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A Quick Nine with Ian Happ

August 28, 2020 fiveiron Community  

Five Iron and Chicago Cubs outfielder Ian Happ teamed up to raise money for Feeding America by offering their communities a chance to bid on a variety of golf experiences and merchandise, including a round with Ian Happ at the esteemed Rich Harvest Farms. Raising just under $15,000, the give-back initiative furthered the excitement of having Ian Happ, known for his community-driven success on and off the field, as a Five Iron ambassador. We caught up with Ian to learn more about his other charitable ventures, his golf game, and how he spent his time during MLB’s shutdown.

 

01 | So, Ian, when did you start playing golf and how did you get into the game?

I had a club in my hand at 18 months old. My Dad was a scratch golfer and began work as a course superintendent before working for the USGA as an agronomist, so I grew up around the game. We lived in the Philadelphia area but then moved to Pittsburg so I really grew up playing at Chartiers Country Club. I have a great relationship with the superintendent and head pro there so I always try to get out there when we play the Pirates. It’s fun to be able to go back to the place where I learned to love the game.

 

02 | How was life in quarantine? Did you learn any new skills?

When everything started shutting down mid-March, I invited some of my teammates to Arizona and ended up with a great group of guys living with me. Dakota Mekkes, Zack Short, and I started The Compound podcast, were able to get outside and train together and actually the golf course in Arizona stayed open, so we were playing a bunch of nine-hole rounds. We’d go in the evening and walk nine-holes, just taking anywhere from two to five clubs. Never took a full bag, we would just take something like a five iron, a putter, a two iron or a wedge. We kept it fun and played two on two matches. 

Podcasting is definitely the number one new skill. It’s been really fun to connect with the fans through that new avenue while also learning how to put it all together. We discuss our baseball experiences and interview various guests. I do the editing and we had to buy new equipment for it so there was a learning curve for sure, especially for how to interview guests properly. We’ve come a long way though and have put together some nice interviews.

 

03 | We heard you recently shot a 69 while playing with PGA Tour player Joel Dahmen and Cubs teammate Kyle Schwarber! Unfortunately, Joel still had you by 11 strokes, shooting a ridiculous 58. How was that to experience and would you consider yourself the best golfer on the Cubs? 

Watching Joel fire off a 58 was incredible, by far the craziest thing I’ve ever seen on the golf course. Schwarber and I were in awe all day. Luckily Joel and I were on the same team so we beat up on Schwarber and his partners. As far as the best golfer on the team goes… Kevin Streelman just gave me a nice shoutout in a recent interview, we play together in AZ a fair bit, so I’ll defer to the professionals on that. I think Hendricks could give me a run for my money, but he doesn’t play all that much. He’s got a beautiful swing but it’s tough to get him out on the course. So yeah, right now I could take on any of them.
 

04 | If you had to pick one club to play with, which club would you choose?

When I was playing nine-hole matches with the guys I got a taste of what a one club round would be like and I would definitely choose a five iron! Actually, it’s what I would recommend as lessons for anybody. Just taking two to five clubs out really made us much better players because you’re forced to learn to hit a bunch of different shots. After playing like that for almost two months, I shot three-under and even-par in my first two rounds back.


05 | Which of your baseball skills translates best to golf?  

As baseball players, we learn how to generate power as hitters and that definitely helps me hit it a long way on the course. But the mental side for sure translates. My mental game in golf helps my baseball, and my baseball my golf – they work together. Because baseball is such a game of failure, understanding that one bad shot in golf isn’t going to derail your round is a huge advantage.

 

06 | What do you like most about the Five Iron experience? 

For me, it’s the space and how it is designed. Being able to have your own area, you have all the privacy that you want. But at the same time, if you want to interact, if you want to be at the bar talking to people, you can do that. It’s cool to have the flexibility to really grind hard on your game and practice with Trackman while also having a few drinks and fun with friends.

 

07 | Do you have a favorite beverage you enjoy at Five Iron or on the course?

My go-to is a Tequila and Ginger Ale and I try to ride that out for nine holes!

 

08 | Can you tell us about The Happ Family Charitable Fund and your new Quarantine Coffee? 

In starting The Happ Family Charitable Fund, the most important thing for us as a family was to give back to the City of Chicago. The city has been so great and accommodating to both me and my family. It’s home for me now. I really appreciate all the fans that come out and support us every single day so to be able to give back and help them is very important to me. 

