GregB135

Update to the post. Still going to have to wait nearly another month for my shoes to arrive, but their response to my last email was a shipping notice for a shoe bag and 3 pairs of socks. At least they are making an effort to compensate for the delay.

In at least two of my older pairs of Sqairz, there is noticeable wear inside the heel on the seam. They are still holding up, as in not torn, but the friction of walking and swinging over time has rubbed a 'hole' in the fabric along the seam at the base of the heel. Keep in mind, I'm practicing on the range once, sometimes twice a week and getting in a full round nearly once/week as well, so they've been worn quite a bit.

So event #2 didn't go much better than the opener. I played nice and relaxed through the entire round. And, truthfully, played relatively well tee to green hitting 9/14 FIR and 6 GIR. Numbers like that usually means my score is in the 80s. Full swing wise I felt like I only had 4 bad shots the entire round, unfortunatlely two of those were back to back (including a bad shot choice) and one other cost me my only penalty on the day. It was a true short game meltdown that got me a 94. I had two 2-chip greens, one semi-bladed bunker shot, NO one-putt greens, and 4 3-putts. That 40 putt total alone was enought to ruin the score, but along with the other poor short game play the number got REALLY big compared to how well I felt I was hitting the ball. For example, on a decently long, downhill par 5, a pretty good drive and pretty good second shot have me looking at the green from 45 yards, center fairway. Thin contact on the pitch goes over the green, one duffed chip, one not close enough, and a 3-putt from 12 feet. That's the answer to "how do you make a double bogey from 45 yards in the fairway." I didn't have time to hang out after the round, but it's going to be another bottom 1/3 finish, and not many points. I'm heading up to play the RTJ trail in Alabama with some of the fellas this week. Maybe playing a whole bunch of golf will get my swing rolling for the next couple of events and I can start moving up the season leader board.

At least it looks like the test is up and running. I was one of the testers in the original Sqairz shoe test. Since then, I've worn nothing but. Be aware, I recently ordered (or as it turns out 'pre-ordered') a pair of the ProS2 shoes on March 15. This order went in not long after ordering a pair of the Speed Mesh shoes for the upcoming season. The first order arrived pretty much on time. I really like the Speed Mesh shoes, but since my older pairs were starting to show some significant wear in the heel padding area, I was eager to get the ProS2s for another color option, and for potential wet weather play (summer in FL). The estimated delivery when I placed the order was March 25. That day came and went, and after a week I sent an email to inquire about the order status. Their original response was, after some shipping delays, the new models had arrived and would be shipping out in a few days and I would receive a shipping notice. Another week went by with nothing. Another email. Another response now saying they were experiencing back order, and I would receive a shipping notice. Another two weeks with nothing. Another email. This time the response is, 'expect them to ship some time next month'. I don't know what most of you would do or say at this point, but here was my response. "Since I've recently ordered another pair of shoes, I'm okay waiting for the delivery. Is there any kind of offer in the works for such an extended delay? I'll reiterate, this is far below the level of customer service I've come to expect as a long time customer. And I'll be honest, it has me thinking I may not order again. I hope you can use that feedback to make things better." Standing by for their response. For the testers, I hope your customer service experience has been up to their earlier standard.

First event didn't go so well. My very first tee shot of the season... cart path bounce into penalty area. Took a drop, played a recovery shot, then first full iron swing of the season... flag bomb to 3 feet, then yup, I missed that eason one and still made bogey. The rest of the round was the full mixed bag of good shots, bad shots, a couple more penalties, and a couple of bad breaks and bounces just for fun. In the end it was a 92 net 80 to finish bottom third in the field and earn only 11 season points. Practice round today wasn't much better. I hit a bunch of wild shots early, but reined things back in enough to feel like I have a 'go-to" feel again for my swing. Event #2 is this saturday at Lake Jovita's south course. Always a crowd pleaser, and a good track for me in the past. Fingers crossed I can earn a few more points this time.

