Gebus

I may not have a single digit handicap but its from putting not striking I don't know many players with my handicap who average around 30 putts per round... I really like to shape the ball it is how I control my distances, if I am between a 7 and 8 iron I'll hit a high cut fade to shave the distance, if I need just a little extra out of a 6 iron I'll draw it a bit giving me maybe 4 or 5 yards. My misses are either I under draw or over fade by maybe 5 or 6 yards I am not quite sure why I do this but luckily it only happens about once or twice a round.

I hope they were Pro V1s find enough of them and you can pay the round!

Coming out of a technologist degree where I spend a lot of time in an optics/photonics lab I absolutely agree with you that polarized lenses reduce glare but fail to see the a need to reduce glare to such a degree on the golf course, that is why I did not mention it. I have played in most light conditions dawn to dusk (and night for that matter just don't tell the club) and have never really been annoyed by glare. I don't see how that could ever be a problem seeing as almost every golfer I have ever seen (including myself) that wears sunglasses removes them on the green. My habit is as soon as my glove comes off my sunglasses comes off.

As a struggling student I feel your pain for not wanting to lose 5$ golf balls, it was a happy day when I made the university team with the titleist sponsorship that comes with it. My best suggestion to you is check out lostgolfballs.com and pickup some PROV1s their. Trust me its worth having the best ball possible. By the way if you do want to have a complete set make sure you buy them this year as of next year finding wedges with old grooves will be VERY difficult, to the point that some of my teammates and I ordered two of each wedge this season.

One of my last rounds last year I shot a 76 with 21 putts (4 hole outs(2 with 7 irons from 170)) sadly it was not on the same day that I hit 13 greens in regulation or that would have been a great round.

Just bought that frogger brush/wedge pick tool thingy works great but is a little big, kind of stands out on my bag...

Yes and No. A higher bounce wedge will help reducing the chances of hitting fat in a really fluffy lie and something with a smaller bounce will dig a bit better on a firm lie but you can never forget is that the more you lower the bonce the more difficult that wedge is going to be hit out of any lie. Like Bob Vokey has said "bounce is your friend".

What you are describing is a driver that has way too much spin, I find it hard to believe that a 6 handicap requires a 11* driver try demoing the same driver with a 9.5*, the low kickpoint shaft should still get that high launch angle you want without all the spin. If you didn't already know the ideal driver launch is 12-15* at around 3600 rpm of spin.

Okay very simply the bounce is the angle that the sole of the club makes with the ground. Less bounce the club will dig more, more bounce the club will dig less. I cannot tell you what bounce is right for you and nobody else can without seeing your swing. My only suggestion is don't go out and buy a wedge with very little bounce just because your fairways are firm because you will be swearing fast, I don't care if you play on pavement, unless your a PGA calliber player you cannot play with a 4* bounce 56* wedge.

like Topwalker said it could be the ball your are playing but more importantly how you hit the ball, on a 50 yard shot I can do everything from have the ball release 30 feet to spin backwards 10-15 feet depending on how I strike the ball. My guess is that changing your ball to something like the PROV1 will probably have more effect than changing the wedge. One suggestion I can give you though some may disagree with me is try to keep your wedges in sets. Try not to have one vokey one cleveland and one adams in a set as it will be much harder to gain confidence in three different wedges than one wedge in three differn't loss. One way to cheat and see if it is the wedge or the ball or simply the swing try this: hit your 50 yard shot but make sure your hands lead the club all the way through (lock your wrists) keep the ball a little back in your stance with your feet close together and make a up-down swing path (as opposed to inside outside) and hit down on the ball,. If the ball doesn't at least check up with that swing the equipment is the issue.

My mom works for an optometrist so I have many (more than 10) pairs of sunglasses. I also require corrective lenses and I wear dailies (because I am lazy). The best sunglasses for golf by far are Oakleys with their G30 lenses. I have Flak Jaket XLJs with the G30 lenses and it reveals contrast. If I am looking down the fairway I can see they way the hills are shaped at 300 yards its fantastic. The one downside is that the lenses are like pink in color which isn't very manly. Polarized lenses are mostly useless for golf unless you lose a lot of balls in the water and have a tendency to look for them because that is the main use of polarized sunglasses, looking into water.

I almost never hit a full swing with my 56* wedge that is what the 52* wedge is there for (it has lest bounce as well so I can carve the ball of the fairway as opposed to bouncing of it with my 56*). Other than that I tend to use all my wedges (and irons for that matter) for chipping. If you are comfortable hitting a full swing with your 56* I would suggest getting a 60* wedge, I dont know what I would do without my 60* wedge.

I play this game alot with my friends. Our rules are special, the putter is off limits a player always has a putter. We limit to 6 clubs: Driver, Fairway wood, Hybrid, 5 iron 7 iron and wedge (and putter obviously). Usually we are three players with comparable handicaps. If Player A wins a hole he takes a club from player B and player C. Any player must have at least one club (other than his putter), if said player loses a hole he is immune to losing clubs. A player can use any of the clubs in his bag, his clubs and the clubs he has taken from another player. Here's were our game gets special, the bonuses: Hole out from off the green (not including the fringe) and get all your clubs back. Hit another players ball and take all but one of his clubs (balls on green are immune) Ball out of bounds off the tee means loss of driver (for entire round, player who hits ball out of bounds may not play a driver for the rest of the round) We tend to play this on a short nine hole, strategy is almost more important than how you play, some times you'll play a putter on the fairway in attempt to hit another players ball at the risk of losing a stroke. I really like playing this game because you usually lose the big clubs quickly so you start practicing your irons and wedge play. A quick story about one of the best time we played (at least for me). The first hole of the course we usually play is really tight with out of bounds right so we usually hit a hybrid, I won the Rock-Paper-Scissors so I went last. My friends choose not even to hit hybrids but to hit the 5 iron, after their shots they were maybe 5 yards apart in the middle of the fairway. I chose to follow them with the 5 iron and hit a perfect shot down the fairway, once it started to bounce we notice I had hit the ball in the back of the two already on the fairway. Once we reached the balls I had hit the one in the back and was two feet behind the other ball. A quick putt and I had all my buddies clubs, all they had were wedges. As you can imagine I won 18-0-0 luckiest 5 iron I've ever hit.

