GolfSpy MPR

Just added this to my basement green. Needed the heat, and it adds some atmosphere :-)

I don't have the mat, but I use the PuttOut regularly on my basement putting green, even though I have real holes to putt to there. Having the little target is great for focus, and not having to bend down for the ball is appreciated. Really excited to report that I finished the drill I mentioned above for the first time today. And not only did I make three consecutive putts at each point from 1 foot to 8 feet, but I never missed one, so I never had to go back. 24 straight makes! Standing over the third putt from 8' to finish the drill, I told myself that this one was to shoot par for the first time in my life, just to add a little more pressure. It stopped in the perfect putt hole. That might end up being the highlight of my golf career

jlukes, Definitely looking forward to the weekly updates as you post them. It's gotta be immensely gratifying to have this kind of obvious, visible progress from week to week. I have to imagine you're looking forward to seeing what this is going to do for you on the course.

You're abandoning me up here? Congratulations on the good news, Shankster!

Wait a minute! I don't want to take this too personally, but why does @hckymeyer win? Let's go #datacritic for today through next Wednesday: My average high: 0.85° | Brian's average high: 2.42° My average low: -14.14° | Brian's average low: -11.71° Me: 5/7 days of snow | Brian: 1/7 days of snow So to recap: I'm colder with more snow. Again, I'm not trying to take this personally here, but if I'm going to have to live with this, I at least want credit for being dumb enough to live in these conditions

I'm not saying I'm going to freeze to death. But I'm also not not saying I'm going to freeze to death.

The numbers indicate an almost 50/50 split. We're looking at options with the app; trying to find an app that plays well with the new features on the forum.

Did some short game work yesterday. Discovered something fun: the SkyTrak does a decent job picking up 10 yards chips in my basement. There's a level of excitement: I hit the ball, and then have to watch quickly to see whether it's ricocheting off the wall toward me or the SkyTrak. Good pressure to hit the wall squarely In all seriousness, it was an enjoyable little practice. The SkyTrak (again) lets you know if I struck it poorly. And I played around with using each of my four wedges at the 10 yard distance, seeing the different launch angles and spin rates that each produce. I'm likely go to stay with my practice of using my 54° for most of these shots, but using a variety of clubs to hit the same shot (think 14-club challenge) is a useful skill-development practice. My other practice was with my PuttOut. Even with real holes to putt to on my green, the PuttOut still has two things going for it: it rolls the ball back to you on a make, and it offers the tiny little target for the perfect putt. So I added to my PuttOut game repertoire with this: I noted in a followup tweet that I end up getting stuck in the 4–6' range, which is awesome, because that's where I need practice. It's also a good mental game practice. When I miss a five footer and have to drop back to four feet, there were multiple times I immediately missed a four footer because I was still frustrated. Can anyone else relate to this? My hope is to really strengthen my putting from this range. I feel more comfortable from 8' than I do from 4'; call it a version of the Jordan Spieth syndrome.

Josh, It's absolutely a fair point you're making. And I'd add this (that is a pretty uncontroversial opinion on this forum): even if you could buy exactly the club or ball that Rory or whoever is playing, that doesn't mean that it would have any value for your own game. But let me suggest a counterpoint. Car manufacturers spend a lot of money on professional auto racing. And yet we all recognize that there is almost nothing whatsoever "stock" about NASCAR. Nonetheless, winning at the highest level of racing (I'm thinking here of brands like Mercedes and Ferrari) help fortify the impression that these brands are capable of producing top-notch machines. I think something similar is not unreasonable with golf brands. Sure, I don't for a moment think I'm pulling Cameron Champ's PING driver off the shelf. But the fact that PING has engineered a club capable of doing that in his hands gives me some measure of confidence that their consumer products are well-designed.

