gaussman1

Interesting. Have you put them on a loft / lie machine to compare?

I'm feeling the same way with inconsistent distances. Doing extended launch monitor next week to try to get some data to back up the feeling. My suspicion is the KBS Tour shafts are just a little jumpy sometimes. C-Tapers were not available as an option and they've always seemed more consistent

I've been struggling terribly on the greens this year, so much so that I've been experimenting with broomstick putters and all different types of grips. I finally decided to putt split handed with the short putter, standing very open and right hand all the way down to the shaft. Result yesterday was the most putts holed in recent memory and my best score in a couple of years. Was a huge relief to finally see the ball rolling end over end and some putts go in the hole

I'm playing in our State Open qualifier today and since it's a local section PGA event we have to wear pants [emoji849]. Same thing in the tournament proper in mid July. Today's weather is going to be ok but it makes no sense that we don't have a heat index rule allowing shorts above a certain temp. To make it even more irritating their are a couple of women club pros who always play and they are allowed to wear shorts or skorts since that's what the LPGA dress code is. The state golf assocation can't figure out why participation from amateurs is down in their events.

That's why I always have my toenails painted before taking eBay pics

There are both types. My least favorite golf god is the one who smiles on the cheater. The handicap padder, the foot wedger, the hole-in-pocket ball finder. We all know that guy. He gleefully gets away with it all while we all seethe and complain, but for some reason he rarely gets run out of town. His patron is the god of id

I am quite sensitive. I cried during the opening short before Incredibles 2

My guess is you hit one of the irons with the "power holes", which feel a little tinny to me. The 9, P, and Gap have a much more satisfying forged thump to them.

Thinking about a new shaft for Rogue SZ Driver. I absolutely hate the Hazrdous Yellow that's in it. Results are decent but no feel at all. Must be the counterweight

I'm personally not a fan of Wolf Creek at all. Yes it's difficult, but I also thought it was poorly designed and intentionally tricked up. I'd rather keep losing money at blackjack than leave Vegas to drive up there again.

Sorry to hear this Matt. What if anything do they do for your back?

You sure this wasn't a SnakePit related injury in Indy?

I don't want to answer for anyone else but thus far for me any scratches/scuffs, bag chatter are all entirely normal. I do have paint fill peeling away on a couple of the numbers already which is obviously disappointing but nothing on the finish of the clubs themselves

Not yet, but it's only been a couple weeks. I'm playing or hitting balls every day for the next two weeks so if they're going to work loose we should find out

Tom Wishon has an interesting video about "slot face technology" vs Variable Face Thickness as it relates to COR and overall face flexing upon impact. It is specific to a woods/hybrids discussion but I think there is probably enough carryover to pull irons into the conversation. The idea with slots (or holes) is that by removing mass from the head you now give that metal some space to flex into when the ball is struck. If that's true you would then have faster rebounding from that particular area of the face. This should result in higher balls speeds and higher launch when the ball is struck by that part of the head. Wishon questions whether this is actually taking place to a degree that impacts launch conditions, but more to the point he questions whether this is more effective than using a thin and variable face thickness across the face. It seems to be his opinion that VFT has more effect across the face as a whole than cutting slots into the head. Neither of these technologies seem to effect launch conditions from a well struck shot in the center of the face, but rather have more of an effect, if one exists, for shots struck off-center. I'm the wrong person for a technical or scientific analysis in Stage 2 but found his opinions as a deeply respected voice in clubmaking to be of enough interest to pass along here. My Stage 2 we're just going to crunch numbers and see how they add up. I will tell you the short irons (no holes) are sweet in the short game

Thank you! They really are sharp looking clubs and I'm excited to report on my initial fitting and now launch monitor data on this current set in Stage 2

Stage 1 is up! https://forum.mygolfspy.com/topic/23686-official-forum-member-review-wilson-c300-irons/?p=410871

