GolfSpy MPR

Looks like before I did any Stacking, my lead arm was slightly faster, and in my progress check, they had evened out. I'm mostly planning to do slow motion swings (working on technical stuff that my coach wants me to change). Not planning to do full intensity Stack stuff for (at least) a few days, depending on how the hand feels. I also built myself a rope to swing, and that's pretty easy to do without straining my hand.

I should note: you can, of course, also buy them fully assembled. But if you can use a hack saw and mix epoxy, building a club isn't very hard (and it sounds like you've already got some relevant experience). Just let your wife know how much you're saving by taking the DIY route

Another week, another foot and a half of snow here. Was shoveling my driveway this morning, slipped on the ice, and strained my left thumb breaking my fall. And so, upon getting to my office, I did the most important thing: grabbed a club to see if I could swing. No bueno. I don't think it's that serious and I suspect it'll be fine in a few days. Might have to take a week off of Stacking, though, and that's annoying. On the plus side, since the snow doesn't melt here until April (at the earliest), I should be fully healed by the time the season starts.

My older son (10 years old) is a very avid golfer and is using US Kids TS line of clubs, which he has liked a lot. Before that, however, I built him multiple sets of the junior clubs from Diamond Tour Golf: https://www.diamondtour.com/golf-components/junior-components.html DTG is a wing of the same company that makes Sub70 clubs. I remain a huge fan of their junior clubs. Kids grow so fast, so if you're handy at all with club building (and it's not hard), being able to rebuild a set for your kid each year without breaking the bank is a giant plus.

If you're following this thread and haven't already, jump over to a new thread I started on the FocusBand. As you might deduce from 25+ pages of this thread: I have a hard time turning off the analytical side of my mind on the course, even (especially?) when I'm swinging. The FocusBand is helping teach me how to do that, and I'm finding it very interesting. For me, it's not so much a balance that I'm after, as much as a "each thing in its place." We're still (at least) two months from opening day here. So I continue to work on technical swing stuff, continuing to try to change my swing feels: 20230217_143626.mp4 But my intent when I'm on the course (and even a lot when I'm in the garage on the Mevo+, doing results-based stuff like playing courses or trying to get new high scores in practice games) is to turn off the swing thoughts and simply focus on target.

So I also threw a velcro wrist strap into my cart. And my dad is a wizard for heat-molding PVC. I'm thinking a small section that could easily be the wrist cup portion. Stay tuned...

Hmmm. [adds dog chew ball to Amazon cart....] Actually, it might be this exact ball: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0002DJX44/ref=twister_B09NQHM8V2?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1

Duration: 00:48:00 The 2023 Most Wanted Driver results are here, and we get an overview from Chris and Tony discussing the big winners. Who ranks #1 in best golf drivers 2023?! Best Golf Drivers of 2023 = https://bit.ly/3Imse4w We also talk about the changing pyramid of influence in golf. NoLayingUp is with Titleist, Good Good is with Callaway, and Barstool is with TaylorMade. How will companies assess the value/ROI of this approach? Who knows, but at some point they will have to, and that's not going to happen tomorrow. There's a lot on deck so kick back, watch, listen, or do both! This is No Putts Given. Be sure to hit #Subscribe and #HitTheBell so you can stay up-to-date and not miss any new videos! #golf #bestgolfdrivers2023 00:00 NPG - Most Wanted Driver 2023 00:28 How You Livin' 02:27 Most Wanted Driver - Best Overall 05:02 Most Wanted Driver 2023 - Best Distance 07:13 Most Wanted Driver 2023 - Best Accuracy 12:19 Most Wanted 2023 - Best Forgiveness 18:35 Most Wanted Driver 2023 - Biggest Surprises 24:29 Most Wanted Driver - What Testers Liked (and what they didn't) 27:09 The changing landscape of golf influencers 40:24 Mailbag - Will any brand sign Bryson? 47:23 We Out --------------------------------------------------------------------- Used by over 19 million forward-thinking golfers! --------------------------------------------------------------------- OUR MISSION: https://mygolfspy.com/our-mission/ --------------------------------------------- Check out MyGolfSpy's other channels! -------------------------------------------- REVIEWS: http://bit.ly/MGSreviews BUYERS GUIDES: https://mygolfspy.com/category/golf-b... NEW RELEASES: http://bit.ly/MGSnewgear PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... DRIVER FITTING TOOL: https://truegolffit.com/ ------------------------------------ MYGOLFSPY SOCIAL ------------------------------------ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyGolfSpy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mygolfspycom/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mygolfspyListen Here

