EPTAs for drivers, most companies have caught up to TM by now. I have an R11 9 degree that has served me pretty well, but I've been trying out the Titleist drivers which I think I will go to next.
TL Golf Thread - Page 4
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TheEmulator
28095 Posts
As for drivers, most companies have caught up to TM by now. I have an R11 9 degree that has served me pretty well, but I've been trying out the Titleist drivers which I think I will go to next. | ||
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
On April 09 2014 04:53 TheEmulator wrote: I have 3 titleist vokey spin milled wedges too. And they are amazing. I have a 48, 54, and 62. As for drivers, most companies have caught up to TM by now. I have an R11 9 degree that has served me pretty well, but I've been trying out the Titleist drivers which I think I will go to next. 62! That's crazy amount of loft, but I did even see 64's. I love the 60 for higher shots around the green, but it frustrates me on full wedge shots. It seems like maybe one out of every 4 the wedge kinda slips under the ball, and it only travels about 70 yards instead of the usual 110. Never figured out why, and no other club does that for me. Not a huge issue though, as generally I like playing little 54 wedge shots in that 80-130 range | ||
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GettingIt
1656 Posts
Btw L_Master you should never use a full swing on a lofted wedge, even a 3/4 swing is pushing it if you are at 56 or above. That may be why you going under it. | ||
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supernovamaniac
United States3047 Posts
On April 09 2014 04:53 TheEmulator wrote: I have 3 titleist vokey spin milled wedges too. And they are amazing. I have a 48, 54, and 62. As for drivers, most companies have caught up to TM by now. I have an R11 9 degree that has served me pretty well, but I've been trying out the Titleist drivers which I think I will go to next. I would say Titleist were always behind TM when it came to the drivers, as many people around me have been using them. I just prefer TM for some reason. Heavier driver, but solid feel. I tried switching to callaway once but man, that thing felt like a toy. | ||
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
On April 09 2014 05:39 GettingIt wrote: I don't understand why people need more loft than the 60 degree wedge when all you need to do is open the club head a bit more. For amateurs playing typical courses I can't see it ever being necessary. The advantage from a higher lofted wedge is that you can play even crazy spinny shots around the green or throw it up even higher for some mega flop. A flared wide open 64 has higher trajectory/more stopping power than a flared open 60. However, rarely; if ever, does any normal course require that extreme of a shot. Courses don't typically run at 14+ on the stimp  Btw L_Master you should never use a full swing on a lofted wedge, even a 3/4 swing is pushing it if you are at 56 or above. That may be why you going under it. Haha, I definitely do not on the course. In fact I prefer to play my wedge shots a bit punchy if anything, unless it's a shot that just needs to be throw up into the sky. Still don't quite understand why it's possible to slide under it like that though, as clearly something changes from the full swing and the less than full effort. It can't be a product purely of club-head speed as a guy like Sadlowski can knock a 60 130+. | ||
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GettingIt
1656 Posts
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
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micronesia
United States24751 Posts
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supernovamaniac
United States3047 Posts
On April 12 2014 23:55 micronesia wrote: Okay I'm going to the range today... going to see what happened after... a year and a half or so. My guess is I will be unable to strike the ball decently with any club! I thought so too when I went to the range for the first time since before moving out to Korea. But then I hit 270+ with my driver on my second swing, slight draw. You never know  | ||
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
After that got the speed down and putted pretty well. All in all not too disastrous. | ||
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micronesia
United States24751 Posts
I went yesterday and was able to pitch some balls ~50 yards with some success. Full swing was pretty disastrous with a few exceptions. Gonna need some on-site help it looks like. | ||
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micronesia
United States24751 Posts
