- 3 hours ago
In this video, Joe Ferguson runs through the six telltale signs that you need new golf clubs, or that your equipment choices are hurting your scores.
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00:00Right, so as we all know, golf is hard,
00:03so you don't want to make it any harder
00:04by using the wrong equipment, right?
00:06Well, stay with me, because in this video,
00:08I'm going to show you how to spot a few telltale signs
00:11that the equipment you're using
00:12might actually be hurting your score.
00:32That's a nice-looking shot.
00:36Okay, so I'm going to go and get my divot.
00:40Obviously, I'm going to repair this divot,
00:42because that's good etiquette,
00:43but one thing I want you to do
00:45is when you are repairing divots,
00:47don't miss out on a good opportunity
00:48to learn a little bit about your golf equipment.
00:50If you come down here and take a look,
00:52looking at my divot here,
00:54that's exactly what I would want to see.
00:55It's about a dollar in length,
00:57and it's very even side to side,
00:59so I'm really pleased with that.
01:01That gives me the indication that my club,
01:03now I'll tidy it up,
01:05gives me the indication that my club
01:06is soling out correctly on the floor
01:08from a lie angle point of view,
01:10so wherever I'm presenting that face,
01:12I'm going to get a true reflection
01:13in terms of its launch direction
01:14of how this club should play.
01:16However, when you look down and see your divots,
01:19if they look a little bit like this,
01:21chances are you need to go to your local pro
01:23and get your lie angles checked out.
01:25If you're looking at a divot
01:26that's got a little bit more depth
01:27on one side to the other,
01:28and that's quite noticeable,
01:29there's a very good chance your lie angles are inaccurate.
01:32Furthermore, if they look like this,
01:34this kind of skinny slither,
01:36that's another really good indication
01:37that your lie angle may not be where you want to be.
01:40That's going to affect your launch direction,
01:41and as such, it's going to affect your dispersion,
01:44so make sure you don't fall foul
01:45of that little telltale sign.
01:51So here's another telltale sign that your equipment choices
01:54might actually be hurting your game,
01:56and it's problem holes.
01:57Do you have that one hole on your course,
01:59or a course that you visit,
02:00that's always that card record,
02:02you can't seem to get through it?
02:03Well, for me, here at the Caversham,
02:05the 16th is one of those.
02:06Every time I've come here,
02:07I've had a little bit of a problem.
02:08So looking down the fairway there,
02:10I've got a bunker right in the middle of the fairway.
02:12In fact, we've got a couple,
02:13but the first one is the one that causes me problems
02:15from this particular tee.
02:17It's about 280 to 285 to get past.
02:20That's a Sunday best driver for me in terms of carry,
02:23so if there's any headwind at all,
02:26I'm struggling to make that carry.
02:27If I then go down to three-wood,
02:29well, three-wood's just going to go straight into it.
02:31It's right at my carry distance of around 260,
02:34so that's a bit of a problem club.
02:35So if I want to hit big clubs on this hole,
02:37I'm going to have to go left or right at those bunkers,
02:40which brings a little bit of jeopardy into play
02:42of the hedges on the right and left of the fairway.
02:44Now, ordinarily, when I've come here,
02:46I would go from driver three-wood down to my four-iron,
02:48and hitting a four-iron off a hole of this length
02:51would just leave me too far in
02:52and make my second shot become a problem.
02:55So what I do when I play here,
02:57and when I study golf courses before I go and play them,
02:59is look for holes like this,
03:00be it with a problem in the middle of the fairway
03:02or a dogleg that you're going to run out of room
03:04with certain clubs,
03:05and make sure you've got a club
03:07that will cover the distance you need.
03:08So for example, here, I pop in my driving iron,
03:11which gets me around 250 yards from the tee.
03:14So I'm laying up short of that bunker.
03:16I'm taking that hazard out of play entirely,
03:19even if I hit my very, very best shot,
03:21but I'm not leaving myself too far in.
03:24So make sure you're not making those mistakes on the golf course.
03:27Make sure you've got the equipment, the bag set up
03:29to cover the problem holes
03:30and the things that could trip you up.
03:36Right, so you might think there's not much can go wrong
03:39with your equipment in your short game,
03:40your chipping and your pitching,
03:41but truth be told, you'd be wrong.
03:43I see a lot of mistakes here,
03:45particularly with people like myself.
03:46We play a lot of golf in the UK.
