BIG STU

This is sorta on the lines of what Sub Diver and myself have been discussing. A lot of distance and accruracy has to do with ball compression. Ball compression has a lot to do with ones SS and AOA. Clubs themselves whether metal woods or irons have a lot to do with it too. Good example at 65 yoa and a buggered up back I do not have nearly the SS I had even 3 years ago. I can compress a softer ball pretty decent in warm weather. Now take a younger guy with more SS if he could hit my irons and not rope hook it he would get a lot of air time and reduced distance and more spin in fact too much spin. On the PXG balls I have seen the cut away and it is a 3 piece which is what I hit mostly. For me to really make an accurate decision and form a honest opinion I would have to actually play one. I would also have to take into account how I am swinging that day and the temps and wind. Yep I am human and not an Iron Byron. But that is the reason they make so many different balls and perhaps millions of club head and shaft combos. My bottom line is one has to play what they feel comfortable with and fits their game

Trust me I have like 2 staff bags full of failed experiments especially wedge grinds. But then again I have had people come by and something caught their eye and I tell them take it and hit it. It may work for you but not me. When I was racing cars I had a big pile of scrap metal in the woods behind the shop some wrecks and a lot of motor experiments I hand grenaded. And yes your theory on the different ball test with different irons with the Iron Byron taking out the human factor would be great. I did read something interesting on a FB feed today. It was talking about older golfers can not hit their 5 iron as good as their 7 iron due to diminished swing speed. I can see that on a standard shafted set of irons. I still hit my 4 and 5 decently but honestly I have mine tricked up with soft tipped 2X shafts and lead tape down low in the back. Now I will also say that I hit the 7&9 woods with no effort. One of the reasons I am a big proponent of tuning or fitting clubs to an individual.

Ok I can see the scientific synposis. All humans have flaws in there swing etc and some are more consistent than others. That is where the Iron Byron comes in for consistant swings and consistent analysis. You are kinda new on here and I will say I am the resident old school crumudgen on here. That is not to say I am closed minded. I am always reading and absorbing fresh knowledge. I have only been on a machine a couple of times. One time was when a Pro friend of mine was proving a point that a 915 D-2 was not the driver for me because of sidespin. He was correct. Even though my old man was a pro and instructor I developed my own swing. I hit a trap cut by design as a anti hook swing so I generate a lot of spin with the irons. I also concurr that I lose some distance because of spin. On feel I have always had an uncanny sense of feel whether it is in golf or other things. And again the human factor everyones feel and precption is different. Back when I was racing cars I drove without gloves because I felt what the car was doing through my hands. Another thing was if I drove say your car I had to have my steering wheel on it. On the flip side a good friend of mine and competetor felt the car literally through the seat of his pants. He did not run a seat cushion sat in the bare bones aluminum seat. LOL he must have been pretty good he was the 3 time World 4 Cylinder champion. Towards the end of my racing days for safety reasons ( which I agreed with ) they made us wear gloves. I went with the treated PBI with treated Kangroo palms for feel. On the equipment end it may seem I am a Macgregor blade man which I will admit. On the other hand I am probably the most brand agnostic person on this or any other board. I do not care one iota the marketing practices or politics of any company. If it works for me so be it. I can remember a discussion one night on here about the National Custom Works Patrick Reed irons. Of course some of the Reed stigma came out. I stated I did not care if they had Mickey Mouse stamped on the back that if I could hit them then they would be in the front line bag. Callaway up until a few months ago they had nothing that appealed to me. The driver in the signature was an accident. I did a trade deal ( as I often do) and traded a M-6 that would not work for me for the Alpha and I got money to boot. I actually wanted the Cally for the shaft. I was hitting it on the range to evaluate the shaft and found out that I got along great with that driver like it was. I put it in the bag set like it was. I have left it alone and have not even had it on my plate to check static loft and lie. All I know is I picked up distance and control with it. On the PXG front I have hit the irons some. I have done 2 sets of shaft changes in the shop. Not that they were fitted wrong but because they were bough second hand and the shafts did not fit the new owner To my sense of feel they hit like any other 3 piece filled iron. Thats not saying they are bad or anything just my opinion of what works or does not work for me. There it can be subjective on many fronts. I do say the main thing is when someone learned the game and the equipment they learned it with. Glad you piped up on here I think in the future we can have meaningful discussions. You seem to be a well educated person and I judge an engineer. O am basically a redneck self taught engineer

Last summer I had some days like that on my dew sweeper rounds. LOL I keep 6 or 8 various yellow balls of different brands I have found in the car just for that reason

A lot of our snowbirds here own their homes or condos and do not rent out. To avoid flying hassles and now days extra charges they keep a set here. I know when my bud had his custom shop he made a small fortune building duplicate sets of clubs for those folks. He kept detailed build sheets on every customer and could duplicate sets down to the weights and frequency numbers for the shafts

Everyones feel and precption is different. And believe it or not different balls behave and feel differently off of different brands of clubs. One of the reasons there are so many different balls out there now

