woltaire

I played lots of Golf last summer and switched my irons in spring 2013. I played with Project X 6.0 irons with Callaway X Forged heads and now play Nippon 1150 GH regular shafts with Mizuno MP 52 heads. Now I wanted to talk about a strange change in my misshits since I changed my irons and ask for advice. I know: "It's not the arrow it's the indian." But anyway I played that much this year that I really felt the difference between the two sets and the results: My swingspeed is at 80mph with a 6 iron. With my Project X 6.0 shafts I often hook the ball when I miss the shot. With the regular nippon shafts and the slightly heavier club heads I very often get a push but absolutely never a hook. My idea now is to get something inbetween. Either the Project X 5.0 flighted shafts or the stiff version of the Nippon 1150 GH. Both weights are almost the same with about 115 gramm. On the driving Range I tried a 6 iron of a friend who plays Project X 5.0 and just hit slight draws. On the flight scope I tried the stiff Nippon 1150 GH with very light Mizuno 825 Pro heads and doubled my spin rates and the fitters told me that this is great for me. Now I am a bit unsure on which direction to take. Is there any experience about this from your side?

Yes, that's exactly what I experienced on the flightscope. I got the mizuno 825 pro clubhead in my hands and it was a wonderful feeling during impact and so on... I instantly had about 10 meters more than before. But the first thing that I wanted to know then was how much loft that six iron has. And it came up that mizuno altered their lofts this year from 31° to 29° for the six iron... The same for many other companies... The result of this developement is that all the long irons will fall away in future... No wonder that the hybrid market is continously growing... And there will be need for a second gap wedge with 48°... That's silly... Instead of this a club making company should have the courage to reintroduce the old Ben Hogan club lofts and add some longer irons to their set. Their fear is that nobody would buy those clubs, but I think that people are not stupid and will get more and more informed in future...

Thank you. It is said that the 825 pro are a huge step forward from the 800 pro. Maybe you can give them a try. I especially liked the light weight with the nippon shaft. What I don't like is that they again make the lofts stronger. The 7 iron of the 825 has 33°. In my opinion that's a step into the wrong side. They should make clubsets with a PW starting from 52° again and reintroduce the 1 iron on the other far end.

Hey, thank you for all advice. I went to a fitting yesterday and it took about 80 minutes. Clubs tested were from Titleist, Mizuno, Ping etc. Shafts tested were from ProjectX, KBS, Nippon... Average clubheadspeed with an Iron 6 was 80 mph. Mizuno dna resulted in shaftspecs of 3 5 4 9 The project x shafts 6.0 that I use make all kind of movement during the shot. I have to work a lot in order to get them where I want... We tried them on different heads and in best case they generated a linear line and simply didn't move at all... Most harmonic and steady curve was with the Nippon 1150 stiff shaft + 0,5 inches. Mizuno shaft optimizer recommended a Nippon 950 stiff shaft. Best clubhead was a Mizuno JPX 825 pro. I carried some six irons 160 meters with the JPX pro and the nippon shaft combination and had much higher spinrates. Longest shot with that six iron was 172 meters...

I am going to make a complete fitting tomorrow afternoon. Will post the results here. Is there something that I have to know before they are going to fit me?

There was a guy with AP2 irons and projectX 5.5 shafts on the range today. I was about 10 meters longer with his 5 iron...

On the video it's an 8 iron. I keep the shorter irons a bit back on my stance. The reason is that I noticed that I am falling behind the ball with my head. It was a simple way to keep away from hooking. With longer irons I go more forward. But hooking is a general problem for me... By the way my 4 iron really flies high and still creates a draw shape. It's just that it is not as long as it should be... What makes me think about the Project X 6.0 and if they are really wrong is, that on the video during impact the shaft is bent towards the target... The swing was taken last season. I was able to reduce my overswinging this season. The idea of this is indead to create lag just in the latest moment of the impact. Maybe I take a new video tomorrow...

I have three cleveland wedges. The rest is Callaway X-Forged 2007 model all with 6.0 Project X shafts. I even have a 2 iron of the Callaway Tour Forged model with a 6.5 Project X shaft. (got it for 20 bucks and thought it would be fun...) This one goes about 200 meters (40 m roll included)... I swing pretty fast and can generate some power... Looking at me while I swing usually results in people saying that I swing fast... Have a look at my usual swing rhythm: I have the feeling that I could swing anything and it wouldn't change much...

