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I think you need to compare the FTi to the Burner. What did you do different between them? Take both to the range. Hit the FTi to get yourself warmed up and in a positive frame of mind. Then switch to the Burner and swing it just like the FTi. Same grip, same stance, same swing... everything. I bet with minimal adjustment you'll hit them about the same. Maybe some of the launch conditions will be a bit different, but assuming both clubs are same shaft stiffness, same offset, same length, and same face angle, they should hit about the same. This all assumes you use the same swing and tempo. Don't go trying extra hard with the Burner because you are afraid you will slice it. Trying harder = bigger slice. Now if the Burner is a stiff shaft and the FTi a regular, or one is 9.5 degree and the other is 12.5, well... we'll have other issues to talk about. Just a note, the Burner is both lighter and longer, which although it translates to higher swing speeds, really calls into question if you are hitting the center of the clubface. Take some tape, sunscreen, or talcum powder to the range to find out. And I agree with Ben Hogan. Driver is the most important club in the bag. Putter may take the most strokes, but Driver accuracy and distance determines how you play golf itself.

While the sensations may differ slightly because of shaft length, club weight, and posture / swing plane, the swing is the same. This is really a fundamental of all good players. When you start trying to have different swings with different clubs, you really limit your development as a ball striker. If your iron swing doesn't work with the driver, it could tell you a couple things. 1) Your iron swing isn't as sound as you think it is. 2) If your iron swing is sound, you are not setting up with the driver properly, to be able to use your iron swing. It really is fantastic when you start getting the feeling of same swing with all clubs. I am just getting there myself, and the results are really appealing.

"Ha ha! I see then good sir that we meet the end of our battle of wits. We will therefore decide this matter as men of honor, by virtue of blades. Have at thee!" Sorry couldn't resist. Anyways, I agree there are some common correlations, but they don't always hold true. I really was trying to point out that just because a swing is "flat" doesn't neccessarly mean the impact path is "inside to outside". You can have a flat swing and still come "out-in". The reverse is true with an upright swing. Probably just arguing semantics. To the original poster... we need swing video!

There are many, many ways to "work the golf ball". It is preferred by tour pros because it allows some margin for error, and tactical advantages based on playing to the course design. To shape the shot, some people change their grip, some change their weight at address, some change a feel during the swing, some move the ball position, some change their feet position. Many methods and combinations. Requires some experimentation on your part to discover what works for you. Well worth your time to learn how. Your ball striking will improve as a result.

Yes. Different shaft, different swing weight, different lie angles, and different offsets will affect the shot pattern. New irons take some getting used to. Even the address picture can be a bit strange for a while, causing clubhead alignment problems. Don't give up on the DG s300. It's a time proven, mid trajectory shaft you will love once you get used to it. Too many people pass it off because it is a bit heavy compared to today's whippy ultralight shafts. In my experience, the dg s300 is a very nice blend of distance and control.

Old school spinner shot. Ball at right foot, weight on left foot, close the club face, hit down on the ball (ball then turf). With a high lofted club, produces a lot of spin on a low trajectory. That's some old school wedge work right there. Harvey Penick loved that shot. Use it all the time on the hardpan of Texas! I really need to try one of these spin milled groove wedges. I hear they are fantastic compared to my watson wedges.

Dude... so funny...lmao. For the original poster, sounds like you finally started using your full shoulder turn in the swing. That's a really good thing. I actually was working on this at the range yesterday, and finally started hitting my driver again (first time in 4 months I have hit the driver and not wanted to break it apart). Using your full shoulder turn relieves stress in the swing, gives you more effortless power, and helps correct numerous swing problems. In my case, my takeaway and backswing was not turning the shoulders. It was all arms and the right shoulder never moved back out of the way. Feels really weird right now to move the shoulders fully, but the shots were incredible. Way less effort. Another 10 yards on my mid-irons without even trying. You're on the right track. Keep us posted!

