romeopapazulu

Shut the front door! Sent from my iPad using MyGolfSpy

Yes, I am confident enough that the putter will change that this is not locked in for the whole year. The day might be stretching it, though. Maybe I could have labeled it "2nd Quarter". Sent from my SM-A600A using MyGolfSpy mobile app

As the season starts, I might as well document what I have and see how it compares at the end of the season. The highlight of the bag is the driver headcover. I enjoy showing this off and having people feel the weight. It won't blow away in a hurricane. And it makes for a fun little boxing glove when the play is too slow. Thanks again to MGS for the trick shot contest this past winter! Driver is now a Ping G400 LST 8.5 deg with a Ping Tour 65 Stiff shaft. I could probably go X-Stiff here, but I tried that with the M3 last year and it took too long to warm up to hit it right. Now I wonder if I only need a couple holes with this to be fine with the X. I'll keep an eye out for a deal on the X on eBay. Next in line is an Adams XTD Ti 18 deg hybrid with a Matrix Red Tie Stiff. I wish I was a little more consistent with this, but have hit it 270 off the tee. If I am in the fairway and there isn't trouble in front of the green, I can roll this up to a green from 250+ (unless I am using a Chrome Soft ). I just landed a Nike Pro Combo Forged driving iron. It had a beautiful baby draw all night on the range. Only 1 for 3 on the course. My intent was for this to be a more consistent fairway finder than the hybrid. It looked to fit that role and I only had 13 clubs in the bag, so I threw it in. Irons are Hogan PTx 22-46 deg (4-PW) with KBS C-Taper Stiff shafts. The shafts were quite a change from my previous TT DGSL Stiffs. After I regripped I thought they might have been non standard length, but figured out they were soft stepped. I wish I could take these to a fitting and try out some other shafts. But If I found something else, I might as well jump into the new PTx Pros for what I would pay for shafts and reassembly. Hogan TK15 50, 54 and 58 deg wedges round out the irons. These might be my favorite clubs in the bag. I don't think I have ramped up the wedge practice more than ever, but I have performed better with these than anything else. Not sure if I want to wear these out, but if so, the Equalizer blacks look pretty fine. A Cleveland Satin Elevado is responsible for the most strokes on the card. I have a P2 Aware Tour on it now. It is at 36" so I hold on to the grip a little lower where the taper is thinner. I just might trim that down an inch tonight. It had been working really well on the Birdieball green over the winter, but the putt count in the first rounds this year has been atrocious. The Ping Traverse bag keeps things organized. It works great on a cart, but I'm not a fan of it on the ClicGear push cart. Does a carry bag work better on these things? I guess it works fine, but it is annoying to switch all the rows around switching from walking to riding. First world problems... The putter is the only club I bought at full retail. It is also the closest to being replaced. I really just need to suck it up and get a putter fitting, get whatever works best and just stick with it. Here are some pics.

If only robots had feelings...

This is a similar conclusion to what I had on the e6 Speed. Didn't stray much offline. Full shots into the green stopped reasonably well. Partial swings would run like Usain Bolt. I wouldn't be able to use it as a gamer unless I was planning on hitting 80% of the greens. However, I would totally use this in a scramble. Aim Dead On and it will hold its' line. If you are off the green, switch out to a higher spinning ball for the chips (and find new scramble partners). PS. If switching balls on a hole in a scramble is illegal, then don't switch out balls around the green. You should still find better partners, though.

It looks to be in great shape! Perhaps the previous owner couldn't figure out what to do with it either.

Another unapologetic pitch for the Pit Barrel Cooker. The Traeger is quick and easy, but chicken or brisket off this thing is unreal.

Made a trip to top golf and the ALIGN tech sure does seem to help on less than full swings. I haven't had much luck with these shots besides the wedges, but did pretty well today. The reminder seems to give one extra feeling of where the face is, so squaring the face without overcooking it was a breeze. Sent from my SM-A600A using MyGolfSpy mobile app

Well, the vacation excuse worked and I found a sweet sale on the Olympus OMD EM10 Mark II!

