RichL85

Better than me. In my head I always had more of a Jim Furyk-ish swing. Try thinking your way through that one on the course while playing off-handed.

Swing feels like it's making progress. Still plenty of things to work on, but I would take this result from a 5-iron any day on the course.

Went to the range today to get some video to send to the coach. Got some video hitting some 5-irons and more importantly, driver. With the driver giving me trouble with the hooks lately, I really wanted to get another pair of eyes on the swing. Hit a few 3 woods off the deck and still happy with the decision on that one. Spent about half of the bucket working on different distances with my wedges. I find it a little strange, but I have to focus on feeling like I am moving the left hip back more than usual to make solid contact with the wedges. It almost feels like a different movement to me, but I definitely needed to work on it. Finished with about 20 balls around the chipping area. I think the immediate future practice plans are going to focus a lot on short game and driver. I'm feeling comfortable with the hybrids and irons, but those other areas are going to be able to improve my scores.

That comment on increasing the left knee bend on the backswing makes me feel better that it is not just me that struggles there. When I do it correctly I feel like I'm able to load into that leg and push off, but if I don't, I just kind of shift to the left and it throws my swing out of sync. That's the biggest thing I've been working on recently. Like you said, if it lines up correctly, I can easily get an extra 3-5 mph out of my swing and not actually put any extra effort in.

Very true. Original intent is one thing, but there will always be the people that want to tinker and play with things. FWIW, I would much rather swap a weight to play with swing weight than to throw lead tape on the club or go through the process of taking the club apart to add a tip weight and reassemble. On the other hand, I definitely understand the concept of not wanting uninformed people messing with the original designs and intentions of my product too much. I've seen a ton of damage to equipment that the company I work for manufactures because a client's plant operator adjusted something without really understanding what that change physically does to the machine. Can't win either way honestly. I like the theory for being able to make those fine tweaks during the fitting, but we all know that there is a market for the people that want to play around and adjust after the fact.

That's actually their thing. Those back weights are primarily for them to adjust swingweight during a fitting. They actually mention on the website that they are not intended to be changed by the end user. The same weight is on the back of my Gen 4 and they swapped a heavier weight during the build to increase the swingweight a few points for me.

During my fitting last week the fitter and I talked about needing options to deal with the holes where driver is too long. To give an idea what I mean by that I didn't hit driver until the 8th hole today. My course has 3 different 9's and the "Valley" 9 has a lot of fairly short 330-380 yard par 4s with dog legs right around the 200 yard spot. Hit mostly hybrids off the tee to start and got to use driver more on the back 9. Ended up shooting 43/44 for an 87. For someone that had only broken 90 once before this year, I feel like I can see the improvements. It was honestly one of those weird days where I felt that overall I hit the ball well, I just didn't score well. Had a painful 3 putt when my first putt hit some goose droppings and just died. Was going to be tough enough to 2 putt from 60+ feet, but that did not help. For new clubs that I didn't dial in the distances yet, I hit some shots long but for the most part my approaches were just a little off to the right. This hole was a combination of both. Hit it a little long and to the right and it took a wicked bounce long. A few missed opportunities with some wedges and just not quite doing enough with the short game to give myself shorter first putts and the round could have been so much better. If that's my mediocre game now, I'm ecstatic compared to where I was. The PXG irons have such a different sound than I am used to, it's just a lot of fun to hear them struck well. I had about 20 minutes hitting the 7 irons and 19 degree hybrid into the net yesterday, and about 40 shots of warmup with a wedge, an iron, and the driver. That was as much as I had swung the new clubs before playing. Took around 2.5 hours for the front and only 1.5 for the back. Was waiting on every shot for the first 12 holes until the group in front finally let me play through.

I'm not exactly sure if I'm picturing it right, but the left thumb. Is it wrapped around the grip toward the underside or laying on the right side of the grip? I play an interlock grip and my coach had me make some adjustments back when I started working with him. My left thumb sits along the right side of the grip (when looking down the grip), kind of in the middle of my right palm. I don't think my fat thumb would be able to wrap towards the underside of the grip without being in the way of the right hand, but sitting in that crease in the middle of the hand, guess it's called the thenar crease feels solid for me. As far as I'm concerned, grip changes are one of the worst experiences to go through because they feel so awkward and get in my head so much that everything gets thrown off. From that point on every part of the swing feels foreign.

