gibbous

The hole (#18 at Westridge in LaHabra Hills CA if anyone knows it) is 491 yards on the card, I think the tees were slightly back. It plays appreciably downhill, and there was a pretty good right to left wind. I smoked my tee shot and by the time it was done rolling I was only about 150 out, still slightly above the green. 2nd shot was a 9 iron that drifted about 20 feet left of the flag and landed a little bit past pin high. The putt was a little bit downhill with maybe a foot of left to right in it, and considering my previous failures on eagle putts I convinced myself that A) I was not going to leave it short, and B) I was not going to miss it on the low side. I visualized the line I though it would take, put a good agressive stroke on it, and it dropped in on the high side of the hole. What a relief. I've always hit the ball pretty far, and it had bothered me for some time that I had yet to pull this off. It also made the frustration of a terrible back 9 disappear completely. Hopefully it won't be another 15 years until I make my next one...

Oh man I hate reading things like this. My left shoulder has been bothering me for the last couple months, mostly when it stretches out at the top of my backswing and while accelerating through impact. It comes and goes, but doesn't seem to be getting any better. The thought of surgery does not sit well with me after hearing about the misery from a bunch of my surfer friends. Good luck man, hope you come out okay.

I'd consider dropping the 4 iron altogether and finding the right combination of 2 hybrids to fill the gap betweeh the 5i and 3w. That's what I did with my older TM irons & hybrids and I don't plan on going back. Hybrids are just so much easier to hit than long irons, particularly out of the rough. Also depending on the actual lofts of the iron set, you might find that there isn't much of a distance gap between the AW and a 54* SW, a 56* & 60* wedge set may produce a better distance spread but it's hard to say without trying them. Where are you planning on trying clubs? Make sure you at least go somewhere that has a launch monitor, and beware the salesman that is just trying to clear out his old inventory. I'd say at your height you'll want to go +1/2" and maybe a degree or two upright on the irons, along with the right shaft for your swing speed. But beyond that it'll be mostly about what you make most consistent contact with and feels best, along with the results you get from the launch monitor regarding distance and shot shape. Good luck!

No way. There tons of variables that affect how a putter feels and performs. Loft varies, different materials that the head or face insert are made out of will have different feels and weights, clubhead design can give a higher MOI or other characteristics to make off center hits less punishing, the faces of some are milled to help promote topspin, different shaft positions or amounts of offset will suit different types of strokes, blah blah blah... I think the putter is the most important club in your bag, but there's no formula to figure out for sure what's right for you without trying them. Whatever feels good and makes you feel the most confident is the one you want.

Okay, I'm going to have to look this up and see what it is. Would the next step up be double-secret forged?

Just curious, but how so? Would it really remove or displace so much of the steel from the clubhead that it would round off the edges of the grooves or something like that? I've heard advice to not use a wire brush on clubs because it would wear through the chrome or whatever other sort of finish came from the factory, but that's obviously not a concern here.

I played with one of those once when I borrowed a set of clubs from a friend in college, used it to hit one of the best fairway bunker shots of my life. The memory of that was part of what made me get my new Callaway wedges in raw steel, though that's probably not a very rational reason. I like the rusty finish on wedges, but wouldn't have it on my regular irons. Go figure... If you hit them with a steel brush you will leave fine brush marks once you get down to bare metal, but it won't ruin anything as far as I know and probably it probably won't even be visible once they get another thin layer of corrosion over the clean spot. Just a heavy rub down with a coarse cloth and some wd-40 or something like that will take off a lot of it, and help slow down the onset of rust in the future.

