geezuzhd:
Hi,
Just to be clear, buying equipment isn't a problem, spending money on premium clubs and finding that the performance is no improvement on what I already have is the problem. Any equipment without the very top specifications is a move sideways. Learning not to cheapen up when buying clubs has been an expensive lesson.
You are absolutely right about this from the stand point that greater distance is not always going to improve your performance. Take the fact that you have a great driver and 3wd these give you great distance off the tee, but the low mid-level irons you have do not allow you to take advantage of the new location you need to hit the approach shots from. if you do make the green they (and the ball) are not going to give you the spin ability to help you stop the ball, so you are at the mercy of a huge expanse of grade breaks (to paraphrase your original post) as to where the ball stops. Now if you don't make the green you are more than likely going to be out of position, and the wedges you have are not gonna greatly help you recover and place the ball in a position to save par.
Someone earlier alluded to the fact of carrying 3 wedges in lieu of 2 and a hybrid, I will say that this probably needs to be your next adjustment. Having 3 wedges with an even separation of distance on them to fill the gap below PW is a must to continually compete (not dominate, just compete) on the championship greens. The ones I carry are now (like a lot of great equip.) gone from the pro-shop however they have been replaced by newer clubs with the same or similar specs. I chose these and bought them even prior to buying my current irons for the simple reason that I knew that the low end yardage of all the top level irons was 120, so these gave me an even 20 yard split from PW to 64d wedge (120, 100, 80, 60).
What I am trying to say is that anything you change is going to almost always require you to adjust the rest of your lower equipment or you are going to be at an impasse.