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Only a matter of degrees
Posted: Monday November 08, 1999 11:44 AM
Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity was a 42-year-old 8-handicapper when he suddenly lost his swing. Since December 1989 he has been looking for it -- a modern-day Odysseus adrift on the troubled waters of swing theory. As Garrity travels the world reporting on golf, he visits as many driving ranges as he can, avoiding the dreaded "mats only" ranges that prevent him from teeing it up. Here is the latest installment of his story. Saturday, November 6 KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- Anybody who has seen me play in recent years -- the troubled years -- knows that my wedge play has been horrible. Given a choice between a 50-yard pitch shot and a 250-yard drive over Victoria Falls, I'd take the long shot every time. No matter what technique I employed, half my wedge shots were either fat or skulled. I blamed my swing. Three weeks ago, in a round at California's Del Mar Country Club, I faced two wedge shots over water from perfect fairway lies. Afraid of chunking the ball in the drink, I tried to pick each one cleanly off the turf. One ball rocketed into a hedgerow to the right of the green. The other fluttered like a wiffle ball and barely cleared the pond. I blamed my clubs. A quick recap: When my swing vanished a decade ago, I was 42 years old, 6'7", and played to an 8-handicap. Today I am 10 years older and maybe 10 strokes poorer. But I am still tall. My height has been a problem since I discovered, at 17, that I could no longer reach the ball from a normal address position. It's the reason I gave my clubs to my college roommate and quit the game. When I took up golf again in my 30s, I had clubs made that were about two inches longer than standard with extra-stiff shafts, built-up grips and upright lies. But there was no science behind my club specs. It was all guesswork. Three years ago, when I took my first lesson from Brian Mogg at the Leadbetter Academy, he marched me right across the range to the club shack. Inside the screened structure, technician Mickey Novak re-fitted my Founders Club irons. "Upright" was still too flat, so Mickey put each clubhead in a special vise and leaned on the club with a lever bar until it was another 2° upright. That's what he did, at least, with the three-iron through the nine-iron. When he tried to bend my pitching wedge, it snapped at the hosel. "I can't believe I did that," he said. I had a spare pitching wedge at home, so I wasn't inconvenienced. But Mickey thought it unwise to bend my sand and lob wedges, lest they also wind up as scrap metal. About a year later, I switched to a new set of Wilson Fat Shaft irons -- built to Mickey's specs -- but for some reason I didn't buy the sand and lob wedges. I continued to play with my old wedges, which were too flat for my swing. And because I am so certain that the golf swing is at the heart of most bad shots, I never used equipment as an alibi for my bad wedge play. In fact, I forgot that my wedges had different specs from my other irons. Fast-forward to the fall of '99. My most recent lesson with Brian, in September, produced the long-sought result: a more inside-out swing path. Tight lies were no longer a problem, and my divots were no longer skinny and pointing left. But there was no improvement with my sand and lob wedges. It suddenly dawned on me (had I been practicing blindfolded?) that my wedges were toe-down at address. That is, the heel of the club and half of the sole were off the ground. No wonder I couldn't hit my wedges! The sweet spot was the size of a pea. The toe of the club either snagged the ground before impact or cracked the ball on a line. In the manner of Archimedes ("Eureka!"), I called Mickey at Lake Nona and put in an order for a pair of Titleist "Vokey Design" sand wedges. They were still on order when I played at Del Mar in early October. Then Larry Dorman of Callaway Golf invited me to stop by his company's test facility in Carlsbad. The Callaway folks took me to a dark room with a range mat, a driving net, and an array of cameras, sensors and computers. The club specialist, former Tour player Clark Renner, had me hit balls into the net with various clubs. Between shots, he studied my clubhead speed, launch angle and swing plane on a computer screen; then he went into another room and bent clubheads with the same medieval equipment that Mickey uses. "This should help your wedge play," Clark said, handing me a Big Bertha X-12 gap wedge bent a full 3° past standard upright. When I addressed a ball, the club's sole lay flat on the mat. When I hit the ball, it came off the very center of the clubface. The shot felt crisp. In fact, every shot felt crisp. Clark had to practically wrestle the club out of my hands. So now I'm the owner of five new wedges -- the 56° and 60° Titleist wedges and a PW/Approach Wedge/SW combo from Callaway. I have hit maybe a thousand range balls with them and played maybe 30 holes. To date, I have hit no fat shots with the new wedges and only a handful of thins. The ball flies a predictable distance on a predictable trajectory. My grip pressure has lessened, and the wrinkle lines have left my forehead. My wedge swing is becoming rhythmic. There's just one problem. All of a sudden, I can't hit sand shots. I blame society.
Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity
advice, share your experiences, or suggest a driving range, click here.
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