downlowkey

It’s not official until @Golfspy_CG2 verifies that all contest rules were followed. This thread will probably be locked soon. He’ll start another thread (likely Monday) with the official announcement and then you can pop the champagne. That thread would be a helluva place to introduce yourself to the forum, so start thinking about your acceptance speech.

I see you pards. Trying to throw us off the time traveler scent with that Oosthuizen pick. Batting 1.000 in MGS Major Contests deserves a golf clap. And you’ll get another golf clap for an unofficial review of those Titleist wrenches when you have them in hand and start digging dirt. Congrats on the win!

Cut: +3 Final Round (avg): 70.64 Thanks for the action @Golfspy_CG2 & Titleist!

Am I correct that Foreward Golf emphasizes the importance of their different sole design options to help promote “tiger strikes”? If so, it seems like fitting on the turf conditions you typically encounter would be pretty crucial. Did they offer recommendation about fitting on turf -vs- mat? If they’re still promoting the “tiger strike” notion, (1) pink has that look, but (3) red is super tight heel-to-toe. What do you think about the TS theory?

This is the eBay listing where I get it. Usually buy 25 feet, which is enough for 8-12 putters depending on whether you’re trimming to full length or just to the bottom end of the grip. Correct - I air install all my grips so there’s no waste for me. But I suppose you could alternatively pull the shaft, run a sleeve of heat shrink on from the tip end and then reinstall the shaft.

Thanks pards! It’s a sleeve - same polyolefin heat shrink tubing you would use for electrical connections. I always use black 3/4” ID w/ 3:1 shrink ratio. Piece of cake with a heat gun, just have to step it up slowly, alternating sides, so you don’t trap any hot air (bulges). It’s pretty cheap in bulk, comes in a bunch of colors, protects the shaft finish and when it starts looking dinged up you can wipe it down with an acetone soaked paper towel and make it look new again. It’s also an easy way to add some weight to the entire length of the shaft. I went all the way to the tip on the Lo Pro project and it was ~17 grams. Just be sure to stay away from the marine grade stuff with heat activated adhesive and make sure it doesn’t have the specs printed on the exterior.

Picked up a minty face balanced Bobby Grace Lo Pro a couple years ago. Loved the chunky tech packed head but wasn’t wild about the double bend shaft set up. So I decided to give it some toe hang this morning. Decisions, decisions… After much deliberation, I went with a one inch aluminum slant flow neck. Primarily because this was a big toe hang hunt, but the aluminum was also 20 grams lighter than its carbon steel counterpart (head already weighed a shade over 390 grams without a hosel). Scavenged a .370 shaft off an old Kirk Currie that I don’t have any plans for, trimmed it to length and started assembling. After an hour of cure time, I wrapped the shaft with black heat shrink tubing and air installed a NOS blue Pure Big Dog grip. This 31” mighty mouse now has ~50 degrees of toe hang and weighs 602 grams!!! Sounds uber heavy but is actually well balanced with the 120 gram grip. I have a bunch of very nice putters in my collection but this is suddenly at the top of the heap. Amazing that a neck change took it from basically worst to first and I love how it turned out. While I was waiting for the Lo Pro to cure, I grabbed the 4-iron from another set that I recently snagged. If you’re not familiar, the Adams IDEA MB2 has my vote for the best blade ever made. There are 5 tungsten plugs set in the back near the sole (circular chrome depressions in pic). Considering these were forged from 8620 13+ years ago, the condition is incredible, but I didn’t care for the two-tone red/blue paint fill from the prior owner. Deleted the offending paint with acetone soaked cue-tips and planned to refill with a Tamiya gloss black. Kinda digging the blank satin look though. What do you guys think? They’re currently laced to X100 TT XP 115 that won’t work with my hinky elbows/wrists. Not sure if I want to build them out with a spare set of Matrix Ozik Program F15 120 collecting dust in the gear closet or try something completely new. May even go so far as stripping the chrome and embracing that raw patina. I’ll update as this project progresses.

Assuming your CheckGo is functioning properly, the scenario you’re describing is indicative of a properly balanced ball. I prefer float testing because it allows counterweighting to check actual degree of imbalance and then sorting accordingly, but 1-4 balls per dozen are typically “perfect”. Those would be the balls that wander in your CheckGo.

