My Driver Quest 2024

[HikingMike]

Hi all! I wanted to document my quest to find a new driver for the 2024 season here. I have not been one to change clubs very often. I have seen other MGS members apparently post about their similar driver quest every year, which is fun, but you won't see that from me. But recently I have learned a lot, and am still learning a lot. I'm also learning about my swing. I have a bit of a gear bug now. I just like reading about the stuff. Ever since my GPS watch broke last August and I found MyGolfSpy, I have been on a Journey of Golf Awakening™, loaded with epiphanies, on the road to total golf consciousness. So I got that going for me, which is nice

Maybe this will help someone else, or spur on questions and discussions about drivers and our games, spin, driver length, shafts, you name it. Please add your input, if you want... advice... ask me questions... And if nothing else, I can always look back on it myself. 

More posts to follow. Join me, on this Voyage of Discovery!

Little known fact - Lewis & Clark (above) were both scratch golfers*

For now, here's my introduction post on the regional Intro/WIYB thread: LINK

*not a fact

Edited May 5 by HikingMike

[HikingMike]

The Catalyst

As I mentioned, my Callaway GPSy watch broke in August. Actually I cracked off part of the main plastic watch housing, the part that held one of the sides of the armband. There was no repairing that My only options were to just use it as a pocket watch, or look for something new. 

 

I always research tech stuff a bit before buying, so I did the same here. Little did I know that looking for golf GPS watch options would become a gateway for opening up everything for reconsideration, learning about golf gear, how stuff works, my swing, and all kinds of golf stuff. 

I found myself at MyGolfSpy a lot! And it became my go to place. It was filling in a large gap with its independent and data-driven testing and review methods. I joined the forum August 18, 2023, and started off with a post in the Introduce Yourself thread for the Midwest region. This thread can be my MGS discovery story too, lol.

Shortly after that I jumped into some threads about golf GPS devices, Arccos, etc. I found a thread "TRYING to ditch Arccos..." and posted there. I also found one "MYGOLFSPY VIRTUAL TOUR and GOLFSHOT APP" and I posted there to ask for the MGS discount code. If you're not aware, Golfshot is a phone app and Apple Watch app to track your shots, keep your scores, and also tell you some extra data about your swing and things like that. I had read up on Golfshot several other places too, and I made the decision to try it out. And then later I went back and posted a bunch more Golfshot stuff for a nice 9-hole score I had, screenshots of some of my holes in Golfshot along with swing data, and Strokes Gained. I also posted some of my 3 wood shots to "Anyone completely ditched fairway woods in their bags?". It took a few rounds to get it down for using on the course, but when I got it, I really liked it. And I was enjoying the MGS forum interaction for sure!

This factors in to my Driver Quest 2024, so stay tuned...

 

Edited April 25 by HikingMike

[HikingMike]

New Data

By October, my golf season was mostly done, 2 leagues ended, I had 8 rounds saved in my Golfshot app, and I had video-ed my swing for the very first time at the driving range. 

The Golfshot app had told me a lot of great stuff. I had my club gapping easy to see at a glance. Swing ID showed tempo, rhythm, hand speed, backswing plane angle, transition, swing path. And I had more stats on my rounds. Data, data, data! Now I will say I may not have entered everything fully and things aren't always correct, so take these stats with a grain of salt. The club gapping has some issues as well, so I think with more rounds in there the bad shots will be ironed out and I'll have more even gapping to better match the distances I play.

      

One thing Golfshot's Swing ID told me was that I was steepening significantly at the transition between backswing and downswing (rather than shallowing). The other thing was that my path was outside-to-in. I thought that outside-to-in stuff was crazy because I hit a draw, sometimes a bad hook, and I can see my divot clearly going inside-to-out. So that's not right. Strange...

First Ever Swing Video

Anyway, both of these things prompted me to video myself on the driving range so I could see what was going on. I had started playing a bit worse near the end of the season, and I didn't like it  

Lo and behold, I could clearly see the steepening in my swing video, and it did not look great. Arrrrghhhh. My swing was not as pretty as I imagined in my head, haha. Bad habits had developed.

Ok that was something to work on. So I began learning about shallowing. Shallowing/steepening is one aspect of the swing that I had never once thought about before. I don't know if I was lucky to avoid it or what. But there was a plethora of info out there about it, and I started thinking about my swing more. 

I started posting more in the MGS forums. Hey what a great place

Edited April 25 by HikingMike

[HikingMike]

In November, I applied and was selected to be part of the big group of MGS testers for Titleist prototype ball, wooohoo!!

Here is my first post in that test - 

That was freakin awesome and a lot of fun. I made over 30 posts on that. That also led to a lot more November golf for me than normal, and normal is basically zero. I had a duty to the MGS test, and also I wanted to improve on my poor play near the end of the season Great!

I had also started learning about Strokes Gained over this time. I definitely like data, and this is the kind of data you can really do something with. 

