Rethinking Bounce

I was answering a question on yesterday's post about sand play when I had a brainstorm. (Ok, maybe it was more of a sprinkle than a storm, but still...) It occurred to me that we, the golfing public, may have a misunderstanding.

I think we need to rethink our concept of bounce in sand play.

Yes, I said concept. Mention "bounce" to most players and they think of a huge lump of metal on the sole of a sand iron. Yes, that heavy sole is called the bounce of the club... but if that's all you think bounce is, then you're missing the whole point. With only that simple understanding, you can make the mistake of thinking that you need a club with a big heavy sole to play well in sand.

But if that's true, then how did Seve Ballesteros manage to play sand shots with a 3-iron? Clearly there's more to this whole bounce thing than just equipment.

You need to understand that EVERY club in your bag has bounce. On a sand wedge the bounce is positive (that is, it sticks down lower than the front edge of the club head) while a wood may have neutral or even negative bounce. You don't usually think about bounce when you play those clubs, but the bounce controls how high you can hit the ball. We'll limit our discussion to irons since those are the clubs whose bounce concerns us most.

The purpose of bounce is to keep the front edge from digging in. Period. A heavier sole makes it a bit easier to control the how the club bounces; the less weight there is in the sole, the more critical a precise hit is. That's why Seve could play sand shots with a 3-iron when most players can't; Seve controlled how the club head entered the sand better than most.

You "lay the club face open" and "cut across the target line" in order to further limit the front edge from digging in. Take one of your short irons and take a stance right there in your home, on a hard floor, with the shaft either straight up or leaning backward, and take a good look at the front edge. You'll probably see a little bit of space between the front edge and the floor. That's because the bounce is holding the edge off the ground.

Here, take a look at this picture of some irons from thesandtrap.com:



Can you see how the front edge will lift up off the ground if you tilt the club shaft backward so the face points up at the sky? And the shorter the iron, the more space you'll see.

Now twist the club face open and check again. There's even more space between the front edge and the floor. That's because opening the club face points the face more toward the sky, so the bounce on the sole is holding the front edge of the club head up even higher. If you were actually swinging this club through sand like this, the bottom of the sole -- that is, the part of the sole that connects directly to the front edge -- would also act like a little bulldozer blade to the head from digging in so much.

When Seve used a 3-iron, he further tilted the face up by squatting down and lowering the handle of the club closer to the ground. In effect, he created a flatter swing plane to the club head entered the sand even less steeply.

I think you'll find that your sand play improves considerably if you start thinking of the physical bounce of any club head as the back of the club head rather than just the sole. To get the back of the club head down onto the sand, you have to point the face of said club up at the sky. That's part of what the "L-to-L" swing taught in yesterday's post helps you accomplish. You want to get that club face pointed up at the sky as it reaches the ball and enters the sand.

Which means that if you're having trouble with your club digging too much into the sand, then you aren't getting the club face pointed up soon enough. The reason a good sand shot "thumps" is because the back of the club head hits the sand flat... or at least that's how I want you to think about it. It's only the sole that's hitting the ground unless the sand is really soft (that's why you need more bounce in soft sand -- the sand "squishes" around the sole when it hits)

So try practicing your sand shots with this concept in mind: Try to get the club face pointing straight up just as it gets under the ball. You have several ways to do this:

• Making an "L-to-L" swing
• Lean the club shaft vertical or backward, not toward the target
• Open the club face
• Cut across the target line
• Flatten your swing plane

It will take a little mental adjustment. At first you'll try too hard. But as a general rule, if you can get the club shaft fairly vertical as it hits the sand, with the face open, and making that "L-to-L" swing, you're going to find that your sand play improves dramatically.

And one other tip: I would suggest that you start by practicing with a 9-iron. You'll have to lay the club open and lean the shaft back to get the club face pointing up. Since it doesn't have a big heavy sole it forces you to think of the back of the club head as your "bounce." Initially it may be a bit frustrating, but you'll make progress more rapidly because it forces you to swing properly. That's how I finally learned to play sand shots successfully.

An Interesting Bunker Video

It may sound as if I'm throwing PGA teaching pro Greg Baresel under the bus here, but that's not my intention. However, I found his new instructional video Bunker Simplicity over at golftipsmag.com and noticed something very interesting...



I'm not questioning whether his method works or not. Clearly it does -- the ball gets up and out of the bunker, doesn't it? -- and there are other instructors who teach this method as well. But it's easy to watch this video and miss something significant.

Do you see those two lines drawn in the sand? Greg is using them to help you see his alignment -- first when he opens his stance and then when he squares up to his target. Those lines are pointing slightly to the viewer's right, which means that's where he's aimed. But when he hits the ball, it flies to the viewer's left.

