TBS

89 43/46
It was a fun day. This was the first time since my baby girl was born that I felt like I knew what I was doing on the course. My confidence is much better as I step up to hit a shot. Too many compounding mistakes, doubles that should have been bogeys. Missed short putts. Short irons just aren't as sharp (When I'm <150 to the pin, it should be an easy GIR and hopefully within 30 ft). I'm sniffing low 80s just gotta find time for practice whenever possible.
Also, shoutout to my sister, started playing more seriously 3 years ago, takes lessons, got fit for clubs and almost broke 100 today. She smashes her TSi3 driver straight and long. Her short game and course management is the only thing holding her back. Shout out to all the girls/women on the course! This is a sport for everyone.

Love my Kiyoshi purple shaft. The kick is so satisfying. 

I agree 100% - if growing the professional game is priority, check out what Billy Ho does sponsoring an APGA event. I also heard that Billy goes above and beyond even flying out a player who didn't qualify to play in the pro am and get them in front of sponsors. Make an APGA show for Golf Channel or Netflix that follows these players and the ups and downs of trying to get on tour. Would be way more interesting than seeing 15 players ranked as the 50-100th players in golf battle it out on boring, sub-par courses, for guaranteed millions. Oh, and also, is there even a broadcast deal yet? We might not even get to watch it.

I agree with this completely. There are a few interesting holes but overall a pretty basic Florida course. I found that Regatta Bay was much more enjoyable with a good mix of holes and you had to use every club in your bag.
I also really like Windswept Dunes. Windswept Dunes should be a model for courses. With so many tee boxes, it played perfect when I played with my sister who has only been playing for a year. Easy enough for her but still challenging enough for me. It's also a great example how wide fairways and sparingly using rough still requires strategy.

Except it's the Saudi government creating and selling a product to help their image (i.e. sport washing) not just another company making a product to compete in the free market (cutting cost any way possible to increase profitability). 
I would just like the players to come out and say they are doing it for the money and not try to act like this group is going to create a better golf product or "grow the game". 

I'm thinking about getting Shotscope V3 but I had a question about the tags. 
How well do they fit on grips that have a more rounded butt end. Most Golfprides are flat on the end but I have a few Lamkin grips that are rounded. The last thing I want is the tags getting snagged and constantly falling out or there to be a noticeable gap/lip between grip and tag.

I'm thinking about getting Shotscope V3 but I had a question about the tags. 
How well do they fit on grips that have a more rounded butt end. Most Golfprides are flat on the end but I have a few Lamkin grips that are rounded. The last thing I want is the tags getting snagged and constantly falling out or there to be a noticeable gap/lip between grip and tag.

In my brief experience, the SS tags are much better than Arccos or Game Golf and I have not had any issues so far. I use GP Tour Velvet grips with a rounded cap and had to glue both Arccos sensors and Game Golf tags to make sure they would stay put. I haven't even seen any signs of a SS tag backing out yet and my grips are all chewed up after having to use a knife to remove the GG tags. Needless to say, I think you'll be fine.
As for a gap/lip around the tag, there isn't really anything you can do about that and I've seen it with the other two systems mentioned above. It does tend to be less of an issue with Arccos, but it's not always perfect depending on the grip.

I'm thinking about getting Shotscope V3 but I had a question about the tags. 
How well do they fit on grips that have a more rounded butt end. Most Golfprides are flat on the end but I have a few Lamkin grips that are rounded. The last thing I want is the tags getting snagged and constantly falling out or there to be a noticeable gap/lip between grip and tag.

I'm thinking about getting Shotscope V3 but I had a question about the tags. 
How well do they fit on grips that have a more rounded butt end. Most Golfprides are flat on the end but I have a few Lamkin grips that are rounded. The last thing I want is the tags getting snagged and constantly falling out or there to be a noticeable gap/lip between grip and tag.

