Taking A Divot?

What club would you say that you should take a divot with, and which ones should you not?

Thinking about my irons it appears to me that I've never really taken a divot with any of my shots.

This is probably due to starting golf on a driving range mat that was as hard as concrete and me not wanting to damage my clubs!

I'd say that a 3, 4 or 5 iron should be sweeping the ball off the turf, then the rest of the irons you should be taking a divot.

What do you think?

Russ

"Sweeping the ball off the turf" is an expression that has no place in the golf vocabulary as far as I am concerned. The reason, is that it infers an upward strike of the ball, yet as we all know this would only produce a top.

Only the driver is hit with an ascending blow and even that is so fine that the majority of us will still be hitting it at the bottom of the arc.

A ball struck correctly with an iron will always produce a divot as the ball has to be squeezed in conjunction with the turf to give a solid strike and ultimate control.

I've never really been a 'divot' person until recently where I made some tweaks to my swing & now I take a divot, smaller the club the bigger the divot, on most shots.

I can do it with all of them Russ, including my putter.

 I can go with what JP says but sometimes I do take a divot with the lower irons 1,3 and possibly 4 but then again sometimes not so much that you'd notice. I don't intentionally try to sweep it off the turf (I only do that in a fairway bunker). The key is if I hit it sweetly and then the difference between the 'divot' shot and the 'slightly rough up turf' shot is v negligible

There is a difference between "burning the grass" and taking a divot. I take the top off the grass but other than when playing a certain type of shot, I never take soil.

TheLyth

The only time I don't take a divot is if I hit a long iron or wood off a tee, when trying to go for distance and roll, anything else played straight off the turf I take a divot, as long as you hit the ball first then take a divot it's ok, can't see how you can strike the ball with a decending blow and not take a divot, I would think that the ball striking and spin control would be poor if you didn't take a divot.. 

I rarely take a divot, but I don't think I strike the ball very well with my irons. Something I really need to work on this year.

I get divots about 8" long and about 4" wide from 8 iron through sand iron off the fairway. It just started to happen all of a sudden as I improved. Im very poor with 3,4,5 & 6 irons off the fairway so I dont tend not to play those clubs. I would love to play long irons when about 180-200 yds out. Never seem to get a good contact. Anyone got a simple fix to get the ball up in the air. I hit the 8 iron about 145 carry but fairly low.

Cac handed Geordie.