Airmailing Greens

[DeadMan]

15 hours ago, billchao said:

Sorry Dan, somehow I missed this comment. I'm playing Mizuno MP4s.

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After thinking long and hard about this topic because it keeps coming up again and again, I've decided it's the irons. I suspect that my stock yardages are based on mis-hits and as I've improved my mechanics this year, I'm striking the ball better and hitting it farther. So now I'm noticing a bigger difference in distance from well struck shots simply because I'm hitting them more often. Yet I still hit those nasty toe shots once in a while and lose like 20 yards on them, so my shot zone is kind of elongated now if that makes any sense.

I'm seriously considering getting fit for a more forgiving set of irons so my dispersion gets tighter.

Yep, this is very likely. MP4 are pretty much pure blades, as far as I know. So yeah, you'll get an amazing shot when you're centering it, and get something way short when you don't. And you have pretty high swing speed, right? All of that is definitely a recipe for what's happening.

I think you can get some forged clubs that are more game improvement than an MP4. I think Mizuno offers a forged GI iron. Forged will help with the problems with GI of having hot spots. There are also many lines of mixed blades/GIs like Callaway Rogue Pros, Titleist AP3s, etc. that you should look at.

[djake]

@billchao I feel your pain and have been there as well.  I have a pretty consistent gapping on my irons and the exception like all amateur golfers is not being long but short with a club. 

Then this spring I was all of a sudden airmailing Par 3s.  Like a solid club long.  I was not up to top shape as I had not been working out so I knew I had all of a sudden gone all "Popeye the Sailor" and grown muscles.

It was getting down right concerning and I started looking all over the web and TST.  

Well I figured it out.  It was not my clubs and how thankful I was.  I was trying a different golf ball out in the spring.  That was the only item.  

So my suggestion is to take a close look at your golf ball.  It very well could be that item causing you more issues then you think.  I did not see in your thread what ball you were using.

The ball that caused me all the issues was the Wilson 50 Elite.  I wanted to try it, for $10.95 a dozen on sale it was a great ball I thought to start the year off with.  Not so painful when it went off the course and lost.

As soon as I switched back to my normal balls the issue went way.  

[billchao]

2 hours ago, DeadMan said:

Yep, this is very likely. MP4 are pretty much pure blades, as far as I know. So yeah, you'll get an amazing shot when you're centering it, and get something way short when you don't. And you have pretty high swing speed, right? All of that is definitely a recipe for what's happening.

Yea I'm pretty sure this is the problem. It wasn't an issue when I was hitting solid but not centered shots so when I missed one farther out on the club it didn't seem like I lost that much distance. Now that I'm hitting more shots out of the sweetspot I'm seeing a greater disparity in carry yardage on misses.

2 hours ago, DeadMan said:

I think you can get some forged clubs that are more game improvement than an MP4. I think Mizuno offers a forged GI iron. Forged will help with the problems with GI of having hot spots. There are also many lines of mixed blades/GIs like Callaway Rogue Pros, Titleist AP3s, etc. that you should look at.

Thanks for the suggestions. I'm not partial to a particular brand as long as the performance is there so I'll see what the fitter has in store for me. Right now I'm leaning towards getting fit at Golftec which is 5 minutes from me as opposed to driving an hour away. I've read they do a good job with club fitting.

10 minutes ago, djake said:

So my suggestion is to take a close look at your golf ball.  It very well could be that item causing you more issues then you think.

Thanks for the input, but it's definitely not the ball. I've been playing Snell MTB for years.

[djake]

54 minutes ago, billchao said:

Thanks for the input, but it's definitely not the ball. I've been playing Snell MTB for years.

Excellent.  Snell and Bridgestone are my two favorite balls.  I just ordered MTB-X in yellow

 

[colin007]

Are these long shots flying lower than you'd expect? Higher?

[ChetlovesMer]

May seem like a dumb question, but have you had a chance to hit some using a launch monitor? 

