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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