Grit Golf

I did a Krank golf marketing survey where they were asking specifically about how golfers felt about nonconforming equipment. I guess enough people must have said they would play it outside of tournament conditions (let’s be honest, most golfers never play in a tournament), that they went ahead and made it. I’m in the camp of whatever makes the game fun is good for the game. With my best drives rolling out to 250 total, id be interested in trying a Krank X. I would have to remove those rounds from my arccos stats to not feel like a fraud, but if it was worth 10 yards or more it could be fun to mess around with.

I agree with this. On the course I’m 2-3mph slower On average based on carry distance than my best shots after warming up on a sim, the case for dropping down makes a lot of sense. I’m also in between Regular and Stiff for most shafts. With the speeder, stiff actually gives me a little more clubhead speed because I tend to pour a little more into it, but when I do, my dispersion gets worse. I ended up adding weight to the head (8g) to soften the stiff flex up to like a R+. The extra head weight Isn’t for everyone but I like it.

For anyone following along, I used arccos to determine my putting sucked. A few sages in the community schooled me on the value of face control and starting the ball on the right line as one skill to work on. Before starting, my arccos putting handicap was 25.7. After working on it for about a week (with some pro help along the way) this is what I posted: That’s pretty encouraging! I got more than my fair share to drop today, and need to keep working on it, but to be perfectly clear, starting the ball on the line is a specific skill and if you’ve never actually focused on that specific skill, you are almost certainly leaving strokes on the table. I DEFINITELY was. This is the best round of my life and this is the easiest way I’ve ever hacked strokes off my game by a very large margin! Now, where’s that coupon code for ExPutt?!

The only time I’ve seen driver shafts actually work their way loose is when the tip of the shaft wasn’t sanded below the paint. Epoxy doesn’t stick to slick painted and polished surfaces as well as it does porous, abraded tips! its probably the fertile moving on you. If you can get the ferrule to move you can always use regular old superglue to hold it back in place, it works great for that.

Also, I know True Temper has been a stock shaft for prett much every oem, have they ever done a constant weight Dynamic Gold -esque offering in a 370 hosel?

A few months ago I bought Cleveland RTX4 wedges with the stock tour issue S400 shafts. I was planning on pulling the shafts and swapping in my KBS gamers from my previous set but I’m loving the S400. I’m gaming a 48* RTX4 and using it 75% of the time for full swings, and I’m striping this thing. This shaft cues up something good for me, but it unfortunately doesn’t blend well into my c tapers, the more time I spend hitting one the worse the other feels. Anyway, I’m thinking about testing S300 or X100 Dynamic Gold in the irons, the problem is, the 2 heads I would game are both .370 parallel. I know I could shim .355s, but are there any other ways to do this? I saw the .370 option for DGs is a tip trim to flex, which I’m not crazy about due to the difference in weight as you go up through the set. I know Nippons have a .370 option that is constant weight (you order each shaft pw through 5i for example and they are butt cut only and all weigh the same). How well would a Modus 3 130 stiff blend into S400 in the irons? Other ideas on making .355 work in a .370 that are less bubba than shims and shafting beads?

I said path but meant face angle. Thanks for the tips!

@cnosil @alfriday101 @deauxrite @BMart519 @aerospace_ray Can I bug those of you who have worked on path? When I first started working on path, I couldn't get a single ball to roll cleanly through the gate set at 0.5 degrees of error. On day 1, I changed my grip and went back to an older putter, and since then have slowly started to find something. Here's where I ended up today after a few hours of conference calls: < 1 degree of error: 10/10 < 0.75 degree of error: 7/10 < 0.5 degree of error: 5/10 There is no pattern to the misses, they are 50/50 missing left and right. At 0.5 degrees of error there are no "gross" misses, ie, I'm grazing or just bouncing off the inside of the gate, not slamming into the front of the gate. I have some arc in my stroke, and it feels like the misses are caused by finding the ball just a hair outside of the middle of my putting stroke (where the face is square) but I can't back that with any data. Also, to eliminate variables, there's no "break" in the ruler where I have it set up for practice, ie, if I put the ball in the middle of the gate at 17", it runs off the middle of the ruler at 48". The old putter is a Ping Anser TR 5 (face balanced/straight stroke blade type putter). Would SAM Putt Lab (or something similar) be worthwhile at this point, or should I just keep running drills and figuring it out to get the most out of that session?

