mynerds

Words cannot describe how excited I am as a predominantly Cobra player. I play Cobra, I play graphite shafts, so naturally everyone thinks I’m 700 years old. If I’m going to play like an old man, at least I’ll look awesome doing so! Absolutely elated - great job on the aesthetics Cobra!

I'm going to be losing a lot of money in February by the time all of these new balls release. I'm really intrigued by the pearlescent finish - I really don't like to spend the time examining balls to figure out which one is mine on the course, which is half the reason I played red and blue matte balls for so long. Time to build out a list of everything I'm going to need to pick up at the PGA superstore. I really wish sing sleeves were more readily available, but c'est la vie!

Nah, you just need to exercise your marketing muscles. "This cutting edge indoor golf range comes with advanced features that promote enhanced reaction times, foster heightened situational awareness, develop fast-twitch muscle fibers, build dynamic ball flight awareness, and keep your mind sharp in new and exciting ways!"

I’m tempted to redeem this, fine print and all, just to destroy whatever horcrux this thread is and send O Works back to the shadow realm!

I'd love it too if I carried my PW 140 yards, yeesh! Got any workout tips for us weaklings in the back? Very excited for you - keep it coming!

Well you piqued my interest. Had to dig around in the basement to find my calipers (thanks Christmas decorations! Now I don’t know where anything is again). Looks like I’ll be ordering a 1/4” hole punch.

Interesting! If you and @Josh Parker get a chance, can you also try @Tom the Golf Nut's suggestion and try a silver marker? I think @sirchunksalot may be doing this already, but I'm always interested in a bigger data set!

Great work thus far testers! For the folks moving on to the Mevo+, I'm interested in a deep dive on how ball color/finish and the use of the aluminum stickers impact data consistency/accuracy. I like the look of matte/color balls, and the aluminum dots run $45 dollars for a roll of 1000 - not expensive, but it all adds up over time. If you're able, I'd love to see a comparison of how the mevo+ is able to provide data for: White, glossy ball with and without aluminum sticker White, matte ball with and without aluminum sticker Color (paging @Yellow Ball) with and without aluminum sticker To limit changing other variables, MaxFli Tour probably is probably the most affordable ball with those variations. It might be a cost-prohibitive test if you don't already have those balls in your bag though. Just a hopeful wish-list from me here! Keep up the good work.