Hate to burst anyone's bubbles, but you can slice and pull and hook and push with a flat swing. Remember it is all controlled by impact conditions. Wanna slice or pull with a flat swing? Put the ball forward in the stance and get too fast with the arms vs. body. Club hits the ball as it is cutting back to the inside, resulting in a pull or slice. From the same position, you can also hook the ball or push it, if the body gets too far ahead and causes the club to cut too sharply from the inside. Gotta look at the total picture. Not everyone who have flat swings are hookers, and upright swings are slicers. That's a really gross oversimplification that ignores what really matters... how you arrive at impact.

Three biggest mistakes in putting technique (besides bad reads): 1) Moving the head or swaying the body. 2) Breaking down the wrists. 3) Excessive tension. Ben Crenshaw, one of the best putters ever, said he felt if he held the club any easier, it would fall out of his hands. Try it some time. Place the club through the life line of your left hand and just have enough pressure to keep the club from twisting. Now just rock your shoulders. You will have much better feel, and consistently find the sweet spot on the putter (the key to consistent distance control).

There is actually much debate over "the proper pose" at the end of the swing. According to Harvey Penick, you should finish with the elbows out in front. Some instructors say you should finish like the pga logo. In the 70s, many golfers finished with hands high in a reverse C position (my father still does this, with the club vertical down his back at the end of the swing - I can't get myself in that position at all). Others want the club wrapped so far around your head it points back down the target line. It's very individual. Many ways to swing the golf club. And btw, many good golfers have recoiled after the followthrough. Moe Norman, Ben Hogan, and lately, Padraig Harrington come to mind. It shows a total release of the momentum of the club. I personally find it difficult to maintain a club wrapped around my head pose at the end of the swing. I let the club rebound so I fully release the club and don't overcontrol my downswing trying to get into a "pretty picture position".

Probably. If Harrington continues to play smart golf and trains himself to execute the shots under pressure, he can win. More players are realizing that Hogan had it right. When you play in competition, you strategize your game to achieve a target score. A score you judge will win the tournament. If you get a lucky break, so be it. Recover from the bad breaks and play to achieve a certain score. Hogan was once asked "How do you win?" and he simply responded "At the end of the day, shoot the lowest score". Several times, Hogan knew what number he had to shoot to win, he planned it, shot it, and won. It's really that simple. Anything else is either gravy or a distraction. Sometimes both. Hogan's icy stare was not to intimidate opponents. It was focus on what counted. The shot at hand and the target score.

The whaaaaat? Did you just reference both a fictitious religious cult and a reptilian species in the same sentence? Dude... I'm all for hoping that eventually we meet other intelligent life in the universe, but come on...

Been thinking a lot lately about how off the shelf clubs have gotten longer and longer, and despite all the "technology" really haven't improved the average handicap. I wonder if the increased shaft lengths are seriously affecting fitting. I've hit drivers I can absolutely nail, then others I can't hit if you paid me a million dollars. I'd like to start this thread to prove a statistical correlation between better scores and custom fitting of clubs, particularly in relation to lie and length. Once we have enough samples, I will post the charted results. Should be interesting to see if custom fitting clubs really makes a difference for the members of this forum. Maybe it will encourage players having difficulty with particular clubs (like me with my fairway woods) to check and see if they are the proper length and lie for our setup, body geometry, and swings. Please post your average score for 18 holes (some people don't have a handicap, so this is more accurate overall), and if your clubs are custom fitted for lie and/or length (please specify). I'll start: AVG: 89 Custom Fit: None Thanks! Matt

I honestly feel today's 3 woods are harder to hit than yesterday's. The reason is primarily shaft length. I have used my dad's old 3 woods, about the same size head as today, but shafts at 42", and that club is money. Easy to hit off the ground or tee, goes about 230 every time. Today's 3 woods are just getting longer and longer and longer in the shaft. Combine that with some significant shaft torque (which is really reaching the limit with graphite) and they are very hard to hit. Look at the guys on tour, they are hitting 270 and up with 3 woods. Maybe they can control a 45" 3 wood, but I can't. Reliable distance and control is the name of the game. I'd rather put it 230 down the middle, than 260 in the woods. All this being said, I have long arms, and a relatively short wrist to floor measurement (despite my slightly tall hieght at 5' 11"). So probably proper fitting for me, especially for driver and woods, is a shorter club than most people.