Back to the Golfshot app, around mid-November, I had 2 rounds submitted for Strokes Gained in the Golfshot app. This was a new-ish feature release for the app, and I think it was one of the reasons I ended up going with that rather than another app. My choice was more of Golfshot app vs. Shotscope X5 watch... both had some Strokes Gained analysis. 

Well, thanks to that November golf and new Strokes Gained analysis, I could see that off-the-tee was the worst part of my game.

I'll be honest. I knew this was my biggest problem. But I hadn't seen it objectively like this, and definitely not quantified before. And I hadn't had the experiences or tools to make the ideal changes to fix it. I'm playing more and doing a bit better because of that. I still had basic swing knowledge from my lessons as a kid and through playing. But there is more to it than just going out and playing, and there was more to learn and more to watch out for. My poor late-season play and my driving range self-video was a wake-up for that. 

I just wanted to do it better and now I was armed with more knowledge and more able to take action to do that. Plus the offseason and MyGolfSpy participation allowed for more reflection. So I would continue to absorb knowledge and tools to work on this problem more effectively. I also made it a goal to not get as rusty in the offseason as usual, so I could start up the new season better.

[HikingMike]

Goals

So I had some offseason goals identified: 

• Improve my driver
• Keep the rust off
• Fix swing faults particularly with driver (steepening...)

I hit driver fairly long compared to my buddies. So it could be a real weapon for me if it was more consistent and safe. I have gone for stretches where I can confidently know I'll hit my draw, start it off right, and it will come back. And it will be in play, and I'll have great rounds. And then I'll have stretches where I get some hooks that are too big, or snap a couple - and I'll try to correct, and that will leave me going back and forth between hooking it way left, and slicing it way right. 

Have to throw in a couple good ones here

 

Learning About Driver Spin

With the Titleist White Box Test, I also started learning a bit more about spin. That's yet another thing I hadn't really thought of before. I truly just went out there and played. I tried to play well, and I play ok, but I was not a student of the game or the technical details by any means. And this is coming from a previous high school team player, long time ago. But if you're testing a ball, of course spin is one of the biggest things you care about. 

This knowledge of spin would help apply to my driver for sure. 

Across The Line

I was lucky to get some excellent swing critique based on my driving range video from a golf coach that opened themselves up to these on Reddit. I had already confirmed the steepening that Golfshot app was telling me. 

This instructor told me: 

Quote

You’re pretty across the line at the top of the swing you try to point the club more behind you or I’m playing at the top that’s what’s leading to a lot of these hooks. Normally when people are too far across the line, they swing too far into out to the right and if they close the face, it’s a big hook, and if they don’t keep the face open, it goes straight to the right. 

Quote

"Across the line" - does that mean past horizontal? Yeah I'm seeing that too. I didn't realize I was going past horizontal that much.

Quote

Hard to explain over text, but if you go to the top of the swing, the club points more to the right of the target over your head instead of at the target or if you pointed the club, we left the Target that is laid off. Daniel Berger is an example of a laid off swing Bryson DeChambeau’s example of across the line swing 

Quote

Ooooh thank you. Yeah I'm pointing the club right of target I see (at the top). Wow watching Berger's swing and DeChambeau's swing helps a lot. Berger's is pretty weird to me. Ok, I'll have to play with that to see how it feels. I have never paid attention to how the club points at the top so I don't have any feel for that.

Yeah I see what you mean. Pointing that way at the top forces me to swing heavily inside-to-out since that's the swing plane as I pull it down. I compensate by turning over my wrists in time, but that can make a big hook and just inconsistency (hook left or push straight right). This is making sense.

Many thanks

Quote

Yeah, definitely. You don’t need to swing leg burger like tigers are really good. Example of it on plain swing, but you might need to feel like you do burger to get to the center on plane tiger style swing. 

Well that was amazing. Major thanks to giga_ice! I would have never known what "across the line" meant, and his analysis was spot on. I guess I could call these two terms "across the target line" and "laid off the target line" to be more descriptive. I've since heard people say if you do this, it forces you to "throw your hands" through the hitting zone, and that's true too. All in all, with that setup, it makes sense that I have to be extremely precise, otherwise it's easy to get a big hook or a big push slice. That's what was happening. If I can mitigate this, then I should be able to hit straight more often, with less left/right danger.

Daniel Berger - "Laid Off" at the top

Bryson DeChambeau - "Over the Line" at the top

Edited May 5 by HikingMike
added labels to videos

[HikingMike]

Updated offseason goals:

• Improve my driver
• Keep the rust off
• Fix swing faults particularly with driver (over the line & steepening)

I tried to go to the driving range in town a couple times when the weather was decent, but it was closed. A sign there said they'd be open dependent on weather. Well weather was decent, but it was winter, so I understand.

