The 70 Yard 7-Iron

• Posted on Grant
• in Course Management, Golf Fundamentals, Short Game
• on December 13, 2013
• Comments Off on The 70 Yard 7-Iron

You are only 70 yards from the green for your 3rd shot on a par 5, but a big tree limb is hanging out over the fairway in front of you. You can’t hit your normal wedge shot; what do you do?

I would choose to hit a 7-iron to avoid the tree limb. In the scenario above, the most important thing is to keep the ball low to the ground. I would rather error on the side of hitting the ball too low than get anywhere close to that tree limb.

Also, for this shot I would aim about 15 feet right of the flag so my golf ball can roll all the way to the hole without getting caught in the rough. Here’s the trajectory I would look for:

I see a lot of golfers try to use the club they would normally hit 70 yards (their sand wedge or pitching wedge). They try to de-loft the club by playing the ball way back in their stance and lean the shaft of the club toward the target. This method is not nearly as consistent as taking the 7-iron and playing a bump-and-run type shot with the trajectory pictured above.

There is nothing magical about the 7 iron and you can certainly hit it from more or less than 70 yards, but it’s the club with the right loft for this shot. You can play the ball in the middle of your stance and let the club-head rotate through impact just like any other shot. Because the 7-iron does not have nearly as much loft as a wedge, you don’t have to worry about the ball going too high and hitting the tree limb.

If you have never hit this type of shot before it will take a little practice to get used to the little swing it takes to hit the 70 yard 7-iron. However, it’s such a simple shot, you will have it mastered in no time!

GB