I think the real problem here is finding out why your son doesn't enjoy golf. Why is it not fun? All his friends play other sports? He feels too much pressure from his father to perform and can't just play to enjoy the game? Golf practice has been a chore in the past, and was not a positive experience? Golf isn't seen as "cool" among his peers? Your child is in his early teen years, a period of self discovery. He will bounce back and forth between interests. Golf needs to be something he finds himself. Otherwise it will always be a source of frustration.

It helps young golfers learn to swing "within themselves". A good practice for anyone, and yes, the first few times you stay in your posture / spine angle through the shot, it feels very restrained. The club however is moving much better and much more efficiently.

It's good to hear you are focused on the result, and not the image. One of the first things my golf instructor told me was to stop thinking about the finish pose, and focus on the impact position. Done correctly, impact pulls you into a proper finish. An improper finish is sign of compensations made upto and into impact. That being said, the proper finish position depends a lot on your swing's intricacies. Look at Moe Norman, he didn't finish in a nice looking pose at all. Ben hogan finished amazing with long clubs, but with short irons and wedges, he kept the club in front (I suppose he figured, short swing, short finish). Both of them did one thing very well... arrive at a solid impact position. I'll take the golf channel response here... ... and if you have any questions, go see your local PGA professional.

Sounds like you really don't have a good lead on the root problem, and you're going to end up taking golf aspirin until you overdose. Harvey Penick said "When you take an aspirin, don't take the whole bottle." I'm going to add #9. Seek out a professional you can trust, then trust their instruction. It will be well worth your effort. That old saying, "It's not the arrow, it's the indian" also comes to mind. Don't blame your equipment so fast. Loosing your grip during the swing because the grip is old and worn out is one thing, but any pro can pick up almost any club and hit a decent shot. Good mechanics are not fully correlated to club design.

Can't believe no-one mentioned this. If you progressively hit slices with longer clubs it may be that your shoulders and / or hips are too open at impact. In other words, you are out of sequence. The body is moving faster than the hands and arms can keep up. If you have the strength, and flip your hands, you might recover, or might hook it. For many people though, it still results in a slice. The club is square to the target, but your body is too far ahead, so you cut across the ball and there goes the slice. If this is your problem, practice your downswing transition. The arms must stay in front of the chest, not get trapped behind. The right elbow comes into the body, but does not stick into the side so much that you trap the club behind your hands. The trapped alternative is not an over the top move, it's just an uncontrollable approach angle into the ball. Makes hitting long clubs very difficult and throws your balance and timing way off. Tiger Woods used to get away with a variation on this action. He called it the "O-lay!" swing. Basically you trap the club behind the hips, then flip it through impact. Very difficult to time correctly. Tiger had the advantage as a junior of learning to keep his shoulders square (for the most part) up to the hit. Look at top down images of him when he was younger. The hips have turned almost fully facing the target, but the shoulders have barely cleared. The club is way behind his body, creating massive power, but very little control. You have to be very flexible and have very fast hands to pull it off consistently. This has been a big issue for me lately. Still working on correcting it. My hips get too fast, and I get the club stuck behind me. I can't catch up with the hands and so my contact with long clubs is horrible. The large head drivers are the worst. The high MOI, high volume head is so difficult to "flip" that it is just slice slice slice. If I don't flip the hands at all, sometimes it just cuts through as a complete shank . Took a long while for me to figure this out. Video analysis probably would have shown it right away. Hope this helps you.

