SamW

I wouldn't give up on this until they have pulled the shaft's from all your irons and put new ones in. From everything I've read the shop has screwed up, they are trying to shift the blame buy saying you hit a root. Because of the flex in a golf shaft it's seriously hard to bend it like that at the hozel buy hitting anything. Once a shaft has been bent at all like that (with a bending bar etc) it's a broken shaft, it can't be bent back as a repair it needs replacing.

Mine was on the 1st, I was too hungover to play on the 1st :)

Make exciting scores with a boring, predictable shots, rather than making unpredictable scores with exiting shots.

+1 for fade, it is definately this year's draw. Once I had it drummed into me what the difference was between a really well struck, on plane, 2-4 yard fade is compared to an ugly over the top slice which infects the game of a lot of us amateurs I was sold. So far results have been awesome in terms of hitting fairways, I can aim up the left side (the danger side of the fairway at my course) with near full confidence that the ball is going to end on that line or right of it. I've shot 2 personal best scores over the winter (75 then 72) and playing for an intentional fade is probably the single biggest contributor to that. Unfortunately due to course conditions over the winter these weren't qualifying rounds so they didn't impact my handicap (course has some tees and greens being repaired over winter so the course is not hcap qualifying under CONGU (UK) rules at the moment).

I've played the odd round with 2 clubs, usually 2hy/8iron (+putter) and it's always had a good effect on my game and course management. See a lot more fairway on those days and shoot ballpark similar scores overall. Trouble is despite it forcing creative shot making, the problem with it is that outside the 2-3 holes that that club combo fit's perfectly, on the other hole's you are teeing off with little prospect of playing the hole your best.. once you get that out of your head it doesn't matter, you just play those holes the best you can with those clubs. The nice thing is that you get more tactical, and in doing that you put your ball in some good considered positions... e.g. you make some very considered layups rather than forcing difficult shots into greens and with that you make much more solid up-and-down opportunities and convert more of them. It's a good way to play golf once in a while. Hybrid is also a really good choice for one of the clubs because they are clubs you can get really creative with and play a lot of different styles of shots with.

This wasn't the case for me after a fitting. Combination of shaft droop and my swing means that my impact lie is about 2-3* upright from my address position. Therefore my clubs are slightly toe-up at address and according to the fitter I used this is very much the norm (shaft droop alone is worth between 1-2* at my swing speed depending on the shaft).

There's new rules at our club which have basically worked, but they only apply on Medal (competition) days (which is most weekend saturdays and about every 4th sunday). For reference Competitive rounds are a maximum of 3 competitors where I play: 1. First group over 2h5m through 9 holes is DQ'd and must stop playing and is banned from next 3 stroke play comps. 2. Groups finishing second 9 in over 2h5m are DQ'd and banned from next 3 stroke play comps. The rules have been in force 4 months, this month for the first time there were no DQ's. I teed off at 9:38 and by 1:15 I was in the bar. This is so much of an improvement, I've had medal rounds in the past that were 4h50, which starts to effect your concentration and your enjoyment. What's more although about 5 groups have been DQ'd in the past nobody has made any complaint about the rule or the time length (other than some people saying it should be 3h40 limit instead of 4h10). [Edit] forgot to say that you can't play the course at all those days unless you are entered in the competition or playing twilight.

Making intentional noise while your opponent is playing is just bad etiquette but probably the kind of bad etiquette that would need an independent official to make a decision on. For me the decision on whether I give a putt or don't is the nearest I get, generally I won't give anything but a tap in to win a hole anyway, but I wouldn't expect to be given one anyway. I play at my own pace, and I get frustrated if my partner is slower even in competition I might say something like "we need to try to keep up with the game ahead" if somebody is playing slowly but that's as far as I'll take it and there's no spirit of gamesmanship to it. On the other side, I once had my bag fall over when my opponent was playing a chip which he miss hit and left himself a 25 footer, I gave him the putt and he might not have got up and down anyway. Funniest gamesmanship I saw was an old guy I was playing in a winter league match, he had very bad legs so he used a single person ride on buggy. At the 10th he offered a sausage roll warmed on the engine of his buggy to me which was welcome it was very cold, but he didn't have a serviette for me only for himself :) as a result I got grease on my driver grip which didn't quite clear up the whole rest of the round...

