me05501

I drive a Mazda CX-5 and my clubs fit laterally across the back but you have to put one end in first to make it work. It's almost as if that area was designed to hold a loaded golf bag. The rest of my storage area is eaten up by an organizer I bought to hold shoes, balls, hats and accessories. But it all fits easily. I was considering having a MX-5 RF as a second car but the trunk wouldn't hold my clubs. No dice. A friend of mine is a car collector and the only car he keeps here in town is a Ferrari. He has to carry his clubs in the passenger seat and even then they won't fit unless he removes the driver. Hilarious.

Third Foundation session today and a couple of new "best speed" readings. I'm starting to see how this program "hacks" its users. Over the course of ten timed swings you start to feel what works and what doesn't. The numbers guide you to focus on the feels that produced those results. You have to be SOMEWHAT mentally engaged but VERY physically engaged to have a great session. I see results from little tweaks like toeing out my trail foot and trying to get my weight forward as early as possible. Then I try to ingrain those feels and add to them. I can see how/why this can work. Just gotta put the time in.

Agree 100%. It's great to have different flavors to choose from.

Cowen is obviously a great teacher but he's not a great communicator IMO. Seems like whenever people ask him to clarify what he means he just repeats the exact same words but louder. Makes me wonder if he wants people to understand him or just wants them to pay him.

Blended set of O.G. Srixons on MMT 125 stiff shafts, soft stepped 1x. Brand new DriTac 2.0 grips and sharp BB&T ferrules Swing weight feels average to me, probably D0-D2 range but haven't recently measured. This set looks and plays great. Pictures show normal wear. Asking $600 shipped/PayPal'd lower 48 states. Reasonable offers welcomed. All specs recently confirmed:

Callaway Elyte A (47*) and G (51*) wedge heads showing only the lightest signs of use. My tech says they’re parallel bore and I trust him. $90 each or $160 shipped for the pair.

Last paragraph resonates. They’re trading a relative illiquid asset for the opposite of that. Timing is probably good from an economic perspective as well though who can tell. Money supply has surged like crazy again.

But delightfully so 🙂

On the contrary, it takes a crazy level of discipline to stay in slow motion mode. The urge to speed things up is always there.

Right on. I'm sure Odyssey, TM and the other brands appreciate the effect L.A.B. has had on pricing. They weren't selling nearly as many $300-400 putters before.

With respect to learning patterns the pro I've been working with says "the slower you go in practice the faster you'll be able to integrate the changes in your game...and vice versa." I'm not sure if this is anecdotal or scientific fact or just his personal experience but there seems to be merit in it so far.

Wonder if lie-angle balanced wedges could be forthcoming...

IMO the internal weighting of Mini drivers is designed to optimize the ball flight for that loft, head size and shaft length. I've tried a 12* driver on a 44" shaft and couldn't get the trajectory down to a reasonable height.

I'm very new to this with only a couple sessions of my first Foundation program under my belt. A couple of observations: I worked out with a trainer a couple times a week for years prior to 2020. I fell off during the pandemic and have never gotten back in the habit of routine workouts. Doing the Stack warmup is probably very beneficial to me and it motivates me to do a little more in our little home gym area. Every time I've ever tried to do stability/mobility/yoga-style stuff it's become very apparent that my foot stability sucks...the left more than the right. I'm not sure if it'll help my swing but I'm adding some foot strength and stability exercises to my routine. It should at least help me in everyday life as I age. Using my SC200 for speed measurement is suboptimal. The Stack app only occasionally hears the speed output and when it does it seems like it's always one of the SC200's semi-frequent misreads of speed. It's easy enough to repeat what the device said out loud for the app to hear but I have to replace a few swings per session because the SC200 said 35mph or 140mph when I know my swing was closer to 80mph. I also own an SC300 that usually stays with my clubs. I'm going to try using it instead. I have access to Trackman and I'm trying to do a little speed work during my sessions with TM. No real progress so far but I haven't gotten deep enough in The Stack to expect any.

