Hook DeLoft

I tried to load a video 3 or 4 times yesterday with no luck. I changed a setting on my phone and am going to try posting one here. I’ll delete this afterwards. IMG_3077.mov

I hit a number of shots into a net today. Unfortunately, I am unable to post numbers because of tech problems that I have described in the review post. I am going to go to the local golf shop this week to get accurate numbers.

I think more and more companies aren't including tools. IIRC, Callaway was the first. I can imagine the meeting: "How can we save a couple of bucks on each sale?" I know, don't include a tool. "But wouldn't customers hate that?" We'll just say we're doing it to save the planet. I have the stock Fujikura Speeder NX in regular flex.

Great, great intro video! Why didn't I do that?

Just posted first impressions in my review post.

I've had a golf instructor try to solicit my business on a range a couple of times over the years. Very irritating. On the other hand, the best teacher I ever had was a driving range pro that I approached after he finished a lesson.

Do any of you use your mat outdoors? If so, do you leave it out at all times?

How'd I play? HOW'D I PLAY?!! One under on the front 9, seven over on the back nine. What a frustrating game.

I’ll be using Chrome X and Bridgestone Tour XS. I may add some others.

Intro posted

For those of us on a fixed income, it can seem that golf will become unaffordable in the near future. However, as others have stated, there are ways to play cheaply. One thing I have never understood is buying clothing (other than shoes) that is golf specific. A decent pair of slacks and polo style shirt can be bought for about a fifth of the prices of golf brands. And "golf" belts just make me think of P. T. Barnum's famous saying. And golf hats with the company's logo? In that case you are paying the company for the privilege of advertising its product.

Thanks

Does anyone know if the weights for the Stealth 2 drivers will fit the new Qi10 drivers?

No, they both use weights that are heavier, the same and lighter than the average driver. SuperSpeed uses different clubs with the weights permanently attached. With the Stack system, a single club is used with changeable weights.

I currently game a Ping G430. I always go for forgiveness over length off the tee. I’m interested to see if the Taylormade Max will give me both.

The first time I payed more than $100 to play was at Royal Dornoch 15 years ago. I also played the Old Course at St. Andrews on that trip and paid over $100. Other than entry fees in charity tournaments, those are the only times I've paid over $100. I would be hard pressed to pay that much for a round of golf these days, although there are a few bucket list courses I would make exceptions for.

