beung

I myself am not what I would consider a "great" chipper but I do ok and chips don't generally cost me strokes. I think that is the first half of the chipping equation, one chip and one chip only. Weather it be from the fringe, the rough or even the sand, get it on because one chip and two putts is better then two or three chips and having to two putt anyways. The second half is aim, where do you want to land the ball not where do you want the ball to end up. As important it is to get the ball on the putting surface you still want to give yourself a reasonable chance at making it and leaving yourself a decent putt. Sometimes this is not possible but generally there is a safe zone you can land it to achive both goals, get it on the green and getting it close. You are right in treating chips as putts because with putting you concentrate on the line and rarely is it right at the hole, you try and pick the line you want the ball to start on which will put the ball on the line to the hole. That should be no different when chipping. I see many people that I play with who look at hole when chipping as if they are going to fly it right to the edge of the cup, hole it on the fly or as though evey chip is dead straight. You should be concentrating on where do you want to land the ball and then let the contours of the green do the rest. The only other thing I am going to say about chipping is that it's generally better to take a shorter back swing and accel through the ball rather then taking a big back swing and then decel.

I am always open to giving and receiving advice about all aspects of golf and if you are not wanting to take my advice then don't. I just would hate to see you or anyone else be deterred to play golf because of the expectation that people will have of this magic ball. I am sure your understanding of me caring or not would be different if I agreed with your method of making your decision. Although I agree with your choice of ball to use I just don’t want you to have the expectation that the ball will be magical on bad shots. I myself have been using this ball for 2 years and although it performs great when shots are executed, I have found that they perform worse then other balls when the execution isn't right on. The extra spin, weather it be back-spin or side-spin is not always wanted.

On the fitting cart it was the FT-5 with the Xcon6, I did try the new burner with the xcon5 but the FT-5 combo was easily 15yrd longer. There are so many head/shaft combos that it would be impossible to tell you the one that will be the longest for you. It only takes time and money and you could find the combo that give you 10-15 more then your off the shelf driver. Then you have to ask yourself what would you rather pay for, distance or accuracey....I would probably give up 15yrd in distance to be 15yrd closer left or right to where I was aiming.

So the next time you blade a wedge shot and it doesn't check up are you going to send the ball packing? We're not talking about a slight mishit here, when I blade a shot it's a crap shoot and the results are hardly predictable. That is like saying this ball is really good because last time I hit a tree with it, the ball bounced right back to the middle of the fairway instead of it going deeper.

I don't want to bash anyone but here is my concern.... You are forming your opinion on a ball based on mishits? So how often do you blade or semi-balde your approach shots? Unless this is something you do on purpose I don't see how this can be any gauge for how "good" a ball is for you. How did the ball perform on good shots? I am not going to tell you which balls to play as long as you consistantly use the same ball. If you don't lose balls during your round then there is no reason why even a very high handicapper can't use the expensive balls but if you are losing 2-3 balls each round then I would say it's not worth the money....at $5 a ball the bill adds up quick if you lose 2-3 a round.

A few things to consider.... 1) Numbers are just that, numbers. Use them to help you with your selection but don't get fooled into thinking that just because you have certain numbers you "have" to use shaft XYZ. 2) I have very little faith in the retail stores when it comes to getting fitted or getting clubs customized. They are in the business of selling you clubs and other material goods not services. My last experience with a "retailer" was the last strew, I got my driver reshafted and although the shaft was a great shaft and it probably was something that I could live with but the knowledge level and care and attention just wasn't there. They sold me the shaft, they put it in without Spining and only alignment they did was to make sure the lable on the shaft was at 12 o'clock. The shaft started to come out of the head because they never bothered to sand the paint of the tip of the shaft. If they couldn't be bothered to do that do you think they are going to check the frequencey to make sure it's true, spine, align and tip it to make sure that it really matches your average SS? I took the club to a clubmaker, who's business is putting clubs together, they do sell clubs but mostly in pieces and they work with you to get the right pieces. Anyways, he helped me pick a shaft and I was able to hit the same head with different shafts. I picked the one that I was the most comfortable with and the numbers were still good, not much better then what I had but more consistent. He spined the shaft and double checked it even though the shaft comes with the spine mark on it but he checked it himself just in case, frequencey checked it and tipped it to get the frequencey that he thought it would work best for me. The install was free because I bought the shaft from him, the retailer charged me for the shaft and the install. So basically the better service was free while the crappy service I was charged for. Simply put get a clubmaker to help you pick your shaft, leave the retail store to do what they do best, selling you clothes, accessories and OEM equipment. It's worth the extra time and even the money to get it done right because you're going to hit better drives and probably more fairways.

