BostonSal

I find the Ping Alta CB Red 65 in R-Flex is as good a driver shaft as any I've tried for me. Fairway woods, too. I'd be curious as to how it might perform on my smaller ( 307cc) TaylorMade 300 driver, although the Mitsubishi stock shaft isn't bad.

Shifting just a tiny bit from my own topic, I was perusing the UK internet golf forum, Golf Monthly. Not one of the sub-forum titles is about equipment. Almost none of the discussions on the entire forum are about equipment. It's pretty much like equipment is a non-issue in their golf discussions. That's a little bit different.

If I end up spending $800 on a C-Grind 48 / 54 / 60° set, bought sight unseen from an internet order, all three at 63° lie and 35½" as is my practice, with Tour Wrap 2G grips because that's on everything but my putters, and graphite shafts that don't match my irons because ones that do aren't offered--- if I actually do that--- I'm never going to admit it if they don't work out. I'm going to say that they're the best wedges I've ever owned and that they're better wedges than I had ever imagined were possible because if I don't say that I'll look like the dumbest guy who's ever posted on the internet. I've got the winter to stew over it. But if I do it, I'll be here in the spring saying that they're the best wedges ever made.

You're right, actually. If you want the exact club as you like it, you need to open a factory, have the tooling made., and then hope you were right about what you wanted.

I appreciate the info.

You're old enough to have started with steel spikes as I did, Foz. How did you get confidence in soft spikes? I was never able to make the transition. I loved playing with the nails, and suffered badly when they were taken away. I've literally fallen down with modern spikes. Eventually, I gave up and went all the way to spikeless, which literally meant changing how I play. I used to be able to consciously swing hard. I haven't tried that in a long time. Now it's strictly about staying in balance and taking as much club as I need or laying up if I have to. Fifteen pair is impressive--quite cool, actually--but I only go with three pair, all the same identical model always in three different colors. They all wear out at once, and I get three more. I've done that forever. I need three for next season.

I very much believe you, and that's probably what will stop me from buying them. I know what I like, and I'm not looking for opinions. They can say C-Grind all they want, but they're not giving me actual bounce measurements, and right or wrong, that's what my mindset requires. It's a mental game for me. I have a 42º 9-iron in my set. To go from 9-iron to lob wedge in four evenly spaced clubs, I don't need a set-matching 46° PW. I need a 48, a 54, and a 60. I'll get used to even 6° increments from the 9-iron with no problems. The fly in the ointment is the 54. Nobody is offering them with less than 10º bounce, and 8° is the most that my mind will mentally endure. Otherwise, I'll psychosomatically belly-hit the ball with the leading edge. If Edel could tell me that their actual bounce on the 54 C grind is 8º, I could very happily buy it without a fitting. They're not telling me that, however, so I must keep looking or strengthen a 56 and be very unhappy with the stamping.

It's entirely possible that I dismiss component brands without good cause. It just doesn't seem that could could match the major OEM engineering capability. Plus there's a bit of a snob factor, which serves no useful purpose, especially if good equipment is being overlooked. As I said, I assume that's possible. The exception I might make is if a component head offers a fit metric that's not available from a major OEM, but I can't remember the last time that that happened. The other factor mitigating against components is that I don't do any club work myself. It might be fun if it were a hobby. But I'd be ordering ready-built component clubs from a builder about whom I know nothing. Back when I was much younger, Ralph Maltby's GolfWorks made some really nice persimmon and laminated wood models that looked equal or superior to most of what the OEMs were making. Plus you could get custom specs. But wooden woods are very, very simple compared to modern, multi-piece metals. The other side of the coin is that we're hitting a ball with a club and how many technological factors come into play at that contact? Maybe fewer than we imagine, but I don't pretend to know. None of my gang plays component clubs, but there may be others at the club playing them and playing them very well. I've heard of DynaCraft, and for them to have been around this long, they probably make a better product than that for which I've given them credit. I have been playing driving irons since the Mizuno Fli Hi II in 2004. And I'm not a bomber. I play them for safety on scary driving holes. And before that, when I was playing Titleist DCI 962s, I kept my Wilson 1200GE 2-iron in the bag as a driving iron, replacing the Titleist 3-iron.. Never tried a component one, though.

I'm not one to get deep into the weeds over shaft technology. I'm not suggesting in any way that it's not worth doing. I just don't do it. Which in part is my reason for asking--are others more careful about matching shafts than I am? I suspect many are. Are they coordinated throughout the set or within a club grouping? If they're all selected on a launch monitor / sim, does that result in many models through the bag or few? My set looks like a bouquet of mismatched R-flex graphite shafts plus a hickory shafted putter. At least I have thirteen matching grips.

Good idea. Thanks.

I REALLY like the look of the new Edel wedges, PARTICULARLY the C grind. A 48-54-60 set, 1º flat, 6º up from my 9-iron, with shafts and grips to match my irons, would probably be right down my alley, but I don't know where I could try them. I've been burned too often ordering stuff on faith that it would suit me.

