Practicing with Blades Playing with GI Irons

[usaglfho]

Is this the best way?

I see so much back and forth opinions on the Blades Vs. GI iron views. Is buying a couple of blades (maybe 5 and 9 iron) and primarily practicing at the range with them the solution to becoming a better ball striker with irons?

Then playing with the GI irons. Best of both worlds?

[minteq]

For me it does not work as well. I have practiced with blades, when I was out of town, and had to rent clubs, and it took me some time to get used to my irons again, I have the Pro Combos, and they are heavier than blades, so it is a different feel.

I found the best drill for consistent contact is setting tees on either side of the ball, so my club just fits thru, if I can hit the ball without hitting the tees consistently, then my swing is good.

Someone else may like practicing with blades, but for me I like to practice with what I play.

[Terpman]

That practice of practicing with harder to hit clubs than your gamers seems to come from a quote from Sam Snead who suggested doing exactly that; he said something like find a club you can't hit and practice with that club. If I practice twice in a week, the first day I will use my Mizzy MP-30s, a club that is hard for me to hit well. On the second practice day, I use my GI gamers, my Wilson Ci7s. Then, a day or two later I play. I have found that the MP-30s force me to stay down and swing through the ball better. And, to hit them decently at all, I had to drop my hands at address down a bit. These two changes have made a big improvement in my hitting my GI irons. I'm making better contact, hitting them higher and even getting some backspin on the mid and short irons. So I keep to this practice routine. It works for me.

[steenboatmd]

Sounds like a really bad idea.

If you are a decent golfer, then most of your practice is fine tuning your ability to control your golf ball, ie fade, draw, high, low, distance control.

Why would you want to practice with a set of clubs that goes different yardages, has a different feel in your swing and flies on a different trajectory.

The only way I would even consider doing this is if you had 2 sets of similar clubs like MP32's and MP60's with the same swing weight shafts, lofts, etc.

If your not playing alot and really need to work on a mechanical flaw in your swing, hitting blades might help you get a littel more feedback on your improvement. But I would switch back to my gamers as soon as I felt comfortable with the change.

If your practicing between rounds or preparing for competitive play, practice with your gamers. Confidence that you have already hit certain shots and have your trajectories and yardages dialed in is so important.

Just my 2 cents

[againstthegrain]

Using clubs that are more difficult to hit provides feedback while practicing since the mistakes will be magnified and good swings rewarded by producing the desired ball flight. My instructor recommends it.

[MikeBabjak]

[quote name='againstthegrain' post='2141930' date='Dec 24 2009, 08:58 AM']Using clubs that are more difficult to hit provides feedback while practicing since the mistakes will be magnified and good swings rewarded by producing the desired ball flight. My instructor recommends it.[/quote]

I recommend this also. BUT, I make sure that the practice club is exact to length, loft, lie, bounce, shaft flex, grip size etc. to the clubs that they are using.

Feel is very important so to hand someone a blade iron that does not even come close to spec of what they play is a bad idea. That is when you run into trouble of going from set to set with this method.

Overall if you can match a few clubs or a full set to their specs to practice with, it is only beneficial to the player in my experience.

[againstthegrain]

As long as the lie is ok I think that's close enough. Do we all play clubs the exact same length, bounce, shaft flex throughout our bag? No, we don't but somehow manage to put it all together and get around the course.

In fact most folks here completely dismiss the idea of playing iron shafts the same length.