ZappyAd

I have a few pictures...

I keep hitting an iron shot into greens (by accident) that looks like it should be dreadful but consistently ends up being great. My playing partner and I were discussing whether it is just a fluke that keeps on happening or if it is something that I should be trying to figure out how to hit consistently. (He is getting dejected because he initially thinks I've topped the ball only to see it land perfectly on the green!) My approach into the 18th on my last round is a perfect example. 150 yds out so I took an 8 iron. I hit the shot and it felt like I was hitting up on the ball making contact on the bottom grooves. The ball came out with a much lower trajectory and an audible 'fizz'. Landed on the green at exactly 150 yds and stopped in one bounce. It is almost the exact opposite feeling to when I try to hit a low trajectory high spinning wedge shot but the result is similar (in fact the accident shot feels a bit better). If you asked me to play this type of shot I would have the ball a bit further back and hit down dragging the handle forward feeling like I'm trapping the ball. With the accidental shot I definitely feel like I'm almost hitting up but making contact with the bottom of the face. Am I just getting random good luck or is this a shot worth chasing?

The Callaway guy was at the range today and there were a lot of free slots as they hadn't been able to get enough takers (!) So I stepped in to help out :) I hit the gbb epic and the XR driver against my Ping G30. As skeptical as I am about the latest and greatest tech the epic was better for me. Hit both Callaway drivers further than my Ping (which may have been due to better fitting) and the epic LS longer than the XR. I felt it had a nice solid feel and the good hits looked pretty cool in the air. i could see my next driver being a Callaway but not sure I'll upgrade right away. I have spent the afternoon thinking about what price per yard is worth paying though!

If you mean would it maintain the status quo and equally penalize all players so that their relative standings remain the same, then no, I don't think it would. But it seems to me that any equipment constraint is going to affect different players by different amounts so whatever restriction you have in place will change the relative positions of players. It is then only 'fair' in the sense that the same rules apply to everyone, even if the effects on their scoring are different. I would guess that with the advances in data analysis in golf these days it is probably more likely that you can accurately assess the impact of any change compared with 20 years ago. Take COR - my understanding is that by limiting COR at 1.5 you would be taking more distance off longer hitters than you would off shorter ones? (I'm assuming COR * clubhead speed is proportional to ball speed is proportional to distance and so Dustin J would lose more yards than Zach J by moving COR from say 2 to 1.5). So simplistically that's unfair on DJ. However, maybe the yards you take off Dustin are closer to the green and under Strokes Gained they are more/less valuable than the yards you take off Zach. So maybe the calculations are more complicated than straight yards lost but ultimately one of them benefits relatively. Maybe it is a similar situation with grooves and spin - if you have a very skilled wedge player who is really able to control spin then they might benefit more from really super non-conforming grooves than a player who is less spin aware. Or they might benefit less if absolute level of spin is less important than simply being able to have it or not. Point is that relatively their positions on the money list will probably be changed as a result of that rule. So I think there is already precedent for making rules changes regarding equipment that impact 'unfairly' on individuals and doing something about the ball wouldn't really be that different.

Have you filled the pipes with anything (i.e. sand or water) to help with stability or does it not really move around that much?

Could they build a ball where the marginal benefit of increased club head speed at impact decreases beyond a certain point? So up to 110mph you get roughly 2 yards extra distance per extra mph but beyond that you get less and less for every extra mph. That way everyone uses the same ball and amateurs still get the same distance they do now but the top end is clipped. We don't use the absolute best tech that there is, we use the best tech that fits within the rules laid down by whoever (e.g. Max driver head size and COR). I don't know much about golf balls but I bet there are people out there that could create all sorts of ball performance characteristics if the rules demanded it and it wouldn't have to eliminate long hitting but rather throttle it back at the extremes.

Did the guy in front touch his brakes to freak out the guy behind him or was it to avoid something?