Been weighing for a while starting a thread on this, but had an experience yesterday that compels me to post. First, a brief introduction: the FocusBand is a fabric band (it also comes as a hat) that has sensors that measure brainwave frequency. Here's the (very broad) theory: high frequency brain activity is associated with analytic, conscious thought. Lower frequency brainwaves, by contrast, tend to be associated with the "flow state," a strong and immediate connection with the present. In golf (and sport) lingo, this brain state tends to reflect being in the "zone." Now, some of us on a Forum like this have a hard time shutting off the analytical side of our brains while playing golf. I'm sure many of you have seen (and can, unfortunately, relate to) this unfortunate fella: The FocusBand is designed to help people like you. Um, I mean, me. By giving immediate, measured feedback on brain activity, it enables the user to learn what it's like to get in the proper brainstate and how to get there. I've had my eye on this product for quite a while, but it's really quite pricey. I eventually managed to snag a used one on eBay for a significant discount. The app is—ahem—old. It's kinda clunky and in many places not at all intuitive. But it functions, and it's centerpiece, when the FocusBand is on, is a tone that sounds in correspondence to its current measured brain activity. It also has an accompanying image, showing a head with either the left brain (red/bad) or the right brain (green/good) lit. If you get deep into the green, lasers shoot out of the eyes, showing that you've entered a state the app calls "Quiet Eye." I suppose that going in, my two basic reservations would be: This is all woo, and There's no way that this is measuring anything scientific. I think I'm wrong about both of those. On the second, I'm pretty sure this thing isn't perfect: I can be deeply relaxed, and if I raise my eyebrows (and wrinkle my forehead), I'm suddenly "in the red" in the app. I suspect my brain activity hasn't changed all that much, but that motion disturbs the measurements. But in the main, you can quickly tell a correspondence between your experience and what the device is telling you. The big thing that the FocusBand rewards is setting your focus on a mental image of a target—and keeping it there. For me, this takes a considerable about of work: the paradox of trying not to try. But I haven't found it too terribly hard (the app lets you set a "baseline" against which you are judged; it can also set that automatically). I spent a decent amount of time this winter using the FocusBand with putting practice. This, for me, is a fantastic way to begin to bridge the divide between working on putting mechanics (a big focus of mine after a putting lesson last season) and getting ready for on course play (where I don't want to be thinking about mechanics any more). The procedure, going into a putt, is to get the hole (or line, or whatever image works best for you) in your mind. Then settle in over the putt, with that image in your mind. Take a last look at the hole while changing the image in your mind to the ball and your putter. Then look back down, re-fixing the target image in your mind, then pull the trigger. When I do this properly, I experience something that is nearly revolutionary for me: I have no awareness of the mechanics of my stroke during or after the putt. I have never been able to grasp the "I don't have swing thoughts" approach to golf before. [Side note: Kirke says that's how he plays. Sure enough, I put the FB on him to have him putt. He'd step into a putt, the app would go green, and he'd hit the ball. I did this without allowing him to see the feedback.] What provoked me to post today was that yesterday, I used the FB for full swings for the first time. The Mevo+ Skills app integrates the FocusBand, which is really cool. So I was doing the "Novice" skills assessment with the FocusBand on. The test is asking you to hit specific carry distances. After the first several targets, I turned on my camera, because I needed to capture what was happening. Warning: this video is super boring, unless you care about such things: If you watch, you can see me trying to get the image of the 150 yard target fixed in my head. The tones indicate the degree to which I'm getting there. When I'm comfortably in that mental state, I pull the trigger. What amazed me is that, with this practice, I kept getting within the 5-point (max) area of the target in the skills progress. For anyone who wants to take a look, you can see the FlightScope data in this spreadsheet I exported: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1nJd5gLpby-eTWniFWTXPWDhS88n8tVLXQXGz87EoSd4/edit?usp=sharing Now, there are drawbacks: I am still working on some swing changes that I think are desirable. With the FocusBand on, my swing quickly reverts to whatever the current "default" is. Over time, obviously, I hope that daily swing work will continue to integrate itself more and more into the "thoughtless" swing; in the meantime, on the course, I want to have the "no thoughts," target-focused feel that I get with the FB. FWIW: here's a comparison of a video I was doing while working on mechanics yesterday versus the target-absorbed swing: So here's my current takeaway: if you're an over-analyzer, this might be something worth looking into. I obviously only have the FB, but there's a competing product (the Muse) that I get ads for on Facebook now. It looks like that is measuring similar things, but it's designed more for meditation than athletics, so I don't know how well it would work with the golf swing. It is less expensive, list price, though.