Stage Two - The Review {7/31/2018} Wilson C300 Forged – Official MGS Forum Review by gaussman1 Intro My apologies for the delay in getting Stage 2 up. I was waiting to get a re-shaft done of my gamers and then ran into snags using my club's launch monitor. I finally got a friend to help me out with his SkyTrak simulator, but then it was Open Championship week and I wanted to wait that out. Now it's a bit more quiet so let's get to it. My basis for the stage 2 review was pretty simple, I just decided to stick them in the bag for 60 days and see what happened. Like most golfers I've got enough ego enough to think that I can play with pretty much anything. Since my handicap has stubbornly refused to budge in 25+ years maybe it's true that my level of mediocrity can be duplicated regardless of equipment. My Handicap Index on May 1st, 2018 was 0.6. My Handicap Index on July 15th, 2018? 0.6. My current Trend handicap = 0.6. This is after 24 actual and tournament Rounds played with C300 Forged. My golf game is the movie Groundhog Day Looks (5 out of 10 points) From over the ball the C300 Forged looks the part. I want a club that has some safety built in but also gives me the appearance that I can hit shots. It's relatively compact but not so much so that it's intimidating. The toe section is rounded off nicely and appears relatively short from the top. The faceplate strike area is brushed or subdued as it appears in the pic here but you can see how the chrome on the sides is highly polished. It is almost a mirror surface, which looks really cool but does have big time glare issues with the shorter irons in full sun. The graphics in the back are quite striking, but this club loses minor points for using decals instead of engraving and major points for paint issues. I have never seen paint peel like this on an iron set before and it seems as if this is a near universal issue for the MGS testers. Wilson claimed to have not heard of this issue before which means either we got the one bad batch or they aren't selling enough units to have feedback. More on my talks with Wilson Golf later but here are the photos. The overall look comes together nicely over the ball and presents a very confident look. Turning the club over though it all falls apart for me personally. The power holes still look gimmicky and the paint is literally falling apart on the back badging and some of the toe sections. As I mentioned in Stage 1 the numbers on the clubs are quite large for no real apparent reason. It just doesn't add anything and does look a little cartoonish. Players in the forged category almost universally want the club to look serious and understated and these are anything but. Flashy and loud may sell pants to guys my age but they don't move forged iron sets. Scene- Pitch meeting Part Deux Suit- “Ummm. These are busy. This is a club we're marketing to serious golfers, right?” Marketing rep- “Sir, all of this stuff shows our customers how good it is! How else would they know if they couldn't see it? Suit- Well, they would know by hitting better shots right? Marketing Rep- C'mon sir. It's all about the optics these days. You have to tell a visual story. Plus using that cheap paint factory overseas has saved us enough money we can put paint everywhere! We can even paint these huge numbers on the sole!” Suit- (gets on Indeed, updates resume) Sound & Feel (7 out of 10 points) Striking the ball these clubs deliver a good forged feel. They have a smooth, solid thump, like an ax hitting a tree. The feel (or pitch) does get a little thinner as you move out of the short irons into the power hole clubs, but is still solid across the face. Are they top of the scale? For me, no. The best feeling clubs I ever owned were Srixon i302s. They were really soft and really solid at the same time. I don't know if it was because they were 6x struck forged or 1025 carbon but striking the ball felt like artwork. I've never had another Srixon iron feel as soft. If those were a 10 in feel these are a 7. They are fine. Even though they are forged I would say they feel closer to an AP2 than a Mizzy or Srixon forging. Range Performance (14 out of 20 points) My favorite range drill is one I stole from Cameron McCormick (JS' coach) called the heart matrix, where you try to hit 3 fades then 3 draws all on different trajectories to the same target. If you were able to do it with pro tracer from down the line they would make a lovely little heart shape. To be fair, I can't perform this drill very well. My swing is a bit inside out and a bit shut so I am always fighting off a hook and I'm partial to irons with a slightly longer toe to get the CG moved out away from the hosel. I couldn't find CG charts for C300 Forged but my left miss is much more in play with these than my gamers. With my gamers I can at least make a straight line for the fade then fill in the draw line nicely. With C300 I create a hook matrix. 