But I did start making practice swings with driver in my back yard every couple days, weather permitting. I really wanted to practice the feel of what I wanted to improve on my swing, how to reduce my "over the line" position at the top, and basically just get the swing into shape before league started. It was pretty basic, just making 20 swings or so, but it did feel like this helped a bunch. 

Thanks to @Indy_Oz, I learned Golf Galaxy just had a free Cobra Darkspeed fitting, and had Callaway Ai Smoke and TaylorMade Qi10 fittings coming up shortly! I knew there were promo demos/fittings out there somewhere, but I had never done one and didn't know how to find one. I did some searching around on Golf Galaxy's website, and sure enough, coming up were those fitting events as well with some time slots to reserve. Let's do it! It will be fun to hit the new clubs, and this will definitely help with my keeping the rust off in the offseason goal as well. Shoot, I wish I had a chance to hit the Darkspeeds. Callaway was at the end of January, and TaylorMade was the next weekend.

[HikingMike]

January 28 - I had my Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke driver fitting at Golf Galaxy. I made a longer post (below). But let me summarize just for my 2024 driver quest

Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke driver fitting

This was the first time I hit a ball since November, that was definitely helpful to knock the rust off. But 2 months of golf down time is really good for me. It was great to get some indoors practice. 

 Keep the rust off

I was hitting a bunch of strong draws and hooks in the Trackman bay. I told the fitter I wouldn't normally go for a fitting when I hadn't played much. The fitter said "you and everybody else".

He ended up fitting me into the Ai Smoke Triple Diamond 9.0 degrees with X-stiff Lin-Q 75 shaft. My fitter started me out with stiff, then went to extra stiff. That was an eye opener, because my current driver is a regular. I knew it was probably wrong since I had a stiff shaft in my 3 wood after a fitting 1-2 years prior. But I hadn't been paying much attention really until I started diving in to stuff with my GPS watch breaking, joining the MGS forum, and reading up. 

With the Trackman's club data, I also discovered I was hitting up significantly on the ball (high dynamic loft). I learned more about spin when hitting different parts of the face, and also learned more about how the LS/LST low spin heads and the MAX heads with their different COGs act differently regarding spin depending on where you hit the ball on the face. I got a good gauge for how high I should be hitting it as well - some of my best hits were 105-120 ft height and 2300-2700 rpm spin.

The fitter also described a bit about the shaft flexing during the swing and why a stiffer shaft could lead to more consistency. He said at the beginning of your downswing is the point where your hands move the fastest, so the shaft flexes the most. As you get further in the downswing it’s a bit less, and so the shaft flexes back a bit closer to straight. At the top of the swing, it might not be in the same place every time of course. And as you are pulling down on the downswing, you are working to correct to the right path. You can do that some, but the result is inconsistent hitting on the face of the driver. The more flex of a regular shaft like my driver causes that issue to be much more pronounced than with a stiff flex shaft. Less flex means I can control where the club head goes better. Also, as a result I will gradually be able to get a better feel for my consistent shot. The pros generally use stiffer shafts for this reason. Long drive competitors actually use much higher flex since they get more distance with the snapping back of the shaft adding a little more speed. And of course for long drive competitors, they don't have to worry about some of the horribly offline shots. They get a bunch of hits to get a straight one and don’t care about dispersion like someone actually playing on a course.

Based on the numbers, I did hit the Smoke Triple Diamond better than my gamer driver. Overall it was a good experience, it was fun, and I learned some good stuff for my driver game. I really liked the fitter as well, we had a good rapport.

 Fix swing faults particularly with driver (over the line & steepening)

 

Edited April 25 by HikingMike

[HikingMike]

TaylorMade Qi10 driver fitting

The next weekend, I did a TaylorMade Qi10 driver fitting at Golf Galaxy!

 Keep the rust off

At the TaylorMade Qi10 driver fitting, I had a new fitter. Good guy, but I didn't mesh with him as well as I did the last one. I was still hitting strong draws and some hooks, but it was a little better. We went through different shafts with the vanilla Qi10, stiff mostly, 65g and 60g. He did have me try regular flex for the heck of it in case I was used to that on my current gamer. We didn't try extra stiff this time. 

After the vanilla Qi10, he switched me to the Qi10 LS. He moved the slider weight to the fade position to counteract my draws and hooks. This one is interesting in that the screw is stationary and it just tightens the weight behind it which slides. At first I didn't realize what position the weight was in because I didn't realize how it worked. I tried both the 10.5 and the 9 degree. 

I think he said the standard Qi10 has a slight draw bias, and it doesn't have a slider. And he said the Qi10 Max has more draw bias so he didn't bring that one near me, haha. 