Short description: If you're swinging something lighter than your driver, you'll swing faster: this is overspeed. If you're swinging something heavier than your driver, you'll work on sequencing and power: this is overload. For my part, I did a first yesterday: swinging the Stack outside:

Huh. Been a while on this thread. Kirke did not make it through Medinah to Augusta for DCP. He drove the ball really well, was the best putter in his age group, and somehow completely lost his touch on chipping (which is normally one of his strengths). He'll try again this year, but only (unfortunately) the Local round: everything past that is on Sundays, which isn't going to work for us. Definitely disappointing, but I'm hoping the schedule shifts back next year. In the meantime, Kirke is ramping things up for our upcoming season. I've decided to start a video channel to chronicle the next few years, which will culminate in Kirke beating me from the back tees of our course. Right now, in the off-season, we're just doing lighter videos. This one is fun: we decided to do a 25-125 yard skills challenge using the Mevo+ in the garage, but both of us could only use drivers. It starts off a little slow: to be fair, we're asking the Mevo to "see" some very fringe case shots. But after the misreads, things pick up, and Kirke hits some pretty spectacular little shots. FWIW: the channel I created is on "kid's mode," so that it cannot be monetized.

Yeah (replying to both fellow mods above), my concern at this point is that I think I know too much. I would love a completely open, brand-agnostic fitting. If a 40 gram ladies flex shaft gives me my best results, so be it. I would want to eliminate as much as possible my own preconceptions. And so for me (assuming an indoor fitting), I even want the screen off. I don't want to make my own adjustments. I'm just here to swing; the fitter is there to make the club the best possible tool for the swing I've got. There was a day when I would have wanted a fitting in which the fitter explains every single step he's making to me. But at this point, I have too many of my own (half-baked) ideas. (Obviously, my scenario here only works if the fitter is a wizard of golf equipment, which is also part of my dream scenario.)

In a club fitting, would you rather the fitter explain his purpose behind each head/shaft/setting change, or would you rather not know what the fitter is doing (as much as possible) to avoid being influenced by what he's saying should happen? My take: right now, I'd love a "blind" fitting with an expert fitter. To be sure, there are some changes that you can't not notice even as you're at address—you'll see the difference between a svelte blade and a chunky GI iron, for instance. And I definitely want him to explain at the end what I ended up with and why. But in the meantime, turn the screen off, let me swing without knowing the outcome, and put something in my hands that gives the best results.