Nice review! I used to love the old Graphite Design YS-6+ and Tour AD YS-Q shafts. Would love to try the current offerings, but man are they pricey. The color on that UB looks awesome too. Enjoy the new TSR!

I will say the first few generations of PXG clubs went a bit overboard on the weights for me. That's a personal aesthetic thing, but these strike a good balance in my opinion. I like seeing some of the proof of the technology without it acting like a lighthouse beacon I can see from a football field away. Also, I have a big thing for symmetry, so this works for me compared to the previous generations. I think the Gen 4 woods in particular are a kind of love/hate thing with the top. I personally love the way the carbon fiber section looks, but I can see that some people would find it obnoxious or distracting. Even more important than all of these clubs, I still have to be able to finish and hole the putts. This is the new weapon of choice for that goal, and for a mallet, it just looks good to me. It feels so easy to line up and goes where I want it. The face reminds me quite a bit of the intention behind the C grooves from my Yes putter as well. Overall couldn't be more happy with the clubs and the build quality. If I had to be nitpicky about things, I have two insignificant issues. 1. The torque wrench must have gotten overlooked during packaging. I'm sure this isn't a big deal as most have multiple torque wrenches, but I do not. Made a call to PXG this morning and one will be on the way. Shouldn't be something I have to mess with since I was fitted to the clubs including adapter settings, but it would be nice to check and verify that the driver is set to the "small minus" setting like we discussed in the fitting. 2. The driver headcover had a small loose thread. Looks like the stitching around the grey area just didn't get the end of the thread cut at the right point. Let's be honest, I am literally splitting hairs to find issues here. To be able to get these clubs fit, built, and to my door in 6 days is absolutely amazing to me. Especially since I work for a company that manufacturers processing equipment and we are still experiencing 6 month lead times on some of our parts. Now to see if I can sneak out of the house to hit them!

Bit of a photo dump. Will have to add some others later. Apparently my phone wants to automatically put some of the pictures upside down. Comparing my old irons to the new ones, not a huge difference in size.

The boxes arrived.

