RichL85

Weather managed to clear up for today so I hit the range after work. Wasn't really working on anything in particular, just wanted to hit some balls since it's been a few weeks. Might be a swing of the day kind of thing, but was hitting a small little draw on my irons instead of that push fade that has been plaguing me for awhile. Maybe moving the lie angles 3 degrees upright helped, maybe my swing was just a little better today. Either way, I was liking the ball flight, but I think the fade fits my eye a little better. Spent 60% of the time hitting wedges to different distances. Had some loft changes done on the PW and the 50 degree, so gapping appears to be better there. Nothing crazy, just swinging the club at a consistent tempo. I know most of my problems come when I get too quick at the transition, so I'm going to focus on just keeping everything smooth for the next few weeks. Everything was going pretty well so I figured I would hit a few 3 woods off the deck. I always figure the 3 wood will show me how much the other clubs are lying to me about my swing for the day. Coming from a person that was terrified to even purchase a 3 wood when I went for the fitting, it's still a club I need to work with. Having said that, if this is my miss with a club I'm not comfortable with after not swinging for a few weeks, I will take it gladly. Obviously a little low, but I'm trying to keep my expectations in the real world here. Also spent a little bit of time putting in the office during my lunch. Realized a weird quirk of mine that seems to cause me to push a lot of my putts to the right. Apparently I've been watching the club go back with my eyes, so today I just focused on keeping my eyes on the back of the ball and not watching the club. It was weird how much of a difference that little thing made.

Seems I'm in the same area as many others, around 50-60 yards and in, it's mostly feel. I may check the yardage just to know, but not always.

I know many people that would say you need a vacation to recover from a Disney vacation.

Finally pulled the round into Shotscope. Exactly like I figured, felt like a played much better on the second day, but scored worse. Went from 42/43 for an 85 on the tight, short course hacking it up with mostly irons all round to a 45/45 for a 90 on the longer course. 20-30 mph winds and 35 putts will do that to your score I guess. Got my irons bent from 2 flat to 1 up yesterday, so hopefully I can make time to play a round this week to see if that helps with the right miss I have been trying to deal with.

Didn't buy anything today. Went into PXG and got some adjustments done on my irons, so all good there. Not surprisingly, they swapped out the ProV1's for the new PXG ball in the fitting bays. Feels good just from hitting it but didn't grab a dozen while I was there. If I had stuck around I probably would have grabbed some to try. I rushed out a bit to pop in for a work meeting over Teams while I drove to the airport for my 3:30 flight. Not that it mattered much since my flight is currently delayed until 7:30. I did snag a hybrid headcover from Disney while I was in the area last weekend though.

Not related to overspeed exactly, but for whatever reason my body/brain doesn't cooperate to get the right plane when I think "swing hard". For myself, swinging hard screws up my timing and gets me off plane and slower results. I have been focusing on being slow throughout the majority of the swing and getting through the impact area as fast as possible. With that thought, the swing plane just happens because I'm not rushing from the top. It's more of a "swing fast" thought vs a "swing hard" thought that works for me. I'm trying to treat overspeed training as just raising the ceiling for what I am capable of, plane and results be damned. I assume if I raise the overall physical ceiling, that I will see results in the normal on course swing as well.

Golf is such a strange game. Played again this morning, and hit the ball better from tee to green than yesterday, but putting was absolutely atrocious. The greens were a new level of slow that I have not experienced before. If I had been able to putt, I think the round could have been decent for the conditions, but I don't know how bad it was. I typically don't write my scores down and just find out afterwards when I upload the Shotscope information, so that I don't think about it during the round. Unfortunately, my H4 ran out of battery on 16 and I did not bring the charger with me to Florida. Next weekend I'll upload the partial round and see what happened, but it was crazy windy. I mean, 130 yard 5-iron windy, and not a mishit 5-iron. It was flushed and just died in the wind. I haven't played a ProV1x in the wind enough to compare, but I used the Proto 348 from the test today and if that was improved performance in the wind, I am scared how the previous model would have handled the wind.

