dkolo

As long as you don't get into a long drive competition with yourself to juice your numbers (which is super tempting and easy to do), I love them. I also prefer a mat vs. grass for testing because it takes some pressure off and you can just focus on swinging and not worry about a fat shot.

I would vote for saying you're overthinking it, but if you are worried about it, try to spend a little bit of time on the range beforehand being mindful of calibrating your distances. There's usually a 100 yard marker or something relatively close to it that you can use as a reference. For me, that's just shy of my SW, hit full and flush. If I saw a significant difference on a few representative shots, I would adjust accordingly. Find a scoring club you can feel confident you can hit a specific distance, find the closest range marker you can, and base your adjustment off of that. You won't really care with your driver or 3W, those will be what they will be, but you can account for it a bit with your scoring clubs. It shouldn't be something that makes or breaks your round; if you find yourself coming up short or going long on the first few holes, you'll adjust, just like you would on a windy or chilly day. Enjoy your trip! I'd be very happy to be playing Myrtle Beach (or anywhere) right now, regardless of club distances!

Thanks once again to everyone for the kind words! I'm very grateful and reminded about what a great community has developed here. Being in a transitional period in my life, it's deeply gratifying to know there's so many kind people here with a shared passion to lean on.

I'm still teetering on the cusp of finding the shanks again, so if I hit a couple of those in a row, and I've made sure to cover my go-to checklist, I call it a day. Or I'll hit a couple of wedges from a different tee box to reset my mind if I have a bunch of balls left over. But I don't want to make a bad thing worse.

My takeaway from this is that Rickie Fowler is really, really good, not that persimmons are nearly as good as modern drivers.

I get that, but I was able to achieve that distance consistently, so I would like to try to get it back. My driving was better then than it is now. Now, I can't get any consistency with my driver while swinging it full, so I'm resorting to hitting fairway finders and keeping it in play. I want to work on my driver to get my consistency and distance back because I know it's there, I just need to unlock it through practice. I played winter tees recently and they were basically one tee box up. I shot my best round ever because I was playing shorter second shots on every hole. So I need to recreate that advantage year-round through improving my driver.

I'm a better golfer than a year ago statistically, but in many ways, I'd prefer to be where I was then, when I was putting in a lot more practice. My short game is less sharp, my drives go 20 yards shorter, and my putting is atrocious. However, I have largely gotten rid of the disastrous misses, calmed down my tendency to overhook my hybrids and irons, and have (knock on wood) gotten a reprieve from the shanks. So while I've lost a lot of yardage, through changes to my swing and being less fit, I'm keeping it in play more and hopefully creating a better foundation to build off of. But yeah, I need to get back to driving it 260+ consistently. I'd just had to neglect driver to stop the bleeding in the rest of my bag and get it back to being gameable.

Trying to learn how to flight the ball at the end of 2015 is what sent me on a death spiral of shanks that I didn't recover from fully until this fall. I can mostly do it now, but I need to gap test those shots on a launch monitor because I can't get an accurate set of numbers on a grass range for how much less I carry vs. how much more roll out I get.

If he's truly healthy and has no further risk of re-injury, then you look at him like Mickelson or Furyk, guys who can cowboy up for the majors and contend in some other tournaments, but also might run into prolonged funks due to their games not being what they were and not having the ability to make those superhuman compensations during their swings like they used to. So I think Tiger could be a factor in some tournaments, but I also could see him hovering at the cut line all year, too. It'll come down to his health and whether he can get back to putting in the incredible amount of work he used to in his prime.

Having used them now for the better part of a year, I'm still quite impressed by their durability. Despite it being a plastic item with thin parts that get a lot of stress, I have to report that I haven't had any issues with breakage of the product yet. Remarkable!

The MGS article from just the other day seems illuminating: https://www.mygolfspy.com/taylormade-m1-vs-taylormade-r7-superquad/ They tested the 2016 M1 vs. the 10-year old R7 Quad and found a distance gain of about 15 yards. Which is a considerable difference. But it also tells you that the difference between the best clubs is best measured on the scale of decades rather than year to year. So, assuming proper fit, you won't generally see huge performance gaps across the entirety of the population unless you look across the span of multiple product cycles. This obviously assumes no wear-related decline in performance, as with wedge grooves, which do have a much shorter shelf life for their maximum performance.