@GolfSpy MPR - Chalk me up as another so jealous of that wedge matrix. That is incredible! My swings didn't really match up with Pelz, but I use the clock theory. My half swing I concentrate on the shaft stopping parallel to the ground. If I am out of practice, I will tend to way overdo it. Three quarters is a vertical shaft. The quarter swing is a bit tricky, and I try to keep the shaft at 7:30. These end up giving me numbers very close to 25%, 50% and 75% of the full swing. I probably swing too hard, so this may not be very helpful, but that overcooked half swing was something that I eventually worked out.

I don't know if there were too many quite that old. I am guessing more 70's-80's. I remember some fluid feel Button Backs. Several Penna persimmons. Those were a bit of a blur. So many crammed in the bags it was hard to remember what else. I can meet up with him and try to take pics of the rest. I need a five wood, and I need to pry that R90 out of his hands. I was trying to get him to throw it in with the rest, but he wasn't about to let it go. I think that was my first sand wedge, and I called it steak sauce because of the brown laminated shaft. Oh, and two of the bags were full of putters and another two of wedges. I would have taken more time, but I was supposed to be at IFA picking up some fertilizer but met this guy at his storage unit instead.

One of those sets of WIlson Staff irons was supposed to be pretty rare, but I can't for the life of me remember the model.

You guys...... Seeing someone's older stuff a few weeks ago gave me the urge to pick up some Wilson Staff Fluid Feels and a couple Powerbilt persimmon woods. I haven't taken them on the course yet, but the few strokes I have taken with the irons have been very pleasing. I need to put together the WITB and WITB(V) now, but lighting hasn't been right whenever I have tried so I didn't have any forum worthy photos. Anyways, the guy I picked them up from has about 7 staff bags full of old clubs. There were several sets of Wilsons and some Hogan Radials and Directors. I was planning on getting one of the Hogans, but the Fluid Feels looked so good. Three of the bags were stuffed full of Persimmons. I was keeping an eye out for an LFF or a JS, but didn't see one. If there is anything that you guys are hunting for, I can go back and snap a bunch of pics. It will all be donated on June 6, so he might take about any offer. (But the R90 will be mine). I am fine with snagging something and shipping it to you if something strikes your fancy.

@shankster what was the shaft in the TMB? I hit up an indoor golf show this winter and the TMB 3 iron was the standout. I liked the Mizzy HM Pro, but none of several shafts really stood out. That TMB with a KBS tour was heavenly with every stroke. Sent from my SM-A600A using MyGolfSpy mobile app

I am actually baffled at the compliment to troll ratio in the comments of this report. It has to be higher than any other Most Wanted test I have read in the last few years. There are a lot of great questions, great answers, and most of the complaints (if you even call them that) are wishing another ball was tested. If the conspiracy theorists can't even find something to gripe about, the guys at HQ must have really knocked this one out of the park. I'm still trying to wrap my head around the results. The shot area spread for driver and 7 iron for the high swing speed is beyond what I ever would have imagined. I tried the epsom salt test for some balls this winter. I would dunk one and mark the top with a marker and redo it several times. Some of the Snell's weren't that repeatable which I took as a good sign. Some Ram's (don't ask how those made it in this house) would pop that same dot up right to the top in a few seconds and repeat over and over. These are the balls I can see soaring off to the next fairway. I expected Tony's teaser about huge dispersion to all turn out to be some strange brands we never heard of. Just about all the big guys have at least one ball with pretty bad dispersion.

I think there are many cases where an expert in some area can pick up on nuances that you or I would never recognize, whether it be some imperceivable sound to a musician or a few cotton balls of extra weight on Tiger's driver. I don't think the army of people results in perfect equipment for the pros. I think the ability of a pro to pick up on those tiny things requires an army to get it right. Maybe not for every tour pro, but the elite ones, yes. (Plus the equipment manufacturers better keep these guys happy or their tour staff will find a company that will.)

That sand ring is amazing. I don't think I have ever seen it like that before.