Torque is the amount the shaft will twist. Generally the heavier shafts resist twisting better simply because there is usually more material to help lower the torque and re-enforce it against twisting. Now when you get to higher end shafts they use stronger and lighter materials and possibly some manufacturing techniques to keep the weight of the shaft low at the same time the torque is also low. Most 65g OEM shafts are somewhere around 3.0-3.5 and as high as 4.0 for a stiff, the higher end shafts for the similar weight are down around 2.5.

Although I do agree with you what alot of higher handicaps are "over geared" but it never hurts to have equipment that is right for you. Also, just be carefull of what you ingrain....practice doesn't make perfect, practice makes permanent. Repeating a flawed swing or a flawed piece of a swing can burn in some bad habits that could be tough to break.

It's because without the tee your swing is focused at the ball rather then through the ball. You should be accelorating through the ball not at it, this should also get you hitting the ball then the ground giving you more solid and realiable contact.

Golf is somewhat a game of opposites.... Swing down on the ball to make it go up, swing left to make the ball go right, swing right to make the ball go left. If you are having problems getting the ball in the air, then chances are you are contacting the ball as your club is on it's way up - unless it's a driver, with irons you should be hitting the ball with a decending angle. Don't try and help the ball up in the air, this is only going to make you hit the ball even thinner and make it harder to get the ball up.

TM makes the Superquad in a 8.5...unless you are a lefty. I just don't think many retailers are going to get many 8.5 in stock because 9-10.5 seems to be where 95% of the people want their drivers to be. I am sure you could order the club from the store, it just might take longer for them to get it in. You might also want to look at getting the 9.5 reshafted to lower the ball flight.

Last update for this shaft...I swapped it out on Fri. I went to the launch monitor on Fri, here are the numbers I got with my stiff UST V2 High Launch on a TM 9.5 425 TP, stock weights in the stock positions. 110 average swing speed 170 average ball speed ~13.5 launch angle ~2400 back spin I would highly recommend the UST V2 HL to anyone who had a little less swing speed then I do, maybe some one with right around 100mph, it would be perfect. I went with the Ozik xcon 6...if anyone wants some info on that shaft give me a PM.

Hmm, is 8-11 deg launch angle too low for drive? My under standing was that you wanted it somewhere between 12 and 14. I just swapped out my UST V2 High Launch out of my TM 425 TP on Fri. I went to the monitor on Fri to find a better shaft for my driver. The UST V2 HL was a good shaft, it just had too much launch angle for my liking - my numbers were similar to yours, I averaged 110mph, 170 ball speed and 13.5-14 deg launch angle and right around 2400 rpm. These were all really good numbers and the fitter was a bit hesitent to swap it out but I told him I wanted to lower the launch a bit and get to a more stiff shaft because the UST stiff wasn't stiff enough. Anyways, I went to a Matrix Ozik Xcon 6, tipped a little to have a frequencey between the stiff and the strong flex. I played on Sat and the shaft is very solid, way more stable and reliable then the V2 HL. Might not be worth the money for some but even if it didn't yield more yards (which it did) but it feels so more predictable...the extra confidence is worth more then the extra yardage it gives.

Are you going to play with it or just have it as a collector?

2 main reasons, they both have to do with control... 1) To make working the ball easier, after all working the ball can simply be a controlled mishit 2) To learn from your mishits, if every shot you hit felt the same but the results were different, how can you improve or learn from your shots? I compare it to coloring, when you're young and just starting out coloring you get those simple pictures with big shapes and generally you can use big crayons that hardly have any point, you occasionally sharpen them but they don't stay sharp for very long so you are happy with basically filling in shapes with color. As you get better at coloring you move onto more complex pictures and spots in the picture a crayon, no matter how sharp, just simply can not keep the colors within the lines. So you start coloring with something like a pencil crayon, they have a more precise point and can get into those smaller areas without going outside the lines. You may progress to markers and then finally to a paint brush and not even needing the lines anymore. Could Picasso be a better artist then just about anyone using Crayons, probably but he is at his best when using paints and brush, just like the pros on the tour, could they take any of our clubs and beat us with our own clubs, yes but they would probably beat us even more with their own clubs.

Truthfully there is nothing magical about a Scotty, I have an older newport 2.0 (the one right before they had the insert) and it's no more special then the 2-ball blade I used to have. I bought mine new for like $200 about a year ago, it is an older one but I can tell most people didn't like the insert that the newport went to so that is probably why they went back to the solid milled head. If I cart I don't even put the head cover on it, in fact I don't even know where the original head cover is. I use a Pro Plat head cover because some one gave it to me. Any retail Scotty is not really worth reselling, any played Scotty usually isn't worth reselling. Is the new Scotty worth $300, I don't know that's up to you, if it works then heck why not, you use it almost 2 times per hole....most people will spend over $400 on a driver they use probably less then 12 or 13 time per round.

