The lie angle is important because it has a direct effect on how the club will react with the ground at impact and also where the club face is pointing at address and impact. Putter The shortest club in the bag, if using a standard design not a belly or broom handle , is the putter. Because of its purpose, to roll a ball along a green, it has almost no loft. The putter is the exception to the rule. So try out his advise and see how it works for you.
I average meters off the tee with my driver. Irons are way more accurate and with them being shorter I feel each iron is more specific.
I even let a fellow much taller than me try my driver and he was amazed with the distance over his driver that was half inch longer than standard. He actually hit his drive farther with mine than his. Carter, good to hear from you again. Glad to know you are not only still swatting the ball, but doing so with more confidence.
Congrats on your success, and keep up the good work! Greetings John, I am the new owner of a set of standard length irons and looking to add a set of hybrids. I also wonder what the impact would be to my fiberglass shafted irons if I took them down an inch? Will the impact be dramatic if cut down an inch? I would appreciate any guidence… Regards, Dave. Dave, thanks very much for reading and commenting. It will take a little while, but one of the best things you can do is read back through all the comments that have been attached to this article.
It will help you understand the advantages and the potential downsides to shortening your clubs. I suggest reading the comments and making a few notes before you make a final decision about your clubs. Concerning the hybrids—feel free to order them short, but request that the manufacturer do what they can to keep the swing-weight up this is generally the biggest problem when shortening clubs, that the head-end becomes too light compared to the overall weight.
They might place weights down the shaft, or a few other tricks, to maintain a decent swing-weight. There are also some new ultra-light grips out there that can help the problem.
Concerning the irons—my clubs are graphite shafted and a full inch short. I love them. I have had to add lead tape to the cavity to get the swing-weight back up a little, but I am very comfortable with them.
Thanks again, and best wishes! Hi Dave. I have a question for you. When you choke down on your clubs, do they FEEL okay to you? Bottom line is that if you LIKE the way the clubs perform and feel when you choked down on the grips, you will LIKE them just as much after you cut the shafts down, So go for it.
John, Great article! Dan, thanks for reading, and good luck with the experiment! I look forward to hearing about your experience. Just read this great article. I usually play 1 inch longer but tried standard length and got great results. Many thanks and best wishes from Northern Ireland , Bill Stewart. Bill, good luck with the new clubs. Hope they serve you well, and thanks for checking in from Northern Ireland!
Thanks for the great info. I am 6 ft and a 4 handicap. But, I can tell that my lie angle is a lot better. With standard length irons with standard lie angles, I noticed they were a little upright with me. After hitting my new Nikes, I have noticed my lie angle is more even with the ground.
No longer hitting pull hooks like i used to. I think being able to stand closer to the ball has fixed that. Chad, everything you said makes sense. Shortening the clubs effectively makes them play flatter, which could help with pull-hooks. And being closer actually can help that too, mainly through a change in balance or weight-movement during the swing.
Good luck with the blades, and thanks for reading! Will definitely get over it and try this next time I go to the range.
Oh by the way I love Lakeview what great tracks that and Packsaddle. Lew, thanks for reading and commenting! One thing you might experiment with since you are uncomfortable with choking down—try fatter grips. Part of your discomfort might be that the grip gets too narrow for you as you choke down.
Glad you enjoy playing Lakeview. Hi John; Reading your posts on this site makes me wish I lived a lot closer to where you teach.
My bet is that you give very helpful lessons that really work for your students. Don, thanks very much. I enjoy the time I spend with my students, and do everything I can to help them enjoy the game more.
Appreciate your kind words! The combo and length would bring it back to a red dot but add distance and allow me to dig more. The other said red dot, reg steel standard shaft.
Totally confused. Ken, I understand your frustration, and I wish I could clarify things for you. My advice is to make the final decision based on feel and ball-flight and cost if need be. Make sure you hit each option off of turf so that you get a realistic sense of the ball flight, and go for the one that gives you consistently the best control over direction and trajectory.