My final fit was: Qi10 LS, 10.5 degree, slider to fade, Tensei Blue stiff shaft 65g

I did take a couple swing tips - he said I had a nice swing, but... He didn't have all the numbers up there on the screen like I did last time. But I think he showed another screen just one time with all of that info. He made a point to look at this to check my swing path, and I did come inside-to-out a lot, 6 degrees. That makes it tough to have square club at impact also, not just creating hook spin. As I hit up on it, I may be having the club in front of my hands at impact, releasing fully at or before impact. Dustin Johnson for example he said still has hit hands way in front of the club with driver. Hands pull up and left when club impacts ball, finish high. Open face at address, hands forward, left shoulder high. Thinking about all this all screwed me up a bit, but the idea makes sense. 

2 big things on my swing-

• I need to straighten out my swing path and be less inside to out so it’s easier to square the face at impact. 
• I need to not hit up on it as much, if possible.

The swing path seems like a more critical thing for my driver play than the hitting up on it. I'm glad he flagged that. 

I will say the Qi10 was a super-attractive club. On looks alone, I much preferred it to the Ai Smoke. But for hitting, I liked them both. I'm not sure which I liked better. It was really neat to be able to try out these brand new clubs, a new experience for me. Based on the numbers, I was also hitting the Qi10 LS better than my gamer driver.

I also kept up my practice driver swings in back yard, now with knowledge of my hugely inside-to-out swing path that I wanted to straighten out a bit. I worked on what feel I needed to have to accomplish my swing fixes, and came up with a good adjustment. Next, to keep that up and take it to hit some more balls.

 Fix swing faults particularly with driver (over the line, steepening, swing path)

A couple of my best shots, that I photo-ed-

Edited April 25 by HikingMike

[HikingMike]

Here are some Trackman numbers from my Callaway Paradym Ai Smoke and TaylorMade Qi10 driver fittings. This includes numbers from the 2 setups I was fit into, and from my gamer. I got a Trackman report for the first one, but not for the second, so I just had to get what I could from the photos I took.

Analysis: Looks like I had higher club speed with my gamer G20, but lower ball speed - super interesting. The Callaway gave me 13 yards more carry, 24 yards more total distance. My gamer had much higher spin.

Ball: He had me hitting a Callaway Chromesoft

Analysis: Looks like same club speed and ball speed. But with the Qi10 I was getting 10.5 yards more carry, 21 yards more total distance than my gamer G20. This is due to the spin difference. I hit my Ping G20 gamer slightly better this time compared to last fitting. I had been doing more swinging lately, and none last time.

Ball: He had me hitting a Callaway Chrome Tour

I have to admit, I'm surprised my gamer did not do better. I've played with it a long time. And my Golfshot app showed I average longer than that. There was some rust in there... maybe that was it, hmmm. 

Edited May 5 by HikingMike
fixed formatting

[HikingMike]

TaylorMade Qi10 testing attempt on MyGolfSpy

Funny thing - Roll back a couple days before my TaylorMade Qi10 fitting at Golf Galaxy, and I noticed there was a MyGolfSpy forum testing opportunity for TaylorMade Qi10 drivers. Whooooaaaaa there. That was perfect timing! Hey I probably wouldn't be chosen, and it turned out there were an astonishing 6,000 signups for the test for 6 spots. But I made darn sure to go to the fitting, and I applied to the test. Exciting times!

Here are my posts to the Testers Wanted thread-
https://forum.mygolfspy.com/tests/110-taylormade-qi10-drivers/?do=findComment&comment=20547

and https://forum.mygolfspy.com/tests/110-taylormade-qi10-drivers/?do=findComment&comment=20712

I wasn't chosen, but I definitely enjoyed following the testing. They are still going, and I'm still following, now on page 33 of the thread!

Visit to Solid Impact

Now around this time I also found another driving range fairly close by, Solid Impact, that I hadn't known existed until now. The place looked great actually. It was a driving range, pro shop with 2 sim bays, and they provide fittings and lessons. The driving range also had a sheltered section and was supposedly heated. And on top of that, it was an independent place, not a big box. And unlike my other range, they should be open with regular hours even in winter. They actually have range passes priced by month, year, and April thru November, very cool.

I wanted to check it out, so I drove there when I had time to kill on a slightly snowy day actually. I ended up talking to the guy there, John, for a while about the driving range, fittings, used clubs, etc. Great guy, and I liked the store. 

Also let me say I wasn't planning to spend $600 on a new driver. So I had started looking up drivers to check used prices and availability on Ebay, 2nd Swing, GlobalGolf, Mike's Golf Outlet, etc. From that lurking, it seemed possible that I could be fitted into a driver that wasn't a new release, with fitting info for the model, loft, shaft, etc. ... and then I should be able to find one used on the secondary market, as long as the specs were common enough, especially the shaft. For example, I checked out Ping G430 line, G425 line, Cobra Aerojet, etc. This might not be news to other people that switch out clubs frequently, but I didn't know how possible that would be. 

I mentioned this "plan" to John, and he said yeah that's totally doable. I could get a regular driver fitting with him at Solid Impact, focus on stock shaft options. And then I could take my fit options and go look on Ebay or whatever afterward.

I went back there to hit on the range twice in March, and then scheduled a driver fitting session!

