mynerds

I wanted a mallet to play around with along side my blade. I was between a L.A.B DF2 and an armlock of some kind. The armlock two ball ten went on sale at the PGA superstore, and I couldn’t resist another Odyssey putter. The feel of the ball off their face is unmatched IMO. As a side note, the interior of the head cover feels absolutely luxurious. Definitely feels like a premium club. This thing is WILDLY different than any other putter I’ve felt. I’m going to have to watch armlock technique videos tonight!

I know exactly how I'd play this one: Driver off the tee. As a lefty, I'd think "draw" to keep it out of the water and try to crush it. Over compensate and hit it into the woods. Hit a provisional thinking "let's not do that again" and slice it into the water. Get confused as to how many balls I've hit by rule, call it 1 + penalty pretending the provisional didn't actually count, and drop a ball near the further back playing partner ~250 yards from the tee to keep pace. Pull out the fairway wood for my "third" and top the ball for 50 yards. Over-correct and fat it for another 50 for my fourth. Pitching wedge for the fifth to get back with the group 100 yards out. Keep with the pitching wedge and land 20 feet out from the pin with the sixth. Brag about the pitch over the water and let the confidence explode. Leave the first putt 5 feet short, lip out with the second, finish the three putt. Confidence returns to normal levels. Replay the hole in my head and tell my partners "put me down for an 8, I think." I am nothing if not honest.

I've tried to spin this as a good thing, at least for my wallet. It SEVERELY limits my impulse buys. I'm a sucker for limited editions, especially blue color schemes to the point that I had to confirm with Cobra that the LTDx Volition edition wasn't offered in LH version when purchasing my new driver and fairway wood: Mizuno Pro 221 in Blue? Mizuno Tour Blue ST-z 220? Cobra LTDx Palm Tree Crew? No customization of the top line paint color My Stealth Plus for lefties (why?!)? That's not even accounting for the product lines that are whole cloth unavailable in left hand orientation. No love for us on the right side of the ball indeed .

I am a backer of this “Gravity Caddy” kickstarter from 2020: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/wagolf/gravity-caddy-gravity-powered-golf-ball-dispenser-0/description Two years and an additional contribution later for shipping funds, and I’ve yet to receive (and thus, review) the product. Alas, this is typically how kickerstarters for products go as first time inventors VASTLY underestimate the work involved in manufacturing at scale. Should it ever arrive, I’ll happily let you know if it’s worth pursuing. If it works but doesn’t fit my garage hitting bay needs, I’ll send it your way.

Welp, I am so deeply disappointed in myself for missing this post! I'm only a few minutes from Prairie Landing and definitely would have attended if not for my own stupidity . Is there anywhere I can sign up for emails about future Sub 70 outings?

At the risk of yelling into the void here, something I'd love clarity from MGS staff on in is the nature of the newsletter, new release posts, product reviews, and buying guides. Today's newsletter hyped up a putting training aid: The phrasing of "we found one that actually works" and "It's addicting" made me expect a product review. I was happy to see Puttout in the title, as I've enjoyed using a Puttout set I built piecemeal based on unofficial and official forum reviews. I read commentary of the training aids and which were beneficial to each tester to select the aids which were right for me. I was excited to hear the staff perspective on the various aids, but was disappointed in that none seem to be present. In fact, the post leaves me with more questions than answers: Why is this posted under new releases? None of the aids are new. I don't think any of the packages are new, but I suppose I could be mistaken. What information does this post provide that Phillip's review from April doesn't? Not only is no new information presented, there is a wealth of information from April that is just straight up missing from today's post. Why are only three of Puttout's five studio sets mentioned? Why exclude the Starter and Academy sets? Why is the "better" option the Pro set? Why is the Academy set, at $100 cheaper with the medium mat, training mirror, training gate, and pressure putt trainer not a sufficient middle ground? What benefit do two pressure putt trainers provide over one? Why on earth is the "best" option the tour set? I don't understand the benefit of multiple pressure putt trainers, and I certainly don't understand paying 3x the cost for the "platinum" pressure putt trainer. Why is the Travel set, which includes the Slim mat, the baseline recommendation? All of the Puttout mats were given poor to mediocre marks in the Best Indoor Putting Greens of 2020, 2021, and 2022, but the Slim was rated lowest of the Puttout mats and low overall in 2022 (16 out of 21): To me and to many, the most important aspect of MGS is it's independent, unbiased, data-driven content. These values are reflected in three of the four MGS core beliefs. These values are not reflected when a newsletter seemingly endorses a product but points to a "New Release" article about products which are not new, which does not provide arguably any evaluation of the product and certainly not founded "in cold, hard data", which is duplicative to a recent product review, and is inconsistent with data-driven ratings across multi-year buying guides. Instead, it comes across as a pay-to-play product sponsorship, contrary to the stated mission of MGS. I don't know if I'm making much ado about nothing, or if this is indicative of a new business model. MGS absolutely has the prerogative to do whatever they'd like. If this type of content is going to become the new norm though, I'll just go back to reading Golf and Golf Digest through my Apple News+ subscription. I have enough sources of paid product advertisements in my life already, I don't need another.

