p1n9183

Here in Argentina is pretty common, but only sideways or away from the hole. It's called "Lie mejorado" or "Improved lie".

Even on a perfect center hit I was receiving at most 1.48 smash factor. 10 days ago on the warming up for a round my Driver made a weird sound, I checked the bottom and it was cracked. Don't know for how long it was cracked but at least this time the crack was easy visible. Maybe it was already cracked before but with a more subtle crack?.. don't know. I'm waiting for TaylorMade to approve the warranty and send me a new head. I was using the Stealth Plus, I will take the opportunity and upgrade it to the Qi10 LS paying the difference. On Sunday with my old Titleist 915 and softer balls I was reaching 1.5, even 1.51 on center hits. Test didn't went well. Only gained 2..3 miles, not worth pursuing. Figured out that with a ball and with a target, my path was way to in to out with this new idea, so in order to move the club in the correct path I needed to slow down to redirect the club on the downswing or aim more to the right, close the face a play a big hook.. not possible. I already play a big draw with Driver, more curvature is unplayable. Yesterday at home, with no ball messed around with a more neutral path, even swinging a little out to in. It felt a lot more in sync with the body. With a big in to out path it feels like my hands are working right, away from the body, when the body is working to rotate to the left. With the path to the left is was easier to apply force thru the hitting zone. As always tested 10 swings with my current swing (A), and 10 with this little out to in path(B). The difference was huge, like 12 miles faster with swing (B). I knew something wasn't right. The fact was that the PRGR was aligned more in line with the (B) path so it of course was giving higher speeds. I proceeded to align it with the (A) path and tested again 5 more swings each. Again (B) was faster but only by 5 miles. (Made a tiny experiment moving the PRGR to a more extreme in to out path and the swings register 25/30% slower for both swings, so it wasn't reading properly at that angle) Finally I moved the PRGR in the middle of both paths, and this time (B) won by 9 miles. Off course, this was without a ball and a target so.. I will be hitting the range tomorrow to see the real difference.

Is more about starting the swing having the club left of the ball (for a right-handed player). I never saw it, even on long drive competitions. For me is easy given how much high I hover the club. I think it would be impossible for players than hover at ball height and even more for not hovering players. I do have that on my normal swing. I'm looking for an extra gear for open holes. Of course I did that, and because of that I'm no longer a "short" hitter, I'm more average in the Am competitions I play. I love to go down the rabbit holes. Sometimes they lead to something good, sometimes it doesn't. Trial and error. I worked on that but left it behind because of backpain. Is impossible to try them all, but I tryed as much as I could and I'm sure I will keep looking for them until I reach my goal. Is one of the fun parts about golf for me, the pursue of distance, accuracy, etc. Yesterday I tested the same movement with a 6 iron an real balls with skytrak. Gained 10 miles of ball speed (around 15 yards carry) but I was missing all to the right and is wasn't comfortable at all. Having to hit the ball with a small face close to the ground was really uncomfortable and not accurate. Nevertheless the extra speed was there and that was the main goal of the test. Tomorrow I will be able to go out to the course and do a prober test with driver and PRGR.

After a couple months working with my irons, I'm back with the speed quest. This move finally didn't stick. It wasn't neither accurate or comfortable to do on the course so I left it behind. One new move that do stick was to feel like throwing the club to the target at impact. It gave me 2 more miles and higher launch when I was able to swing free and kept the previous swing to more tight holes. Normal stayed at 106 and throwing the club at 108 on tournament. Yesterday I messed around with foam balls and the PRGR and found a "new" way to create speed. The idea was to use the drill that make you start the swing from P8, but with a twist. The idea is to start from address but with the club hovering the ball high like I do in the video, hinge quickly my wrists to the left to move the club to P8 (the arms also move a bit to the left). Then go back from P8 quickly to the ball unhinging an rehinging to the right, and to the top of the backswing as normal and from there normal swing to hit the ball. Is like my movement is more fluent and my wrists hinge a lot more at the top and I gain a lot of speed when I hit the ball without any more effort. I tested 8 swing with my normal swing, and 8 with this new way. In both cases I tried to replicate the speed and control I made when I'm on the course and I wanted to hit the fairway, I did this with a 2000 Driver gripping it down to play it like 42.75" (gamer is 45.75") to avoid hitting the ceiling. Despite feeling the new way had a little less face control, the increase in club speed was promising (even to much to be true). Normal P8 100 110 101 110 99 110 100 111 102 109 101 110 101 110 96 108 100.0 109.8 If my gamer Driver is around 106 with the normal swing, I should be swinging at around 116 that is a lot more than I could dream off. Before engaging in this new idea, no matter how ugly or different it seams for normal golf... I want to ask.. is this legal for tournament golf?

