Irons II: Game Improvement vs Score Improvement

Sitting in the dentist’s office, waiting to start a root canal, I picked up a year-old golf magazine.  It featured  multipage review of 39 different sets of new and improved (for 2013) irons.  Leafing through the pages was no more painful than what lay ahead (nor was it any less painful, Dr. Edgerton is deft).  Assuming that the so-called reviews were no more than regurgitated marketing hype, the blather about players club, game improvement clubs, groove technology, forgiveness, pockets and inserts was just that--blather.

Sifting through it all, what the customer wants is an iron that hits the ball further during his round and, after his round, when he adds his score, yields a pleasant surprise.

The club makers have taken care of the first.  Today's golfer can hit his seven iron as far as his Dad hit his five iron.  Over and out.  Not a problem anymore.  As the great Robert Trent Jones said back in the days of hickory shafts, most men pull a club from their bag because of the number on its clubhead, not what they can do with it.  So, it's simply a matter of increasing the clubhead loft and the length of the shaft.  Voila, you can hit your seven iron as far your Dad hit his five iron because the specs of your seven iron are the specs of his five iron.  Take pride in your ability to hit a four iron 200+ yards and that your 8 iron is your '150 yard club'.  Just don't look too hard and the specs.

Of course, the result of this is a train wreck when it comes to the lofts of the long irons, but nobody can hit long irons and that's just another marketing opportunity--for hybrids.  Sell hybrids at a buck, two bucks a stick.  Take it to the bank.  And while making bank at that end, at the other, the super strong pitching wedge opens a void at the short end of the spectrum, as well.  That's another opportunity--for wedges.  Shall we call the new club between the sand wedge and the pitching wedge a gap wedge, or, even better, an attack wedge.  Three wedge sets are morphing into four wedge sets and the prices increase by, well, a third.

Life is good.  Except for the shortage of golfers.  Well, the shortage of customers.

That leaves the second problem.  How to improve scores.  If the clubmakers could make clubs that would actually improve scores, maybe the golfers would come back.  Or, at least, the customers.

Now, improving your score by cheating with the equipment you use is as old as the game itself.  That's why the USGA and the R&A get their panties in a wad over 'non-conforming equipment'.  That's why Karsten Solheim and the USGA went to court over square grooves a quarter century ago.  And that's why the USGA and the manufacturers negotiated a ceasefire at 460 cm cubed over the size of driver heads a decade ago.  That's why the golf ball is the issue de jour.  But back to irons.

Leave behind the marketing promises of 'game improvement'.  What we're talking about is 'score improvement.'  Score improvement is all about not paying the price against par for a poorly struck shot.  Game improvement is all about feedback, positive and negative.  And negative feedback is painful.  The sting in your palms from a poorly hit shot is not fun.  Neither is the resulting line drive veering ovv into a trap.  Nobody goes out and buys those experiences.  If the price of score improvement is satisficing performance rather than performance maximization in terms of ball flight, so be it. 

Without a doubt, cavity back clubs are easier to hit.  'Easier to hit' means forgiving, which in turn means score improving.  To a certain point, a golfer of a set skill level will score better with cavity back clubs than with any other iron.  I think, but I'm not sure that the skill level point of diminishing value is somewhere around a 10-12 handicap.  Above that point, a golfer gets a 'better' (in terms of a lower score) with cavity backs.  Below it, and the improved feedback of muscle back clubs (and the resulting ability to shape shots, control ball flight, etc.) at least offsets the forgiveness of the cavity backs.

 So, the size of the market for irons that require the focus, practice (and resulting skill) of a performance improving club, rather than a score improvement club, is rather small.  Depending on whose statistics you wish to put weight on, something between one and five percent of golfers can shoot in the 80s.  (Note--I think the keeps of the different statistics--the National Golf Foundation and the USGA--are honest, they are just measuring slightly different populations.  The people who play an occasional recreational round of golf are a different and less skilled group than the crowd that posts scores to maintain a handicap.)

What's the take away on all this?  Well, at the most basic level, don't expect disinterested technical information, advice or analysis for people trying to sell you shit.  But you already know that.  Maybe the tougher take away is, know yourself and your needs before you open your wallet.  That's advice more often given than taken.  And finally, be honest with yourself.  But that is harsh medicine, indeed.  How many of the world's great religions are based on confuting it?

Irons I: Feedback vs. Forgiveness

Everybody loves feedback.  That's half true.  Everybody loves positive feedback.  You know, the note from the teacher that says your kid is a delight to have in class, effortlessly masters all the assigned material, attacks all the enrichment assignments with enthusiasm and is a popular and cooperative leader among his classmates.  Yes, positive feedback is a wonderful thing.  Negative feedback is another matter.  Nobody likes the note reporting that your child is a disruptive, unpopular student who is frustrated by his inability to perform at even a minimally acceptable level, and that you need to put down the beer, turn off the television, and help your kid with his math homework if he's to have any chance of succeeding in school.

Everybody loves forgiveness.  At least when you are the one forgiven, that is completely, not half, true. (Victims do sometimes prefer to see the perp take a long drop at the end of a short rope).  Now forgiveness is an asymmetrical form of feedback.  When there has been sin, fault or failing, the implicit feedback is that's okay, don't worry about it, keep on truckin'.  Even if there is a gentle admonition to go ye forth and sin no more, the pattern of forgiveness implies an acceptances of human frailties and flaws.  And when there is nothing to be forgiven, there is no feedback at all.

