All too often as humans, we look around at others for guidance about how we should do certain things and suppress our own imagination, which can sometimes be limiting. Take for example the golf bag. The standard set make-up we are familiar with is generally comprised of a driver, fairway woods, maybe a hybrid or utility iron, iron set, wedges and a putter right?
Well, while playing a recent round, it struck me that maybe we are getting things wrong.
To give you the context, one of my playing partners that day was a very competent 3 handicap golfer. We were chatting freely on most tees and he would describe the shot he was about to attempt which generally varied between a high teed up draw shot or a “squeezy fade” from a lower tee depending on what the hole demanded or even what suited his eye. Now whilst he played extremely well that day, one or two loose tee shots got me thinking. Was he asking a little too much of his driver to produce two very opposing shot types on demand?
Now, the player in question had been custom fit for his driver, and as a former fitter myself, I know that parameters such as loft, CG location, face angle and even shaft type can be used to create certain bias’ within the driver to promote or mitigate certain shot shapes like the best drivers for slicers. However, I have never heard of even one the best drivers that could be tweaked to comfortably allow both draws and fades at will. Such a task requires an awful lot of skill and practice from the player.
Whilst the old adage “drive for show and putt for dough” still gets bandied around, it is actually the top 25 drivers of the golf ball that earned significantly more money than the top 25 putters on the PGA Tour last season.
This got me thinking, with driving being such an important part of the game, are we allowing ourselves enough versatility with just one tool for such a vital job?
I am far from the first person to have thought of this concept, notorious free thinker Phil Mickelson has actually won a major with one driver, two drivers and even without a driver in his bag altogether!
Mickelson successfully tackled the links of Muirfield in 2013, winning the Open Championship with just a strong lofted three wood, a strategy implemented due in part to the placement of the bunkers at Muirfield and also the fact that he wanted to include a 64 degree wedge within his 14 club allowance that week.
On the opposite end of the scale, in his 2006 Masters triumph, Mickelson took on Augusta National with not one, but two drivers in the bag. Due to the premium on tee shots and the severe dog legs on a number of holes, Mickelson had one of his two drivers set up shorter in length, with a fade bias internal weighting, specifically for holes like the par 5 13th. His other driver was an inch longer with a CG location and face angle heavily favoring a draw shot for holes such as 11 and 18.
My point being here, that if one of the most skillful players in the history of the game needs to appoint two drivers to facilitate two shot shapes, surely even a very skillful 3 handicap player is demanding too much of one club to produce this?
To balance this argument, some would question the benefit of even attempting multiple shot shapes with the driver. Many of the most successful drivers of all time have been almost entirely one dimensional with the driver. Rory McIlroy for example rarely strays from his reliable draw shape, whereas players like Jon Rahm, Brooks Koepka, Colin Montgomerie and Dustin Johnson almost exclusively rely on a fade shot with their drivers.
It could be food for thought however, if your home course features a number of opposing dog leg tee shots that would benefit from a driver shot matching the hole shape, there is nothing in the rules stopping you carrying both a fade bias driver and a draw bias driver.
As someone who plays a lot of golf on windy seaside links courses, even the concept of carrying both an into wind and a downwind driver has occurred to me! I can often get myself in trouble when I am trying to knock the ball flight of my driver down into a strong headwind by making alterations like gripping down, swinging slower and numerous other thoughts… Am I just making things far too difficult for myself when adding a less lofted driver with a low launch and spin shaft profile could take care of it for me?!
The concept of specialist clubs for particular situations can be expanded even further still. I once conducted a custom fitting for a single digit handicapper who wanted a club built specifically to help extricate himself from the dense heather that lined the fairways of his home course. We eventually created a scythe-like option whereby we ground all of the bounce off the sole (actually creating negative bounce) of an old 8 iron he owned, and sharpened the leading edge to the point you could almost cut your finger on it! He used this very successfully as a specialist tool to chop his way through the heather easily and get his ball back into play.
Maybe I have just got too much time on my hands, or maybe I am on to something…