3 draws from the right edge then 3 more from the left. I can hit a dead push if I try real hard but really struggle to fade these. If I'm just beating balls the default is high draw. If I wanted help turning the ball over I would probably be delighted. Looking at the SkyTrak Simulator data we don't really see a hook story, which won't really surprise anyone who has done indoor club testing and gotten very different results on course. After warming up we hit 6 balls each and threw out the worst one so this is admittedly a very small sample but we went back after the official test and hit more shots without getting any outlier data so I'm fine with this representation. Looking at the data I argue that C300 Forged holds its own with some heavyweight competition, though player 1 ball speed was down significantly from the others with 7 iron. I blame player 1 for that. He's terrible. On-Course Performance (30 out of 40 points) Overall, the performance was draw and more draw, so not great for me but good enough that I see the value for a different player. For future models I think you're stuck with Power Holes as a feature as this seems to be the main visual difference between these and FG Tour V6 (this and a hundred bucks). If they're going to stay at $899 I would really like to see an expansion of the stock shaft offering to include Nippon Modus and KBS C Taper, but it doesn't really make a lot of sense for a stronger player to be fighting off a high launch head with a low launch shaft. I would suggest C300 be less expensive and reserve the stouter shafts for FG Tour. But I digress. After missing greens left the first few weeks I finally just started aiming further right than I would like for the last month and playing the draw and my scoring has been normal, as evidenced by my handicap above. I am however playing my way around these clubs rather than firing at targets and have been looking forward to getting my gamers back in the bag. I've been basically just aiming right edge and hoping to get it on the green somewhere. During testing I took my gamers back out on a few occasions and there is a drastic difference for me between the two. My gamers I can hold straight and drive through the wind and on course the C300s are all just fighting the draw. I'm guessing KBS Tour vs Nippon Modus plays a factor in this result, but Nippon was not an option for testing. My home course has a couple of approach shots with hazards left and the latter half of testing I have resorted to just opening the face, squeezing with the left hand and trying to miss wide right. That is effective enough to get around but it's not great golf. Play it or Trade it? (12 out of 20 points) C300 Forged is out of the bag already, but that's not really the reason for the low score. I know we're not really thinking about $$'s in this section but these do occupy a nice price point in the market. I think they would be much more attractive for $100-200 less. $899 is not high for a forged club, but it sounds high until you start looking at all off the forged sets over $1000. At $799 you could garner a few more eyeballs. At $699 they would occupy a real niche and show separation from FG Tour. I'm sure Wilson thinks that price point would devalue the brand but let's be realistic for a moment- some of the larger retailers only carry Wilson's cheap stuff anyway. How many C300 Forged are they selling at $899? They are nice looking irons over the ball, and I like the feel but really have to allow for quite a bit of draw. If you asked me to play a money game tomorrow my Srixon Z765s are going to be in the bag (in fact, they are there right now). The C300 Forged are quite easy to hit up in the air but I do struggle to drive them through the wind or get shots to hold their lines. The wind blows where I play so I'm a little relieved to be going back to my gamers. A player who is looking for a little higher launch and maybe a touch of help turning the ball over but still wants that forged look and feel would be an ideal fit for C300 Forged. The question for me becomes whether Wilson Golf is a worthy place for your money. We're pushing $1000 after tax and pretty good isn't good enough for that kind of cost. You need to wow me. One way you can do that is with great customer service. Unfortunately…. Conclusion I was concerned enough about the paint issue that I called Wilson Golf. Or I tried to, but there is no golf customer service number. Wilson Sporting Goods has a general customer service phone number only. So I called Wilson Sporting Goods. I'm not giving employee names from this call as this part isn't great and I don't want to get anyone in trouble. A very nice lady answered the phone and explained that for a warranty issue the process is to go back to the website, scroll down through 3 pages and then click 4 icons and complete 2 puzzles to receive a skeleton key. Proceed through the labyrinth and past the gorge of eternal peril where the skeleton key will unlock a secret door. Behind that door is a warranty form. Kidding aside, this next part is 100% accurate- Fill out the form and submit 3 pictures under 5MB in size and you will get a response from the warranty team within 1-2 business days. Upon approval they will email you a return form. Ship the clubs back with the original proof of purchase and then after receipt of the clubs and inspection and approval by the Warranty Team you will be emailed a voucher to go back online and build another new set. This process takes however long it takes. Several weeks? At least. Months? In all honesty, yes I could see being without clubs for a couple months while you go through all this. How cheap does $899 seem now? I