I’ve had some success using my shaft puller to reset ferrules but it’s also deformed a fair number. A pipe flaring die block has worked better for me. Dip the clubhead/ferrule in hot water for maybe a minute, clamp the die block around the shaft with the flaring bevel oriented toward the clubhead, stand the club up on a solid surface (workbench) and then gently tap the block with a mallet until the ferrule is flush w/ the hosel. If the ferrule isn’t moving, dunk it in the hot water again. In my experience, the beveled edge on the die block is less likely to marr the top edge of your heat softened ferrule where it’s thinnest and most fragile. I enjoy club building as much as anybody, but playing graphite top-to-bottom of the bag, I’d prefer to avoid pulling gamer shafts unless absolutely necessary. A deformed ferrule is an automatic rebuild for me. If that leads to a bad shaft pull, expensive dominos start falling.

Have you ever hit their original UW release? When folks put them on digital L/L machines, the actual loft was often 2-3 degrees less than the stamp. If you could track down a 17* head that’s actually 14* and laced to a telephone pole, odds are pretty decent that you wouldn’t have to worry about launching that setup too high.

Seat on the board for Shipnuck - wow. GEaaS (Golf Equipment as a Service) or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Planned Obsolescence Less than thrilled about the PO model weaseling into the golf space and he just might be the scribe to parse the finer points w/o pulling any punches. Let him off the chain and bring back #PowerToThePlayer

I’m not 100% certain because it’s nearing the ragged edge of my own physics education and golf IQ, but will offer the following thoughts: The referenced Tutelman “study” was last updated April ‘09, when, save for instances like a full hybrid set, cast and forged iron loft designs resulted in face forward CoG heads. One of the things that 3D printed negative space matrix structure allows is significant mass relocation. For instance, nudging CoG further back and concurrently bumping up MOI, in a traditionally shaped package (read: svelte sole width). That’s a potentially enviable design advance. Provided you account for the increasing, albeit minimal, gear effect, particularly at the ludicrous speed (credit - Spaceballs) Bryson is applying. Because it bears repeating, “Bryson Speed” is the crucial component of the abnormal things happening at impact when he is swinging his irons. So, _if_ the CoG has moved slightly rearward away from the face, I can see how limited bulge could offer a marginal benefit. Specifically to redirect some of the draw spin axis tilt he imparts with his exaggerated (by tour standards) in-to-out path and relatively closed club face, particularly on toe strikes. From what I understand about the effect that roll has on launch/descent angles, I seriously doubt his new wrenches have much if any at all. I could possibly see the benefit of having a smidge of roll radius north of the sweet spot in his lowest lofted irons but that extra dimension would likely complicate the face design significantly. Colloquially speaking, “bulge & roll” would probably be more accurately written as bulge-and-roll, because of the in tandem application of that design package in modern driver/fairway wood faces. But all the talking heads have been erroneously throwing that term around out of habit with regard to the 3D printed Avoda heads. Essentially, Bryson’s irons are almost certainly all bulge and no roll, and probably not much bulge either compared to what you see in driver faces. Bryson is always hunting gains in the margins, and IMO, has always been hyper focused on controlling torsional forces during impact collision. I think it’s part of the reason he decided to bulk up (more lever mass = increased torsional stability). I think it’s why he had LA Golf build him ultra-low torque “rebar” on their HD mandrels. And now, with advanced 3D printing mass relocation options and his speed, I think it’s why he’s experiementing with some bulge in his irons (read: redirecting start line on toe/heel strikes). If we were to look at a simple overlay of his dispersion pattern for say 7-iron, before/after the Avoda experiment, I don’t think there would be a huge difference in the offline dimension. But I’m guessing the story that a simple dispersion pattern comparison would not reveal and the quality that he finds beneficial, is how the ball gets there. Namely, toe strikes start slightly farther right and are more likely to finish right of target, where they formerly crossed the target line and finished left. With the converse also holding true for heel strikes. In theory, those improved shot shape qualities should also result in marginally better distance control. Put that all together and it’s a pretty significant improvement from a course management perspective in the “cover distance” era at the highest level of the game. And now my head hurts, so if you don’t mind, I’d like to take a page out of Keith Moon’s party playbook and go drink two beers as fast as humanly possible.

Possibly just a conscientious student showing deference to the time is money principle. That said, if I didn’t push for extra time, I most likely wouldn’t be shelling out for it. Agreed - my fitter always handles any tipping

Cut: +6 TW: +4

FYI we have a Still Aceless Thread, where all the unfortunate souls that share the same lifetime average go, to commiserate over gut wrenching accounts of this particular scenario. Though I cannot personally relate to your last sentence and would never tempt the golf gods as such (they’re always listening), nice shot nonetheless. And because no one else has taken the obligatory parting shot, suppose I must - did you make the putt?