All Golf All The Time, 3.0

Just got back from a range session. Had the I15 vs AP2 and a driver showdown between the X Hot Pro and Alpha 815. Surprisingly, the 815 beat the X Hot Pro. The iron showdown was interesting. While I was smoking the drivers, my iron swing was not good. The I15 won out but I think the shafts might have had as much to do with it as the club heads. Probably be selling the AP2 on eBay in another month.

 

With those two vintages the PING will have the more forgiving head. As you note, shafts remain important, too. But the 714 was still more toward the player side.

We have a fundraiser tourney tomorrow. Getting ready to ride bikes to the beach; it is AWESOME here this morn.

 

Kicked off golf season with a 91 at Tarandowah. Typical early season inconsistency, wasting a course in very get-able condition. Driver was bad, 3-wood was money. Irons mediocre. Putting was decent. The real horror show for me was the chipping. Normally a strength, but probably cost me something like 6 strokes on the day. Mostly on mental mistakes.

 

I've been going out a few afternoons each week and working on chipping and short pitches. Who would've thought practice might actually help? I still have a long way to go to ingrain it but I hit quite a few in tight yesterday during our tourney. Don't get me wrong, I still hit a 90-yard SW on 14 when I was trying to go about 40, but there were a number of very acceptable results in the mix.

 

*Boast alert*

My game Friday was effortless, a feeling I've only experienced one other time. Why can't it always feel this way??

I shot 78!!

 

Always helps to stop on 14! lol

Congrats, good shooting!! I just had a 78 drop off the index and shot up two ticks instantly. Funny game.

 

First round with the new clubs last saturday was an absolute cluster****. New driver wasn't in yet, but at Firerock I really don't need it often anyway. Long range session beforehand went fine, but I think a combination of factors got in my head for the actual round.

I didn't know my new yardages yet and wind was against at the range, so I think a little uncertainty was making me hesitant. I was also trying to tweak some things. So for the first nine, I mishit irons just about everywhere and had some appalling scores. By the back nine I still wasn't hitting the irons well but the misses were manageable, but adapting to the new wedge for scrambling suddenly became an issue. End result was an apocaliptic 103 that does not include a couple mulligans I took later on.

Went to the range yesterday and suddenly I could hit irons again. And the feel for the wedge and putter will come, I am still optimistic about them. New driver is in, and I am still getting a feel for it. We may have overdone the draw bias a little, but I want to get some solid data before tinkering too much.

Trying out the Game Golf app (without the markers for now) this year, too. So after 1 round, it thinks I am pretty spectacularly terrible, with funny oddities like my longest 7 iron going 153, but having hit a 9 iron 155 (think that was a sand shot, too).

9 holes tonight, again at Firerock (if rain stays away), so we'll see if I've gotten past last Saturdays issues.

 

I have the Game Golf and Arccos tracking things here I'm supposed to demo. I'm kinda of the I-don't-give-a-shit mindset. But duty calls so I'll shove 'em in my grips and see what comes of it and write it up. But seriously, we all still generally suck and yet have ALL this overload of kryptonite club and more data than NASA had for moon shots. ENOUGH!!!!

Grrrrrr. Yep, just what I'm going to be wanting to do when hitting shots beside the Pacific in a few weeks, staring at my freakin' phone looking at my spin rates ... not. I already know exactly what my 7i does ... anything but what I intend.

 

Don't worry, they won't be giving you spin rates AFAIK.

I think if you have the tracking things it won't be that annoying (until a post round edit). Ironically part of MY hesitance of using these products is I don't like being limited by the tracking. Its like a lot of the fitness apps out there. I am a nerd for breaking down stats on things, but if I'm going to do it I want to have a LOT of data to break down, and I want to be able to crunch the numbers myself. I want to know where I was aiming, whether I was trying a punch shot or a full swing, what the wind was, how the hit felt, if the ball was in a divot or sitting down vs up in the rough. Of course, I don't want to ENTER all of that.

Game golf seems to mostly resolve those issues with hit volume. The trends just show out over time and it can kind of figure out what hits to ignore or give less weight to. But I still wish I could export the raw numbers

 

That's fun? lol

I enjoy the testing stuff, getting clubs that work with our quirks, and I'll be doing another round of that next week. But out there, not so much. If I snap a ball I don't need some gizmo to show me going across the path and trying to save it -- the proof is over there in the oak trees. Most of our golf sins can be highlighted and addressed with two alignment sticks, and if we don't want to spend that 20 bucks on two pieces of plastic, two clubs from the bag, and impact tape. Obviously a big part in all of this is how we learn. I don't want data or pictures or a lot of words. I'm very kinesthetic.

 

I find analyzing stats fun, yes. And I acknowledge that I am weird that way.

Tracking them, much less fun, so we'll see if I stick with it, especially if I don't like the level of detail I get back.