So far so good. Last week the shot of the day was sticking a 6 iron (ZGRIP ALIGN enabled) to 6 ft. from 193 yards. Unfortunately, the next shot was not eligible for shot of the day. I don't think I am going to have any problems with the roughness of the ZGRIP. It is really really firm, but that hasn't bothered me too much yet. One of the biggest differences I can tell for now is that they are standard sized grips with no extra tape at the bottom. I had left every other club or so with the UTx's to give me a better chance to do a side by side, and I think I prefer the extra wraps I put under the UTx. I took a micrometer to the ZGRIP, UTx and the TS1 I have on my 58deg. I have a chart showing the profile of each of these as they are set up (I'll post that in a bit). The UTx and TS1 are pretty similar though the bottom hand area. I measured the grips on the side and from top to bottom to see the size of the rib. My homemade reminders came up with the same size rib to a few hundredths of a mm, but there was certainly more variation as it went down the grip. The ZGRIP was much more consistent. I went out this last weekend as well and by some dumb luck I think half my shots were with my 8 iron which still has the UTx wrap. I don't know why that never got swapped to the regular UTx end of last season. That will come off soon and I will try to put a couple extra wraps under the ZGRIP to see if I can match the profile of the UTx's. Anyone else play with reminders? Do you go all the way to the wedges? I am leaning towards leaving a round grip on the 54 and 58 because these are the ones I open up most often. The TS1 was not my favorite on the driver last year, but it is killing it on the 58.

Still inaccessible here. I saw the home page for a sec but the report wouldn't load. I assume Golf Digest has created bots to click on this constantly to keep it down until they can find a Prof who will accept payment to disprove all the findings. Sent from my SM-A600A using MyGolfSpy mobile app

That's so annoying. I wish there was an dislike button to hit for this (as in also dislike). I still wonder what GG claims to offer that is so far beyond the other options to validate the premium price. At the presale rate it wasnt bad, but at the regular price, isn't this quite a bit more than the other two main options? Sent from my SM-A600A using MyGolfSpy mobile app

You know, I don't even remember writing that. Maybe it was a Freudian slip?

Stage 1 is here:

