PEPPER THE PIN
Hit the sweet spot, find more greens and watch your scores tumble with our perfect iron-play package.
Hit the sweet spot, find more greens and watch your scores tumble with our perfect iron-play package.
Never mind your 300-metre drives or holed 30-footers … it’s approach play that really makes your score. If you’re in any doubt about this, keep some Greens In Regulation stats for a month or two and cross-reference that figure with your total score. A correlation will emerge. Even golf’s foremost number cruncher, Mark Broadie, preaches the same
message. Approach shots, he argues, are the key score differentiator, typically making up four of the 10 shots that separate the 80-shooter from the 90-shooter.
This ironplay special has been created to help you hit your irons closer more often. We asked data collection experts Arccos what the thousands of iron shots its system has tracked tell us about how and where we miss; we harnessed the considerable powers of the leading launch monitor – Foresight Sports’ GC Quad – to reveal the true ingredients of the perfect iron contact; and then we challenged our team of elite coaches to come up with the tips and drills to help you develop a purer, surer iron game.
It’s a package dedicated to improving your approach play and lowering your scores.
I. HOW MANY GREENS DO WE ACTUALLY HIT?
Arccos data can deliver this information either by club or ability. The stats show a truly consistent drop as the handicap level rises, revealing just how important hitting greens is to your score. Similarly, our percentage rises as the club gets shorter, though the overall picture – just one in three greens hit with a 6-iron and not even one in two with a wedge – shows clear room for improvement.
BY CLUB:
4-iron: 28.48% 5-iron: 30.29% 6-iron: 33.87% 7-iron: 38.08% 8-iron: 42.69% 9-iron: 46.85% PW: 49.32%
BY HANDICAP:
0-5: 46% 6-10: 39% 11-15: 33% 16-20: 27% 20+: 22%
2. LONG OR SHORT?
Surely the most telling stat, the number of misses short compared to long, paints a sorry picture for how many of us are falling foul of golf’s most heinous crime. While only one approach in 20 goes through the green for all handicap levels, longer-handicappers leave almost every other iron shot short. Even at 11-15-handicap level, one in three shots fails to reach the green. In terms of the club, we get slightly better as the club gets shorter … but we are still leaving one in four 9-irons short of the green, and more than one in three 5-irons.
BY CLUB:
4-iron: 4.6% (long) 36.22% (short) 5-iron: 4.21% (long) 36.03% (short) 6-iron: 4.72% (long) 31.48% (short) 7-iron: 4.83% (long) 28.73% (short) 8-iron: 5.14% (long) 25.52% (short) 9-iron: 5.37% (long) 24.61% (short) PW: 6.51% (long) 23.5% (short)
BY HANDICAP:
0-5: 5% (long) 24% (short) 6-10: 5% (long) 28% (short) 11-15: 5% (long) 34% (short) 16-20: 5% (long) 41% (short) 20+: 5% (long) 48% (short)
3. LEFT OR RIGHT?
One of the more surprising sets of stats, green misses left and right appear almost equal when assessed by ability; there is not one single handicap level that dramatically favours left or right misses. On the face of it this suggests a simple lack of clubface control among amateurs, but it is also partly explained by the club-by-club data, which shows a prevalence of right misses with the longer irons and left misses with shorter ones. This apparently contradictory state of aairs can perhaps be put down to the out-to-in swing shape supposedly used by 85% of club players sending the ball left, with only the straighter-faced clubs able to
apply a spin axis that sees it curve back to the right.
BY CLUB:
4-iron: 13.78% (left) 16.92% (right) 5-iron: 12.82% (left) 16.65% (right) 6-iron: 13.34% (left) 16.6% (right) 7-iron: 13.13% (left) 15.24% (right) 8-iron: 13.51% (left) 13.14% (right) 9-iron: 12.93% (left) 10.23% (right) PW: 11.88% (left) 8.78% (right)
BY HANDICAP:
0-5: 12% (left) 13% (right) 6-10: 14% (left) 14% (right) 11-15: 13% (left) 14% (right) 16-20: 12% (left) 15% (right) 20+: 12% (left) 13% (right)
CONCLUSION
We don’t hit the ball far enough! Coming up short comprises the lion’s share of missed greens. Clubbing up is an obvious answer, but so too is developing your ability to make solid contact.