I have a similar gap at the top end but as yet haven't found the right solution. I have a space in the bag though because my inter club gaps are a bit bigger. Could you bend the 5i a degree or two stronger ( to hit 185), and then drop the 4i and get a hybrid to fit between 190-210? Or look at bending all the lofts a bit to spread out the distances and then drop a club.

It did make me wonder if the guys in the clubhouse know anything at all about how long rounds are taking on their course. Presumably people were handing in their cards at the end of the round so it shouldn't have been that hard for them to get a rough idea of how long the rounds were taking. I just think that time taken for a round isn't a metric that they monitor or even care about. I will probably join a new course next year because of it.

I played at my local course yesterday with a buddy I regularly play with. We had played the week before at the same time and got round in 3hrs 20 minutes. The course was busy but everyone was moving and we thought that possibly we had found the perfect time to play. When we turned up this week we were told at the pro shop that a member's competition had gone out earlier in the day but 'don't worry, the last group went out over an hour ago and you should be fine'. We caught up with the jam at the fifth and from then on things were pretty slow. The round took over five hours which, given our hopes at the start, was a pretty poor result. The thing that struck me as odd was that whenever we crossed paths with a group up ahead (at a tee or where holes pass near each other) they invariably said 'sorry about this but the round is going to be slow today because we're playing in a competition'. Over the course of the round about five groups said the exact same thing which made me think that a lot of people thought it was a good reason to justify slow play. It really got me wondering why! Should I expect competition play to be much slower than 'normal' or were these members just using it as an excuse?

I haven't hit the M2 irons but I can relate a bit to the issue of noise. I have a ping G30 driver which makes a very 'distinctive' noise when I hit it. I often get looks from other players on the range which took a bit of getting used to. (The range I practice at has some strange acoustics and in certain bays you can get a sound that resonates across the whole facility!) Out on the course it is much less of a problem though. Any issue is mostly inside one's own head so after you get used to it you just focus on how the club performs.

It seems to me that everyone has their own opinion on how long a round 'should' take. The problem is that out on the course, slowest guy wins. I think it is down to the individual courses to manage. If a five hour round is the norm at a course then that should be made clear before you start out and/or book. I think one of the biggest problems with pace of play is the difference between expectation and experience. If courses did more to inform players of the reality before playing then there would be less frustration.

I haven't played there but Mark Crossfield did a series of videos from there when the European tour went through (must have been Aug/Sep of last year). Played a couple of the courses including 9 holes with Nicolas Colsaerts which was quite entertaining (if you like Mark Crossfield I guess). They also went up onto the glacier and did a bit of paragliding, plus lots of club tests and walk and talks with the pros during the pro am. Nicklaus course : Nicolas Colsaerts

I remembered seeing this guy in one of the golf magazines - don't know if you have already seen his videos but he does a lot of work with long drive pros and he may be able to provide you with some background info (he is also on Twitter): https://www.leecoxgolf.co.uk

I think it depends totally on how you deliver the club during your swing. I used to have to close all my fairway woods at address so that really only the leading edge was touching the ground. I still got a functional ball flight out of them but I was always left wondering why I couldn't hit them properly when I just sat them on the ground 'as they lie'. They looked way too open and went high and right. I've made some changes to my swing (through lessons with a local pro) and now I can hit my fairway woods starting from their natural lie behind the ball. The club face still looks slightly open but I trust the fact that my swing path + face angle will produce a straight ball with a small draw. I would have thought that most clubs are designed to sit on the ground in a particular way for a 'standard' swing path and face angle but in reality setup is going to be modified by how the golfer's swing works.

Interesting thread in general - fwiw and based solely on my limited long drive experience of reading your first post and having seen one interview with Joe Miller I think you need lower loft (like 5-7'), less backspin (1-2k) and a very long tee! It seems like it's a very technical area so having regular access to a launch monitor so you can see and fine tune your numbers is probably very important. Can you give any more detail on the overspeed training you've been using? I'm quite interested to see if I can pick up another 5mph on my driver swing speed so if you have any advice based on your experience that would be cool.