Good luck, and thanks for reading! Your analysis about the length of drivers makes sense to me. My colleagues have been puzzled as to why I hit longer with my 4 woods than my driver. I always felt that my swing was some how different for the driver as compared to other clubs. I was thinking of shortening my driver but I will now try to chock down on it to see if it makes difference.
I also wonder whether long drivers can create stress for your back, shoulders and wrists. Alan, I think you are right on track. A lot of golfers do very well with the length of a 4 or 5-wood, and the loft of about a 3-wood. Modern drivers really do not relate to the rest of the set, and really require a completely different setup and swing.
Best of luck, and thanks for reading! I have been struggling hitting irons below about a seven iron. I now choke down on all my shafts driver included. The result is that I am swinging better and making good contact with all my irons. I have in effect shortened the shafts. The distance is excellent compared to previous sets ups. I am now able to put all the good stuff I have learnt into action most of the time. I am excited by the results of shortening the club. Maybe I should get the pro to take half an inch of all my clubs — putter included.
Yes I go down the shaft on that one too. I am 5 foot 8 inches tall. By the way, my putter is probably about 32 inches. I am a one handed player right hand playing right handed. I place my hand on the grip in the same location as if I had both hands. I had a fitting recently and he suggested shorter clubs and gripping them at or near the end of the grip to increase clubhead speed.
He even mentioned possible trying womens length clubs. I know I grip my current set too tightly as my glove wears quickly. Thanks for reading, and best wishes! Went to a local club swap Saturday and picked up two clubs. Picked up a TaylorMade R7 Quad I got both clubs because I want to do some testing of shorter than normal wood and the movable weight system of the TaylorMade clubs will allow me to adjust the weight of the head to compensate for cutting down the length of the shafts of both clubs.
This is a great way to figure out what length works best for each golfer as it allow for adjusting the swing weight as you cut down the shaft one step at a time until you find the BEST length for you or a customer. Will do some testing with the factory shafts but will install a good after market shaft before either club goes in my bag. This is a great article, and based on my experience I have been playing since I was a kid and grew up taking lessons and honing my swing fundamentals , I want to believe you.
Last week, I got my first custom set of irons at Golfsmith. Last weekend, I played my first round with the clubs with mixed results. At address, they look and feel fantastic. However, I had a few swings where, although the ball seemed to fly higher and pretty consistently straight, the distance was a good 5 to 10 yards shorter than how long I used to hit the same irons Note: my old set was standard length.
That said, when hit purely, the contact felt better than ever, my accuracy was excellent, and I rarely had serious mis-hits. Should I be worried that I should have gone with standard length? Is it normal to see the results that I saw? Could this be an effect of me just having to get used to a slightly shorter club than the ones I have hit over the past 20 years playing?
I feel like consistency with my new clubs will come with time, and keeping in mind your pointers of posture and approach above would help as well…. Hi, Chase. Great comments and questions. Here are some things to consider, and some possible explanations for the results you saw:. Playing with one set for 20 years will make your swing evolve to fit those specs, which is why I asked if you have a somewhat flat swing.
If you play with the new clubs for several years, your swing will likely evolve to fit them too. The point of my article was that most people can create more distance by focusing on other factors before adding length to the club.
Best wishes, and thanks for reading! I have a son who just turned I bought him a set of rental return Nike VRs from our golf course as a reward for not playing tackle football afraid of head injuries like many others unfortunately as he really enjoyed playing. Anyway, the clubs are probably 5 to 6 inches too long, the driver probably even more based on your points in your column.
He hits them Ok, but struggles to get the ball flight that he had when he was playing his junior clubs. He feels embarrassed going back to junior clubs because all of his friends have adults clubs they are too big for some of his friends as well so these kids must want to grow up too fast these days!
PS Yes, he chokes down on all of them, but the shaft almost pokes him when he swings, ugh! Thanks for any help you can give, take care! Brian, thanks for reading and responding to my article. She was phenomenal, and she had this amazing swing based around the angles created by choking down on her junior clubs. Eventually her dad decided he did not like her choking down and she was removed from my junior programs.