Or at least hit some with your swing coach watching? Often what's happening on the course will show up in practice and it's a lot easier to diagnose on the practice range than it is on the course. 

Good luck, keep us posted. 

[billchao]

18 hours ago, colin007 said:

Are these long shots flying lower than you'd expect? Higher?

Normal flight. If it's slightly higher launch it's not noticeable. I know the ones I hit slightly thin that launch lower and roll more, that's not what I'm talking about here.

47 minutes ago, ChetlovesMer said:

May seem like a dumb question, but have you had a chance to hit some using a launch monitor? 

Or at least hit some with your swing coach watching? Often what's happening on the course will show up in practice and it's a lot easier to diagnose on the practice range than it is on the course. 

Good luck, keep us posted. 

I haven't done anything with my Mevo this year, that's a good idea. I'll try to do that in the next few days.

I can't tell it's happening when I practice. I only see about 10' of ballflight 😃

[ShawnSum]

On 7/30/2019 at 8:06 PM, billchao said:

My swing has been improving steadily as of late and I've been working out more. There's a possibility that my top end speed has increased and I'm hitting the perfect storm of faster than usual speed and pure contact that results in longer distance at the worst possible time.

I'm dealing with this right now as well, most notably the improvement to my swing which is translating to a lot more solidly hit balls. A little while back I airmailed a 6i 185+ yards on a Par 3 that is 168 yards, I was livid when I laid eyes on where my ball was but my takeaway from that entire situation was that I am 100% striking the ball better and this is the result.

Long story short is I've committed to hitting whatever club will leave me short because I would MUCH rather be chippin up instead of dealing with all the problems that you mentioned about missing long. It's been working well.

[billchao]

4 hours ago, ShawnSum said:

Long story short is I've committed to hitting whatever club will leave me short because I would MUCH rather be chippin up instead of dealing with all the problems that you mentioned about missing long. It's been working well.

I'm not sure I want to always be clubbing short if it leaves me with no chance of being on the green, but yea I get what you're saying. Just have to pick my spots where I can miss long better.

[billchao]

I'm probably going to schedule a fitting with Golftec. They fit for most of the major manufacturers (Mizuno, Ping, Titleist, Taylormade, umm I forget the rest) and I've read that their fitting process is pretty extensive so I have confidence in it. Plus they're only five minutes from my house.

Unfortunately they're planning on going through renovations this weekend and won't reopen until early November. I'm not in a rush to get it done, but I'm hoping my swing doesn't "go cold" by then.

[Bonvivant]

Wow I just looked back at my old comment on this, and how far I have come in 3 months, lol. Apologies for my naivety. I'd say now that it would be a combination of your working out doing its job effectively, and just super sweet strikes. Something that I have been doing lately is taking a full swing but with only 70-85% power and a longer club. I've found that I strike the ball a heck of a lot more solid when I am not putting full power on, and that keeps my distance dispersion tighter than it was. For me it goes something like this.

Full PW is normally 100 yards when struck ok/decent (probably 75-90% of my shots that aren't completely fat or thin) but can easily go 115 when I hit the sweet spot (the other 10-25%). If I take this route, I am airmailing 10-25% of the greens.

85% 9 iron goes around that same distance with a near sweet, or sweet strike but this is more than half of the strikes I get at this power. Something out of the toe or heel still gets me 90+ yards because of the roll out with less loft, so my dispersion is better. If I take this option, I almost certainly won't airmail, unless its a flyer, and anything that isn't struck well is a short chip or on but short.

It can seem odd to take off that much when you are used to swinging full power, but it might be worth trying out to see what it does for you. For me I tend to do this on shots 130 yards and in. 130 yards for me is a full 7 struck ok, or a weak 6 struck well. Outside of that I am swinging full power because I would much rather have a shorter club than trying to take something off of a 3-5 iron (or my 5HY).

Edited October 14, 2019 by Bonvivant