BostonSal

I hope that I haven't asked this before, but if I have, I must not have gotten any replies. I like to have, and as far back as I can remember, always have had at least one lofted fairway wood and one long iron overlap in lofts. This may be much less common today in the hybrid era, with hybrids replacing both long irons and high loft fairway woods, but I don't presently hit hybrids. It's just how I play. I like a long iron that I can hit on nasty driving holes. I like a fairway wood that gets the ball high in the air in a hurry. And that means a loft overlap. I can do it either with wide wedge gapping at the bottom of the set, or, I can do it with a fifteen club cart bag as I'm just playing weekday morning golf with my friends. I've mentioned in it many threads, but never, unless I've forgtton, made it the subject of thread.. I'm just curious if anybody else on the forum does it.

Low forties with intermittent drizzle. Not quite bad enough to truncate the dog's walk, but bad enough to not enjoy it very much.

If I'm still here in April, that's when I next expect to pick up a golf club. It will still be too cold, but I don't want to be hitting April shots in May or June so I'll force myself.

The best reason to get new clubs is that you feel like it. I have a small museum of retired sets in my basement, and the above is the only reason that I've ever had for replacing any of them. I could put new grips on set #1 and play it right now, truth be told. I'll get the exact same amount of fresh air and hangout time with my friends, you see, either way. But that's why I play. Others could feel differently.

Everythig get screwed up eventually. I remember Maxfli as a major premium model made by Dunlop, just as Top Flite was a major premium model made by Spalding. Now neither is affiliated with its original source in any way but they're still around as store brands. Then again, I also remember playing with R&A spec 1.62" golf balls, so what I remember doesn't matter much any more.

If I can go back to the podcast briefly, there was one other thing that I'm remembering. Spalding, at the end, was selling their top models in the way that store-brand models were being sold. We should remember a time just before that, however, when MacGregor, Spalding, and Wilson were essentially the Big Three. First, not one of them was a "golf company" like Callaway, Ping, or TaylorMade are today. All three were general sporting goods manufacturers like Mizuno. And all three had extensive store model line golf clubs. Stuff like MacGregor's Jack Nicklaus Golden Bear and Wilson's Sam Snead Blue Ridge were huge sellers to working class players. There were more upscale store models as well like Wilson K28. Nonetheless, they were on the department store floors right next to Northwestern and Kroyden. And yet, these store models didn't seem to diminish the green grass pro shop only lines that those same manufacturers were selling at much higher prices (although those "higher prices" were still only $40 per wood and $25 per iron.) And the fair trade laws at the time allowed the manufacturers to demand no deviation from MSRP from the club pros selling the gear. The marketing paradigms were altogether different then, and Spalding went down late in the transition. But MacGregor went down not that long afterwards, and Wilson is a shadow of its former self in golf.

I'm pretty sure that fifteen year old clubs are no more than a set of fresh grips away from being perfectly playable. UNLESS THEY"RE YOUR FIFTEEN YEAR OLD CLUBS, PERHAPS, simply because you're fifteen years older than you were when you first played them. If you were 25 and now you're 40--no problem, most likely. If you were 50 and now you're 65, however, it could conceivably be different.

The best way to solve that problem is with a fifteen-slot cart bag.

Titleist, with it's current T-Series, has now made it relatively convenient to put together a complete 11-club iron set with matching shafts and grips, despite modern lofts and gappings. Titleist U505___2, 3, 4-irons // Mitsubishi Kuro Kage Titleist T200___5-iron // Mitsubishi Kuro Kage Titleist T100___6, 7, 8, 9-irons // Mitsubishi Kuro Kage Titleist T100S___48° GW // Mitsubishi Kuro Kage Titleist SM8___54-10, 60-04 // Mitsubishi Kuro Kage Matched with their Cart 15 StaDry bag, you'd have enough room to complete the set. Might be hard to do with a conforming 14 club bag. But with a fifteen club bag, I could add.... Ping G425 Max___12° // Ping Alta CB65 Red Titleist TSi2___16.5° // Aldila Tour Blue 65 Callaway Epic Heavenwood___20° // Callaway RCH 65 Tad Moore Chicopee___putter Very playable set for me, although I wouldn't really need all three U-505 utility irons. I like the deuce as a driving iron, but I don't like holes in a set, either. I play weekday morning social golf with my friends, so it's not a problem. If I want to retool just one more time in my life, this could be the way to go for 2022. Comments welcome, although not necessarily expected!

You've expressed it very informatively, and I think that I see the picture a little more clearly now. Thank you. My personal preference would be fewer models and more spec options within the models instead, but they have the market research resouces and all that I have is an old man's opinion. Nevertheless, it's not that I can't ever find something in equipment with which I enjoy playing. I always do. I just imagine in my mind what "closer-to-perfect" would look like. I've said in the past that playing golf was one enjoyable activity, and pondering golf equipment was a barely-related other one.