Navigating the Hype Callaway has been using AI to design products for years. Yet, it has only appeared in their product branding now. Is that because the newest generation of AI design is revolutionizing club design, or is it because appending “AI” to the name of anything will improve sales? A fair response one might have is, “who cares?” What first brought me to MGS and what kept me coming back was the commitment to combat hype with trustworthy, honest reporting. MGS was created in response to companies putting marketing over the performance of their products, and I’ve seen that mission valued within the forum community as well. My intent isn't to make a mountain out of a molehill, but to challenge what could become or may already be a marketing gimmick. AI is the hottest marketing term in the world right now. If golf companies are going to put “AI” on their products, is it based in truth or hype? Callaway – Ai Smoke First out of the AI gate here in 2024 is Callaway with their Paradym AI Smoke line. As @Tony Covey MGS pointed out on the main page, Callaway has involved AI in their club development since at least 2018 during development of Flash Face for the Epic Flash Driver. Since its release in 2019, we’ve seen the Mavrik, Big Bertha B21, Epic Speed, Epic Max, Rogue ST, Great Big Bertha, Paradym, Paradym X, and now the Paradym Ai Smoke. In that time, the two major AI contributions to the drivers were focused on refinements to the original Flash Face and the Jailbreak Speed Frame. On the iron side, the story appears to be much the same. The first AI-designed irons began with the Mavrik line’s “Flash Face Cup”. Since then, we’ve seen AI optimize for the development of the Big Bertha B21, X Forged CB, Apex MB, Apex 21, Apex Pro 21, Apex 21 TCB, Apex 21 DCB, Rogue Epic Max Star, Rogue ST Pro, Rogue ST MAX, Rogue ST MAX OS, Rogue ST MAX OS Lite, Great Big Bertha 23, Paradym, Paradym X, and now Paradym Ai Smoke. The fact that Callaway incorporates AI into their development process is indisputable. In the past 5 years and across dozens of products, they’ve demonstrated and promoted as much. And here we are 5 years later with the first Callaway products to stamp that AI badge onto the product itself. So what’s changed? From what Tony tells us, Callaway believes the real magic isn’t the 15% chassis weight reduction from the Paradym but in the “Ai Smart Face” technology. Also per Tony, the creation of the Ai Smart Face is a product of Swing Code, AI Face Optimization, and Micro Deflections. Let’s take a deeper dive into each of these to identify what the real innovation(s) might be. Swing Code Callaway boasts that the Ai Smoke has the “World's First AI Smart Face™ designed using real player data.” That "real player data" is called “Swing Code” and is a set of 1,040,000 data points from 250,000 swings collected from Callaway Fitting Centers. Swing Code data “consist of swing speed, club delivery, and face orientation just prior to impact.” There are a few ways to interpret these numbers. If we look at how the Swing Code is presented for the Ai Smoke Max, we see four bullets: Uses most of the face Swings 90-100 mph Has a slightly upward attack angle Has a path that’s slightly out-to-in with a face slightly open to that path The other 3 driver models, 4 fairway woods, and are presented with the same Swing Code structure (the irons are not marketed paired with a structured Swing Code categorization. More on that later.) If each swing Code is actually: 1) impact location, 2) swing speed, 3) angle of attack, and 4) club path and face orientation at time of impact, then we get four points of data for 250,000 swings and you get 1,000,000 data points. That matches pretty nicely with the marketing materials, with 40,000 data points remaining. It’s possible that remaining data assigns each swing with an individual, and that the total number of people to have been fit by Callaway is 40,000. It’s also possible that there are 40,000 different combinations of impact location, swing speed, angle of attack, club path and face orientation, depending on the level of fidelity of each data point. It would be a little surprising for there to only be four data points per swing available. Another way to interpret the data is that there are 1,040,000 data points per swing, captured as part of those four principle components. The biomechanics of a swing are complex and, given the wealth of data that’s provided by at-home launch monitors, I wouldn’t be surprised if a single swing contains that much data. Aside from the raw number of data points, one thing that raises an eyebrow about Swing Code is that 250,000 doesn’t seem like a particularly large number of swings. I haven’t been to Callaway for a fitting so it’s possible that their fitting process is uniquely lean. Based on how many times I swung a club during my fitting experiences at Club Champion and Golf Galaxy though, I’d expect a much larger number of swings at Callaway’s disposal. Perhaps they need to expand their data sets to their Top Golf venues… Let’s take a step back though - is Swing Code new? During the launch of the Mavrik irons back in 2020, Popular Science reported that Callaway had gathered twenty years-worth of data from their networked fitting centers. Are we to presume that Callaway hasn’t been using that data over the past 4 years of product development, or that the Swing Code is based on a different collection of data from their fitting centers? Or is it more likely that this data has been used since the development of Flash Face, and the innovation this year is that the data was given a name? If “World's First AI Smart Face™ designed using real player data” just means “this is the first year we’re referring to Flash Face as AI Smart Face™” then color me disappointed. AI Face Optimization Is the AI Face Optimization cause for excitement? Quoting Tony again, “When AI arrives at the optimal solution, Callaway can make and test physical parts. It’s the equivalent of testing 50,000 faces when, historically, they’d be able to test fewer than 10.” Well, yes and no. Yes, AI allows Callaway to test tens of thousand virtual prototypes instead of being limited to the less-than-10 physical prototypes. But Callaway has leveraged this virtual prototyping process for at least the past 5 years. The process isn’t new for the Ai Smart Face. So maybe something else has changed. The first Flash Face was developed from 15,000 iterations for the Epic Flash. Tony reports that’s dropped down to ~12,000 iterations for subsequent releases but increased to 50,000 iterations for the Ai-Smart Face. Callaway claims “the difference between the 5,000th iteration and the 50,000th is roughly a 60 percent decrease in downrange dispersion area.” That’s interesting, but it’s not an apples-to-apples comparison between Flash Face and Ai Smart Face. What we really want to know is the decrease in downrange dispersion between the 12,000th and 50,000th iteration. Unfortunately, we would need to know what the learning curve looks like to know the benefit of upping the iterations from 12,000 to 50,000. It’s possible that learning curve doesn’t plateau until the 45,000-50,000th iterations in the same way that it’s possible that it plateaued between the 10,000-12,000 iterations. Without additional insight, we can’t know. I don’t think the decision to provide dispersion control metrics between 5,000 and 50,000 is malicious. I suspect it was deliberate though, and I further suspect the dispersion control numbers are significantly less impressive if looked at only between12,000 and 50,0000. Optimizing for Irons I mentioned earlier that the Smoke Ai irons are not marketed according to Swing Code in the same way as their woody counterparts. We get a little bit of a peek behind the curtain with Brian William’s comments to Golf WRX: “It starts with the work we did on Swing Codes specific to irons, and they’re very different. You don’t see quite the exaggeration that you see on woods around path and face angle. What you do see is wide variations in speed, and we saw that players with speed and players with slower speeds had fundamentally different outcomes.” This is a fascinating insight to me, and I think speaks to the credibility of their learning process. I read Brian’s comments to say that when their model tries to optimize for irons, they find that outcomes are predominately driven by swing speed alone. Callaway could market their clubs with the same criteria as their woods to make their fitting criteria seem more sophisticated, but they instead market based on ball flight, speed, and forgiveness. They’re not optimizing based on path and face angle, and they don’t claim to. Kudos to them there. Microdeflections The last aspect of the AI Smart Face technology is Microdeflections. As best I understand, microdeflections refer to the specific pattern that was output from the AI optimization process after it was instructed to optimize for tighter dispersion control. Given Callaway’s historical performance in most wanted testing, you might reasonably assume that this is the first time they’ve attempted to optimize for something other than distance . Callaway has been claiming increased forgiveness and faster ball speeds across the face due to AI optimization since the Mavrik and its SS20 Flash Face improved on the Epic Flash. And yet, the Mavrik’s top performing variant in the 2020 Most Wanted found not much forgiveness and a shot area not among the best. The Epic Max and Epic Max LS performed much better in 2021, but the Epic Speed was near the bottom of the pack in forgiveness. The Rogue ST line took a step back in 2022 but Callaway saw a return to the top 5 with Paradym X in 2023. Perhaps ironically, Callaway’s AI optimization has been unforgiving in maintaining forgiveness in their products from year to year. Flash Face Reincarnate? Overall, the new Ai Smoke line feels less like a paradigm shift and more of a new coat of paint on a largely proven, incremental process. I haven’t seen anything to indicate that this isn’t just another iteration of the Flash Face technology, but perhaps that’s not a bad thing. Callaway is unquestionably a leader of implementing and marketing AI in the development of their products, but we shouldn’t (and honestly can’t) expect a radical new approach from year to year. Almost none of the radical breakthroughs in AI last year that turned it into such a hot marketing term have anything to do with how Callaway might be analyzing and designing their clubs. Realistically, they might have purchased more compute power, slightly improved their models, or simply run their simulations for 4 months instead of 4 weeks to realize a slight performance improvement. I wouldn’t be surprised if this year ends up being a return to the mean as a relatively underperforming year for Ai Smoke given the success of the Paradym X last year and the historical back-and-forth that MGS has seen from Callaway products. I look forward to the performance metrics in the 2024 Most Wanted list, specifically for the Max D. If Ai Smoke was successful in optimizing its AI Smart Face based on player need, then the Max D players who “use the whole damn face” should have the most forgiveness in their hands without sacrificing too much in terms of accuracy and distance. One last note Callaway’s procurement of their first $5 Million supercomputer to develop the original Flash Face was lead by Dr Alan Hocknell. Interestingly, Hocknell left in 2022 after spending 24 years with the company and joined Acushnet, parent company of Footjoy and Titleist, as their VP of Advanced Research and Innovation in 2023. I am curious to see what Titleist comes up with in the near future, and whether a supercomputer is on their procurement roadmap.