asked if there was actually anyone in the golf division I could speak to. She said yes if I wanted to hold. About 10 minutes later a gentleman who we will call Wilson Golf picked up the phone. Yes, he is on the golf team. He actually deals with the specialty retail accounts, not customers. No one deals with customers other than general sporting goods customer service. I was intrigued, because I could not find any retailers in my area initially to demo clubs for spec purposes. I asked how many specialty retailers they have stateside. WG-“Oh, thousands” Me- “For golf? Because I looked at Golf Galaxy and Dicks and green grass and couldn't find them anywhere. GG and Dick's don't even carry them online WG- “Well for golf specifically it's a smaller number. If a retailer sells footballs or soccer balls that counts as a specialty account” Me- “OK, how many golf?” WG- “I'm not sure. I do find one called Club Champion in your state.” Me- “Yes they are a custom fitter. So there's one. If I had purchased at the only account in my state and had this paint issue could I just take them back?” WG- “Yes. Then they send them to us and after the warranty team reviews the clubs we issue a voucher so the new clubs can be ordered online.” Me- “You won't just send a replacement set to your account?” WG- “No. We need them back first, then after inspection and approval you have to order online.” Me- “Ummmm. That doesn't sound great for the player. I had a crack in the hosel of my 3 wood from a major OEM and the replacement arrived within 3 days of my pro calling his inside rep. I got the new club before we shipped back the old one. You guys really need to receive and inspect the club before you issue a replacement to your account holders?” WG- “Sorry, man there's only 3 of us on the golf team here. Stuff takes time to go through the process. Me- ????????????!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 3 PEOPLE ON THE GOLF TEAM !!?? Smacking myself in the head. “Are these made stateside?” WG- “No they're made overseas. I'm not sure where. I'll check into the paint issue though. I haven't heard about that before.” Me- “That's odd. 3 of the 4 testers here have reported the same issue. That's a high percentage from a very small sample.” WG- Crickets Me- “Moving on, these seem like they're for basically the same player as the FG Tour V6. Why would a player buy this instead of the FG?” WG- “Well they're $100 cheaper.” Me- “Can't argue with that. Thanks for your help.” WG- (Hangs up. Considers life choices. Updates resume) So as is probably obvious by now I have mixed feelings about C300 Forged. The clubs look good over the ball and perform fine. A little too much high hook for me but that's the price of having KBS Tours instead of C Tapers as a stock option in my opinion. They're not the top of the line in this category but they're also not priced to be. I do still believe them to be priced too high to have much sell through, even without my concerns about the health of Wilson as a golf company. And that is where I really struggle to recommend. There are lots of tier 2 companies out there in the golf world. Some of them make soft goods (Snell, Vice), some of them make putters and wedges (Edel, Bettinardi among others) and a few turn out hard goods (Fourteen and Tour Edge come to mind). But they are all GOLF COMPANIES who make it their mission to be the best they can be at what they do. I think the motto of each of these smaller outfits is probably “We Try Harder”. Wilson is not a golf company. They are a large sporting goods catch all. They don't seem to have any more emphasis on golf than on tennis or baseball. They have obvious QC issues at overseas production facilities and virtually no resources internally for golf. They don't try harder. Their top end models are not carried in store or even online at Dick's or GG (but old cheap, closeout models are) so that means they are hard to find, hard to try, hard to buy and definitely hard to return. If I'm spending $1000 on new clubs I'm buying them from someone who specializes in golf instead of Pickleball. I would be more comfortable with 2 year old end of life cycle new clubs from Ping, TM or Callaway because I know what I'm going to get on the service side. My instinct is that Wilson Golf is going down a path that can't really continue. I just don't see how they can sell effectively to avid players by using the big box sporting goods model. Can you imagine trying to compete against Callaway or Titleist as a sporting goods company? It would make more sense to me for Wilson to compete against the big box retailers of the world by opening their own sporting goods stores and selling their own SKUs there. It's probably more likely that Wilson Golf ends up as a Special Make-Up Brand that's only carried in places like Dick's or PGA Tour Superstore. Either way, I am struggling to recommend Wilson Golf as a golf company worthy of your money, which means I am struggling to recommend C300 Forged. These clubs are fine. They're pretty good actually. But Wilson Golf as a company I think has serious deficiencies and I can't recommend you invest your money here as opposed to with a major OEM. My conclusion would be an earlier line - hard to find, hard to try, hard to buy and hard to return. Final Score: (68/100)

