Good Idea to Use More Advanced Clubs to Improve Swing and Contact?

[JayFou]

Hello Arturo28mx,

Thanks for the response.  I'm not sure the analogy fits my question very well though, or perhaps I didn't communicate my question well.

To me it's not about "I want to learn to drive a car so I'll buy a Ferrari to force myself to learn to be a better driver.".  I agree with you, I don't see how buying a Ferrari would make me a better driver than say, a Toyota Corolla.

It's more like "I want to learn to learn to drive a manual sports car but manual sports cars usually have very precise clutches and don't offer the driver a large margin of error.  Would it be better or faster for me to start by learning on a manual car whose clutch has a large margin of error and working my way up, or dive in the deep end right away and start with a manual car whose clutch has a small margin of error right off the bat."

The way I see it, generally speaking, people learn and improve faster when they are forced to.  It usually takes people a lot longer to learn or improve in something if there's no sense of urgency or necessity.  Of course there are people who can keep themselves motivated and will learn or improve very quickly regardless; but generally speaking, urgency and necessity are very good motivators.

My goal is to be able to consistently strike the ball in the center of the club face.  My question is, would it be better to force myself to use less forgiving golf club heads right at the beginning, necessitating me to really focus on consistently striking the ball perfectly center right away.  Or use more forgiving golf club heads at first and remove the necessity to strike the ball perfectly center every time since the club head will forgive off center strikes (to a certain extent).  

@arturo28mx

 

 

[JayFou]

As a side note I do have one set of clubs aimed towards beginners and another set aimed towards better players and are "less forgiving".

I honestly don't notice that much of a difference so I wonder if it's really that important.

Edited September 17, 2021 by JayFou

[boogielicious]

7 hours ago, JayFou said:

My goal is to be able to consistently strike the ball in the center of the club face.  My question is, would it be better to force myself to use less forgiving golf club heads right at the beginning, necessitating me to really focus on consistently striking the ball perfectly center right away. 

I really think it doesn’t make a difference what clubs you use. What is important is a good practice plan. For center-face contact drills, I use a dry erase marker on the face and work on my setup to get centered contact. FWIW, I’ve had SGI and GI clubs and didn’t like them as much as cavity back heads. I even use a blade for some drills like the one above.

If you want to improve your ball striking in general, good instruction and a smart practice plan will really help. I would recommend a couple of things in this regard. 

1. Start a My Swing thread in the Member Swings section.
2. If you don’t have a good instructor near, I recommend Evolvr. It’s on-line and at your own pace. I’ve used it for years.
3. Check out the two threads below. The COVID practice thread is one @iacas created last year. I has many great drills. The first five are full swing and are excellent. The second thread is about how to practice. That is very important. Most of us wasted hours and hours of time practicing incorrectly until we focused and practiced smart.

 

[saevel25]

7 hours ago, JayFou said:

My goal is to be able to consistently strike the ball in the center of the club face.  My question is, would it be better to force myself to use less forgiving golf club heads right at the beginning, necessitating me to really focus on consistently striking the ball perfectly center right away.  Or use more forgiving golf club heads at first and remove the necessity to strike the ball perfectly center every time since the club head will forgive off center strikes (to a certain extent).  

If you have a better swing, then I think the feedback from a less forgiving club would be more beneficial when trying to find the sweet spot. 

If you have a swing with some big time swing flaws, then it doesn't matter because you will need to work on areas of the swing that don't require finding the sweet spot. 

[DrvFrShow]

The main difference between GI irons and blades - I've played both (my blades were like that shitty rental set Shorty was talking about)  - is that with the GI iron, when you mishit or thin a shot won't sting as much, especially in colder weather. If you have a GI 7i and hit that say for example 160 yds. If you're 1/4" off the sweet spot it'll go 145 yds. With a blade if you're 1/4" of it'll go 100 yds. and either to the right or left. If you hit the shot fat with either club, the ball isn't going far anyway. A hosel rocket will go further into the woods with a GI iron. 

Play whatever you want. You have to determine how much time you have to practice. How often will you practice. If you have high expectations and will practice everyday, by all means, go for the better player irons. You don't have to use butter knives, but if that's what you want, go for it. It's your money.

[metbid]

On 7/19/2021 at 10:01 PM, JayFou said:

watching youtube videos.  After that I'll start posing some videos for some community input and re-examine my club situation.   

The trouble with watching Youtube videos is you can watch 10 of them and get ten different opinions and tips for the same thing.  In-person lessons take into account your individual swing needs.

[saevel25]

On 9/17/2021 at 9:21 PM, DrvFrShow said:

is that with the GI iron, when you mishit or thin a shot won't sting as much, especially in colder weather. If you have a GI 7i and hit that say for example 160 yds. If you're 1/4" off the sweet spot it'll go 145 yds. With a blade if you're 1/4" of it'll go 100 yds.

I am going to disagree with that. I've hit shots so far onto the toe before that I missed the grooves. The ball doesn't go 60 yards short. Maybe 30 yards. 1/4" an inch, the ball might come up 8-10 yards short with a blade, and about 2 yards shorter if that pending how much game improvement design there is. 

Game improvement irons is all about ball speed retention, and most of their design lower spin and increase launch angle. 

I agree with the feedback, you can miss 1/4" on a GI and not notice you did. On a blade, you'll notice. 

[cipher]

2 hours ago, saevel25 said:

I am going to disagree with that. I've hit shots so far onto the toe before that I missed the grooves. The ball doesn't go 60 yards short. Maybe 30 yards. 1/4" an inch, the ball might come up 8-10 yards short with a blade, and about 2 yards shorter if that pending how much game improvement design there is. 

Game improvement irons is all about ball speed retention, and most of their design lower spin and increase launch angle. 

I agree with the feedback, you can miss 1/4" on a GI and not notice you did. On a blade, you'll notice. 

Having switched to blade irons this year I fully agree. It was surprising to me how forgiving they actually are on mishits. They seem more consistent overall to me with decent contact somewhere on the face. Maybe the big sole on GI irons help a bit more with a fat shot, idk. The feedback with blades is great, I love that.