Woods vs. Irons

[Richie3Jack]

Sorta difficult to answer because your interpretation of 'fundamental difference' may be different from mine. I do think there are fundamental differences..but again, that's my interpretation of what a 'fundamental difference' is.

We hit down with irons for the most part. Perhaps if you're hitting a 2-iron teed up pretty high you can hit upwards on the ball and strike it well. But, that's very rare. So with irons...we hit the ball first and continue to have the clubhead go down further until it reaches the low point. In essence, with irons we want the ball *behind* the low point...pretty much always (there's always an exception to the rule, but I wouldn't worry about it much).

With the driver, because it's teed up, we can hit down, hit up or hit 'flat.' In fact, I think with the modern titanium driver...because the hot spot is up so high on the club compared to the old persimmon and metal drivers...we probably shouldn't hit much more than -2* down or it starts to become counterproductive and hard to gain consistency. I think hitting up on the ball isn't easy to do time after time either. So, 'somewhere around flat' is probably a decent rule of thumb to live by. The PGA Tour average is -1.3* with the driver, so that is 'somewhere around flat.'

So with that, the ball position with the driver can be behind the low point, in front of the low point or right at the low point.

Typically the driver backswing will be longer than say a 7-iron swing. There are some other tendencies as well.





3JACK