Duration: 00:43:51 In this episode, Chris and Tony discuss PXG's latest release–a three piece golf ball with a TPU urethane cover. Fun fact, this isn't PXG's first foray into golf balls. Remember "Slick Golf?" Yeah, that didn't quite work out too well. In addition, Tony offers insight on the new Titleist docuseries and the rise of Titleist metalwoods. There's a lot on deck so kick back, watch, listen, or do both! This is No Putts Given. Read more about the PXG XTREME GOLF BALL here = https://bit.ly/3x4ljqc Be sure to hit #Subscribe and #HitTheBell so you can stay up-to-date and not miss any new videos! 00:00 NPG - PXG Ball and Titleist Docuseries 00:29 How You Livin'? 03:01 Parsons Extreme Golf Xtreme Golf Ball 06:35 Why make a ball now? 11:31 Who is making the PXG Xtreme Golf Ball? 20:30 Is the price of the PXG Xtreme Ball right? 25:27 Tony is a "Movie Star" 31:10 Is Titleist ahead of everyone else? 33:01 Other Docuseries Ideas 35:42 Who should play Tony and Chris in the MyGolfSpy documentary? 36:51 Mailbag - When did Titleist flip the Pro V1 and Pro V1x? 40:12 What is the one club you're most excited to test or replace? 43:29 We Out --------------------------------------------------------------------- Used by over 19 million forward-thinking golfers! --------------------------------------------------------------------- OUR MISSION: https://mygolfspy.com/our-mission/ --------------------------------------------- Check out MyGolfSpy's other channels! -------------------------------------------- REVIEWS: http://bit.ly/MGSreviews BUYERS GUIDES: https://mygolfspy.com/category/golf-b... NEW RELEASES: http://bit.ly/MGSnewgear PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... DRIVER FITTING TOOL: https://truegolffit.com/ ------------------------------------ MYGOLFSPY SOCIAL ------------------------------------ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyGolfSpy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mygolfspycom/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mygolfspyListen Here

This is the key idea. Here's what my data tells me: hitting 109 with the Stack (roughly 120 with the driver dry swing no ball) is within my physical abilities. My inability to repeat it, then, is chiefly technical/mental, not physical.

OK, you're all safe:

Jumping in late here, so this might have already been noted, but I've found that upslopes—like the ramp of the PuttOut Pressure Trainer or the upslope of the Perfect Putting Mat—also exaggerate the error. If the ball isn't dead on line when it begins rolling up the ramp, the ramp itself (again, it seems to me) pushes it more offline, more than it does a "normal" ball. Anybody else have this experience?

My Stack session today, in two gifs:

Duration: 00:39:29 In this episode of No Putts Given, Chris and Tony dish on the 2023 PGA show and why it feels different than years past. Thanks to our host, Bennett, the guys pick their favorite products from the show and make some 2023 predictions. Enjoy this special edition straight from our VRBO in Orlando (with an off-camera audience!). There's a lot on deck so kick back, watch, listen, or do both! This is No Putts Given. Be sure to hit #Subscribe and #HitTheBell so you can stay up-to-date and not miss any new videos! #golf MYGOLFSPY'S top golf products from the 2023 PGA Show = https://youtu.be/oGEvZeqC9PA Bushnell = https://bit.ly/3HAzolj CaddyTalk = https://bit.ly/3DjIjVF Callaway = https://bit.ly/3RbgC7a Cobra = https://bit.ly/3RaKT5X Foresight = https://bit.ly/3jh1c4F Full Swing = https://bit.ly/3Y3dQ69 INNODESIGN = https://bit.ly/3YkiUn1 LA Golf = https://bit.ly/3XZODcT Me & My Golf = https://bit.ly/3RfxUAe Mizuno = https://bit.ly/3Dm9HSO PING = https://bit.ly/3HKSV2F Pins & Aces = https://bit.ly/3XJLXAh Rapsodo = https://bit.ly/3DjJVPc Srixon = https://bit.ly/3wBx4E8 Titleist = https://bit.ly/3DjIBvJ Tourputt = https://bit.ly/3wxgntC Trackman = https://bit.ly/3JkWUUD Uneekor = https://bit.ly/3WJzQSC Click the links below to read more on our website! Callaway Paradym = https://bit.ly/3Ra8qnw Callaway Paradym Woods & Hybrids = https://bit.ly/3Hxwj4n Callaway Supersoft Golf Ball = https://bit.ly/3Jkl5lV Callaway Supersoft ERC Golf Ball = https://bit.ly/406N2DS Cobra Aerojet Drivers = https://bit.ly/3JplUdz Cobra Aerojet Irons = https://bit.ly/3XUzw4A Mizuno ST-Z & ST-x 230 Drivers = https://bit.ly/3wweBsO --------------------------------------------------------------------- Used by over 19 million forward-thinking golfers! --------------------------------------------------------------------- OUR MISSION: https://mygolfspy.com/our-mission/ --------------------------------------------- Check out MYGOLFSPY'S other channels! -------------------------------------------- REVIEWS: http://bit.ly/MGSreviews BUYERS GUIDES: https://mygolfspy.com/category/golf-b... NEW RELEASES: http://bit.ly/MGSnewgear PODCAST: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... DRIVER FITTING TOOL: https://truegolffit.com/ ------------------------------------ MYGOLFSPY on Social Media ------------------------------------ Twitter: https://twitter.com/MyGolfSpy Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mygolfspycom/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mygolfspy/Listen Here

