- 5 minutes ago
We team up with golf YouTuber Matt Fryer to help you hit better shots with the club that statistically loses golfers the most shots during a round according to data from Shot Scope.
Big thanks to Shot Scope for the data and tech featured this video.
Big thanks to Shot Scope for the data and tech featured this video.
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SportsTranscript
00:00Now this is the club that the data tells us every ability of golfer loses the most shots
00:05with during a round. So we've teamed up with YouTube coach and Shotscape ambassador Matt
00:10Fryer to help you turn this club into a secret weapon.
00:17Right so Matt, we're here on the fourth hole at Thornby Ladies, beautiful hole, but we've been
00:23crunching the numbers right with Shotscape and it's clear that every ability of golfer
00:27loses the most strokes during a round with a five iron versus any other club in the bag.
00:33Yeah tough club to hit. Why do you think that is? You know the five iron itself not much loft
00:38on there,
00:39they're getting stronger as well you know we look back in the old days it was around 25-26 degrees,
00:45yeah down at like 22 now so you've got to be able to launch it so I think that plays
00:50a big part and
00:51then head size as well when we think of alternatives that are out there compare that to the iron and
00:57they are you know pretty small that even even myself I'm considering changing that in a minute
01:01just to try and find a bit of yeah a bit of forgiveness out there. And why is a lack
01:05of
01:05loft a problem for a lot of golfers out there? I think well it's there's two things launching it
01:09we want to try and I think when we think of good iron shots we see that high tower in
01:14one and then
01:15also curvature we struggle actually controlling the curvature and again because the head is small as well
01:20if we then add in a missed strike as well we're not going to launch it as high and the
01:25curvature is
01:26then going to be exaggerated even more so it makes it probably the hardest club in our bag to hit.
01:31Yeah so not only is it hard to hit because of all those reasons you just talked about we also
01:36see
01:36that golfers have unrealistic expectations about how far they hit it but also how many times they
01:42should be hitting the green with this particular club. Let's say the average golfer 15 handicapper is
01:46hitting it 169 yards. They'll be thinking that the seven iron is going 150 so then when they're
01:52pulling the five iron out at 180 let's say you're going to be short there that's not even factoring
01:58if you misstruck it or depending on lie as well I see a lot of golfers taking it you know
02:03from semi
02:04rough slightly heavier rough and because of that lack of loft they're not able then to launch it up as
02:10well which is then going to culminate in a short shot going into the green again. Right that's enough
02:15for the doom and gloom we've talked about how hard a five iron is to hit but let's help golfers
02:19out
02:19there hit their five iron a little bit better shall we? Yeah. Well for me there's two areas where
02:25I see real problems with the five iron a lot of students that I coach they come in we get
02:30the five
02:30iron out and we adopt the technique that we see from a seven iron in that as we go to
02:35address the
02:36golf ball the ball gets back in the stance here and as we discussed there's not much loft on it
02:41and we
02:41want to try and launch this thing and that's then where the second problem comes in in that as we're
02:46coming into impact I see a lot of golfers moving back behind the golf ball in an effort to try
02:53and
02:53get the ball up in the air so when we do get our five iron in hand and we're going
02:57to address it we're
02:59going to remedy that ball position first if we start with our feet together here where the ball is going
03:03to be just in the middle of them what I would say to every golfer if we're going to get
03:07a five iron out
03:08we want it a little bit further forwards in our stance it's going to shallow the angle of attack
03:13out ever so slightly and it's going to help us launch it so what we want to try and do
03:17is maybe
03:18step out about two inches with the lead foot towards our target so we'd see that it's about a club
03:23head's
03:23width in front there yeah and then as we go back we're going to make a bigger step there so
03:29it's going
03:29to be about two to three club heads back there as we can see now where my body is we've
03:35got the middle
03:35of the body here and the ball is now target side of that most golfers have it back here and
03:41then
03:41intuitively the brain then will say right we need to now get this up because it's further back and
03:46that's where the second problem comes in as we're coming into impact i see a lot of people getting
03:52the sternum even further back behind the golf ball and that's going to result in those shots where we're
03:58getting the ground before and if not you get that lovely topped one and then again you're going to have
04:03five eye when you're absolutely cursing yourself so just real simple making sure that we get just