She went on to play college golf and is a respectable player to this day, but her scores were never better than when she was 13 years old. I sometimes wonder what would have happened if she had been allowed to stay on the path she had started down. One of my methods is to try to create angles and planes for juniors that will not change when they are adults. As they get taller, the clubs get longer, but the angles are consistent. Juniors playing with long clubs tend to learn swing planes that are not entirely effective, and tend to be less effective when they are taller and stronger.
My suggestion is this—at the very least, cut an inch or a little more off those clubs. You might consider having a club-fitter help you add some weight to the head to keep the swing-weight decent. And even then, have your son honestly evaluate which set he hits better. Perhaps a third set a short, light-weight adult set? My old shafts definitely had more flex and were lighter. The salesperson at Golfsmith recommended I go with a stiffer flex, which I think is resulting a a more consistently straight ball flight.
No, they are fairly similar. No, I think my swing is probably more vertical on average. And while it sounds like you needed a stiffer shaft, you also could lose a few mph in the swing if the new shaft is heavier. I also find it unlikely that a half-inch of length translates into a one-club change in distance. Hope you get adjusted to the new sticks, and either get your yardage back, or at least hit them accurate enough that less distance is worth it!
Chase; I would have to think that the main reason you are hitting your new irons shorter and higher is due to the loft of the new clubs being higher. I have a set of SnakeEyes C irons, and compared to most of todays current irons, the loft of all of the clubs is Higher with the SnakeEyes set. A good 15 to 20 Yards shorter, all due to the higher loft on my older irons.
I also was hitting the ball 5 degrees Lower with the newer Burner irons. Again due to the lower loft. My money is betting on you not seeing much if any difference in distance do this test.
After a 10 year lull while my weekends were locked by Little League and such, I have started golf again. I leave my Driver out of bag because it always slices. Striking the 3 wood better now, heavy slice is gone. I am thinking this explains my ability to hit a 2 iron with better accuracy.
Except that two iron is a graphite shaft, while the rest are steel. So now, it is time to buy a modern set of clubs. And I am concerned with loft and shaft. At age 55 and 5. Thanks for reading, Greg, and welcome back to golf! I Wish that more clubs came with Weight Ports or weight screws that could be used to Increase the weight of the head. They would sure come in handy for building a set of clubs with shorter shafts to get the swing weight back to normal. I really hate the look of lead tape on a clubhead.
However, one thing that I noticed right away was that I felt pretty comfortable hitting wedges, 9 iron and 8 iron, and generally hit them as well — and as long — as my friends who are much better players. I understood that swing flaws come out more as you move toward the driver, but it was more than that. My swing with the shorter clubs felt comfortable, like my shoulders just rotating around my spine, while the longer clubs just felt out of control.
I wished that I could have the same type of swing for my driver and long hybrids as my higher clubs, but the shaft tended to put me in an more upright position, so I figured that that was the position that I was supposed to have. Then, a few weeks back, a friend was watching a PGA event. As you mentioned, it looked like he was playing with kid clubs. He was bent over more that I was with a 9 iron.
But I noticed how it allowed him to use his shoulders to turn his arms and hands. I was blown away. I watched him hit a driver. Same thing. Much more spine tilt. I noticed something else. His hands gripped the club just a bit above his knees with his driver. My hands are around my pockets, maybe my crotch, a good foot higher! That was amazing to me. I noticed that most pros grip is around mid-thigh, again, much lower that where I setup. They push you toward a much more upright address position, particularly the driver and other woods.
Also, from a mental perspective, two inches of club sticking out kind of messes with my concentration, but I can get used to it. Anyway, I guess that this is a long-winded way to say thanks for the article. Bit far to drive for a lesson. I think you are spot-on with the things you saw in Keegan Bradley.
