ChitownM2

I wouldn't say that I've had any issues with distance control on the downhill putts, although my thought process on those putts may be different. I don't ever think about how much distance I'm trying to take off a putt, but instead I take into account how much slope there is and pick a spot on the near side of the hole and putt to that spot. So I'm always approaching it thinking, This is about a 20' putt rather than looking at a 25 footer and trying to take 5 feet off. Obviously we're doing the same thing but my approach is to just ignore where the hole is whether it's a downhill putt or a sidehill one and just focus on the spot I want to hit the ball to and then let gravity just go from there.

Got out for a few more sessions with the ER8 in the last few days. On Saturday I hit up the local 9 hole par 3 course but was running late and didn't get much time to warm up on the practice green. This lead to a pretty egregious 3 putt on the first green but after that things were all good. I had a couple ~10 footers that resulted in tap ins, then 2 more lags from 20' & 25' that left me with 1 foot putts. In the end, Arccos listed my strokes gained as 0.1 strokes worse than I've been averaging Last night was league and I played my best 9 holes of the season. Had some really tough lag putts and left a couple of them with more work to finish than I would have liked but managed to sink them all. Zero 3 putts on the night including a long downhill lag from 31ft and a pretty aggressive sidehill putt from 38' both of which I left within 3'. Capped the evening off by draining a 40' putt for birdie on 18 to bring my total strokes gained for the night to +2.0 vs the 12 hdcp I've been comparing myself to. That last put contributed +1.3 to that number but even without it I was still over a full stroke better than my recent average with the ER8 which itself is a full stroke better than what I was gaming previously. Got a round of 18 scheduled for Thursday and another on Saturday so we'll see if I can keep this momentum going. I've also been working on a little comparison of the ER8 vs. my gamer vs. my odyssey from several years ago and will share more on that in the future. I need to get in at least one more session but will hopefully have something mid to late next week to share on that front.

Enjoyed the race today, Norris added some drama at the end and McLaren lucked out that Max hit Hamilton or else I'm not sure that window to let Piastri by would have been there. Also, I can't believe Verstappen was not penalized. Max once again tried to dive bomb Hamilton on the inside, carried more speed into the corner than the car could handle except this time Lewis committed to maintaining the racing line instead of braking or running wide to avoid getting t-boned. IMO, the trailing driver should have to make a clean pass not put the lead driver into a position where he has to run off track or slam on his brakes to avoid getting hit. Reminds me of playing gran Turismo as a kid where you just go full speed into the corner and then slam into a car at the corner and bounce off him to make the turn

Apologies to everyone for such a long gap between posts here. Between my son's birthday, the 4th, my sons birthday party, my birthday and some business travel it's been a crazy As I. Fortunately, I've been able to sneak out for some golf in that time. As I last mentioned, I had another round at my home course, 2 9-hole nights at league and then a round at a local muni today. So this makes 5 outings in total so far and I'm feeling pretty comfortable with the new putter now. Today's round was definitely an interesting one. We got almost 2" of rain between 10pm Saturday and 10am Sunday so the course was sopping wet and the greens were soggy with standing water in a lot of the cups. My long putts were lights out today. I had 3 putts over 50' and another over 35' and all of them came to rest within 4' of the cup and I nearly holed one of them. The bad news is I missed one of those 4 footers along with another 4 footer that I pushed and a 5' birdie putt that lipped the cup. In total I missed 3 putts from inside 5 feet today which was atypical for my experience thus far with the ER8. All in all it was a pretty good day on the greens but I really wish I could get at least one of those short ones back. Big picture, I'm sticking with my initial impression that the face is softer and it feels like I have to hit putts harder than my solid milled ER7. Unfortunately, I don't have a good way to measure it, but it's probably not as big a difference as it feels like in my head. I can say that I prefer it on shorter putts, say 7-8' and in. Like most things putting, it's probably all mental but I have more confidence to just go bang those putts home without worrying about sending it way past. It's like the softer face provides a little more forgiveness as far as touch is concerned. So all of the above is subjective, but for me (and probably most MGS readers) the numbers are what really matter and so far the numbers are looking good. My last four outings consisted of 18-9-18-9 and in each of those Arccos tracked my strokes gained putting at 0.0, -1.5, +0.8, & +0.9. Might not seem like much but I had a negative strokes gained coming in. Through 5 rounds my overall strokes gained sits at -0.4 which is a 1.4 stroke improvement from where I started this review. My 1 putts are up over a full stroke and my number of 3 putts is down so I'm getting along very well with this new putter. Tomorrow is another Monday night league so fingers crossed things keep going well and I should have more to report later in the week. I'm hoping to get out for another practice / data gathering session on the practice green Thursday evening.