Now, here's the problem.  Most people, to improve at something, need motivation and feedback.  If you don't have any reason to excel, you will inevitably be tempted to content yourself with mediocrity.  Why exert yourself to do better than average if there's no payoff?  And if you don't even realize that your performance is mediocre, or what's wrong with it, you probably couldn't improve even if you were motivated to.

Blades, muscle backs and cavity backs.  What does all this have to do with how the manufacturers of golf equipment sell sets of irons?  This is an observation on marketing practices, or, more accurately, mis-marketing practices.  Since all modern players' irons that are colloquially referred to as 'blades' are actually 'muscle backs', I'm going to call 'muscle backs' 'blades' even though the original blade irons lacked the configuration of muscle back irons, starting about 40 years ago.

In a nutshell, blades give feedback instead of forgiveness.  Put another way, cavity backs let you play better currently with your game at a given level, because they are forgiving, while blades motivate you to improve and let you know the flaws in your current game, because they give you feedback.  This presents a real problem to anyone flogging golf clubs.

People need forgiveness.  And people think they want feedback.  And most golfers dream of being better, even if they don't have what it takes to get better.  So the poor peddler of golf clubs must meet the needs, feed the dreams and stoke the illusions of his customers.  That is a hard thing to do.  And the poor golfer, to navigate the flood of misinformation, must start by being honest with himself.  That is an even harder thing to do.

In the beginning . . . (cont'd)

The next phase opened in a conference room in a Houston skyscraper.  I was in the company of another lawyer, whom I knew, a couple of accountants and some junior financial analyst types.  The representatives of our respective clients had retreated to their phone booths to confer with their superiors about the progress of the negotiations. Soon, they would come back and we would go off and caucus separately about what was possible, and what wasn't.  But, for the time being, in the hurry up and wait of business transactions, we were in waiting stage.

My lawyer friend opened his briefcase and took out the handle of a golf club, which he began to fondle, gripping it, examining his grip, relaxing his grip and gripping it again.  This went on for a while.  I knew what he was doing because a few years earlier, long before I'd taken up golf, I'd been in the company of a Halliburton CEO (several CEOs before the evil Dick Cheney, who kinda messed up Halliburton before he really messed up our country's international standing), and the guy had been doing the same thing.  I asked him what he was doing, and got a little lecture on the importance of proper grip in a good golf swing, how grip pressure can be varied and so on.  Afterwards my boss elaborated--the man had the habit of playing with his golf grip when he was either bored or nervous, and I could rest assured that, given who I was, I was boring him, not making him nervous.

My friend stopped playing with his grip and looked at me.  Do you play golf, he asked.  I said no, not much, owned clubs, that was about it.  How old is your son, he asked.  I told him, twelve, not a teenager yet.  He nodded.  Earlier in the afternoon we'd been bitching to each other about kids in adolescence and teenage misbehaviors, be they large or small, they are endless.  He spoke again.  You ought to take up golf with your kid, he advised.  He put the grip down.  And got intense.

You'll be bad and your kid will be bad at first, he said.  That will be good, because you'll both be learning something together.  And because he's a kid, he'll get better at it fast than you do.  And he'll like that.  He'll also like driving the golf cart, at least until he gets his driver's license.  And you get out there on a golf course with your kid, if you keep your mouth shut, he will talk.  He will talk about all kinds of stuff.  Shit he would never dream of telling you in any other situation.  For hours.  Especially if you get stuck behind a bunch of really slow groups.  At least, that's how it worked for him and his boy.  They played golf together a couple of times a month, and some weeks it was the only time they were speaking to each other.

So, the advantages of taking up golf again included the possibility of five hour rounds behind slow hackers, and playing really poorly myself.  The payoff was the chance to stay connected to my kid.

It made perfect sense.

In the beginning . . .

I took up golf in the '80s of the last century for the limpest of reasons.  I had joined a law firm, my partners played the game, and a fair amount of our firm and business development activities included or involved golf.  So, over beer and burgers in my backyard, my next door neighbor and I agreed to swap an unused set of golf clubs sitting in his garage for my wife's old bicycle sitting in our garage.   A few weeks later, the bicycle (now his wife's) was stolen from his garage, while the garaging marauders left the clubs (now mine) untouched.  He only commented that whoever stole the bicycle got further on it than anyone had ever gotten with those clubs.

The irons were the 'game improvement' clubs of the era--muscle back irons that helped the beginner get the ball in the air.  Together with a mallet putter and woods with persimmon heads, that made up the bag.  I was in business.  I signed up for a set of lessons from a driving range pro (the younger brother of the famous distance driving champion Art Sellinger).  I participated in firm scrambles and began accepting invitations to client golf outings.  I drank beer during and after rounds, listening to war stories but having the good sense not to inflict accounts of my own travails on anyone.  I learned to pick up promptly when I was out of the hole--pace of play, and all that.  Some of the cart girls, in their tanktops and short shorts, made good eye candy.

It was pleasant.  Occasionally I would hit a nice full shot--off the tee or from somewhere in the rough (maybe a fairway once in a while)--that felt pure with those old muscle back ironss.  I replaced the persimmon head woods with a set of the new fangled ones.  I was innocent enough not to be embarrassed by the sky marks I promptly put on them, though I can't say that I hit them much better than the persimmons they replaced.  Oddly, I found that I could putt, and something about the short game appealed to me.  I was stunned by the quality of golf writing--John Feinstein, Herbert Warren Wind, the British--much better than the general sports writing of the day.  I developed a smattering of golf lingo and a nodding acquaintance with the rules of golf.

After a year or two, it all sort of petered out.  My children's youth sports became a bigger part of my life.  The driving range was sold for real estate development.  I bought a sports car.  I kept going to the firm scrambles and accepting the invites to client functions, but that was about it.