Another thing to consider with Bryson’s wedges is he went to single length (with 10 degree upright lie angles) as a collegiate golfer, one of the reasons he cited at the time was that one length + the 10* upright put him in an upright plane that alleviated tightness in his lower back. Going with shorter length clubs, or flatter lie angles may be off the table completely for him if he thinks it could lead to or even contribute to an injury. I don’t know anything about biomechanics or sports therapy etc, but there is a fitter who has a partnership with Cobra selling 39”, upright lie, one length irons specifically for golfers w lower back problems, so there may be something to it? Another thing I have been curious about with him is, why are the irons 10 up, but the driver isnt? It seems like he is trying to keep the exact same spine angle for every club in the bag (driver down to wedges) and the only way to keep a driver spine angle in your wedges is to lengthen them and stand them up 10 degrees? If he is designing his golf swing with a specific spine angle locked in as a constraint, you will never see standard wedges in his bag. I don’t really know enough about it to say for sure, so please school me on it if I’m way off base.

I love this ^. Really well said.

I’m going to blindly rely on the arccos handicap (right or wrong) to highlight my own strengths or weaknesses for the time being. I’m a database admin in my day job, and making a data project out of my slap *** putting sounds horrible, to each their own though!

That’s genius!

I know what you mean, sometimes I wonder where they come from. What I will say is even though 37% GIR isn’t fantastic, if I have an iron in my hand I might not end up on the green, but I’m also not going to miss by much. My driver is a mess (working on that w a pro), so I’m teeing off on most par 4s with 5 or 6i and leaving myself 150+. It’s harder to hit greens from 150 out and I think arccos is considering that?

I created this thread so that anyone who needed to improve their putting could get some insight and help. To your point, part of the thought process for anyone reading should be "how do I know if I need to improve my putting?" For me, specifically, I think I need to improve my putting because: Arccos putting handicap 25.7 (overall handicap 16, approach handicap 5) 37.7 putts per round, 2.1 per hole, 2.3 per GIR (arccos) I've had 3 3 putt bogies from 6 feet or less in my last 3 rounds (arccos) I've actually carded 0 birdies in 3 rounds with a 37% GIR (thats 0/20 getting them to drop when it counts with the flat stick) I 3+ putt on 22.2% of holes, and 1 putt on 13% of holes (arccos) I've never seriously or 'with intent' tried to learn or practiced putting. I think I could move my handicap by 3-4 if I turned putting from a weakness into a strength.

My less than 40 yard wedge stuff needs work for sure. I always thought my short game was pretty good, at least in comparison to the guys I play with (all mid/high handicaps), but Arccos was another eye opener for me. With that said, I did see my "chipping" handicap (on arccos) drop over the last 2 rounds by just forcing myself to use the putter from the fringe/fairway. I've shaved more strokes by being smarter about what NOT to do, than getting better at what TO do on the golf course it seems.

@cnosil inspired me to work on starting the ball on the right line as a first step to better putting. He talked about the Visio brand putting "gates" as one way to get feedback. Before spending any coin, I wanted to make sure this would work for me. Here's the DIY, very ugly, very "bubba" way I made myself a set of putting gates. Thanks to Covid, work from home, and boring conference calls, this whole project was done in about 2 hours while "muted". All you need is some scrap wood (I used a scrap piece of a cedar fence slat), and some basic woodworking stuff.

I've been on conference calls all day, thank goodness for headphones and the mute button.

