Breaking out some new technology
This is another blog about gear and specs. I’m writing a few posts about this right now as this is what I am working to figure out. It has rained so much here over the past two weeks that I fully believe the biblical floods are upon us. Seeing as hitting off of mats into a torrential downpour doesn’t necessarily make for the most realistic golf simulations, I have determined to figure out how to optimize my 2015 gear. For a long time there have been a few suspected issues with what I have been playing with, but there was always so much going on that it was hard to focus on changing gear, and my knowledge base at the time wasn’t quite what it is now. This month is a perfect time for gear shifts and I hope to have it all figured out by January. I have basically played the exact same specs (especially with the irons and wedges=) throughout my set of clubs since I first got a full bag of 14 on December 30, 2011. Three years later my swing has become much more consistent and it’s time to find the right gear to match that swing.
Earlier this week I finally got everything sorted and broke out the FlightScope. I shot a little video of some thoughts while working with the new technology, too:
not the best video quality that I’ve ever shot, but the point comes across pretty well, I think. The new irons really fit me and my swing has almost overnight transitioned from inside to out 5-6 degrees to being close to on plane. this is great as I was never able to control the ball with my previous setup if the club went on plane. It seems crazy, but I think the toe was up with the old irons which caused the ball to have more of a hook tendency so I had to swing out a lot and hold off the face, which wasn’t super easy, especially in pressure situations.
Not so much from here on out. I’m slowly starting to learn more and more about things like lie angle and how that impacts the ball flight. It’s great. Knowledge is a good thing.
To help further that knowledge, today I went down to Oregon City to visit with my friend Jari at Birdie Finish golf. He’s the best master club builder in Portland and I wanted to have him take a look at my new sticks to see how close they were to 3 flat. Golf is not always a perfect science when it comes to ordering new clubs and I have heard horror stories from others about how far off their sticks were from what they were supposed to be. I had complete faith that mine were flat as I could tell from hitting them and the ball flight, but I was curious as to how close they were to what I had ordered. I also wanted to learn more about how to measure loft and lie in hopes that one day I will be able to check and adjust things on my own, as well as many other tasks in club building and comprehension. “One repays a teacher badly if one always remains nothing but a pupil.”
In the meantime, Jari is an excellent source and I would definitely recommend anyone who is curious about your own clubs to go have them checked out. He can definitely help your game.
Here is a short video of Jari working:
For the record, the new Titleist irons and Vokey wedges came in almost perfectly as they were ordered. All were between 2.5 and 3 degrees flat and each one was exactly the loft that it was supposed to be, which is great!
I have learned so much about how gear can influence ball flight over the past month. I’m pretty surprised at just how important it can be. There are probably a few people who fit perfectly into stock-standard clubs, but for the rest of us when you want to get down to that lower handicap it’s an important piece of the puzzle.
I now have great resources here in town as well as the FlightScope to make sure things are going how they should. The next step is to find a driver that instills confidence, as well as a 3-wood. Jari is going to build me a driver to try out and it should be ready by the middle of next week as he has to custom order everything to try and get some stuff that fits me. It also always takes a bit longer as lefties don’t have as many options, so custom it tends to be.
Always moving forward.