First off, it's nice to have more people posting in the midwest thread! It was getting pretty lonley there the past few months compared to the other regions. Welcome @Bruce_B, @mbell42, @Jnoble89, and @Sherlock! An extra hello to my fellow healthcare Chicagoan @Sherlock and go Cubs go . It's been a hot minute since I've been on the southside - maybe 2013ish for Flutag? After that, the furthest south I ever found myself beyond driving through to the south suburbs or out to Indiana was museum campus. At least according to the community map, you'll find at least a few forum spies towards the west burbs.

Welcome @WalkrOfSky! I’ve driven through Terre Haute a few times on road trips to southern Indiana and a friend of mine lived there for a few years while working at Indiana State. For what it’s worth, I was turned off by the cost and availability of golf-for-the-absolute-beginner. I’ve had good luck with the digital lessons from Me And My Golf. A yearly membership ended up being cheaper than a lesson from my local pro, so I gave them a shot and have been happy with the results so far. May the force be with you!

Thinking about picking up a mallet putter with some birthday funds from the family. I like the feel of Odyssey’s white hot insert in my current blade putter, so I’m tempted to try their armlock two-ball ten mallet (currently on sale at PGA superstore). The other option would be a factory second L.A.B. DF 2.1. Or I’ll just it towards something else entirely that I don’t need. Decisions, decisions….

Set up my LX+ this week and figured I'd document this for anyone else having trouble syncing their H4 to their phone. On initial setup, the app asks which product you have. Both the LX+ and the H4 show up as options on that page. I selected LX+ and was first prompted to pair the H4 with my phone. It paired succesfully, but threw an error saying pairing was unsuccessful. It still advanced to the next page where it prompted a firmware update. Again, it seemed to update successfully but the app said it was unsuccessful. Again, it let me advance. Finally, it attempted to upload my home course to the H4 and this time actually errored out. It prompted me to restart the app and H4, and try again. After restarting both, the H4 no longer showed the initial "connect to app" screen. However, the phone couldn't connect to the H4. The app brought me back to the initial "Which product do you have?" screen, and all attempts when selecting the LX+ failed to connect to the device. No instructions seem to exist in the documentation for resetting bluetooth pairing, so I was stuck. However, once I selected that I only had the H4 device, it immediately connected to the device and all app functionality was smooth sailing. tl;dr: If you are configuring a new LX+ device, just tell the phone app that you have an H4. The iOS Shot Scope app likely has a bug and doesn't play nice when you select LX+ during initial setup.

Good luck to all, and thanks Cobra, MGS, and Rob for putting this together! This is a heck of a contest, to say the least. Which Model? I picked the Forged Tec X Irons as they match closely in both forgiveness and swing weight of the LTDx's I was able to play with during a fitting. The Forged Tec X seems to straddle the line between game-improvement and players distance, and would serve as an iron to grow into as my game improves. Further, I've only ever played graphite shafts in my irons and would enjoy the opportunity to game and compare steel shafts that I think of as being reserved for "stronger" and "better" players. If living up to the expectations of your clubs isn't reason enough to make you hit the gym and practice greens, I don't know what is! In short, I think the Forged Tec X irons punch above their weight class. I'd love to see if they'd help me do the same. Name: Mark - Batavia, IL Current Irons: Callaway X-20 Irons (5-SW), stock graphite shafts. Handicap: No official handicap for me yet, but unofficially trending to 22, down from an alleged 45+ early this year. Can the Forged Tec X Irons help push me sub 20 by the end of the year? Agree to participate in discussing their performance? Of course! I've had a blast this year writing official reviews, unofficial reviews, and tracking my improvement progress. Cobra really won me over with the LTDx driver this year, and I'd love to dive in on more of their products.

