A little bit of gear and a lot of thanks

I started this blog with a lot of “gear” talk and then was going to put some “in other news” at the bottom, but I’m afraid this format might lose the non-golf readers out there.  So, I’m going to start with the other and then dive into club shop talk.

A few donations came in from the previous blog post by Stuart and I want to thank you all for the generosity and for continuing to read the blog!  You are all so amazing and I am forever in your debt for lending a hand to keep The Dan Plan floating forward.  It will be the three year anniversary in early April as well as the 4,000 hour milestone and I love this more every day.  I hope that all the readers out there are enjoying the process, too.  Please let me know if there is anything I can do for you.  The long term goal is to track progress and learning so as to make this and similar challenges more feasible and possible for anyone to undertake down the road.

I consider myself lucky for being able to pursue my dream, and want to show people that it is a possibility for them, too.  We don’t have to quit our day jobs and go all in, just take it one hour at a time when you have the chance.  Whether it’s in the evening or on the weekends, don’t forget your passions and remember to have fun while following those dreams.  If you are not having fun you probably aren’t learning optimally.

Speaking of fun, I’ve almost completely paid off my former coach.  Just one more payment to Chris for the retroactively applied golf lesson fees and I can move forward.  I don’t like owing debts and will be glad to get that out of the way.

On another completely random note, I want to have some fun guessing games over the next couple of months and have a few in mind, but was pondering prizes.  What would people be interested in winning?  Think big, random, fun, doable, etc and let me know.

Okay, now on to club talk.  I’m so excited about these new wedges!!  They came in late last week and are total champs.  I played a full round today with all four for the first time and couldn’t be happier.  You can actually see them on http://www.vokey.com/ right now too as the feature wedges on the site.  It’s awesome that they chose them for that.  In case they switch the home page, here’s a screen shot of it:

The specs:  All four have Dynamic Golf S200 shafts with Green New Decade Multi Compound grips.

Vokey 46 and 50 degree SM4, each with 8 degrees of bounce.

Vokey TVD grind 54 and 58 degree.

The clubs cut through the ground well and the ball actually checks up on the green like it’s supposed to.  I was playing with long time golf buddies Eric (aka Country Club) and Deryk today and after wedge shots landed within a few feet of the pin and checked up I would look over at Eric who just laughed and said “I told you!” and I had to laugh along.  I’m not paid by Vokey or Titleist, but it’s hard to not want to write about these clubs and this experience.  I feel like all of the countless (although counted) hours of short game practice are finally paying off.  I can hit any number of short shots right now and the ball does what I always thought it should.  Simply gold.

I know have 5 clubs that I love, the four wedges and a SeeMore putter that does me no wrong.  Since I bent the irons back to standard from the 3-4 degrees flat that they were I have been enjoying the trajectory of those, too, although am very curious what it’s like to hit other sticks.  I have heard great things about Titleist and Mizuno irons and would love to try them out.

Speaking of other clubs, my coach, Adrian, and I did a driver lesson this week trying to figure out why I’ve been hitting about 3 fairways a round over the past 25 rounds.  My misses are not manageable, too.  We brought out the TrackMan and I hit my gamer driver on it for a few shots then he had me hit about 5 other drivers, all of which had either “stiff” or “extra stiff” shafts.  What we found was that there was far greater variance in the club face with my gamer driver.  Making the same swing with it the face angle varied from 10 degrees shut to 10 degrees open and this was with making the same swing, not like I was trying to hit a huge draw then fade, my hands were passing through the same each time.  With all the other drivers that number went down significantly, making it fairly obvious that the shaft was not the right profile for me.

It’s funny, though, because just 6 months ago that driver seemed to really fit my swing.  Makes me wonder if 6 months and thousands of drives with it have either degraded the shaft or changed my swing to not fit that shaft profile.  Either way, it’s gotta go now and the main priority is to find a driver and 3-wood that fit, then work with Adrian on fine tuning those swings.  That’s his advice: Find gear that fits and then we can groove the swing.

In a way it’s a large relief on me.  I was hitting huge slices, then hooks, then slice, etc all the way down the course and was confused as to what was going.  I would swing the same way four times and have four completely different results, whereas I can hit an iron or hybrid and know immediately whether it was a good shot or not, with my driver I felt like there was more mystique than skill going on.  For the record, the driver that I have been using is the TaylorMade RBZ 10.5 Tour with the Matrix Rul 60 shaft.  That shaft has a pretty low kick point and a medium flex tip.  What I think is going on is that my swing is pretty flat mixed with the low kick point creates a lot of torque on the shaft bending it not only backward, but twisting the head a little and if it doesn’t snap perfectly in the impact zone there is a large variance of misses.  With a bit heavier shaft that has a higher kick point and less torque my misses should tighten up and with hopefully minimal amount of distance lost.

Today, I went back to an older driver of mine that has a stiffer shaft in it.  I’ve never liked the feel of this club, it’s the Nike 9.5 VRS with the Motore Speeder shaft, and don’t hit it very well, but that shaft is definitely stiffer and although I didn’t hit it very far I did hit 6 fairways, or twice my running average and I could play all of the misses.  I played one ball for all 18 holes for the first time in too long.

Golf is a game of millimeters and it’s 90 percent in your head.  If you aren’t hitting something well your confidence in that stick goes down and then you starting hitting it worse.  You could have two people with nearly identical swings that need very different gear to optimize their game and that is why getting fit is so important.  Ideally, get fit by someone who knows your game.  If you walk into a store and ask a stranger to fit you and you are hitting balls off of mats into a net, what are the odds that you’ll get the right gear?  But, if you have a fitter who works on a range and wants to know about how you actually hit the ball on the course you have much higher odds of finding the right gear.  I’m searching for a driver and 3-wood fitter right now.  Jon at Columbia Edgewater is great for TaylorMade gear and I will check those sticks out this week, but was curious as to the rest.  Who’s the best fitter in Portland for all brands of gear?

One last random question.  Golf can be an expensive game.  What’s the most expensive round you have ever played?  Can be just greens fees or for whatever reason, but what was it?