Unless I am mistaken all fujikura shafts are made in japan and they ship them to wherever their customer (taylormade) assembles the club.

I played nine holes with just a 7 iron (no putter, I putted left handed with the back of the 7 iron) for a bet with my friends and I shot a 52, would have been better but I got stuck in a deep bunker...

The shafts are almost certainly the same the only difference is the graphics, Fujikura simply makes a taylormade branded speeder 757 for taylormade same way Aldila makes a voodoo shaft for the new zero limit driver from cobra.

I work in a pro-shop at a golf course, our biggest competitor is a store called Golf town, which is pretty much the Canadian version of golf galaxy. They send me in to spy on prices and deals so that we can stay on par with them (because you know you will drive thirty minutes to save 5 dollars on a new driver... once I've spent thirty minutes fitting you of course). Sometimes I feel like seeing their sales strategy. I went in and told them I needed a new driver and had no idea what I wanted. With out any emotion he grabs a Ping Rapture V2 12* regular shaft and put me in the simulator. I have a 112 mph driver swing and as you can see I am used to a 9.5* driver with a stiff shaft, as you can imagine I was hitting it 250 yards straight up getting like 200 hundred carry, I asked him if it was the right specs for me and he said "absolutely" (face-Palmy). He simply picked the most expensive driver he had in stock and put it in my hands, its horrible.

For reading break, Imagine if you poured a bucket of water on the green that didnt seep in, what direction would it go that's how its going to break. The next step is to split the path of the ball in three, the ball is not really going to break on the first third (except for some extreme hills) because that is when the ball is moving the fastest, start trying to read break from two thirds onward. The ball is going to break the fastest on the last third so read more break there. Never forget that on a breaking putt 85% of misses finish below the hole so always read a tad more break than you think. For your four footer problem my bet is your yipping it a bit. My best advice is to make sure your routine doesn't change between a four for forty footer putt. You should still be reading break in a four foot putt but the break into three rule still applies. Hope that helps.

If your thinking about getting new wedges don't forget to look at/try Vokeys, I know that may sound like sponsor talk(by looking at my bag) but they don't give me the clubs. I have played Cleveland my last set were actually all CG12 and they are good but when comparing them to Vokeys is like comparing butter knives to scalpels. Also look at scratch golf, they have different wedge grinds for different swings which can really help if you take a lot of full swings with your wedges.

I have hit the slingshots for a round (forgot my bag at home borrowed a buddies set), as you say they are on the heavy side, I compare them to lead shovels. I have nothing against the nikes but I would suggest an iron set more along the lines of the Adams a7 or even better a7os if you can afford the difference in price. They are "hybrid irons" giving great forgiveness while staying more along the lines of a traditional shape/weight. For danieldrieberg that posted before me with a 7 handicap with slingshots it would be great to see what you could do with a more player's style iron set, you could probably drop that number down quite a bit.

Thanks for all the advice everybody this forum is great. Using google maps and the pen tool is going to save me a load of time, that's probably what I am going to do. For the printing as I said I am not going to worry about it, it isn't part of my task so I am just going to have the prototype made at the ups store and let the course worry about the rest. Thanks again everybody.

I am not too worried about the book becoming obsolete, in Quebec technology seems to arrive ten years late, I've met scratch golfers that are amazed when the see a range finder. Anyways it's not really my problem at this point, my golf course wants it so now I have to go ahead and make it, I am just looking for suggestions to make it a little easier for me.

The golf course I am talking about is not a nice private course its a small public course. They have not printed new scorecards in like ten years so some of the pictures are a little out of date, as for the print shop I am at least going to make the "prototype" at the ups store and if the course really likes it we will have it done at another print shop.

The golf course I recently started working for likes the idea I had for making a yardage book for the course that can be sold at the Pro shop. Being the person I am, I really didn't think about it before suggesting it. I have seen what a yardage book should look like and have the range finder and other tools for the job. I could use some help on actually making the book, my plans thus far are: 1) walk the course, hand draw every hole in a notebook with all the necessary yardages 2) hand draw the shape of the green (to put on the back of each hole with space for the player to write notes on how the hole breaks) 3)Once all the holes are done use Photoshop (which I am fairly capable with) to redraw all the holes and yardages and greens in proper sized Jpegs. 4) bring all the jpegs to the ups store (I get discounts because I am a student) to print and bind them. This is easily a 15 hour job just on photoshop to make it all look nice (which is 10 more than I really wanted to spend on it) I was wondering if there are any other software(or methods for that matter) for making a yardage book that is presentable enough to sell.

I have tried all the major brands hybrids (Ping, Titleist, Taylormade etc) and the Taylormade Raylor is fantastic out of the rough, it doesn't get caught up it just slices through the thicket. I like to shape my shots a little so I prefer the smaller Titleist 909H but if I had to chose a hybrid just for the rough I would take the Raylor.