 Keep the rust off

 Fix swing faults particularly with driver (over the line, steepening, swing path)

 

Edited April 26 by HikingMike

[HikingMike]

Now we're getting serious about a new driver I have a bunch of new knowledge of my swing, my rough plan to buy a used driver, and a new driver fitting scheduled for a an independent shop with a great brand selection. Let's go!

Driver Fitting at Solid Impact Golf

I had a great fitting session with John at Solid Impact Golf. I noticed the sim bays were definitely much bigger than the ones at Golf Galaxy. At GG, when I stepped back to take a practice swing, I didn't have enough space behind me. I actually bonked my gamer driver off the wall behind me, thankfully on a very light practice swing. Geeez, that's not cool. I found at GG I had to move the ball out of the way to actually take a practice swing... or just not take practice swings. But I had no worries about that at Solid Impact. Also I'll note that they had Foresight GC Quad launch monitors/sims here. 

I hit my 7 iron a bit first to warm up and John took a look at my Ping G20 gamer while I did that. Then I hit my G20. I didn't take photos or get a report afterward, but from what I remember, I was seeing numbers similar to what I saw at the two GG fittings. It was just ok carry and total distance and high spin. John noted my swing characteristics so he could start in a good place with different clubs. 

Here are some rough numbers with my G20 from my previous GG fittings-
GG1 252 carry/267 total, 3,100-4,000 rpm
GG2 263 carry/275 total, 3,500 rpm

Then we tried some other clubs, and made some shaft and loft adjustments along the way. 

• Ping G400 LST 
• Ping G430 LST
• Callaway Paradym (Triple Diamond?)
• Cobra Darkspeed (LS?)

I was hitting a bunch of hooks. Actually it was an odd flight where it looked pretty straight for 1/3 to 1/2 of the flight, and then really took a turn left. I did let him know that I do hit a draw regularly. And I'll hit a bad hook once or twice a round maybe, but not almost every shot like it was showing. It looks weird. He called it "really ripping left", haha. 

I hit the Ping G430 LST well, besides that flight. And same with the Callaway Paradym. I noted the Paradym had a dull thud feel to it and it definitely didn't give as much feedback about how I hit it on the face. And the head felt heavier as I swung it. They were definitely different, both good. John noted that the Pings are known for swinging lighter generally and that's why he started me off with other Ping models. 

But really interesting was that the 8.5 degree Ping G400 LST was the one club that wasn't doing that. We came back to it and I hit it a bit more. It was turned down to the Big Minus for loft, which meant it was 7.5 degrees instead of 8.5 degrees, and it opened the face slightly as well. Then he seemed pretty satisfied with that. I asked, should I hit any others out there? He said "do you want to hit something?" I looked behind me and saw Cobra, and I was like sure how about a Cobra Darkspeed? 

He set up a Darkspeed for me, most likely a Darkspeed LS. I hit it well too. I would say for all these other clubs really, I had better spin and distance than my gamer. That points to me not having the right setup in my gamer, which I expected, but it was still interesting to see it in raw numbers. But besides the G400 LST, they all had the weird big hooks. 

I can't remember which clubs these were below, but they were a couple good ones. John mentioned he was looking for 160 mph ball speed. I did have a few that were over 300. Distance was consistently good. Now that I knew more from the previous fittings, I wish it had club numbers in there like club speed, efficiency, angle of attack. But they were blank on this one. 

 

So wow, G400 LST was looking good. And that was about it for my fitting time. John told me about the Ping driver lineup going back from the G430 to the G400, and listed out those I could use as my options when searching for a used club. He said I definitely wanted to look for the Ping Tour 65g stiff shaft for those. And he noted that the Ping adapter changed after the G400. Man I had really expected to be put in something a bit newer. But the price was good for sure. It was a bit more beat up than I liked, haha. They would also give me a trade-in credit if I traded in the G20. 

I went back home and over a few days I thought about it, and checked out Ebay and such some more. I eventually decided I did have to get the G400 LST because what it did compared to the others in cutting out that big hook was too much to ignore. And I hit it well. And their price was right. It was a little more beat up than I wanted, but I could handle that for the price. Listings at Ebay and the other stores were rather scarce for the 8.5 degree and stiff shaft. The few that I found were definitely higher cost.

So I called them up and told them I'd come to get it!

Improve my driver (I hope!) 

  

[HikingMike]

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that I broke a ball at my fitting at Solid Impact, haha. I picked up the ball to put it back on the tee and noticed it was nearly cracked in half. My fitter said that was common - the ball will hit and spin against the screen and it gets hot. Wow, I didn't know that. I was just impressed I broke the ball in half, lol. A couple shots may have been off due to that. 