I've played plenty of times in those conditions, and I agree it's hard work, in fact there are quite a lot of weather conditions that are pretty hard work. Truthfully though I still walk the course and I still take the conditions as part of the game. But there again the competitive golf I've played is predominantly played under English Golf Union which doesn't permit any carts. So I guess, if the playing field was level and cart's were allowed in a competition somewhere else then I'd take a cart, but I'd resent it. The reason is that I've been to courses where people play in carts (I've also played a lot in the US but also some other places), I've seen a lot of people that just wouldn't have the stamina to walk a course, they are just not golf fit... I wouldn't let them use a cart to play me because I'd be standing there thinking their golf will deteriorate pretty badly during the round if they walk and I'd be planning my game around that. If you want to stand with the cart argument, do you think they should be allowed on the PGA tour, I mean why should the pro's be forced to walk 5 miles each day for 4 days to play an event? Going back 150 years, why didn't they just make horse paths on golf courses and have all those old fellas in Scotland riding around the course on a horse? Carts aren't part of the sport, whether its 110 degrees in arizona or horizontal rain with 50mph winds in scotland, it's just something that was added to the game to facilitate golf courses extracting money from unfit people.

I don't see why a golfer has any less right to tweet politics than a politician or anybody else. Same way with religion. That said Webb Simpson is clearly a brainwashed moron and I'd sooner never see him on another leaderboard, that's just the chance you take sharing your views.

Personally I think carts should be for medical reasons only, and then never for competitive golf or any handicap qualifying round. This is because golf is a sport and an aspect of the sport is endurance. At my course there are very few carts anyway and generally only visitors would ever be seen dead in them. In a strokeplay or matchplay tournament a cart is clearly a competitive advantage. As a result I would never join a club where using "artificial propulsion during competitions" was within the local rules as I don't wish to play in a cart or suffer the competitive disadvantage of not being in a cart. I know that a lot of people play golf just for themselves, just to get their own handicap down and no other reason.. for me I'm only playing the game to win things, personal performance is okay it's a bit of a consolation prize. I can have a social round just for the company but it's going to be matchplay and it'll probably have money on it or at least a beer in the bar on it, I wouldn't play with somebody using a cart unless they were totally unable to walk the course for medical reasons and then only if it was a solo cart.

You didn't really say if the rightness was caused by a push or a fade (e.g. does the ball fly straight or fly left to right in the air). The hybrid you have sits slightly open at address (I know I use the same one) which is likely part of the cause I suppose. If it's consistent I wouldn't worry too much about it, just line up a little more left... if it's a fade and you are hitting it straight with your irons then I would check your ball position and see if its too far left in your stance.

Could be yea :) and I know what you mean SW London courses have quite bumped up prices on the "it's easy to get to from Chelsea" factor. Still I think you'll find something good around there, the other member's of the club become the most important thing in the end.

Interesting that you are posting from London (where I also live). I joined a private course 6431yds par 71, superb greens, tight fairways, generally challenging and its around the £160/month mark. Quality and upkeep of the course was top of my list. Large number of competitive events was second, e.g. I wanted to be able to play in a competition at least every other weekend and at least once a week midweek in the summer. General good feel of the club acting as a club, I ideally wanted to join a club owned by its members. So the feel of the place was a big factor also, I particularly didn't want to walk into the bar and find a bunch of stuffy old men wearing Blazers. [edit] forgot to mention that I also wanted good golfers to play at the club, so I was looking for a club where > 1/2 the membership were better golfers than me :) Cost would have been a factor if I thought that the one that I picked was too expensive but I don't. I spend plenty of time at the club and get good value out of my membership fee. The club doesn't exist to line anybody elses pockets anyway so everything the members pay gets spent on the course and the club house. Thanks Sam

I've been using Golfshot GPS for practice rounds for a while and I think it's great. The only problem I have with it is that its not legal for comp use at my club because it's an IPhone which breaks 2 rules: 1. You aren't allowed to have a mobile phone switched on the course at my club although many people bend this rule. 2. Despite the Golfshot GPS app being conforming in what it does, IPhone's strictly speaking are non conforming for other reasons because they have Compass, access to weather apps and even spirit level type apps... even if you don't use these app's you theoretically could do so you are potentially in breach of rule 14.3. Or at least that's my interpretation and seems to be the generally accepted interpretation of that rule at my club.

Now I own a set of blades and a set of cavity's (the aforementioned mp-52s along with a set of mp-32s), actually these clubs feel very similar for the most part they are fundamentally both Mizuno forged irons, they have the same lofts, swing weight and even look similar from above. Sometimes I take a mixed set to the practice ground, the extra feedback from the 32s can help me from a practice point of view, they are like bad swing amplifiers.... So having the comparison in my hands, I know that I couldn't use a full set of blades, I just don't strike the ball clean enough or swing well enough in real golf situations, those slight draws would become big draws, those 15 yard short slight toe hits would become 50 yard short toe hits. But I actually do feel I could use a split set if I wanted, if I switched out 7-PW with the 32's this wouldn't worry me at all, its the 3-6 irons that would do. The reason I don't do it is that there's no tangible benefit to me on the golf course .... I could take this to the extreme and switch to some SGI iron (and I've tried that)... the reason I don't follow that path is that I feel so disconnected from the ball and I hit the ball so obscenely high with that type of club that while I gain distance I throw a lot of accuracy out of the window, it doesn't work for me.

