Jordan Spieth has revealed that the Titleist T100 7-iron he used to hit a hole-in-one at the Texas Open was the only new club in his bag.
Spieth’s ace has to go down as one of the finest we’ve seen for some time for the contact he makes and the perfect line of the shot.
However, that precision might not have been possible with the club he was using previously.
Spieth had found that over time he was beginning to hit his 7-iron 4 to five yards further than he would like for ideal yardage gapping.
Over time he had worn the grooves down on his 7-iron much more than the other clubs in his array and felt that he needed to bring things back into balance.
So he asked Titleist to bring him a new club and the grooves did their thing, adding just enough spin to shave off that excess yardage and give Spieth the gapping he was looking for from his irons.
“I hit my 7-iron a lot, especially on my own,” Spieth told GolfWRX.com.
“The spin rates, relative to my 6-iron and my 8-iron, were lower, so it was going too far,” Spieth explained. “I was trying to figure out why, if it was something in the make up of the iron. I got the lies and the lofts checked, and everything was fine. So finally I was like, ‘Can I just get a new one and see if it fixes it?’”
Spieth received a new Titleist T100 7-iron, set to his usual specifications ahead of the start of the Texas Open.
He was already using that model but needed a club that hadn’t had its grooves worn off.
Spieth said that it was a rare occurance but something he has done before.
“Maybe there was one other time throughout my career where I changed just one iron, so it’s very unusual,” Spieth continued. “I think it’s just because the grooves were worn down from hitting it too much.”
There’s a key lesson here for those who are not experts: Even while you probably don’t practice as much as Spieth does, particularly with the 7-iron, it’s still crucial to have your wedges and irons examined frequently.
Significant wear on a golf club’s face grooves lowers friction between the face and the ball at impact, causing spin rates to drop and distance to rise.
Since that will be the first club in the bag to wear noticeably, the wedge you use most out of the bunker and around the greens should be checked first. To give you an idea, golfers on the PGA TOUR replace their lob or sand wedges every one to two months.