 

I went back to Solid Impact for a range session not long after. I wanted to get some hits in with the new driver! League was starting up shortly. And I got a buddy to come with me who needed to knock the rust off, and who I hope starts playing more regularly   

It was a pretty windy day. But I noticed the driver definitely hit differently than I was used to with my old driver. I'm really glad I had this chance to get used to it before league. But I ended up hitting it well and getting a feel for how I needed to hit it. And I guess it was good practice in the wind. The flight definitely stayed lower than my old driver. Distance? I couldn't tell. 

Now I've also played 3 rounds, and I like the change. I feel like I am hitting it straighter and more consistently so far. Distance? It's probably a little longer. My home course has been pretty damp though and we've gotten a lot of rain here. So there isn't much roll, and I'll reserve full judgement on that. 

It is possible that the ball flight is lower and less spinny than optimal. I'll just keep that thought in the back of my mind for now. 

Losing Trust in the Sims?

But one thing that is getting to me is that it just feels like the simulators were off in their interpretation of my hits. I know I chose this driver because it was the one that wasn't making big hooks. But I don't know if I believe those big hooks in the sims now. What if those odd flight paths were just wrong? I don't hit a giant hook out there every time. 

That's great. I thought I had a good way to get data and sort things out, but now I'm not sure. I know there are others out there that won't do an indoor-only fitting. We'll see, but I may be like that too. The good thing is Solid Impact has outdoor hitting also. 

Now that I look back, I see that my spin was quite low on the two fitting photos I took last - 1833 and 1961 rpm. More spin might help out a bit with carry. Though it could exacerbate misses. I'll watch that anyway. I do have plenty of room to go back to standard loft since it's down a degree currently.

I will say I am also trying out a new ball as well, Wilson Triad. I posted a forum review for it.

By the way, you can see my new bag in the photos. And the old original headcover for this G400 LST was pretty ratty (was this kept outside?) so I got a new one, a really classy green and white one!

[HikingMike]

I played 9 holes in league yesterday evening from the white tees. It was a great driving day! I hit 5 of 7 fairways! No penalties and no lost balls. On a couple holes, I had drives that were the closest to the green I've ever had. I had 2 birdies back-to-back! It's been a while since I did that. And I had a good look at eagle, but missed the putt. I've been comfortable, consistent, and confident with my medium draw on most tee shots, and that is really great to have going. 

The ball flight seemed good. If I can keep up my consistency, I might try upping the loft slightly to gain a tiny bit more spin for more carry. But the low loft could definitely be one of the reasons I've been better at hitting the fairway.

  

 

[HikingMike]

Driver Shaft Lengths

I wanted to include some info about driver shaft lengths here.

But first, here's the Ping Tour 65 stiff shaft in my G400 LST. Ping's website says it weighs 62.0g and launch angle is Low Mid.

Ping's Europe website still has a page for it: https://eu.ping.com/en-us/products/clubs/driver/g400-lst

 

I noticed my Ping G400 LST has a slightly shorter length than other retail clubs. The stock length with the Ping Tour 65g stiff shaft that I have is indeed a little shorter than with their other shafts on this same club. 

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The Tour 65 shaft is available at an upcharge - default standard length is 45.25"

And it shows standard length for 3 other available shafts is 45.25" also. Meanwhile on the main specs page for the G400 LST, it shows 45 3/4" as the length. It looks like the Ping Alta CB 55 is the "normal" shaft for it, and the Ping Alta Distanza is another option. So those must be the 45.75" ones.

This is half an inch shorter than my G20 is. You can see in this MGS article, that the standard length for the G20, including with the Ping TFC 169D shaft that I had in it, is listed at 45.75".

It's interesting to note this because not long ago I had discovered that the driver length that pros play on average was shorter than the normal retail standard length. Wow, this seems like something I should know. A person logically has a better time hitting the center of the face and reducing dispersion just through the simple length difference. Now everyone's different, but I like the idea of a small shortening of the driver length to hit it more solid more consistently. I don't usually hit all over the face, but I do notice when I hit it solid and not solid. 

Here was something I posted in the TaylorMade Qi10 driver forum review thread-

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I for one am glad to see the discussion on driver shaft length, as someone else who just discovered the pros play a significantly shorter average length than the retail clubs in the store. I’d like to ask a fitter about this next time. Though they may not commonly have different shaft length options.

“90% of driver shafts are too long”

I also posted about this in the golf ball rollback thread, and reference this article- https://www.todays-golfer.com/features/equipment-features/2020/june/driver-shaft-length/

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“I’d say 90 per cent of the drivers sold in the shops today are too long for most players,” says esteemed clubmaker Tom Wishon, of Wishon Golf. “The standard driver length of 45.5-46.5 inches offered by the majority of companies is too long for most golfers and will prevent them from achieving their maximum potential for distance and accuracy.”

“I very rarely build drivers that are 46 inches long,” says Murray, a former tour fitter who finds the vast majority of his clients are better off with a shaft that’s shorter than the manufacturer standard. “On tour I very rarely built drivers that were over 45 inches long.”

