Over the years, I’ve known people or just overheard conversations of people who seem obsessed with backspin. Of course, every golf shot that isn’t rolling forward has backspin. I’m referring to shots into greens that spin backward from where they land.
It reminds me of a story involving Tommy Armour. He was asked by a member at Winged Foot how to spin the ball back, like the pros do. Armour asked the player how often he hit the ball past the hole, to which the member replied, “Why, hardly ever.” Armour’s response summed up the situation nicely: “Then, what do you want to spin it back for?”
I personally very rarely spin the ball back. It’s not a conscious decision. The ball just never reacts like that for me.
I typically hit the ball high and hard. Any well-struck shot with a short iron normally hits the green and ends up within a couple of feet of the pitch mark, if the greens are receptive. When they’re hard and fast, those factors come into play more and there will be more roll. But my shots seem to fall straight down from a mile high and stay right near where they land.
Sometimes, I can’t help wondering why my ball doesn’t spin back more often. I know how spin is caused in a technical sense, but I don’t know what it is about my own swing that limits the backspin.
When I start wondering, I think back to a PGA Tour event I went to several years back. It was the Buick Classic at West Chester Country Club in New York.
My friends and I picked a spot out along side the 7th hole on some rocks by the green. It was a wet day. The green is a multi-tiered green and if I remember correctly, the pin was on the top tier toward the back.
After a bit, we proceeded to watch four players in a row hit the green with their approach shots only to see them spin off the front of the green back down into the fairway. Incidentally, the fifth player we saw was Tiger Woods, who proceeded to stuff his approach onto the green like a dart.
The fact is, these guys that spin the ball like that have extra work to do. It’s more calculations for them to do for each shot. Tune into an event on television any week and you’ll see the same thing. Sometimes they master it and sometimes they don’t, and are chipping on from the fairway.
Every time I wonder why I don’t spin the ball like that, I’m happy that I don’t have to do extra work to figure out what my shots are going to do.
There’s always a possibility that it’s more of a detriment than I realize and that as I become a better player, things will change and force me to investigate the problem.
For now, ignorance is bliss.
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Mike…it sounds like you are not hitting down on the ball, and hitting the ball first before ground. I used to hit really high, and still pretty far shots, then a low handicapper showed me how to hit it crisp and with a lower trajectory AND spin:)
I’m definitely hitting ball first. The shots are very solid. They just stop dead instead of spinning back.
You’re probably right that hitting down a bit more would get me that extra spin, but I’m not sure there’s really any benefit. Lower trajectory shots might be nice, though.
You have to hit the ball pure to get backspin and for us amateurs, who cares really. If you can get it to stop that’s great!
If you cannot consistently control the distance you are hitting the ball with your irons then I would not worry about back spin.
My pet peeve with back spin is the harder you try to create it the more I tend to mis hit shots.
Every player should strive for distance control in their irons. But isn’t accounting for backspin part of that? You can’t count on hitting a full pitching wedge a certain distance if you’re not also accounting for the fact that it’s going to come back 3 yards or 1 yard or roll forward to some degree.
Trying to manufacture it might not be a great idea if you can’t control the distance of your irons, but it might be helpful if you get several yards of forward roll out of every iron.