vandyland

Haha, that is a fun topic as well. There used to be like a "worst hole design" thread on here I think that I participated in a few times. I have probably more thoughts on bad holes vs good holes.

Also, as a side note, Maltby is JAMMED right now with orders. Specifically for the TS1-IM. When I called in my order (it was fairly custom in a few ways) the sales manager was like "by the way, where did you hear about the TS1-IM....we are getting flooded with orders the past two weeks." I assume the majority of it is due to @azstu324's efforts to get the clubs into the hands of Let's Play Thru's YouTube channel and social media did the rest. They really are a very well made product for the money if you can get over needing to have brand name equipment.

@Tcswan5871 I ordered a set after testing out the TS1-IM 7 iron so they are currently being built. My thoughts were that it performed similarly on center strikes to the TS3 and TE+ V4 irons from Maltby (which I also tested) but was more forgiving out on the toe which is where I miss it. It is *slightly* and I do mean slightly lower spinning than the other two BUT it launches higher so it still has good stopping power. I am coming from the Ben Hogan PTxPro irons which are also tungsten toe irons (only through the 7 iron) and I found the TS1-IM to be easier to hit. They also get through the turf well despite having a narrower sole (I am fairly steep coming into the ball so that is important for me). Things you may not like if you haven't seen Maltby irons in person before: The length of the head is slightly longer than most "players" irons. That is a maltby design principle. It was a little strange at first but I have gotten used to it. They are quite understated (I like that), don't have much offset and top line is slim-ish. For some people (like me) those are all good things.

Golfworks is building my TS1-IM with the red/white/blue 3 ring custom ferrules for a nominal fee.

Per Monte, he thinks it comes from me bending my trail arm too early. So I *think* if I keep my trail arm more disciplined it will raise my overall lead arm angle/swing angle AND be more repeatable. Just a hard habit to break like all swing issues.

I will be back to updating this thread in a week, I have a pinched nerve so I am taking a body break here for 4-5 days.

Hit balls on Sunday (which was a mistake for my body as I am battling a pinched nerve) and played 18 holes and have noticed a few things. (1) Backswing is getting flat again (not sure if I should care or not). I find I hit the ball better that way so maybe that is all I need to know there. (2) Squared front foot (rather than flared open) seems to help me control the early firing of my hips better and get my hands down faster (3) I was starting to watch the club going back again so trying to focus more on the ball. (4) Early wrist set is still key (and will always be), a late wrist set is very hard to time consistently unless you are Gary Woodland Will probably need to take the rest of the week off from hitting balls and exercising as my pinched nerve in my neck is not going away with all this activity (obviously).

It's tricky but we all know how much power the players have. As someone who rarely, if ever, drinks...it is not my scene. On the other hand, for my friends that are not golfers, this is like the only non-major tournament they can name. I was at a super bowl watch party last night and one guy was like "I love the kickoff event for the PGA Tour in Phoenix" and I was like "they have already played like 5 events this year.... To expand this, the tour just got a big investment from Private Equity and this has become a very visible event for the tour. They are going to have to manage this carefully. Almost like a star player that keeps getting in trouble (Ja Morant maybe?). Again, I would HATE being at the WMPO but it gets eyeballs (though I am curious what their viewership was this year with the playoff getting pushed into the Super Bowl). Again, as an entertainment product, this delivers. As a golf competition/tournament, it has gotten WAAY out of control. Which is more important for the ultimate success of the tour?

Date 02/11/2024 Course Name Hillwood Country Club Gross Score 79 Course Handicap 4 Gross Strokes over/under par 7 Net Score to Par 3 Net Score 75 Net Birdies or better 2 Longest Drive 279 SIM Round? Last round before they shut my course down for restoration. Unfortunately, still battling a pinched nerve in my neck (or at least that is my excuse)

Personally, I don't think I would ever want to go to the WMPO but, they do have an identity. A lot of lower level tournaments would kill to have that kind of engagement (hate that word but there it is) and it seems to reach a lot of "non-golf fans." The flipside is this is what WMPO sets themselves up for. They basically want the biggest party they can get and it seems to get bigger every year. I think eventually the players might start to push back.

I'm in!

