The Golf Club I Was Too Embarrassed To Use

Now, I've got to admit, there was a time when I was, well, too embarrassed to put this club in the bag, or at least admit I played it. And the simple reason was, I thought it was too good for it. Do you know what? In recent years, my whole bag's got embarrassing. But, my golf's got better. Weird, that, isn't it? And in today's video, I'm going to tell you why this kind of club is, well, infiltrating my bag. I spent a lot of time trying to work this one out, but ultimately, it just makes the game a whole lot easier. You see, the funny thing for me is that I've gotten older, I've gotten slower, and my handicap hasn't budged an inch. In fact, I think I'm a better player now than I was 20 years ago, when on paper, I should be a lot worse. You see, what I realized was, I don't hit the driver quite as far as I used to. I don't hit the irons as far as I used to. But, I still manage to get the ball in the hole by making compensations to my bag setup. And this is one change that, like I said, I never thought I'd make, but I'm glad I did. Now, this club is, well, it's multi-versatile. You can play it from the tee, from the rough, from a bunker, if you fancy it. It's also super forgiving, and helps up there any element that I've lost in my game in terms of ball speed and club head speed. Kick off. And again. Keep coming around. There she comes. Yeah. That's yard perfect. Playing 170 to our flag. Water between me and that green, and it's a club that I would have every, well, certainly a lot more confidence in playing this club than the alternative in an iron. Yes, another hybrid has snuck its way into my bag. Oh my god, this game Look at that. I hope you're picking that up. And again, just lands soft as well, and that's because of the way this thing performs in terms of ball flight, launch, then descent angle, then coupled with the spin. There's so many reasons to to why this is better than an iron alternative in my hand. It is in fact a seven hybrid, 31°, and I'm going to show you why shots like that are hugely important, me choosing the right club, not the wrong one. I've got data coming as well. I'll give you every reason why you should be seriously looking at changing up your bag set up and including clubs like these. I said this thing was multi-versatile. You can even use it for in and around the greens. It's got a little bit of loft to pop the ball up, but then it gets it running at the hole and can be a far easier alternative than using maybe a seven or a wedge or a lofted wedge. This thing gets the ball running at the hole and not a great deal of effort required just to putt in stroke. So, we end up with that age-old question, is that bit about stigma, and have you got the balls to put this thing in your bag and not worry about what your mates say? Now, I got to admit, I didn't. I kept irons and longer irons, seven, six, five, even four iron up until a couple of years ago. But as you go by and you hit more of these, you think, am I stupid or what? The idea for me is to get the ball into the hole in as fewer shots as possible. It's also about making my bad shots or my average shots a bit better than they would be using an alternative. So, why the heck am I keeping these kind of things out the bag? Maybe more importantly, why are you? Right down the middle. Amazing ball flight. Plenty of control, plenty of ball speed, plenty of forgiveness. So, data-wise, I've not recorded it yet. I'm going to do that now, but I can tell you what I'm going to expect. Iron equivalent will be flatter launch. It'll be lower ball speeds. Not sure about spin. Think the hybrid will spin a bit more as well. This will be coming down with a steeper descent angle. And all in all, this will beat it hands down in terms of performance. That's my bet. Let's go and take a closer look at an iron equivalent and how they compare in terms of data. Right, FlightScope is on. I want to see data-wise why I like this club so much and why it's made its way into my bag. So, nice smooth swing, no great effort. Ball flight ridiculous. Exactly what we've just seen out on the golf course earlier. It's right down the middle. What have we got? We've got a nice 144 carry. Nothing too spectacular there. No great efforts in terms of that swing, but we're launching at 31°. And we're spinning at 5 1/2 thousand revs. Okay, so that's an easy one. Weighing all the numbers, I didn't check descent angle. It'll be on screen for you now, but no doubt it's coming down steep. Now, I need a tee peg. Bear with. So, this time we want to see what happens with a little bit more effort in terms of club head speed. So, again, a bit more effort into that. Ball flight is uh well, blows my mind every time I see it. And what's that done? All of a sudden, we've just jumped up