The Art of Golf Club Selection on the Course

What you need to know to be a SMART golfer

Imagine this: you’ve hit a great drive that found the center of the fairway. You arrive at your ball and it’s in the perfect spot. What are you doing next before you swing? Do you use your rangefinder to get an exact yardage and say “it’s 150 yards and I hit my 7 iron that far, so that’s the club”. If so, that is not the best way to strategize when it comes to golf club selection. Sure this could work out in your favor from time to time, but if you want to play better golf than what you currently are, you need to implement a better pre-shot routine to make more accurate club selections.

What goes into Club Selection?

• Actual number and what is the number we are playing to
• Assessing the lie
• Club fitting
• Knowing your distances
• Knowing your shot shape and alignment
• Wind speed, wind direction, and elevation change
• Potential penalty areas around the target area
• Hole location and green terrain

First and foremost, it is CRUCIAL for anyone who plays golf to have a yardage tool of some sort. This could be a rangefinder, GPS device, or yardage book. Let’s use an example of a rangefinder in this case. If we are not using either of these tools before we are hitting a shot into a green, we are going into that shot with little to no information. How would we know how far the bunker is that is in front of the green? Our ultimate goal before we swing is to come up with a number that we believe is what we need to hit a shot to our target. This does not always match up to a number that we would laser with our rangefinder. As we go through the factors that go into golf club selection, understanding these factors will give us confidence that we are picking out the right number and club for a particular shot.

There are many factors that go into why we should hit a certain club on any given shot. A major factor is having clubs that are fit for you that help you hit the ball more consistently. Everyone is different. We have different heights, lengths of arms, swing speeds, etc. and getting the right clubs for you is crucial to shooting lower scores. 

Knowing how far you hit each club is vital in golf club selection. When we pull a club out of the bag, we need to have a good idea of how far it will go to be able to plan accordingly. The distance you need to know is the CARRY distance. Carry distance is how far the ball travels in the air until it hits the ground. Of course we want to know how far the total distance of a club is, but if we can know how far the ball will carry, we can then assume the roll out from the carry number based on course conditions.

We need to know how we curve the ball. Of course we can want the ball to draw or fade like the professionals, but each person should be playing their curve. The time to work on your game is not on the course, but rather on the range or in the simulator is where we should be drilling in our swing changes to be able to make the changes habitual. If we know how the ball curves, we can then align our feet and body to the left or right accordingly. This also goes into how we need to play when there is wind.

Wind can be a tricky variable to account for, but it is necessary in our equation for calculating how far our specific target will be playing. The main two wind variables we need to know before selecting a golf club are the wind speed and which direction the wind is blowing on that particular shot. When the wind is in the face, we need to account for it by adding distance to our number that we are playing to. If we were to hit the same stock shot that we normally would, we can expect the ball to fly slightly higher into the air and to come back to the ground at a higher angle to the ground. As a result, the ball would stop faster than a shot with no wind or wind directly from the back. When it is at our back, the ball will go farther but it will not get as high. This can cause it to roll out or take a bigger hop once it hits the ground.

The lie of the ball is such an overlooked factor in golf club selection. If the ball is in the fairway, we are able to assume that we can get the ball to spin and launch normally, assuming we make solid contact. This is because the club face should hit the ball first and then we can get the adequate spin/launch to the club that we are used to. If we are hitting from the rough, assuming thicker rough, then we have to factor that into the shot. With thicker rough, the grass will be in between the face and the ball when we make contact. This will cause the ball to not have as much backspin and therefore will roll out more once it hits the ground. How much the ball rolls out will depend on the loft of the club. Higher lofted clubs (wedges) will stop sooner than the lower lofted irons. 

The main issue I see in a lot of my students is they will aim directly at the pin. I cannot stress enough how inaccurate this strategy is. It is important to know where the pin is on the green, meaning front, middle, back, left, center, or right of the green. We must stop lasering that number and only playing it to that number. What happens far too often is that we worry about that number and only that number and this can lead to us landing the ball near the hole and rolling through the green resulting in a green side chip. Instead, we need to recognize where any green side hazards are, meaning bunkers or water. We should be able to get different numbers of what it is to CARRY the bunkers or stay short of the bunkers. We need to find out when the water comes into play or be able to aim away from the water even if the pin is on that side of the green. I guarantee you that if you were to aim towards the wider side of the green instead of the pin every time, you will hit more greens and overall score better.

In summary, playing smart golf leads to playing better golf. If we can make it a habit to check each of these factors pre-swing, it will lead to better results. It may seem like a daunting task to look for these factors and how they will affect our ‘playing number’ but it is necessary to lower your scores.