Ha! You caught me there. I was intentionally generic with the use of AI because, unfortunately, the term is used without any rigor whatsoever in golf and other buzzword-hungry industries. Let’s normalize some terms with examples so we can be more specific in our discussions. Automation: Mindlessly performing a pre-defined task, the same way, every time the task is requested. “Hey Bill, why are you aiming over the woods?” “Playing the slice Ted. Works every time.” Artificial Intelligence (AI): Automated task execution, augmented with the ability to learn and change to achieve a better outcome. “It works every time because you’re leaving the face open every time, Bill.” “What’s an open face?” “Oh for the love…Alright let’s start with your grip. Then we’ll talk about your swing path.” Machine Learning (ML): Using mathematical models to help computers learn from experience; a sophisticated guess-and-check approach. The greatest illustration of ML I've ever encountered. Deep Learning (DL): A specific type of Machine Learning inspired by how the human brain learns. “I know this is going to sound crazy Ted, but every time you hit an absolute bomb off the tee on a par-4 you end up very short of the green or well past on your next shot. How about you club-up the next time that happens, don’t try to clobber the ball, and see if you can’t get some more birdies on your card?” Neural Network (NN): The fancy mathematical models that enable deep learning. “Impressive insight Bill, how’d you figure that out?” “I’ve known you 30 years Ted. Any time you hit a good shot, you think you’re ready to join the tour and it all falls apart.” When we talk about Large Language Models, self-driving cars, Robotic Process Automation, generative AI, AI Vision, translation, content-moderation, AI-developed products and the like, we’re generally talking about application of one or more of the above technologies to solve a specific problem. Not to get ahead of myself, but should we be impressed when Callaway touts 80,000 lines of code and 1,000,000 data points going into 50,000 iterations of a club? Mevo, Rapsodo, Flightscope and the like are all doing things that could reasonably be called AI, yet they’re not as violently marketed as “AI” as many other products with a fraction of their technology stack. What does any of this mean for trying to correct my awful swing path? Part of what I’m hoping to decode is exactly to your point. When a golf OEM slaps an “AI” sticker on their product, what are we actually talking about? Do the claims hold water? What smells like fact, and what like fiction? Hope that helps!