That can mean only one thing: Even though he set up with the intention of squaring the clubface at impact, the clubface was actually open. I'm guessing that's because when the bounce skims through the sand, the sand grabs it and holds the club face open. (Similar to the way tall rough grabs the hosel and closes the club face.) Which also probably explains how the whole "open your stance, open the face, swing across your body" sand technique developed -- it was probably a little easier to predict where the ball was going if you did.

Does this mean you shouldn't use Greg's method? Of course not. It clearly works. But when you use it, you'll still have to set up so you're aimed along an "open" line if you want the ball to fly toward the hole. With Greg's method you're just squaring the club face down that line instead of opening it up.

Something important that Greg mentions and demonstrates -- but that may get lost in the debate over square vs. open setups -- is that "L to L" swing with the hands even with the club head at setup. These are the two primary keys to getting the bounce to work, so you want to use them no matter which technique you choose.

The "L to L" swing with hands back is demonstrated face on in slow motion at the end of the video. Make sure you take time to watch that -- again, it'll really help your sand play no matter which technique you choose!

The Limerick Summary: 2013 U.S. Open

Winner: Justin Rose

Around the wider world of golf: Prayad Marksaeng won the Queen's Cup on the Asian Tour; Simon Thornton won the Najeti Hotels et Golfs Open on the ET; Sue Kim won the Decatur-Forsyth Classic on the Symetra Tour; Scott Parel won the Air Capital Classic on the Web.com Tour; Dean Burmester won the Polokwane Classic on the Sunshine Tour; and Rikako Morita won the Suntory Ladies on the JLPGA. (The Constructivist has those details.)



Alas, it was not to be for Phil Mickelson. Not even on his birthday. For the 6th time -- a record it's clear he'd rather not own -- Phil the Thrill was a bridesmaid once again.

Perhaps the greatest irony of this whole U.S. Open -- an irony repeatedly mentioned by Phil in his after-round interviews and by the other players all week -- was that nobody really expected little Merion to beat them up so badly.

Not even after she'd beaten them up for three solid days. Despite rumors that she might even be "gettable" on Sunday, she steadfastly refused to give up any round lower than a 3-under 67... and she refused to give those up to anybody capable of winning.

All Justin Rose did was post the only even par round of the day. Yes, you read that correctly -- there were 6 rounds in the 60s and a single round of par. Everybody else fell victim to the short little course that was supposed to give up rounds in the low 60s and a winner in double digits. Justin Rose held it together even though the course got waterlogged, even though the wind blew around 20mph, even though the course finished up hard and firm. Merion demonstrated that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover... or a true championship course by its yardage.

I know some of you will wonder why Justin leaped up to #2 on my RGWR with this win when Adam Scott didn't after he won the Masters. The reason is simple: Not only did Justin do a number on all the other players listed (Tiger was T4 at the Masters while he barely eked out a T32 this week, for instance), but Justin has as many points for just Top5s as Adam has when his Masters is included! Justin hadn't had a win since March 2012 though.

Well, that's not a problem anymore. The only question that remains is whether Justin will be able to escape the "major slump" most first-time winners have. Will he use this as a jumping-off point to win multiple tournaments this year? Stay tuned...

At any rate, this week's Limerick Summary salutes the newest sports hero in Philadelphia. I wonder if he'll run up those famous steps at the Philadelphia Museum of Art before he leaves?

No Rocky performance for Phil, it seems;
An Open win’s still just the stuff of dreams.
But Justin’s par round
On a Merion drowned,
Blown, and dried proves he’s ready for golf’s extremes!

The photo came from the tournament page at majorschampionships.com.

"Inconceivable!"

If you've ever seen the movie The Princess Bride, you recognize that line. The Sicilian genius Vizzini uses it every time something doesn't go as he planned. Eventually, after hearing it so many times, the Spanish swordsman Inigo Montoya says, "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."



This week's tournament at Merion reminds me of this clip. Can a small course like Merion handle the infrastructure of a U.S. Open? Can such a short course, especially after it's drenched with 6 inches of rain, challenge the best in the game? You really think the winning score will be somewhere around even par? You think most of the favorites will struggle?

INCONCEIVABLE!

And yet, it's time for the final round and it appears every last one of these things was true. I'm still in shock that all five of my picks from earlier in the week did so poorly. Tiger Woods and Matt Kuchar are 9-over while Graeme McDowell, Matteo Manassero, and Sang-Moon Bae didn't even make the cut. To this point, nobody has shot a better round than a 3-under 67, and a single player is under par. Do you realize that the final 5 holes at Merion are the toughest 5-hole stretch in Open history?

INCONCEIVABLE!