Gonna push back a little here. In the main, most people think of themselves as more or less impervious to advertising. But this strikes me as implausible; perhaps advertising doesn't work and major corporations throw away a huge chunk of their annual budgets for no reason, but I doubt it. Now, that's not to say that all advertising is equally effective on everyone; if you have no social media accounts, major OEM payments to "influencers" (that word still makes my skin crawl) really would have no effect on you. But advertising is, for the most part, rarely about specific claims. It's about your impression of a brand and its credibility. When you walk into a store, you have certain impressions of virtually all the brands there. And those that you don't have an impression about already—well, that itself is an impression. Most of us start with a level of skepticism about a brand we've never heard of, especially when making what is for most of us a fairly big-ticket purchase. Zooming out a bit: OEMs using social media people as endorsers makes a ton of sense, I think. Think of the golf channels on YouTube you watch regularly, or maybe the podcasts you listen to. You have a more "real" (fake) relationship with those characters than most of us have with most Tour players. In my own case, I feel like if I ran into Mark Crossfield or the Chasing Scratch guys at an airport, I'd have a ton of stuff I could talk with them about. Although neither Mark nor Mike and Eli know it, they and I have already spent hours and hours together. We have old jokes, inside bits, etc. To be sure (and now we're getting into sociology, etc.): this is a fake relationship. But when Titleist took on Mike and Eli, it felt like they were doing something for the whole Chasing Scratch "community." Obviously, this kind of thing has more weight with certain social media personalities and their audiences than with others. But broadly, I'm guessing that in my own case, I feely more warmly about Titleist because of what they've done with CS than because of Jordan and JT.

According to the press release, the price is $700: https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2023/01/25/2595236/0/en/Rapsodo-Announces-Mobile-Launch-Monitor-2-Pro-with-Golf-Simulation-for-More-Options-Measurements-and-Fun-on-the-Range-or-at-Home.html That means that price-wise, it's closer to the Garmin Approach R10/Mevo (not plus) range, rather than the SkyTrak/Mevo+ range. It'll be interesting to see the reviews on the accuracy of this. That has been the biggest complaint with the R10 that I've seen: there is a step up in accuracy from the R10 to the pricier units. If the new Rapsodo is accurate, it will be a very interesting competitor at that price.

