A few years ago I had a Ping G15 driver finally kick my 975j out of my bag. Since then I've been steadily losing distance on my drives and all of my other clubs. I use to be fairly long with the driver. Maybe not "Internet" long, but I was swinging about 107 and getting 250-260 on average and some bombs out to 275+. I attributed my distance loss to being 44 years old and lack of flexibility. I've also had some back trouble. My distance loss came to a head when I joined up with a 68 year old man on the course one day and he was 25 yards longer than me. On my home course, I can no longer reach spots with my driver from the white tees that I used to hit with my 4-wood from the blues. The odd thing is that I can still register 105-110 on the speed stik at the local golf shoppe.
So I got into the gym last summer. My company is a dot com and has probably the best corporate gym you've ever seen. My back is great, my core is stronger, and I'm still hitting the ball like a grandpa. I have enough game to still make it work and shoot in the low to mid 80's from 6100 yards or so.
I have a history if being intolerant to club changes. I learned to swing with old blades and laminated wood heads. When I picked up golf again at age 32, I didn't make any progress or improvement until I dumped the oversize stuff and starting playing MP-33's and a 975D (that's a story for another post). Any time I try to change to GI irons, I have a good round or two then my entire game goes to garbage. I switch back and get my game going again. I always knew this was a problem with irons, but I never imagined it would be with the driver.
Last week I went out and played my G-15 and R1 for 9 holes each, shot 88, but really tried to feel what I was doing with the club head. I came to the conclusion that I was somehow adjusting my swing to the big shoe box on the end of the shaft.
Today I went to the range with my old 975J, a pristine 975D that I found for a few bucks in a used bin, and my old blade 6-iron. I warmed up with the 6-iron, them spent some time with the D. I felt more connected to the club, and was hitting it about 20 yards longer than my average shot now.
I'm going to play the D for a month or so and see how it goes, as well as have an instructor look at my swing.
Anyone else experience problems moving to forgiving, oversized clubs?