FINAL REVIEW First Impressions (16/20) I wasn't impressed with the lack of protective padding in the box. The driver arrived without damage but I can easily imagine a delivery company gorilla damaging the club with the lack of protection. The different torx screw sizes for the two weight placements is puzzling. The head cover is nice and exudes quality. Aesthetics (19/20) I think the dark blue body and dark blue face are smashing. The Max has a very large profile that some won't like but I find it reassuring. Bottom line: this is a very good looking club. The numbers (20/20) I don't care how good a club looks if it doesn't deliver. This club delivers in spades. You can see in the body of the review that the club delivers elite ball speed numbers on off center hits. After adjusting the loft and adding some lead tape, the performance on the course was outstanding. At my slower swing speed, I just don't think I can get more out of a driver. On course (20/20) Despite being designated as the most forgiving of the Q drivers, the Max gave me a penetrating flight with low enough spin to produce a lot of roll out after landing, even in the highest loft setting. As you would expect from the ball speed numbers, it was forgiving on mis-hits. It takes a truly terrible swing to get in trouble with this club. The good, the bad, and the in between (18/20) This driver won't suit everyone. A high swing speed player may find better results with the LS or regular version. But that is hardly a criticism. There is no club that is right for everyone. The driver did not come with an adjustment tool or an explanation of the different hosel settings. The adjustment tool is probably no big deal for most -- there are plenty floating around and anyone who bought a driver in the last decade probably has one. I have no idea why TaylorMade would not include a chart explaining the hosel adjustments, but I am deducting points for that. Play it or trade it (20/20) This club is now my gamer. I fiddled with my previous driver until it was maximized for my swing and the TaylorMade still produced a small but measurable increase in performance. I am looking forward to using it as a test platform for different shafts, but the results I'm getting now are excellent. Final score: 93/100 I need to thank the guys at my local Edwin Watts. They let me pound balls on their launch monitor a few different times without charging for their time. Apparently, customer service isn't dead! Thank you to TaylorMade and My Golf Spy for the opportunity. INTRO What an exciting opportunity! Many thanks to TaylorMade and My Golf Spy. First, a little about me. I am a 67 years old (and I mean old) retired guy who has been playing golf since my mid 30's. Strictly speaking, I played a little bit when I was 11 years old but it didn't take. Interestingly, the main thing I remember about golf at that time was that I was always hitting the ball left. As you can see from my user name, the problem seems to be baked into my genes. I have never had much speed. I blame a lack of fast twitch muscle fiber. When I was a kid I could run all day but I was no sprinter. You can call me the Slow Twitch Kid. When I played football, I was small but made up for it by being slow. I'm married to a wonderful woman. We have two grown sons (my step sons) and three grandchildren. The two youngest grandchildren live 5 minutes away and we keep them every afternoon after school. I am trying to get them interested in golf, but so far no luck. The USGA says I am currently an 8.8 handicap. I say they are full of it. I have a hard time breaking 80 from the senior tees. No telling how high my scores would be from the regular tees. Driving is the strength of my game. I don't miss many fairways but am distance challenged. Iron play is the worst part of my game. My chipping and pitching are good. Putting is mediocre. A couple of days ago a Rapsodo MLM2 PRO launch monitor showed up on the doorstep, so I'll be using it for measurements during this test. I got some shots in yesterday. I am going through a bout of dizziness at the moment, so they were not my best efforts. Dizziness -- they should use that as one of the excuses on the Carl's Golf Land commercials. Here are the numbers from my best shot: Carry 207.9 YARDS Total 218.8 YARDS Ball Speed 127.6 MPH Launch Angle 19.0° Launch Dir. 2.0° Spin Rate 3065 RPM Spin Axis -1.7° Descent Angle 44.4° Apex 109.0 FEET Side Carry 1.4 YARDS Club Speed 86.2 MPH Smash Factor 1.48 Here are the averages for all shots: Carry 198.2 YARDS Total 210.3 YARDS Ball Speed 124.8 MPH Launch Angle 19.3° Launch Dir. 0.4° Spin Rate 3028 RPM Spin Axis -0.6° Descent Angle 42.8° Apex 100.2 FEET Side Carry -0.3 YARDS Club Speed 85.8 MPH Smash Factor 1.46 What stands out is that I am loosing yards because of high spin and too steep a descent angle. PLAN FOR TESTING I am going to use a combination of environments: on the course, on the range and outdoors into a net. For the net shots, I'll be using the Callaway Soft X balls that come with the Rapsodo. On the course, I'll mostly be using my current gamer, the Bridgestone B XS. I will be trying the driver in different settings in an attempt to maximize results. I also have a spare shaft with a TaylorMade adapter that I'll try, but my official results will be based on the stock shaft from TaylorMade. GOALS I'm looking for lower spin and a lower descent angle than my current gamer in an effort to eke out a few more yards without loosing forgiveness on off center strikes. One of my talents is missing the center of the face, so forgiveness will be a big part of the test. I received the driver yesterday. Make me wanna dance! It arrived safe and sound despite having essentially no padding in the box. I was disappointed that there was no adjustment tool included. Luckily, I have an old Taylormade tool that works. Also, there was no card explaining the hosel settings. I went online and printed off instructions for the Sim 2 driver that had the same hosel settings. The driver is a handsome devil. I really like the dark blue face. It is darker than the blue you can order for the My Stealth customization. This morning I played 18 holes. Playing in a 12 to 15 mile per hour wind, I hit 9 of 12 fairways. The distances ranged from 180 yards (terrible flipped hands pop up) to 249 yards (down wind on a hard fairway), with an average of 216 yards. Without the wind the range would not have been so large. I think these are encouraging results. Tomorrow I will get some numbers using the launch monitor. NOTE: I hit a number of shots today using my Rapsodo launch monitor. Unfortunately, after the shots synced, it was showing some bizarre numbers. For example, on some of the best shots, it was showing a club head speed 7 to 8 mph lower than it showed in the app at the time of the shot, but what looked like the original ball speed. This resulted in smash factors of 1.57 and 1.58. As much as I would like that to be accurate, I know it just ain't so. As a result, I am not going to post any numbers from the session. I'm going to the local Edwin Watts sometime this week and see if they will let me compare the Rapsodo to their high dollar launch monitor. I still find it odd that the heel weight and back weight are not interchangeable. I am going to get in touch with Taylormade customer service and see if they offer various rear weights (don't worry mods, I won't tell them I am part of the MGS test). UPDATE: I played 18 holes yesterday and was able to get a feel for the forgiveness of this driver. Not that I did it intentionally. I put 2 terrible swings on it and got playable results. You get a different sound when you miss the sweet spot and I did that a few times and still got my normal distance. That was impressive. When looking at the club head, I noticed something for the first time—the alignment mark is off centered towards the heel. I took a picture of that. Maybe that is to compensate for the player’s eyes being so far to the side at address. You'll notice in the first pic above that my miss is toward the toe. I say miss, but since I hit it there more often than the middle maybe the occasional shots out of the sweet spot are my miss! I went into this review hoping for more distance while retaining forgiveness. My thought was lower loft would give me higher ball speed and that may be true; but yesterday, I decided to go in the opposite direction and turn up the loft by 2 degrees and had good results. Hmm, more testing is needed to figure out that. UPDATE: I spent some time on a Trackman launch monitor to get an idea of forgiveness on off center hits. As you will see in the pictures, the retention of ball speed on off center hits is extraordinary. I tried different hosel settings to see how much they influenced spin and ball speed. The average smash factor of all hits was 1.49. That boggles the mind. The stickers in the pictures show the impact positions. Even if I didn't get the stickers perfectly centered on the face, the results are extremely impressive. Basically, any strike in the same zip code as the middle of the face gives you high ball speeds. I noticed on the course the other day that the highest loft setting was giving me the best results. The launch monitor session showed why. At my slower club head speed, I need more spin to keep the ball in the air for maximum carry. I have a positive attack angle with the driver of 3 to 5 degrees. That tends to lower my spin. Despite this, spin with my gamer driver is too high. My hope going into the test was that lower spin would get me more yards but with this driver overshoots the mark in lowering spin. However, that is applicable only to my swing. The driver cannot be faulted. UPDATE Adding some lead tape to the driver really helped with my consistency with it. Almost all shots are now soft draws and I'm generating a little more club head speed. There is something unusual about this driver which may make adding or lowering weight a little more difficult than with other drivers. Take a look at this video: 73292395586__26B318DF-D109-40E4-99ED-1BCBE5241D79.MOV UPDATE I compared the Qi 10 Max with regular flex shaft to my gamer Ping G430 Max with a Distanza 40 senior shaft. The TaylorMade was slightly better. I then tried the TM with a senior shaft and saw an increase of about 5 yards. I will be using the senior shaft from now on. Here are the numbers before switching shafts. TaylorMade Qi 10 Max Ping G430 Max