I have not had any issue with them falling off with a more rounded grip. Currently have them on some standard tour velvet grips on my irons and they have not moved at all.

I'm thinking about getting Shotscope V3 but I had a question about the tags. 
How well do they fit on grips that have a more rounded butt end. Most Golfprides are flat on the end but I have a few Lamkin grips that are rounded. The last thing I want is the tags getting snagged and constantly falling out or there to be a noticeable gap/lip between grip and tag.

I’ve only taken it to the range a few times but it’s awesome. Less club tangle than my older ping hoofer. Smaller and carries more balanced making it feel much lighter. Also no logos make it so sleek. 

Not a club but my birthday present finally got in after ordering it in October. 
Titleist Linkmaster bag! I will be doing a more in depth review over on this thread but had to show off how sweet this thing is. Time to upgrade head covers.

Like new! I’ve played in rain, mud, and dirt and all it took was a wet towel wipe down and it looks back new. There has been no scuffs or scratches. 
 
I think the leather is what sets this bag apart. Notice vessel bags pushes using a cart strap sleeve. No worries here. This is premium leather that is soft but tough. 

Yeah - from what I understand they want to keep them unavailable to general public and have to be bought through a pro shop or specialty stores. I also think they are doing a major price increase for their new releases too. 
As annoying as that is, I guess its a good business model for a premium product. 

One of the coolest benefits from this bag is that Titleist will send you a custom initial tag to go on your bag. I requested it the day I got my bag in and it took about 3 weeks but man is it worth it.
 

I've been looking to upgrade my bag and I've decided that I wanted to try a more premium option that is carry friendly but primarily for pushcart or riding. I want a smaller profile bag so the Vessel players bags look a little too big. The Vessel Lite Stand is on my list but it looks like they are discontinuing and launching something new for the 2022 season. I've thought about Stitch, but I really want one more pocket/compartment. If it had the ball compartment on the back, it would be a finalist. 
I stumbled on the Titleist Linkmaster series when I was on a recent golf trip and I was super impressed. The only downside is that it may be a 1/2 lb heavier than the stitch or vessel but the quality, durability, and customer service of Titleist make up for that. GolfWRX has a few threads on them, but I wanted to see if anyone here had any experience or thoughts on this bag.

I saw that NOBULL recently released a golf shoe https://www.nobullproject.com/collections/golf?page=1
I used to do a lot of CrossFit and these shoes were really popular when they first came out. I think they are still pretty popular but there is a running joke that they have not changed their style or features since they were launched over 5 years ago, maybe 10 years? Their claim is that it is no frills and all you need in a shoe. I'm guessing this is their same claim for the golf shoes. 
For a no frills golf shoe, $180 seems a little steep. Hopefully they show up in the next spikeless tests.

I saw that NOBULL recently released a golf shoe https://www.nobullproject.com/collections/golf?page=1
I used to do a lot of CrossFit and these shoes were really popular when they first came out. I think they are still pretty popular but there is a running joke that they have not changed their style or features since they were launched over 5 years ago, maybe 10 years? Their claim is that it is no frills and all you need in a shoe. I'm guessing this is their same claim for the golf shoes. 
For a no frills golf shoe, $180 seems a little steep. Hopefully they show up in the next spikeless tests.

I've played the Tour and they spun a little too much for me and were not good in the wind. I do like the X a lot.
I just wish they made the Tour X in yellow.

I pulled the trigger and ordered one from my local boutique golf store in October. (Check them out https://www.pebblehurst.com)! It finally came in this week. It is sweet!
This is going to be one of the last golf bags I'll ever buy. It is such premium quality and versatile. It's small enough to carry and enough pockets to carry everything I need. I don't consider myself a minimalist by any means. I have about 9-12 balls, tees, 4 golf gloves and a pair of rain gloves, snacks, rangefinder, and still an empty valuables pocket for my phone. I primarily walk with a push cart or ride but I hate having a heavy bag. It has very little logos or crazy colors. Now to update my club head covers.

