longdrivenate

TL;DR: Nothing novel here. Practice your putting if you want to score better. It's the fastest, easiest, and most affordable way to cut strokes off your handicap. My experience below, as well as some learnings and a product recommendation. I am a golf addict. Pre-COVID, I would play about 1-2 full rounds a week and go to the driving range at least 2-3 times a week. My practice routine at the range would generally consist of hitting 80-150 balls (not just mindlessly bashing balls, but usually doing drills and playing simulated holes/courses in my head), and then putting for about 10-15 minutes on the practice green before going home. I know people say you should practice putting more than anything, but I just didn't because the practice green at my range is awful and I genuinely believe practicing on it makes me worse since it's in such bad condition that it's not representative of what greens on real courses are like. Anyways, with that routine, I became a good driver of the ball, and a decent but not great iron player (you'd think I'd be better with my irons and wedges from consistently hitting that many balls, but hitting off mats really doesn't translate that well to the course I find). That said, my putting was atrocious. I track all my shots with golf apps and in my last 6 rounds before COVID, I averaged 40.4 putts per round...in other words, 2.25 putts per hole. Yikes. Then COVID happened. I live in San Francisco, where shelter in place went into effect in mid-March, and golf was no longer an option. I was bummed that I wouldn't be able to play for awhile, or even go to the driving range to practice. And on top of that, because I live in a San Francisco condo, we don't really have much outdoor space so I couldn't set up a nice backyard practice area or anything like that. But I was determined to practice somehow, so I bought a Putt-Out putting trainer and matching 6 foot putting mat. I set them up the first week of quarantine and started rolling at least 100 putts each day at varying distances from 1 - 6 feet. I would usually do this in sets of 20 while counting how many of the 20 I made. But I also did a fair bit of just playing around and trying different grips, different stances, etc. Over time, I settled into a grip and stance that works well for me and I started grooving that. As one would expect, over a month of this, I became quite good at these short putts on the putting mat. Now I can routinely make about 19/20 from 4 feet or closer and I'd say I'm about 16/20 from 6 feet on average. Now these aren't challenging putts considering they're short and on a perfectly flat surface, but still, doing weeks of that practice gave me loads of confidence that when I line up a short putt, I know it will at least come off the putter face straight and on line with where i want to hit it. And it's become my expectation that if I'm within 6-foot range, I'm going to make it. That mindset is completely different from where I was before COVID when I would stand over a 5 or 6-foot putt and feel like it was a coin flip (at best) whether or not I would sink it. So, when golf courses reopened a couple weeks ago, I was excited to get out there and try out my new putting stroke. Delightfully, everything I had practiced translated to the course. In my first round back, I only took 30 putts! That's 1.67 putts per hole and probably the best I've ever putted in my life. Beyond that, it's continued. I've played another 5 rounds since then and in these first 6 rounds since COVID, I've averaged 32.7 putts per round. To remind you, in my last 6 rounds before COVID, I averaged 40.4 putts per round. So I've been 7.7 putts per round better since COVID happened. I'm ecstatic about this, but honestly, the best part isn't even the scoring, it's been the shift in mindset. The confidence I've developed in my living room has stuck with me on the course. Before, when I would walk up to see I have a 5-foot putt left to save par, I would get anxious and start hoping that I would make it. Now, when I walk up to a 5-footer, I'm practically thinking "piece of cake, that's a gimme". And 3-footers are effectively automatic, at least in my mind. That shift has given me loads of confidence on the course. Now I'm telling myself, just get on the green in regulation and you've got a decent shot at birdie, and almost assuredly walking off with a par. Whereas before, there was the challenge of getting the GIR but then also the challenge of converting the two-putt just to get a par. So much less stress now. I know that was long, and all to basically say something everyone already knows - practice your putting if you want to score better - but I wanted to share because 1) I'm stoked lol, and 2) I had a handful of learnings from this that might be novel/helpful to others: Learnings: Lag putting is great and important to practice but even just getting really good and confident at short, simple putts is tremendously helpful. As described above, I resisted practicing my putting for a long time because the practice green at my driving range is terrible. But beyond that, when I did practice, I would mostly practice lag putting since I figured if I could get myself closer on second putts, then I would have fewer three-putts. Well obviously with my 6 foot putting mat, lag putting hasn't been an option for me. But just practicing these short ones has helped me learn how to make sure the ball is coming off the putter straight, and there is just something about seeing the ball go in the hole over and over that builds tremendous confidence. Not giving away strokes from within 1 - 6 feet has been a really empowering feeling on the course. So get comfortable and confident with those short ones and actually getting the ball in the hole! Don't be afraid to give it some speed. Before COVID, since I had so little confidence in my putting, I was always afraid that if I hit a 6 footer too hard, I might send it 3 feet past the hole and have another short one to fret over. So I would try to get the speed just right and more often than not, end up either leaving it a little short, or the ball would get to the cup moving so slowly that any break in the green would get amplified and the ball would turn too far left or right and miss on the side. By developing confidence within the 3-5 foot range over the last month, now I'm not afraid of sending the ball a few feet past the hole since I know (or at least think) I will make that putt coming back. So I started hitting them with a bit more speed and that makes sure the ball gets to the hole with a chance to go in and also takes more break out of the green. Those things combined result in many more putts going in. So get confident from close and then hit the damn ball. "Swing your swing" even applies to putting. In other words, I don't believe there is a "correct" grip or stance. For years, I've tried to use what many people would probably describe as a proper or traditional grip and stance with the putter. At the end of the day, I was not a good putter though. By having lots of time to do nothing but putt this last month, I experimented with everything. I tried narrowing my feet, widening them, opening my stance, closing it, interlocking my fingers, separating my hands, etc. and just played around with what felt good and what let me hit the ball straight as often as possible. After a week or two of that, I settled on a grip and stance that is nothing like what I had been doing before COVID, but you know what, I'm confident with it and at the end of the day it is working for me! So don't be afraid to experiment and find what works well for you. I highly recommend the Putt Out trainer. It is exceptionally good for developing the speed I talked about above. For anyone who's not familiar with it, it's a cup-sized target that rolls the ball back towards you the same distance that it would have gone past the hole if you missed. So if I putt it up that thing and it rolls back 1-2 feet, then I know that speed would have sent the ball 1-2 feet past the hole if I had missed. This helps me understand how hard I can hit a putt without having fear of it going too far past the hole. Great for developing speed control and confidence IMO! Putting is the most convenient, affordable, and efficient way to improve. While it can be challenging to find the time (or money) to go to the driving range or play rounds of golf, putting can be practiced from home with minimal time and money. That putt-out trainer can be bought for $25 and you can get cheap putting mats anywhere (the one I bought and linked to above goes well with the putt out trainer, but it's more expensive than what you need). Then just roll some putts whenever you have the time. It is so quick. I can usually sink 50 four-footers while my morning coffee is brewing...do that alone for a month and you'll be a better putter than you are today, I guarantee it like George Zimmer. That's all I got. Hope this helps make someone happier with their golfing, like it has for me