Marking my ball means two different things to me. It means using an old, real silver dime with no copper center to mark the ball on the greens. You have to clean off the tarnish to make them bright enough to easily see. The old dime is the closest thing that I have to a superstition. I'd just call it a very old habit. Then there's the Sharpie thing to mark the ball for identification. I have a custom ball number and my name imprinted so I don't have to do that. It's only an extra three bucks per dozen to get that.

With a 42º 9-iron, as is still available in the weaker lofted, less GI offerings, I'm good as long as I bypass the set-matching wedges (46°PW / 50°GW) and go to a 48-54-60 set. That provides not horribly big 6º gaps from 9-iron to lob wedge. With a 9-iron of less than forty degrees, however, as we now see on the GI models, I can't configure anything approaching a normal looking golf set. People are good with four or five wedgs now, so I guess that it's not a problem. Still something that I try to avoid, however, as I like to have at least one club's worth of long-iron / lofted wood overlap on the long end of the set.

The 1.5º gap would indeed be insignifcant in two fairway woods or two hybrids. In a fairway wood and a hybrid, however, it can be a full-fledged one-club gap. I think that I may hook hybrids because the lie angles are too upright for the lengths, and if I shorten the lengths to match the lie angles, the price in distance would pop up. Just my guess. Hybrids with a more rocker-type sole would mitigate this.

I get it better with the second viewing. Thank you, Barbajo. I'm just not the profitable demographic upon whom the OEMs should focus. First, having breakthrough new tech for each scheduled product release is simply not believeable to me. After all, they don't hold up the product releases for new tech, do they? They're always right on time. It's simply not believable, and the handicaps are not steadily tumbling as a result. Second, my personal obsession is with fit metrics. If they were still lathing a solid, oil-hardened persimmon or laminated maple clubhead, I could tell them the exact loft, lie angle, and face angle that I want on each wood--not to mention exact swingweight at a given length--and get the clubs in three weeks. I'm old enough to remember that. We've gotten an awful lot of multi-piece construction technological breakthrough since them, but we lost the exact fit metrics in the process. Since I'm the almost the only one talking about that, obviously the targeted demographic doesn't care about these things. But my desire is that production techniques will be developed that allow old school customization on modern clubheads, knowing all the while that there doesn't seem to be a demand for it.. That's all that I'm trying to say. People often think that I'm railing against the modern paradigm. I am most certainly not. I'm merely suggesting that some of us exist for whom it's not working. Thank you for your appreciated insights.

I used to have them, wore them all the time, and absolutely never wear them now as an elderly linkster. That's my choice. Having said that, if I still wanted to wear them, their not being particularly the current fashion wouldn't deter me one bit. Just don't have a leaky bladder if you do wear them.

The podcast was very interesting. Barbajo had excellent info on a topic that really interestd me a lot. One thing was very disturbing. He said that you could be a golf company looking to constantly innovate or a company trying to sell what you're known to make. The former is what's succeeding, and the latter is what I would rather see. All the innovation-- contriving new tech for the scheduled new product rollout-- has resulted in the average handicap going from 17 to 16 over the past few decades. I am very unimpressed with that. It's an effort to get people to buy what they don't apperently need if their index calculations are going to remain the same anyway. Slow moving evolation of the human species alone may have caused that 1 shot move. At the end of the day, you're hitting a ball with a stick, and we've had sticks made for doing that pretty well for a very long time. The tech has been pretty damned good for a long time, and we're still just hitting a ball with a stick. I'm in the vast minority, and I'm not honestly looking to argue with the majority who feel differently, --just airing out my own different view-- but I'd rather have a company where you could tell them the loft, loft gapping, lie angles, face angles, bounce, etc. that you want and they'd spend their efforts on providing specific fit metrics rather than new and contrived innovation. A company that could develop manufacturing techniques that made possible on new equipment that customization which was once possible on antiquated, simpler equipment , this at affordable pricing, would have REALLY made an innovation breakthrough. Again, this is only what I'd love to see, and I'm not trying to impose it on those who see it differently.