I read somewhere that average shaft lean for pros were around 10 degrees, of course more with wedges than with woods. Sounds about right. For a 3 wood (15° loft) , if the launch is 10° and the AoA is -2°, the dynamic loft should be around 12°/13°, giving us just 3°/2° of deloft

I think those yardages are going to be destroyed in a few years (unless ball rollback happens). Boys from 15 to 20 are bombers now. I followed the leaders of an am tournament last year. All of them were hitting 7 iron from 180 and AVERAGING 290, 290 and 310 Driver distance on a no roll day at sea level.

Do ShotScope account for weather? roll? altitud? wind? lie? etc... etc.. If not, you need a lot more shots in order to cancel out all that different variables. The best way to compare is with a launch monitor or hitting shots on the course with both from the same places at the same time. Unless the loft of the clubs are modified to have similar loft, you are not going to hit both clubs the same distance.

Statistics showed that Keagan was lucky enough to hit several good shots closer together to win more stuff than JT. Not enough to bench JT, both were pretty similar and experience was the defining factor. Imagine player A shoots 70-70-70-70 on a tournament and 70-70-70-70 on the next tournament. and B shoots 75-75-75-75 and 65-65-65-65 on the same events. On SG statistics they are going to be equal but player B is more likely to have more wins, or TOP 10 and definitively more earnings in the money list. Is just variance.. been regular is only good if you are on the top, but if you are on the middle of the pack, to gain more points or money at the end of the year you are definitively better off if you are inconsistent.

The desperate search for attention, even when is not the right one.

Good read! sometimes I dream that I'm in a swimming pool full of golf ball in the bottom and I usually go up and down picking them up until I wake up and get really disappointed.

I own a stealth plus 1 with an X 60 gram shaft. with a head weight of around 200 grams. Every club I test feels heavy so I removed the back weight and it felt better, also gained me 2 mph of club speed. It still feel heavy for me so I wanted to try something lighter. Are there any other drivers lighter than 190g? Are there heavier drivers but when you remove the stock weight you can lower it below 190g? Can a 40g shaft help the issue? I know that all of this is going to bring down the swingweight to the C category and I'm totally ok with it. I love the feel of the club when I add 50 grams to the grip but it also get too heavy in total weight so I don't get faster with it, even I loose a bit of speed. Any suggestions?

Agree, there are plenty of +2..+3 guys out there with his same age that can shoot easily on the 70's. I heard he made 12 on a hole so.. I remember Tiger saying he prepared Charly to be mentally strong. 12 in a hole is not a matter of ability or even strategy, I'm sure after a couple of balls in the water his strong mind left the room. Good player for his age, but he is always going to be compared with his father and of course he is never going to be enough.

It just feel comfortable, active. When I don't hover I feel really tight, I don't like to bend forward at address, I like to be tall. Irons is the same thing but is impossible to do this, so I'm forced to touch the ground with the club before starting the backswing. If I don't I start chunking and thinning shots. Played 18 on Sunday, really windy day (18 mph, with gusts of 30) . 11 Drivers, 4 against the wind, 3 with the wind and 4 crosswinds. Average was 292 with half of the balls ending in decent height rough so I guess 300 would be a better average. Dispersion was as good or even better as my previous Driver but was 20 yards further in average. Something I would like your opinions on is on a test I made the prior day at the club´s math/net with my gamer (Driver). I was testing the old vs the new swing and the results were pretty consistent with this chart. So I tested a new move, I tried to apply force to the handle of the club to make my wrist hinge quickly on the backswing and without lifting the heel or raising the elbow I smashed normally the ball like in my previous driver. Club speed jumped to 115 and stayed around 114 and 116. Tested the other swings and the club went down to 106 and 111 as normal. The odd thing was that at 115 club ball stayed around 160 giving me all smash factors below 1.4 knowing that I was hitting it solid. After 10 swings the PRGR battery died so I was left with the doubt. Could it be the batteries? was I swinging fast but not over the ball? really have no idea. I recharged the batteries now, so I will test this new idea further when I can.

