Brooky03

I own 3 wedges and carry 3 wedges; 50, 54, 58. So, I don't have to worry about moving wedges in/out of the bag but I don't think it would be something I'd worry much about if I did have more wedges to choose from. The 50 and 54 are almost exclusively full swing clubs. The 58 is my 'do everything' around the green club. It's simple enough for me. A little more complexity probably wouldn't hurt my enjoyment and a little more simplicity (like a 52 and 56 instead of all 3) probably wouldn't hurt either. This might all come down to the variety and types of courses people play. The courses that I play don't have a ton of sand and from course-to-course it's pretty much the same (the brown stuff, not the nice fluffy white stuff), so bounce is much less of a concern.

You took this to the extreme. I think we're talking about recreational use, not chronic (no pun intended) use. Abuse of any drug will be detrimental.

5 minutes before every third or fourth round lol

I enjoy the occasional solo round with a small joint. I'll usually wait to light it until hole 3 or 4 and when the course isn't crowded (a Fall weekday usually does the trick). I can't say it helps or hurts my game; if there is any effect, it's minimal. But it does help my mood a bit. I worry less about technique and if I'm going to slice into the woods and just enjoy the simple fact that I'm out on the course. It's definitely different than alcohol. Alcohol helps my game until it destroys my game. And the line between helping and destroying seems to be about 2 or 3 sips too many. edit: Wow, this thread was resurrected from the dead.

Loft jacking is real, but there is a reason for it other than for club manufacturers to say their clubs are longer. You typically see loft jacking get more aggressive as you go from normal 'players' irons to GI to SGI. Because SGI clubs are meant to be the easiest to launch clubs money can buy, there's a tradeoff. I'd bet the 51* Mavrik GW that OP bought plays a lot different than a 51* Vokey wedge. It's going to launch very high, probably more like a 54 or 56 degree 'normal' wedge. Height with irons and wedges can be a good thing... to a point. Manufacturers are trying to prevent ball flights that are unusably high, with too much spin. It's not that they didn't think of the bottom of the bag, it's that the launch characteristics of the clubhead are a factor when setting loft. I think MGS has had articles that touch on these points better than I have.

My guess is the SGI properties of the Mavrik irons were causing problems at the top of the bag for Callaway. For instance, the 3-iron might’ve been launching much higher than a standard 3-iron, too high, and costing distance. So Callaway turned the loft down to create a more comparable ball flight. Once they did that, they had to do it throughout the bag.

It looks like they have AW and GW. The GW is 51*. Are you able/willing to game the matched GW?

From the replies, I've gathered that I have lower standards for an acceptable golf course than most or I don't run into slow play/crowded issues as much as others, or both. The municipal courses here in Rochester, NY are in good enough shape for me that I'm rarely cursing a bad lie or greens that are subpar. I can get out and walk 9 holes at the muni near my house for $11-13. It's a hard value to beat. I tend to play in the mornings on weekdays, so I don't run into golfers slowing me down very often. Weekends can be dicey, but I'm not usually worried about that extra half hour or hour on weekends like I would be on weekdays. I also had the good fortune of growing up 2 miles from a course that I would describe as near immaculate that only costs $50 for 18 and a cart. Rounds at similarly maintained courses near where I live now cost easily $20+ more than that, so it creates a value gap in my mind. I generally feel like I'm overpaying for quality. A membership to courses like this would end up costing me more per round than the cost to hop on as a non-member, dropping the value proposition even more. All of this, of course, applies to semi-private courses (which I'd just call public). Truly private courses just for members are in a different world and probably not something I'd even consider until I'm close to or in retirement, and only if life has gone well enough that I'm sitting on a hefty nest egg. I don't really feel like I'm missing out, though. Another point worth mentioning is that the muni course near my house and the muni I go to on lunch breaks have decent practice areas that are free to use. If there is any requirement that you have to have a paid tee time or range tokens to use the practice areas, it's definitely not enforced and, to my recollection, not posted. I don't know what kind of practice facilities these private courses have, but these muni's have greens you can hit into from maybe 40yds out, and multiple putting greens. One has an area that I haven't tried out yet, but it's essentially a short par 3 that I could hit full shots under PW into.

A 4-8ft putt to win a round.

In my experience, the lighter-faster path is the way to increase speed the quickest. Kind of like if you want to jump higher, plyometric exercises are going to do a lot more for you right off the bat than squats or calf raises or even Olympic lifts. That said, there's room for both and the answer is both (Olympic lifters do tend to have bananas vertical leaps). I would not recommend swinging anything much heavier than a normal club, though. Like, if we're talking about exercising with one of those weighted donuts, I don't think that's the safest or most effective use of time. I'd go the path of plyometric work (swinging something lighter faster) and traditional resistance work (lifting weights, anti-rotation core exercises). Tossing around a medicine ball isn't a bad idea either.