I think the issue is fps on the camera and not the version of iOS. 240 fps only came in with the iPhone 6 and that is what the app uses to calculate speed.

I read a review that said it took a bit of setting up to get it to work (at one point they had misaligned the phone and got a swing speed of 500+mph!). It isn't available outside the US so I couldn't get it to try out - not sure what the reasoning is behind that decision!

I'm not sure that the max score or ready golf ideas will do that much to speed up play in the real world. Most of the pace-challenged golfers that I get stuck behind don't seem to be that bothered about their score. They just want to get that ball in the hole however long it takes - people will still hit as many strokes as it takes and then just 'mark it down as a 10'! There just isn't an incentive to play at a decent pace if you don't want to - if you are happy taking 6 hours for a round then it isn't strict adherence to the rules of golf that is slowing you down. It may look good as a headline to say the rules are being changed to speed up golf and address one of the top complaints people have about the game, but how much difference is it really going to make? Only the course owners can make a difference here imo by monitoring pace and resolving any hold ups.

If the event isn't being distributed on free to view tv or streamed subscription free over the internet then it won't do anything to grow the game imho. Putting this out on sky tv in the U.K. is going to reach the exact same audience as any other golf tournament, maybe even less because there will be some that don't hold with making any changes to the game.

I use a GorillaPod attached to my golf bag or a railing. GorillaPod has the benefit you can also use it as a stand and attach it to pretty much anything. I've used it for golf, video conferences, biking and never had a problem. https://www.amazon.com/GripTight-GorillaPod-Universal-Smartphone-Smartphones/dp/B009GHYMB6

I've used 3D studio max, maya, lightwave and cinema 4d at various times in the past. At the moment I'm putting some time into learning Blender (which is free to use and pretty much does everything I need). With all these programs the thing I've found is that you have to learn the tools you have available and the shortcut keys to activate them. When starting out it seems impossible to get anything done as you are always hunting for which tool to use and then trying to figure out how to operate it. So any artistic ability you might have gets blocked by simply not being able to use the tool. If you watch 'how to' videos on YouTube then invariably the demonstrator rocks through the examples with a blur of key strokes and mouse clicks. As with pretty much anything you just have to practice practice practice to get to the point where choosing tools becomes second nature. I tend to follow what's happening on video and then repeat the action on my desktop. I find this helps me remember what the keys are much more effectively than simply watching the video on its own. But realistically it is going to take me hundreds of hours to get proficient enough to produce anything useful. I do however have the benefit of having done this process before on several different platforms so I at least know that eventually I will be able to get there. I think for a lot of people it just gets too boring and they give up.

I think it will depend on the club maker. I have a 10.5' Ping G30 which I adjust up to 11.5' - I believe this gives it a slightly more draw bias/ closed look (not sure if that is just my belief or reality) but it works really well for me. Going down in loft is supposed to make it more fade biased. I guess different manufacturers are going to be different in that regard and some might have a draw/fade adjustment that is independent of loft. As always though there probably isn't going to be anything better than trying them out in person (which will take even more time what with all the loosening and tightening of hosels!)

My guess is that as the loft of the club increases the percentage of initial direction due to face angle goes down. So chipping with a wide open 60' wedge means you only have to swipe across the ball a small amount to get it to go straight. Maybe at a higher loft the ball can slip across the face more easily along the direction of the swing path and so picks up more swing path facing momentum. But it is probably all still consistent with the physics of full shots it's just the face angle is 60+ degrees versus 10-46' driver to wedge.

I'm excited to see Tiger back. I even signed up for a years subscription to PGALive just so I could watch his first two rounds. It was only $40 but I can't think of another player that I would have done that for even in their prime, let alone when they are 41. And Tiger's even better value these days as you get more shots per dollar! Looking forward to today's play.