I do not think you know me that well----- Anyone who has known me on here knows I am not biased I joke around a lot. I did not say PXG was inferior in any way. You want to get technical look at my front line signature. Lets see my old Callaway driver was probably cast in China along with the 3 wood and I know the shafts were both made in Japan. Now if you want to get technical in my vintage bag everything including the Persimmon woods were made in the good old USA--- Sorry if I offended you in any way

LOL you drink as much coffee as I do---- I did the 2nd pot this morning as well

LOL I am retired and love it------ I basically do what I want with certain limitations----- The only real have to I have is my Church Work on Sundays. I generally get up early because I have most of my life but if I want to go back to bed then I do so. I get up and either play or hit balls or maybe work in my shop some. I do not play in any of the mens groups because first off they cheat but then again I am not obligated to make certain tee times on certain days. Even the Saturday Shootouts are not a must. If I tell the guys I am playing then I play. If I decide not to play that weekend then I do something else. And I relish in my retirement and am not bored or overworked

Yep it is rainy and cold here. Done had the coffee and fixing to go to church. I have double duty on the sound board today. My bud on that service called a few minutes ago and had a sinus infection. So I am fixing to go do the set up and run up and do both services

I agree with that but what I meant was that like us you giuys were bombarded with Snowbird tourists

I figured you Florida guys were just like us.

Depends on your clientale and how many touron golfers you get.

We have like 4 guys at our club we dubbed the "PXG Boys" PXG head to toe. I am sure they will be buying and I am sure the way they hit it in general I will be finding some in the creeks ponds and woods if I look. Like I have said before I have won so many Srixon balls I do not need to buy any balls soon. And lately with the influx of tourists I have found a lor of preminum balls without ball hawking. But I am 100% sure with that crowd I will be finding some. If I do certainally I will try them in my short or practice rounds Edit: I know those guys well and love to give them crap. And at one time or another I have had them for Shootout partners. One of them one day got me aggrevated on the range. He kept wanting me to hit one of his new PXG irons and I would not. I have my little anal hangups I know. I do not like to drive other peoples vehicles or hit their golf clubs. I finally told him Why would I want to hit a hollow foam filled iron made in China when I have a perfectly good set of solid forged steel ieons made in the USA from American steel. He backed off. Next day he apologized to me for being pushy

LOL kinda a easy Saturday for us too. 2nd week in a row the shootout has cancelled due to weather and the 3rd out of the last 4 which is unusual for us. We got rain last night and it is due all weekend. Last night and this morning it was not a hard rain bit a steady drizzle. The hard stuff is supposed to start about noon. But it is a raw type cold rain. We did get out about 7AM and went to the Waffle House. We are back home and have the wood stove going and are inside dry. Not really roaring but just enough to be cozy and take the chill out. We are supposed to get around 4" of rain for the weekend The rain delayed yesterday and it was 70 and sunny. Now this time of the year the course is crowded with snowbirds. I did manage to hit about 40 balls on the range and do some short game practice. I did sneak out in front of some turn groups and got 4 holes in. They have been double teeing. I was going to go home the starter ( who is a minority owner) told me to sneak out on the front since some of the turn groups were slow. He told me if anyone had anything to say to tell them where to go and the fact I was a Member. I did get 4 holes in and ran into a log jam 3 groups for no reason backed up on #5. For some reason the course has never used rangers. LOL I shrugged and cut across to the club house and went home. I told the cart guys they would be lucky to get carts in by dark. But I think they got some reprieve it started drizzling rain about 4 or so

Yep and you know good vinegar when you see it too

LOL the brain is working this AM so here is another one Many Many Moons ago they were holding a big Shriners Tournament in Pine Valley NC. Now to make this note I support anything the Shriners do. A bud of mine was from the area and wanted to put together a ringer team. There was no Calcutta or anything like that. So yeah since it was for the Shriners I was dead on it. We had a decent team and it was a Captains Choice. Now my bud who put the team together was kinda a sketchy ruffian to say the least but his Dad was a prominent MD in the area. We had a pretty decent team with him and the former super there who could play. I drug one of my Mini Tour buds / cronies up there. Now this being a small town and area it drew annual attention. Somehow we got first tee time Hooray back in those days I drank so more after round drinking time for me. My Mini Tour bud and I decided not to do any bets along with the super. So everyone in town was by the first tee and Bobby ( the docs son) insisted on teeing off first. He took a mighty swing at the ball and his pants fell down around his knees. Funny thing he was going all commando so the big white moon was shining in full. Man we cracked up everyone laughed for 5 minutes. Needless to say his Dad was embarassed. Sid the super was next up after the laughter died down and he got his composure. He was getting ready to hit and someone yelled check your belt and pants. He hit the ball anyhow and smoked it straight down the middle. Now he was a bear of a man he turned around and growled my belt is ok and I do not go commando. Everyone rolled again. I swear it took a full 20 minutes for us to tee off the first tee. Now this was a small tight golf course and all during the day you could hear someone sing in a good Frankie Vallie voice "there is a moon out tonight oooh oooh". Like I said we did not have one dime bet and it is one of the few rounds ever I drank myself around a course. I do not know to this day what we shot none of us remember. Only thing I do remember is I slept in the parking lot that night in the front seat of my Vette. Note my mini tour partner and I had agreed pre round that if we won anything that us technically being pros we would donate it back to the Shriners to auction off. Probably will never know because Sid and Bobby are gone now and my bud the Mini player I have not heard from in like 20 years now. I heard he had a club pro job in the Midwest somewhere

