I always thought I had a pretty good idea of how far I could hit each golf club in my bag. Pitching wedge was around 110 yards, moving up 15 yards for each club in my bag. Now that Sandford Springs have the excellent FlightScope equipment Neal Granville suggested that for Fridays lesson we use it to work out how far I can hit each club. Neal had done this himself earlier in the week so he thought it would be a really valuable thing for me to do. As mentioned above the distances I had for each club really were guestimates so I was excited to see the results.
After setting up the equipment and warming up we began with my 7 iron and hit 3 good shots. We were only really interested in the good shots, so if I hit a duff one I'd have another go until there were 3 good numbers to get an average from. I suspected I hit my 7 iron around 150 yards. Flightscope gave me the information that the carry was 146 yards with the total distance being 149. Not too bad from my initial estimate, but great info to know that the carry was 146. I worked up the bag through my longer irons, hybrids and driver. The very interesting thing was my 5 iron and 4 hybrid had the same carry. My 4 hybrid however had a much higher flight. This is great to know if you want to hit a shot that is softly landing - typical on a par 3.
9 iron to lob wedge was the biggest surprise and where I feel this exercise will benefit me the most in the future. I now know the exact yardages I can hit each one of these clubs. I thought my lob wedge could go about 60 yards. I actually hit it 80! Sand wedge I thought went 80 yards - I actually hit it spot on 100 yards! This makes a huge difference with the shots from 130 yards in as I can confidently select the right club to attack the flag. Knowledge like this plus the use of a Skycaddie is a killer combination! I've printed my sheet of yardages off that Flightscope generates for you and inserted it into my scorecard holder. I'll be taking this everywhere with me now! I have had good results on the course since which I am confident I can put down to this session. On the Friday evening, the same day as the lesson, I got 20 stableford points over 9 holes (that is basically playing 2 better than my handicap), and on the Sunday I shot gross 76! Net 66! Which has meant my handicap has been cut to 9.3 (yay I'm a single figure handicapper!)
If I were you I'd look for somewhere that has the Flightscope system (such as Sandford Springs) and get your yardages worked out. I can tell this is going to make a real difference to my game.