spearq8

I think the problem would be weight. You need to keep a certain swing weight configuration and the total weight shouldn't become too high. In the meantime I have been trying the Maltby MB and they seem extremely large and forgiving for a blade. I made a full set for my brother's kid (12 years old) and he chose them over his brand new R11 irons, and his last 3 rounds have been his lowest scoring rounds ever. The idea that hitting blades is more difficult is a myth, and it is unfortunate because blades are simply much more accurate than CB's. But with blades you really have to be fit properly with the correct shaft and your lie fitting should be perfect. I have 5 sets of Mizuno blades and I liked the Maltby irons so much that I ordered a full set to build, they really play extremely well although they don't have the perfect finish of Mizunos, and the quality control in the finishing looks like it could use a lot of improvement, but the play on the irons is as good or better than the Mizunos. I still am not sure what shafts I want to put on them and ordered a few more 6 iron heads to try X100, S300 (what I play with now), FST Pro 115 (am interested to see how a light shaft does on a blade), but there is a good chance that I might be giving up on the Mizuno's and moving to the Maltby MB's. http://www.golfworks.com/product.asp_Q_pn_E_MA0194_A_cn_E_2089 Why not order a fully assembled 8 iron or 6 iron and give it a try? I think you will be pleasantly surprised at how easy they are to hit.

I put the DriTac grip on an iron to test it and didn't like it at all. Way too spongy and I felt like I lost some feel with my iron. I have a couple of friends that have it only on their drivers and love them. Maybe this is a grip that works good on a driver but not really that good on an iron.

I think with blades you have to rethink your philosophy of hitting a golf ball. With a blade you really have to reduce your swing speed because the performance happens only when you hit the sweet spot. A good strike on a blade will go much further than an equivalent strike with a CB, also your shot dispersion is dramatically tighter. People have a hard time swinging less hard, especially on the longer irons. If more people would hit their blades on a launch monitor, they will quickly realize that increasing swing speed is not the way to get good distance, but rather hitting the sweet spot is the real deal. That is why with a blade you really need to have an absolute perfect fit for lie angle and shaft fitting. If you get properly fitted for blades, you will never want to hit anything else ... but a poor fitting for blades will make you hate the game of golf.

What I don't understand about the negative comments about Tiger is that many seem pissed off that he gets so much attention. If you win 14 majors and win more than 70 PGA tournaments ... I guess that will attract some attention. While many people enjoy Tiger fail, many really want him to get back to where he was dominant to witness history as it is happening. Even my wife who has never hit a golf ball will sit and watch 5 hours of golf coverage only if Tiger is playing. Whether you like it or not, he is probably the best golf player in the history of the game, and that tends to attract even non golfers to how he is performing. Add to that the soap opera type saga with his personal life, and you get even more interest!

The "spoilt brat" description was used when Tiger won a major with what looked like an injury. A lot of people, including some participating players, mentioned that he was hyping his injury. Well it turned out that his "fake" injury was really very serious, and that he had somehow crushed the field with what was basically a broken leg. Who knows if playing with that injury was worth it for Tiger, maybe his present nagging injuries can be due to playing when injured and not respecting the healing time a body needs to fix itself. Again, Tiger is all about majors and all other tournaments are just warm ups for majors. He has one record that he really wants to beat and to do that he needs several more wins in Majors. I would not be surprised if Tiger doesn't play till the next major.

I was actually surprised at how easy it was to make a club. I had bought a spine finder and so spined every club I made. The real PIA was installing the ferrules as that was tight as hell! I finally read somewhere that you just put them in hot water before and they go right in ... wish I had read that before getting a nice cut on my finger trying to cut out the ferrule and replace it! But really they feel smooth and buttery just like Mizunos, and I dare say I might be replacing my MP63's with the MMB's. They really are very forgiving for a blade and even mishits are not punished too much. It could also be a combination of spining and the FST Pro 115 shafts that is giving such smooth results. I will make a couple more clubs in X100 and S300 and FST 115 Pro Stiff to see how that compares with my MP 63 and MP67. I got a couple of extra heads with the same loft so I can compare. The lofts on the irons were all perfect and so I bent them 1.5 degrees strong to match the kids older clubs (TM r11).

I think he is just being careful and decided it is just not worth the risk. It doesn't take much to seriously injure yourself once you start feeling things are not right, and to be honest I think Tiger is only interested in winning, so anything less was simply not worth the risk. Previously he did play through a serious injury and won, but that was a Major and he probably did a lot of damage that hurt him in the long run. What is certain is that he still has the "game" to come back and dominate and his game was really starting to get some consistency. His weakness was his short game, which ironically was his strength early in his career. Short game usually improves with more play, and his stats there were improving round by round. I think now Tiger is all about majors and all other tournaments for him are just practice rounds for the Majors. He really really wants to break Jack's record and that puts a lot of pressure on him ... once he does that (if he does) I think we will see his best golf.

I haven't had good experiences with the TFC stock shafts from Ping. Somehow I feel that the quality control is poor and the shafts are inconsistent. I had two identical G20 drivers with identical shafts and lofts that played completely differently. I did try out the i20 with Project X shaft last weekend that was in a demo Ping setup and it felt OK. But really if I did get an i20 I would immediately put an after market Mitsubishi Ahina 72gr shaft in stiff and let that baby rip.

