BMart519

Your 5W and 4h are redundant distance, choose the one you hit best. You don't really have any loft gaps to require another wedge. You should get rid of the 56 and replace with a 58 or 60. To hit a 120 yard shot, take a full swing with your 130 club and grip down about an inch or mid-grip instead of top end. I do the same thing with my 45 deg PW as the gap down from that is to 105 yards with my 50 deg GW.

Another option is make some prizes flighted. Having 20+ index playing against low single digits is not ideal. You could still have something for low net for the entire player pool. Also important to realize it is impossible to make everyone happy, there will always be a complainer. Some courses play harder than their ratings and some easier, some also favour longer hitters, right to left ball flights, etc. I have a friend who sets up an annual match play tournament with singles and doubles matches and makes a mess of trying to apply handicaps in that format by basically taking the differential between teams and cutting them in half. He is usually on the losing team because he posts scores with lots of gimmes and assigns indexes to people based on his opinion if they don't maintain one. Sometimes, simpler is better.

Flaring you trail foot outwards instead of perpendicular to target line will add hip turn. You can also experiment with rotating your head away from the target at address which should help with shoulder/back. More complicated adjustments should be assessed by a coach, but lifting instead of rotating could be another approach to assess limited mobility.

The drill at the 11 minute mark in this video really helped me stop over swinging and adding excess bend in my lead elbow. It shows how far you can properly rotate which is the physical limit to your top of backswing. It was surprising how far short of parallel it was for me.

Is this posted anywhere re: the Ping Tour being counterbalanced? I know the Alta series is CB, but it also plays 1/2" shorter than the Tour at standard length. I always thought the Tour shafts were not counter balanced.

Welcome to the club, this system was a major contributor to me improving SG:OTT by 1.5 in 2021 and picking up at least 10 yards throughout the bag. Honorable mention to DECADE for better tee shot strategy and sending it with driver whenever possible for also driving that improvement. The gain numbers a bit deceptive, the first 4 sessions you are instructed to make a "full" gamer swing. In session 5 and beyond you are asked to swing as hard as possible or at "max". It seems a bit deceptive to use two different effort levels to compare gains. It definitely shows potential though.

Grip it lightly and place it in the trash or your garage, then get a 4 or 5 wood or a 17/18 deg hybrid. Unless your driver speed is at 105 MPH or above, you are unlikely to get good carry on a club with 15 degrees of loft. Not to mention the misses that go way offline. I tried a 16.5 deg Taylormade M2 HL 3 wood this year to scratch that itch below driver; worse misses than my 17 degree hybrid, 10 yards more distance on perfect shots, same average distance due to the misses and was even worse off the ground. It lasted about 5-10 rounds in the bag. I have an F9 driver and love it, it beat or matched all new drivers in a fitting this year. I got rid of my F9 5-6 wood quickly, the groove around the milled face puts a premium on ball striking since the hitting area is so small and the 3-4 wood is the same. I've got old cobra hybrids which have much taller faces than this line of woods that I find much more forgiving. One of your hybrids or a driving iron will be a better fairway finder. There will be negligible gain in FWY% with 3W vs Driver and the 20-30 yards of distance with a driver in the rough will often beat a 3W in the fairway behind it. I had a better scoring average with 2 and 4 hybrid off the tee vs 3W this year and driver beat them all. I'm toying with the idea of removing or at least reducing the amount I use the 17 deg hybrid ys the 22 as well since I can hit that 220-240 off the tee.

This is an interesting way to look at it... My personal opinion on fitting in order of importance is: Driver > putter > wedges > irons A poorly fit driver can easily cost you 20 yards per hole (0.2-0.3 strokes), but you could learn to putt with almost any putter with enough reps and it would be rare to magically drop 4 strokes with a new putter and no change to practice routines. The sheer volume for putter still makes it important. Wedges are so specialized for grinds, turf, partial/specific shots, on top of generic gapping. Irons is mostly gapping similar to long game, but there are specific shots and trajectories to consider in long game as well. I haven't made up my mind on long game (woods, hybrids, utilities) but it would probably be before or after wedges.

Your most lofted wedge is usually a specialty club for a few specific shots and minimal full swings. I would suggest you work backwards from what purpose in your bag does that club need to fill? That should help decide on grind and possibly loft. Andrew Rice was on the Practical Golf podcast recently and his "general" wedge advice was never hit your most lofted wedge at more than 75% effort and 90% effort on your 2nd most lofted wedge. Then fill in around those yardages as needed. Unless your 58 is in the 100+ yard range, I don't see much reason for a club with 62 deg of loft. If you want to go high bounce, it should be based on multiple fats and chunks on soft courses that is hurting your scores. If it hasn't ever happened, you probably don't need it.