I would absolutely LOVE to get some great stats on my putting game to inform what to work on. But game golf is pretty terrible for putting, and it would take a silly amount of work to get something good. I don't want to be an annoying slow player because I am tracking my putting.

But wouldn't it be awesome to know whether you are over or under reading break consistently on some shots? Or if you are a regular or member somewhere, on a particular green? Am I often pushing my longer putts offline? And what range does my feel for distance go to absolute crap?

Even if 2/3 of the time it is only confirming your suspicions, it would be great to authoritatively know what to work on.

 

How do you judge over/under reading? It's all speed-related. Now, sure, you gotta know left-to-right from right-to-left, but it's putting, it's art not science. A more important matter is if your putter suits your vision and stroke. Sightlines or not, square or toe-down (and how much hang), eyes in, over or out ... and can you even grip it on the square.

Two of the best tips I've ever heard came from Dave Stockton and Kevin Streelman.

Stockton: Don't think, react. Get over the ball, screw the practice stroke that for the vast majority of amateurs is nothing like the real stroke, just hit the ball.

Streelman: Find the high side, keep the ball on the high side.

The contorted and lengthy permutations so many ams have on the greens is like death from 2 million paper cuts. Heavens ... plumb-bobbing, marking and remarking, prancing around doing a 360 or 720, eight practices strokes each of which is unique. HIT THE FUCKING BALL, people! If you can't discern the mega-break walking to the green, that micro-break you've spent three minutes divining won't mean squat.

 

If I'm just thinking back to a round on an anecdotal basis, I can't. That's why I'd like the data!

Every putt you should at least have a feeling on if you hit it how you intended, and thus whether it did what you expected. I get what you're saying. A putt doesn't have 3 inches break. It has 3 inches if you give 4 feet of force, or 1 if you give 6 feet. But whatever break.force combo I choose, either it does exactly what I visualized, or it doesn't.

So how often am I high or low siding (with breaks in either direction) when I hit it the way I wanted and still missed? For that matter, how many of my misses did I execute the putt but screw up the read, vs ones where I think I had the read right but hit it wrong.

Also not entirely sure I agree about it being art, not science.

 

I wouldn't expect you to. Different wiring, different approaches to try to get to the same place

So with this putting science, how do you account for grain, time of day (you don't play on poa, it matters big time), moisture, type of grass, wind, footprints and pitch marks, moisture content and any number of other variables across courses and even across greens at the same course? How do you quantify intent, and result, and then correlate the two? What happens if you change balls?

Are you a spot putter or a line putter? What type of stroke?

Maybe that quick version of AimPoint might help.

 

I looked a bit into aimpoint.

But as I said, the data would be more about quantifying the problem than looking for a solution.

How does science account for the factors you mention? Badly. But science with bad equipment is still science. Its still laws of physics that put the ball in the hole.

If it was art I could aim the opposite direction, putt it into the bunker, and argue this was a profound statement about futility and should thus count as a successful stroke

 

How do you drive your car around a bend at 60 mph? Are you calculating closing rate and tire adhesion and minute changes in the arc, or do you just somehow make it happen with your eyes, head, hands, heart and feet? Science rules the result, art allows you to safely pull it off.

 

Yes.

Doing one is doing the other, its just a matter of the instruments (eyes, hands, feet), data (experience) and computer (mind) being used. To me, art is about aesthetics. I suppose you could substitute "feel", but that is really just a factor of experience and aptitude. And more importantly to this question, there IS a right answer into the acceptable range of actions to safely make the corner, which is how Google can make a self-driving car. Also, modern roads and vehicles are designed to take as many of the variables out as possible and make it simple to develop that 'feel', and driving also allows for adjustment and reaction to an initial miscalculation.

Putting actually takes far more precision, and because of different surfaces and conditions and widely different slopes and angles, it is much more difficult to built up the requisite feel both for how something will behave, and for how to execute. And once you hit it, there is no adjustment. Which is why it would be handy to know if my eyes and brain are teaming up with a persistent bias in the results they give me.

 

Try Streelman's advice. You'll make more putts, you'll have more fun.

 

Never been a good golfer and never will be, but I've always been a pretty good putter. What definitely helped is the long held adage of speed. Unless you're putting on ski moguls, good speed will put you close and you'll drop one now and again. I have friends that hit ten footers on the practice green that come within a foot or two only to be dis appointed. If you're close you two putter. If the average golfer two puts (off green chips not withstanding), it's a good day. Like Ken said, it ain't science, it's just simple math.

Good Luck!
Ric at Joes

 

This just hit the stands, kinda apt given this discussion. It's in the current issue of The Met Golfer.

Link, pp 84-85: http://www.metgolferdigital.com/i/663274-apr-may-2016

(I can email a pdf if anyone is interested.)