Played a new to me course today. It was a weird little course. Pretty short, but tight tee shots and not much room to the sides. By short, I mean I only hit driver 5 times. A lot of holes required iron or hybrid off the tee because of the layout. It wasn't a terrible round, but I was pushing my irons to the right most of the day. I've got some time scheduled on Friday to get the lie angles checked since they originally fit me to 2 degrees flat and a few things have changed since then so they might need to go more upright like I was using before. Highlight of the round was the 38 ft putt with about 3 feet of break for the one birdie. Ended up with a 42/43 for an 85 despite not playing particularly well. Had 3 other putts finish within a few inches of the hole I wish would have fallen, but there are worse ways to spend a Saturday when stuck in another state over the weekend for work.

Can the answer be both? I am capable of being better than I am, and I am also capable of being worse than I am. For a comparison, back when I played tennis, I had a nasty habit of subconsciously adjusting my level based on my opponent. When I faced a good, college level player, I could hang with them and naturally played aggressively and won my fair share of matches. But you put me up against a weaker player, my brain started to overthink the situation and my game would change. I would play terribly as a result, but would usually still win these matches. They were just annoyingly closer than they should have been. With golf. I know the shots that I am capable of hitting, and I generally hold myself to the standard of what I am capable of (whether that's reasonable or not is an entirely different can of worms). With that perspective, I think that I am better than what my scores show, because I have my fair share of shots that are downright embarrassing. When I hit those shots, I legitimately wonder if I'm really that bad, or if it's just a bad shot. If I'm really that bad, then I am much worse than my scores sometimes show.

Won't be getting a check-in for February done anytime soon. Clubs are packed up and I fly out tomorrow morning. Not going to bother with taking the PRGR with me or anything like that so I'm just going to try to enjoy my rounds over next weekend in Florida since I'm stuck there for work for the next two weeks.

It's pretty hard to have a subjective bias for pure data numbers. My initial thoughts are that it would be much tougher to eliminate the personal variables associated with the humans involved in the physical testing. If various individuals are involved in club testing for example, the visual bias, weighting differences, etc. all come into play and that makes it more difficult to isolate measurables for statistical comparison. However, for example, ball testing done with a robot would eliminate variables such as club differences, swing variability, etc. At that point, assuming the robot delivers whatever club is being used in a consistent manner, the data is the data. I guess short answer for me, is that I would be much more interested in how MGS goes about isolating/eliminating as many variables as possible more so than I would be critical of the statistical analysis methods used. The statistical methods would be interesting from a personal nerd standpoint, but MGS has been called out more than once for various tests that make a claim without properly isolating that as the one variable in a given test.

Exactly. I deal with data measurements where I'm using Minitab to determine statistical significance for one variable in a measurement that can be affected by about 20 different other variables, so I can see some wide ranges of measurements. I would hope that a manufactured product like golf equipment doesn't have that same variability that I deal with, but statistical analysis would at least provide some additional credibility to the testing to eliminate as much outside, unmeasured variable contributions to the overall result there is.

Statistical significance would likely negate a lot of the differences seen. Based on my experience with Minitab, it's surprising how large of an actual difference it takes to become statistically significant sometimes. I've seen general averages differ by 20-30% but not show any verifiable statistical difference.

Seems like January has been a month for my family as well. Early January my mother had a stroke, then my mother-in-law fractured her wrist on the 20th. Father-in-law had shoulder surgery on the 23rd, so both in-laws are down to one arm for the next few months. Got word last night that my mother-in-law's brother fell off his roof and was on life support in the hospital. Doesn't look good for him, but we are just waiting to hear any further news. I'm ready for February already.

