gavinski91

Reminds me of golfing with my father-in-law. He carries a 64° wedge and uses it for everything around the green. I have yet to convince him to permanently remove it from his bag - it's painful watching him take a full swing from 20 yards and either catching it fat and advancing it 15 feet, or catching it thin and seeing the ball rocket across the green.

I didn’t have a chance to try the 4hy and 5i when I demoed, so my set will go 5i > 4hy > 5w > 3w > D. One of the things I’m interested in is how the gapping will work out between them given the strong lofts of the irons, so I will keep you updated on how that goes once my woods and hybrids arrive.

We'll need a picture of you in your cheer outfit if you want to try out for the position.

I was just thinking that @jlukes MIM Black wedges with the vinegar treatment look like they’d pair nicely with the copper irons, might be another option if the copper wedges aren’t forthcoming.

I'm waiting on my woods yet (Driver, fairway woods, and hybrids), along with my bag. No one has the bag yet, two of us have all the clubs, two have 2/3s of the clubs, and the other two only have 1/3. (the thirds being woods, irons, and wedges) The others are welcome to commence trash-talking at any point, but I'm going to keep it pretty civil. The challenge will be such a mismatch that it would be akin to dunking on a 4 year old and then getting in his face about it.

Arccos says smart distance with my current driver is 254. And for comparison here is this hole with my previous clubs a month and a half ago, when I got par on the hole for the first time in my life en route to a career-best 80. I’ve always been a firm believer that distance isn’t everything, but damn if it doesn’t make the game so much easier when your approach shot is two clubs down. For another example, on the 9th hole today I skyed my 3w off the tee and was left with 190 to the center of the green. With my old irons I would have gone with my 5i and swung out of my shoes in hopes that the ball somehow rolled up onto the green. Instead today I was able to hit a basic 6i without over swinging, hit the green, and 2-putt for par. I really hope some of the other contestants have a similar experience, otherwise I’m gonna run away with this thing!

Three off the tee, but still all I can do is laugh in disbelief.

Enjoying a Tom Clancy, some Balvenie 12 year, and watching the Dutch put the hurt on the rest of the world in women’s cycling.

I think me and the 5-iron are gonna get along great off the tee! The irons overall will take a bit of getting used to, but initial impressions are promising. The real star of the day though was the Snakebite wedges. I only used the 58* once (had a 70 yard shot that needed to get way up over a tree), but I used the 52* 12 times in this morning’s round, and every single time it put the ball on the green, with an average distance to the pin of 24 feet (including an up-and-down from 85 yards to save par) I had a lot of shots that I’d like to have back, but managed to card just 1 double-bogey on my way to an 83!

Yeah, it’s from SWAG golf. They do limited runs of their covers and never re-release any old ones, so they have value as a collectible (but I just wanted this one b/c it looks cool). They typically sell out in under a minute, but can be found on EBay from re-sellers - just do an EBay search for “swag mallet”.

Watching tennis at the Tokyo olympics, and now I know where the insect sounds in the ExPutt background noise come from!

Yeah I'm happy with the transition. Like I mentioned in the video, the only thing that I would like to see is to have the chrome of the Snakebite wedges to be a more muted satin, would visually match the Radspeeds better that way. But then they wouldn't match the MIM Tour irons as well, so I guess it's six of one, half dozen of the other, and probably too many SKUs to have both color options available in all the loft and grind combinations.

The unboxing video is finished - it has my initial thoughts of the irons and wedges, along with some glamour shots. Check it out!

Working on the unboxing video now - initial news is that the wedges look great. The irons, however - I got my second choice shaft (KBS $-Taper Lite S), which is fine, but according to the packing slip they got my lie angles wrong. I'm gonna measure them to confirm, but the packing slip said standard lie when I asked for 2° up. Not the end of the world I guess, but that does mean that I won't be getting the best possible results out of the clubs.

Well look what was waiting for me at my desk this morning! The label says irons and wedges. I haven't opened the box yet, but will record an unboxing video later today and share that in this thread!

Harry Nodwell posted a drill on his Instagram page, Nodwell's Daily Dingers, a couple weeks ago that was actually the catalyst for the change. In the past when I would struggle with my slice, I would subconsciously try to hit the ball further left, which in practice led to a more severe out-to-in club path and an even worse slice. After going through the drill that he suggested, I now set up for every drive aiming down the left side of the fairway, and then visualize a sweeping push draw and try to hit that. The result is a nice baby fade that matches the flight path of the rest of my clubs.

This was the one of the reasons I went with the XB at 9° rather than the XD at 10.5° and lofted down. And since the order was placed I've been working on some swing changes that have dramatically reduced my slice, so the XB in a draw setup should be enough to keep me out of the next fairway over on the right!

I finished 2nd to last on the previous one, I figured things can only get better from there!

My miss with my current driver tends to be a push slice, so all this talk of pull draws had me excited for my clubs to arrive!

A quick clip from a range session last week. I spent the early part of the session focusing on an in-to-out club path feeling with my mid-irons (probably closer to neutral in reality, since I tend to be pretty out-to-in). At the end of the session I brought those feelings over to the driver. Still some work to do on shallowing out the swing, but this was a definitely improvement from my last round when every driver shot had a 30+ yard slice.

Well I still haven't had any clubs arrive, which is absolutely terrible for my work productivity. I'm having them delivered to my office (since no one is at home during the day and our front porch is steps from the road), so every time I hear a truck drive into the parking lot I start bouncing up and down in my seat listening to hear if anyone comes through the door downstairs. The real question is at what point will my boss start to notice....!

Not at all - let's be real, the number on the scorecard doesn't matter, it's what you look like when you tee off in front of a group that's important!

Nothing for me yet

With a swing speed of ~105 you're probably giving up a bit of distance with the Q-Star Tour and would see benefits from a higher-compression ball. But like others have said, if the problem you're encountering with <75 yd shots are swing related, switching to a different ball won't fix them. I wouldn't worry about the Ball Lab results - they would almost certainly lead to variances in ball flight of less than 5%, and unless you're a scratch golfer those differences wouldn't be measurable at all because your swing is less than 95% consistent. One thing that I think a lot of folks in this thread don't realize is that the Q-Star Tour is a urethane ball, so no worries on that front. For what it's worth, I'm at a near-identical handicap and swing speed compared to you and made the switch halfway through last season from the Q-Star Tour to the Z-Star XV and have been very happy with it. The XV doesn't feel as squishy off the driver face, and feels a bit firmer as well with irons and wedges which I prefer. I suspect your issues aren't ball-specific, but if switching to a firmer urethane ball makes you feel more comfortable, then that will have a noticeable impact on your game.

They did a tribute release to it called El Grande Sherbet earlier in the month.