First off, it’s been pretty well documented that I did not consistently golf for a number of years between the time I finished college and last year when I picked it back up. As a result, pretty much every club in my bag was from the original bag I had back in 2008 when I graduated. The two changes to the original bag were a handed down driver from a friend and I did reshaft my irons and wedges when I found that a few of them weren’t even the right shaft. These clubs went to the Modus3 Tour 120. While Ian was busy in the Caribbean, I was in Florida for a work and a conference. I had my flight scheduled to come back but it did not leave until 6pm on Saturday. A recent bonus from work and the nod of approval from my wife said that I could finally get some new clubs, but where to go and where to start? Logically, I was flying out of Tampa, I was staying in Tampa, PGATSS is there. That seemed like it would be a good start. This is where I ran into a bit of a mental problem for myself. While I wanted new clubs, I did not want to go crazy and blow a budget. I set a limit for myself that simply would not cover a full bag of brand new, current model clubs. I did swing by PGATSS on Friday just to check it out and honestly none of the employees could be bothered to talk to me, so that made the decision easier. I have recently been looking down the PXG rabbit hole. Notwithstanding the awful commercials, the question was whether the clubs performed. There happens to be a location in Orlando, and as I said, I had time to kill on Saturday before my flight. Scheduled a full bag fitting for Saturday morning and figured the worst case scenario I'm out $25 for the fitting appointment. I did not bring my clubs to compare against because I did not expect to have any free time with the conference going on, but realistically, it just felt like time for an update. Not that I really have to justify the decision, but I just wanted some new clubs and I wanted them to be appropriately fit. My swing has made some progress over the past year and I wanted to get some updated equipment that would hopefully fit my current swing. Anyway, with the fitting scheduled and the current prices that PXG had for their Gen 4 equipment, I had some idea what I would be looking at during the fitting. I played around with the PXG site a bit the night before sort of pre-shopping for what I suspected might fit me, and prepared myself for the initial sticker shock (Hey, I'm cheap!). My fitting was scheduled for 10am, and I arrived a little early. The PXG location has a bit of an upscale boutique kind of feel to it. Makes sense for their product, but there was a large amount of real estate dedicated to apparel. None of that was of much interest to me, but there were a few entertaining t-shirts that had some humorous quotes. I spent a few minutes on their little putting area trying a few different putters to see if I could narrow down my eventual choice and try to speed along the fitting process a bit. After unfortunately kicking out a few that I liked based on looks alone, I was left with a few possibilities that would be tested later. No matter how much I always want a blade style, I always get better results from mallets. I probably looked a bit strange after that because I laid down on the floor next to the putting green to stretch out my back a bit before the actual fitting. A little after 10 I met my fitter, Lance, and we discussed a few things as far as where my game is currently and what I’m looking for with new equipment. We were pretty much settled on Gen 4 throughout the bag for the fitting due to the budget I was dealing with. Irons: We talked about the different iron heads and after a short warm up tried to narrow down the head and shaft first. Started with the XP iron with the TT Elevate Tour shaft in stiff and hit it ok, but kind of low on spin and height. The shaft itself didn’t feel too good to me and that was the first thing we swapped, going to the KBS Tour 120 in stiff, trying to get the launch and spin up a bit. It also helped to tighten up the dispersion a bit. This combo worked ok, but I went in expecting the P head would be the best fit for me, and the descent angle with the XP and KBS Tour was a little low around 44 degrees. We swapped to the P head, keeping the KBS Tour shaft which felt good to me. This was a good combo, but I wasn’t hitting the ball very well at this point. Still wasn't fully warmed up, but Lance wanted to see the turf interaction with the T head and also see if we could get the ball up a bit, so we swapped that one in and hit that one as well. From a contact standpoint, that one actually was the best to this point, but the spin was getting a little too high. Trackman numbers were showing a descent angle with the T head around 54 degrees. He wanted to bend the T head loft a little stronger to see if we could bring the flight down. The plan was to bend the T head to match the loft of the P head, so while he was doing that I asked to hit the P head with the KBS shaft again. He actually stopped in the middle of bending the T because I must have gotten warmed up sufficiently between those two setups and the P head just worked. I must have found my swing somewhere in there because the second time with the P head in the KBS Tour shaft, the numbers improved across the board from improved contact. Lance did want to see if he could get the descent angle up a few degrees and the spin up a few hundred rpm to put me in kind of the middle of Trackman’s “ideal” range, so we swapped out the KBS shaft for the Project X LZ 6.0. From a feel standpoint, I liked this shaft quite a bit, but the spin and launch angles jumped up significantly, back to descent angles above 52 degrees and widened the dispersion. At an upcharge with performance that didn’t back it up the cost difference, we both felt good with the KBS Tour stiff in the P head for me, so now we wanted to see about lie angles and eventual swing weight. According to Trackman, my dynamic lie angle was 69 degrees, and since I’m used to playing 3 degrees upright in my Srixon irons, we tried 2 degrees upright in the PXG. All it really did was shift everything left and dynamic lie stayed the same. Pretty much a failed experiment. Decided to go the opposite way and try out 2 degrees flat. Sure enough, there it was. My best dispersion and consistent distance of the day with 2 degrees flat of all things. After I hit them and we looked at the numbers Lance mentioned that he had thrown a curveball in there and snuck in a different KBS Tour in after the Project X LZ, this one being 1/2” long, exactly what I am used to. Last thing to do on irons was dial in the swing weight. I mentioned that I am used to heavier swingweights, around D5, so a simple weight change in the back of the head bumped the test club from D3 to D5. Took three swings with that setup and we were done. Irons finished! Will come back to these for deciding bag makeup later. Compared to my pre-shopping, I got head, shaft, length right but I would have guessed upright instead of flat. Driver: I was not looking forward to this part of the fitting. In complete honesty, driver is not a favorite club of mine. Sometimes I can hit it well, and other times, it would be better off staying in the trunk. I feel confident and comfortable with my swing holding an