I don’t want to keep talking gear, as that’s been one of the main subjects for a while, but it is a large part of my winter focus so it’s hard to not at least mention it.  I’ll try to keep it short; here’s what I found:

With the drivers I was pretty surprised to see just how different the swing path, angle of attack and swing speeds were between shafts and head manufactures.  I made ten swings with each different setup I could get (four different driver heads and a few shafts with each) to see how the averages changed with the club.  Unfortunately I was only able to demo two new TaylorMades (the R15 and the Aero something or other) and compare those with my 913 Titleist and a KZG custom head.  Riverside had just sent their older demo clubs back to Titleist, Callaway, Nike, Ping, etc so I will not be able to compare those brands of new drivers for a couple more weeks until the 2015 equipment gets in stock.  For the meantime, though, it was pretty interesting.

I found that with the R15 my swing averaged 1 degree up on the ball and faster than 106mph.  That’s compared to 2 degrees down on the ball and about 103mph with my gamer Titleist.  I wasn’t trying for speed, but was just making nice normal swings with each club to get some consistent feedback, but found it interesting that the same length shaft and basically the same swing weight between those two sticks created fairly different results, especially in the angle of attack.  I’m not sure yet what it means, but it has opened my eyes a bit more about testing out wide variety of gear along the way.  One club is not in any ways “better” than the other, especially amongst top tier lines at the big manufacturers (who all deal with established coefficient of restitution limits), but one combo may fit my particular swing better.

The KZG was permanently put on a shorter shaft of 43″ as it is not an adjustable head.  What I found with that is that my club path was by far the most consistent, but I was averaging just over 100mph with the swings and my fastest swing of 102 was unfortunately balanced with a few around 98.  I swing my 3-wood faster and the ball goes about as far, so even though I have a great club path and strike the ball pretty well with it, the shorter shaft is limiting to me in potential distance, something I cannot afford to lose being currently a bit on the shorter side off the tee.

I am very excited to continue this exploration and can’t wait for the rest of the heads to arrive at Riverside.  I have heard great things about the new 915 driver and will definitely post my findings as soon as I have a chance to compare it with the rest.

The next step of the week was to decide which wedges to stick with.  My original SM4 wedges are the 50, 54 and 58 degree with 8, 11, and 14 degrees of bounce respectively.  They are also standard lie and have stiff flex S200 shafts.  The new wedges are the SM5 with the same lofts and bounces, but with different (bigger soled) grinds, X100 shafts and are 3 degrees flat.  I like the new ones a ton with the whole and half swing, but cannot seem to chip with them worth a darn.  I have stuck more short chip swings in the ground over the past month than I care to remember, something I never did in the past.

I wasn’t sure if it was adjusting to the new wedges or the new bounces and lie.  So, I took out the old ones for a couple of rounds this week and what I found was that I missed the feel with the half and full swings on the new wedges and after a month away from these old ones my chipping wasn’t much better than with the new ones.  What I realized was just that I need to adjust how I have the wedge interact with the grass for short shots and that the new ones will actually make me a better short game played in the long run as they are forcing me to really consider each shot that I make and to not just have one go-to short shot.  They may not be the answer a year or two from now, but in the time being they are teaching me and that is worth keeping them in the bag.

That was the gist of the week, work on short game and tee shots and get my bag ready for the ensuing tourney season.  It was a good week in that respect as I learned a ton about both gear and, in particular, how I interact with it while on the course.

The end of the week was kind of a bummer as I tweaked my psoas muscle at the end of Friday’s round somehow and later that night it continued to ache/bother my walking and swinging so I decided to take Saturday and Sunday off in order to rest it.  I’ve had a similar strain in the past and I tried to play through it and it ended up lasting weeks, so this time I decided to pay attention to my body and take a weekend off instead of potentially inflaming the issue.  After those two days I went out to Riverside on Monday and hit balls for a couple of hours and was feeling much better.  I think by tomorrow or Wednesday it should be back to 100 percent.