Indeed, not his first rodeo Thanks, now that the move is over, I'm glad I decided to Shake It Up Remains to be seen if I wind up being a net positive, haha.

That's great! I'm about an hour away, and I'd love to meet up and see some new courses in the area once they reopen (I was surprised to see that all the courses shut down here, even with no snow on the ground. Back in NY, I played with a guy once who used a power drill on tee boxes to put his peg into the frozen ground!)

Absolutely. The biggest reason why I persist with game golf is so that I have a better idea of where I need to improve in the future. The rich data would be great to show an instructor before a lesson or at least use it as a guide for what you ask to work on.

Chapeau, my good man! I'm glad you're getting the recognition you richly deserve!

Disc golf sounds absolutely wonderful. My kid sister's golf team beat their rivals and got treated to a round of foot golf on the last day of the season. My sister, reflecting her genetics, managed to break her knee (she hates when I describe her injury as "breaking her club from hitting it fat"). I imagine disc golf would yield even fewer injuries!

I am all for trying new ideas to grow the game. Before I left, they were in the process of converting a spectacular golf course that'd been open 10 years and was all over NY's best public courses lists (Tallgrass) into a solar farm. If it takes clever pricing, 12-inch holes, or foot golf to increase interest in the sport and get money flowing into courses, I'm for it. The game isn't on a great trajectory in a lot of places right now.

Well, it looks like he's comfortable enough to switch to Callaway's O-Works line of putters, which I'd interpret as a good sign. That new insert seems super funky, so if he feels comfortable gaming that and going away from his Scotty Cameron safety blanket, it's probably a good reflection on where he feels his game is.

I just wanted to quickly pop in and say hello after having taken most of 2016 away from the site. Sorry to have ghosted for a while, but I had a lot happening at once, and I needed to take a step back for a bit and get everything back on track. Now that I've moved to Wisconsin, I'm excited at what the future has in store, and I'm looking forward to becoming more active in the great community again. Thanks to @iacas for reaching out and helping to welcome me back into the fray. I missed all of you! Cheers to a great 2017!

The advantages of graphite iron shafts is that they offer greater swing speed for players who need that kind of help, both through weight reduction as well as, often, higher launching characteristics. What do you feel draws you to graphite shafts? Is it the allure of the fancy tech or do you think you are the kind of slower swing player who could benefit from them? We would love to know to offer help!

This is very much general rule of thumb stuff because the real answer is "go get fit," but generally speaking shallower woods are easier to hit off of the deck while deeper ones are better suited for off the tee as driver alternatives. If you struggle with woods off of the ground, consider a hybrid or an adjustable wood that you can add some loft to to aid launch. The tall wood with low spin sounds like you want a driver replacement, in which case look at Taylormade's Mini Driver or Callaway's 1.5 Mini. But if you're really a newbie like your profile says, it's possible yore just finding what people find through experience: 3W off the ground is one of the hardest shots to hit well. In which case, consider lessons over equipment upgrades. It's taken me 4 years before I felt comfortable putting a 3 wood in my bag.

I just texted this to my girlfriend who teased me for being wrong when DeChambeau didn't proceed under the rules the way I said he had to when we were watching together. Being right vis a vis your significant other is the next best feeling to winning The Masters, I imagine.

Sorry for not getting back to this sooner; I've been away on vacation in Hawaii. Yes I have! I'll get some pictures of that up when I hit the range next because I only brought one Tee Claw with me when I took photos, but it's really great for when I go to one particular driving range where the targets are all over the place and I have to figure out alignment for each different target that I hit to for different clubs. I've always hated using clubs for alignment purposes because I find that I get in my head about clipping it. This is a much more elegant solution because I can stick a tee in a Tee Claw string and wedge it under a mat, with the other end of attached to the Tee Claw. And @Tee Claw was absolutely right: spending the past two weeks in California and Hawaii, the land of the grass driving ranges, I picked up a whole baggie-ful of broken tee pieces for use with the Tee Claw for the upcoming season back here in the Northeast, where mats rule the driving range game.