iron, but with driver, there is still a little bit of mechanical work to do in order to get comfortable with it. Regardless of that, I still wanted to see what we could do. I assumed the XF models would be the go to choices in the woods and hybrids, and I was not wrong on that one. First up to try was the XF 10.5 degree with the Tensei Blue 75 Stiff. Now, my typical shot shape with the irons is straight or a tiny fade, but driver recently has been kind of the opposite with the low hook being the nemesis. Sure enough, that was the start of this episode as well. Tried a few different tee heights to find one I was comfortable with, but still mostly low hooks with the Tensei shaft. Not sure if it was the weight or the shaft, but that one didn't work for me. Interestingly enough, that same shaft in the 65 version was what Callaway had fit me into a few months ago. Next up was the Diamana S+ in Stiff. That one was definitely better, got it up a bit higher with a smaller draw that would have been playable from the left side of the fairway or just barely into the rough. The Diamana felt better and results showed it was better for me. To describe my swing, there is definitely no harsh transition and I get the best results from what I describe as a lazy swing. Keeping my tempo smooth and flowing is hugely important to my results. Biggest issue with the Diamana was just a bit of a wide dispersion. Mostly it would be playable, but I had one that just went way offline. Lance and I had talked earlier regarding shaft upgrades, and for the most part I wanted to avoid them, but was willing to consider it if it made sense (that evil budget thing you know?). Lance decided to have me test the Fujikura Motore X F3 6- Stiff. Admittedly, I had essentially zero knowledge about this shaft going in. It was simply a shaft that I had never legitimately considered before, but first swing, little bit of a push draw, 1 yard off center of the fairway. That shaft gave me a tight dispersion, but still tended to the left. We both felt good about the head and shaft combo with that one giving me a small dispersion and best distance, so now it was time to play with the other adjustables a bit. I mentioned first that I was more comfortable with a shorter driver shaft. Luckily, a 45” Motore X shaft was available for me to test, and that helped me get a little bit more centered contact. First adjustment we made was to change the adapter setting to the “small minus” setting, flattening the lie angle by a touch to try to get the ball starting just a little more to the right. That small change was effective in taking out some of the bigger left misses. As far as the weights go, we decided to stay with the kind of typical setup with the heavier weight in the back. Spin was not too much of an issue with my typical shot being between 2000-2200 rpm with my miss being a high floater at 4000 rpm. That’s on me, not the club obviously. I will say that I hit a few shots that felt good, but numbers showed high spin and cost me distance as a result. The spin numbers will be one of my nitpicks later on. Compared to my pre-shopping, same head, same length, different shaft, flatter lie and lower loft would not have been my first guess for adapter adjustments. Fairway and Hybrids: I feel like this one should be combined because the decisions here were made based on the gapping between the clubs around them, not in their own bubble. Going in, I knew that I don’t hit my current 3 wood well, so I wanted to try a 5 wood instead. My usual course has a few holes where a solid drive reaches water or goes through the dogleg, so I needed something a little shorter to hit those distances. We started off with the 19 degree XF 5 wood with the Diamana S+70 Stiff shaft. After the first two terrible shots (this is what happens when you don’t swing a fairway wood for about a year), I was able to remember how to swing this club and hit a few really well. Unfortunately, the 5 wood was giving up about 40 yards to driver, where I was hoping for something that was maybe 15-20 yards shorter than driver. I don't quite know how to explain the distance on this one. Launch and spin were fine, ball speed was there, but I just didn't get the carry I was hoping for. I mentioned that I was currently more comfortable with hybrids than fairway woods, so Lance grabbed an X hybrid in 17 degrees for me to try with a Project X Riptide 6.0 shaft. Of the three swings, I hit two well, but within a yard of the 5 wood. Decided to take a break from there and see what we could do with the other hybrid spot for a bit. The Riptide shaft felt good to me, so we stuck that into an XF 19 degree head to hit. Absolutely loved this one, high, straight with a tiny draw. Just crushed it, but again, within a few yards of the 17 degree X and the XF 5 wood. Well I certainly don’t need three clubs to cover the exact same distance, so the other two are out, and the 19 degree is in. We discussed the iron makeup, and I felt more comfortable ending at 5-iron in the 0311P. Even that 5-iron is 4 degrees stronger than my current 5-iron and that is the longest iron I currently carry. So that leaves me with a 23 degree 5-iron and we tested the matching XF 22 degree hybrid and it felt just as good with the proper distance gap. These hybrids worked well from a gapping perspective to the irons, but it left me with a 40 yard gap between the 19 degree hybrid and the driver. Despite my fears, I asked to try the three wood to see if it would fit. XF 16 degree 3 wood, same Diamana S+ shaft. First swing, crushed (as well as I can hit a 3 wood anyway). Second swing, little bit off to the right, but both were the distance I was looking for, 18-20 yards short of my typical drive. These were both off short tees because that is the shot I expect to use it for most often. Figured I should try it off the deck just in case I need that shot when I visit other courses, and did not have any issues hitting it well. It will definitely be something I have to work on, but it fit exactly what I was looking for. Compared to my initial guess, hybrids were dead on, fairway wood was wrong on basically everything aside from length. Wedges: With the 0311P PW being 44 degrees (these stronger lofts are going to take some adjustment), we come down to the decision of what to do about the gap wedge and spacing of additional wedges. Initially, I was thinking of getting the set gap wedge for those full shots, but after looking at the data from my previous rounds, I find that I currently use my 50 degree wedge for almost exclusively partial shots. Discussed this with Lance and felt ok with the 6 degree gap between the PW and the standard 0311 3X Forged 50 degree wedge. He did not have one to hit with the KBS Tour shaft, so I had to hit the Forged with the Elevate Tour shaft. Even though the shaft feels pretty dead, the overall feel of the club was good. Pretty standard wedge, but I like the full face groove look. My shots did tend to fade off a bit too much to the right which will come into play for a final spec decision later on. Chose to stick with the 50, 54, 58 setup that I am used to, and staying with the same KBS Tour shaft. Initial guess would have gone with the 0311P gap wedge along with the 54 and 58 Forged wedges. I probably would have ordered them longer and upright, but after the fitting, these