Strap in folks. I’ve got a soapbox and I’m not afraid to use it. As an AI enthusiast and avid golfer, I find myself standing at the intersection of two worlds that, on the surface, appear to be incongruent – the precision of artificial intelligence colliding with the artistry of a well-executed golf swing. In recent years, the golf industry has fervently declared the infusion of AI into its product development processes, promising revolutionary advancements in club design, ball technology, and overall gameplay experience. However, as someone deeply entrenched in the realms of artificial intelligence, I can't help but approach these claims with a healthy dose of skepticism. Are we witnessing a genuine marriage of cutting-edge technology and the age-old pursuit of a perfect round, or is the integration of AI into golf products merely a marketing ploy, a superficial gloss on what remains fundamentally traditional? In this exploration, we delve into the landscape of AI in golf, attempting to separate fact from fiction and unveil the true impact of artificial intelligence on the sport I love. Disclaimer: The above content was generated using AI. Therein lies the problem. I applaud any organization that is making investments into understanding and applying AI to their business. Real R&D is hard, time consuming, and expensive. But to my eyes, the adage “Trust, but Verify” has never been more relevant in our daily lives given the deluge of "AI" this and "AI" that. In this thread, I’ll be taking my outsider’s skeptical eye to what appears to be a release season full of AI promises. Feel free to follow the thread to observe or join in my descent into AI madness. If you have any specific or general questions about AI, feel free to leave them in the comments and I’ll do my best to answer with what limited knowledge I have. I am an expert in AI. Or maybe I’m not. These ideas are original and of my own volition. Except the ones that aren’t. I want you to listen, but I don’t want you to just believe me. Trust, but verify. And I want you to treat everyone else slapping “AI” stickers on anything within arm’s reach. On deck is Callaway and their new AI smoke line (hopefully week of 1/8, maybe this weekend depending on how hard this coffee hits). More to come as new brands reveal their new products. Mods - feel free to kick the topic into a different section if this is in the wrong location! Case Study: Callaway's Use of AI in Product Development Cheers to an interesting 2024 release cycle!

Here's to hoping that the outing is at Kishwaukee out here the western Chicago suburbs, and the "Villa" is just sleeping on the floor of Sub 70's storefront . Excited for the announcement, wherever it may be!

Good morning and happy NYE! Finishing the year off with some garage sim work and enjoying time with the family. Stay safe, stay warm, and may 2024 be as kind to you as you are to it! Cheers!

