fRzzy

I don't work the ball, it works me.

Damn, can I buy that club? I would put it in my bag making sure it sticking out for people to see everywhere I go...

It's just to show you that you will create maximum lag by not doing anything with your wrist.

Driver $125 3 wood $115 irons & hybrid $340 wedge $50 putter basically free plus shipping for all, about $100-$200 I don't remember... except the wedge, others are new... my old irons & hybrid cost me $300, just switched to single length irons...

You creat highest level of lag by letting your wrist do nothing, do not try to manipulate them in any way. Let's try this, hold a club at the top of backswing position, and try to cock your wrist by... well, cocking your wrist, note the angle created by your left arm and the club. Now loosen the wrist while keeping your left arm straight, I'm sure the angle will be smaller, that is more lag created.

I do have a wet towel around my neck while riding my motorcycle in leather suit :D

Actually I don't remember getting mad after a bad shot, I just laughed it off. But I tensed up setting up the next shot, thinking "I have to make this shot", of course that didn't work. Taking deep breaths and make some slow practice swings seem like a very good idea. Not trying to make heroic shots from tough lie is another, I remembered hitting the ball from this side of the fairway to another a lot...

I don't have any advice regarding the techniques, but this is how I practice and it works for me... Hope it help you put together what you know you need to do into you swings. Seperate your swing into small parts, takeaway, backswing, shift weight and bring the grip to your right thigh, release to impact, impact to finish releasing, continue follow through... like that... with or without the club doesn't matter. Do them slooooooooowly, with a lot of repititions, I start my practice session with stretching, then do 50 slow takeaway, then 50 slow backswing, then 50 begin of downswing... After all of them done, I must be done like 300 takeaways, 250 backswings... so on... Once you feel like you have master something, do it faster to get to the checkpoint and slow down to continue... Then I begin hitting balls, three slow practice swings before hitting one ball. It take me 4 hours to finish hitting 150 balls. Granted, I only start practicing like this for about a week, before that I hit balls at the range like golf is a game of rapid firing. Obviously it didn't work. This, I must say, works. I almost have a perfect takeaway, long way to go but I'll get there.

Hello, I have just look at my score cards of my last (first) 3 rounds, and it usually look like this 2 3 1 2 6 8 1 2 0 (strokes over par) I'm new to the game, so bogey and double bogey is ok for me, but I tense up after a bad shot, and it results in more bad shots. How do you get over that last bad shot you make?

Great advices, thank you very much. I really need to work on my short game more. I don't have much problems from 80-180 yards, I mean for a recreational golfer like me, but shorter or further than that are really really bad, I can tee off with my 4 hybrid until I have great confidence in the driver but I can't just struggle with my wedges forever :D But your inputs are really all welcome, they will help me correct my swings for other clubs, too.

I've been Playing Golf for: 2 months My current handicap index or average score is: 3 rounds only, 66 over, 52 over (18 holes, standard courses) and latest one is 15 over (9 holes, all par 3) My typical ball flight is: mid height misses are mostly fades or slices, hooks are rare The shot I hate or the "miss" I'm trying to reduce/eliminate is: Consistency problem, I may hit 10 times in a row with a perfect straight trajectory that goes 210-220 yards carry today, but tomorrow I may spray the balls all over the range. The swings are from a "in-between" day, some shots ok, lot of them bads, I can't find the solid feeling with the driver today. Videos:

The sand wedge I'm having is from the Taylormade Burner irons set with graphite shaft, it's light. While it is very suitable for me to make full swings, for 1/2 or 1/4 swing, it is too light, and unstable. There is this Big Trusty Rusty 55 degrees in my local pro shop used clubs bin, with decent grooves, they were selling it for $60. I tried it at the practice green and it felt ok, I'll ask for it. I'm planning to use it for all partial swings.

@boogielicious: thank you for your kind words. I bought the RAZR X Black yesterday, it's an 46" long 10.5 degrees loft R-flex shaft driver, in stock form it weights 312 grams with a swing weight of D5. After shorten down to 44.5" and re-grip with Winn Lite 25 grams grip, it's now weight 285 grams (right on my calculation, yay) with a swing weight of D3.5. I tried to hit a bucket of balls later, after the grip solvent has dried. At first, I was thrilled with the lightness and spraying balls all over the place with crazy tempo (long-drive-championship-fast tempo, haha) but got one go straight as a bullet and hit right on the net at the end of the driving range, I guess that ball can carry at least 230-240 yards. After a short break, I slowed down to my normal tempo and got very impressive results, 200 yards carry is the norm now. I tried to hit last ten balls as if I'm on the tee box, 3 right on the target, 3 off by 15 yards, 2 off by 30 yards, 2 OB. And the most important thing is I can hit a bucket of 150 balls, all with my driver, I couldn't do that with my old driver or else I may need to go to the hospital. Great first impression, I'll report back in a week to see if it last.

Yes you are exactly right, I have just found out that what I'm trying to do is matching the MOI of my driver to my irons (I thought all irons in the set are the same but I was wrong) Can you please tell me what is the right way to achieve this? Make the MOI of the driver roundly the same with my irons and shortening the length to 44"-45"? Or this is a bad idea trying to match MOI of the driver to the irons? No I was over exaggreted in my thread title, is there any way to edit it?

@Earnest Jones: Thank you for pointing me in the Clevecland Classics direction, but I can't swallow their coloring, black works for me. Also, I'm not sure I can control a 45.75" length driver, I prefer something shorter, If I'm going to shorten the shaft, I'm afraid I can mess up the swing weight/static weight. @iacas: Yes, you are right, swing weight is very important and should never be "forgot" like the thread title said, I was over exaggerating, hahaha... I'm looking at the Callaway RAZR X Black driver, which the shop clerk confusingly weight it up for me at 312 grams, stock length is 46" and stock swing weight is D5, I'm hoping that I can lighten it down to around 285 grams at 44.5" length and D2 swing weight by cutting the shaft off 1.5" and replace the stock grip with Winn Lite 25 grams grip. All can be done for free if I purchase the club for $140, I'm tempting.