are going to be standard all the way around. Putter: As mentioned before, I had to eliminate some putter options early on because as much as I want to play a blade putter, they just don’t work well for me personally. Based on my experiments earlier, two putters stuck out as both appealing to my eye, and that I putted well with while waiting. These were the Bat Attack and the Blackjack. My current Yes putter is a rather short 33”. It worked for me in the past, but something about my putting has changed over the years, and now it is simply too short. So the first part of the fitting was to take one of the putters and a handle that could be adjusted for length to determine the comfortable length. Lance set it both excessively high and excessively low and I would move it until it felt comfortable. He mentioned that when he does this, there tends to be about 1/2” difference in the final length when going from the different sides. I was no exception to this, but we got a length set and started to hit some putts. I should mention that he did not tell me the length and I did not find out until closer to the end of the fitting. Unfortunately, the Trackman that was setup in the putting area was not working. Lance did mention that the Trackman was honestly a pain for putter fittings, but we would do the best we could without it. I alternated between the two putters, hitting a number of 10 foot putts with each. I honestly liked both of them, and could easily have gamed either one, but at the end of the day, the Blackjack just seemed that little bit better for me. I just seemed to have a little easier time lining it up and rolling the ball along my line. That made sense as I putted pretty well with a Spider last year when I rented some clubs during another work trip. As expected, Lance had to kind of pitch the new M16 putter shaft that PXG recently came out with, and we tried it out. While I messed with it we also joked about the prices of some other golf products that are available. It was a nice enough shaft, but for a putter, I honestly couldn’t feel too much difference, not enough to justify the upcharge anyway. Checked everything we could on the putter and found that for once in my life I’m relatively standard. No need to change the lie or loft on the Blackjack. It just lined up and went exactly where I was aimed. So I guess now I have to accept responsibility for my misses because I can't aim? I definitely wanted a blade of some sort, but I can't argue with results, and a double bend mallet just works for me. Final bag build: Driver: 0811XF Gen 4 w/ Fujikura Motore X F3 6- Stiff shaft at 45”. Hosel at “Small Minus”. Heavy weight in the back. 3 Wood: 0341XF Gen 4 w/ Mitsubishi Diamana S+ 70g Stiff shaft at standard length. Hosel at Standard, Heavy weight in the heel. Hybrids: 19 and 22 degree 0317XF Gen 4 w/ Project X Riptide 80g 6.0 at standard length. Hosel at Standard, Heavy weight in the heel. Irons: 5-PW: 0311P Gen 4 w/ KBS Tour 120 Stiff at 1/2” long, 2 degrees flat, +2 swingweight Wedges: 50, 54, 58 degree: 0311 3X Forged w/ KBS Tour 120 Stiff, Standard length, Standard Lie. Putter: Battle Ready Blackjack, 36.5”, Double Bend neck, Standard loft, Standard lie. Interesting parts to me. 1/2” shorter on the driver shaft was mostly a personal comfort and contact thing, but standard length worked on the 3 wood. Standard length on the hybrids was definitely the way to go, and proves my opinion that my current hybrids are too long, as these are going to be at least 1” shorter than my current equipment. I was shocked to see the flat lie angle on the irons, especially given that I have been playing upright for the longest time. The wedges at standard length and standard lie. Since the wedges are not going to be full swings too often, the added control of the shorter shaft makes sense to me, and the standard lie to go along with it because my wedge shots tended to be off to the right. We talked about it and both seemed a bit nervous about matching the irons with a flat lie and pushing the ball even more right on those. And then there is the putter, 3.5” inches of difference in length from my current putter, makes a huge difference for my own personal comfort and my putting stroke. I definitely tend to the “straight back, straight through” type of stroke, but the short length of my current putter had me actually pushing the head outside of the line on the backswing. Nitpicky comments, my preferred bag was unavailable, so I went with the standard PXG stand bag. Despite having plenty of family that have been in the various military branches, I personally feel undeserving of camo designs. I don’t honestly know if I’ll use it because it’s a 4-way top, and I kind of like my current 14-way top. That bag is a Callaway and that might hurt my soul will be my personal conflict there. Trackman for the putter fitting would have been nice to see the data, but I feel comfortable with my choices and the putter felt great and gave me the results I wanted. Fitting was done on a Trackman with Pro V1’s. I think they should spring for the RCT balls in the future because I did have a few shots that sounded and felt better than the Trackman numbers showed, usually with some crazy high spin numbers that killed the distance. My main goal was to try to avoid upcharge shafts, which we did except for the Motore X in the driver. I’m ok with it because we did go back and forth hitting the Motore against the Diamana a few times just to be sure and it was the clear winner both for dispersion and longest drive of the day. Things I learned about my own swing. My spin rate on normal drives is not uncontrollable, being around 2000, so I was happy with that. My attack angle on irons was very shallow, trending around -0.5 degrees. That may have just been my swing for the day, but it felt pretty typical. I know I’m a bit of a sweeper. I am glad that I took a week off from golf before the fitting because it allowed my mind to be clear of any swing thoughts or mechanical manipulations. I can definitely get into my own head a bit too much, so it was good to feel like I was able to just swing freely with my normal swing, flaws and all. I attribute this to Lance who managed to not make me feel massively inferior to all other golfers. Swing speed was just a touch lower than I see sometimes, but that could be the different measurement device or just my swing for the day. Either way, I don't believe that 2 or 3 mph either way is going to change the accuracy of the fit in anyway that would be noticeable to me. I have to end this by saying thank you to Lance, who was awesome during my fitting. We even joked about the absurdity of many of the PXG commercials and how I said I would never buy PXG because of it, just like he said he would never work at PXG because of it. Sure enough, we were both wrong. Are these the absolute best clubs out there for me? Probably not, but my life has larger priorities than having the absolute best of the best equipment for my hobby. They were surprisingly good to me, and I believe that they are a very good fit for where my game is at and offer plenty of room for me to improve and not have to worry about outgrowing any of the sticks for a long time. An added bonus, my fitting was on Saturday the 24th, and my clubs are scheduled to be delivered Friday the 30th.