Stage Two - The Review June 25, 2019 Golf Pride ZGRIP Align– Official MGS Forum Review by RomeoPapaZulu Intro I want to start off my Stage 2 with another thank you to the MGS team for giving me a shot at a review. I have suffered through a hodgepodge of grips of the last couple of months. It’s one thing to get a new driver and hit some shots with a new one and then turn right around and hit some with the current driver to compare. I have alternated the new grips on my clubs to try to get the best comparison with the Lamkin UTx’s I am (was?) currently playing. I joined the couple’s league this year, so I have been out at least once every week with some additional range time and several other full rounds. Here are a couple of vids of the awful swings I was subjecting these through during this testing (I recommend you don't watch these immediately after eating, you will likely get severe stomach cramps). Looks (9 out of 10 points) I really like the way these look. There is the giant Golf Pride on the topside at the bottom of the grip that some may find distracting. But if you are really adamant about installing a grip logo down, then a reminder grip isn’t for you in the first place. Then again, I am sure a decent amount of golfers are going to prefer to not have a giant logo jumping out at you, so -1 for that. After looking at the photos I took, I installed my last grips logo down, so I am one of those guys! The rest of the color scheme really suits my eye. The majority of the grip is black and white, so pretty standard. They really make the reminder portion stick out by coloring that red. I would liken this to the Cobra F9 drivers with the yellow bottom. This isn’t visible from address, but sure shows up on the camera. Here is a birdieball session in the front yard. The ALIGN would be visible (by really tall people). This might not pair with a pink club all that well, but I could see this looking really nice on a black shaft with a DBM finished clubhead (hint hint my princess). Feel (16 out of 20 points) These rank as the firmest of firm of all Golf Pride’s offerings. I won’t dispute this. I have handed a few clubs to several people, non-golfers included, and everyone ranked these as the firmest. But can these be too firm? This was my biggest sticking point during this review. I would rate these as having a lower amount of tackiness than the UTx grip, but higher roughness. The UTx has a bit more softness to it. It took a bit to warm up in Utah, so I may have had an affinity to the slightly softer UTx grips towards the beginning of this. What the ZGRIP may lack in tackiness, it makes up for in roughness. These things are aggressive. I love it under the glove hand. If you manage to let a club twist in your gloved hand with these grips, I reckon the front half of your glove is going to peel off and stay with the grip. There is a slightly different texture to the rib on the bottom. I really can’t see how anyone is going to be able to tell that at all. There have been enough comments about people not even telling the rib is there! I am certain that I saw some sort of info from Golf Pride that this different texture was some enhancement feature, but I am going to dispute that. I purchased an MCC Align to play alongside these on my driver. This is definitely softer on the lower hand. I think I would lean more this way if I were just grabbing the sample grips at a store, but the driver performance is in no way indicating that the MCC is more beneficial to me. This will require more time for a thorough evaluation. Performance Characteristics (25 out of 30 points) This was not a love at first touch situation. I think the colder weather to start out this season may have slowed down the adaptation period. The left hand is winning with these, though. When I set my gloved hand on these, I feel like I am locked in. The right hand is getting more accustomed to the firmer grip, and things are going well. The heat hasn’t hit us yet here in Salt Lake City. I don’t think I have had to play in anything above 80 deg yet. The last range session involved an industrial spray bottle and lots of simulated rain. I doused the grip, gave it a wipe with the towel and then took 4-5 shots (with a naked left hand). Then I switched clubs to try the UTx, rinse, lather and repeat until my baby soft left hand couldn’t take it anymore. I was looking for some slippage and leaving the clubface open and losing some shots off to the right. With each grip I pulled a couple out of 20 shots, probably for over concentrating on not letting the club slip and just holding on too tight. I didn’t lose any far out right, and a slight fade was all that resulted with either grip. Although both grips performed pretty well, the manner in which they did it was completely different. I would liken the ZGRIP to some all terrain BFG’s. The massive texture just channels the water away while the outer surface of the grip dried off after only a few shots due to a light breeze. The UTx felt more like a drag racing rear tire after the warmup. These gripped with tack while the ZGRIP worked through texture. I will report back with some updates as I get to use these more while I am sweating my tail off. Last season I had a serious case of the shanks for a bit. I seem to be over that now, but the occasional shocker still pops up now and then. In the last few rounds, twice I could have killed someone standing in front of me and a bit forward. The interesting thing is that these were both with my 7i which had my old grip on it. My new favorite club is now my 50deg wedge. I hadn’t installed a rib on the 50, 54 or 58 in case I wanted to open the face up. I don’t ever do that with the 50deg, though, so I slid on a ZGRIP and now am infatuated. Here is a chart of GIR from a period