Article #58
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Dear Jitterbug:
I hit my irons, relatively speaking, farther than my woods. My 8-iron goes 150 yards, which seems pretty good to me, but my driver only goes 220 yards. What should be the correct proportion of irons to driver distance? If mine is out of proportion, how do I fix it?
Jon Rickland
Jitterbug Gang Fan
Jitterbug:
All right, Jon, you may not be as far off as you think. It's reasonable to hit your 8-iron 150, and your driver 220. To me, those yardages match up fairly well.
But, I know what you're talking about. Often, when a person is way out of whack, that is to say, hitting his 8-iron 170 and driver only 225, it's usually an angle of attack issue. In other words, the guy is getting distance from his 8-iron by hitting abruptly down into the ball, giving the 8-iron the effective loft of, say, a 5-iron at impact. The earmark of this type player is the flying squirrel like divots, v-shaped deep, and five pounds each.
Unfortunately, this type approach doesn't work too well with the long irons and woods; in fact, the diminishing distance returns start somewhere around a 6-iron.
Mr. Vaughn:
There's another reason golfers tend to be disproportionate in the iron to driver distance ratio, and it has to do with the psychological effects of swinging a driver.
Let's face it, the driver is the only club in the bag that doesn't have a yardage assigned to it. The farther, the better! Right? And, that's how people swing at the ball with the driver; like they're trying to hit it to the moon. Next question: What do golfers, especially men, do when they're trying to hit the ball farther? That's right, they fire their upper bodies out ahead of everything, spending all the power producing whip into impact before it's useful. And, of course, it's even worse when the golfer feels deficient in his driving distance. So, if you're really suffering from disproportionate driver distance, you might have your pro see if you're making the same swing with the driver as you are with all your other clubs.
Lord Berry:
As important as it may seem to standardize a certain number of yards between each club, it's more important you have a reasonable understanding of what each club can and can't do.
Golf is, in part, being able to hit shots, and, the other part, knowing what to expect from whichever club you select from your bag.