03:48I think we've arguably got the most changeable ground conditions
03:52of any golfers out there.
03:53In the summer, we've all seen it.
03:54We can play it off bare hard pan that feels
03:57like playing off the motorway.
03:58Now we're here in November
04:00at the beautiful Caversham Golf Club.
04:01There's been a bit of rainfall.
04:03The ground gets a little bit softer
04:04and that demands a little bit more precision in strike
04:07and it demands some thoughts on the equipment you're using.
04:10So I've got a little 50 yard pitch shot here.
04:13I'm on a relatively tight bit of fairway,
04:15but it's quite soft underfoot.
04:17Now I've got a six degree bounce Callaway wedge here,
04:20which is quite a low bounce wedge.
04:22Now, if I just play this shot,
04:27I mean, I've struck that quite well.
04:28I've got away with that reasonably well there.
04:31But when you've got a low bounce wedge like this,
04:34when you've just got six degrees of bounce on the sole,
04:37in soft conditions, it puts a real premium on your strike.
04:40If I hit that a millimetre fat,
04:43there's a very good chance it would only get halfway to the hole.
04:46So when the ground gets a little bit softer,
04:48it's really worth considering going up to a higher bounce wedge.
04:51Now, a lot of you might be thinking,
04:52well, I don't want to buy two wedges. I don't want to have two wedges hanging about.
04:56In truth, that would be my preference, and that's something that I do.
04:59But I get my equipment free as a tester.
05:01So I understand your point there.
05:02So if you don't want to do that, I think there's another good option.
05:05And this is funnily enough, what Scotty Scheffler does.
05:07So Scheffler has a very, very low bounce lob wedge.
05:11So 60 degrees, around four degrees of bounce.
05:14But then he goes up, his next wedge is a 56 degree,
05:19but he's more into double figures of bounce here.
05:21So I've got a 54 degree here at 14 degrees of bounce.
05:24So the angle gets a lot steeper between the back edge and the leading edge.
05:28That back edge acts like a little bit of a rudder through the soft turf
05:31and gives you that little bit more margin for error.
05:33Yes, you might have to play a few shots with a slightly different loft
05:37to what you might be used to.
05:38However, I think it's worth it for that extra insurance from the sole.
05:42Now, this counts for bunkers as well.
05:44We all know wet sand and dry sand and fine sand and coarse sand,
05:48if you're playing different courses, reacts differently.
05:50So if you've got a couple of different options in your wedge arsenal,
05:54that's really a good way to beat those changeable conditions.
05:57Well, I hope you're enjoying the video.
05:59If you are, if you could just hit that like button and subscribe to the channel,
06:02that really helped us out and get in the comments down below.
06:05Let me know if you've made any horror equipment errors that have affected your game.
06:18Okay. Well, that was annoying.
06:20It was all too familiar.
06:21Does that happen to you?
06:22You think you've hit a good putt from long to mid range.
06:24It just pulls up five to six feet short.
06:27Well, there is obviously a potential for human error here
06:30whereby you're just not hitting it hard enough
06:31or your speed control is not good enough,
06:33but it could also be a telltale sign that your putter's not set up correctly for you.
06:38And specifically, I'm talking about your loft here.
06:41It is crucial to get your loft on your putter to match your stroke type
06:44and the conditions you're playing on.
06:46So for example, if you have too much loft on your putter,
06:49the ball can come off with a little bit too much backspin and skid too much,
06:53and it won't reach the full potential of its roll distance.
06:56Similarly, if you don't have enough loft on your putter,
06:58the ball can get stuck in the grass.
07:00It doesn't get above the grass quick enough on the green and start rolling,
07:04which again will rob the ball of energy and come up short.
07:07So keep an eye out.
07:07If you are consistently coming up short, it's worth getting your putter off check.
07:11And I've got a very easy way to do this on your own with just yourself and your iPhone.
07:16So what you want to do is you want to get your phone out, set it up, rest it against
07:20two T-pegs,
07:21face on to where you're putting.
07:23If you can put a cross or a line on your ball with a Sharpie pen facing that camera,
07:28what you'll notice is when you go in slow motion, film it in slow motion,
07:33if that cross or the line that you put on the ball is staying very much in the orientation
07:37it was in for the first foot or so of its roll, the chances are your loft's in a good
07:42place.