to a 170 carry. Now, why that's important to me is because the first shot, I can play that soft one. We'll look at club head speed in a minute or two. But what happens when I then just put a bit more effort into it is we can we can get out another 20 25 yards in that case. But we don't lose like launch angle. We don't lose that descent angle. And maybe more importantly, we don't lose that spin. And that spin is hugely important because I want to see it stopping on the green, but I also don't want to see it going too high as to where it's impacting when I'm playing into the breeze. So, some really interesting numbers with that hybrid. I really don't need to see what goes on with the iron alternative, but that's what we're here to do is show the difference between the two. So, let's hit a couple of irons with a similar kind of mindset. Right, 7-iron in hand. And look, there's no fear factor in a 7-iron. I love the thing. I can hit it. But, there are differences in performance that I just can't ignore. So, let's see with that nice easy 7. Ah, really nice shot. Love that. Picked it up nice and clean. We got We got a 144 yd. I think that's relative to that club head speed and swing. Really happy with that. Spin is low at 4,500 revs. Anybody who watches the channel long-term knows it's always an issue I've had. I wouldn't write that off as being a disaster because coupled with that descent angle of 49.3, I'm more than happy with that. So, then it's whether or not we can do the same as we did with the hybrid, put a little bit more effort in, and what do we get out? Well, really good ball speed. I'm hitting this thing too well. We got a 165 carry. Really good. Slightly shorter than that of the um of the hybrid, but that'll be relative to ball speed as well. And we got a 49 spin, which is again, that's okay. I'm not too concerned by that. We're launching a bit flatter, and the descent angle again is not coming down quite so steep. But look, let's be honest, the 7-iron numbers were good. And I sit in a position right now where where I'm at ability-wise, I'm still comfortable, like I said, with a seven iron. But there's no doubt about it, I can get more out of the seven hybrid equivalent. And for me, they were two good strikes with a seven iron. But if I don't get it quite right, the drop-off between the difference between that and the seven hybrid is where you start to see the real differences. So if we did this over a maybe 10 20-shot um routine with data, I think you'd start to see the variables creep in. And I think for me, it's the inconsistencies when I don't quite get it right with the seven iron, which again would lead me towards that hybrid. Is it going to carry the bunker? Could be good if it does. Oh. That's a good one. Ultimately, this decision as to what you put in your bag is a bit like what this channel is all about. It's about not dismissing options. And not dismissing them because of uh either the stick you're going to get from your pals or how you think your bag should look. And we're all guilty of it. I'm at top of the tree for doing that, but I've definitely opened up my mind and then the channel and then hopefully to you as to what the alternatives are that are out there. A seven hybrid I don't know, three, four, five years ago was literally frowned upon. You'd given up on golf. You were uh or you were an old man. And I think there's elements of all of those things, you know, partially true, I suppose. People slow down with a club head speed and can then lean on these kind of clubs to help them out. But I think there's a lot of golfers that are also still got plenty of ball uh club head speed who can still lean on these clubs to get better performance uh and and ultimately lower scores. And I think it's that genre of of golfers that really uh perhaps starting to change their mind a tad. And I think the fact that we're seeing nine woods and seven woods appear on tour more often, I think inevitably we will see more lofted hybrids find their way on as well. And interestingly enough, I went up to Royal Lytham St Annes a week or two ago to watch the Ladies Open, and they're all using six hybrids, seven hybrids. They probably swing it a lot more like you and I. A lot more skillful, don't get me wrong, but you watch them, you make you watch how easy they make the game look, and you start to realize that you're a bit thick between the ears, and ignoring these kind of clubs is born out of sheer stupidity and not necessarily out of any type of logic. Right, rant over. That's me done. That's what this channel is all about. You're going to see it more and more often, I think. Lofted hybrids, lofted fairways. Whether I can persuade you to give them a go, well, time will tell. As ever, thanks for watching, and well, I'll see you all very soon.