Nothing ticks me off on the course more than being paired with someone who just doesn't know when to shut up. Two people stick out in my mind as the worst. I was playing with a friend last week and they sent a single out with us, and this guy had to make a comment after every single shot that anybody in the group hit. How my buddy's shot needed to draw more, how he had misread his putt or how I had misread mine, it never ended. We tried to humor him for a while but were flat out ignoring him by the back 9, but he never seemed to take the hint. Though the worst playing partner I've ever had was a guy who was rattling off jokes the entire round. And not just any jokes, it was like the comedian in the comedy club scene in Goodfellas. Rapid fire one-liners that were so stale they had ceased to be funny before I was born. Occasionally he would have one that required another person to ask an obvious question that would set him up for his punch line, and the guy he had shown up with would comply each time like he was some kind of trained parrot. His friend had to leave at the turn, and pretty soon the comedian was expecting me to deliver the set up question. I tried to act as disinterested as possible without seeming rude, but he would tell me "you were supposed to say, blah blah blah..." like I didn't understand what was going on and his humor was somehow over my head. This also never stopped for the entire round, and this was the only time I have ever walked off a course without finishing. I was playing terrible, and after snap hooking my tee shot on 18 back into the 17th fairway I was faced with the choice of listening to this guy for another hole, or just walking to my car which was about as far away as my tee ball was. I chose the latter, and don't regret it a bit. People like these, as well as "get in the hole" guy, need to STFU. I just find it hard to tell them to do so without feeling like a jerk myself.

Possible, yes. But shafts themselves aren't that expensive, so if you can get the labor part of reshafting them for free I think you'd be crazy not to do it. The final product would be WAY better.

As I understand it, the only way it wouldn't make a difference would be if each of the clubheads also weighed the same amount, which they probably don't. If he were to take the shaft out of say, the 7 iron, and put the head of the 9 on it, I believe the flex would effectively be softened because the head of the 9 is typically going to weigh more. I imagine the difference would be pretty small though, whether it would have a smaller effect than putting extensions in the existing shafts I don't really know... If you like the heads, the best (though also most expensive) solution would be to take them to a custom fitter and have them re-shafted and frequency matched so you know they're consistent across the board and correct for your swing speed. Off the shelf club sets are rarely as good in this regard as what a good clubmaker can do. I'm also 6'5"ish, and played with standard length clubs for a long time. When I finally got clubs with longer shafts the adjustment wasn't quite as natural as I was hoping for. Your experience may vary, but like any other change it will probably take some getting used to. Though you'll be better off for it once you do adjust.

Surely you're not implying that technique has nothing to do with how well you strike the ball or the resulting flight? It doesn't have to look pretty, but there are common elements in the swings of pretty much all good ball strikers. I've improved on my personal best two of my last three rounds (from 78 down to 76, then 75) and an adjustment in my full swing had a lot to do with keeping the ball in play more off the tee, and hitting the ball closer to my target on approach shots. The short game is the more important part though, I agree with you there. Every good round I've ever played has been helped along by getting up & down from off the green, a few long par putts made, and zero short ones missed.

Golf Digest did a piece a little while back on a pro who played this way years ago. I can't remember his name, but I think he was from India and was a very accomplished player. I've tried swinging a club like this and couldn't hinge my wrists to save my life. Once I played 9 holes with a guy who gripped like this and he could barely hit the ball. Funny how what is impossible for one person is perfectly natural for another. You might improve if you took the time to re-learn the swing with a conventional grip, but if you're happy with how you play now it might not be worth the frustration. Have you ever tried playing fully left handed?

New personal best 75 for me on Wednesday, including -1 on the front which was also my best 9 to date. Fell apart on the back with one bogey and two doubles against a lone birdie. A bit frustrating because I still feel like it should have been better, but I'll still take it.

Does anyone else think it's funny that when the word "Draw" is printed on a clubhead, it usually translates to "Fix my slice" for the buyer? I wonder how much the increasing number of clubs designed like this stems from the fact that drivers with offsets don't seem to sell very well. It also seems to me that we golfers like manufacturers to dupe us like this, in a word-association sense "draw" is much more positive than "anti-slice" or "game improvement".

I hope that didn't come off as harsh by the way, and I certainly don't mean to say that you're some kind of doomed student. One ugly round after a questionable tip means basically nothing as long as you don't let the frustration detract from your desire to improve, and hopefully the number of balls lost not overly influence your enjoyment of the round or the game.

I agree w/ this, the grip of the top hand in the 2nd picture should be stronger. Also, if the 2nd picture shows how you normally hold the shaft at address, I'd suggest setting up with your right wrist a little flatter and the shaft leaning toward the target more. In the first picture the shaft forms a pretty straight line with your right arm which is good, but I don't think this is something that your grip should force you to do. If you've only been playing for a year, it's going to take some time before you can really tell what makes one swing different from another, and what tends to change from day to day to create different results. An instructor should be able to do this as well after a few sessions, but even if they were to tell you exactly what you needed to do differently actually being able to execute it regularly will be a challenge for a new player. If you don't think the instructor's teaching methods suit the way you learn best then by all means get a new one, but if your game is as bad as you make it out to be it's still very possible that you'll remain frustrated for a while no matter who is instructing you.

