Who uses 4 wedges with 1/4 and 1/2 swings?

[CalBoomer]

Duh. Of course we are - and we also include other irons in the equation. The difference is in the mental approach - we may not use actual numbers in the equation and we don't dwell on yardages while setting up over the ball. Does a centre fielder think about how many feet away the cutoff man is, or does he look at him and fire the ball?

Actually, it's a lot easier to throw a baseball 200 feet to a cut-off man than to hit a 100 yard wedge within 10 feet of the pin. Baseball and golf pros prove that on a daily basis.

[sean_miller]

Actually, it's a lot easier to throw a baseball 200 feet to a cut-off man than to hit a 100 yard wedge within 10 feet of the pin. Baseball and golf pros prove that on a daily basis.

You've given two extreme examples. Can the average hack golfer throw a baseball 200 feet (on a rope - not a moonball that rolls 50 feet)? I find that very hard to believe - many celebrity golfers (e.g Barrack Obama for one) throw like girls and can barely make it to home plate - a throw of only ~ 60 feet.

My money is on the president stiffing a wedge over firing a baseball 200 feet. Not that it matters to this discussion, I'm just sayin'.

[mdl]

I play the way the OP plays. I only have a PW and SW, and my full SW goes about 110 with no wind. I struggle from about 70-90 yards, and rely on feel with my SW inside that, though if I have open fairway between me and the fringe I've started hitting some choked up knock downs with my 7i or 8i so I can take less of a swing and just let it run up a bit.

But I totally agree with the commenters who say that's not the way to play. I've been putting off spending my time at the range on that kind of thing because I do pretty well just on feel (which obviously involves shortening the backswing, but just by feel) on short approaches and up and downs from inside 70 yards (for my HC). So far I've just concentrated on consistency of impact and landing spot with full swings. I do a fair amount of pracice with short pitches and chips at the chipping area, and I just feel like what's hurting me most right now, aside from putting, is the fact that I always have a good number of just horribly off drives and full swing approach irons in any given round.

I feel like I can get down to an 7 or 8 by concentrating on getting to the point where I'm totally confident of being able to put a full SW-7i iron (which I hit 165-170) on the green, and a full 19˚ hybrid-5i either on the green or close enough to be trying to get up and down with a 15-20 yard chip, and continuing to work hard on putting. That and cut out the 2 or 3 drives each round that I either snap hook or push-fade into big trouble.

Once I'm doing that, then I fully agree that the way to scratch definitely involves some serious investment on the 1/4, 1/2, and 3/4 distances with the PW and SW (and I should probably add another wedge). But I just think that for me (and any other lowish mid-handicappers with a solid short game), that's not the fastest route to cutting strokes right now.