Season opener is this Sunday. Sounds like it's going to be a fun season again. Our new committe members have instituted some changes, so it will be interesting to see how those work out. They are always looking to improve our pace of play, yet, asked us all to try and use a live scoring app this year. Not sure if that won't slow us down some. Either way, I'm a little nervous going in because my work schedule and some weather kept me from practicing this week. My only opportunity to hit any balls is going to be in a scramble event on Saturday.

I definitely recommend Westchase, it's a good mix of quality conditions and isn't going to be to harsh for the non-golfers. Plantation Palms and Heritage Isles are good choices as well, they are going to be maybe one step down on the course conditions. If you're trying to stay in Tampa proper it's going to be tougher. The only track I'm familiar with is Rocky Point, but that's not one I'd recommend highly for course condiitions. It is maybe most appropriate for a bachelor party kind of vibe because it's not a super hard track and it's not as pricey as some of the others.

I'm playing in a Master's themed scramble tournament this weekend. Which ensemble says "The Master's" more? The straight green shirt, or the azaleas? Greg With The Hat wants to know. (Mrs. Hat always picks the azaleas btw)

I keep going back and forth between the X1 and ProV1. For the most part they are similar. Performance off the driver is similar, the X1 still flies a little lower for me. With irons though, especially short irons, it seems like the X1 is shorter. I did pick up a Performance Pack in my last order, and I was VERY pleased with the way the new/yet to be released for sale Xp performed. OnCore's ball fitter suggestion for me was the Elixr, but I just don't like the feel of that one.

Here is the course lineup for the Tampa Tour 2024 Season - If you are familiar with any of these, it feels a lot more like we are the "Tampa" tour again, after ranging out sometimes 3 hours drive or more over the last two seasons. We are back to playing a few member favorites, and there are a couple of new tracks for me in this years lineup. Me personally, I'm excited to have the Innisbrook courses back this year. Copperhead gets more publicity for hosting the Valspar Championship each year (i've got my Friday tickets). IMO, and many agree, the Island course is the better/more challenging track. If is had more room to facilitate the spectators they would host the pros on that one. Both of the Orange County National tracks are crowd pleasers. Juliette Falls is a hidden gem in Dunellon that quickly became a favorite among the league players. I'm looking forward to TPC Prestancia as a new site for me, I'll just have to qualify for that one. Once we get the season rolling, I'll queue up the course reviews under 'Greg-with-the-hat's Tampa Course Reviews' or something similar.

Rather than change the thread name and start again, I'm just goingt to pick up here where we left off. I'm getting ready to start my 6th season playing on The Tampa Tour. It is a stroke play, full handicap, amateur league. We play usually 14-16 regular season events over the summer season, then there are two qualification based post season events. The field of 40 players in each event is divided into two flights based on the mid-point of the handicaps for that weeks players. Last season the cut line was usually around 10 or 11. After barely missing qualifying for both post-season events last year, my goal is to earn top-20 status on both leader boards and be an auto entry for both. I played in both last year thanks to being selected as a captain's pick for the Tampa Cup, where I was 2-0-1 for the weekend in match play. It may be a little harder this year as I am starting the season with my number at 11. If last year's pattern holds, that will make me one of the 'bubble boys', and I'll wind up bouncing between the A and B flights each week depending on who enters. The struggle for me will be playing back one set of tees when I'm in A flight. They tend to put the A's at about 6600 yards, while the B flight plays about 6200. I've been working on my game through the off season with lessons and practice rounds. I've seen scores get more consistently in the mid-80's range, even when it feels like I'm not hitting it well. I've putted pretty well so I'm a lot more confident once I reach the greens. We had some changeover on the league committee, and they did a great job setting up our schedule. I'll cue that up in another post and start working on my course review format for the year. Hang on folks, and here we go - Life on the Bubble 2024!

The T-200s are still going strong, and got some new friends in the bag over the holidays (Christmas and Birthday). Cleveland CBX ZipCore 52 and 56 degree wedges went into the bottom end, and there was enough cash in the holiday cards to upgrade the driver and 3 wood to PXG 311 XF Gen 5 Driver ang Gen 6 3 wood. I'm definitely ready for the new league season (at least as far as equipment goes). Hopefully I can get my swing dialed in and make a better showing this year.