Consider going through a fitting for new, shorter clubs, or consider cutting your clubs down a little read the earlier comments to get a lot of good info about club adjustments. And if you ever go into the Blue Ridge Grill, say hi to the bartender, Mark, who is one of my best buddies. Funny you should mention the bar. I did play down there once.
Probably scored around — a generous — though I did birdie a hold and hit some pars, which shows what the other holes were like. My friends mentioned the Blue Ridge Grill, saying that it was a great place to grab a drink. By the way, I went to the range yesterday to test choking down. It definitely made me feel more comfortable. It might help. Excellent article… after a 30 year break from golf I started playing last August.
Taylormade R11 TP All of these changes, including shoes, for less than a new driver — golf is just plain fun now. I actually wear a cadet-medium glove but play with jumbo lamkin grips. They fill the hand while the hand is in a relaxed position—not to mention that some of us choke down to get the right length on the clubs, and the oversized grips keep the handle from getting too narrow as the hands go down the shaft.
And I absolutely agree about the shoes adding stability to the swing. Great stuff! Thanks John for posting the article, I feel more comfortable on cutting my driver down to size now, I found at 3. John, time will tell about the performance of the shaft, but I can tell you that most people do better with a driver that is close to 5-wood length, which is pretty close to where you have ended up.
I was told that I needed these and I never really questioned it. Last night, I went to golf store and got on fitting machine for new clubs. To my astonishment, I hit the standard length 6-iron close to 10 yards farther than the longer clubs, even when I felt like I was hitting the longer clubs flush. The swing speed and ballhead speed were correspondingly greater with the standard length. But in my case, it created a slower clubhead speed. What is the explanation for this?
Fred, thanks for reading and commenting. You could easily make up for a few mph by striking the shorter club better, more in the center. Both of my woods are a good bit shorter than my driver but the swing speed is the same as often as not. I started golfing about six months ago. I became hooked pretty fast. My short game caught on much faster than my long game. My driving started out okay, but I was slicing way too much.
The more I tweaked my swing the worse I became and eventually my driving became terrible. So much that was afraid to even take out my driver on the course. This has kept me from attempting a par 72 course. Earlier this afternoon I was hitting balls at range with little to no progress. For the heck of it I decided to choke down. My first shot went straight about yards. I figured it was probably a fluke, but nope, every ball I hit after that was straight and in the yard range.
Now that I think about it. Thanks for the note! I think the bigger advantage of having same-length clubs would actually be having all clubs with the same lie angle—meaning each club could be swung in the same plane.
Same setup, same plane, consistent results—seems a lot easier than 14 different setups and planes! Thanks for the question! One less Variable. If all your irons are the same length, then you only have to learn how to make ONE swing.
Good idea, but not everyone agrees that it works out to be a Better way to go. I just finished doing a like checking on the features of TaylorMade drivers. Seem like the best model to use for building shorter than normal drivers will be the R7 models. So that leaves the R7 as the best option for adjusting the swing weight using different screw weights. John; I looked at the One Iron Golf club idea and came up with a little different idea on my own.
That happens to be what a standard 6 iron length is. I did a test of my idea a few years back. I built a Bottom line was I hit the Overall, I was much more consistant in terms of accuracy and distance with the 6 iron length 3 iron.
Hi John, like Mark I too have been playing a little over a year 49 years old. A little late in life but.. Well, all my crying out of the way, I too have nearly the same problem that he has. I recently viewed a video on You-tube about this very issue. A PGA instructor said that driver shafts should not be any longer than 1 inch higher than your belly-button. I have been struggling with accuracy also. I took a few lessons at the PGA Golf store in Paramus, NJ and the golf pro said that I should keep my spine almost straight up, nearly verticle, on my tee shot with my driver.
I golf every week with my 22 year old nephew who has been playing for 6 years. He is a handicap. He said right from the start that I was too upright and looked uncomfortable at address. I read your article and I checked my driver.
I have always felt it was too long and my swing was not comfortable and fluid. And similarly my irons, and sometimes 7, I have some accuracy and distance issues. Your thoughts. Frank, welcome to the game!! I think you are realizing some important things.