A revelation tonight. It is not my lighting (the camera is infrared) but rather my strike. Upon warming up with the impact vision camera EVERYTHING was toe side. So I spent the next 30 minutes drilling a more centered contact through experimentation. The extreme toes I can feel but the slight toes are more subtle. Another good indicator beyond impact vision is smash factor. Basically any smash factor for me under 1.31 is probably fairly toe side. After getting more and more 1.36, 1.38 smash factor VOILA! My carry numbers looked much more reasonable. It wasn’t the unit…it was me. HAHA. This is about 40 shots with no deletes and I finally got up to 163 yd carry with *great* strikes carrying closer to 172 yds. I also hit some smoother shots as well but this is now a very important instructional tool for me. A very exciting night! Worth every penny so far! And when I say toe shot, I mean TOE and look at that smash factor of 1.23, yuck: Versus a really solid strike:

Well, I think I am already getting my money’s worth out of my MLM2Pro. I have found two things very valuable, (1) impact vision and (2) smash factor. I have a toe miss that was particularly bad this week and I could finally SEE it on impact vision and basically any 7 iron shot with a smash factor of less than 1.31. I spent about 30 minutes working on my center face contact and I *think* I was taking the club back with a slightly open face and then it was staying open a bit coming into impact, presenting the toe.

I am currently enjoying my MLM2Pro at the moment (have only had it for a couple of weeks so far). I have an unofficial review of it in my signature that is on-going. One test I have not yet tried is standard balls out on a golf course (as mentioned the MLM2Pro has special balls to read spin). I would not want to lose those though you can (supposedly) buy RPT balls on ebay and other places.

I am thinking I will fire up E6 next week after ATT upgrades me to Fiber internet this weekend. We will see if it is truly 20x faster. I need a more stable internet signal coming outdoors before I start burning my free trials.

It's interesting, I didn't have this issue when I was comparing the MLM2Pro at the trackman bay or on the range. My assumption (warning, warning! that must be proven!) is that I am fearful of hitting a shank in my courtyard which is making me stray towards to the toe, which is insane to say but possibly akin to Indoor Swing Syndrome where people cannot swing fast inside. I am going to work with the swing vision more tonight and this week to see if I can stray towards the center/heel a bit more. Also, I think the swing vision gives you a little bit of insight into path and face to path even though it isn't displaying any numbers.

Well the MLM2Pro has impressed me again. Today, I am talking about "Impact Vision" where you can see the club path coming into the ball and where you are striking the ball at impact (hence the name). I previously did not know where to access this but I started reviewing video last night and I noticed you could toggle between the full swing camera (not that useful to me since the view point is really low) and the impact vision. It revealed that I am hitting a lot of shots on the toe side which is probably the biggest reason why I am seeing so many shots coming up short. At the risk of embarrassing myself, here are a few examples... Talk about a toe strike…wow…that almost missed the clubface. You can see how it twist the club massively after impact. Not great by me but excellent feedback! And this one might be the worst! I think I probably missed all my grooves here it was so far out on the toe. Amazing insight.

I ask because I am basically the same. About -4.4 down with a 7 iron. I had always assumed I needed more of a V-Sole, wider sole and...to be fair...those worked fine. But I got into this TS1-IM which had a narrower sole and my first thought was that it wasn't going to get through the turf. But it does, beautifully I might add. So score another one for "don't just blindly follow the common logic/marketing" and test stuff yourself.

@Syks7What kind of attack angle and divot do you take?

Just did a test side by side with Rapsodo MLM2Pro vs Trackman and, for me, they are so close it really makes me feel good about my purchase. I saw the largest deviation in launch angle but ball flights matched 100% of the time, carry, swing speed and ball speed were all quite close. Biggest advantage trackman has is the club path data but I am not sure that is worth $20k.