He took a look at me hitting a few balls with an iron and then asked me to vocalize my pre-shot routine/thoughts. He said everything seems perfectly fine except he suggested making one minor adjustment to my grip: moving my left-hand thumb clockwise around the grip a bit. He said my thumb positioning might explain why I often have the club open at impact when I hit a bad shot. While I was getting used to that (which felt good, but was making me mishit the ball) he had me move the ball all the way up in my stance with a short iron, and told me to try to hit the ball before hitting the mat, recognizing that this is not normally where you would hit the ball. This seemed to force me to rotate my chest more, and gave me a more complete follow-through. When we moved the ball back to a more normal spot in the stance I was still rotating my upper body such that my finishing position had my right shoulder well in front of my left shoulder (which I am able to do with my current level of flexibility) Next we worked on my balance (another thing I seem to be able to point to when I hit a bad shot). He told me to swing the club in a perfectly horizontal plane like a baseball bat, and practice shifting my weight to the area between my left heal and the ball of my foot (instead of on the toes where I tend to go when I am not balanced). I then took a few swings on a slightly tilted plane, but with the club still passing above the ball. Finally, I returned to a plane where I can hit the ball. I was less likely to have my weight too far forward while hitting balls, but that seems to be a work in progress. The nice thing is it's easy to feel when I'm on my toes while swinging, and I can take a few practice swings like a baseball bat to get the feeling at any time.... even out on the course if necessary. Finally, he saw I was swinging on too vertical of a plane. He used visual targets for me to bring the club back more inside, giving my backswing a more correct plane. He said there are more things we can do (such as with the backswing) but he doesn't want to give me too many technical things to try to work on. He said to do at least 2-3 practice sessions on my own before we work together anymore (which might take me a bit since I'm only practicing on weekends right now). He said my gear seems good except that my driver might not be matching up well with me, but I don't consider the driver a high-priority club to be honest... so I won't worry about it now. He seems eager in the future to work on short game on the chipping/putting green and with some more pitching, although we did a bit of pitching today. He commented that being comfortable with 60 yard pitches, and with your woods, means you should be able to swing well with any of the clubs in between, since they are just the two opposite extremes of the same motions. I'm pretty pleased with how today went. After practicing my long game a few times like he requested and doing one more lesson with him (probably mostly short game) I hope to start playing actual golf. | ||
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
He said everything seems perfectly fine except he suggested making one minor adjustment to my grip: moving my left-hand thumb clockwise around the grip a bit. He said my thumb positioning might explain why I often have the club open at impact when I hit a bad shot. This is referred to as a strong or weak grip. Most players play slightly strong, primarily because this will put you a little shut at the top with a flat left wrist, which allows you to just fire the right side and hold on, but it can vary. It's definitely easier to hit the ball to the right with a weaker grip as it puts the club in a more open position at the top, and the wrist needing to be more rotated at impact. Just to be clear, what a neutral grip means is that if you swing to the top and have a flat left wrist the clubface will point at the same angle as your left arm. With a strong grip and flat left wrist the club will be slightly skyward (closed) at the top. Strong Grip: ![[image loading]](http://www.aroundhawaii.com/assets/articles/2012/04/2574/images/p2.jpg) | ||
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micronesia
United States24751 Posts
When I first started hitting with a PW or something, I was either going fat or doing something weird and not getting a normal amount of distance or high enough trajectory. However, after hitting for a little while I found I was doing fairly well with pretty much all of my clubs. I'm going to do another lesson tomorrow (#2) where we hopefully fine tune my long game a bit and then work on short game. After that, if things seem to be going well, I'll plan to start playing actual golf next weekend. If I'm really lucky, the range at the course near where I live will actually be open by then! Driving two towns over just to go to the driving range is a PITA. edit: thoughts on the improvements the pro wanted me to make:
edit 2: I'm going to keep my scorecards once I start playing and establish a handicap asap | ||
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micronesia
United States24751 Posts
Putting the depression aside, I need to figure out how to record my score correctly. I know that there is a way to determine the maximum score you can post for handicapping purposes based on your handicap and the slope/rating of the course. However, if you don't yet have a handicap established, how do you determine the maximum number of strokes? I had several holes where I got up to 8 and just stopped counting, but I'm not sure what the max should be. Edit: one unofficial site I found says to use an effective handicap of 36.4 until I establish my own, and thus the max score I can post seems to be 9. | ||
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