Second this - I took 2023 off from the forum to wrangle in some professional and home-front chaos. I was missing some community connection, and was pleasantly surprised to see so many familiar names and avatars upon returning (the profile photo requirement for testing is a secret gem IMHO). I was shocked at the amount of activity in the off-season. As someone who didn’t experience the trickle of changes, the consolidation and restructuring of the forums are a dramatic improvement. I spend less time considering and navigating which specific bucket any topic might fit into, and more time reading/reacting to the community’s content. Kudos on the effective refocusing of the community on the vital few - the content metrics are a clear indicator of that success!

Are you locked into Walmart brands? At that price point, I would recommend the Caddytek pushcart from Costco ($150 at time of posting). I feel like the 3 wheel is easier to push and has more maneuverability than its 4-wheeled counterpart. It’s been my workhorse and I’ve recommended it to others who’ve similarly enjoyed it. https://www.costco.com/caddytek-3-wheel-golf-cart-with-swivel-front-wheel.product.100430232.html If it’s Walmart-only, the Costway 3-wheeled cart without the seat looks similar to the Caddytek and seems like it could be a good buy. https://www.walmart.com/ip/Costway-Foldable-3-Wheel-Steel-Golf-Pull-Push-Cart-Trolley-Club-w-Umbrella-Holder/752252450?athbdg=L1200&adsRedirect=true

Sorry I missed the call! Next time I'll remember how to translate time zones properly, and I'll bring the toilet bucket along for a cameo appearance .

+1 for the Sonar+ grips. I had CPX on all of my clubs looking for grip and comfort, and they really didn't feel right to me. I tried the CP2 pro (logo down for the pseudo-alignment line) and the Sonar+ throughout my bag. Sonar+ was far and away my preference, and I'll be hard pressed to change in the future.

Great job thus far testers! I am very excited to see how you all react and compare the Mevo to the Mevo+ I had a similar reaction to my RapsodoMLM which pushed my pursuit of the Mevo+. I will be very curious if you have a similar reaction to the Mevo+ as I did! @Byrnzee send me a PM if you find yourself near the Fox River in the western burbs during testing (St Charles, Batavia, Elgin, etc...). I've been working on a ball fitting setup at home and have some spare sleeves of several balls. I'm happy to donate to the testing cause if you want to see the Mevo+ capture different ball performances (especially spin with/without the reflective dots). I've also got some non-white and matte balls if you want to compare performance vs glossy white. I'm happy to share with the other testers as well, just as soon as you move to Chicagoland .

Found myself at DSG trying on Peloton shoes, and inevitably drifted over to the used club section. I found some right handed x20s (5-Pw) which were my old set. They were on sale for $85 which seemed like a steal. I bought new grips for them and now have a spare set for any of my righty friends to use for the garage sim.

Ha! Consider it my service to the golf world to suffer so you don't have to . In all honesty, I just enjoy writing. It's a nice creative break from my day-to-day job. I'll always give it the same amount of effort because its the process that's enjoyable for me, regardless of whether I like the product or not.