I'm the opposite. Natural lefty but play right handed. I've noticed for me that my body responds to different dominant side feels on different days. One day it works to focus on the right hand, next day it's a left shoulder feeling that works. It's occasionally infuriating. I have noticed that for some unknown reason, I don't have much success with any thoughts about manipulating my left hand/wrist, so I end up working backwards to get rid of that wrist cupping. It's weird how the brain works sometimes.

Being pretty busy in Florida for work, I didn't even bother to bring my clubs. Figured I wouldn't have time to play. I did bring my putter with me because it was luckily short enough to fit in my suitcase. I ended up spending 20-30 minutes each night putting around the various hotel rooms, finally dedicating myself to get used to the claw grip. Turns out having an actual, consistent preshot routine is helpful? Who would have guessed that? Long story short, I got comfortable with the claw grip but didn't like the way my current club felt after awhile. I'm not 20 anymore and using a 33" putter is just not comfortable these days for my back. Went to my fitting earlier before my flight back home and found a new club to replace it. Every time I go in looking at putters I want to like a blade, and today I walked out having ordered a larger than I already had mallet. I'm pretty excited about having a full fitted bag on order. Would never have guessed a few of the options that worked, so definitely glad I spent the time to get a proper fitting.

A lot. Let's just say that a recent bonus and a full day of time to kill before my flight this evening were not a good combination. Will be waiting a bit to get the new sticks, but the fitting had a few aspects that were both expected and surprising. If these clubs last as long as my current set, then I will be set for all clubs until 2037.