Two alternative methods to alignment to try. 1) Heel line. After setting up to the ball, glance behind you to see if your heels are on a line parallel to the target. Heel line is more accurate than toe line (because you turn your toes outward at address). 2) This is really oldschool but it works fantastic. At address place the club along your thighs to check alignment. The shaft should point parallel left of your target. If your thighs are parallel to the line, you are aligned in that stance. It's a really easy way to get set square. Now the only thing to worry about is shoulder alignment. I usually check thighs and shoulders. Also make sure that once you take your stance and get square, that you don't fool with it. Many people get set square, then shuffle around to feel "comfortable". This just means they are reverting back to old address habits, and it destroys good alignment. Hope this helps.

I too have had cases of deep divots, especially with irons. A couple of questions to ask yourself that may help you decide if you need to take action: 1) Am I delofting the clubface through impact so much that I can't control trajectory (everything becomes a punch shot)? 2) Are the divots inconsistent, or starting behind the ball, destroying my shot quality? 3) Do the divots show a distinct toe down or toe up cut pattern? If so, your lie angles may be really off for your swing. 4) Does the deep divot affect your ability to swing smoothly and finish in balance? 5) Have you encountered any hand soreness or tendonitis as a result of steep impact? 6) Have you started having trouble with woods because your approach angle is getting too steep? 7) Are you having to get overly handsy through impact to square the face and save every shot? For me, it was a bunch of these, and solving the problem has required some serious changes in my swing and grip. My divots were toed in, hitting behind the ball, and I was getting serious hand and arm soreness. It made golf very difficult. Some grip and stance changes, and lots of hits later, and I am making much better divots that still generate great compression. BTW, I have found that a strong grip with the right hand, along with too much forward press, always causes deep divots. For me, Hogan was right. The right hand V points at the chin. You can still strengthen the left hand a shade to help square the club if you need to, but don't get into the bad habit of having such a strong grip that you basically are hammering the ball. Lol... hammer... reminds me of that infomercial. The HAMMER... PooooooWWWWW!

I strongly suggest reading Paul Runyan's book, "The Short Way to Lower Scoring." He provides an all inclusive approach to using your chipping and pitching for all sorts of situations and learning to become a short game artist, not just a one or two shot wonder. He was renowned as one of the best short game players ever. I have been working with his approach for a few months, and my short game is getting a lot better as a result.

There is a par 5 at a course I play regularly that has a tee box that is just a sucker position. About 180 yards out there is a huge gulch, trees lining both sides, very narrow, OB left, woods right. And the par 5 is a dogleg right after the gulch. Not a happy situation. Drives would have to be perfect to make the fairway. I found an alternative strategy and I regularly make par on the hole. Tee box: 8 iron just short of the gulch. I know, I know... 8 iron on a par 5, are you crazy? But it works and makes it a zero pressure situation. Second shot: Mid iron - FW across the gulch. Depending on position (which is easy to play to using the 8 iron) I either go for the green with a cut, or use a mid to long iron to the fairway. Third shot: Wedge to the green. Fourth and Fifth: Putts. It works, and having a strategy at the hole every time makes it a no-brainer, low stress situation. I completely eliminate the tee box factor. Perhaps once my driving is more accurate and I can shape it as needed, I'll try driver off the tee, but the setup and the wind in that area just screams "sucker!".

Square to the line of the club's path in the swing, ie never leaving square from the line which eventually runs along the target line through the ball. A good way to tell is does your club in the takeaway point toe straight up, or do you take it back with the toe pointing more closed? Might need to provide some graphics so people know the difference. Byron Nelson, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, and Jesper Parnevick are four good examples of square faced players (some times refered to as closed or shut faced, but the terminology there is actually misleading). It just means they didn't manipulate the club with their hands, wrist, and arms, to rotate open on the backswing.

Was reading a book yesterday called "The Square to Square Golf Swing" published in 1970 by Golf Digest. It highlights the difference between wooden and steel shafts, and the change in technique seen on the tour to improve ballstriking consistency. It's a total concept, but mostly all about not rotating the club face open on the backswing, but keeping it square, and pulling with the left side through the ball. Very similar to Byron Nelson and Jack Nicklaus. So I wondered what he consensus is among Sand Trappers. On the backswing, keep it square or fan it open, then close it on the way down?