Range session yesterday was cut short when I got a message from my MIL that she was at the hospital with a fractured wrist. Before it was cut short, I continued working on a few of the same things I've been working on. A lot of it is my posture and standing closer to the ball. My two main thoughts at the moment are to get my hips out of the way on the downswing and to release ahead of the ball. In some ways it feels counterintuitive to stand closer to the ball in order to force my body to get out of the way in the swing. I also have to feel like my arms and hands are just falling with gravity with the first 3/4 of the downswing. It's starting to come together though. After working on the swing aspects for a bit, I went to practicing more randomized shots. Pretty much just working through a few of the holes at the course hitting shots based on what I would be seeing on the course. It's probably something I should do more often. Was just making my way to the short game area to work on that 20-50 yard range when I got the message, so I didn't get to work on that. FIL is scheduled for shoulder surgery on Monday, so we will have two bandaged up parents in the house for the next few weeks. I guess my MIL felt sorry for him and wanted to show support. Not the way I would have chosen personally, but to each their own.

Imagine the criticism that tennis companies got for years over paintjobs. Trying to explain to 100+ people a day that the majority of professionals were playing older models that were simply being painted to look like the newest year's model got old. Not to mention all of the various custom features and weighting that may be involved. We are talking everything from a professional using a 15 year old racquet with a custom molded handle because he prefers the shape of another manufacturer's handle, foam injected into certain areas of the frame to alter the flex, lead tape to alter the weight and a modified string pattern. All that while manufacturers are throwing up advertisements and posters telling everyone to buy the "New (insert pro's name here) Racquet". It was quite infuriating personally. Of course the retail model was a more appropriate fit for the vast majority of people than the actual pro's racquet, but it feels wrong in some ways.

Decided to do a quick check in while I was at the range today and the weather has made things tough the last few weeks. Top speed is up a little bit to 111, so that's a positive. Took some swings at a few balls to see if raising the physical ceiling was going to affect my mental barrier and saw improvement there as well. Where I was around 95 for playing speed, I was pretty comfortable hitting in the 101-102 range today.

Positives. I've always liked Cobra and Ping for drivers and fairways. Never actually owned either, but enjoyed hitting multiple models from both brands over the years. Love Cobra for hybrids. The old Baffler DWS was one of my favorite hybrids I've ever hit. I also really like my PXG hybrids that I currently have. I am definitely a Srixon fan when it comes to irons ever since my I-701s. They had a special feel. I've spent a lot of time loving the look of Mizuno irons, but never really hit them all that well for whatever reason. I don't have any real positive bias for putters. I love the look of the standard Anser style putters, but I accept that they aren't the best fit for me. I've grown to like the look of my PXG Spider-lookalike putter. Negatives. Mizuno for drivers, fairways, and hybrids. They never really caught my eye visually and I've always felt like their performance wasn't where I wanted it to be. Callaway for irons. They perform fine, but man they make some chunky looking irons. I might be an outlier here, but I'm not a fan of Vokey wedges. Can't even say why, just never had much success with them. Negative bias toward Scotty Cameron putters. I just don't get them. That's a personal thing on me, but yeah, it is what it is. Biggest negative bias towards marketing is hands down PXG. They have, by far, the most obnoxious marketing and advertising, and don't get me started on the stupid price of their clothes. They make some solid clubs though.

I get that. I'm basing this off my k-vest analysis where I can actually get into a point where my hands reach max speed before anything else and they just drag the rest of my body around the swing. It makes it very dependent on timing the compensations *for me*. I'm trying to get my swing to a point where there is less thinking and fewer compensations happening. My natural tendency, for whatever reason, seems to be to stabilize the lower body and take it out of the swing as much as possible. Not exactly the most efficient way, and not exactly kind to my back. *For me* the best swing feels like my hands initiate the takeaway and coil everything, and then they get lazy and everything uncoils in reverse order starting from the ground. Right now, if I don't consciously think of being lazy with the hands, I get unnecessarily quick at the transition and my body doesn't keep up with my hands. It's a very personal thing, and I am working to get that lazy hands to be more of an unconscious thing because it works *for me*. So I'm not necessarily making it a "body swing", I'm just trying to get the contribution of the body to match up with the natural contribution of the hands which comes easier to me from past sports

Went to the range yesterday to work on incorporating the stuff I've been doing into the golf swing. It's a tough transition because I'm basically relearning motor patterns from what feels like a totally foreign setup position. Mostly ignored ball flight because I was more focused on just trying to sync the movements in the right order. When I get off, my hands tend to take over the swing and pull my body through rather than the rotation of my body bringing the hands and club along with it. When I was able to line everything up, it results in those swings that feel easy but the ball just seems to jump. It's going to take a lot more work until I can get to the point where that all happens without me consciously thinking about it. Overthinking is one of my problems, so until these patterns are more ingrained, I just have to accept some bad shots. Weather is back to rain for the next few days, so practice will be very limited outdoors. Probably just swing a club slowly indoors to work on the feelings.