I'm a senior with you, Chuck, and I know what you mean. I've played high loft wedges since they emerged in the late 70s, however, so they don't require any more practice for me than anything else. Which is a good thing, because my dedication to practice isn't huge. If I feel physically up to swinging clubs, I play!

Sunny today and 48°F. Almost warm enough for golf, but I'm shut down for the winter.

I don't use GPS because it's more accurate. It isn't. I use it because It's easier. But as with you, I pretty much know where I am anywhere on my home track. For better or worse, I've seen pretty much all of it.

I would prefer a little bit of offset in the longer irons at least. That looks severe. I'm not sure why other than I might just be used to it. In fact, I'd bet that's the only reason. I hit metals, right? I do remember looking at Ping Eye 2s when they came out. They were hugely popular, and everybody I knew seemed to be buying them, but even the wedges had massive, one-iron look offset. I simply couldn't play that and got progressively offset Wilson 1200GEs instead--which I liked, by the way. I pretty much stuck with stainless irons until 2009.

I somehow happened across an Acushnet Bullseye putter called the LaFemme. It's basically the same as a Bullsyeye Flange but it's only 33" long and the grip is too small. I honestly don't remember how it wound up in my putter bag because it's been there for decades, but I believe it may have been marketed as a women's putter in its day.

I play the ball a little further back in my stance to deloft the club. I also choke down on longer clubs to hit low into the wind. That might not work for you if you're two degrees strong already. My preference is for weaker lofts. And if it's too windy, I play gin in the clubhouse instead.

I stopped rooting for the PGA Tour way back when they broke away from the PGA of America club pros in the 1960s I believe it was. That's just how I felt about it at the time, regardless of the practicality of the move and its revenue implications. They do and did things their way, however, and were very successful for a long time. All constructs eventually get challenged and things change. Right now baseball is having its World Series, but it's no longer a true battle of champions. Except as trademarked terms, the American League and the National League stopped actually existing more than two decades ago. The World Series is merely the final round of the MLB playoffs, which is to say, culturally far less that it used to be. Constructs change. As a recreational player with very little interest in professional golf as sports entertainment, I hope that whatever they do works out well for all involved. It won't affect me in any way,

The PC, for percussion center, was said to have a so-called sweet spot the diameter of a pencil eraser but not quite as close to heel and more toward the center than most blades. Of all the popular pure blade types available at the time, the PC had the reputation of being the very least forgiving. In 1984, the more forgiving cavity back irons were just about all stainless steel. At the same time that the PC was out, however, Hogan offered the "Edge," I believe it was called. That, curiously, was one of the very first cavity back forged clubs, and the idea exploded from there. I believe MacGregor were the next ones to jump on the bandwagon, but those early forged cavity backs were still one-piece heads, not like what we have now.

Titleist started out with a teardrop line, a more rounded line, and a more squared off line in the Vokeys--- but with only loft options. When they decided to go with grind and bounce options, they did it all with just the most popular tear drop face. It would have been awesome if they offered all the options in all three shapes, but it would also have been asking a lot. If they offered all the options in all three head shapes in both conforming and shredder models, that would make Titleist my favorite clubmaker ever!

November was a month too early for me. I didn't shave during final exams and immediate prep for them, winter and spring. I'd get a barber shave when finals were done, one of them just before going home for Christmas. That was a college tradition for me. That was also a half century ago. Now it's a snow white beard and my wife threatens to volunteer me as a mall Santa if I grow one.

That's quite a challenge for yourself. If it turns out to be unrealistic, take encouragement in whatever improvement you actually can realize. That's what most of us do.

Thanks for the info. Thanks.

I've got two three club options between driver and 5-iron. The best option for my own club is 18, 21° fairway woods as the only fairway options between driver and 5-iron; then a driving iron to use strictly as a driving club. The more versatile option for playing at other courses would be 16.5º fairway wood with 19 and 22º hybrids. All three fairway playable. (Downside is that for me, the hybrid feels less safe than a driving iron on scary driving holes.) The eleven staying constant would be driver 5-GW 56-08, 60-06 and putter. To try a driving iron without paying too much, try to find an 18º Mizuno Fli Hi II with the stock Exsar Blue shaft (circa 2004). Bending it to 19º makes it a touch easier to elevate. Worked for me. Newer ones are even better, but this one is pretty good..

The stamping on the sole of a club is only a cosmetic issue. Nothing more. Cosmetic preferences are purely subjective. People who don't care about the cosmetics, however, seem to be highly critical of those who do. Not sure why it stirs up animosity and belligerence, but it clearly does...on virtually every golf internet forum. Perhaps it's best to keep one's subjective opinions to oneself. I just wish that I understood why, but it's probably better to drop the issue than to try to understand why it makes people as angry as it does.