So, my thoughts (however flawed) are that most of the technological improvements in the last several years with drivers is that there are more "profiles" available with multiple heads and that the faces have gotten better (across most all OEMs) at retaining ball speed no matter where you hit it. Let me put down two players and where I think they might or might not get much help: Player 1: Hits the ball all over the face and generally has trouble keeping spin down (somewhere in the 3000+ rpm territory). To me, this is the player that most benefits from today's advancements in technology. Most major OEMs have a lowest spin, lowish spin and moderate spin option head now. Since this player misses the center of the face a lot, they need some of these "enhancements" but would need to verify that with a fitting where they see their general miss with both their current gamer and a new challenger driver(s). Player 2: Hits the ball in the center most all the time and already has a pretty good spin profile on their ball. Even if this player has a 3-4 year old driver, I don't think they are going to see a material change in performance with a new driver. This is all anecdotal. Personally, I am closer to "Player A" than "Player B". I was happy with my Cobra Radspeed XB driver but then I got a chance to hit the Mizuno ST-Z 230 driver and I noticed that on dead center strikes, the drivers were very similar in performance. But on toe/heel strikes, the Mizuno was waaay better. Not just in ball speed but also staying straight. And in general I think you see that with the new Pings and TaylorMades as well. One note on Cobra, I think they are chasing absolute ball speed so I would think the darkspeed would likely be faster than your current driver by a decent margin but maybe not any more forgiving...I could be wrong.

The FST 125 shafts are currently $11.95 and the Score LT shafts $9.99. So just a $2 difference. I am sure the Scores are good too I just like the FST in that it has similar profile to the KBS Tour and is slightly heavier than the Score LTs. I have never had a set built where the total shaft weight gradually declines (all the FST 125 shafts are cut from a 43" shaft to their correct size) but I can talk myself into that could work out well for me. The heads get slightly heavier through the set as the shafts get slightly lighter so your total weight doesn't change much but the relative weight of the head to the weight of the shaft will change more. A fun experiment and I may not even notice the difference (I am not overly sensitive to iron shafts I have found). On the numbers above there are two numbers from the TS1-IM that stand out. One is the short, left shot on the dispersion chart that I wrote "terrible" next to on the excel summary. I hit that WAAAY out on the toe and it still went fairly straight and only lost about 6 yds of total carry vs a good strike. The other is maybe a slight indication of a possible "jumpy" ball (the longest one) was the last one where I caught one dead center and it went about 6 yds farther. You'll notice how tightly bunched the carry distances are with the Hogans, that is their strength. The TS1-IMs strength, to me, is forgiveness while still providing some feel/feedback. As of right now, I am comfortable with the slight chance of a jumper if it gives me some relief on off-center shots. Quite often, that is the tradeoff.

Did a Rapsodo MLM2Pro Combine last night with targets at 110 yds, 130 yds and the usually driving component and my score went up to 70.0 which was an overall HDCP score of 3.8 (about right). My distance/accuracy hdcp for the 110 yd shot was +1.4 HDCP level, the 130 yd shot was 7.4 HDCP and the Driving was a 4.9 HDCP (I was hitting them left tonight). I was found something that worked better in my takeaway and I felt a more deliberate dropping of my arms in the downswing which was helping with overall contact but I overdid it a tad (I was exaggerating) and that led to some left shots but overall pleased with the session.

Great thread topic! Let me get my caveats out there first: (1) It is good to have a variety of golf course styles, types, etc. Something for everyone (2) This is just what I prefer to play (described below) not what I think EVERYONE should agree is a great golf course I prefer W I D E R golf courses (think landing zones or fairways at least 50 yds wide) with more of the challenge or demand placed on the approach shot rather than off the tee. I like golf courses that give you OPTIONS off the tee rather than "hit it here or else" or courses that give you an easy out of the tee vs a challenging line of the tee that will give you a reward. I think a variety of hole templates (short 4s, long 4s, doglegs, redans, etc) keeps things interesting. Not a ton of OB or blocked out shots. Golf courses that fit this description: Pursell Farms (Farm Links), Mammoth Dunes, We-Ko-Pa Saguaro, Tobacco Road, Kapalua Plantation Golf courses that are the antithesis of this: Harbour Town, Caledonia Golf and Fish Club, Colonial, Sahalee Country Club, many other Florida coast residential courses

Got on Trackman today and saw enough out of the TS1-IM to where I bought a full set, 5-GW. Would highly recommend emailing them for a quote for anything that is off menu. I thought I was going to have to go the custom route to get FST 125 shafts and when I called they told me that. Then I just emailed for a quote and got the standard pak price for just $2 extra per shaft which saved me like $100. Also, here are the trackman numbers I got between my gamer and the TS1-IM (there is a 1.5* loft difference between them): The TS1-IMs spin a little less, bias a little more right (less offset) but carry farther (spin and carry down to loft differences I presume). But overall they feel great and perform very well.