RPMPIRE

It's been a busy beginning of the year for me, but it also included a few rounds of golf and a tournament, which is the first tournament I've played in years. I've still been working hard on my priority piece, which was to square my club face throughout the swing and I have a few good days and bad days, but I can say that it has gotten better. I've also really been pushing myself to stop working on my priority pieces on full speed swings and really just try and slow things down on the range. I always think to myself that I can't hit it well at full speed if I can't even do it at half speed. Anyway, for the tournament, I played the SF City Golf Championship, which is a match play tournament. During the qualifying, I didn't play so well and shot an 87 on a par 68 course so that placed me in a middle-tiered bracket. I shot my irons decently, but my drives off the tee, chipping, and putting were atrocious. So I decided to work on that all week. The day before my first match, I went to an indoor range since they had a GC2 launch monitor to get my exact carry distances for each iron (this was probably the best thing I've done for the tournament) and the pro there actually gave me a quick lesson on chipping and get a good feel of squaring the club face on my full swings. On my first match, I won 2&1. The next week, I won the second match 3&2. The third match was the toughest since I went 2 down after the first two holes, won the third, and then was one down for the rest of the front. I lost the 10th hole and was two down. Then I won the next hole with 25-foot birdie putt. We played even the next three holes even, and then won the next three holes to win the match 2&1. The hole where I went 1up was through a 20-foot par save. On our 17th hole, my opponent hooked his drive left into a construction area, couldn't find his ball, and he called the conceded the hole after. Being down throughout the entire match to come back like that I still can't believe but was relieved to move into the semifinals. My next opponent had a family emergency and couldn't make his match and that put me into the finals. It's not the way I would have wanted to advance, but I nothing I could do about that. My final match was somewhat up and down. I went two up after two holes, and bad chipping gave up that lead on the next three holes. I won the 7th and 8th but lost the 9th and 10th to give up the lead again. Won the 11th, lost the 12th, halved the 13th, won the 14th and 15th, halved 16th and won the 17th to win the match 3&1 and my bracket. It felt good to win and also felt lucky since I haven't played much golf leading up to the tournament. After getting my carry distances measured, I was able to play a lot more strategically with my irons. Choosing a club became much easier even given tough lies and weather conditions. Now I might take a week or two off from golf to rest my back.

I have a similar problem, but for me, it's because I tend to shut the club face throughout the swing. There are several factors that contribute to that so if you can, post up a swing and it can be better diagnosed.

I tried out the i25 driver and 3 wood yesterday since I was looking into a new 3 wood. I didn't test out the driver as much as I did the 3 wood since it wasn't what I was shopping for, but the faces on both clubs were hot. I didn't mind the racing stripes on the crown. In fact, I do like them a lot and is a very good alignment tool compared to others. I saw they introduced and adjustable neck to raise the loft about half a degree each way, but since most newer clubs can adjust lofts more than 2 degrees, I don't really see the point of having that. Ping does have a good fitting system, so it's advisable to get proper fitting and the right club since the adjustability is fairly limited. When it came to buying one, the two clubs it came down to for me was the Titleist 913Fd and the Ping i25. Eventually, I went with the Titleist mostly because of consistency, but distance-wise, they were about equal - carrying 235-240.

Happy Birthday!

Thanks for posting Mike. I've started doing this at the range more and practicing my priority pieces a lot slower. I saw it somewhere in the forum (can't remember who posted it) but he said that "if you can't do it slow, then you can't do it fast" or something to that extent.

@PeterFaragher I agree with Scott. I had an Odyssey 34" cut down to 33" and that changed the swing weight a lot. The putter head felt a lot heavier and I couldn't control the putts especially within 5 feet. If you're going to cut it down, I would also advise the fitter to also maintain the swing weight as much as possible.

I've always like Linkin Park since their first album and it's good to hear elements of their old sound in their new single.

Tiger Woods -12 Patrick Reed -12 Henrik Stenson -12

My weekends are pretty open in April so those dates work for me.

I was thinking the same thing since you live all the way in Sac. @Rock26 we're going to cancel this weekend So @mchepp and I think I'll be available for next Saturday. I'll book two foursomes for March 22 and hopefully we'll get two groups in by that day. If you guys want to suggest a later date, we can go ahead and do that if the 22nd is too short notice.

I don't mind either way. I always think the more the merrier. For this weekend, I need to know soon so I can cancel the tee time. @bplewis24 let me know what you think.

Should we postpone again?

Yup looks that way. I cancelled the 8:40 tee time and the guys at the pro shop said that they'll be able to work in a fourth player at 8:30 since someone else took the single spot. Either way, we're good to go for Saturday.

I saw this video on YouTube of Tiger on the driving range with ProTracer. Normally, we see ProTracer on tee shots and occassionaly on approaches while on the course but I thought it was nice to see it repeatedly while on the range. He's working on hitting low stingers with his 3 (or 2) iron, 3 wood, and driver.