last year and then this year with the ZGRIPs. Overall, there is an improvement of a couple of percent. However, comparing what I am doing now vs. the first half of last year, I am having none of the really bad GIR rounds. Something else that is not reflected is the greens where I am playing in couples league range somewhere between red oak and black walnut in hardness. I have hit the center of one or two greens per round that just rocketed off and back to the tee of the next hole. There appears to be only a 3ft wide strip in front of the green that will let you land short and roll up. Considering this, the coulda woulda shoulda numbers with the ZGRIPs are a good amount better. If anyone has a recommendation for a head shaft combo that could give me 10,000 rpm of spin with a seven iron, I might be able to hold a few of these greens. I will dock a couple of points for something immeasurable. I can absolutely feel the rib, and there have been several cases on the course where I find that I totally overthink swing path and club face. In general I am happy with the reminders, but every now and then it gives me some sensation in a practice swing that gets me thinking or worse yet in the backswing. I HAVE to just pull out of the swing and step back in those cases, but I don’t, and the results are usually terrible. I think this is more common with the reminders than without. Durability (10 out of 10 points) I don’t see any evidence of wear on these yet. My hands and glove will most likely be the victims of the majority of wear here. I will check back in to provide some updates, but I just can’t see these things wearing out for a long time. We did just have an 84 deg day (first one of the year?), so maybe if I start sweating profusely later this summer these will start to show some signs of breaking down. Miscellaneous (8 out of 10 points) The flat end is a nice feature (+3). I don’t have any sensors that I need to screw into the grips, but I can see how the rounded end of the Lamkins could cause an issue of a poor fit and snagging as clubs go in and out of the bag. The grips showed up pretty quickly (+3). It sounds like we got a few more than in the original plan (+3). The firmness does have some cons. When putting these on, I think my C-Taper shafts compressed more than these stretched to go over the shaft (-3). I had a real battle trying to slide these on with an air compressor. For other grips I can usually put a dab of solvent on the inside of the bottom of the grip to help it slide on at first and then the air compressor slides them on and off without a hitch. I really fought with these. On a couple grips where I put some extra wraps at the bottom, I was afraid of impaling myself if I were to slip while pushing these things on. If I were to do this again, I would just use the double sided tape and a ton of solvent. Some final bonus points are won by Golf Pride for pairing this test up with some putter grips. I played with someone with a Tour Snsr Contour Pro several weeks ago. I loved it, got one, and now don’t feel like throwing my putter into nearby lakes. (+2) Play it or Regrip it? (16.9 out of 20 points) I started out with half of the grips on in case the ZGRIP experiment went really wrong. It didn’t take too long and I swapped them all out for the ZGRIPs. They are showing extreme durability, provide a very secure purchase under the left gloved hand, and have passed whatever water test I could throw at them. The performance numbers don’t show that any of you will be watching me on the Golf Channel any time soon, but comparing this time of year to last year and not penalizing me for playing on concrete greens, my iron play is showing some good improvements. I did get an MCC Align to test alongside these and put it on my driver. This also had a pretty aggressive texture under the gloved hand but the lower hand area is a fair bit softer than the ZGRIP. My driver play right now would lead most people with any sense of reasoning to pull it out of the bag entirely, but that is not a grip issue. I will play this and the ZGRIPs through the rest of this season before making a decision what will ultimately end up on the twigs. The grip setup right now is MCC Align on driver, ZGRIP on Utility Iron, 3Hy, 4-GW, a leftover UTx on the SW and the Lamkin TS1 on the LW. If I weren’t cheap, I would have the TS1 on the SW as well. This is a reduced taper grip that has a pretty similar texture throughout and some markings every inch or so at the top, so I find it works great for helping me choke up a repeatable amount and lets me open the clubface without the rib ending up in a weird spot in my fingers. The final love it /list it score awarded is 16.9 (11 out of 13 eligible clubs are now with a Golf Pride Align grip). Conclusion TL;DR: Firmness: I suspect these didn’t stretch over my steel shafts as much as the shafts compressed underneath the grips. I would rate these at an 11 on a scale of 1 to 10. I would recommend against these for any fans of a Winn DriTac type of squishy grip. Texture: All Terrain BFG’s. Deep texture and heavy cord help with a very secure purchase and great moisture management. Performance: Compared to this time last year, I am more consistent in my iron play. If it weren’t for a lot of unwatered greens, my GIR% would show a good improvement as well. These are firm enough throughout the whole grip that I would not have gone with these if I were choosing a grip by picking up the sample grips in a golf store. After getting them on the course, though, I am seeing that they are performing great. Someone with high sensory awareness might find the ALIGN feature distracting due to the added feelings in the hand, but I have so far found them more helpful than harmful. Final Score: (84.9 out of 100 points)