Great question, and I don't think I've written about it here. I do use the Mevo+ integration, and I love it. It isn't flawless, but I have a kind of fringe usage case that likely helps break things. My actual phone is an Android, so I have a couple of iGadgets that I use because I have swing devices (including Stack) that are iOS only. So the phone I use to Stack has no SIM card. When I connect the phone to the Mevo+ to use with Stack, there are times the Stack app tries to check something online and can't, because it has no data connection. This is most common for me when I finish my Stack session and tell the app to switch users to Kirke; most often, I need to kill the app, connect to an actual wifi connection, switch users, kill the app again, connect to Mevo+, and then launch the app. Tedious and annoying, but not a deal breaker (and again, my way of using it is non-typical, which is why I suspect I break things). The second issue we've seen is the rare instance (especially for me) of a Mevo+ misread on the last shot of a set. Without the Mevo+ integration, you can pretty easily re-enter a number if you typed it wrong or if it mis-heard you. If the Mevo+ misreads a swing mid-set, you can tell it to erase it and try again. But when you finish a set, if the last swing was wonky, and you tell it to let you edit the last swing, you're stuck: it doesn't re-read a new swing, and while you could type or say a new number, you have no number to input because the Mevo+ isn't telling you a speed because it's connected to the Stack app. I've spent too many words describing these issues, which makes it sound worse than it is. Honestly, I wouldn't go back to any other method. Mevo+ integration has been a major win, a major upgrade, and I'm glad the Stack did it.

Whoa. Been a while. So here's my end-of-season summary from last year: I treaded water. Looking back through this thread, it looks like I started last season with an Arccos handicap of 12ish; as of right now, that number is 11.5 Last year, according to Arccos, I was slightly better than a scratch golfer in short game play, and much, more worse at everything else: So what is my plan this year to shave off some strokes and finally get to single figures? I gotta make more putts inside 9'. Arccos now gives much more fine-grained information about SG putting at various distances. I'm fine inside 2'. From 3-5', I lose 1.7 strokes per round to a scratch player, and another 1.1 strokes per round from 6-9'. From all other distances, I'm losing less than half a stroke. How I'm going to improve: starting at the end of last fall, I took my first online putting lesson. For years, I've played with a horrendous-looking cut putter stroke, bringing the putter way outside the line on the backstroke and hitting across the ball. I've worked hard this winter to groove a much more traditional stroke. I've been doing a bunch of putting with a variety of gadgets, chiefly Blast, HackMotion, and FocusBand. With Blast, I've made strides on consistency of tempo and face control, toning down my pull tendency and keeping the putter more level through impact. With HackMotion, I continue to monitor wrist motion, aiming to keep my wrists quiet through my stroke. The biggest contribution, though, might be the FocusBand. It's a device that is worn on the head to measure brainwave frequency. In summary, you're trying to quiet the mind of conscious, analytical thought and turn instead to pictures, particularly of the target. It has been incredibly eye-opening for me, as one who is massively over-analytical. I've gotten some pointers on Twitter from PGA Tour player Greg Chalmers on how it is to be used, and when (according to the device) I'm deep in the "green" brain activity (the good, right-brained side), I'm experiencing something I never do: putting without swing thoughts. It's to the degree that, when I miss while doing this kind of mental practice, I have a difficult time diagnosing what might have gone wrong, because I literally have no memory of the stroke itself. I'm working with it now to be quicker getting into the mental "zone" so that I can reach this brain state on the course. For full swing stuff (off the tee and approach): I'm Stacking, and making huge gains. I'm continuing lessons with Jayson Nickol on Skillest. This is the part of the year in which I'm working on incorporating big movement adjustments; over the next two months, I'll be gradually adding more and more strike- and result-based practice.

Last time I checked in here, I mentioned I was stagnating a bit, holding right around 100-102 with the Stack at 195g. (Max driver speed is typically about 10mph above Stack speed, due to the Stack being about hybrid length.) Well, I found something my past two sessions: EDIT: Because looking at the before and after numbers might make even me skeptical of myself, that I sandbagged my initial baseline to make bigger progress, here were my on-course Arccos driver numbers for last season (this is my driver data, not just my "off the tee" numbers):

The Stack is the length of a typical hybrid. My garage ceilings are about 8'; I'm also 5'10", and will occasionally hit the ceiling with my hybrid when using my Mevo+. I would likely want at least 8'6" to do Stack work.