Having just bought a SkyTrak, I'll say this: I'm still stunned at theb price gap in the launch monitor space. There's the very low end (sub-$300) that gets you an OptiShot class device, which, while fun, isn't much for precise data and game improvement. The next massive step up is the SkyTrak, listing for $2,000, which is probably as accurate as needed for almost any home user (minus club data). It's the space between these that has to be developed. The obvious candidate is the Mevo. I'm open to correction here, but last I looked, the Mevo doesn't track side spin numbers. That's a massive gap for using it for game improvement in a net, in my estimation. So this is a long-winded way of saying, while I'm not in the market anymore, I'm still interested in seeing that mid-level market advance.

This sparked a more intense discussion than I anticipated. I think it might be worth breaking down the phenomenon under discussion more specifically. (Disclaimer: this should be a chart, but I'm writing this on my phone in a Burger King, so you get words instead.) In any of these scenarios, we have three possible parties: the company that is branding a product, a competing brand, and a third-party, generic manufacturing facility. The least egregious version of this relationship happens when two competing brands happen to use the same manufacturing plant to make differing products. I expect that we all understand and even expect this. The most egregious version is when one brand puts its logo on the product of a competing brand, giving the impression that a Tour player is using their product when he is actually using a competitor. That latter category seems quite close to deceptive advertising. When a player is featured by a brand as endorsing their product for play at the highest level, while they're not using it themselves, that seems (at least to me) like a problem. I don't know (and I have no connections) what specifically Tiger meant here. The least objectionable version is this: Tiger was playing a ball designed by Nike, essentially the same as that commercially available from Nike, but manufactured for Nike in a Bridgestone plant. I see no issues there at all. If, however, Tiger was playing a Bridgestone designed and sold ball with a swoosh painted on it, that rubs me wrong. And I have no opinion on Nike as a golf company. I've used a couple of their clubs with no problem. Put it this way: I'd be stunned if this were any kind of Nike specific problem.

Confirmed by the man himself: Someone with serious video editing skills should put a Bridgestone logo on the iconic "ball hangs on the edge of the cup, then drops" moment from Augusta :-)

I actually have a propane heater in the garage, like this: https://www.amazon.com/Dyna-Glo-TT15CDGP-Liquid-Propane-Heater/dp/B0044R8Y4Y/ref=sr_1_4 It's not going to warm the whole garage at these temps, but it's a decent way of warming up the hands from time to time. As for clothing, I had on jeans, a flannel shirt, and a quarter-zip jacket. And a winter hat. Honestly: I play at least a month of my season in the same outfit I'm not born here, but we Yoopers adjust to the cold EDIT: here's a terrible video of a swing: https://photos.app.goo.gl/XSC54KiRPfYmDfsH9 The lighting is entirely inadequate, so I'm not going to even make the effort to convert it to YouTube. But you can see that I can make a full swing.

That all makes good sense. Thanks. Just before doing the skills test, I set up a target at 130 just to hit PWs at. I just couldn't get the ball there, and it was driving me nuts. Some, again, were obviously bad strikes. But even on good strikes, I was falling short. I suppose a completely frozen ball might be as good an excuse as any

Also something I'm trying to figure out: how much the freezing temps are going to affect my SkyTrak results. A couple of considerations: I keep my balls that I use for SkyTrak in the house in my golf bag. So the balls are not starting out at 10°. That said, our basement this time of year is still sub-60°, so they're not warm to begin with. A lot of articles about golf ball performance in the cold factor in the changes to ball flight with the colder air. SkyTrak doesn't know about that; it's set to ideal air temp and fairway conditions. So the question for me is going to be something like this: how quickly does a (say) 55° ball drop to being a 10° ball? Does hitting the same ball over and over (as I normally do) help keep its temperature up? And how much of an effect is that temperature drop on distance and spin rate? I might have to leave a Q-Star Tour out in the garage, and hit a few shots with it and a ball from inside back-to-back, to see if I can (with an inconsistent swing) isolate any results there.