TL;DR: It does what it says it does. Would I pay $180 for it? Uhh……. maybe I’ll just keep my shag bag. First impressions: 11/20 Aesthetics: 9/10 The Numbers: 7/10 On-Course: 14/20 The Good, the Bad, the Inbetween: 10/20 Play it or Trade it?: 10/20 61/100. Fun to have, cool novelty, but I can’t in good conscience recommend it over the many available cheaper alternatives. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- First impressions: 11/20 In 2020, I helped kickstart the Gravity Caddy. My first impressions were during the product development process and they weren’t great, even by Kickstarter standards. The first red flag should have been the project risk section that claimed “Quite simply, this project does not come with any risk.” The project kicked off July 2020, and finished funding in September 2020. The original project timeline targeted September 2020 for production and November 2020 for product shipment. Interestingly, there was an update in August 2020 before funding completed that claimed production had already begun. This would prove to be untrue. The product took over a year to begin assembly, well over two years to arrive, and communication was sporadic at best over that time. Quite frankly, I forgot about the purchase and assumed that the project delays were indicative of (another) failed Kickstarter. New product development is hard, time consuming, expensive, and not for the faint-of-heart. This project seemed like it was seriously underestimating the work that goes into producing commercial products, but it managed to see things through and deliver a product in the end. I’ll take 8 points off for the Kickstarter experience. Once the product arrived, I was impressed with how well it was packed and how easily it was to assemble. Minus one pedantic point for the product being originally advertised as “no assembly required.” The practice mat is 1” thick, three layers, and seemed likely to be pleasant to hit off of (more on that in the On-course section). The bottom layer almost feels like a horse stall mat. It is VERY dense and feels like it will hold up against significant wear and tear. I appreciated that extra tees were provided. I’ve chewed through the rubber tees that came with my Maxfli hitting mat, and all of the broken tees at Top Golf seem to find their way to the left side of their hitting bays (you rightys don’t know how good you have it!). Again, the thoughtfulness to include the extra tees is welcome. Aesthetics: 9/10 The Kickstarter images gave me some serious Gatorade vibes (and not in a good way), but I am very happy with the final product color palate. Red, black, green, grey. It’s a simple color scheme, and it is well done. The red stands up again the sea of green that is a practice area, the green matches my practice mats, and the branding is embossed but subtle enough to blend into the product. I really enjoy that they decided not to paint the logo as shown in the prototype images. My only criticism is that the hourglass shape seems unnecessary. It doesn’t appear to serve a function to me, and I’m not a fan of the curves where there are straight lines in so many other areas of the product. A solid aesthetic overall though! The Numbers: 7/10 First, some pricing numbers. I purchased at the early-bird price of $99 USD. At the time, retail pricing was estimated at ~$150 USD. Following production, retail pricing has ballooned to $180 USD. This is more expensive than other similar automatic ball dispensers on Amazon and SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive than other basic shag bags. 2 out of 5 for pricing. Second, dimensionality. I won’t double-count the capacity and weight numbers in the sections below, so we’ll stick to spacial dimensions. Length: 27.5” with mat, 19” without mat; Width: 19.75” with mat, 12.5” without mat; Height: 13” to the top of the caddy, 17” to the top of the lever mechanism. Overall, the caddy and the mat feel appropriately sized. 5 out of 5. On-Course: 14/20 According to Gravity Caddy, it's perfect for the “Yard, garage. Indoor, outdoor.” I’ve often joked that I lost all my shame once I became a parent. However, even my dulled self-consciousness wouldn’t want to be seen hauling this out into a hitting bay. I can’t imagine using this for chipping practice in the yard either – it just seems like it would be so cumbersome. I am fortunate enough to have space for a bootleg garage simulator (thanks Spornia!). In that way, “on-course” for me is limited to the garage and only the garage. For the mat, it is a tri-layer 1” thick hitting surface. It doesn’t hold a tee like a CCE mat, but fat shots feel about the same in both mats to my hands. The hopper capacity is lower than expected (see point 6 in the next section). Balls at the top of the hopper end up not feeding through on their own because the upper level is not sufficiently sloped: signal-2023-12-27-193239_005.mp4 The lower level is not sufficiently sloped either, and balls end up stopped there as well: Granted, a good whack of the club jostles the balls. At this price point it shouldn’t be necessary though. Pros: decent hitting surface that’s forgiving to miss-hits. Cons: Limited use cases and minor unreliability. 14/20. The Good, the Bad, the Inbetween: 10/20 Here are the original Kickstarter claims: Gravity Powered? Yep! No power or pedal to be found here. The tee jostles a lever, and the drinking-bird mechanism does its trick. Ready to play out of box, no assembly required? Eh, minimal assembly required. I’ll try not to be too pedantic here, but a slight miss none-the-less. Fully automatic? Yes, to a fault. Aside from the occasional stopped ball scenario above, I have to leave a ball on the tee or empty the caddy out if I want the caddy to stop dispensing balls. A lever or stopper of some kind would be a welcome addition to me. Nevertheless, the fully automatic claim is generally met. signal-2023-12-27-194559_002.mp4 Fairway practice mat? Yes, but it’s a double-edged sword. The mat itself is well positioned to simulate fairway practice, but the mat is very thick. Your three options are to choke up a bit on your club (eh…), hit from a broader elevated platform (why?), or hit from an equally thick practice mat (just hit from the bigger mat then). I’d be tempted to cut a section out of my own CCE mat before using the fairway mat regularly. Suitable for left or right handed golfers? Yes, but you do have to move the caddy depending on which side of the ball you play. If, like me, you play with a mixed dexterity group then you will be moving the caddy around or someone will be feeding balls between their legs a la Top Golf’s stationary dispenser. Shoots up to 50 balls in a row? No. Here’s what 40 balls in the hopper looks like: Weighs only 9lbs / 4kg? The mat weighs 4.28lbs. The caddy weighs 5.39lbs. At 9.67lbs, it misses the claim but there are so many other items of substance that its hard to pick this nit. The ultimate practice tool for golfers of any age, level, and ability? No. Like, objectively, absolutely not. The caddy doesn’t help with your grip, setup, swing, awareness, long game, short game, smack-talk, none of it. It puts a ball. On a tee. Heck, you could argue that this actually prevents practicing picking up your provisional when you inevitably “find” that ball you scorched into the trees that happened to catch a “lucky bounce” back into the fairway. Or does that only happen with my playing partners? Perfect and fine-tune your swing, even in the off-season? No. See 8. Bring the range home to you? No. Second verse, same as the first. (See 8). Charitably, 5 out of 10 claims delivered so I’ll give 10/20 points. Play it or Trade it?: 10/20 I feel 50/50 on whether I really like this product or really don’t. Hence, the 10/20. On the one hand, I would be happy to haul this thing out of the basement and set it up for group play if others come play the garage simulator with me. There’s a quirky novelty to it, and it’s a fun albeit occasionally unreliable dispenser. Plus, my toddler has a blast knocking balls off the tee onto my Puttout mat and it’s the only reliable way to get her to take a break from the iPad and play with a club. On the other hand, if someone were to offer me $180 (or even my original $99) to take it off my hands, I think I would have to refrain from throwing it at them with enthusiasm. It’s interesting and effective, it’s just not worth $180 when you could have a shagger for nearly a tenth the cost. Let me know if you have any questions!