Many of you know me as Gaussman1. I think it's time to pull back the curtain and reveal the secret behind this username- My last name is Gauss. And I am a man. This original username was crafted at the dawn of the internet and has lasted many years because I am lazy and don't feel like thinking up new things. What I do like, love actually, is the game of golf. I live in central Indiana and was raised across the street from an Indianapolis Parks Department muni. As kids my brother and I spent countless hours chipping and putting against each other as we waited for dad to finish playing. As we got old enough to play on the course we would spend sunup to sundown in the summers going round the little track and struggling to clear the creek that crosses many of its fairways. I watch my father now struggle with that same creek that he sailed over with ease for 40+ years and see one of the many ways way in which golf is a metaphor for life. My brother was a much better young player but I was the one who was hooked on the game. Now at 48 and 49 years old respectively he wishes he had stuck with it a little more and I wish I was a just little bit better. As someone turning 49 in a few weeks and carrying a 1 handicap for 25+ years that seems a little greedy but that's golf. We will never be good enough. Anything that could help me be just a little bit better is worth a try, which is how I stumbled on this ragtag collection of lost golfing souls to begin with. May God help us all. Currently I have the Callaway Rogue SZ driver and 3 wood and a big question mark in the irons. Last year I had Srixon Z765s with the Nippon 120 shaft. They were supposed to be Extra Stiff but I accidentally bought a set that was Tour X flex. I managed to survive the season with them but knew that I was going the wrong way in speed to live with those clubs. That XX shaft is built for lumberjacks. In January I had shoulder surgery to repair a bone spur and some torn labrum tissue. I knew this season was going to start slower than last year so the telephone poles had to go. I snagged a set of Ping I200s but the wider sole doesn't match up well for me and I can't drive them down in the wind. I don't know if it's the head, or AWT shaft, or a combination of the two, but high and higher are not ideal trajectories for a 120 yard wedge into the wind. Still Desperately Seeking Irons. My typical 150 yard shot is an 8 iron with a little draw and the shot that I'm afraid of is a going draw, particularly with wind from the right. I'm the all-time champ at missing that shot left and I'm constantly short sided, so I flop more than a European Soccer player. Not exactly a great scoring strategy. I would love to be able to flight it down without turning it over and hold it a little left to right from time to time. Maybe new clubs will improve my ball striking! I've tried that before without much success but I still believe in the theory and don't want to give up on it prematurely. When I saw the Wilson test I was intrigued. I actually gamed the V2s a few years back for part of a season (I don't remember why I gave them up, they seemed fine) and I've been a fan of the brand since my first iron purchase back in about 1986. That was a used set of Wilson Staff Fluid Feels with the red bore-through pin. I can still see their tiny little faces begging me to try knock-downs, fades, hooks, anything but a straight ball. I've always had a soft spot for forgings and but for the occasional Ping dalliance my irons over the years have usually said Mizuno or Titleist or Srixon. Nothing feels like a forged iron at impact and I'm anxious to see if the C300 Forged can inspire that same sort of reverence. Some irons feel so sweet you almost want to apologize to them for mis-hits. Sorry about that 5 iron. You know I'm not good enough for you. First Impressions I could do unboxing pics but you guys have seen club boxes before. Clubs come in them. They're brown and rectangular. The clubs were professionally wrapped and the spec sheet inside was a nice touch. Everything matched up exactly with my order specs (KBS Tour 120 Stiff, Standard Loft and Lie), and I will put them on a loft/lie machine in Stage 2 for verification. The clubs themselves are visually stunning. The cavity and the WS scripting on the hosel are just gorgeous. The only slight negative is the numbers on the clubs are a huge stamp and one of my regular playing partners joked that they looked like the Reader's Digest Large