I did some homework and found out that: 1. Swing weight doesn't mean anything if the static weight of the club doesn't allow you to achieve your normal tempo. Let's say, some crazy guy can make a club with a swing weight of D5 but weight 500 grams, now try swinging that, I bet you will feel like its swing weight is off the chart. 2. Swing weight is all about balance, it allows you to feel the clubhead, this confuse me first, but I try hitting the ball with the club holding backward and understand, you need proper balance of the club to swing it properly. Then again, I find it very very strange that none of the manufacturer that I know of openly state the club weight of their driver on the specs sheet. Why do I care about this, you may ask. Here's the story... I'm 5'7", and weight 114lbs, I'm slim, as you can tell from my avatar, and my physically strength is, well, weak. I can hit the irons very good (for a newbie like me) and have great confidence hitting thems, but I can't drive, I just can't. The best I can manage to hit the ball straight is like 180yards, 10 yards further than my 4 hybrid. No matter how hard I try, slow and easy, hard and fast... Yesterday, I read around the internet and found a thread on another forums, a guy complained about today drivers being too light for him, he need to increase the static weight to around 330 grams to swing properly, then I weight my driver, wow it's 324grams. Earlier, today I went to the driving range and borrow a driver from the pro shop, it's Cobra ZL or something that weight 310 grams (I brought the scale hahaha) After warming up, I tried some drives, after 3 or 4 slices and hooks, I managed to hit 3 in around that go straight to where I aim, the balls drop right before the 200 yards mark and roll some more. What I noticed is, my tempo is greatly faster than with my driver, although it is not as fast as with my irons which I feel comfortable with. I then ask to try hitting the Cobra Long Tom, which is 269 grams. Let's not talk about the accuracy, it's a 48" long driver, but my tempo is achieved, or I believed so at least. Then I leave with a $38 more in the wallet, my old driver is with the pro shop now and I'm looking for another driver that weight around 270-280 grams. Maybe I'll buy something that weight 300 grams, widely available, and then cut it down 1.5" and regrip with Winn Lite 22 grams grip. Same swing weight, save around 30 grams, shorter shaft, and no more confusing about my drives.

Wow, thanks a lot. I was thinking about getting something like 56* wedge with 10* bounce but I now need to research more.

Well, please ignore my above post, it doesn't completely wrong but I found out today that static weight is very important, too. So shortening the shaft too much and then tried to bring the swing weight back up can make the club become too heavy to swing.

Uhm, since you ask, I don't think I really need a wedge right now, my instructor told me if I'm going to get one I should choose a wedge will lower bounce to help with when I need to open the face to get the leading edge closer to the ground. But this is a gift so I guess it's not going to hurt to get one now, isn't it? Plus I tried my brother's Taylormade RAC something, the weight make it more stable for me to chip at 20-30 yards distance.

I'm getting a wedge, this is my first and it's a gift so money isn't a problem (but no, I'm not going to ask for some $200-$300 wedges) My irons have PW, AW and SW already and I'm hitting them pretty good, very consistent in distance with ok accuracy from 80-100 yards. Shorter than that, I use the PW or SW. From my chipping lessons, I'm mostly a slider, I dig only and only when I have to, and the sole of the Ws in my irons set didn't help. Can you please recommend my one wedge that is good for my needs. I'm new and I'm hoping for some forgiveness, too. Thank you.

If you cut it off 2", swing weight will be decreased by 12 points. You will need to add 24 grams to the head to bring the swing weight backup. And that is a lot. Note that the shaft will be be come stiffer if you shorten it, but not so much if you trim it from the butt. But, with the required weight need to be add to the head, it can be come too soft, so tipping 1" from each end is what I will do if I were you. You will need to look out for the shaft strength, too. I can't imagine the shaft broken down with a heavier head but be careful. Note that this isn't from my own experience, it's from my notes from various places over the Internet. I'm planning to butt trim my driver's shaft 1" and add 12-16grams to the head to bring the weight back up (more than now) while (hopefully) soften the shaft a little bit. It will be done next week when my new driver arrive, just in case something go wrong.

I'm 5'7" and using an 45" driver, I'm thinking about cutting it 1" off, too. Great thread.

Erm, I don't have any reliable way to measure my swing speed. Can a device like Swingbyte be useful to analyze my swings?

I have just returned from a local pro shop, I tried a TM RBZ 5 Hybrid in regular shaft there, it's really feel softer than my iron graphite flex R shaft (Taylormade Burner 2007, first version, Asian only I believe) I hit 8 balls in total, 5 of them shot straight up to the sky and dropped around 170-180 yards, only two are straight, one pull fade, one fade and one push draw... 3 bad hits (topped, thin...) So, with softer flex shaft, I lost some consistency in ball flight but gain accuracy on where the ball drop. Trajectories are higher, much higher and distance gained are around 30-40 yards. I was like what the F after the first hit, the ball take off, went straight into the sky with in a perfect straight path and fell hard onto the grass. I then proceed to hit some more and got above results. I guess with softer shaft, I have more backspin which help the balls take off easier, steep drop angle reflect that, too. Wow, just wow...

My 5 iron hits are consistently carry the ball 140 yards, and I don't think I can swing faster with acceptable accuracy. And ball flights in general tend to fade, I can't remember if I have ever hit a draw. Do you think I should try ladies flex shaft? I don't mind using ladies clubs if it's suitable for me.