Really? I don't swing much over 100mph and I usually carry my 5i about 190yrds, that is my 200yrd club because I know I am going to get some roll out of it. Pros swing at like 120 and probably can carry 200yrd with their 6i. I would supect that the OP swings right around 100mph.

This is something I have contemplated about for a while now since I am not legal when it comes to the number of clubs in the bag.... I just think that there could be too much of a distance gap between your 3i and your 4w.

I went on a shaft hunting mission this weekend.... Since no one has and club with the xcon in stock I had to use the Callaway Optifit system to try the different shafts. I tried both the Blue Board and the Xcon 6 in the store with a FT-5 9.5 head. I liked both shafts but I found that the xcon 6 had less misses to the left and it has less spin, not by much but it was less. So if it was between the Blue Board and the Xcon, I would take the Xcon. Not being satisfied with just hitting the club indoors, I wanted to see how the club performed on the course. I have a friend who works @ one of the retailer here and he let me take a Callaway Optifit driver with an Ozik xcon 6 stiff shaft with an FT-5 head, it was the 10 deg head and not the 9.5 head. Yeah, the 10 is not the tour and so it's has a bit of closed face angle but 9.5 it too popular of a loft angle for it to allowed to go missing for a couple of days Besides, I only missed one drive to the left and it was a pull not a hook. This was a great comparison to my 425 9.5 tp /w the UST V2 HL and although the heads aren't the exact same, I was more trying to see how the shaft was. The shaft (Xcon 6) is amazing, very smooth but lots of pop to it without the feeling of the sudden snap I would feel with the V2. Even though the head was 10deg on my demo the ball flight was better and the distance was longer, I don't know if that was because of the head or the shaft but the smooth action of the shaft let me swing free and the results showed it. I am going in to yet another launch monitor session on Friday to test drive more shafts to see if my seat of my pants launch monitor is varified by the actual numbers. I think I am pretty much sold on the Ozik but I am still undecided on the flex and weight. The Xcon 6 felt very solid but not heavy so the weight should be ok. As for the flex though, I am not sure if the stiff is stiff enough, the strong flex might be better for me and the X I would think is too stiff. I have given up the I-mix route since I figure once I find the combo that works for me, there is a very small chance I will be swapping head/shaft combos around...heck I haven't even moved my weights on my 425 head.

Golf is 100% about results, it doesn't really matter how the ball gets in the hole, just that is does with the fewest strokes. The ball doesn't know, nor does it care what you hit it with. Use what works best for you, heck no company is making clubs to fit me perfectly and so I might as well go out and use whatever equipment works best. Weather my $200 goes to TM, Ping, Callaway or whoever, the money is still gone, might as well be on something that works.

lol, haha you said "nipping" :P I am korean and frankly I can't tell asians apart either.

Try this drill, taking your normal grip but take your backswing with only your left hand, still have your right hand on the club but don't use it during your backswing. This should get you drawing the club back straighter instead of you pulling the club inside with your right hand.

I have said it before and I will say it again.... The ball is one of the few constants in the game, no matter what ball you play, your game will adjust to it. If you are used to your ball not having any spin and it running out all the time then your game will take that into account. If you are used to the spin and know that there will be less runout then you should take that into account as well. The reasons I would discourage high handicappers from using a Pro-V or similar ball is that it costs alot of money and generally higher handicap players tend to lose more balls. The extra spin works for and against you. Sure it's great when you can fly the ball to the hole and have it stop but that extra spin really hurts you on longer shots if you don't hit it well and get though to the core of the golfball. That extra spin will compund your slice/hook if you don't hit the ball well enough to transfer the energy to the core of the golf ball.

Well having equipment fitted to you will no doubt improve your scores but low handicappers generally have pretty solid and standard swings so the measurements that come from the factory are going to be pretty close. Unless you are sharter then like 5'7" or taller then 6'2" or so then the stock length and lie should be ok, now if you have an odd swing then the lie might have to be adjusted on your irons. With woods, the shaft is about the only thing you can get fitted for. The main problem with getting fitted to a shaft is that it costs alot more then getting fitted for irons. Usually if you buy the irons new from a store they do the fitting for you, with a driver you have to spend some time at the launch monitor and buy a new shaft and have it installed. So is the average golfer going to spend say $50 for the launch monitor, $150 for the shaft and install, so an extra $200 to gain a few more yrds on their drive - which lets face it the extra yrds just means it's even further into the trouble and there is even less chance of finding your ball

It can be done but I doubt many can or will. Tour vans can do it but many retailers are not going to be able to or even willing to. It's probably best to reshaft rather then changing the loft on the driver. Changing the loft can aslo change the face angle, I think if you deloft, the face angle will become more open.