Print version. At least I could read them! The 7 iron couldn't wait to be hit and buckled in the front seat while I was still putting the others in the bag. The wedges sat together in the back and gossiped about everyone else. Wedges think they're special The box does have a slogan in big font that says More Win. Did they mean Win More? Or More Wins? I'm honestly shocked that this is the slogan. How about Play Better? Or Wilson Golf- Modern.Classic. Do you need me to write ad copy for you, Wilson? I don't know why that bothered me so much but it's the first thing you see and is such an easy thing to get right and it's such an amateurish tag. From the looks of the clubs they've clearly got serious golf people working on the products but there is a disconnect between there and marketing. Maybe they can workshop it on a reality show. That is typical of the areas where I think Wilson struggles to differentiate itself as a golf company instead of just some large generic sporting goods catch-all. The Wilson website has golf listed in the same sub menu as Pickleball, Fast Pitch Softball and something called Padel. You can buy a Padel Paddle from Wilson for just under $200 which looks a lot like something I got whacked with during fraternity pledging. If you go directly to WilsonGolf.com at least that redirects to the /golf homepage. There you see the FG Tour V6 irons which are classy looking (but do seem like they occupy the same space as C300 Forged) and the upcoming judges on Driver to Driver Season 2 which feels gimmicky. There's also info on how to win a trip (A Power Trip!) by doing a C300 fitting. I scroll down to the C300 icon which invites me to #poweryourplay. My play is being #powered by something called Power Hole Technology which is just an awful slogan and not really even accurate. When is a hole not a hole? When it's filled, which is the case with Power Holes. They are slots carved out of the sole (and topline in the standard 300) and then filled in with urethane. The end result of this should be more face flexion and higher ball speeds across the face. Power Holes seems like another marketing flop. I'm picturing the pitch meeting for this and an executive saying “is Power Holes really the best we can come up with?” and getting “well sir, Speed Slots was already taken” as a response. The elastomer filling is there to absorb vibration and also for a tidier fit and finish than you would have if you actually played golf with clubs that had holes all the way around the head. Anyone who had to dig mud out of their original Rocketballz fairway will be able to appreciate that the holes are filled in here. Although there is a lot going on in the soles of the 300 Forged because of the Power Holes, you don't see any of it at address with this model. What you see is a very traditional looking topline. Not quite as thin as a modern blade but in no way thick or cumbersome at all. They are all shiny chrome and classic looking badging and are visually quite striking, particularly over the ball. The Wilson Logo on the grip is traditional and classy. The website also says “C300 irons with double the power, double the irons and double the distance technology”. I looked everywhere trying to find out what exactly was being doubled before I realized they just meant there are two sets of C300s. Standard and Forged. So, you know, double. I know it seems like I am being tough on Wilson and I am. The website is convoluted and the marketing is gimmicky and cheesy. It's as if these clubs are being marketed to some regional big box chain for a Father's Day Blow Out. You would never catch Titleist or Callaway slapping Power Holes on one of their premium iron sets. And neither should Wilson. Because in Stage 2 we're going to see launch monitor data and on-course comparisons. And we're going to see that this is a premium set of irons.

I don't know what that means but it sounds electrifying!

Seen it multiple times. Big fan

We saw him in Indy a couple weeks ago and had a great time. Big Community fans so he could have said pretty much anything and we would have lapped it up.

Dressing for the occasion

Yikes! The pictures were the best part.Doc- "Ok here you can see this cloudy sort of blob and then here in the after photo you can see it now looks like this different cloudy sort of blob." Me- "Ah yes, that does look a little different"

And is it always in the lead shoulder? Seems like that's the one that takes a beating in the swing.