I'm trying to keep my goals for the year simple. 1) Better practice. For me that's going to mean a lot less time taking full swings and a lot more time on the putting green and around the short game area. 2) Regulate my expectations on the course. Even though I know what shots I am capable of, I need to do a better job of understanding what is reasonable to expect instead of getting upset about anything less than perfect. 3) Keep working on flexibility and mobility. More of a quality of life goal, but it also translates to golf because my left hip tends to catch in the swing, so I have to keep working on it so that it doesn't become a limiting factor. 4) Try to play at least 15 different courses this year. There are only really 3 courses within about a half hour of me, but with work travel and more courses about an hour away, I want to start experiencing more courses instead of playing the same one repeatedly. Funny thing is 15 different courses would be more rounds than I played all of last year, so this one might be difficult.

I've still got a few options on my list to test before I fully commit to one. If money were not a concern, I'd likely stick with the Proto 348, but that's not my reality. I see diminishing returns on my money with other options, so I'm more likely going to end up with a DTC ball.

Interesting message I received from my trainer a few weeks ago. He must have checked my food logs which included four days of meals from Chipotle, Chick-Fil-A, Starbucks, and Popeyes, because I got a lovely message about how I should spend more time eating home-cooked meals instead of eating out all the time. Not exactly sure how I was supposed to do that while traveling for work? For what it's worth, for the four days, I was under my daily calorie target by a combined 450 calories. A total 2.4% under target across four days. I had to laugh a little bit at the criticism. After trying many different things along with my wife, it's hard to believe that the thing that worked best *for me* is simply keeping accountable of the majority of my food. I have always had two main issues when it comes to food. One is the fairly typical stress eating. When stressed, I definitely had a tendency to grab random snack foods and mindlessly eat extra calories. The other, and probably the most detrimental since having kids, is that I legitimately have an issue with wasted food. I think that is something that has just followed from my childhood and I have to consciously remind myself not to finish off whatever food my kids leave on their plates after meals. Unfortunately, that stuff can add up fairly quickly. Now that I'm logging food, I don't in the least bit feel guilty if I have a slice of cake or pizza, or whatever it may be. I may have to adjust a few things I eat during other parts of the day, but as long as I'm near my targets by the end of the day, I don't focus too much on how I get there. It has taken a lot of the stress out of food for me, and that has helped a ton. As far as the numbers go, I'm maintaining weight with a higher calorie intake and just working on gaining some strength right now. I usually end up getting one or two meals a month that my trainer calls a "free meal". The phrase "cheat meal" has a different mental impact than "free" meal for me, so the idea that I can choose to eat whatever I want once in awhile helps to curb those thoughts of falling away from making solid choices the rest of the time. One could probably argue that these free meals are not the way to maximum progress, but at the end of the day, if they help to sustain the long-term progress, I believe there is a place for them.

Pretty terrible conditions to try to swing fast after we got drenched in rain yesterday for a surprise. There was quite a bit of sliding around with the feet but I still wanted to check in and see where things are at. The bad part is that I'm still not really seeing much in the way of top end speed increases yet. On the other hand, my "cruising speed" has gone from the 95-98 range to sitting around 105 comfortably. Once I get through more of the stability and strengthening programs, I hope to see some larger progress.

What are the chances I could do that with my wife? Our son guessed that she had about 100 shirts in her closet. I stopped counting at 100 and I didn't make it halfway through the top rack of her closet. Now she has migrated to take over 1/3 of my closet as well.