@Getoffmylawn That's a really great story! Callaway FTW! I think some brand reps are considering the "long game", even if they are commissioned. What I mean is, they know that if they are honest with you and if they look out for what will help you play your best (instead of pushing whatever they have this release cycle) they can earn a customer for life. Having someone come to the demo day every year, even if they only end up taking home 1 thing from each demo day, has gotta be incredibly valuable. I know in our business we do whatever we can to earn and retain customers because lifetime value is the metric that matters to us, I imagine its the same to some degree with golf.

Thanks for the tip off on the Visio gates, I think I can cobble a 50mm gate together to start working with.

Based on the Visio numbers, if I can consistently get 4 out of 5 putts rolling off the back of a 48" x 2" ruler, that should mean I'm figuring it out? EDIT: I just did the math, NOT leaving the edge of a 2" ruler is the same as keeping the ball between a 93.5mm gate. A 93.5mm gate at 48" requires less than 1.19 degrees degrees of error to either side. That's probably sufficient for a not perfectly level surface? The first go-round with this exercise was a bit eye-opening.

SO - the ruler "test" is pretty revealing... It now makes complete sense why I miss almost all of my birdie putts. I have a 2" wide x 48" club fitting ruler, and it's a real challenge to get from one end to the other without spilling off the side. This seems like a very sound place to start. I'm guessing the ExPutt sim will smack you in the face with the same reality, just delivered in a prettier, more high tech way :). It'll be interesting to follow along w the forum reviewers on that one.

Great podcast! I had a thought about: 5. Getting Fit? Good Luck! I started playing 5-6 years ago (at 27) and struggled mightily with irons the first 3-4. I had 3 “equipment evals” / fittings in those first 4 years for IRONS and I was fit into: (1) 2 up 70g graphite GI head (when I had a 4 knuckle showing strong grip to control a slice), then (2) 2 flat 105g steel (when I changed my grip and plane after a few lessons and ended up 6-8* in to out trying to work on it myself), then finally, (3) standard lie, 0.5” short 120g steel when I finally figured my path and release out. Irons are now the best part of my game (5 dynamic hcp approach on arccos). Hindsight being what it is, I think I would’ve been better served starting with whatever the wrist to floor chart prescribed (which is basically what I play now) and spending the money spent on fittings on group clinics and lessons instead? In this case, I don’t blame the fitter for giving me clubs that fit my busted swing each year, but I think fitting the clubs to my busted swing made the swing faults I was working through stickier than they needed to be. I also think I’m not a typical new golfer, and the fitter saw me as a hack in his late 20s, instead of a brand new player. It makes me wonder what would’ve happened if I would’ve played standard clubs all throughout? Would I have figured it out faster? Would I have gotten frustrated and quit the game? An old 1980s dynacraft fitting manual I came across said to always fit new/developing players into equipment they should grow into (flex and lie). I understand the comment about how crazy it is to tell your kid to “learn how to run in an an adult pair of Nikes” - but, I think fitting every new player isn’t the right answer either. Part of the fitting should be considering where a player is in learning the game, what they are working to fix, and where they want to go?

I really like that kind of offset or face angle, or call it what you will! It seems to work for me. I don’t know how to search for it except just trying to find topline photos?

I’m playing a set of Cobra F7 Ones. I keep coming back to them. According to the specs they have a bunch of offset, but when I look down at them, they don’t look like there’s much offset at all compared to other GI irons that I have kicking around in my garage. The best way I can describe it is, it looks like the face is offset right by the hosel, but the whole face is pointed a tiny bit left (closed) which puts a portion of the leading edge back inline with the hosel toward the toe. Are some GI irons built with this kind of (shut)!“face angle”? Is this just my eye?

What’s the best way to evaluate and improve putting? Lessons? Fitting? Practice aids/greens? What’s worked for those of you who have turned putting from a weakness to a strength?