More bounce doesn't work for my swing and the firm conditions in the "rain shadow" of the Rocky Mountains. I bought a 54/14 PING Glide 2.0 with a Wide Sole grind to match my Glide 2.0 LW and replace my old 56 SW for better gapping. The Wide Sole 14 immediately worsened my play and I swapped it out for the 54/12 SS grind which is a more versatile mid-grind and works better for "standard" conditions around me. I just bought a 58/6 Glide 3.0 with thin sole to replace my 60/10 SS since it is primarily used for firm and thin sand bunkers or short lobs greenside. Outside of the sand I like picking it clean and minimizing divots. We'll see how this new wedge works, it's 4 deg less bounce than anything I have used before. I generally use the old school approach of open your stance, open the club face and swing across it in the sand. But I will add this to the list of experiments where I setup square but still open up a bit for some relief with the lower bounce.

During my last round of the year the sand in all the traps felt very firm and thin (could have been frost just below the surface). My shoes would only sink in 1/4" to 1/2" deep wiggling my feet back and forth. I knew that if I tried to open my sand (54/12) wedge a bit and take sand behind the ball as normal I would likely end up bouncing the leading edge into the ball and blading it. All day I decided to use my 60/10 LW with the face square to the target and pick the ball clean or take the least sand possible. The result was 1/3 on sand saves and leave distances of 7, 9, and 9 ft from 28, 20, and 15 yards from the pin. When I practice wedges I'm usually hitting off clean lies and have benchmarks for 5-30 yards in 5 yard increments. I have limited opportunities to use practice bunkers, especially to the point of benchmarking feels for 10/20/30 yards of carry. Hitting the ball clean made carry much more predictable and aligned with my benchmarks, taking minimal sand allowed enough spin to have some stopping power on the green. On a normal sand shot, I am aiming for the club to enter the sand 1-2" behind the ball then adjust effort by distance which is basically a wild ass guess as to how far the ball will carry and then roll out. Other than the obvious risk of skulling the ball, what are the other downsides to using this approach permanently? Considering my sand save% was 13% on the year, I don't think I have much to lose. The reason I wonder is, it was by far the best sand play I had all year and Shot Scope had me +0.53SG versus scratch out of the sand as someone who usually performs to the level of a 20 HCP within 50 yards. (I was +0.03 SG vs 25 HCP or -0.69 vs scratch from greenside bunkers on the season...) I have a very shallow attack angle with my irons and barely take a divot, so this is something that feels more comfortable than burying my club into the sand with what feels like a 60 yard swing.

This thread is going to give me the yips.

If strengthening a 56 is going to cause an issue because of the number on the club, you're just making things needlessly difficult on yourself. I'm sure Artisan will spec out what you need if you want to go custom. Or do your own grind on a 54 with 10 degrees of bounce. Grinds will differ between companies which will make the bounce play different at the same number. https://ping.com/en-us/blogs/proving-grounds/effective-bounce

Red sharpie wears off the marking in my profile picture faster than black. But it should still last at least 1-2 rounds.

What drove the 10 days off and did you do other exercises during this time to help your back?

Maybe a $2 Nassau will get the competitive juices flowing and someone will go low.

Most people hit driver far better than 3 wood because the driver is over 2X bigger and more forgiving. If your 3W and driver are close in terms of distance it means you either hit down on the ball too much with driver or it is poorly fit (probably both). People who are topping multiple drives per round need to take some lessons and learn how to hit a driver. They'll top a bunch of 3 woods if they hit them on every long hole. The top 100 teacher summit is in Pinehurst this week and 3W was chosen as the club most people should NOT play. A good driving iron is a huge benefit with the reduced gear effect on a flat face club. I would think about wedge game completely opposite: if you have the hands to manufacture shots, 4 wedges in more than enough. If you could hit 3-4 shots with each wedge it would easily fill the gap of the 5th wedge which might get used 1x per round. If someone can only hit 1 stock chip with a wedge, an extra club could be helpful for a certain yardage or trajectory. I'm sure 1 of your 4 wedges gets much less use than the others.