On a side note I am starting a new yoga routine to help mobility, stability, strength and prevent these minor injuries from occurring.  Much more on that soon.

Here’s to a great week!

Inspiration abounds and sometimes there’s so much to go around it almost hurts.  Other times it’s hard to find your way through a day.  Lately, I’ve been finding so much beauty in life that I get to the course full of excitement and confidence.  I can’t wait to get there and can’t wait to tee it up after my practice session ends.  I know my skills and game are better than ever and each first tee I hit I’m ready to go after it and make some good shots, shoot a nice and low score.

The problem, though, is that my on-course confidence is at an epic low.  I’m testing some new drivers, trying to change my iron swing, the new wedges I’m not 100 percent sure how to hit short approach shots with due to the different bounces and my putting is good but I don’t seem to start the ball on the line I want each time.  Outside of that, all is gold.

I know the change is going to come and life happens in cycles, but that doesn’t necessarily make it better while you are in the middle of the old “take a step back before moving forward.”  Everything I am doing is for the long-term greater good and I know that progress is happening, just have to stick to my guns.

I’ve been testing out some new drivers and here are the FlightScope numbers from the most recent one:

There are some things I really like about these numbers, like the club path and face to path, but the dynamic loft is now too low on average which added to lower spin is causing a lot ball flight.

This driver has a 43″ Accra stiff shaft in it.  I tested out one right before the holidays with an x-flex shaft and I only played 9 holes with it.  It felt crazy strange and I hadn’t a clue why I literally could not hit the ball more than 170 yards.  The night before I went to see Jari at Birdie Finnish golf to have him switch out the shafts I picked it up and did a light flex test in my hands, honestly not bending the shaft much at all, but then this happened:

It was one of the craziest things I have seen in golf.  There were maybe 20 swings on the shaft and it just exploded in my hands.  I didn’t put much pressure on it, so it must have had just a randomly weak spot.  No offense to Accra, of course, as they make great shafts, I just happened to have found one with a defect.  They will swap it out with Jari, for sure.  But, I do know that the structure of this particular shaft probably led to how it performed on the course.

At any rate, I now have the Stiff flex version and am liking it, but it’s not quite perfect yet.  I can tell that something is a bit off with either the length, the head, the weight or something.  But, it’s getting closer to the date where I find a driver that really fits me.  Right now I am hitting way more fairways with the 43″ shaft and making center contact more often.  But, I am not getting it up in the air high enough, especially for winter time when the ball plugs as soon as it hits grass and a better trajectory can increase your drives by 15-20 yards.

It’s a work in progress, but at least it’s finally progressing.

I am also still adjusting to my new wedges, which is proving to take longer than I had imagined as short wedge game has always been a strength of mine, but now I am finding myself chunking one or two shots a round and then blading a couple.  It does not lead to confidence or scoring.  The question I have is how long do you try something out before you make a decision if it belongs in the bag or not?  Last year I stuck with a driver that I never “found” for months and then realized that it just didn’t fit my game.  In retrospect I wish that I would have switched it out earlier, but I kept thinking something would click.  I don’t want to replicate that experience, but I also want to do my due diligence with any potential new piece of gear.  What does everyone else do?

I’m going to give the new wedges another week and then if I have not found confidence in them will switch out to the old ones for a week to see if it’s the arrow or the operator.

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.

Potentially, this could be a honeymoon period, but from what I have seen and felt thus far I’d say I have finally found gear that truly fits my swing.  I think for the past 1.5 years I have been trying to adapt my swing to my sticks, but my eyes have been opened and I now truly appreciate how much of a difference small changes can make in your equipment.

I am still playing Titleist irons and Vokey wedges, but with the shorter x-flex shafts and having the lie bent 3 degrees flat instead of 1 upright which my older ones were when I had them checked, they feel like completely different clubs (sticks ).  Completely new.

the divots are flush in the sod creating nice rectangular pelts and I don’t have to hold on to prevent the ball from hooking.  I can really get through it and my two shots are either a nice little draw or a miss of a slight push.  It’s remarkable and the best thing that’s happened to my game in quite some time.

