When you do hit a shot to the right or left, you may not want it to go as far as if you hit it straight. This is a big selling point for these clubs. But think about it. Ninety percent of the time if you hit the ball left or right of the green you are better off being short than pin high or long right or left. Not to mention, how many greens have slopes on the side that you really don't want to hit on the fly. A green will hold a pin high shot, a slope, or even just off the green has a tendency to bounce much harder, and send your shot further into trouble. So when you miss a shot, and I never noticed these clubs improve any ones direction, (in fact if you hit the ball a bit on the toe of your blades they have a tendency to draw the ball back in), you're almost always in a better position for par if you end up short or near pin high than you are long and further away from the green, usually with a downhill slope to the hole instead of an uphill slope.

When you hit a bit of a thin shot with your blades they carry just as far but with a lower trajectory and a lot of spin. Those game improvement clubs if you hit them thin just wave goodbye to the flag stick as they go by, unless you happen to hit the flag. Now if you hit your blades too thin you will be short, but once again that is usually preferable to long. Now the reason for all this is the enlarged "sweet spot" on these new clubs, but you may find that there is actually more variance in distance on a given shot than in your clubs.

In other words if you hit your 8 iron sweet as can be, as opposed to just well, you might hit it 5 yards further than normal. With these wonder clubs they can go up to 20, even as much as 30 yards further than a normally struck ball. The iron game is an accuracy game. What good does it do to say "Yeah I hit my 8 iron 180 yards the other day?" Yeah, but what was your score on the hole? Besides which, if you have a larger gap in between each iron, you have many more "in between clubs" situations.

I think John Daly and Tiger Woods sometimes get into trouble because of their extreme length, not that the trade-off of distance off the tee doesn't make up for it, it just isn't an advantage to hit short irons a long way sometimes. When there's a 25 yard difference between your 8 iron and your 9 iron it's tough to control distance.

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To tell the truth I love to work the ball when I want. It is such a kick to pull off a shot where you really had to hook or fade the ball. You can use punch shots, high fades, etc. when the situation calls for it, and you just can't pull those shots off as well or consistently with perimeter weighted clubs. No one will argue that. Many good players don't mind that so much, I mean you can still pull them off to some degree, but I just love shot making as opposed to same shot all the time.

But the biggest reason I can't stand those type clubs and the big name brands are the worse, is that I cannot for the life of me chip and pitch with the darn things. Now I admit some of that may be mental, because I don't like the way most of them look, but even the less extreme ones just seem to rocket the ball off the club and I just couldn't get a feel for them. I think once again it has something to do with the de-lofting and the extra weight at the bottom.

The last thing is that you don't get any feedback from these clubs. You can't feel the difference in a good shot or a mediocre shot. So, you have to know when things aren't quite right, before you get into any bad habits (or at least any more bad habits). When you hit a good blade you can feel the whole shot better, especially at impact. Golf is very much a game of being able to reproduce an action which brings about a certain feel which brings about good shots. You will know where the ball is going when you will hit a shot with good blades.

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Part of this whole club thing, in my opinion, is that people would buy a good set of Hogans, Rams, or Titleists and if you had those why you could use them for 20 or more years, and it is my belief that they were making such good golf clubs by the late 60's and 70's that they killed their market except for new golfers.

So they had to find a way to convince golfers that these new clubs were better clubs, and they did. Now one of the things that I feel enabled them to do this was the advent of the metal wood. I do think these clubs, big heads, lighter shafts; lighter heads do have a large advantage over the conventional wood.

Why do I feel this way about the woods and not the irons? Because of the very nature and function of the drive opposed to the nature and function of the iron shot. You won't care if you hit you driver 20 or 30 yards further sometimes, will you?

I have no problem with an off center hit still going a good distance even if its a bit off to one side or the other, on a drive. The only bad trade off I see is that once in a great while you hit it real bad and it goes far enough to get you in more trouble than a conventional club. I do however feel those instances are rare. The only time you wouldn't welcome extra yards is when you'd hit it through the fairway or would rather be a full wedge away instead of a 2/3's wedge, but then a person shouldn't be hitting a driver in those situations anyway! So the metal woods became popular as game improvement clubs and the rest is history.

So, try to use our tips above and your game will definitely improve.