And Wishon agrees. “There’s a very good reason the average driver length on the PGA Tour is 44.5 inches and not 45.5 or 46.5.”

 

It would be good to confirm that. But I did come across some data on pros listed on Ping's website about their staff pros-

PING staffers driver length (inches), per Ping website:

• Champ 45.0
• Cink 45.25
• English 45.0
• Finau 45.25
• Hovland 45.75
• Hughes 45.5
• Kim 45.25
• Moore 44.5
• Perez 45.25
• Phillips 45.25
• Schwab 45.25
• Skinns 45.25
• Smalley 45.25
• Theegala 45.0

And I also read that Scottie Scheffler's Qi10 standard driver he is playing at 45.0 inches.

So averaging those, I get 45.18 inches. That's not nothing. It is higher than what Wishon said was the 44.5 inch average back in 2020 though, so possibly it has crept upward. But it's still shorter than drivers on the retail rack.

This half inch shorter length may be another factor to help my driving game. We will see. It would be nice to have a ton of sim time and be able to switch out gear easily to game all of this out. I can't put that kind of investment into it, but I will keep this in mind. Also, I don't know how much I trust the sims now.

Edited May 5 by HikingMike

[HikingMike]

I had some more notes from my first range session and my first round with the G400 LST that I haven't posted yet, so let me just add those here. 

First Time at the Range

At my first driving range session, it was my first time hitting it outdoors. It did hit much differently than my G20. And I had my first inklings that what I was seeing with my shots on the sim was not reflected in my shots in real life. Both at Solid Impact where I was fitted for this driver on a Foresight GC Quad, and at Golf Galaxy where I did two fittings (Callaway, TaylorMade) with their Trackman, my shots with all the drivers would very often start out as a baby draw, and then halfway into the flight become a huge hook taking a giant turn left. It was less the case with the G400 LST, and that was partly behind me ending up with this. But now that I was back hitting outdoors after winter, I felt like that was something I didn't see in real life, and it wasn't down to my swinging differently each place. 

But it was also great to know I was able to hit this straight after getting the hang of it! Some of them even had a light fade to them which was different for me. In the past if I've been overcorrecting, I could hit a big slice, not a controlled fade.

First 18 Holes

I played 18 holes at my home course with some teammates to have a little warmup before league started. I was inconsistent but ok with the G400 LST. Just like the range visit, my shots weren't looking like what showed up on the sim with the big left turn. I did hook some, but they were normal hooks. I sliced one. But I also hit some good ones that were in the fairway or just barely off the fairway. 

At the time I thought it will take more getting used to to gain more consistency. And I seemed to gain that in my more recent round or two. 

I'll also note that these real-life hitting experiences make me think my fitter and I were a little too overzealous with the low loft and low spin. It's possible my drives are too low spin and are falling out of the sky a little, leaving room for some optimization. I'll watch this going forward. If so, it means I could try bumping it back to standard loft setting. Or I could try another ball even. But it also means maaayyyybe we shouldn't have ruled out other drivers like the G430 LST 9.0 degrees (or the G425 LST which I haven't tried yet) purely based on the behavior of my shots on the sim. Btw, I read Viktor Hovland prefers the G425 LST to the G430 LST, and plays it... but G430 LST is supposedly better for most. The G425 was so good, there was definitely discussion on this at MGS as well. 

Strokes Gained

I have 4 rounds in so far this year. I filled in all my putt distances and was able to submit these rounds for strokes gained too.

Here are my strokes gained from individual rounds - everything I have in there, so 4 rounds this year and 2 rounds last year. (The most recent one was from the shorter tees.)

Just looking at the top 4, that is a hell of a progression of driver strokes gained decreasing: -4.27, -3.34, -2.01, -0.63. Wow that's exciting! 

Now here are my overall strokes gained for all 6 rounds below. Strokes gained for Tee did get a hair worse. But keep in mind out of 2 rounds last year, 1 was really really good for my tee game at just -0.90, definitely an anomaly. So now Tee is at -2.45, while for my two rounds last year it was -2.22. 

All 6 rounds-

Just 2 rounds last year-

So Tee is nearly the same, Approach is nearly the same. Short Game and Putting have gotten a little worse.

Considering how erratic I was off the tee in the second half of last season, which is not counted in these, I consider this a win so far in 2024. Let's hope that continues!

[RetiredBoomer]

While as a casual recreational player, I don't get as deep into the weeds on equipment as most of our forum members, I can't do anything with a 460cc driver.

I don't like teeing the ball that high.

I don't like playing the ball that far forward in my stance.

I don't like hitting up at the ball.

My current driver is around 300cc which looks huge at address to me, but it has enough loft that I can still hit slightly down at it, more like a normal golf shot. 

Maybe it costs a few yards to hit a smaller driver, but if one is making more consistent contact,
it's really not costing anything.   
 