Spalding Golf was very close to my heart. The rock hard, 336 dimple original Spalding Top Flite from the 1970s was, back in the predomimantly wound ball era, the ball with which I could most self-asuredly club myself. They may have been primitive, but they were the most CONSISTENT ball on the market. You knew how they played, and you never had to think about them. And with the relatively inexpensive and very forgiving Executive irons, essentially made for the Top Flite ball, you could actually spin them. While it didn't apply to me, pure blade afficionadoes considered the 1953 Top Flite grind to be one of the most playable ever. It re-emerged as a cast stainless club called the Top Flite Legacy in the 1970s, but it wasn't the same. Bobby Jones aligned with Spalding when he turned pro after his competion days. And Lee Trvino had considerable input into the design of the Top Flite Intimidator 400, one of the most playable fairway woods of the late 1990s. I paired them with the Titleist Howitzer driver which had no matching fiarway woods of its own. When they were the Big Three, Spalding, MacGregor, and Wilson were like Mizuno--general sporing goods manufactures, not golf only companies like Callaway, Ping, and TaylorMade. They even made inexpensive department store model golf clubs. But their pro shop lines won an awful lot of big tournaments back then with star-studded advisory staff rosters,

Consider this: WITH HYBRIDS 12° driver 16.5º fairway wood 19, 22º hybrids 5-GW 56, 60º add on wedges putter. WITH LOFTED WOODS 12º driver 16.5, 18, 21º fairway woods speciatly driving iron 5-9 irons, stopping at the 42° 9-iron 48, 54, 60° add on wedges putter. Fewer matching irons and 6º scoring club gaps because I add the driving iron for scary driving holes. Also slightly wider gap between longest fwy wood and 5-iron. In the past, I've found hybrids to be hooking machines. I assumed it was a stereotype but it was very much true. If the new ones are better, and if I could eliminate the driving iron, the small tweak to the rest of the set could be helpful as well. Anyway, that what I'm pondering. Anybody not hooking hybrids out there?

I have to try several times. The first window NEVER opens.

Today they stamp a number "3" on 15° clubs or even on 13/13.5º clubs because they somehow like the designation "strong-3" more than the simpler designation, "2-wood," which is beyond what I can understand. Well, I have no choice but to accept that a 15° fairway is a normal 3-wood now, and for me, that's too strong to hit from the deck absent a slightly uphill lie.. I can launch it, usually, but it probably won't carry as much as a slightly more lofted club might. As the early 1980s TaylorMade Original Pittsburgh Persimmon lofts were abandoned by everybody including TaylorMade themselves, and the new metals took on the stronger lofts, I initially used to think of whatever 17° or thereabouts metal that was in my bag as my "3-wood" regardless of stamping. Shortly thereafter, however, I completely stopped thinking of club numbers at all as they might pertain to metals. Titleist doesn't use them, and I think that they have the right idea. So, saying 15° metal rather than 3-wood, I don't bag one, but I might likely be bagging a club of similar loft to an old, wooden 3-wood, or an original Pittsburgh Persimmon.

I forgot to mention in the previous post that I am in no way critical of the launch monitor / simulator method of custom fitting. I can totally appreciate how that would be beneficial to any player about to make a significant investment in equipment. While I lack the patience and level of commitment to take that route myself, I would not advise anybody to skip that process if they have access to it. However, the thread was about buying blind, and I am indeed one who tends to do exactly that, not just a single club but right up to the complete set level..

My preferred supplier of recent years is not a sponsor here so I won't throw them a plug, but since our club professional is mostly a polo shirt salesman these days, and as that used to be my source of fitting and buying alike, I now buy everything on pure faith, often never having seen in person the model that I'm ordering. I know what general type of shaft that I want. I know the EXACT grip model that I want. I know my lengths and lie angles. After, that it's a crapshoot. If something doesn't feel right, I resort to lead tape and otherwise live with it. I will only buy from dealers that will sell clubs individually because I get pretty weird with set configuration. My set almost always has overlapping lofts between long irons and lofted woods. There is often up to an 8 to 10° gap between the 42° 9-iron and the first wedge. I often have to mix and match models to get the gapping that I want, especially in metals (woods) and wedges. Absent an unlikely liberalization of the 14-club rule, I'll always have big holes in the loft progression in order to bag clubs that I like the most. But yes, I buy with plastic online, and it's always a Hail Mary. I've been delighted and I've been burned, but I have gotten better at it with experience.

I don't have one right now, but I do have a question concerning forum protocol. When doing a WITB signature, is it good form to include the fifteenth club in a fifteen club cart bag or should one discretely leave it out for purposes of forum decorum?

My brand loyalty was once strong toward Spalding. What that means, if we're being honest, is that I probably won't be around to play for many more years!

Let me preface my remarks by saying out front that this is NOT an argument against Game Improvement models. Our club opened in 1906. Thus, for nearly the first seventy years of its existence, GI irons simply didn't exist. Choppers played the very same model clubs that the club champion and the head professional at the club played. Since then, the average handicap has dropped from about seventeen to about sixteen. Again, this is in no way to say that GI models aren't beneficial to aspiring players and average recreational players. That argument wouldn't garner much support, nor should it. What it does say, however, is that if you really like to play blades and such, and you're not a scratch player, you'll nonetheless get used to them because a hell of a lot of people have done just that in the past.