The first day I had them I went out and despite having a couple small chipping duffs, a-la Tiger last Thursday, due to not being used to the different grinds and bounces I shot a decent 78.  A few of those bogeys were directly attributed to tee shots and some others from not completely trusting the new sticks as it was my first time out.  The next round I played with them was last Friday and I won a little match play round by shooting a 74.  It was one of those super easy 74s that could have been a few strokes lower if some of the 8-10 foot birdie putts had dropped.  It was great to hit the ball well again and stick some more greens!

Afterwords I almost felt mad at myself for having tried to make the other fit work for so long.  My iron play had not been up to snuff for some time and I just didn’t know why.  I’m not saying that gear makes all of the difference, but it can definitely make some significant difference, especially if you are like me with needs pretty far away from “standard” stock settings.

Speaking of a standard fit, that is the setting of my driver and 3-wood. I have already taken the hybrid out of the bag and now know that I have to replace all three of those.  No offense to Titleist, but their gear tends to be a bit upright, as does a lot of brands as upright can help prevent the dreaded slice, and for someone like me it is harder to hit.  I can get shorter shafts which may help as that assists in flattening the lie.  Whatever it ends up being, it’s time to find the right big clubs for my game throughout the bag.

The point that I have learned from all of this is that if you have been struggling with something for some time it’s good to look at all of the reasons that may be getting in your way.  At the level that I am currently, a slight change in gear can be a stroke or two per round either way.  In golf, a couple of strokes makes a huge difference.  Now if I can also gain some confidence in my tee shots by having a driver and 3-wood that I trust I can potentially gain a stroke or two there as well.  It won’t make an overnight change, but confidence is key and I now have that from 3-iron to 58 degree wedge.

It’s been about 1.5 years since I had any significant change to my irons or wedges and I have been playing stock standard lie and a stiff shaft.

This new setup has 1/4 inch short shafts which are 3 degrees flat through the set with KBS Tour X-stiff shafts in the irons and X100 in the wedges.  It’s a big change, especially going from standard lie (which when we measured them all of my irons were actually 1 degree upright) to 3 flat and will take a little bit to let my swing adjust to them, but they arrived last Wednesday and I took them straight out to the course to break them in on some good turf.  I was leaving early Thursday for my sister’s wedding (without clubs to spend time with the family) so it was very important for me to get a round/practice in with them before heading out.

And it was great!  I had a few block shots (left push), which Neff said I would as that’s what happens when you go from too upright for your swing/body for 1.5 years to having a set that fits your swing.  Eventually I will learn to trust the new sticks and let my swing be more fluid than before.  I didn’t realize it, but I have been playing with irons and wedges that are too long for me and upright which has been causing me to hold on in order to fight hooking the ball.  Live and learn.

No matter how great they felt and how excited I was to be playing with them (and with a full set for the first time in a month as a few of my irons have been broken and I took the hybrid out of the bag so now I have a 3-iron to replace it), it wasn’t the highlight of the day.  Eric, aka Country Club, knocked in an eagle on the par 4 9th at Riverside.  It was a great shot from about 150 yards that looked good the whole way.  And, he needed it to go one up on the front

I was surprised at how effortless it felt to swing the new sticks.  I only had one major miscue all round, which was when there was OB left and I overcompensated in order to not block a ball OB and ended up hooking my new 7-iron straight into the trees right.  That was maybe the 10th time I had swung the irons so it’s understandable to not have complete faith in them yet. This will come with practice.

Speaking of practice, I went to the club today just to realize that Portland had frozen overnight and the course was closed.  I am not a fan of hitting off of mats as I think it breaks your swing and body down and the chipping green/putting greens were closed too, so I’m going to use the rest of the day to logistically catch up after the trip.  Also, I have found an iPad, finally, so will be breaking out FlightScope this week to get some updated numbers on the swing.

All great things!!