Knowing its going to go about 145 in a hopefully straight line is just golfing bliss. I hit my 7 iron 3-4 yards more than that I'm not ashamed. I used to try and melt the ball with my irons but aside from it sometimes going much further I had no consistency.

This is really just a standard risk/reward thing that occurs in all kinds of course management situations in golf, its not about the "newness" of the golfer at all. For instance a tournament pro when playing a hole is really setting their own par, on a lot of par 5's their internal par is a 4 but in some conditions they might play it as a par 5. This is really no different from a high handicap player playing a long or difficult par 4 as a par 5 to be honest. For a new golfer playing off say 28 handicap you can easily afford to play "bogey golf" and go for 1 over par on each hole, if you set that as your goal and you make it then you played 10 better than your handicap, most days though your inconsistency will still drive your score up a little because you will still hit some bad shots that get you into trouble/cause penalties/miss putts etc. It's one of the hardest things to do in golf to remove the urge to go for golden moments... I've seen 15 hcap golfers (especially older guys) who play bogey golf and shoot under their hcap often just through real quality chipping and putting.

All rough is not equal, often a hybrid is good from rough but you have to stop to consider what the grass before the ball is going to do when you sweep through it. If you are sitting low in thick rough the flattening effect of a hybrid sweeping towards the ball can put so much grass between the ball and the face it kills your contact. In the same situation the sharp edge of a short iron will cut a lot of the grass as you go to hit the ball and could still make a clean contact with the ball (but the club could have lost most if not all of it's speed getting there).

I'm surprised so many people do it. Don't get me wrong I've gotten very annoyed about golf but I've never thrown or broken a club. Where I live club throwing is considered pretty bad behavior, for instance if somebody who bought a green fee threw a club they would be escorted off the course, if it was a member they would have a disciplinary and probably would be suspended. All it does it show everyone you are playing against how mentally weak you are.

In terms of your BH-5's, they are basically game improvement irons cavity back in line with something like a Titleist AP1 or Mizuno JPX-800. If you really just feel like you want new irons (sounds like that's really what you want) you could decide to get a similarly helpful set of irons or something else. It's choice/taste and what you feel like doing. It's really not about level's it just doesn't work like that, you have Lee Westwood & KJ Choi hitting what can only be called SGI irons and most people would dream of hitting irons like they do.

I cut a 46" Superfast Burner to 44" and never looked back, I feel more positive with the club, hit the ball further and straighter. I needed to re-weight the head, to get the SW up to D1.5 (which is still somewhat lighter than it originally was). So I wouldn't be scared, if you look at the specs of the tour players you will find the majority using drivers in the 43.5-45 range with very few hitting longer ones. I do have a bit of a note from my experience though. Originally I had my club butt trimmed only then re-weighted in the head.. the effect of this was that the stiff shaft played too soft, afterwards I had a further 1/2 inch taken from the tip which fixed this problem completely and restored the balance of the club properly. I didn't see this part coming, but trimming from the butt then adding weight to the head makes the shaft play softer, so if I was you I would think about taking 1/2 inch from the tip and the rest from the butt as well. I would be stunned if you did this and found any significant loss of distance... if your experience is like mine then I think you will feel more positive, find it much easier to square the club at impact, make a much better ball contact and gain a small amount of head speed.

These are my measured yardages for actual play (for shot selection), I'd like to add that I intentionally don't bomb it with irons I rarely swing more than 80% with any iron so I'm not going to do what some people are doing in this thread and write down what I could hit it too if I smashed it. Driver: 250 3 Wood: 235 2hy: 215-220 3i: 197 4i: 185 5i: 173 6i: 162 7i: 150 8i: 138 9i: 126 PW: 114 52: 103 56: 90 I read this thread and laughed a bit, some people hit dream yardages.. I'm not debating that some people hit it far, I've played with some extremely long hitters playing off very low handicaps, and occasionally with some extreme long hitters playing very wild off quite high handicaps.. the latter are always people who smash the ball out of control. I did plenty of work in the past getting my 7 iron to go a consistent 145-155 yards, this for me was the key measure, hitting over 170 with a 7 iron is possible with my swing but really that means hitting in the 130-175 yard range, not very useful on a course imo :) When I stand next to somebody on the 195yrd par 3 5th on our course, I take a 3 iron, the next guy might take a 6 iron especially if he's using hot faced irons.. I don't care one iota if mine heads for the green and his hooks out of bounds because he is hitting on his limits.

I just do what Sevam1 said, which is what hogan did. I stand about 4 feet from the ball 45* back from it, take a 1/2 swing, watch where I'm faced when I finish. Address the ball, couple of waggles, look at the target, look at the ground and swing the club.