Went to Black Diamond Ranch this past Saturday and played the Quarry Course. First visit back there in about two years. New management has changed the dynamic a bit. In the past they were (if I'm using nice words) 'inhospitable' to guest players. This time they were more than welcoming and we had a great time. Also fired off my best round there yet. 39-43-82. The T200s are getting me in a groove of sub-40 nine hole scores. (It's only 180 yards and about a 40 foot drop to the green from the tips - par three opener of the 5 quarry holes)

Date 10/28/2023 Course Name Black Diamond Ranch Quarry Course Gross Score 82 Course Handicap 13 Gross Strokes over/under par 10 Net Score to Par -3 Net Score 69 Net Birdies or better 5 Longest Drive 250 Best round on that course by a long way. New management is much nicer to guest players.

Played another 9-hole Iron Man challenge earliler this week. The base where I work has two courses, and the North course is much less busy, so it's usually not a problem to play multiple shots or something like this. It isn't the best conditions-wise. Not all the fairways are mown closely, and the green speeds are a little inconsistent. It's fun though recalling the days of my H.S. team using it for practice and learning the game with my buds there. This time the scoring was relatively even. It was 75 and sunny, but the breeze was a steady 15+ through the round. I am a little disappointed that it took me until the 7th hole on either ball to finally hit a green in regulation. Iron Man's only missed fairway was costly. It was a bit of a pull on a shot where I was trying to make a forced carry, and didn't, adding a penalty to Iron Man's score where Bag Boy pulled it off with the driver. Iron Man also had one 3 putt bogey while Bag Boy made a long birdie after making another high risk tee shot pay off. Those two strokes were the difference this time, and Iron Man took the loss by 1 stroke. Once again, even though I didn't have a great ball striking day into the greens, both scores were 40 or better on a day with challenging wind conditions. I had a much better than average day off the tees though only missing three fairways out of 14 tee balls. And only one of those needed a recovery shot to get back into the line of play and get a short game save for par. The T200s are solid and predictble. I'm sold on the results. I'm still trying to get accustomed to the change in feel. While you can really tell when you get a pure strike on the sweet spot through feel and sound, the feel feedback on the off center hits is less telling than the sound. The good news is those slight mis-hits don't seem as costly as anticipated on distance.

I'm planning on Iron Man vs. Bag Boy round II tomorrow after work. Stay tuned...

Got a quick session in on the range before football time today. Took a couple of glamor shots while I was there

Okay then. If you can imagine that string of photo posts included in the review post, you'll have an idea of what I inteded my end product to look like. My apologies to the mod team and all of you for the delays caused by dealinlg with the server issues. Even with all the frustration here at the end of the process, it has been great, and a lot of fun working with this group of testers and the mod team to get here.

First Impressions - 18 out of 20 Points off for packaging - A little plain considering what I've received from some other OEMs

I tried every possible option. With and without pictures. Copy/paste from Word. All over several frustrating days. Shout out to @GolfSpy_APH for finding a workaround to all the server issues to at least get the text of my review up. I even got rejected this morning with the Internal Server Error trying to quote the post to add the photos. I'm frustrated and disappointed because it all makes it look far below the level of my other review work and it puts my name on an end product that is below the quality that I would publish. Not Jamie's fault, he went way above and beyond to find a way to get it up there.