I’ll be working on the sticks from now until December 20 when I head down to Hilton Head to visit the parents.  I will definitely be bringing the clubs down there and would love a pick-up game if anyone is around.

I talked with the guys at Titleist and they confirmed that this isn’t too uncommon for KBS shafts, but it seems like a big issue seeing as half of my irons have broken during play in the 16 months since I got them.  I play the 9-4 irons right now.

I had the 9-iron fixed a while back by a great repair guy here in Oregon City, Jari, but the 7 is out of the bag and now I’m without a 6, as well as have taken the hybrid out of the bag as I just don’t like hitting it, so have been playing with a few gaps lately.  What I have learned is that it’s very possible to play with the 8 and 5 iron from distances of 145 yards to 195, it just takes a bit of creativity, which in turn has taught me how to better control the ball.  So, it’s a good thing to play with different arrangements, although I am excited to get some new sticks soon.

Here is the state of my 6-iron:

Clean snapped right at the hosel.  Very bizarre the first time it happened, just kind of annoying after 3 times.

But!  I had already placed an order for new irons before it even broke, so in a way this happened at a relatively good time.

I worked with Michael Neff on his new GEARS golf system last week at Columbia Edgewater.  It’s a pretty amazing and is the most accurate club and body gathering system I have been a part of to date.  The site:  http://gearsgolf.com

He put me in the motion capture suit and I hit some irons and drivers and he fit me into new clubs based on the results.  He says that I have the Mike Weir “issue”, which is basically about being the same height as Mike 5’9″ and with relatively long arms for our bodies.  The problem with that is it is very easy to get super flat in the swing making it harder to have a good horizontal swing plane with the longer sticks when they are set to stock settings.  To resolve this issue, he fit me into shorter shafts from 9-iron to driver and set the irons to 3 degrees flat.  He is custom making me a hybrid that will lie flat similar to the irons and then the next step is to find a 3-wood and driver that fits better.  I’m going to go with a shorter shaft with both of those and find clubs that sit flatter as you can’t custom bend either of those seeing as they are not forged metals.

The new irons and wedges are supposed to arrive tomorrow.  Once I get those I will have a slight adjustment period as he says a few of the compensations I do in my swing are to adjust for my current clubs not fitting me how they should.  For the past year I have been trying to adjust my swing to fit my sticks, now he says he has found me sticks that will fit my swing. I appreciate that and have confidence that it will help me grow in my game.

New specs on the irons:

Titleist 714 AP2s with KBS Tour (I know, they snap, but I love their feel) x-flex shafts 1/4″ short bent 3 degrees flat.

rest of the specs I’ll post as the final decisions are made and arrive.

I am very interested in seeing if and how much of a difference this makes.  He says that I have been holding off on the swing to avoid the snap hook and actually hit the ball off of the heel with a swing path 6 degrees inside to out and with a shut face in order to produce my draw.  I have been getting low Smash factor and that with better fitting clubs and a more fluid swing I should gain accuracy and distance as well as ball control with both fades and draws.

Only time will tell, but I trust that this is a step in the right direction.  And, having confidence in your clubs is half the battle in this mind game we lovingly call golf.

The shoot was quick, too.  I basically just taught the TV host how to hit a golf ball as he had zero experience in the sport (a la Dan 2010) and then told a quick summary of my story to date while we played a couple holes of the St Jörgen Golf Club.  I love when these things go well as my journalism background likes to get things correct the first time and be efficient.

Afterwords I had 48 hours to explore and reflect on the trip as well as the past few weeks.

Walking around Gothenburg I was reminded how important it is to have an extremely strong sense of self belief in your vision.  I’m not exactly sure why that thought came to mind while exploring the 17th century neighborhood of Haga Nygata, but I suppose when exposed to the countless options of this world it can be easy to have a wandering mind. It’s important to have a bit of that old fashioned tunnel vision to keep the train moving along.

