alisdair

I think the trouble with measuring increasingly detailed stats like those you mentioned is that your sample size is too small to counter the noise. By the time you have enough data to usefully compare 2 iron vs 3 wood vs driver from the tee (probably dozens of rounds) you should have a feeling of which works best, and you'll probably have improved some aspect of your game during that time anyway.

I think if your hands are too far forward, your right shoulder will tend to tilt down at address, which makes it really hard to keep from swaying back. That then leads into a bunch of problems, obviously. How far forward are your hands? Why is that? My guess is above, but I'm not confident that it's correct.

A solid tee shot on the 7th left me 170 uphill to a plateau double green with trouble right. Choked down on a 5 iron and hit it to the back left fringe. My shot of the day was the 25 foot fringe putt, for my first birdie of 2010. I still haven't hit that green in regulation, though. Maybe tomorrow!

Tamiya paints are available individually on eBay. I think I paid about $6 including postage for the three I used. You can buy applicators, but a few cocktail sticks will do the job just as well when you're painting a golf club. I just meant regular kitchen/bathroom bleach, straight from the bottle, undiluted.

Rubbed neat bleach in with cotton pads until there was almost no colour left. Took about 10 minutes. They ended up yellowish, and a couple of Sharpies did the rest.

In direct answer to your question: my current swing thought for all clubs (except putter) is "shallow". I feel like I hit my 3 iron with the same swing as my 9 iron. There are lots of things that could cause the problem you describe. Video of your swing would help, as always. Chunk and slice implies a steep, out-to-in swing. This will hurt you more the longer and less lofted the club. Ball position is also a possibility. You shouldn't have ball as far forward for a 3 iron as you do for driver. The further forward it goes, the later in your swing arc, and the more likely you are to bottom out before the ball (chunk) or catch it on the straight-to-in transition (slice). I'd suggest taking your 7 iron swing, and changing three things: 1) Move the ball an inch or two towards your front foot. 2) Put a little bit more weight on your left side at address. 3) Focus on a shallow downswing, from the inside.

It's almost definitely an intercostal tear. These tiny muscles between your ribs are put under a lot of strain when you swing the club, and it's easily done, especially if you practice too hard. I had this injury last year in August, and only managed two more rounds between then and November (both in pain). No golf until your rib feels 100%, or you might have this injury all season. Avoid ibuprofen if you can cope with the pain, as it slows healing. There are some stretches you can do which will help. Ice the area if it feels inflamed, or heat it if it aches. Go to a sports physiotherapist if you can, or a doctor, but the doctor is going to say "rest it for 6 weeks". Good luck!

I went for a simple DIY paintfill and headcover as well. I'm quite please with how well it came out: It really is quite easy to do. If you have an idea for a design, go for it!

Really striped a 3 wood downwind from the elevated tee on the 425-yard 16th. Left me 145 yards for the second shot. Still bogeyed, but of course.

A new low round: 84 (+9/+6 on par 69) . The course is still recovering from the winter, but the greens are finally in shape for play. Unfortunately my scrambling isn't in shape at all: 10% up and down, with average UD first putt of 13 feet. Plenty to work on!

Flare out your front foot a quarter turn.

Titleist are good about putting this sort of information on their website. The 909 driver shaft chart shows launch vs spin for each shaft . That PDF is linked from each of the 909 driver pages on Titleist.com.

I voted mental game. Most of my misses now come when I'm not concentrating. Worse than that, a costly miss on one hole can turn into an anger-induced high number on the next. From what I see around the course, the same thing happens to a lot of other high-handicap players, even those who do a decent job of course management. Maybe low-handicap players would benefit most from improved ball striking, but I think a lot of mediocre and bad golfers could be much better if they (we) could manage their (our) mental game properly.

I've just tried Folder Actions, and it doesn't seem to work reliably---only works when you're exporting new rounds, doesn't run if you re-export to fix a typo or add notes. I'll stick to cron, I guess. No big deal!

For anyone using (Mac) Scorecard's web export: how are you automatically uploading to your web server? I've been trying to get a launchd agent to watch the folder and run rsync without success. For now I'm just running rsync every 10 minutes with cron, but there must surely be a better way. iacas, how do you do it?

Then you should take the stickers off. They'll look like this:

My Kodak Zx-1 and Gorillapod are always in my bag. That sounds awesome. I'd love to see a full framerate swing video if you have one uploaded.

First time back after two months off (!) recovering from a rib injury. Shot 46 (+12), with nothing over a double bogey. Not as good as I'd hoped, but not as bad as it could have been.

A Google search works if you add "site:thesandtrap.com" .

I haven't tried a hybrid, but I love my 2 iron and have no problems hitting it, so there's no incentive to upgrade. The courses I play encourage running the ball onto the green rather than soft landing. When I eventually replace my olden-days irons, I'm going to have to get a hybrid because most manufacturers don't seem to make 2 irons any more

A couple of reviews of folding carts from the main site: Sun Mountain Micro Cart Clicgear Cart Model 2.0

If you're already playing 9 holes, 18 isn't much different. Make sure you have plenty of water and snacks (bananas are the best) to keep yourself in good condition for the whole round. Don't try to fix your swing on the course and hit your tee shot on the first with your favourite club, even if that's a 7 iron. Good luck!

To anyone who's taken the paint off their Scotty: can you post a picture?

Headcovers keep moisture on the club and cause rust. I think it's more of a problem with forged irons (like almost all Mizunos) than cast (like most others).

I slightly pulled a muscle in my ribs from swinging too hard, but the story behind it is slightly amusing/embarrassing. Having come back after a long break and fixed my swing problems with a couple of lessons, I was hitting easy 7-irons at the range, and disappointed that they were only just making it to the white flag at 135 yards. I used to hit an easy 7-iron 150 yards, and about 160 if I went after it. So I swung harder and harder until I eventually got one to the blue flag at 155, but in doing so felt a tweak in my ribs. At my next lesson, I was asking the pro about how I could get my distance back, and lamented my 135 yard 7-iron. He pointed out that the markers at the range are in meters, not yards; the white flag was 150 yards = 135 meters. So now I feel dumb for picking up an injury and writing off two weeks of practice, and dumber for not being able to read the distance chart units