I used to do the same thing especially trucking. Get to the yard early fire the truck up early after the pre trip inspection. Get settled in the seat ready to go. When I was racing I got to the line up or staging area early gave me time to clear my mind and triple check my belts and helmet strap and settle down in the seat. I actually used to get so relaxed in the race car in staging I would go to sleep. When we got the warning flag to pull out the guys who raced with me weekly knew to tap my bumper or one of the officials would bang on the top of the car. One time MUSC was running tests for the med students to study heart rates on race car drivers. One of my good friends who I raced with ( and is now a MD himself) was helping run the test and he did not race that night. One of the students was monotoring me and exclaimed that something was wrong with his equipment that it was showing a low heart and respritory rate. My bud said bet it was car #39 which was me. Told the student watch this and he went down and banged the top of my car. Rates went up. He told the student that I was the only person he ever saw that could go from totally relaxed to WFO in the drop of a hat. During the race my heart rate went up some and the student was concerned. Now this was where my bud's racing knowledge came in. He told the guy naah he is not scared or anxious he is fighting the handling on the car a bit. LOL he could not resist he got on the radio and told me fighting it a little there Stuey? I told him yeah it was handling like a Mack dump truck with the tandems out of line.

Thanks man but it is the truth---- Since my accident where I suffered a concussion along with the broken back and shoulder my memory is not what it used to be as in it comes and goes. My wife seriously swears I hit my head harder than the Docs think. And I will admit that I am getting older too

Exactly heed his advice

Duuh my brain finally kicked in--- I recognize you from the other place. I can tell you from experience even though you are released from therapy and the Doc to take it easy. Along with my well documented back injury I had a cracked scapula. When I started therapy it was on the shoulder with caution on the back. My shouder healed up in like 6 weeks and really never gave me any problems after that. The back was another story. I will admit I have always been a wide open person and part of it was I could not accept after all I had been through in life this happened in semi retirement. I pushed myself too hard and had 2 relapses on my back. My Doc said he had never seen someone push themself that hard. I had to accept I could no longer swing and hit as far as I used to pre accident. I had to revamp my whole swing to be able to swing and play pain free. In the last year and a half I have had to entirely rebuild my swing and it is coming around. So like I said take it easy and do not push the issue. I monitor the other thread on the other site and saw what you had posted. Some of the people that are there now I do not care for so I do not comment there and we will leave it at that

You are correct on precipitation moving itself from where it falls. With what they are predicting here I will say it may be some time. Our course had rain last weekend and it has been CPO all week. Now they are predicting rain from tonight all through Sunday. The weather gurus are arguing on how much one model shows 3.5 inches and the other one shows 4.5 inches. With what we had last weekend even 2 inches would be a lot. And like last weekend since my wife worked last night she went ahead and stocked up on supplies for us. So we will basically do like we did last weekend stay inside. I told one of my scramble buds this AM on the phone if the gurus are correct with any luck the course may dry out in 2 weeks. Three of our group are in our late to mid 60s and crippled up and our other member is 80 so needless to say we do not play when it is CPO

Where I grew up in Piedmont NC we did not have any gators but we had water Moccasins. We also had the walking catfish which we called flopping catfish. Where I am at now in Coastal SC we have plenty of Gators and those nasty snapping turtles. Where most people get into trouble with gators here is either getting too close to snap pictures or trying to feed them. Also anyone who has lived down here for any time knows not to walk small dogs close to a pond. Another problem we have now is Coyotes. They have been sighted 2 miles North of me in Surfside Beach in the Dog Park. Up in North Myrtle last week some attacked a dog and killed it. When either my wife or I walk our Frenchie we pack heat not only for 4 legged predators but times sadly being what they are the 2 legged variety too. We have been in the park where we are at for 22 years and have never had any trouble from either

LOL and it was not reserved just for the Army we heard it just as well in Orlando at boot camp. First morning I was already up and in the head. I came out and the guy asked me "WTH was I doing?" I told him and he said to help get the rest of the slugs up

Fixing to go out to the shop in a few. Going to dig out an old Sun Mountain bag I may use some. Also going to switch out 2 Ping Putter shafts because the one has a brand new SS grip on it like I have on the Scotty. Heading to the course is fruitile because of the mens groups and then the influx of snowbirds. BTW our greens have turned around 180*. They are pristine in the best shape they have been in the last 10 years. On a sad note A J the pro co owner you met passed away the week before Christmas of an apparent heart attack he was only 45 YOA. All of us are still reeling over that I see you are in Laurinburg NC. I know the area sorta well. Back in the 70s my old man and his business partner leased land there to bird hunt on. Also my neighbor across the street owns property there. PM me your new address and I will send you the big cup holder for R2-D2. I found it this winter it had fell behind the dry stack of firewood in the living room. When I started using that stack it was behind it still in the original box