 

 

[HikingMike]

On 5/3/2024 at 3:24 PM, RetiredBoomer said:

While as a casual recreational player, I don't get as deep into the weeds on equipment as most of our forum members, I can't do anything with a 460cc driver.

I don't like teeing the ball that high.

I don't like playing the ball that far forward in my stance.

I don't like hitting up at the ball.

My current driver is around 300cc which looks huge at address to me, but it has enough loft that I can still hit slightly down at it, more like a normal golf shot. 

Maybe it costs a few yards to hit a smaller driver, but if one is making more consistent contact,
it's really not costing anything.

Interesting stuff. Can you say what model your driver is? 

This makes me wonder about the volume of my first couple drivers in the mid and late 90s - Lynx Boom Boom and Callaway Big Bertha War Bird. They were definitely smaller than 460cc, but that's about the time they started getting bigger I think. I did some googling but was not able to find it.

[RetiredBoomer]

On 5/4/2024 at 10:02 PM, HikingMike said:

Interesting stuff. Can you say what model your driver is? 

 

It's new--a TaylorMade BRNR, 13.5º loft.

I came into this season with all new stuff.
I'll probably never get to do that again.

 

[HikingMike]

Scramble Tournament

I just played in a 4 person scramble on Saturday and had a great time! That was a lot of fun. We won second place in A flight (Championship, A, B flights), actually tying score with the first place at 63 -9 (scorecard playoff). That was a great improvement over last year when our same group came in at the very bottom of A flight with a 68 (-4). 

We used my drives a lot since I was the long driver of the group. I had a few bad ones, but I believe we used my drive on 9 holes. For the par 5s, we had one eagle, and we were on the green or the fringe in 2 shots in 3 out of 4. I got close to the green on a couple shorter par 4s. 

Another guy hit my driver on the last hole just to try it out. I had shown it to him earlier. He hit it well, but it was definitely much lower for him.

New Knowledge

I'll go back to some things I gleaned from my driver fittings and from just my own work-

What I learned from Callaway and TaylorMade fittings:  

• I need a stiff or extra-stiff shaft, not the regular I'm using
• I have plenty of draw, and want to avoid any extra draw bias in a driver
• I hit up on it a lot with driver, too much, 3.5 to 6 degrees, probably should have low loft
• I have higher spin and benefit from using a low spin model of driver, as long as I hit close enough to sweet spot. Otherwise, for off-center hits, the Max heads with more rear COG actually do better for spin than the LS heads.
• My swing path is inside-to-out by a lot, 4 to 6.5 degrees. That makes it difficult to have a square club at impact and to have a consistent shot in the right direction. Of course it imparts a lot of draw spin and the face angle is crucial. Of course I'd love to try to make my swing path more straight through the impact zone, and I'll work on my swing to do that some.

Swing Adjustments

Possible swing adjustments below:

Me

• Takeaway should be steeper and more inside. I was going too far outside, and too flat, and that really affected my swing plane to make more outside-to-in. I found that taking it back steeper also allows for shallowing at the transition. And that benefits your impact and speed.
• Grip - Ensure properly aligned grip with Adam Scott method. I realized I was taking my grip for granted and my left hand was a bit closed sometimes. And I had my right thumb on the top of the grip, which I also learned was no good. 

John from Solid Impact

• I may be keeping the face closed as I do takeaway. Need to open the face as I bring it back. This feels like it could help to prevent strong hooks. I need to be sure I am consistent though.

Colin from GG

• At address, lead shoulder higher, press forward slightly.
• Try to have the hands in front of the club more at impact, finish high.

Graham from GG

• Don't let the club get in front of my hands at impact
• Get 80% of weight on lead foot when club hits ball
• Address ball at toe of the club, since when club is on the ground, it's further in toward body than it would be if lifted up to the ball as when swinging through.
• Don't try to take a little off to hit a tighter shot. Rory says he actually tries to swing slightly harder than what a "normal" swing would be. 
• Shaft flexes most at beginning of downswing, since that's where your hands move fastest. Hands slow a bit further along, and shaft flexes back a bit. More flex of a regular shaft like my driver can exarcerbate inconsistency of clubhead placement and path starting from the top, and that leads to inconsistent hitting of the face. Stiffer shaft will let me control the club head better, and gain a better feel of a consistent shot.

Of course, this is way too much to think about at one time while I'm playing a round. But I will use these notes when doing practice swings at home or going to the range to work on things. And these things will gradually work their way into my game. They are already helping my consistency.

[HikingMike]

I redid my calculation on driver length for pros to include more TaylorMade staffers. It came out to the pros having an average driver length of 45.1597 inches over 18 pros. There is something to that, to say the least. I am pretty sure I will be happy with my driver length reduction to 45.25 inches going forward.

Also there is a new poll up in the forum asking what your driver length is. It has been talked about several places in the forum and was talked about on the community call last week. The poll results will be a topic for this week's call. If you're seeing this, please go there and cast your vote. We could use some more votes.