04:08the basics and any pro that you see out on the golf course they just do the basics well yeah
04:13they've all
04:13got different swings but if we can just make sure by taking this little setup and feeling that that
04:19sternum's just behind it but then as we start to come down the one thing i want you to try
04:25and feel
04:25is that you just make a slight move where we feel we pressure the lead foot but as we're coming
04:32into
04:32impact i want to see now that that sternum will be slightly in front of it just covering it because
04:37if we do that we're then going to get ball and turf strike and that's going to give us the
04:41appropriate
04:41lift conditions that we want to try and get this five iron struck with that's some some really good
04:46advice there i mean is there any drills or swing feelings that people can take to the range to
04:51practice to really enforce these good movements yeah i think for me i do a real simple drill with my
04:56students and you know we talk about the five iron being hard to hit button i want to talk about
05:01the
05:01makeup of the club as well yeah mine they're really shallow soul if we think of like your seven iron
05:06your pitching wedge you take more of a divot with those clubs with these you get a little bit of
05:10relief and we want to try and use the bottom of the club a little bit more so what i
05:14want you to try
05:14and feel if you just did a little drill where you put two t-pegs one at ball length and
05:21then one about
05:22a club head width out in front of the golf club there what i want us to try and do
05:27if we just move the
05:27ball to start off with i just call it sort of landing the plane as we do it or brushing
05:32the
05:32plane along the ground i want to try and feel that i can get my students to try and feel
05:36that they
05:37as they're coming into impact to stop the leaning back and getting the ground early i want to feel
05:43that as we're coming through we just feel that we're just brushing the ground here just that couple
05:48of inches from where the ball would be and afterwards i'm not taking a big slab of turf out
05:53so i'm just going to graze it with a slightly downwards attack angle but as you can see
05:58there just a little bit of turf popping up as we go through if we can just do this in
06:02small swings
06:03you'll start to feel that the pressure shifts forwards and you get that nice little grazing of
06:09the club and then as you come into a full swing you're able to just pick the ball off a
06:13little bit
06:14cleaner instead of dumping it out early i really like that well should we see one you've sort of talked
06:18of talk here it's all the talk let's let's see that nice shallow angle of attack i mean it'd be
06:24a
06:24good fine one to get there today into this wind but uh hopefully the viewers can see what it what
06:29it's supposed to look like just that little brush come in make sure that ball position's right
06:38feel that sternum in the right place
06:46that's a pretty good hit matt it's pretty good but a little little curl on it there joel but yeah
06:53as you can see not much divot and that's the big thing for me trying not to make sure that
06:59we're
06:59doing everything to get it up in the air try that little brushing technique and you'll be
07:03astounded how well your strikes start to come with it yeah no that's a really good drill and a really
07:07good shot i mean that stayed pretty straight but yeah i think you would agree and i would agree you
07:12see a lot of golfers with long irons in the hand bye bye and that lack of loft really just
07:16accentuates
07:16the curve that you get yeah on a ball so what should golfers approach be when it comes to their
07:21aim and
07:22their strategy should they be allowing for a little bit more how can they really help hit more greens
07:27with the way they think about this shot i think over egging how far we hit it so you know
07:32on a whole
07:32line here at formby ladies on the fourth a lot of the trouble that we see on every golf course
07:37as well
07:37is generally at the front yeah so if you've struggled to launch it but you've got an okay
07:42strike and it's sort of coming in a little bit flatter as well you've got a lower descent angle
07:46you might end up bouncing into trouble so like one strategy is looking at you know this hole here
07:52i can see one two three bunkers that are all short of the green so is the five iron going
07:57to cover that
07:58maybe not am i going to launch it enough to carry it up over maybe not then there's also
08:04the um you know the flag hunter especially when we get the lasers out we look and as we play
08:10golf our
08:10end target is that flag isn't it is the hole so we can get suckered into going well the flags
08:15tight
08:15on the right or tight on the left and depending on what your curvature is as well it might not
08:21be wise
08:22to actually go at that flag because you could stand there with a flag that's at the right of the
08:26green
08:26you've got a little bit of a slice the five iron is going to accentuate it you aim dead at
08:32that flag