Stage 1 - Golf Pride ZGRIP ALIGN Review First and foremost, so many thanks to Golf Pride for sending new products for a real shakedown and to MyGolfSpy for trusting us to put together some quality reviews. When I told my wife and kids I was getting the opportunity to review some grips, my son asked, “why you?”. So thanks again for having more confidence in me than my own family! My name is Randy and I live in the Salt Lake City area of Utah. I have just one awesome wife and two great boys (14 and almost 12). I have been ripping up sod on our great selection of public courses here for about 8 years. Where did I pick this game up? Let’s see… Sometime back in what I assume was fourth or fifth grade, I had accumulated a giant collection of golf balls from cleaning up the YMCA fields after the neighborhood guys would practice with their shag bags. I put together a set of clubs from garage sales and the free piles when they didn’t sell in garage sales. I recall a crusty plaid bag full of 14 clubs, none of the same make. There couldn’t have been $2.50 invested in that set. The favorite of them all was the 7 iron. I want to say it was a Nancy Lopez with a loud green grip. Being an L flex and having the best grip of the bunch led me to like that over the 4 iron which was probably a 150g X-flex. Most rounds as a child were on imaginary holes in that YMCA field. My instruction came from a grocery bag full of golf magazines (read every word of those at least twice). For a graduation present in 8th grade I got a matching set of irons. Yonex ADX’s?? Why no, they were some 20 year old muscle backs with leather grips that were slick as snot. At some point in the next year my friend and I regripped those with some Victory knock-offs and two bottles of lighter fluid. If you can imagine a green and black candy cane that was left on the dashboard during a long day in Disney World, that would be how these things looked. Just a crooked hot mess. But the fact that I did this helped me know that I can do this myself, so I haven’t kept a grip on very long that I didn’t like. To get an understanding about what I look for in a grip, here are some that have stood out over the years: Winn Dri-Tac: I played these in Peru. It was incredibly arid and a crazy strong sun, so these things got baked and soaked in sweat. I thought I like the soft feel of these at first, but I started losing drives out the the right after a short while and realized the driver grip was worn pretty well. A quick regrip fixed things quickly. I wouldn’t go this route again because I prefer a firmer grip and one that holds up a bit better. Sharpro 3CAT: These are one of my favorites. Business on top (grippy cord) and fun on the bottom (softer wrap). I loved how the wrap at the bottom helped position the fingers in the same place each time. If only something else out there did that… These did wear a bit quicker than I like, but they were so cheap and I usually only needed to regrip the driver and wedges. Lamkin UTx. I had the UTx wraps for a bit, but I wanted to experiment with extra tape on the bottom half of the grip so I pulled them off. The normal UTx grips I have now have 4 extra wraps of painters tape on the bottom (equivalent to two wraps of double sided tape?). I also got the GolfWorks rib pack for some DIY reminder grips. These stick to the shaft before the tape to get the rib on the bottom. They go on easy enough. I pull the grip out of the vice and check alignment before taping and blowing the grip on. The one complaint here is that the rib under the tape doesn’t work great for blowing the grip on because the air just shoots out the channels along the side of the rib. We’ll see how an actual ribbed grip works for this. The best description of my game would be grip it and rip it. A typical par four would be driver, wedge, and three putts. The next hole would be an angry driver, chip, and three putts. I will then tighten up the shoe laces to make sure that they stay on my feet for the next REALLY angry driver. To keep the club in my hands by this time, I need something akin to velcro on the grip. Well, there may be a teeny bit of embellishment there, but I do like tacky with a good bit of texture. I spent some time on the Golf Pride website to see what these grips were all about. I think Golf Pride has done the best job organizing their grips on their website. They picture all their grips in a row and I can sort by firmness or moisture control. I can also use a couple of filters to narrow down selections further. I poked around on some other websites and didn’t find anything nearly as useful. What is ALIGN? Is it really revolutionary? Well, as best I can tell, Gene Sarazen invented the reminder grip around 90 years ago. Ben Hogan was also known to create a reminder grip by putting a wire hanger on the underside of the shaft before wrapping his grips. So I would venture to say that there is nothing revolutionary here. I don’t have a ton of first hand experience with golf pre-1980’s, but from what I remember and can find about reminder grips, they were more popular up until the early 1990’s. When Golf Pride came out with the Tour Wrap and Lamkin developed the Perma Wrap, these grips didn’t have heavily colored patterns so the risk of installing the reminder all crooked led manufacturers away from the ribbed grips. So what is old is new... Once I was finally able to get my hands on these things, I liked what I saw. The black and white grip with the red accents is pretty slick. The texture on these is for real as well. The grooves on these grips are deeper than the tire tread on my 2500 HD. Here are some closeups of the Z-Grip compared to the Lamkin UTx I currently play. They are also certainly on the firm end of the spectrum. I had the wife and kids hold one of these and some other grips, and they all picked the Z-Grip and being the firmest. Here are a couple zoomed in images of the textures of the ZGRIP and the current gamer the UTx. Another initial observation was about the butts. I am not opposed to a round butt, but on my grips? I can see the Lamkin grips giving me issues if I were to finally splurge for an Arccos or Shot Scope system with sensors. The flat butt on the ZGRIP seems to accommodate the sensors much better. Golf Pride claims a few benefits to the ALIGN technology. 1) Get locked in at address. This seems reasonable to me. I added ribs on my previous grips for this reason. 2) Clubface awareness. I am going to get some time on a simulator to see if there are any noticeable improvements with the reminders. 3) Square club at impact. If I can feel the clubface with the reminder, can I really return it to my intended orientation at impact? Is there any added benefit to a ribbed grip? 25-33% of PGA Tour pros think so. How do these secure a spot in my bag? They need to allow me to have a good solid grip, especially in damp or sweaty conditions. The biggest concern I have after first impressions is the firmness. Are they so firm they are harsh on mishits? Are my delicate little hands going to have blisters and calluses from hell after some extended range time with these?

Congrats! Which irons do you think you will go with?