As an update, my Spornia SPG-7 arrived earlier this week and I've used it several times. It has far exceeded my expectations and I can't recommend it highly enough. It is about 20 pounds, folds down and stores into a bag that is small enough to toss over your shoulder, and can be set up and/or taken down in less than 3 minutes once you know how to do it. Definitely recommend.

Just posted my lengthy thoughts on a number of LMs under $500 here. Feel free to message me with any questions!

I'm impressed how handy everyone is here. I would be sitting in a pile of disconnected PVC and tears if I tried doing this stuff. Awesome work though.

Hm, you've piqued my curiosity. I'm skeptical, but very interested haha. Downloading now...

I love playing with friends, but it's not often they can get out at the same time as me so I started going out on my own a lot. I'd say about 90% of the time I get paired up with randoms, but every now and then I end up solo and I must say I've come to absolutely love it! It's really nice to just be out on a course, surrounded by nature, all alone, and not have to make conversation with anyone or think about people watching your shots, etc. It lets me get in a much more zen like flow state and I've honestly played the best rounds of my life on my own. I also like that if I'm not interested in playing for a score that day, I can treat it like a practice round and use the course as a giant practice facility. Want to hit multiple balls off the tee? Go for it. Want to hit different approach shots into the green as you're walking up? Go for it. Obviously only if you're not slowing anyone down, but being able to practice on an actual course is such a huge luxury since 99% of my practice ends up being on a range or practice greens. I wish I got more opportunities to play solo.