I thought about a crazy thing with the shafts: Would it make sense to blend the shaft flex from 6.0 to 5.0 and parallelly blend the iron head type? Wedges: 6.5 flex Muscle Back Head Short Irons: 6.0 flex Notch back Club Head Mid Irons: 5.5 flex Cavity Back Club Head Long Irons: 5.0 flex Fully motorized comfort irons The aim would be to generate constant distance gaps between the irons and maintain the workability and feedback of shorter irons.

I landed pin high or even before with the 9 iron but it ran away. I played it from the semi rough so I guess it was a flyer... All measured distances where done with the same ball flight. If I hit well it is a high draw hitting first ball then ground. It is true that I usually end up with 90 shots on 18 holes. But I don't have the feeling that distance is a problem here... I usually am there with two, just miss the fairways and green. Except of those 420 yard par 4s where I have difficulties. I also usually have three double or triple bogeys during my rounds. The reason is mostly that I loose some balls from the tee. Funny is that when I play with people they tend to ask me what iron I used and so on... So I always thought to hit far. :)

In my case the distances are all carrie lenghts without wind. I measured them in the evening when it was getting cold and the wind slowed down. Everything without tee except the driver. Today I took my 3 and 2 hybrid with me. I have the fli-hi iron hybrids with regular steel shafts. 3 went 160 meters 2 went 170 meters 3 wood went 185 meters I also tried to use the distances from yesterday during the game. But in many cases I was too long. Played the 4 iron from the tee 175 meters (total) because there was some wind from behind. Hit a 9 iron with side wind from 124 meters and ended up behind the green... Played my driver twice 205 meters against the head wind...

how much loft does you 7 iron have?

I bought a bushnell seeker. Yesterday I used it in order to determine my proper lenghts. It was a bit of a surprise because it seems that I overestimated my lenghts like many amateurs probably do. Apart from that I recognized an interesting fact. With higher clubs the differences in my lenghts get less and less. At the beginning there are 14 meters in the end just 5 meters difference. See my table here. Full swing lenghts: (five same balls used on every club) Ball used: Wilson DX soft Temperature: 15° Celsius humid air Lobwedge: 70 meters 79 yards (cleveland 588) consistant ball flight Sandwedge: 84 meters 92 yards (cleveland 588 rusty) consistant ball flight Gapwedge: 98 meters 107 yards (cleveland 910) consistant ball flight Pitcher: 106 meters 116 yards (callaway x-forged 2007 notchback project x 6.0) consistant ball flight 9iron: 115 meters 126 yards " consistant ball flight 8iron: 124 meters 136 yards " consistant ball flight 7iron: 133 meters 145 yards " semi consistant ball flight 6iron: 140 meters 153 yards " not very consistant ball flight 5iron: 148 meters 162 yards " some left some right 4iron: 153 meters 167 yards " some left some right Driver: ~200 meters 219 yards I would like to ask for some opinions on this. My thought was to leave the 4 iron away and switch to a hybrid. Or to combine with another iron set and use the 6, 5 and 4 irons of a more forgiving model... or even change completely to more forgiving clubs...

No I never had a fitting session. I don't have a Golf Pro but try to learn alone... It's a period where I change so many things every day that I also don't want to get a club set that is fitted to my errors... I made this video now that shows setup and basic swing. I draw some lines into it. What can be seen is that I slightly lower and rise my body before and during swing. My idea was to make my Irons longer than standart in order to work agains the down and up movement... However I am not sure if that will work of if I am right...

I am 6,2 feet tall (74,4 Inches). With Golf shoes my wrist height is 37''. I currently play standard lenght and lie. (Callaway x-forged 2007) I checked many online fitting sites. They all basically say 2° up and 0,5'' longer maybe even 1'' ... However I don't want to trust a computer blindly. Therefore I decided to just add half an inch to my club lenght for now. Because I think that cannot be wrong... Before I do this work I wanted to ask if I am basically right. Does the ballflight change when I just edit the club lenght? Some more questions: 1. Is it true that an accurate lie fitting is not really important for lofts that are smaller than 24° 2. I have three wedges (Cleveland 588 52°, 56°, 60°). Some say they should all be the same lenght others say half an inch between them... What's the advantage of having them all the same lenght?

During setup your head looks a bit too low. At the top of your backswing you are laid-off a bit too much. That's the result of a slight wrist movement right after your take-away to the inside. If you can get your wrist a bit more one-piece and upright it might dissappear.