Final Review 3 Oct 2023 Titleist T-Series Irons (T200) – Official MGS Forum Review by Greg Barker First Impressions 18 out of 20 From the very beginning the testing experience for the T-series irons was first rate. You can read more in-depth about the fitting and un-boxing in those posts. My fitter, Joe, is one that I’ve worked with before so it didn’t take him long to get me dialed in with the T200 5-PW, and the TRS2 4-Hybrid all matched up with the Mitsubishi Tensei Blue graphite shafts. Truthfully, the two-point deduction is only for the packaging for shipping. Given Titleist’s reputation of class and prestige, And how hard they work to maintain that image, the packaging was plain and minimal, but effective. The simple carboard box with basic wrapping on the club heads and not much to keep the clubs separated in the box falls a little short of what some of their DTC competitors do to make receiving the shipment feel special. (photo package) The clubs themselves look fantastic. Titleist has marketed the new T-series as more easily blended than previous sets. And, while I didn’t wind up with a blending of the T-series this time, my previous set was blended T-300/T-200. Not so much for looks, but for playability differences I went back and ordered the T-200 club heads to replace the two 300s. Aesthetics 9 out of 10 Titleist continues to make really great looking clubs with a simple and classic appeal. The T-200s really nailed the look for taking a player’s distance design and giving it the classic look of it’s more blade-like siblings. The look at setup frames the ball nicely, and the slightly thicker top line keeps the bulkier back side of the club head out of view, which for me helps give a bit of confidence when I’m trying to shape a shot. The change in the badging, enclosing the cavity and other inner workings of the clubhead gives these that classic ‘look at me, I’m a great club’ appeal that has become Titleist’s go-to. (photos 7setup, 5 setup) Sound and feel are where the T-200s lost a point for me. The previous T200 got a bad rap for sound because the badge enclosing the back of the clubhead made a goofy, annoying, clicky sound if you happened to tap a ball with the back of the club. Granted, you would only do that on the range and not when hitting a shot, but it was still there. They improved that mightily with the new version. Comparing these directly to the original T200s, the sound of the strike tells me a little bit more than the feel. Maybe it’s the combination of the updated design and the graphite shaft but the feel feedback I get from this set feels a bit muted versus their predecessors that really told your hands when you flushed it or missed it. The sound and feel together though is more than enough to decipher the quality of the shot. The good news: Even when sound and feel say you missed it by a bit, the inner workings of the club provide a shot that stays pretty close to the one you intended. It took me a few range sessions to get accustomed to the feel and balance with the graphite shafts. It seemed strange to me that the lighter graphite shaft had what seemed like a stiffer, or more rigid feel to it than the steel shafts in the other irons. I got over that quickly when I saw the consistency in the numbers and the ball flight. The Numbers 10 out of 10 I put these irons through a number of range sessions using the Rhapsodo MLM. I had a couple of lessons with my coach using them. I played a number of practice rounds, and had them almost immediately in play in league competition for the final event of they year and post season match play. I could see right away, consistently higher ball flight. That was identified as a target during the fitting to improve carry and descent angle. I started very consistent club and ball speeds using the MLM, and as a result, more consistent distance with each club. It was doing some impact drills that really honed in the sense of the sound and feel mentioned above. Once I get to (or at least close to) the A swing, the side-to-side dispersion seems to be A LOT better to boot. All-in-all this set of T200s with the TSR hybrid was really easy to get dialed in and ready to take on the course with confidence. (photo rangedata) I used them in a practice round on the course immediately after the hurricane passed through. So the fairways were not cut down to their usual height, and there were some soft conditions to deal with as well. These irons flowed really nicely through the deeper fairway grass and at the same time I’ve had no issues, and even hit some really good shots, from thin or other troublesome lies. The sole design seems to be working as advertised in that regard. On-Course 20 out of 20 For the past several seasons, I’ve pretty steadily averaged 5-7 GIR per round and scored pretty steadily in the high mid 80-s to low 90s range. Looking back at my scorecards with these irons, including one 9-hole irons only round, I’ve seen that GIR average bumped up to 7-9, included one round with 10 GIR. Two of five rounds with the T200s in the bag had 10+ holes at par or better, with 5 individual 9 hole scores under 40. On top of those competitive rounds, was the irons only 9 that carded a 38. I managed to break 80 for the first time in something like 3 years. The last round I played was in a team match play event. Even with