Good morning spies! Bringing up the rear here as our house is in full holiday mode with sleeping in. I dread trying to get everyone back on schedule in January. I'll be wrapping up my workweek like most today, then gathering supplies for the extended family coming in for Christmas. I'll start my pizza and bagel doughs today for Christmas day eats (cold fermentation for the win!). Then we'll get all the cookie decorating supplies out for the little ones. Say a prayer for my vacuum - it's going to get a workout this weekend! @Josh Parker happy birthday to the wife, and best wishes on the offer! Our friends just had their buyer back out due to a fraudulent lender, which cost them their own contingent purchase. Realtors have a higher stress tolerance than my stomach can handle . @Byrnzee safe travels, and let me know how that trip goes! I'm eyeing Chicago to the Rochester area to visit some friends Someday™. Traveling via car or plane is of debate. @GolfSpy_BEN I feel that in my bones - a good cup of coffee can put some solid ground beneath my feet, and that can pay dividends in what could otherwise be unkind moments later in the day!

Welcome to all! I am so happy to see so many Chicagolanders (and leftys!) have joined in 2023. Looks like @Byrnzee and @Play18 are the closest to me geographically out in the far west burbs. I owe you both a drink if I run into on the greens in the spring!

Well it's been a long 16 month(!) hiatus since the last update. A new job and the chaos that is *gestures broadly*.... made it tough to keep on the update bandwagon. Have no fear, I'm back and ready to share my shenanigans with my fellow not-so-bad'ers! Some quick notes: I've cleared out some old clubs (shoutout SidelineSwap - can't imagine I'll trade clubs in to DSG or PlayItAgain going forward), got some new toys for the garage, kept some things that were far too reliable to abandon, and am playing far more consistently than I ever have. I have an official handicap (though the site is down, thanks CDGA! /s), though I typically play an adjusted score of 95-100. Treating each hole as if +1 was my par really helped set realistic expectations for myself and celebrate good-enough shots. I had a few legitimate birdies on par 4's this year, and I suspect they felt to me like eagles feel to my scratch-golfer buddies. More to come after the holiday season and family times are behind us, but I'm excited to be poking around here again!

Returning after a small hiatus: welcomed a new niece, left a job for my own sanity, navigated a bunch of family events, repainted and reconfigured one of our unused bedrooms into a second home office, crossed off a bunch of items that had been sitting stale on the honey-do list, and on and on and on. I am looking forward to getting the garage simulator set up for the winter, and hope to FINALLY get my neighborhood ball test/ball fitting going.