Numbers are in and I have to say that my swing is awfull haha. Now I understand why the other day a guy told me that there was other players that also played well like me but their swing was uglier... The results were promising but not as good as I wanted. Have to say that I felt tired with pain in the back and not fast at all, maybe a little burn of how many swing I swung this last 6 days. But it doesn't matter. The important thing was to test the new swing against the older one. With irons the gains were almost none, about 2..3 miles of club speed more but a little worst smash factor on normal shots. But for longer irons with tail wing, as I spected, launch was higher and the shalower AoA improved ball striking ganing about 5 yards and higher landing angle. Didn't take the time to record it, really didn't matter that much. Wanted to spend more time with the driver. With Driver I hit 17 shots with each swing, the normal and the one lifting the left heel (3 different holes / winds). Here they are, the normal swing and the new one. Can't beleive how much I hover the club. Normal: New: Now to the numbers, gained 5 miles of club speed and almost 9 in ball speed. Spin remained low but it launched a little higher and with less curvature so really glad about that. Dispersion was the same, maybe a little narrower but that could be a little biased. Type Club Ball Smash New 110.8 159.6 1.44 Normal 105.8 150.9 1.43 Diff 5 8.7 0.01 Feel free to make fun of my swing or throw me a tip to make it not tha ugly or at least faster!

Totally agree with you both. This afternoon I will record a couple swings with irons and Driver at the course with the corresponding PRGR readings.

Quick update.. Set the math, "net", shoes warm up and started with 7 iron. Test result with the 3 swings for ball speed: 111 118 116! It was imposible to hit the ball in the middle of the face while lifting the left heel, the up and down move make me afraid of hitting the ground so I mishit a lot of shots and even swung a little softer. I don't think It worth the time to get used to the movement for shots from the deck. Just moving the elbow higher gave me between 10-15 yards with each iron so is more than enough. I would be using normal elbow for short to mid irons for control and high elbow for longer irons to gain spin and height, again more distance is a bonus. Now the Driver: 98.5 vs 103.5 vs 105. With the ball away from the ground, I always drive with very high tees, I wasn't afraid to go at it normally. Lifting the left heel was a little bit less confortable than the other 2 swings but it has more potential since is a huge change from my normal swing and it still was faster. I think that with practice I can gain a few more miles to get a swing that is around 8..9 miles faster than my normal drive to use in wide holes or Par 5´s. Tomorrow will be testing on the course with my Driver so there will be more accurate results.

As always I'm after swing speed. My current course speed is around 106 mph, 153 ball, 2200 spin / 14° launch, with an average of 250 carry (0.5 index). I play against plus index guys that hit it from 270 to 300 carry so I'm a little bit in disadvantage. I own a Skytrak and recently a PRGR to practice and finetune my numbers. I´ve heard Bryson said that when he wanted more speed it want's the idea to swing harder but to have a longer backswing. I've already tried in the last 15 months to have more shoulder turn, and even lift my left heel for more turn, but it always felt disconnected, even losing sight of the ball ending up in nothing good only to get 2..3 more miles per hour on some swings. Also tried to lift my hands really high in the top but generally translated in poor loading of the hands, and very inconsistent increase in speed. Also tried a LOT more stuff you see on youtube everyday but nothing helped my case. Last Sunday night I was messing around with a short driver (I have low ceiling) and the PRGR (no ball). Normal speed for that session was around 106. I don't remember why but I tried to lift as high as I could my left elbow on the backswing, keeping the left arm almost straight. Right from the first attempt the PRGR jumped to 110.. 111.. and after more swings it settle in 112 (with a couple 113 in there). 113 was my top speed with that club ever but swinging out of my shoes, but this time I was just swinging my on course swing. Of course I tried to swing my previous swing and again it went back to 106. Tested 5 swings with each and the average were 106 vs 112 as spected. I was amazed. Next day I setted up my "net" and did the exact same test but this time with a foam ball. This time the results were 100.3 vs 106.7. Not totally sure about the gains yet I picked up real balls and a 7 iron and the club speed jumped from 88 to 94 and the ball speed went from 112 to 120. I was convinced. But hey.. wait. There is more!! I assumed the gains were because I felt that having the elbow more up, gave me more distance from the hands to the ball to accelerate and create more speed but this time feeling comfortable about the position and not having that much turn to the right. It was like I could start to apply force to the handle right from the top taking advantage of the high hands, thing I wasn't able to feel in other attempts so have high hands at the top. On Tuesday I asked myself.. what if I manage to lift the elbow even higher? could it translate to more speed? would it be comfortable? well, tried a couple of things without success until I tried to lift my left heel but this time only having in mind lifting the elbow as high as it felt comfortable. Eureka! felt fast as hell. I was bear foot, set the PRGR and swung a 7 iron. Tested 5 swings with the normal swing, 5 with the Sunday swing and 5 with the new discovery. After that made 5 with each again to have 10 swings with each. Results were more than I would dream... 81.0 vs 87.2 vs 93.5 !! That's 12 mph in gains! for a 7 iron is an improvement of 20-25 yards! Of course I want to hit the driver longer, irons longer is just a bonus, so I couldn't stop there and put my shoes on and set the math to have a firm turf and swung the club with each swing a couple of times to see the numbers. I was already tired so I didn't attempt to do the full test like I did with the 7 iron. The results were not that great but still really good. 105 vs 109 vs 113. 8 mph gains is still a lot of speed that can translate to 25 more yards with driver (carry) without swinging harder. I would try to make time today in the afternoon to set the net an hit a couple drives with foam balls and irons with real balls with all the swings to compare more numbers. The real deal is on Friday that I will be able to hit the course with the PRGR later in the afternoon. As for reference and to compare to your own swing, on the top of my backswing my left elbow is between my chin and my left shoulder in height. With the Sunday swing it went up between my mouth and nose height and after lifting the left heel it went up to my forehead.