This is so frickin cool. Good on you for doing this. I'd love to see you make a Superspeed C club alternative. I can't bring myself to spend $100 on that thing even though I like what it's trying to accomplish.

No experience with those but I have an All Turf Super Tee mat arriving this weekend. $150 off Amazon. Hoping it will be a worthy upgrade to the cheap POS I bought from Dick's awhile back.

Great review! I'm also a Mevo owner, but I have a bit of an addiction to budget launch monitors haha, so I did a comparison of my experience and thoughts on the various ones I've owned. Those include the Mevo, Rapsodo MLM, Swing Speed Radar, and Swing Caddie SC200. FWIW, I have also used Trackmans, GC2s, and Toptracer systems at clubs and ranges so have benchmarked the data from the devices against most of those as well. Here are my thoughts on each of the personal launch monitors mentioned before and my recommendation at the bottom. Swing Speed Radar cheap good for measuring swing speed without a ball great battery life (I've had it for 2 years and still haven't had to change the batteries) only measures swing speed (no ball speed, carry, smash, anything...) swing speed is unreliable when hitting a ball Swing Caddie SC100/200 Affordable Reliable ball speed and carry distance no more advanced data (spin, direction, launch angle, etc.) no ability to record your swing battery is ok but not great no mobile app or ability to review your data post practice Mevo Ball speed and carry distance is excellent. I compared these against Trackman and they were virtually identical, usually within a yard or two on carry. Spin is ok. It's not super reliable but in many cases I found it to be within a few hundred RPMs of much more expensive monitors. I wouldn't trust it to be exact but it's good enough to be an indicator of whether a shot had abnormally high or low spin. Works well both outdoors and indoors, as well as in low light conditions (I often hit on a range at night, so this has been hugely helpful). Has a solid mobile app and online interface that makes it very easy to store and review your data. This is very helpful for gapping since you can see averages by club over an entire session as opposed to just trying to remember roughly how far you hit each club by averaging shots in your head or biasing yourself towards just thinking about the data from the balls you hit well, vs your average shot. Syncs with your phone so you can easily record video of your swing from any angle and automatically match the data to it. This is helpful for identifying what you're doing with your swing when you hit a ball well and what you're doing when you don't. Can share this with a coach as well if you want, which is great. Really small and durable. I know all these monitors are pretty small, but Mevo is by far the smallest and it's a tank. I just leave it in my bag and take it everywhere I golf, except for when I take it out to charge. Charges via USB so even though battery isn't great (can last a few range sessions without a recharge), it's as easy to recharge as your cell phone and you don't need to replace batteries ever. Can be updated and improved via software updates. In other words, it will presumably get better as Flightscope rolls out better algorithms and features in the future. With the rollout of the Mevo+ though, I don't know how confident I am that the Mevo will continue getting substantial upgrades...who knows. Club speed (at least at high swing speeds) seems unreliable. This is ok if you are aware of it and just focus on ball speed/carry, but you may see inaccurate smash factors because of the miscalculated swing speeds, which might make you think you're not hitting the ball as well as you are at times. For example, there are numerous times where Trackman will have my smash at 1.5 but the same shot on Mevo shows as 1.41 because it's calculating a faster swing speed than I really have. If I didn't know the swing speed number was off, I might think I'm not actually hitting the center of the face even though it feels perfect. Hopefully this is something Mevo can improve in future updates. No directional data No shot mapping or tracking No games or challenges to play (I assume because it doesn't have directional data) Rapsodo MLM Accurate with ball speed, carry distance, swing speed, and smash Very easy and cool video integration with shot tracing Directional feedback and shot mapping (not measured, but traced...so it's not perfect, but I've found it to be generally reliable at least for general direction and shape) Good mobile app to review sessions and averages Can play games on it like closest to the pin, long drive competitions against other users, etc. This stuff is actually pretty fun and I won a prize from Rapsodo for winning one of the monthly competitions, which made me happy. Stores your videos in the cloud vs on your phone so it doesn't take up memory if you're doing video Small and easy to set up. Not as small as the Mevo, and doesn't feel as durable, but it's good enough that I don't have concerns about either of those things. Very easy and fast to set up (after calibrating when you first receive it - which is a pain in the butt) Can not use indoors or into a net (big con, especially during quarantine) Does not work well in low light conditions (works very well in sunlight but under driving range lights at night it's effectively useless) Shot tracing is cool and roughly accurate but it's not always the most accurate (it just guesses based on how the ball is moving in the first bit of travel). More of a gimmick for easily making fun shareable video clips with ball tracer on them than really knowing exactly what happened to your shot. Still helpful for getting a general idea of direction and shot shape though, even if not completely accurate. While it collects a lot of data that you can review after your session, you are somewhat limited in choosing what data you want to display while hitting (when recording video it's set to only display carry distance, ball speed, and launch angle). Your phone must be on the device, positioned directly behind you, for it to work. This means you can't record yourself from other angles while the device captures your data. This makes it hard to review video of your swing from front on or from the side if you want to do that while also capturing data. Ultimately, in picking the best of the bunch, IMO it's close between the Mevo and the Rapsodo. For $500 they are both great at the basics (ball speed and carry distance) but then excel at different things beyond that. Mevo IMO feels built for providing the greatest volume of data for people who are purely focused on analyzing their performance, whereas the Rapsodo feels as though it's built to provide basic data while making it easy to have fun (make shot tracer videos to share online or play cheap versions of closest to the pin, long drive, etc.). Both are awesome, but to me, the versatility of the Mevo to be able to use it anywhere and in any conditions and always get generally reliable data that is then stored in the cloud and easy to review when/where I want has been enough to make it my pick. It's really nice to be able to look back at the data from thousands of shots and see my real averages with each club, as well as improvement over time.