E6 driving range on "short indoor" mode seemed to work much better than the FS Golf App on "Indoor" mode for driver readings. Had multiple balls in the 2300-2500 rpm range which is normal for me. Still a few suspect readings around 1300 which was a bit off the toe, but didn't feel that bad. Now experimenting to see if launch angle is correct due to mat and tee height. The Titleist RCT balls already look like a worthwhile investment to avoid aligning the metal dot with the target on every swing. The battery charging and electronics are a bit of a joke on these units. Left it plugged it overnight and it had a 3% charge the next day. Got some support saying I need to remove and replace the rechargeable internal battery to "reset" it if you run it out of power. The charging error indicator would flash intermittently during charging and isn't listed in the reference guide that comes with the unit. The general advice is not to run them off wall power to reduce electrical interference and then the internal battery will barely last 1h when using the E6 software. This necessitates the use of an external USB power pack to run the unit. But apparently the USB pack shouldn't be used to charge the unit when powered off as it won't provide a full charge. Another recommendation was purchase a replacement internal battery. They supposedly will stop charging the battery once the temp drops low enough as well. Performance has been positive on partial wedges and full irons/hybrids which is where I think this unit will provide the most value. It will be interesting to see how chipping changes with the Fusion tracking upgrade. In general, all shot shapes have been correct based on feel and face impact. There are enough minor issues to consider the cost differential in going up to a GC3/LaunchPro or Uneekor system. But being the only mid level system that can do full sim play with no recurring subscription is a huge plus.

What's your lowest score this year? Since that is the topic of the thread and all...

I paused Stack training over the last 1-2 months of the season to focus on playing and improving strength through heavy compound lifts since my 2nd Stack program (Neural Drive) did not yield anything in terms of speed gains. Over the course of my extended break, the Stack team rolled out a new program "Full Speed Spectrum" in the app which coincidentally was recommended for me. The programming in this new program has been quite different over the first 3 sessions. Session #4 will be the first time using a step drill or any non-standard swing with the Stack. This further illustrates the advantages of this system compared to others and justify the higher price. Not to mention the ability to access any workout I ever completed and look at every swing or notes on swing cues for the session. Average driver speed is up 3mph since I began in the spring, which isn't much but on course performance has seen bigger benefits due to the reps with driver during training. In 2020 I gained 0.14 strokes off the tee vs a 10 handicap and that number jumped to +1.61 for 2021 (or the equivalent of a 5 handicap) which is the strongest part of my game. It further increased to +2.38 vs 10 HCP over my last 10 rounds of the season and +0.66 vs 5 HCP (-1.56 vs scratch). This yielded average driving distance of 249 yards over these 10 rounds and a Shot Scope Performance-Avg of 285. The spread between these 2 numbers highlights the number of mishits to be cleaned up and also that I will regularly approach 300 yards on good drives another 5mph of club head speed . I am pairing a basic 5x5 weightlifting program with the Stack over the winter. The goal is to approach the targets laid out for compound lifts by Mike Carrol with Fit for Golf. At my bodyweight these are: Squat: target 350, current 210 Deadlift: target 400, current 265 Bench: target 250, current 125 Row: target 300, current 145 In reality, I will be satisfied if I can approach within 50 pounds of each of these for 1-3 reps vs 5 by April.

Have had success with partial wedges down to 40 yards and up to full 7 irons. First driver test was the usual 3500 rpm balls at around 150 mph ball speed that carry 200 yards. Now experimenting with positioning the radar and changing settings in the software to see if I can get something reasonable. I hit a ball 260 carry on a GC quad in my lesson Saturday, and regularly hit 250 carry on my SC200 radar in the same hitting bay.

This whole issue is a nothing burger. There are already a full spectrum of fitting offerings from free "Demo Days" to fitters that eliminate or reduce the cost of the fitting if equipment is purchased and all the way up to paid fittings like TXG, etc. If you want the best, you are going to have to pay for it due to limited supply of expert fitters being exceeded by demand. It would be like suggesting that everyone could show up to a Tour event and get fit off the tour trucks. They are also aligned with the quality you get... A free fitting is not going to be the level of a paid fitting and likely have less equipment to test. My iron fitter recommended whatever club had the highest rating in Flightscope. When I wanted to save $500 vs the 1st pick, he recommended the iron with the next highest rating. I could have done the same thing hitting balls by myself on a monitor, but at the end it was no cost and I got to demo multiple clubs and shafts on an expensive monitor.

Ball speed and spin is essentially the same, efficiency dropped. The only difference is 3 degree higher launch. Easy to achieve by hitting just above center of the face and learning to increase AoA. Cheaper too.

Is your ideal tempo 2.1? There is no single "ideal" tempo for all golfers.