I like to tinker around with stuff and decided to see what building a golf club would be like. After a lot of reading and since I am an avid blade player, I decided to build a set from a golf pak from Golfworks. I really liked the looks of the Maltby MMB and decided to go for them. The pak came with FST 115 Pro shafts and those are nice because you can be very flexible in which flex you want to use. I first decided to make an 8 iron and 6 iron for my brother's kid (12 year old) and cut the tips one club higher using the chart on the FST site. So I figured the flex would be between A flex and Regular flex. We took them out on the range yesterday and man those things were sweet. Now I am a Mizuno man and have 6 sets of forged Mizuno's and currently play MP63's, but those irons really felt even more buttery than the Mizunos. Not only that, they were amazingly easy to hit and my brother's kid was peppering the flag on the range with beautiful high straight shots. He plays with R11 CB irons and was hitting with both 8 irons of both clubs and was consistently hitting better shots with the Malby irons. What is amazing is that these blades are so damn forgiving, even on mishits the results were just as good or better than a mishit on a CB. We had a ton of people on the range begging to hit shots with the irons and they all were amazed that they could hit so well with a blade. I guess it could be that the shafts have something to do with the easy hitting clubs (little less than regular), but I also had no problem hitting straight shots with them even though I play with S300 or sometimes X100 shafts. If you haven't tried to build a club, give it a try. Go to Golfworks and buy the components to build one club (say 8 iron or 6 iron). I don't think it would cost more than $50 to build one. I highly recommend the MMB from Maltby especially if you like forged blades. Even if you don't play blades give them a try, you will be surprised at how easy it is to hit these, and a well hit blade is always more accurate than a well hit CB. I think that Golfworks can also assemble the club for you for a minimal charge, so if you don't have a workshop that might be a better option.

Whatever choice you make, be sure that you have an original after market shaft. The Ahina that comes with say a Ping G20 driver IS NOT the same as the after market Ahina that costs around $300. I know that for a fact as I have tried both. I would rather get a cheaper after market shaft for around $ 60 than stay with the original super brand name shaft on my driver.

You can get your 4 iron bent a little to get it to around a 3.5 iron ... maybe 2 degrees strong. That is what a lot of pros do to fit their gaps. If you have not gotten fitted then this is your opportunity to also check your lie angle on your clubs. With a proper fitting you can taylor your distances to how you like them. I don't carry a 5 wood, but my R11 @ 3 rescue is around 230 yards while my iron 4 iron on my Mizuno MP63 was around 195 yards. When I checked the loft of my iron it was 1 degree weak, so I set it at two degrees strong and now my 4 iron is about 210 yards. You really can't tell what an iron loft is by the manufacturer label, for example I checked my brothers Taylormade CGB Max irons and they were all 5 degrees strong! When you consider that 4 degrees is the average gap between clubs, that meant that his 4 iron was actually a 1 degree strong 3 iron! So get fitted and make sure there is the correct spacing between your clubs. Also getting fit for lie is the best thing you can do for your golf game, the tiny sweet spot on your club suddenly becomes huge!

Personally I feel the shaft has much more to do with ball flight than the head. I have 4 Ping drivers, a G15 9.5, G15 10.5, and two identical G20 9.5 with identical stiff shafts. One of my G20's feels like it is a 13.5 and balloons my balls way up in the air (horrible against the wind) while the other feels much lower and closer to the 9.5 rating. The difference in identical off the shelf clubs is so startling that it has completely changed my outlook on how important it is to get properly fitted before and after a shaft fitting and club purchase. Personally I would stay away from an 8.5 and stick to the 9.5 and simply get a shaft that gives me good launch monitor results. After market shafts that are identical to the shafts that come stock with the shaft are world's apart. If you don't want to spend a lot for an after market shaft, then get a G20 with a tour preferred shaft, that probably is a better choice and has a little better tolerance control.

I did myself a favor and bought my own Blue loft lie machine. All my clubs are soft forged irons and really you will be shocked at how quickly the lie can change. I just got a set of Mizuno MP63's and checked them from PW to 3 iron for loft and lie. The clubs were pretty much dead on and I made a copy of every single setting. I played those clubs about 3 weeks (maybe 12 round of golf) and hit them on our hard mats at the practice range quite a bit. Yesterday I brought in my clubs home to check them again. Every single one of them was off by between 1/2 a degree and 1 degree in Lie angle (all more upright), although there was not too much change in loft angle. What bothers me is that this change happened in only 3 weeks. I used to have clubs that I never checked for Lie and Loft angle before, until my club pro told me the reason I was having to aim so far right with short irons was that my lie was off (it was by 4 degrees). Personally I think you play forged irons you absolutely have to have your lie checked regularly ... at least on your PW and 9 iron and 8 irons. This is especially true if you play blades, where the sweet spot is already pretty small. It really is a quick process and should take less than 10 to 15 minutes to do your entire set. Not only will having a perfect lie keep your ball straighter off the face, it will also prevent unwanted side spin which can create havoc in windy conditions.

Oh yes you can absolutely have a driver head go off, especially if it is made of a composite. I played with a Callaway FT3 driver and used to blast that driver over 280 yards. Then after some time I started to notice that I was losing distance, and was having a hard time getting over 250. I figured it was something to do with my swing and started doing all sort of swing changes, more hip rotation and exagerrating swing speed and basically screwed up my pretty decent swing. My brother then noticed that his identical driver has a different sound, and sure enough after checking the head I noticed a crack in the composite area. I then bought an FT5 and again the same problem happened with 2 of them ... great for a while and then it just dies after a couple of months. My brother's FT3 also started getting a crack and he also said he felt dramatic distance loss. After googling the subject it turns out that this is a common problem! This put me off so much that I will never again use a composite driver. This also happened with my FT3 3 wood. I now use a Ping G15 driver and wood and G20 drivers, and since they are all titanium, I don't worry about the head going off. To be fair I live in a hot climate and it gets extremely hot when I play. That could be a contributing factor to composite club head failure. But I don't want to ever risk going through that horrible patch of my golf game ever again.

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