Ladder Notes · Carry vs Total
Rollout Across an Ohio Season
We spent a season with a rangefinder and a notebook working out how much our own approach shots ran out, month by month, on four courses within twenty minutes of the shop. The spread surprised us.
This started as an argument. Dane insisted that mid-iron rollout on our local courses ran ten to fifteen yards in high summer. I thought it was closer to six. Neither of us had anything better than an impression, which is exactly the sort of thing this shop is supposed to be against.
So across one season we measured. Not scientifically — there was no control group and the sample is us and a handful of willing regulars — but consistently, using the same method every time, which is enough to be useful.
The Method
On approach shots where the pitch mark was clearly identifiable and the ball's final position was visible, we paced from the mark to the ball. Only shots landing on a fairway or a green surface counted; anything landing in rough or on a slope steeper than a couple of degrees was discarded. We logged the club, the course, the month, and whether the previous forty-eight hours had brought rain.
Just over four hundred shots made it into the log across the season. The four courses were a mix: two public bentgrass layouts, one older parkland course with poa-heavy fairways, and one newer course with sand-capped fairways that drain aggressively.
What Came Out
| Month | Median run-out | Range |
|---|---|---|
| April | 3 yd | 0–7 |
| May | 5 yd | 1–10 |
| June | 9 yd | 4–16 |
| July | 14 yd | 7–24 |
| August | 16 yd | 8–27 |
| September | 11 yd | 4–19 |
| October | 6 yd | 1–12 |
Sand-capped course excluded from the April figure — it was already running while the others were saturated.
Dane was closer than I was, which he has mentioned since. The peak is genuinely in the middle teens, and the range within a single month is wide enough that any single number is only a starting point.
The Rain Effect Is Bigger Than the Month
The most useful thing in the whole log turned out not to be the seasonal curve at all. It was the rainfall column.
An August round two days after a heavy storm produced rollout figures indistinguishable from a typical May round. A dry week in late September produced numbers close to the August median. The ground does not care what the calendar says; it cares how much water is in it.
This is genuinely actionable and it costs nothing. Before a round, you already know whether it has rained. Adjusting your expectation of run-out by that single fact will get you closer than a seasonal average ever could.
The Loft Curve
We logged enough shots with other clubs to see the shape of how rollout varies by loft, and it is steeper than most golfers expect.
| Club | Median run-out |
|---|---|
| 5 iron | 21 yd |
| 7 iron | 15 yd |
| 9 iron | 8 yd |
| PW | 5 yd |
| SW | 2 yd |
Descent angle does most of this work. Spin does less of it than golfers assume.
The practical consequence is that seasonal adjustment matters enormously at the top of your bag and almost not at all at the bottom. If you carry one adjustment in your head, carry it for your long irons and hybrids and forget about your wedges entirely.
What Descent Angle Does
The reason a five iron runs four times as far as a pitching wedge is not primarily spin. It is descent angle: the steepness at which the ball arrives.
A wedge arriving at fifty degrees hits the ground with most of its energy directed downward, digs a mark, and stops. A five iron arriving at thirty-five degrees carries far more of its energy forward and converts it into roll. Spin modulates this, but geometry dominates it.
That has a fitting implication worth stating. If a golfer cannot generate enough descent angle with their longer clubs to hold a green in summer, no amount of spin from a groove or a ball will fix it. The answer is a higher-launching build or a different club in that slot. We see this most often with older golfers still playing long irons that they no longer have the speed to elevate.
How We Use This in the Shop
Every ladder we print now carries two rollout columns rather than one, labelled soft and firm, built from this data set rather than from the launch monitor's generic model. It is not a precise instrument and we say so on the card. It is, however, a great deal better than a single number derived from an assumption about ground conditions somewhere that is not Ohio.
We also re-run the log informally each season. Course maintenance practices change, and the newer sand-capped course has already shifted noticeably as its turf has matured.
If You Want to Do This Yourself
- Pace from pitch mark to ball. It takes ten seconds and you are walking that way anyway.
- Log the club and the month. Ignore anything that landed in rough or on a slope.
- Note whether it rained in the last two days. This turns out to matter more than the month.
- Twenty shots per club is enough to see the shape. You do not need four hundred.
- Expect your long clubs to move a lot and your wedges to barely move at all.