Kind of a hybrid of both for me. I'll ground the club to get my grip because one of my many issues is the tendency to get too tight with the hands. Very lightly taking my grip with the club on the ground helps to keep everything loose. After that it's a partial takeaway to right around club parallel, for whatever reason that helps to get my right shoulder rotated back a little. Back to address, quick tap on the ground, just barely hover, and trigger the start of the swing by bumping the right knee forward.

Golf gives and takes away. After a couple really good practice sessions, yesterday was absolutely terrible. The range was all torn up and I just couldn't seem to get it together. Out of the 50 or so balls I hit, I can count on one hand the number of shots that felt good. Things were just off. I think it was largely related to pushing a little too hard at the gym earlier in the afternoon. My lower back was feeling it a bit from the deadlifts. Went over to the chipping area and just worked on chipping and pitching to avoid getting too much into my own head. I feel like my swing has gotten to a point where it is solid enough, so I don't want to go trying to make corrections on a bad day and screw up the other things I've been working on. Honestly spending more time in the short game area is where I should be anyway. Set up the net this afternoon to hit some balls before I put the clubs away while I'm traveling for work starting tomorrow. Still a little sore in the lower back and a little off as a result, but much better than yesterday. Ended the session hitting a few balls with the club that has been giving me some trouble recently, the 18 degree hybrid. First couple were pretty bad. I've been thinking that my hybrids have felt too long recently, so I choked up about an inch and suddenly I was ripping it. Now to let things settle while I'm in Florida for a week away from golf.

Range session today to keep working on the same things. Timing the weight transfer, using the legs more, tempo. Trying to get in some solid range sessions this week before I travel next week for work. No reason to bring my clubs on this trip because of the timing, so I won't be hitting anything for a week. Then have a Mizuno fitting scheduled for the next weekend. My practice is basically down to hitting 3 or 4 easy punch type shots only getting to around left arm parallel. Follow that with a regular swing. I'm seeing that I shift the weight in a better sequence on the little punch shots and that helps me keep from flipping the hands. Now it's working on transferring those movements to the full swing. Overall, solid range session.

Trainer switched up my program a few weeks ago. Got down to about 205 and stalled for awhile. At around 6'3, I'm pretty happy with the overall weight. They increased my food intake and changed my workouts a little to focus on building some additional muscle. Two weeks of that and I'm sitting at 204.2. Close to 66 pounds lost in a year since starting with the trainers in my program. I don't realistically see my body type under 200 pounds, so I'm at a place now where I'm good with the weight. I still check in weekly as demanded by the program, but I look more at the weekly measurements and gym performance to see changes. Despite the cost, the training program was definitely one of the best things I've ever spent money on.