Even more amazingly, the one player under par is Phil Mickelson, the least likely player in the field to play a conservative game. And who would believe that two of his closest competitors would be Steve Stricker (E) and Luke Donald (+1) -- two players who always struggle at U.S. Open courses because they aren't particularly accurate?

Could one of these three players actually win this major? Could Phil finally, after 5 close calls, snag one on his birthday?

The only thing I'm sure of today is that the ending of this tournament will be... well, inconceivable.

Are You Stuck in the Deep Stuff?

Since the big boys struggled so much up at Merion during the first two rounds of the U.S. Open -- and will probably continue to do so over the weekend -- I thought this might be a good time to look at ways to escape the deep stuff.

And I do mean DEEP stuff. There is plenty of instruction on how to play out of the rough, but the videos rarely ever show the instructor hitting out of SERIOUS rough. For example, Martin Hall has video showing the techniques but he's in a studio. Other teachers demonstrate techniques out of only 2- or 3-inch rough.

But not Irish golf instructor Barry Power. He's in some seriously deep rough here and, while it may look a bit sparse compared to the green stuff at Merion, the color of the grass is misleading. You can barely even see the ball...



He has three main keys to pulling this shot off, and they're very simple: Take your grip so the club face is open about 45 degrees, just like in a sand shot, position yourself so the ball is about an inch back of the center of your stance, and then make a "confident" swing -- which means you don't have to swing out of your shoes.

The idea is to hit the ball without catching any more rough than necessary. Moving the ball back in your stance helps with that because it gives you a steeper swing down onto the ball. Likewise, opening the club face presents less of the leading edge to get hung up as you swing down.

Then, once you're down into the rough, the grass snags the hosel and twists the face square so you get a solid hit. You don't swing out of your shoes because you need to make solid contact, not jerk away while pretending you're a bodybuilder, and making solid contact in the rough is hard enough as it is.

This is an easy-to-use method for getting out of the deep stuff. Some of the pros could use it this week at Merion!

OK, So Maybe Phil CAN Play Strategically...

A quick note about TV broadcasts: ESPN is going to start coverage a half-hour earlier this morning. Coverage will begin at 8:30am ET.

Yes, I admit it. In Tuesday's "My 5 for the Open" post I wrote that:

Likewise, Phil Mickelson seems to be playing pretty well... but I simply don't believe he's emotionally capable of playing a strategic game at Merion. Phrankenwood is going to break loose from the lab and go on a rampage because Phil isn't satisfied with any win that doesn't require heroics.

And he certainly proved me wrong. He walked off his private jet (after flying back from his daughter Amanda's 8th grade graduation) directly onto the course, bogeyed his first hole (his only bogey of the day), and then proceeded to shoot 4-under over the next 17 holes. Even with a 3.5 hour rain and lightning delay in the middle of it.

He played an utterly unPhil-like game, hitting all but 3 fairways and all but 3 greens. He hit irons off most of the tees. He only took 29 putts despite that 3-putt bogey at the start of his round. He even managed a few heroics... but he limited them to his short game.



I understand he took his driver out of the bag and added an extra wedge, meaning he has 5 wedges in his bag this week. (Even Dave Pelz must have looked askance at that!) But so far it seems to be working.

The real irony of all this is that only two of the players in the clubhouse are under par: Phil at -3 and Nicolas Colsaerts at -1. (This ties Phil's best first round in a U.S. Open since way back in 1999!) And while 13 other players are under par as I'm writing this, there's no guarantee that any of them will be under par once the round is finished. Bear in mind that several players got it under par in the morning, but only Phil and Nicolas were able to post. Luke Donald currently leads at -4, but he's got that tough 5-hole stretch from 14 to 18 coming up this morning... and the wind is supposed to change.

So I was wrong. Phil is in great position after the first round to get a U.S. Open of his very own. All he has to do is keep doing what he did Thursday. Maybe Phil CAN strategically plot his way around Merion...

And then again, maybe it was just jet lag. This IS Phil, after all. ;-)

The photo came from cbssports.com.

The Ruthless Golf World Rankings: June 2013

Just a quick note: U.S. Open coverage begins this morning on ESPN at 9am ET, moves to NBC at 3pm, then moves back to ESPN at 5pm. According to the official U.S. Open website, this will ALL be live coverage!

Alas, I'm a couple of weeks late doing the June rankings (again!) so this is actually the June-and-a-half rankings. I'm including the two weeks of tournaments we've played this June as well as all of May, so this ranking is accurate up to the U.S. Open. Primarily, this post will explain the shakeups I've been showing in my sidebar rankings since the last full listing in May.

Please note that, although I've removed Tiger and Dustin Johnson's wins (at the 2012 Memorial and St. Jude, respectively), players may still get credit for Top5s in those tournaments if they show up on the current RGWR. What can I say? I'm lazy!