I am headed back to Sweetens Cove on March 19th. @TBS will be joining me. I originally got 8 passes, but only need 4.
I thought I’d mention it here first, I have 4 available passes to play from sun up to sun down. Pay once you get there. $100ish to walk, $150ish to ride. Let me know if interested! Would be cool to meet some of the MGS family.

Background 
After I took a few months off of MGS due to some work and life things that needed my attention, I finally got some time to log back on and post a long overdue review. After posting, I found myself curious as to how I was selected and the likelihood of being selected again, especially since my product was so niche and did not receive many interactions. So I took the challenge upon myself to do a not so scientific study of how reviewers are selected and compare it to the post (https://forum.mygolfspy.com/faq/testing/how-are-equipment-testers-chosen-r11/) by the Mods on how testers are selected. While there are no bombshells, I think we Spys understand the value of data in telling our story. So, I did my best at pulling all data from the past 18 months of reviews
 
Methods 
First off, I am no data scientist. From DJ to Bryson, I’m somewhere in the middle. I mainly do very basic data analysis in my role through excel. I know, I know, SQL is much more efficient and I’ll get around to learning it. For this study, I focused on 18 months of product reviews. I chose this timeframe to get some data points outside of the pandemic. I started going through the review pages and noticed it was not as organized as I thought, so I chose to do only 18 months of reviews that were already on the “Past Opportunities” page in the dropdown menu. Like I said, I believe that there may have been a few more reviews that have not been archived to this page, but I don’t think it was significant.
I then did the manual labor of data entry and collection. I clicked on each individual “TESTERS ANNOUNCED” within the time frame, recorded the following data points 
-       date of review published
-       product
-       rough product MSRP 
-       MGS username
-       If the User has a Donor badge on their profile
-       Content count
-       Total reputation
-       Month and year MGS account was created
-       City and State
Once all of this information was input into the spreadsheet, I then added a note if they had multiple reviews and I also created an additional metric to measure the quality of the posts. All analysis comes from these data points.
 
Limitations
Overall, the main limitation is that this dataset was manually curated, so there could be a mistake, but any mistake would be minor. I have checked that there is not an additional 0 added somewhere but there could be +/- 5 units off when it comes to reputation due to fat fingers on a keyboard. Additionally, the MSRP was calculated off a quick Google search. I get that there could be sales, or the price was actually $25 higher at the time of testing. Finally, the content created, and total reputation numbers are not accurate to the time the member was selected. There is no way for me to go back and see this information, but I proceeded with collecting this because for the most part, I believe that most people’s posts grow linearly. So, the quality of posts metric should not be too far off. I will address that in bigger reviews (Cobraconnect), this ratio can get skewed. Enough with the small talk, let’s take a look at the data.
 
Data:
Let’s take a look at the data!
By the numbers-
-       48 total products
-       202 unique testers
-       ~$119,625 total costs of products tested
 
As I said in the introduction, I will be using the MGS selection criteria as a framework of analysis.
Picture – I did not go through and collect this data. This is also the easiest of all of them. Put something up there! I’ve seen pictures of the people (I assume), cartoons, their children, memes, etc. Just put something up. (Inclusive, but probably true)
Prove review chops - 71 (35%) of people had more than 1 review. If you get chosen, even for the smallest thing, a pushcart distance tracker, a dozen balls, etc. take it seriously and write a good review. This means good pictures, concise statements that clearly articulate your opinion on a product, timely submissions, and good follow ups. A good first review will go a long way to getting your second review and the data clearly backs this up. Additionally, one anecdotal note, it was very common for there to be a progression of items to review, starting with a smaller item and then growing to more expensive items. (True)
Start posting – Please remember that this category is not perfect because I was not able to pull the post and reputation numbers at the time the testers were selected. I am assuming that people post at a linear rate. I looked at three areas for this section. Number of posts, Total reputation, and third metric that I created, Quality of post score. I wanted to look at how many interactions per post the reviewer gets. This metric speaks to higher quality of posts for the forum.
 