Great review. Thanks for doing it. I have an OW as well. I don't really use it as a training / practice aid, but I use it routinely to warm up before hitting balls. It is a great, quick way to find your tempo, get your body moving in sync, and get stretched out. The stretching factor you mentioned is really really nice. A couple minutes swinging that thing slowly and then working up to full swings with it really loosens up the wrists, hips, back, and everything. Then I'm good to go

Great review! I got a Whoop and did the 6 month commitment, but after about 3 months of consistent use, decided that I would not be continuing my membership after the initial 6 month period. That wasn't because the device was flawed. I found that it was very accurate, and the data was really cool and helpful to see. The most interesting thing to me was definitely being able to quantify how much of an impact alcohol has on your body's ability to recover! Ultimately though, while I found value in it and think it works well, I personally felt that I hit a point of diminishing returns since it effectively quantifies things that I consider common sense - if you eat crap, drink, don't sleep enough, and are stressed, then you're going to recover poorly. Conversely, if you eat healthy, limit your alcohol, manage stress, and sleep a lot, then you're going to feel better and be healthier. On top of that, since I'm not a professional athlete where every minute of my day revolves around training and optimizing performance, I felt that despite knowing what daily behaviors I should try to change, I still had limited ability to enact that change (I have to get up and go to work at a certain time every day, so I can't just sleep an extra 2 hours because Whoop says I need it, ya know?). So while it was really cool to see some of this stuff quantified to get a sense for the direct impact various factors have on my body's health and performance, I personally felt like I got everything I wanted out of it in about 4-8 weeks, and then it added marginal value to my life. I'm also a watch guy, so I felt like I was sacrificing being able to wear watches I like in order to wear the Whoop. With that in mind, if they added a screen to make it more of full featured smartwatch, then I would be interested again, since I wouldn't mind having that data if the device also added other value. However, the data alone just wasn't enough to keep me using it long term. Last caveat - I would totally start using it again if I was going to train for something that requires me to craft my daily life around that training (such as a triathlon type event). It would be very helpful for that since it does a good job logging heart rate, exercise, calorie burn, and guiding you on how aggressively to train on a day to day basis given your recovery. But for an average person who just wants to understand a bit more about their body, I felt that it was a cool experience, just not something I need regularly forever.