I haven’t tried a driving iron but I’m not eager to, either. I tend to hit my hybrids well, especially now that I have some ‘pro’ (anti-hook) hybrids in the bag. Hybrids are more versatile and should be longer loft-for-loft, at least in theory. I don’t play in strong enough wind usually to worry about keeping the ball low.

2-3x is in reference to the lie adjustment. Example: I want a club that has a standard lie angle of 62* bent to 63*. If the manufacturer allows up to a 3* tolerance, that club that's supposed to be 62* is actually 65* and then they bend it the 1* up that was ordered and deliver a club at 66* (3* above spec) and call it good. That 'tolerance' is 3x the amount of the adjustment (1*). A tolerance amount that much larger than the adjustment amount reduces the value of the service to practically zero, in my eyes. Just deliver a standard iron at that point. I'd argue that's a service that shouldn't be offered. It wouldn't cost hundreds per set for club manufacturers to get customer order lie angle tolerance (and loft, for that matter) tighter. I'll say with confidence it's not close to hundreds per set at the volume we're talking about here. Like I was saying, we're not paying builders $400+ solely for precision. The MSRP of a club includes the labor cost to the manufacturer to both make and assemble the clubs (for instance, you don't usually get discounted prices for unassembled clubs). By going through a builder, the majority of the builder's added cost is essentially a duplicate payment of labor already factored into the MSRP of the club. You're paying for the club to be assembled twice, even if it's only actually assemble once. The builder has his own profit margins on top of that. The 'precision' cost is a fraction of that $400+. Specifically to lie angle, if you want it precise, that's about $50 for a set of irons. Club manufacturers with more resources and economies of scale should be able to reasonably provide the same precision at half that cost or better, which should already be rolled into the MSRP. My understanding is that club manufacturers are already pretty good with loft and length outside of the odd goof up but, similarly, it shouldn't be burdensome or cost prohibitive to get those tolerances to reasonable levels if they're not already. Presumably, the manufacturers check the lie angles of their clubs before they head out the door, no? If they're not checking them, how do they know they're within that 1-3* tolerance on a standard order? They just rely on the customer to tell them they did it wrong, knowing most won't/can't check? That's not superb business practice, but maybe that's the case. If we assume they do use the equipment to check lie angle - not just pluses and minuses to bend it up or down - I don't see how it's unreasonable to incorporate that into the bending process. Maybe that's all too much for standard orders. Fine. But it shouldn't be for custom orders. I know I'm probably getting too into the weeds here, but just incorporate measuring the actual lie angle into the lie angle bending process. So, the worker - who already has to put an iron in a bending machine for custom orders as it is - puts the 7 iron in the machine, sees that the angle is +2* from standard, sees that the customer ordered +1* from standard, bends the club down a degree. As the worker would already have to do for custom orders, s/he would repeat for each iron. Since custom orders already have to be bent, I don't see how this adds much time to the process if it adds any time at all. I'm actually inclined to believe, or at least hope, manufacturers do follow some kind of process like the one described. That's why I'm leaning toward chalking the lie angle issue brought up in this thread to differences in lie angle machines or user error on one side or the other.

I’ve gotten in the habit lately of checking the par 5 distances to decide between the “men’s tees” (white) or “tips” (blue) as I’ve played more courses lately with my boss. Based on a good (not great or exceptional, but maybe better than average) drive, I try to determine if I’m within 3wood distance on my 2nd shot on the shorter par 5’s. If I am, I move back to the blues. If I’m 3wood or longer, I play the whites. I‘ve never calculated a handicap for myself, but best guess is somewhere in the high teens, so I don’t tend to score all that well. That said, I wouldn’t enjoy playing driver, iron on par 5’s.

I understand the point about everything having tolerances and it costing more money to get tolerances tighter. And an incremental improvement in tolerances usually comes with expenses that are not incremental. Calibration or just differences of the bending machines seems to be the big factor here. Outside that, though, if a manufacturer is saying a tolerance 2-3x the adjustment amount (if measured on the same device) is acceptable, then it’s obviously (to me) a service the manufacturer shouldn’t be providing. As to the cost, lie angle adjustments are a few bucks per club most places. In your club builder example, that’s adding extra labor on top of the labor baked into the msrp of clubs, and multiple services (grip install, shaft trim and install, lie and loft adjustments). Some of those the manufacturers seem to get right more than others, so it’s not just the added precision you’d be paying for. I’m referring to one particular adjustment that appears to have an unreasonable tolerance. It’s an adjustment that pro shops can make for a small amount of money that happens to be almost pure profit. It’s a hard sell, imo, that club manufacturers benefitting from economies of scale couldn’t do a better job here. I’m hoping this just comes down to the differences in bending machines. That’s a much easier pill to swallow.