I tend to use my eye with my clients, and if they can take a decent posture, with at least some forward flex from the hips, and get the shaft pointing at their belt-line or higher at address, then they should be able to learn a decent swing with the driver. It made a huge difference and I now can hit my irons. He did take one inch off all my clubs except the putter. I actually hit them all farther, because more of my strikes are in the center.
My Vokey wedges do feel kind of odd due to the shortness. In one chapter he writes about fitting some NBA players for clubs. You might intuitively think that because they are so tall they would automatically need longer clubs. Not so! It's all about arm length.
Wishon uses the "wrist to floor" measurement to determine club length, not the "fingertip to floor" method. He feels that large hands with long fingers would skew the measurement. This could surely be the case with guys who can palm a basketball like it's a volleyball. He wrote about one particular player who was 6'10", but had a wingspan of 7'4". His hand were hanging down by his knees! He needed shorter than normal clubs. If you need the wedge shortened to suit your height, then the gap between the wedges and 9-iron may be too large a gap and you need all the irons shortened to maintain the gap.
The standard distance gap for the set of irons used to be 10 yards between the irons, these days could be 15 yards depending on the set up. Think also the golfers are not cut from the same mold, we all have different physical frame and different physical ability, eye-hand coordination For creating the ball trajectory and the distance we want, combining the loft angle and the length of the golf club to make necessary adjustment for the purpose of having the gap between each of the golf clubs.
One, the driver does not need to be precise in distance I've heard, the longer the distance the better , and the longer the shaft , the more effort to keep it under control to put the tee shot in the targeted area. A lot of the golfers swear that they felt the difference, and some said there is not a noticeable benefit. How we feel about substance or non-substance will change over time. A strong golfer whom keeps his physical condition in check will benefit from the current fitted set longer, Most of us will enjoy this fitted spec.
A simple answer to your friend's question of why shorten the golf clubs if they were at different length to start with, is that we're trying to find solutions to achieve the endless search for the perfect golf club for the individual golfer.
I can tell you this, a good golfer with above athletic ability can play any set of golf clubs, may not play his very best of golf. It's a great game for anyone to enjoy, most of us will never play at the level we see on the broadcasting Tournaments. I heard sometime ago that one does not have to be good at golfing to enjoy playing it.
True, if the expectation is not unrealistic. Interesting turns to this conversation. I've read and reread the OP's post and it seems that he is asking a couple of things, for example in the original question, i. It begs to ask, do the manufacturers "build" clubs to have the same swing "feel", so that your swing feels the same whether its a 5i - 7i - 4h - PW, where the only real adjustment is knowing that the swing plane shifts slightly based on the varying club lengths which is what the latter part of the OP's post seemed to ask.
In the same respect if I do take and put tape 1" down on the hand from the butt end and use that as my gauge for gripping the club, I swing straighter with more carry.
The clubs make better contact all around. To be honest I work off the loft of the irons which is why I love the TA s as the lofts are stamped in the club face rather than the number stamped in the bottom. FYI - I have already been using drivers that have shafts shortened from You can post now and register later.
If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account. Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible. Paste as plain text instead. Only 75 emoji are allowed. Display as a link instead. Clear editor. Upload or insert images from URL. By dennyjones , October 14 in Tour Talk. By iacas , December 31, in Instruction and Playing Tips.
Scrape off the underlying layer of grip tape with the utility knife. If you have trouble removing the grip, use solvent to dissolve the glue as you scrape. Clean off any remaining adhesive from the shaft with solvent and allow it to dry.
Wrap masking tape around the area of the shaft that will be cut. The tape will keep the end of the shaft from splintering as you cut. Use a tape measure and pen to mark off the exact length of the new shaft. Insert the cutting blade attachment into the rotary tool according to the instructions in your owner's manual. Use the rotary tool to cut the club shaft along your marked line. Smooth out the end of the shaft with a piece of fine grain sandpaper.
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