07:43So you don't need to worry and you can blame your lack of ability and lack of speed control
07:46for coming up short. However, if you see that ball oscillating backwards and the cross rotating
07:52like it's got backspin, there could be a very good chance you've got too much loft on your putter
07:57and that's something you'll need to address. And you'll also see if you've got too little loft,
08:01you'll probably see the orientation of the cross moving a little bit, but moreover,
08:05you'll see the ball bouncing a little bit through the grass before it sets off on a true roll.
08:10So this is a really good way of getting to grips, getting a feel of if you have got your
08:15loft right,
08:15it's worth checking before you start blaming yourself for your lack of ability.
08:25Ah, I thought that was a good swing and it's just set off wonky. Have you ever been in that
08:31situation
08:32where you think you're putting good swings on your iron shots but they're just not starting off in
08:36the direction that you were expecting them to? You're looking up and it's coming out of a different
08:40window, well that can be another telltale sign of an incorrect lie angle. So essentially what we want
08:45when we come into impact is this club soling out flush to the ground because then the loft points
08:50exactly where the face is pointing. And what I mean by that is you could come in with a perfectly
08:55square club face, but if your lie angle is wrong and you're too toe up, so you can see if
08:59this club
09:00face is pointing squarely at the camera and it's sold out flat on the ground without opening or closing
09:04the club face at all. If I just get the lie angle wrong, you can see how that loft is
09:08now pointing off to
09:09the left there for me or if the lie angle is too toe down, it's pointing off to the right.
09:13So getting
09:13your lie angle is absolutely crucial to getting that start direction right on your golf ball. And
09:18a good way you can check whether you're in a good place is if you grab a golf ball, one
09:21of your practice
09:22balls and a sharpie pen and also if you've got one of these line me up things that can be
09:26really useful,
09:26but it doesn't necessarily need that. Pop that on your golf ball, pop a nice fresh sharpie line
09:35on that golf ball. Then if you just get in behind, set it up so that golf ball is nice
09:41and vertical on
09:42the ground where you're going to strike it. And then relatively soon after that, you get in there
09:51and you strike that golf ball. Because that's fresh on the tape, do you want to come in a bit
09:55closer here?
09:57I've hit it out the heel, but you can see how almost perfectly vertical that is for me. So I
10:02know these
10:02lie angles for me are really, really good. If you see any of this left to right tilt on that
10:08line
10:08that's left on the club base, then you know you've probably got some lie angle issues which are
10:12affecting your start direction. So you need to get into the pro shop and have a chat to your local
10:16pro about getting that fixed. While we're on the putting green, I want to talk about another aspect
10:24of the putter that might be costing you strokes and it's to do with the alignment. We see so many
10:29different alignment cues available today from two balls, from top lines, from flange lines,
10:35to dots, to no lines. So how do you know which one's right for you? Well, there's a few ways
10:40you
10:40can go about this. Probably the most prudent way is to go and book a fitting with your pro who
10:44will put
10:44you on something like a Quintic or a sand putt lab, something like that, and can actually quantifiably
10:49measure which putters you aim better than others. If you haven't got access to that, however, it's very easy to
10:56get on a putting green. Maybe go into your pro shop and ask if you can just borrow a couple
10:59of putters.
11:00You don't even have to hit any putts with these, so don't make your pro worry about that. But what
11:04you can do, take a friend out to the putting green, get them to take their phone with them,
11:08get yourself set up over a six to ten foot putt, relatively straight, and aim bang at the centre of
11:14the hole. So get different alignment aids, put the first one down and get yourself aiming bang at what
11:18you think square to the centre of the hole is. When you say go, they take a picture. Refer to
11:24that picture and
11:24go and see how close to centre you are. Then move to another style of alignment aid, whether it was
11:29a
11:29top line to start with, move to a flange line, then move to the two ball, then move to a
11:34dart, then move
11:34to no alignment aids, and just cross-reference how well you line those clubs up. It's not a perfect
11:40science, but it will give you a really good indication of what style of putter works better
11:45for you for your eyes because we're all very, very different. Make sure you're checking that out
11:50because you can put the best stroke on any of these putts you like. If you're not pointing in the
11:53right
11:54place to start with, you're going to hole very little. Right, so there you have it. I hope that
11:57was helpful. I hope that's given you a few indicators of how to spot those telltale signs your equipment
12:02might not be working for you. Let me know in the comments down below, have you fallen foul of any
12:06of those, and let me know if you fix it. I really want to hear about it.
12:09Let me know in the comments below.
12:09Here you go.
12:15You
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