I get the feeling a lot of jerks play your local course! It can become a spiral to the bottom. At some point, enough people don't replace divots, rake bunkers and fix ball marks that everyone just gives up and starts exhibiting the same bad behavior. I'm happy to say that everyone in my group does their part to keep the course in shape.

"Aye, there's the rub." -- Hamlet

My feeling is that golf, like life, isn't fair. If you want to know how good you are, play by the rules. If you are in an official competition, play by the rules. On the other hand, for casual rounds with friends, I agree with the author that you can play anyway you want. It's your time and money.

I remember Tiger's father saying if you really wanted to Tiger proof a course, you would make it shorter with wider fairways and low rough. That would nullify his advantages over the other players.

"...even if we move up a bunch we'll still be hitting more club to most greens". Depends on the course and conditions. I carry most of my tee shots around 210 yards. From the front tees at the course I play I have a 9 iron or less into almost all the par 4's and can reach all the par 5's if the fairways are firm. The front tees are around 5000 yards.

I don't necessarily agree with the article about which tees amateurs should be playing but it is an interesting take. I occasionally move up to the shortest tees at our course and enjoy it immensely. If I used this article as a guide, I would play the shortest tees every time. Of course, in just three years, I'll be moving up anyway, at least in my regular group. The reason I'm not sure I agree with the author's suggestion of which course yardage to play is the fact that hitting the ball a long ways is a skill in and of itself. At first glance, this might seem to contradict my being in favor of limiting distance for the best players. But, if the ball roll back works as intended (a big if) long hitters will still have an advantage. https://www.golfdigest.com/story/shocking-new-data-average-driving-distance-tee-boxes-pga-tour?uuid=982340801622498eb16abf989514a2d6

To the original question, whether I can leave a bad shot behind depends on the day. Some days I am relaxed before reaching the golf course and have a feeling of moving slowly. On those days I quickly get over a bad shot. Other days, I am easily distracted and feel unable to slow down. Those are the days when a bad attitude is hard to overcome. I really need to work on that.

It's obvious the Ravens are going to win the Super Bowl this year. Wait, that was last week.