Spent some time in the 10° garage on Saturday hitting shots. Poorly. A lot of bad contract, mostly fat shots that SkyTrak was (appropriately) punishing me for. This week, I'm hitting Walmart for some spray powder. It's time to focus on strike improvements. Two observations from Saturday's practice. I did another skills challenge from 135 and down, with slightly worse results than the first time: I had one badly fatted shot on the 75 yard distance, which really killed that number. 105 continues to be a problem. It should be a full 54°. Maybe it needs to be a gentle GW? I'll test that. I also did a little video work. Turns out, feel isn't real (apparently, that saying exists for a reason). Felt like I was really shallowing the shaft in transition and fighting the early extension. In reality, it's a bit better, but I still have a lot of improvement to make there. On the plus side, I hit well over 100 shots in bitter cold, and two days later, my left hand isn't in sharp pain. The fat shots certainly hurt on Saturday, but it looks like (hopefully) whatever I strained in my hand is improving. Ideally, that will let me get back to SuperSpeed swings, maybe by next week.

I'm currently playing on the tablet/laptop I use for office stuff (essentially, a Lenovo version of a Surface). I'm not using any of the game software for playing rounds, but for the SkyTrak software itself, this machine (which is certainly no gaming device) is adequate. It is a common complaint with SkyTrak that shots take a few seconds to display; I expect it's a bit worse with my current setup, but nothing awful. If I were looking at the other software (like The Golf Club), a machine upgrade would also be in order for me. Another reason I'm currently quite content with my current setup.

The main account just tweeted this tidbit: I already wanted to take a field trip to HQ sometime. But this? This puts it over the top. Let's hope we see this come to fruition!

The contrast at the beginning of the latest video is astonishing! Very nice work! Question: what are you seeing ball-flight-wise at this point?

Enjoying some daddy/daughter time for her eighth birthday.

Plaid, Definitely no offense taken to this comment; like I noted, that driving distance is embarrassing. The longest drive Game Golf ever recorded for me was about 280, and that was in pretty neutral conditions. I know there's way more in the tank than what I'm getting. I'm definitely making swing improvements this off season (more on that to come), but I'm pretty certain the key to better distance for me is found in strike. I don't claim to have a dime-size wear spot on my irons, but I'm at least a decently consistent ball striker. But there's something about the large driver head that throws me, and I have a very hard time repeatedly hitting a useful part of the face.

Mike, thanks for the advice. The pain, at its worst, runs from just under my wrist, up through the hand following the crease toward my thumb. I suspect (based on no expertise at all) that is a kind of tendinitis. (One forum user, who is qualified to have an opinion, suggested something similar to me in a DM.) I'm turning 40 this summer. I saw a comic one time make the joke that getting old just means that you stop healing: "Ah man, banging my shin against the coffee table. I guess that's just going to hurt for the rest of my life." Maybe this is one of those things

Count me as interested. As to why Crossfield isn't in: I like his content a lot. But it seems, just based on public actions, that Mark can be pretty thin-skinned, and he doesn't let grudges go. There is a long-standing rivalry between the Crossfield and Shiels sides of YouTube golf. They've taken turns taking shots at each other's content at times. Honestly, I would wish Crossfield would get over it in this case: I think having the Crossfield gang involved in something like this would make it considerably more entertaining. As to what would make this better than the normal course vlogs: assuming that they're doing this right and blocking off a course for some time to film it, they can start to overcome one of the biggest weaknesses of even good golf vlogs: the inability to see where the shots actually go. Filming golf shots solely from the point of view of the shot is pretty worthless a lot of the time. Having extra cameras around near the landing areas of shots, if done correctly, could really help the production and watchability of something like this.

On consistency of speeds between swings or between days: I think one of the things that the radar has highlighted for me is the remarkable difficulty of being at peak performance day in and day out. The guys who do this for a living, in whatever sport, are doing something hard. An update on me: I haven't done any SuperSpeed swings since my last update. I visited Topgolf last week, and I've been playing with my new SkyTrak, and the hand pain flares up every time. I hate the idea of totally shutting down golf swings for whatever length of time, but I'm starting to think that it might be necessary.

This post is gold. Thank you.