As a 0.5 index player (been around 4 and +1 in the last 7 years) I revisited my rounds history and posted the following scores indexes in the last years: 21.6 17.6 12.9 12.7 and several +10 rounds. Everybody have off rounds, it just take 1 of them to your buddy to score better than you. I've had 1 really bad round per year. 30 bad rounds in 30 years, if he just manage to play well just one of them you are done. My bet is on the 16 index guy.

Are you sure that your AoA is+7-9 degrees ? Unless you are hitting all your driver lower on the face, I bet that your real AoA is more like +2/+3 and making your spin loft around 18°, plus your high speed is pretty normal to be around 4k spin.

Bougth the PRGR launch monitor 3 weeks ago. Really good for speed training and for the course to get accurate ball speed numbers of every club to dial in real distances. Also fun to challenge your friends at the course to a max ball speed or club speed with driver.

9 Iron 38 Pw 43.5 (-1) 42.5° Gap 47 Wedge 50 (+1.5) 51.5° Wedge 56 Bend the Pw to 42.5°, buy a gap wedge of 47° and bend de 50 wedge to 51.5°. At least your degrees gaps are goint to be a little better fillend in lower side of the bag.

Spin comes from the difference between AoA and dynamic club angles. The same way "lateral" spin comes from the difference between path and face angle. You can achieve 0 total spin If you manage to hit the ball in the center of the club, exactly been the face to path exactly equal (in a 3d plane) and been the AoA exactly the same as the dynamic club angle. The ball will start to behave more like a rock in vacuum, were the best carry conditions would be to launch it at 45°. Off course, the slimmest contact with air is going to give some kind of spin to the ball so.. 0 spin is achievable (almost impossible) but it would just last milliseconds. Not even Long Driver Pros hit it below 1500 so... keep those rmp up and straight.

Don't remember the pro but one multiple PGA tour winner was presented with a similar scenario when he had the chance to turn pro. His mindset was that if he was so good as he and all people thought, he would just wait a couple of years to finish college and then turn pro and win millions. He did so and It went perfect for him. Don't know is there a PGA pro that was a prodigy and because of turning pro too early disappeared years later without any kind of success. If you are confident in your own abilities, you are not in a harry to turn pro. You know that eventually you are going to get all that money back and more.

This was really helpful. Every time I wanted to swing faster on the backswing to gain more speed I used to swing fast with my hands all the way to the top, creating a lot of caos at transition. After this video I started to move the hands faster but only to p2 or at most p3. Transition was smoother and because of that gained more consistent speed.

I realized I had both problems a month ago, and a little of the 5th too. The problem is that your arms are turning to much to the right in relationship to your chest. (your hands get out of sync with your body) If you just swing backwards with your hands and keep your hips and torso still, the hands don't move to the rigth, but upwards over your rigth shoulder, like if you were about to chop´some wood with the club. From that position, turn now your hips and torso to the rigth and you are going to see that the hands automatically set perfectly in position, bearly rigth of the center of your chest. Couldn't believe it at first, I was so used to move the hands too rigth when in reality the hands move more upwards than laterally on the backswing. I fixed it just by taking out the club a little bit to the outside in order to keep it in front of my chest as much as I could. My way to check if this was working, was to make a regular backswing and stop in the top, and from there look were my rigth elbow was pointing. Normally is going to be almost perpendicular to the club. That's bad, but when I checked it after taking the club a little out, the elbow started to create a 35/45 angle with the shaft. From that position, your arm and body are a lot more connected and is a lot harder to get stuck on the downswing. Currently I'm guilty of 7,8 and 10 but I can live with that.