I did my second lesson today, and then went to try playing 9 holes (first time playing in a year and half). It was an utter disaster. All of the shots I could hit nicely on the range (with or without help from the pro) I could not hit on the course. Putting aside bad lies and other situations on a course that are much different than the range, I couldn't even hit easy shots from perfect lies. Don't stress too much about this. Golf swing work, 99.9999% of the time is a process of going like 6 steps back and then 7 forward. You can get significantly worse for a while during swing changes. If you are thinking about them on course, you are trying to make a unnatural (at the moment) action work, or if you aren't and just try to play normally you still have problems because you are beginning to ingrain the other new habits and you can struggle from the conflict. It's also much different to do it on the range than on the course, even if in theory a flat, good lie should be the same thing...it's much different. Not only are you worried about actually trying to play golf, aim, worry about targets, etc.; you also aren't hitting a ball every 30-120s like you are on the range. Bottom line, don't let playing bad while working on your swing stress you out. Once it gets real comfortable you'll start to see the improvement come. I need to figure out how to record my score correctly. I know that there is a way to determine the maximum score you can post for handicapping purposes based on your handicap and the slope/rating of the course. However, if you don't yet have a handicap established, how do you determine the maximum number of strokes? I had several holes where I got up to 8 and just stopped counting, but I'm not sure what the max should be. Per USGA rules until you have a handicap index, you use an assumed index of 36.4, the max allowable. However, this does not necessarily mean 9 is your max score, as for ESC you must use your course handicap, which is a result of your handicap and the courses slope rating. Simply put: CH = (Handicap * Course Slope) / 113, then rounded to nearest whole number. For practical purposes, until you have a handicap index, if the slope of the course from your set of tees is 123 or higher, you can take no higher than a 10 on any hole. If the course slope is 122 or less, then you can take no higher than a 9. | ||
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micronesia
United States24751 Posts
As for course handicap... the slope of the course I played on was 129, so I guess the max score for handicapping is 10. Unfortunately, I lost count at about 8, as I said, so I'm not sure for my 'max' holes if I really made it to 10 in each case or not. I think I'll just alternate between 9 and 10 for any holes I had like that for a best guess. In the long run this won't matter at all, of course. Unrelated, but apparently my boss' boss is going to get me into his golf game! This could either be a really good thing or a really BAD thing LOL The good news is (for me, anyway), he has a cast on his wrist right now so I should have some time to improve my game before he invites me to play! I'm just worried he will try to hook me up with his super-powerful golf brethren before I have a chance to get my swing in order. | ||
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L_Master
United States8017 Posts
On April 30 2014 09:53 micronesia wrote: Thanks L_Maser, I'm going to hop back on the horse this weekend. As for course handicap... the slope of the course I played on was 129, so I guess the max score for handicapping is 10. Unfortunately, I lost count at about 8, as I said, so I'm not sure for my 'max' holes if I really made it to 10 in each case or not. I think I'll just alternate between 9 and 10 for any holes I had like that for a best guess. In the long run this won't matter at all, of course. USGA actually has prepared for this as well. Basically the rule is if you didn't finish a hole, didn't play under the rules of golf, can't remember, or a giant bald eagle snatched your ball (actually there is a different rule for that but...) you use your handicap to decide what score to take. You record a score of par plus your normal number of handicap strokes allotted. So in the case of playing at CH 40, you would take double bogey, except on the wholes handicapped 1, 2, 3, and 4, on which you would take triple. Actually though, in this case you say you can't remember; so the provision is to use the most likely score you would have made. If you were at 8 and lost count, probably would be best to take a 10 unless you had like a 2 footer left for 9. The good news is (for me, anyway), he has a cast on his wrist right now so I should have some time to improve my game before he invites me to play! I'm just worried he will try to hook me up with his super-powerful golf brethren before I have a chance to get my swing in order. As far as playing with the boss goes, you'll probably be noticeable worse at your level, but not all exec/managers are that great. It's unlikely to be you and three 70s shooters. Obviously be conscious of etiquette; repairing divots, fixing ball marks, lines while putting, sweating, etc. Then just watch pace of play; don't be afraid to offer to pick up on a hole if you're really not getting anywhere on it, and be ready to play when it's your turn. Have club/yardage all figured out ahead of time and be ready to go. | ||
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TheEmulator
28095 Posts
edit: oh wait, please tell me you meant swearing? | ||
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GettingIt
1656 Posts
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