Shot 40-36 today, best round of my life. One despised double bogey and a couple other weak holes on the front, but even on the back including one wedge 3rd on a par 5 that almost spun back into the hole but left me a tap in birdie. But more than anything I putted well, lots of long par puts dropped and lags left simple finishes. Feels good to know that I'm improving.

As long as you've got a basic understanding of etiquette and don't play horribly slowly, there's no real reason to be nervous. Anybody you might play with was in your shoes once, so don't worry about any other junk and just have fun. Relax and make the most natural swing you can. Don't stress about the bad shots, just try to remember the good ones.

I will not keep two metallic objects in the same pocket. I don't know why, but something about them hitting or rubbing against each other bothers me. The quarter I use to mark my ball goes in the front right pocket with a couple tees, divot tool in back right. I don't put anything in the left because I don't want to feel them on my backswing, and it's a pain to take stuff out of them with a glove on which doesn't come off when putting. That's all I'll keep in my pockets as well, everything else goes in the bag.

In this scenario, to fly the ball all the way to the green and stop it at a pin that is only a couple paces on, you need to put a lot of spin on it. In most cases that also means hitting it high so it lands softly, and that makes it a shot with less margin for error. If you don't have a lot of long rough or any other obstacles between you and the green, the bump and run mentioned before is usually a safer shot. That's where you hit the ball much lower and intentionally bounce it through the grass in front of the green to take some speed off before it gets there. It takes practice to anticpate how the ball will react off of whatever you hit it into, but once you figure it out using the countours of the ground around the green to your advantage can be a lot of fun.

I've never seen anybody put a huge amount of spin on a chip no matter what kind of equipment they're using. Why don't I see pros doing this every week? Maybe we're talking about two different types of shots, but I just don't see how this is possible for anyone, let alone reasonable for a high handicapper to expect to be able to do consistently. I chip best when I can pick out the spot I want the ball to land and find the proper trajectory for the ball to hit the ground so it releases the way I want it to, then match the club to those two variables. I don't rely on the spin to keep the ball from rolling off the green on a chip shot, I just don't hit it that hard...

In my experience many recreational golfers expect far too much bite on shots around the green like chips and short pitches. There just isn't enough clubhead speed in these types of shots to get the ball to spin enough to stop on a dime. Even pros have to make a swing that takes the club up to about waist level before they can impart enough spin on the ball to make it check after just a bounce or two, and that's pretty much only when playing a big flop shot or the low 1-hop checker from 40+ yards out on the fairway. If you watch someone like Tiger chip, the ball will spin enough to dance around a little on the first couple bounces but it only slows down some, there will always be some run-out.

Thanks Dub, I figured I would end up asking there.

I've been considering trying a Scotty out for a while now, and the JAT Prototype is the one I lust after. My only problem is that I doubt I'll be able to actually get my hands on one to try it before buying, so I'm wondering if anyone could tell me about their experience with it. If it helps, I've tried a few of the Newport models which felt good at impact and rolled the ball nicely, but felt a bit too light for my liking. Right now I'm playing a Ping Piper-H which is a pretty similar design and has a good weight to it, but I don't really like the way the insert feels or the way the alignment lines are set up. Any input from someone who has used it would be much appreciated...

But I've never heard anybody try to speak for what "any US soldier" might do, publicly or privately. That's dumb enough, but to take it a step further and assert that they would probably let their politics drive them to kill an elected official is just stupid whether you're joking or not. I'm in the military, and while I and most service people I know really don't like Pelosi, Feherty is completely wrong to paint with such a broad brush and I think it's sad that he has to pretend everybody in the service so completely agrees with him. To me, it's self-serving and just plain old pathetic. It's true that this is being blown out of proportion and not worth the outrage that is manifesting itself, but it's not worth the support that it's being given either. Anybody who says something like this is wrong no matter which side they are taking.