Thanks to the current heatwave, the course and practice areas were practically empty yesterday afternoon. Went after work, but like an idiot, left my glove at the office somehow. I usually only bring a few clubs with me to practice with after work, so yesterday it was the 7 iron and the 50 degree wedge. Spent about half of the time just working on tempo, basically hitting slow, full swing 7-irons to the 130 marker, and then wedges to around 65 yards. I've had a nasty habit of speeding up my tempo and transition some days, and those are usually the days I have major issues. Trying to think to myself that "slow is fast" seems to help. Focusing on a slower tempo and slow, even transition helps me to feel like I am accelerating more into impact rather than accelerating from the top and losing that speed early. Spent another amount of time just hitting little punch shot draws. My typical ball flight is a little fade, but I'm trying to work on hitting a draw more often since the course I play at suits that shape better. I also like having options from a personal perspective. I was able to translate that into a couple of full shots, but pulled a few as well. Work in progress as usual. Called it shortly after that because I started developing a blister on my finger and didn't want to risk popping it. Lesson learned for me. Don't forget the glove!

Rough round today. Was hoping to follow up last week's round with something similar, but today was just a generally rough day. I couldn't seem to get myself to trust the swing. I've been putting in the work to make the improvements, it just didn't travel to the course today. Wasn't able to manage stringing anything together. Hit a solid drive, push the approach right, decent pitch, miss the putt by an inch. Bogey. Irons were mostly pushes to the right, driver was tending to go left on me more than usual. It was a weird round. My "lazy swing" came to course today and brought along all of the issues that come with it. On top of that, it was incredibly slow today. Last week my round felt slow and took right around 3 hours. Today it was a little more than 4 hours, and I skipped 3 holes to avoid the parking lot that gathered on 13-15. I was sitting behind 2 or 3 groups on every hole and when I got to 13 I was looking at 2 groups waiting to tee off, both of which were pretty slow groups themselves. I couldn't take it anymore.

After the atrocity of my range session on Friday, I went in with pretty low expectations today. Went out in the heat of the afternoon and had a bit of a round. For one, I ended up losing my phone around the 4th hole so my normal score tracking app couldn't be used. Strangely enough, that might have helped as the only score keeping was my Shot Scope. It was only one shot better than my previous best, but I guess any personal best is a good day out there. I just didn't know about it until I got the round to sync off the device. Ended up going 42/43. It was not always pretty, but I mostly just did a good job of avoiding big numbers. One double on the front and 2 on the back. Four pars on each side and a number of fairly standard bogeys. Had a bit of a mental breakdown in the middle of the back going double, double, bogey, bogey. No real excuse for it other than just that I got kind of pissed about the guys behind me hitting into me a few times because I was waiting on the group in front of me. Best hole for me was #12 where I hit driver over the trees to cut the dog leg, leaving myself about 40 yards to the pin. Didn't do any better than a two putt par, but it was my longest drive of the day. The driver is definitely still a work in progress, but this was enough to give me hope that it can become something useful in my game. Positive note. My phone was found and returned. Realistically, I can see another few strokes coming off that if I can find myself in the fairway more instead of having to punch out under the trees so often. The swing is still coming along, but I'm in a much better mood than I was on Friday.

Rough day on the range today. No real excuse for it, I just didn't feel good about my swing. It was ugly with lots of shots off the hosel, the exact opposite of my usual slightly toey contact miss. By the end I could tell that I wasn't staying down at all, moving towards the ball and lifting up. I didn't feel that I was able to make any real corrections, which is annoying because I had been doing well recently. Will probably take a day or two off and then go back to working out the kinks. Hopefully it was just a bad day and not the destruction of all of the work I've been doing for the past few weeks. Left probably half a large bucket out there. It reminded me too much of something my college advisor told me. "If everything is going badly in the first 30 minutes of your day, just go home. It won't get any better and you will be miserable trying to fix everything." The few times I've used that advise, he wasn't wrong.