08:32and you miss it 20 yards right so it might be more if you are a slicer saying cutting the
08:38green into
08:38thirds you know you've got your left third your right third and your middle third you want to play
08:43down the middle and the uh the left third if you are a little bit of a slicer allowing it
08:47to move back
08:48to center and then pull up to the right hand flag so there's a lot of thing you know for
08:53me assessing
08:53where the trouble is and flags and and taking that into account and especially with the five iron
09:00you know playing towards that back number a lot of the time as well with the watches the great thing
09:04is that you can see front middle and back yeah i'd play you know to that back one every time
09:09if i've
09:10got anything more than a seven iron out for the the average golfer you don't see a lot of golfers
09:14missing long do you a lot of the time and you and often that's where the trouble isn't yeah there's
09:20nothing generally that back of the green there it's just going to hit it and roll back to the
09:23green so yeah that would be part of my strategy straight away so there you go guys some really
09:28useful swing advice strategy advice to help you hit your five iron a little bit better next time out
09:34right so matt we've given the viewers some useful tips to help them hit their five iron a little bit
09:38better but if they're still struggling which a lot of golfers probably will be yeah what other options
09:44are there for them to put in their bag maybe upgrade it to a different club that might give them
09:50a
09:50bit more success yeah you know and shot scope shows that if you do switch into something else
09:55i.e like a hybrid your green percentage is going to go up i think four or five percent more
10:00than
10:00more greens are hit with the alternatives yeah there's lots out there now you know back in the
10:05day we just saw bladed irons didn't we it was a two iron to a lob wedge deal with it
10:09get on with it as
10:09where now combo settings become a big thing so you can get a sort of like driving utility iron something
10:15along the lines of like this so the head looks a lot bigger compared to it you can get things
10:21like
10:21the hybrid something like this again it's sort of the mix in between the iron and the wood and then
10:28even from there you can go into things like the seven woods and even the nine woods now we're seeing
10:33lots of things like these and you know the real big benefits with clubs like these when you're moving into
10:38them is the mass of the head so not only do you get a larger sole which is going to
10:44help you with
10:45a little bit of turf interaction it's going to be able to get a little bit more weight down at
10:49the
10:49bottom which is going to help with that launch issue that i talked about earlier on yeah and then
10:53also because of i've lost mass of the head from toe to heel and then even from front to back
10:58any
10:59missed strikes which we all do as an average golfer that's not going to cause as much twist in the
11:05face so then that's going to limit that curvature as well you know when you hear the hybrid the combo
11:10set so i think it's a pride thing a lot of time we would say no no i've got to
11:15have it but we're
11:15seeing you know tommy fleetwood winner of the fedex caught nine wood in the bag when he did that so
11:21it's something that i think if you really struggle with those long irons looking at the alternatives
11:26you can have a dramatic impact on your game i mean we've already talked about at least four
11:31alternatives there to a long iron how do golfers know which one's right for them what should they
11:36be looking at um obviously for me always talk about in our videos go and get fit you know you've
11:43got to look at your launch conditions what swing speed you are how you spin the golf ball and what
11:51feels good to you as well you might look down at something and say oh a fairway wood a seven
11:55wood just
11:55doesn't look right as well something like a you know a combo iron you still feel like you're playing a
12:01little bit more of an iron so it's a case of getting them all in hand and you know looking
12:05at
12:05the gapping as well of each of them because you what you don't want is to go from six iron
12:10to a
12:11combo iron and then your next comes your three wood and you've got you know a 40 50 yard gap
12:16you've got
12:16to make sure that those all stack up and that you're hitting the right launch angles as well when
12:20you go through them so there you have it guys hopefully we've given you all the advice you need to
12:25hit better shots with the club that the stats say is the hardest to hit we've helped you swing we've
12:30helped you set up position we've given you some options in terms of changing the club to make it
12:34easier for you if you're still struggling then maybe all hope is lost but hopefully the tips in
12:40this video are going to help you hit more greens with your five iron and lower your scores big thank
12:45you to matt for helping us today thank you to formby ladies golf club here we'll see you next time
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