The Journey To Scratch: Dialing In My Distances From 150 Yards In

5 clubs. I could play just about any course around with these 5 clubs, plus my putter, and shoot pretty well. In fact, there’s very few holes that my 150 yard 9 iron couldn’t reach, or come up just short of in two. Same could be said of the par 5’s and reaching them in 3. From that 150 yard 9 iron, I drop to a very easy 135 yard pitching wedge. From there, my 51 degree gap wedge fills the 120 yard range. My sand wedge has the 100-105 range covered and my lob wedge is my go to club inside 80 yards. It’s about as solid a group of short clubs that I have ever owned, let alone had in my bag. Not since the days of my ‘89 Fluid Feels with my JP wedges did anything feel this accurate.

Of course, this now leads me to the dialing in of these wedges and short irons to make the most of those drives that land me inside the 150 marker on the course. My biggest area of need at the moment is the sub 50 yard shots. I leave far too many of those shots well outside 10 feet, which in my head should be the longest distance I have to stare down a putt from inside 50 yards. For this, I’ll need to grab a laser range finder and a few old game balls to use at the range. Once I get the distance gauged with the gamers, I can hit the range balls at various backswing distances and create a full chart for them. It takes a bit of time to do it, but prep work is everything when you are trying to shave a few strokes off the old handicap.

Next week is Spring Break and we will be out at the beach for a few days, but I’ll be getting at least one round in next week, and hopefully a second round over the weekend – weather permitting. It’s been a very, very wet 6 months in the Seattle area, so we will see how it goes.