Perez just signed a contract for next season so it would be a big ordeal for Red Bull to get out of. Edit: apparently RB added clauses to his contract that if he falls 100 points behind Max at either the summer break or the end of the season they can terminate his new contract. Seeing as he is already outside that window things could get very spicy since in order to gain points on Max he has to finish ahead of him and that doesn't seem likely to happen unless the car breaks down.

Nobody wants to see boring races but it's annoying to see rules enforced for some people but not others. Aggressive driving is perfectly fine as long as everyone knows what's permissible and what isn't and I don't think enforcing that would make things boring, I would argue that it would make it more exciting because we'd see more people trying things and/or tighter racing if they weren't concerned about getting run off the track or turned into.

I thought Max had matured as a driver since his battle with Hamilton but that appears to not be the case at all. He hasn't grown at all. He's either going to win the race or make sure that his challenger doesn't. He was back to his old ways of moving in the braking zone, deliberately moved into Lando causing the collision and then ran him off the road after he already had a puncture. The penalty system in F1 is also a joke. Max should have been penalized twice, once for each of the above offenses, instead he still finishes in the top 10 and takes home points when he was the one responsible for sending Lando out of the race. Same goes for the black and white flag Lando earned for going off the track while trying to pass. Going off the track like that is not the same thing as what they were doing last year where drivers were gaining an advantage by running wide. In this case Lando went wide unintentionally, driver error, and slowed down to yield the position back. In my opinion, F1 needs permanent, professional stewards for the entire season. There is no consistency race to race or season to season which makes it impossible to ever know what is allowed and what isn't and when you're going to get a penalty and when you won't. It's a joke that a sport that generates $3.5 billion a year can't afford to pay the stewards to have the same group at every race. As for qualifying today, I thoroughly enjoyed it and am hoping for a good race tomorrow. You can almost guarantee that with a fixed floor Max is going to be right up there with the top 3 after a few laps.

League went pretty well last night with the Evnroll. Got some confidence right off the bat on hole #1 by draining an 8 footer to get up and down and save par after an errant drive. I did have a couple of 3 putts but neither of them had anything to do with the Evnroll, first one I played too much break on the high side from about 5ft and it lipped out and the other I just put too much juice on a long breaking downhiller. I do still think the Neo classic feels softer than the solid milled ER7 but I do think I'm liking it on short putts. It feels like I can hit the short ones with a little more authority which I find more comforting than on my previous gamer where I felt like I had to feather it with just the right touch for fear of blasting it past. Nothing more frustrating than leaving that 4 footer short by 6" because you were afraid of blasting it past. Here are the stats from last night, note that I'm currently playing at a ~17 and have my Arccos set to compare to a 12. I've got another round of 18 scheduled for Saturday at my home course again so we'll see how it goes and hopefully have another update for everyone. If anyone has any questions or wants a photo, etc please feel free to let me or any of the other reviewers know as I'm sure we'd all be happy to oblige.

Finally found some time to get my photo editing done and get my first impressions added to my review post here! Since it took me so long to get it posted after finishing the verbiage, I actually got out yesterday to play my first round that I had alluded to at the end of the post. I circled back to my home course for the first time in over a month and what I had hoped would be a good test on a familiar course turned out to be a little different. It's been unusually hot here in Chicago the last few weeks but on Friday we had a break and got a slow consistent rain all day which made greens that are typically average speed play incredibly slow. I got to the course plenty early and went through my typical routine of the range, chipping then putting before my tee time. Since this was going to be my first round with the ER8, I put in some extra time on both of the available practice greens in an attempt to adapt to both the atypical conditions and the new putter. Overall things went OK, I definitely left a couple of my longer putts short but was able to recover and make the 5-6 footers I left myself. I even had a 55' downhiller for eagle on the back 9 that I sent past about 4' and put home for birdie which I was pleased about. It was difficult to tell if I was leaving my putts short because of how slow the greens were or if the insert has an appreciable impact on distance. My guess is it's the former and not the latter but I'll get another chance to assess things at league Monday night. One thing I did pay attention to was glare off the putter which was something that several people mentioned to me was a concern when I was getting opinions on whether to get the black finish model or stick with the satin chrome. It was a very sunny day and we were playing a little after noon when the sun was directly overhead and it never once was an issue or something I even noticed. I'd be curious to hear from people who have had an issue with glare and what putter they were using.

Looks like my putter is waiting for me at home as well.....wish this was a WFH day. More details to come

Now that the forum is back online I've got my intro posted and would love to hear from other members about any questions they have or particular things you are curious about / would like tested!

I'm sure that will be the case here too...that's why I had to capture this tiny moment in history

Just have to preserve this image to prove I'm not completely terrible at this despite what the results of all previous contests say

Cut line: +6 Tiger: +8

Thanks everyone and thanks to MGS & Evnroll! Definitely looking forward to this one and comparing it to my ER7 gamer I've been using the last 3 seasons.