What about one at the bottom of a well? Phil! On your front doorstep? Matt! Thrown into the air? Chuck! In a pile of leaves? Russel! Out in the sun? Wilt! On the grill? Frank! I'll..see myself out

Hey man, first off all the support in the world for trying to create something new. New product development is fraught with challenges and is not for the faint of heart. I wish you all the best in your endeavors here! Based on the photos you sent, it seems like you're doing well in the early stages of the prototyping process. My product development experience is in a different market, but to my untrained eye it looks like you've been working on retrofitting existing collapsible push cart parts to a Mizuno BR-D4C cart bag. I think this is a great way to start playing with your ideas and seeing what works/what doesn't work. You have a few things going for you in that approach. For one, it helps you understand how the product can actually work, as opposed to what can be rendered quickly and cheaply by graphic artists. For another, it can help you play with specific parts and materials you'll need to source later. Those three-spoked rear wheels are common in the white-labeled drop-shipped carts on amazon (which may have been where they were pulled from), so sourcing similar parts should be easier than custom injection-molded wheels, for example. If you've worked in product development before, I'll be preaching to the choir in saying that tooling for your product will likely be your biggest challenge. If you're not fully outsourcing the product development, you're looking at a wide range of materials and likely will need multiple manufacturing partners (your fabric, plastic, and metal components may not be produced under one roof) plus assembly and likely sub-assembly partners to get this out the door at scale. Much of this is going to come out of the APAC region, and you'll need to plan your work hours and travel accordingly. Coming up with a novel idea is hard, prototyping is harder, but your mettle is tested most in tooling IMO. If you haven't already, I would highly, highly, highly recommend looking into that process more particularly before pursuing kickstarter funding. Many kickstarters have failed because they underestimated the challenges in manufacturing at scale. Check out the posts for the Gravity Caddy project and see the (ongoing) challenges the project has had in the tooling phase for nearly two years for a mechanically simpler product. (Not a lawyer, this is not legal advice) As for the patents pending worldwide, I would encourage you to wait until you are done prototyping before pursing the patent route. At first glance, there are a few existing patents which may be substantially similar to your product in functionality. Making sure your product is substantially different can help avoid legal problems down the road and expedite your application process. FWIW, I wasn't able to find any golf related applications or patents out of Fresno. If you haven't applied yet, then that makes sense. If you think you have, you may want to make sure whoever is filing on your behalf remembered to include you on the application. Again, best of luck! It's a long and challenging road but ultimately a fulfilling one.

Couldn't agree more here. I threw CPX on my irons rons, CP2 Pros (grip down for the alignment line) on my driver, 3W, and wedges, and Sonar+ on my Hybrids just to be able to compare all three. So far the CP2 Pro and the Lamkin Sonar+ are far and away my preference over the CPX, with a slight preference for the Sonar+. Honestly, I might just pick the grip per club that better matches the shaft as performance on both has been similar. CPX was cool to try, but I will never regrip with them again. The tackiness was gone after 2 rounds and even a soapy scrub doesn't bring it back like it does on other grips. They also encourage a weird hand placement for me that has thrown my iron play into an even worse place than it had been.

Alright which one of you broke the forum this morning?

Late to posting, but some used TS2 hybrids that were on sale for ~$60 each arrived and will be replacing my beat-to-death TaylorMade rescue. I’ve already since replaced the stock grips with Lamkin Sonar+ Midsize grips and they are going to battle my CP2 Pros for my new go-to grips going forward.

It was definitely a better deal than is typically offered in the regular, smaller discounts that your email will get flooded with. I'm still waiting on my order being fulfilled, but I currently wouldn't recommend purchasing custom clubs at CC based on price alone. The 50% discount on a fitting with purchase would cost more than the same full retail fitting at CC and buying your clubs at Fairway Jockey (who offers a discount if you provide the CC engineering specs). If you're still looking for a fitting discount, the best offer I see at the moment is 50% off, no club purchase necessary from True Spec: I can't speak to True Spec's fitting process or quality but there are few posts around the forum that seem to generally endorse them. Good luck!

Awesome! I hope your experience ends up being as beneficial to you as mine was to me. Here's a link to my full review, but the short of it is I would recommend anyone doing a fitting: -Watch a fitting on YouTube, ideally for the type of fitting you’re interested in and at the venue you’re being fit at. Know what the process is before you arrive, and be prepared to hit a LOT of balls. -Know the following club terms: length, loft, lie, shaft weight, shaft flex, and swing weight. -Know the following launch monitor terms: carry distance, total distance, club speed, ball speed, smash factor, dynamic loft, descent angle. -Know that there are different “off-the-shelf” shaft options that may better fit your game. Bonus points for knowing if you like lighter or heavier shafts going into the fitting. -Know your budget and prepare to manage expectations accordingly. If you have the funds to go nuts with exotic shafts, go for it! Don't be afraid to have a budget and consider no-upcharge shafts if that's your need. Most of these recommendations are probably well in your wheelhouse already, but I figure it is worth repeating for any relatively inexperience player (like me) to hear. I would love to hear more about your experience after your fitting and see if I was just lucky with my fitter or if CC offers a consistently superior service across the nation. Good luck next week!