The first thing that I would try to teach my caddie is how to cheat in a creative way. I don't think it's very creative to hide an extra golf club in the bushes... That's pretty stupid with all cameras around you and professional flight partners that run after you. The proper solution might have been to pull out the extra club with another club that has to be used by the player. Then when he puts the other club back in the bag the extra club vanishes into the caddies trouser leg. The caddie then has to hobble continously but he could fall after some steps and behave as if he would be injured... They instantly drive the caddie with a cart to the club house for medical care. He disappears in the toilet and pulls the extra club out of his trouser leg then might be able to flush it down somehow... If that doesn't work he should give it to the president of the Golf Club and say: "Oh, I've found that on the toilet. Maybe someone has lost it..." I think with such an eye-catching performance in front of public and people getting pulled into the chances to get caught while doing it are less, because people expect you to hide somewhere when you do something illegal... But if you make it that complicated that noone actually understands what you are doing, you will never get caught...yeah! Apart from that when poeple get involved they don' react because they get fear by themselves. Watch the Marx Brothers for more information...

I still have a callaway x-12 oversize one iron that is very comfortable to play although it has 16° of loft. It has a small offset and in my case a steel shaft. It has a very low penetrating ball flight and when you get the sweet spot and it's pretty dry on the fairway it can travel as far as a three wood or even a bit more. If you don't get the sweet spot it remains short but usually is still there in the fariway someway like a well hit 4 iron. It really depends on how hard the ground is... I took some lead tape and taped about 15 layers on it's bottom back to get a lower center of weight which raised the ball flight slightly and increased the swingweight... I just carry this iron, when it is very dry and windy. But my alternative now is a Mizuno fli-hi 2 iron with 18° loft and tons of lead tape that is also very comfortable to play and goes as precise and far when it's less dry and windy. That's really a nice club and much more forgiving and fun. I can really recommend this one.

That's possible... However they offer everything as 4 week buy and try. So you can get it and then resend it. That's not typical for people who sell outdated technology. It seem's that they are very convinced about what they're doing and have interesing explanations... They proclaim that with grooveless you get less spin on the long irons and more spin on the short irons. According to them the reason for this is that during impact the ball gets pressed for a moment to about 20% of it's normal width. In that moment the ball generates a small counter movement in the opposite direction, practically a small moment of forward spin. The grooves limit the backspin effect during maximum impact in a way like two gear wheels that go into opposite directions which results in a small loss of backspin. On the short irons this effect is higher than on longer irons. On an iron 6 and 7 there is no real difference between grooves and grooveless... On longer irons you get less spin with grooveless which results into more roll... Can that be?

I am from Germany and therefore I am following a pretty young German golf club company. They make publicity and were interviewed in Germany's top golf magazines and so on... The reason for that is because they offer lot's of strange stuff with a "less is more" philosophy under the company name "Bagger Vance". However their most outstanding and most discussed product are these grooveless blades here: http://www.marken-golf.de/golfshop/shop/Grooveless-Eisen-Oldschool---ohne-Rillen_27-444.html They even offer real leather grips and say they last longer and behave better in rain. Or they produce bi-matrix shafts of hickory with steel top and remake persimmon woods like these: http://www.marken-golf.de/golfshop/shop/Bagger-Vance-Persimmon-H%C3%B6lzer_28-1790.html It's all made in Germany stuff. However their website is coded like a terrible bunch of debris and the company leader looks like a total freak... http://www.marken-golf.de/Impressum___AGB/impressum___agb.html I am not sure if they are cheating with their products or if they are geniusses and don't know if anybody mentioned their golf clubs here before. So I wanted to ask what you all think of that stuff... Is this the true future of golf clubs? Or is this bullshit?

March 2012 I am focussing on my overswing at the moment. I managed to get the club parallel to the ground at the top. I also tried to work on the swing plane as shown in the following video. My current error seems to be a pull draw. If I hit it bad the ball starts slightly to the left and turns on. With a i7 it's about 10 meters to the left of the target if I hit it wrong. With the driver about 30 meters. It's neither a duck hook nor a quick hook. Simply a pull draw.

Didn't you write something like that if the club looks like a driving club it may affect the legal aspects aswell?

It just arrived and I could give some first impressions that might affect also the legal aspects... - The length of the club is as long as a Driver they used in the mid 90s (about 43 inches). - Clubface is about as big as a old Callaway Warbird driver. - The club however is more compact in it's back and has about 240ccm I'd say. - The last thing is that it seems to be very light in it's weight... - Loft is 16°

Well, I ordered a ERC 3 Wood with Callaway standard firm shaft now from the UK. I couldn't find a single one in Germany, although I was looking for 2 month... I hope it is going to arrive soon and I will give some feedback as soon as the snow is away...