Christians

Day 470 - 2026-01-13 Got some work in while some players were using the sim, so I had to stick around. 🙂 Good thing too, since… I hadn't yet practiced today until about 6:45 tonight. 😛 

That's not quite the same thing as what some people messaged me today.

Day 152 1-12 More reps bowing wrists in downswing. Still pausing at the top. Making sure to get to lead side and getting the ball to go left. Slow progress is better than no progress.  

Yea, if I were to make a post arguing against the heat map concept, citing some recent robot testing would be my first point. The heat map concept is what I find interesting, more on that below. The robot testing I have looked at, including the one you linked, do discreet point testing then provide that discrete data in various forms. Which as you said is old as the hills, if you know of any other heat map concept type testing, I would be interested in links to that though! No, and I did say in my first post "if this heat map data is valid and reliable" meaning I have my reservations as well. Heck beyond reservations. I have some fairly strong suspicions there are flaws. But all I have are hunches and guesses, if anyone has data to share, I would be interested to see it.  My background is I quit golfing about 9 years ago and have been toying with the idea of returning. So far that has been limited to a dozen range sessions in late Summer through Fall when the range closed. Then primarily hitting foam balls indoors using a swing speed monitor as feedback. Between the range closing and the snow flying I did buy an R10 and hit a few balls into a backyard net. The heat map concept is a graphical representation of efficiency (smash factor) loss mapped onto the face of the club. As I understand it to make the representation agnostic to swing speed or other golfer specific swing characteristics. It is more a graphical tool not a data tool. The areas are labeled numerically in discrete 1% increments while the raw data is changing at ~0.0017%/mm and these changes are represented as subtle changes in color across those discrete areas. The only data we care about in terms of the heat map is the 1.3 to 1.24 SF loss and where was the strike location on the face - 16mm heal and 5mm low. From the video the SF loss is 4.6% looking up 16mm heal and 5mm low on the heat map it is on the edge of where the map changes from 3% loss to 4%. For that data point in the video, 16mm heal, 5mm low, 71.3 mph swing speed (reference was 71.4 mph), the distance loss was 7.2% or 9 yards, 125 reference distance down to 116. However, distance loss is not part of a heat map discussion. Distance loss will be specific to the golfers swing characteristics not the club. What I was trying to convey was that I do not have enough information to determine good or bad. Are the two systems referencing strike location the same? How accurate are the two systems in measuring even if they are referencing from the same location? What variation might have been introduced by the club delivery on the shot I picked vs the reference set of shots? However, based on the data I do have and making some assumptions and guesses the results seem ok, within reason, a good place to start from and possibly refine. I do not see what is wrong with 70mph 7 iron, although that is one of my other areas of questioning. The title of the video has slow swing speed in all caps, and it seems like the videos I watch define 7i slow, medium, and fast as 70, 80, and 90. The whole question of mid iron swing speed and the implications for a players game and equipment choices is of interest to me as (according to my swing speed meter) over my ~decade break I lost 30mph swing speed on mine.

Maxfli, Maltby, Golfworks, all under the Dicks/Golf Galaxy umbrella... it's all a bit confounding. Looking at the pictures, they all look very, very similar in their design. I suspect they're the same club, manufactured in the same factory in China, just with different badging.  The whacky pricing structure has soured me, so I'll just cool my heels a bit. The new Mizuno's will be available to test very soon. I'm in no rush.