some early miscues in the first round, the T200s kept me competitive through the weekend. I hit a handful of difference making shots in 4-ball and alternate shot. Then in singles, with the match even after 14 holes; I hit 3 of 4 GIR coming in, including slightly mis hit layup and approach shots on the par 5 18th, but that was enough to take the match 2-up and earn my second full point for the weekend. (photos T palms card, Consvtry card) The Good, the bad, the in-between 20 out of 20 The good – with my previous set, I dreaded pulling the 4 or 5 iron for approach shots. I had just about zero confidence in either of those clubs. Interestingly, it’s been the 5 iron and 4 hybrid that have generated some of the best, and most clutch shots I’ve hit with this new set. The bad – with the very slight increase in carry distances, this set managed to stretch out what I already thought was too great a gap between my PW and lowest lofted wedge. That’s left me without a club in the bag for the 105-115 distance. The in-between – going into the fitting, I told Joe, “everything is on the table” as far as set makeup, shafts, etc. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical when he grabbed the first graphite shaft option. The performance of this combination though was just too hard to beat and the Tensei blues got the nod over the Nippon Zelos lightweight steel shaft. The only other negative to all of this? If I keep scoring this well, I’m gonna wind up in the A Flight and one set of tees further back (at least the 4h and 5i are pulling their weight now) Play it or Trade it? 20 out of 20 If you’ve read this far, you can probably guess the answer to that one. These irons are definitely in the bag to stay. Giving props to Joe for yet another really good fitting and further testimony to the value of that in selecting clubs, I’ve played some of my best golf in years with this set in the bag. I’ve regained some lost confidence in using the longer clubs for approach shots. Seeing my GIR number on the rise, and looking at score cards with 10 and 11 holes played to par or better has me more excited about where my game is, and where it could get to, than I have been in a long time. (And the Gap Wedge to work into the bottom of the set to fill in that yardage gap is on order) Conclusion What does Titleist claim for the T200 irons? They call it a Player’s Distance iron, so it should be the middle ground between the workability of a muscle-back/blade design, and the forgiveness of a cavity back, perimeter weighted game improvement iron. In other words, the sweet spot for my mid-handicap game. Even comparing these directly to their original release predecessors, I got improvement all across my iron game using the new T-200. Titleist also claims: Enhanced Feel – If by enhanced they mean softer, I can concur. If you’re accustomed to the more distinct feedback to the hands of a forged blade or muscle back, these will feel “muted” to quote myself and another tester. That doesn’t mean they don’t tell you enough to know when you nailed the sweet spot, or got one a little thin. I also felt like I had a little better club head awareness through the swing and transition with these. Clean and Confident Shape – Titleist has changed their mindset on whether or not they want you to blend their iron sets. The T-series is designed just for that. While I didn’t wind up with a blended set after my fitting, the lines and appearance at setup frame the ball nicely. Closing the back of the clubhead and making it more of a hollow body cavity back makes the look consistent when you do blend the set, and, at least for me, gave me a little more confidence up and down the set. Effortless Turf Interaction – Definitely a Check! I got to play these in a variety of conditions, and from a variety of fairway and off-fairway lies. My divot shape had been a little shallower, but definitely more consistent on the range. I’ll also testify to seeing far less distance given away on shots where I said “caught that one a little heavy” while the ball was in fight. Also very consistent performance for me through the set in this category, helping to restore some lost confidence in the longer irons. Better Tungsten for Better Scoring – Also Check! I’ve carded some of my best scores in years during this test period. The upgraded tungsten in the new design generated higher ball flight and better descent angle than my earlier version T200s. My GIR numbers improved along with my number of par-or-better holes each round. Final Score 97 out of 100 At least for this mid-handicap, self-described “B-Flight hack”, the Titleist T-200 irons more than fit the bill, and proved out just about every detail Titleist claims. If you are in the market for a new set of Players Distance type irons, I am more than a believer in these. (photo final bag) Sent from my Pixel 6 Pro using Tapatalk

Still trying to figure out how to get the final review posted. Every time I try I get a server error message. But seems like these short comments, even with the photos, don't trigger the same issue. I'm stumped. Anyone have any thoughts?

Thanks. AKA "Greg with the hat"

This looks promising.... hopefully I'll have final posted this evening.

Still experiencing technical difficulties getting the final review posted. Mods are working the issue. This is a test.....