Product Name: Tee Claw Product Type: Practice Equipment Product Website/URL: teeclaw.com Cost: $9.99 - $14.95 (various retailers) Ratings (out of 5): Value: 5 ($9.99), 3 ($14.95) Effectiveness: 5 Durability: 5 Esthetic Appeal: 4 Link to Discussion Thread My Member Review Being from the Northeast, almost all driving ranges available around here make you hit off of range mats instead of grass. I don't mind having to hit irons off of the mat versus grass as much as some people do, but one of my biggest gripes comes up whenever I need to hit a ball off of a tee, as with a driver or a wood. I'm always at the mercy of whatever rubber tees are available at that driving range. Sometimes, my stall won't have a tee at all; other times, it'll have one that's entirely the wrong height. "Is this tee for my driver or for a kid's tee ball league?" I'll find myself asking when I'm stuck hitting off of a far-too-high tee. It'd be great if I could just stick a tee in the ground and adjust the height of my tee the way I would if I were playing out on the golf course. I've resorted to schlepping my own rubber tees with me that I've cut to the correct height, but if I go somewhere with different thickness mats, I run into the same problems all over again. I had the opportunity over the past few weeks to test the Tee Claw as part of a TST member review. When I heard about the Tee Claw, I was instantly drawn to the idea. The basic concept of it is that it's a small device that attaches to most range mats and allows you to use real golf tees on the range that you can then adjust to your preferred height. The device itself is pretty simple: it consists of a small round plastic disk with four serrated hooks that allow you to twist the device into the scruffy fabric of most range mats. The center of the Tee Claw has a softer silicone with a hole into which you can insert a tee. The Tee Claw itself comes with a few different length tees, but you can take any tee you own and use it with the device, adjusting its length to suit your own needs. Using the Tee Claw over the past few weeks, I've been very much enjoying how it's given me the peace of mind to know that whenever I go to the driving range, I won't have to walk up and down the range scouring for the right-size tee, resorting to trial and error and digging around under the muddy mats. And I can switch between my driver and my 3 wood easily by just swapping in the correct-length tee. No more scrounging around for the one short tee at the driving range just to hit a couple 3 woods. When you hit off of the Tee Claw, much like on the golf course, subject to how you deliver the club, the tee will either stay in the ground or it'll fly off. I was worried I'd lose a lot more tees at the driving range, but for the most part my tees either fly backwards or they stay in the device. The Tee Claw also comes with an anchor cord that you can use to attach it to a fixed object or tuck underneath the mat as a backup to ensure that the Tee Claw doesn't go flying away on you if you hit a catastrophically bad shot and hit the claw itself. It hasn't come into play yet in my experience but it's great to know that it's there and that I don't have to worry about the Tee Claw flying down the driving range and my having to do a walk of shame to get it. The Tee Claw comes three to a box, and while I haven't needed more than one claw on the range, using a couple Tee Claws together make for a great alignment aid for putting practice. The Tee Claws grab onto carpet for in-home practice just as well as they do on the driving range, so connecting two Tee Claws via an anchor cord works great for me when I'm practicing starting lines for my putts in the basement. I've also used the Tee Claw on the driving range to use the anchor cord for alignment. It's a surprisingly versatile product for something as facially simple as a better tee. I have to say, I was instantly excited about the Tee Claw upon hearing about it, and I'm somehow even more impressed by the product after having tried it for the past month. It's built exceedingly well and it works just as well as advertised. It's a tremendous product that solves a very real annoyance for many golfers. I'd hate to go to the driving range without it. Thanks to TST and Tee Claw for the generous opportunity to test the Tee Claw over the past month!

This is a bit neither here nor there, but I didn't want to start a new thread just for this tidbit. I was on Costco's Golf Club section of their website and, of all things, they're selling Scotty Cameron putters now http://www.costco.com/golf-clubs.html They have 6 models of the Select range going for $299 each. I think they're the real thing and not a made-for knockoff like Callaway does with Costco sometimes. But yeah, Scotty Camerons on sale in Costco. What a time to be alive.