Completely on the same page. I ran out of shaving cream the other day and since I'm trying to limit how often I go to the store, that made the decision easy. Now I'm all in

Lol. I was literally googling "how to cut your own hair" last night. It all looked way too difficult though so I decided I'm just going to go full Tom Hanks in Castaway until this is over.

I spent the last couple weeks going back and forth on whether or not to buy a hitting mat and net so I can hit balls at home. Researched a ton of them and finally pulled the trigger on a Spornia SPG-7 after lots of deliberation. I don't think it will arrive for another couple weeks still but I'll let you know how it is once it arrives. It was about $200 so I figure even if I were to ust use it for the rest of the quarantine period, that's less than it would cost me to go to the range for 20 days, or to play three or four rounds of golf. Plus then I'll have a net to use on days I don't have time to go to the range/course.

This will be the most I've ever practiced putting in my life. I bought a PuttOut mat and the trainer and have been rolling at least 100 putts a day from within 6 feet. I never ever do that in normal life and I probably give up at least 5 strokes a round by not finishing short putts. If my living room floor translates to the greens, I might come out of this whole thing a better golfer than I was before haha. Bummed to not be able to play golf right now, but kinda excited to see what this whole period does for my putting game when it's over!

I've been trying to decide between pulling the trigger on a 3hybrid or a driving iron for awhile now. I currently have the Taylormade P790 irons (3i - PW) and an old Callaway x-hot 3 wood but there is still a pretty big gap between the 3i and the 3w. I have just kinda dealt with it for awhile but figured it was something I should solve for at some point. So, I went and tested the Taylormade Sim 3H about a month ago. I was really hoping I'd like it since I had heard so many good things and had never hit a hybrid before. Sadly, I was very disappointed. I did not feel confident over the ball with it, I was inconsistent and I wasn't really hitting it much further than a good strike on my 3 iron. I know it was my first session swinging it and maybe there would be a learning curve, but I'm someone who has a hard time getting excited about a club if it doesn't feel good right from the get go. So I pulled back on the idea of that hybrid. However, I did go hit the Taylormade P790 UDI shortly after and I liked it much more. I definitely was not the easiest club to hit but I was still more consistent with it and it filled the gap between my 3i and 3w beautifully. I didn't pull the trigger on buying it since I'm rethinking whether or not that is really a gap I need to fill at this point, but if I was going to add either a driving iron or a hybrid to my bag right now, for me it would be the UDI.

How long have you been playing golf? What’s your handicap or normal score? 6 Years - 14 HCP What do you love about golf? I love that it can be both so fun and satisfying but also so humbling. The highs are incredibly high, but the lows are frequent. I also like that I can go out and play socially with friends, giving me a lot of quality time with people to really talk to them on a deeper level while having a lot of fun, but I can just as easily go out and play with people I've never met or even on my own. And finally, the exercise is great - both physically and mentally. Nothing keeps me feeling better than walking 18 in the fresh air and working my mind and body for 4 hours straight. It's a game I picked up somewhat late but am looking forward to aging late into life with. What brings you to MyGolfSpy? Do you already know any other Spies? I've always been around tech and am an early adopter of most new things, so golf equipment/tech/aids are things that have always fascinated me. I like reading the reviews, testing things myself, and decided I should finally start contributing. Where are you from? What is your home course? San Francisco, CA. I don't have a "home course" but play the majority of my rounds at TPC Harding Park, Presidio Golf Course, Sharp Park, Lincoln Park. What are the best and worst things about golf in your region? Best - Golf year round and lots of really exceptional public courses Worst - Most of the courses are heavily tree lined with dramatic elevation changes, and it's never really hot and sunny (consistently good weather, but never great). What do you do for a living? Public markets investor How’d you pick your user name? I'm a competitive long driver on the World Long Drive Tour. And my name is Nate.