Here are the RGWR criteria:
I focus on the last 12 months of play -- that's long enough to see some consistency but short enough to be current. Every player in the RGWR won at least once on either the PGA or European Tour. The OWGR rates consistency over the last 2 years, so I see no reason to rank that; my RGWR says if you're a top player, you've won somewhere recently. My priority list (based on quality of field) looks like this:

1. majors, TPC (PGAT), BMW PGA (ET), and WGCs
2. FedExCup playoffs and prestige events (like Bay Hill and Dubai), the latter often determined by the history and difficulty of the course
3. other PGA and ET events

I put extra emphasis on recent form -- 2 wins separated by 6 months don't carry the weight of 2 wins back-to-back -- and I make some allowance if you're recovering from injury or serious sickness. Also, remember that I count Top5s as a separate category from wins; if you see a player has 3 Top5s, those are seconds through fifths only.

I assign points to tournaments this way:

• Majors: 10 points
• TPC & BMW PGA: 8 points (yes, I'm calling them equals!)
• WGC: 7 points
• Prestige events: 5 points
• Regular wins: 3 points
• Top 5 finishes: 2 points
• Other wins: 1 point

I give full credit (not in point value, but they carry the same weight as "official" victories) for wins on the "minor" tours like the Nationwide and Australasian Tours provided the winner has a current win on the PGA or European Tour. These wins will count only as "regular" wins and not "prestige" wins, no matter how prestigious they may be for their tour, because they generally don't have the field strength of a regular PGA or ET event.

I don't count the Grand Slam of Golf as a win in my rankings. I've decided that 4 players isn't a large enough field to give it the weight of a win against a larger field. However, I do take a win there into consideration in my rankings, much as I do money title or scoring awards. Other limited-field events (up to maybe 24 players or so) are counted as wins if the player also has an official win on the "big tours" but they only get a single point. The OMEGA Mission Hills World Cup (the 2-man team event) counts in this category.

And because of a strange quirk on the ET site, I've decided I have to specifically state that a tournament win can only count once. Therefore, to avoid possible confusion, I'm just telling you that the RGWR says you can only win a tournament once at a time.

As usual, although the point totals (and even the number of wins) a player has affects my rankings, they don't override my personal opinions. It's my ranking system, after all:

1. Tiger Woods: 5 wins (1 TPC, 1 WGC, 2 prestige), 5 Top5, 38 points. Do I really need to explain why he's here? I figure the bad week at Memorial was just that -- a bad week. He's certainly earned the right to have one!
2. Matt Kuchar: 2 wins (1 WGC, 1 prestige), 2 Top5, 16 points. Matt adds the Memorial to his already impressive resume. 
3. Rory McIlroy: 4 wins (1 major, 3 prestige, 3 awards), 4 Top5, 36 points. Rory remains at #3 by the thinnest of threads. If he doesn't start playing better soon... well, the dogs are yapping at his heels. If McDowell or Manessero win the U.S. Open this week (and both are in my 5 to Watch), he's outta here!
4. Graeme McDowell: 3 wins (1 prestige, 1 other), 5 Top5, 19 points. Hey, a new entry! Graeme finally broke through with a new PGA Tour win last month and, with his large number of Top5s, vaulted over several players.
5. Matteo Manassero: 2 wins (1 BMW, 1 prestige), 3 Top5, 19 points. Another noob to the rankings! Manassero is coming off the biggest win of his career at the BMW PGA Championship, which he followed with a T4 at the Nordea Masters. Oh yeah, he's leading the Race to Dubai as well.
6. Brandt Snedeker: 2 wins (2 prestige), 6 Top5, 1 award (FedExCup), 23 points. Guess what? No change this month. Better get it in gear, Sneds!
7. Adam Scott: 1 win (1 major), 3 Top5, 16 points. No change, but he hasn't played much since his Masters win so he gets a couple of months' grace period.
8. Charl Schwartzel: 2 wins (1 other), 6 Top5, 16 points. Charl continues to tread water, but his Top5 total helps keep him here.
9. Louis Oosthuizen: 1 win (1 prestige), 6 Top5, 17 points. Louis posted another Top5 in May, so in this tight competition he holds his place in the rankings.
10. Phil Mickelson: 1 win, 6 Top5, 15 points. Phil has been playing well over the last couple of months, including a runner-up finish just last week.

Players to watch:

• You may not know Mikko Ilonen, but he's had a win and a Top5 in the last two months over on the ET. (He also had a Top5 in March.)
• Scott Stallings barely missed my RGWR this time. He has posted 2 new Top5s in just the last two months. That is almost certainly a sign of good things to come.
• It seems I was right last month -- Boo Weekley has rediscovered his game. With a recent win, I look for him to start placing well in the bigger tournaments soon.