For me it is also important to step back and appreciate everything that my work has accomplished both on and off the course to date.  Never would I have imagined that I would get flown to both Australia and Europe in a single year to make an appearance.  It’s important for me to relish these experiences as there are a lot of things that have been foregone over the past 4 years in order to get to where I currently am.  Short term (or even longer term) sacrifices lead to the long term payout.  This is true with just about everything in life, not just one man’s chosen path or his golf game.

So relish I did and I had a great time during the trip.  In a way it felt like an end-of-the-summer vacation and seeing as I only golfed a few times and didn’t get much practice in it might as well have been my annual time off.  When I returned I felt refreshed and ready to get back at it, too.  It took about an hour to warm up the body as 15 hours on a plane does no wonders for your golf game, but once I get the swing back on line I hit some good shots, including birdying my first hole back in the states, which is a great sign of things to come.  Of the 9 holes I played I birdied 3 of them and felt good rolling the ball.

Now that I am back and refreshed I am ready to make the next push of the Plan.  The first step is to meet with Michael Neff again and get my clubs better fit for my current swing.  He texted me while away and said he had it figured out and would tell me in person when we were on a range.  We shall meet early this week and I am excited to hear what he has “discovered.”  I have no clue, but trust that he knows what he is doing and will set the sticks accordingly.

The next step is to decide which clubs to play with that new configuration.  I have been hitting my Titleist set for 20 months and still like them, but have a call with Titleist and two other club manufacturers in the near future (i.e. this week).  I have been offered similar deals to what a typical club pro might get (14 clubs, hats, gloves and balls) from three manufactures right now and need to decide whether it makes any sense to try out something new or to stick with what I have.  It’s a good problem to have.

On a side note, here is a story from a Swiss newspaper about my time over there:

The link:  http://www.tagesanzeiger.ch/sport/weitere/Spielt-er-2018-gegen-Tiger-Woods/story/22975901

As you can see, I’m decked out in my Titleist, Vokey and FJ gear.  Like the world’s cheapest billboard.  I truly appreciate the gear that I have gotten to date and think I have repaid everyone who has sent it in media and social media outreach.  Seems to be a fair trade in my opinion.

Perhaps it’s time to start adjusting the tone and approach of the blog in order to expand the reach and truly inspire instead of just telling my own story.  The original idea of telling my story seems to be getting stale and I think the more useful information would be to tell the story of what research and findings people across the globe are currently discovering that can help us all improve.  I have met a number of these people and think that focussing more on their work, albeit through my training eyes, is a better approach for both myself and every potential blog reader out there.  It is time to seriously step back and scrutinize the path this blog has travelled down and figure out where it needs to go for my own sanity and the readers’ sake.  I’m not saying that my training or practice will be different, just that I will focus more of this site on human performance in general while entangling it with one person’s expeditions.

At any rate, this wasn’t supposed to be a blog about shifting directions; rather my aim was to talk about the Europe trip and about what comes next, although I suppose the jet lagged mind wanders when wide awake at 4am and what I worry about during those middle-night times is often how to continue funding this expedition.  Mountaineers and explorers have similar issues, although once they finally raise funds and set off their concerns shift from funding to survival.  I suppose I have a leg up in that respect as it is very unlikely that getting lost or an avalanche will be my demise.   Everything has it’s plusses and minuses.

Perhaps that is the point.  You can travel the world and see all of the amazing people doing their amazing work stuffs and fantasize about what their lives may be like but at the end of the day you have to trust your heart compass is pointing you in the right direction.  Without that faith all is quickly lost.

There are countless ways to get from here to there, just pick one and stick to it.  That, in a nutshell, is talent.

And now I shall force upon you a photo slideshow of my 11 days in Europe.  You knew it was coming and like the good relatives you are you will do me a kind and take a look.  Perhaps pretend you just found this in a thrift store laptop 100 years from now and are trying to create a novel around it about the lives of those involved.  Or feel free to skip it.

In a couple more hours the sun will come up, at which point practice is in the equation.  For now I will continue the mental process of organizing my goals for the rest of 2014 and then begin to think about the year to come.