If I'm understanding what was posted earlier, that there is a 2-3deg. tolerance for lie angle, that seems like an unjustifiably high tolerance. I don't think it's uncommon for people to order clubs that are just a degree or two upright or flat. If the tolerance is double or triple the amount the lie angle is meant to be adjusted, why even offer the service?

Note to self: If I ever order custom irons with lie angle adjustments, I will have to have them bent because the manufacturer probably won't come close. That's good to know. If the tolerance range is larger than the range most people are having their lie angles bent in the first place, what is even the point of the custom spec? This either means lie angle doesn't mean anything (if you ask for 1deg. up and receive 2 deg. down, the manufacturer considers that close enough), or you're better off just getting standard lies and adjusting yourself/at a store.

I was going to suggest a softer ball, but I'm not overly well-versed in this area. I just remember when the Supersofts came out, it was noted that they basically refused to spin off of driver. If it's generally true that softer balls spin less off of driver (idk if it is), maybe going to a softer ball could help? Not that you have to go Supersoft level of softness.

I have not problem with it. I would definitely be annoyed if I hit it, though. When I don't have a ball marker on me, I tend to opt for a blade of grass or small leaf, basically anything that I'm confident won't blow away and also won't affect the putt much if the ball hits it. Sounds like this is illegal, so just call me the bad boy of golf haha.

This is the reason, imo. Hogan was somewhat committed to teaching the golf swing. Nicklaus, to my knowledge (I could be wrong), wasn't as invested in teaching his swing. To copy it, you'd be just analyzing film. To OP's point about copying the swing of the greatest, Ray Allen was the greatest 3-point shooter in NBA history until Curry showed up. Absolutely nobody should copy Ray Allen's shooting stroke.

My answer depends on if we're talking about being between clubs or at the top range of a full swing club. Sticking with the 7 and 8 iron example: - If I'm at a distance between the two, I'm better off choking up (down?) on the 7 iron and taking a full, normal swing rather than trying to really hammer the 8 iron. But the swing with the 7 is not a reduced effort swing; I let the fact that I'm shortening the club take care of the distance. - If I'm at the very top end of the 8 iron's distance, I hit 8 iron and don't even consider the 7. It would be too much distance to take off just by changing my grip position and I cannot make good contact with a less than full effort swing. At least, outside of touch shots with wedges I can't.

I bought my boss some Callaway ERC Softs and he's loving them. Picked up a little distance over the Supersofts and Titleist Velocities he was playing. Not a ton more distance, but a little more, and he likes the feel. To my eye, he seems to be launching the ball a bit higher, too. He's in his late 50's and probably swings driver in the low or maybe mid 90's, but it's my understanding that these balls should work well for swingspeeds below 90, as well.

There are three county-owned courses near where I live. I use two of them for their range. $10 gets you 3 tokens. A token gets you 35 balls or so. They’re the typical yellow Pinnacle range balls; usually in good shape. I don’t have a problem with the range balls because I’m pretty comfortable with my distances, so I don’t use range time to dial that in.

I'm not sure what there is to disagree with. OP wasn't asking for a driver to fit his swing. He was asking what about the club made it perform unexpectedly better for moderate swing speed golfers in the test. Independent of swing (same golfers putting the same swing on different clubs), the club performed better than other low spin drivers for that group. That means there's something different about the Mavrik that made it better, not something different about the swings. Which of course does not mean the club is best for all moderate swing speed players. Again, though, that wasn't the question asked. Perhaps my second paragraph in my original post is causing some of the confusion? I was making a tangential point with my swing as an example. If you thought I was saying swing doesn't change how a driver performs, I was not. edit: and, fwiw, the answer to OP's question seems to be ball speed or 'hotness' of the face rather than launch angle, based on the testing data.

AoA and loft at impact tend to go hand-in-hand. Not always, but usually. Regardless, to the point being made about the test results, the characteristics of a club and how it is weighted can affect launch quite a bit, not just the golf swing. The variable of the golfer's swing is removed in this case (sort of) because it's the same group of golfers hitting different clubs for the driver test. Across that group of moderate swingspeed golfers, the Mavrik Sub Zero apparently performed well. Since we know it's low spin, launch angle and 'hotness' across the face are really the only two things left that the club could impact.

I don't have any experience with this, but this frame at Michaels seems like it would do the trick, yeah? https://www.michaels.com/product/black-shadow-box-by-studio-dcor-10360333. 18x24 with a 1.5" depth. I'd imagine some double sided tape or Command strips could be used to mount the flag to it. One of my coupon browser extensions added promo code ZVCRLT6LGDSV to bring the price down to $60 out the door for 2 of them.