Quarantine Coffee is a venture with myself and Connect Roasters, who are based about an hour south of Chicago. I reached out to the founder after trying his coffee. I fell in love with how smooth and how great their roasting press was so I pitched him the idea of Quarantine Coffee to help the Chicago community during this crisis. We were able to bring it to the market within two weeks and $3 from every bag sold goes directly to COVID-19 relief charities, including the Greater Chicago Food Depository and Save the Children. We’re super excited about it and the response has been great. 

 

09 | How has being reunited with your team while also playing an unprecedented season in these uncertain times been? Is there anything in particular that has surprised you about it?

It’s been great to be back into the field with my teammates and best friends. Honestly I couldn’t pick a better group of people to be going through this with. It is unprecedented, it’s definitely more challenging than I ever could have imagined but I’m just happy to be playing for the fans. I think the most surprising or interesting part is seeing different parts of the stadium I never knew existed. For social distancing purposes we’re utilizing a lot of the stadium that fans would be in that we’ve never used before and it’s cool to see the field and game from that perspective.

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Matching club face and path

March 15, 2020 fiveiron Instruction & Technology  

Dan McCracken – NYC

Some golfers slice, some golfers hook, and others may push or pull the ball.  Some golfers may even suffer from all four of those directional misses. Regardless of what your miss is, all golfers miss their target at times.  The first step to correcting these misses is understanding why they happened. To find these answers, it’s best to get yourself in a simulator and start charting your club face and club path numbers.  These data points tell the story of why your ball flew where it did, so let’s dig in.

Perhaps the best place to start is with this fact that you are not going to hit the ball perfectly straight consistently.  Almost every golf ball struck will have some degree of curvature to it, certainly some more than others.  So with that said, I believe the best players own their curvature so that they can consistently shape their golf ball towards their intended target.  

The data point I like to look at first is the club face angle.  Where the club face is pointing at the moment of impact is the primary controller of the ball’s starting direction.  So if your club face is open you’ll almost always push the ball, and if it’s closed you’ll almost always pull the ball.  Regardless of what you do, it’s only a bad thing if it curves away from your target (or a better way to phrase it for the more advanced player, over-curving your target).  When it comes to which way your ball is curving, we now need to take a look at club path.

The club path angle refers to the direction the club head is moving at the moment of impact.  Golfers tend to swing either inside-out or outside-in. For a right handed golfer, inside-out would mean swinging more to the right which would generally create a hook or draw bias.  Golfers who fade or slice the ball generally swing outside-in, for the right handed golfer this is swinging more to the left. So to figure out how to curve the ball the way we want to, we need to look at the relationship between club face and club path.

The ball flights I generally like to help create with most students would be push-draws or pull-fades.  So if your ball is going to curve to the left, I want it to start to the right and vice versa. The relationship I like to see is about a 2:,1 path to face.  So if your path is 4 degrees inside-out, I want your club face 2 degrees open. Same goes for the other side of the spectrum. The bigger that match-up gets, say 10 inside-out and 5 open, the more curvature you’ll see, but it should still end up pretty close to your target.  To be able to apply your natural ball flight to as many situations as possible, I usually like to see less curvature than more.

There are many variables that go into changing your club face and club path.  You can look at grip, club face alignment, body alignments, ball position, dynamic posture, pressure shift in the feet, take away, hand path, arm structure and many more things.  If you find yourself lost or overwhelmed, that’s what our 5i Golf Pro’s are here for. However if you choose to walk the road alone, remember that face angle controls starting direction.  If your path is left of the face angle, the ball will curve right and vice versa. This knowledge is the starting point to make real change in your ball flight.

You can book a lesson with Dan in NYC by clicking here.

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Sip & Swing

February 11, 2020 fiveiron Events, National  

Five Iron’s Women’s Golf Clinic

Whether you’ve never picked up a golf club or you’re an avid player, join us to work on your game while enjoying an open bar, food and giveaways! We’ll warm up with some beverages and instruction from PGA professionals who are ready to help you learn and improve your game.

Don’t have golf clubs? No problem. We have complimentary sets at each of our locations for right-handed and left-handed players.

Upcoming Events: 

  • Sunday, April 5 – 5-7 pm 
  • Friday, June 12 – 6-8pm  
  • Thursday, August 20 – 6-8pm 
  • Sunday, October 18 – 5-7pm 
  • Sunday, December 6 – 5-7pm
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