Total number of posts
Total reputation
Quality of Post Score*
Range
5 - 14,307
3 - 26,497
0.09 - 5.8
Mean
1,412
2866
1.92
Median
513
824
1.85
Because of such a large range with bunching happening at the higher end of each category, I would suggest forum members look at the Median. The best chance for you to be chosen is to have over 500 posts with over 800 total reputation which comes out to 1.85 interactions per post. Like I said earlier, there were a number of members chosen with less than this number but most under 500 posts were in the 100-200 range. I think the biggest takeaway, is to post frequently and create posts that others want to engage in. I think an average user can get to 200+ posts in 2-3 months. 
There might be an issue that leads to inequity when it comes to being chosen. As I started reviewing some of the posts and interactions, if you are chosen for a more high-profile test, your posts and interactions will increase at a higher rate than other members. This easily leads to a boost in your profile making it easier to be selected. I don’t think there is a way around smoothing out this distinct increase, but it is something that I hope mods take notice of. (True)
 Become an MGS Donor
This category comes with major limitations. The only public piece of data that I was able to collect was if the member included the MGS Donor badge in their profile. From this information I found 59.9% of testers had a donor badge in their profile. I suspect that this number may be closer to 70-80% but these members have not reached out to get the donor badge added.
(Inconclusive but probably true)
Overall, MGS is clear about how testers are selected. For the most part their criteria is clear and the data shows that they follow the criteria for selection. 
Common misconceptions
I wanted to add a section that debunked some of the common misconceptions that I had when I first joined the forum. 
-       I have to be a member for a long time before I get anything (FALSE)
o   Over the past 18 months, members who were selected had profiles created from March 2010 – November 2020. 42 testers (21%) joined in 2020. If you’re new and are contributing to the forum, you have a decent chance of being selected.
-       Once I get one review, I won’t ever get another (FALSE)
o   71 (35%) members had more than 1 review in 18 months. I suspect if I go back even further, they had other reviews too. As I said in the above section, if you get chosen and do a good review, you actually put yourself at an advantage to be selected again.
o   No reviewer had more than 3 reviews in the past 18 months. It appears that this is the limit, it looks to be extremely rare for a member to have more than 1 review every 6 months. 
-       I have to be good at golf to be selected for a review (FALSE)
o   This idea is very much false, MGS wants members of all skill levels to be involved in testing. In order to prove this, I pulled the handicaps listed on members’ profiles. This is a limitation because it is member provided information that is most likely not updated regularly. Regardless, here is what I found.
Range – (33 - +5) Mean – 10.09 Median – 9.2 o   If anything, having an accurate handicap is beneficial to being selected because, it appears that MGS wants to have a broad range of testers for each product, specifically balls and clubs.
 
Conclusion
For the most part, MGS sticks to what they say when it comes to choosing testers but it appears that there is some non-measurables that they use when it comes to selecting first time testers. It does not appear that there is a formula or that it is completely random. There seems to be a human element which makes it hard to say exactly why specific members were chosen over others from the outside looking in. 
Shoutout to @Brian A, @jlukes, @B.Boston, @txgolfjunkie, @gavinski91, @Mtbryant01, @daviddvm for having been selected to review over $3,000 worth of equipment! These individuals were ones who had been selected for this year or last year's Cobraconnect challenge. So each of them had at least one product review in addition to cobra connect in the past 18 months. 
 
TL;DR - Overall, post quality content frequently, if you are given a chance to test an item, take it seriously, and keep posting. If you’re new and you stay involved, your time will come. 
 
Okay, I’m tired. Let me know you’re thoughts!

It's next to impossible to find a Linksmaster bag, and at $600 it's far out of my price range.  I paid about $210 all-in for my Stitch SL2 stand bag with the 40% off discount that I got.