Recent Rapsodo purchaser here (2022 father's day sale) and I have mixed feelings. On the one hand, its immensely helpful for learning distances when hitting indoors into a net, and for recognizing when I'm mis-hitting when I otherwise may not realize it. On the other hand, the lack of analysis on spin also gives me a lack of insight on some of my mis-hits where the ball launches relatively straight but spins wildly off to the side (push slice/pull hook? I don't know shot shape names). It works well enough for my skill level right now, but I have to imagine I will eventually upgrade to a mevo or mevo+ in the future.

Shot a true 58 (no mulligans, no kicking of balls, no shenanigans at all) at the municipal 9-hole, which is fairly typical for me. However, I had the worst day putting for me (four 3-putts) and at least 5 penalty strokes. I had a legitimate birdie shot on a par 4, hit 3 fantastic drives off the tee including the 1-handicap 386 yard par 4, and my PW was absolutely dialed in the entire day. I'd really like to break 50 there this year, which I think would be a fantastic achievement given where I started this winter. EDIT: Uploaded my scorethrough the CDGA and it showed an adjusted score of 49, probably adjusting for maximum hole scores or some handicap rule I don't understand. Oh well, here's to /sort of/ breaking 50!

Hit my new LTDx Max driver off the tee on the 294 yard 4th absolutely dead center. The GPS on my phone wasn't working, but might have been my best drive ever around ~250 yards. My playing partners have seen how far I've come from not being able to hit my driver at all to that, and started asking for tips on the 5th tee box . Pitched onto the green and two-putted (with a real shot at a birdie) for par. Having a good first shot really takes a lot of pressure off!

I ordered close to a full bag from Fairway Jockey based on my fitting at Club Champion. I'll do a full review of FJ once all of my clubs arrive, but a quick update today as I (sort of) received the LTDx Max driver, LTDx Max 3W, Milled Grind Wedge 3 54 degree (bent to 56) and Milled Grind Wedge 3 60 degree. I happily received the package today and found the clubs to have been pack pretty well. Some of the styrofoam supporting the larger clubs had shifted around but nothing that seems to have damaged the clubs. All of the shafts and grips looked great and the Cobra head covers feel extremely high quality. After taking the head cover off the 3W, I noticed I received an LTDx, not an LTDx Max. I confirmed that it showed LTDx on the packing slip, but LTDx Max on the original order. I called customer support, provided my order number and the packing slip number, and they confirmed the same. They'll send me out a new club head as a warranty claim (since it is adjustable and not permanently attached) and a shipping label for me to return the incorrect clubhead. An inconvenience, but nothing unreasonable in my book and overall a great customer support experience. Aside from a little glue residue on the MW3's from the plastic protectors for the raw wedge face, I saw no issues with the wedges. The driver, however, seemed to be dirtier than I would expect from a new club. First, there were a few scuffs on the crown: There was also weird glue on the loft sticker (which peeled off with the sticker no big deal) and a darker glue-like substance near the red weight (easier to see in the full size photo). Overall, nothing that seems to impact performance but not what I would have expected from a brand new club. Perhaps my expectations are too high though. Happy to have at least part of my order, and looking forward to the replacement 3W head and iron set. I've introduced these new clubs to my unmowed yard, as they'll be learning to spend lots of time in the rough with me

I knew I had read this too and couldn't recall from where. Finally dug up the posts from @GolfSpy_THV and @GolfSpy_APH Links below for anyone interested

The wear pattern on the 7-iron bothers me, if only because I wish I could hit my 7i that consistently Very cool clubs, and I really appreciate the logo-down install on both the shaft and grips. Wrong side of the ball for me unfortunately!

Question for HQ (maybe specifically for Tony): the 2022 Most Wanted Utility Iron dropped last week (6/27) and news of the new Stealth Utility Iron and Driving Iron dropped today (7/5). Given the interest and high performance of the Stealth line, I have to imagine that positive interest (and possibly performance) will also carry over into these new clubs. Presumably, the article was previously written and the posting embargo lifted today. Was/is there any communication between MGS staffers on new clubs coming out and the posting of the Most Wanted series? It seems like it would be unfortunate to have to wait another year before seeing how the Stealth UDI and DHY stack up against the other utility irons because the Most Wanted Utility Iron article dropped a week too early. Would the Most Wanted list be updated to include this latest release?