Here's my theory on what the before/after might look like. I've long suspected L.A.B.'s strategy was to use "strategic scarcity" to maintain a very high price point. They were somehow able to supply PGA Superstore etc. with as many basic models as necessary while holding back customization for those who were willing to pay up and wait for delivery. The marketing story gave the impression that balancing each putter required hours of work by skilled craftsmen etc and so forth, which was meant to justify the long waits and big markups. In reality I think they wanted to play out the orders relatively slowly to keep the price point high. If they suddenly filled all the outstanding orders it would have caused the second-hand market to crater which would erode the comfort level of customers spending $700 for a new custom putter. The hype cycle for these is probably peaking now with Spaun's major win and relatively wide Tour adoption. The strategy worked and it's time to cash in. My guess is that P.E. will ramp up production and try to keep the price point as high as possible for as long as possible. Eventually the used market will sag. More people will be able to buy and try them at lower prices and they'll turn over much more quickly. The only reason to buy a new one will be very specific customization or a desire to have one that isn't all chipped up from use.

Here's how I think of it and why carrying a Mini has worked for me. We see almost every club in the bag as being meant to hit the ball a specific max distance. We don't expect our PW to go 175 yards. That's what a 7 iron is for. We always have a longer club we can reach for to do whatever job is in front of us. That's true until we get to the driver. Most of us swing the driver hoping for maximum distance. Guys who hit it 220 want to hit it 240. Guys who hit it 240 want to hit it 260. This thinking creeps into the swing we make...going all out, losing control of the club at the top and losing our balance coming through. If you have a mini driver you probably don't swing it like that. Subconsciously you know that the role of that club is to hit fairways and not run through doglegs and add some backspin and basically provide an easier tee shot. The swing is more in balance and you're more likely to find the center of the face and you get 95% of your average driver distance with way less stress. Once you get used to doing this on every tee box you can easily convince yourself to make a similar swing with the driver. You start hitting the middle of your driver and finishing in balance and you see the ball do what it's supposed to do and hopefully it also finds more fairways and gets you 12-20 extra yards. The reverse is also true for me. I'm more likely to hit driver from most tee boxes these days but having the Mini in the bag is like a safety net. If I start overswinging and spraying it around I can drop back to the more comfortable option and get through my round with minimal damage to my score.

The real question is this: why do ams think they should be able to hit every fairway when the guys on TV clearly don’t?

IMO the Core is quite limited. You can’t do a lot of the things promoted by reviewers such as using the device on the trail hand. You’re basically paying for the hardware and getting a taste of what it can do. Unless you’re willing to pay up for more features you’ll run out of ways to use it pretty quickly.

You’re not going to see WRX staff knocking brand new clubs either. You don’t bite the hand that feeds.

Maybe they're splitting up professionally to save their friendship? I know they've always been very close, but Joel's results have fallen off quite a bit recently and maybe he needs to hear a different voice. Joel seems to suffer from more self-doubt than a lot of guys out there. I detect a hint of imposter syndrome maybe where he looks around at all the guys he's playing against and maybe doesn't feel like he deserves to be there. Who knows? If Geno wants to keep working out there I don't think he'll struggle to find another bag to carry.

I don't mean this as a slight but it seems like Scottie's ability to resist distractions comes from just not having a lot of non-essential mental activity. Not saying he is unintelligent but he is more of a plodder/doer/worker than a thinker IMO. See ball, hit ball, find ball, hit ball again. When he finds something that works for him he sticks with it. The notorious grip trainer is a prime example. As long as he's played and as much success as he has had there is only the tiniest chance that his grip is suddenly going to morph into something different. Yet his habit or process involves making swings with his grip trainer and he's not going to change what's working.

We played a charity scramble at Nashboro yesterday. Kind of scruffy overall but the greens were really good and there was adequate shade to be found (which starts to become a real priority when the heat index is 102*...whew!).

"Solving" the lack of left handed options would make the lack of left-handed options worse while making all clubs more expensive. If every OEM made every single club in lefty, the limited pool of buyers would have more options to choose from and they'd all choose the model they liked best. This would spread the limited demand across more options resulting in fewer sales of each specific option. The costs to manufacture and stock all those unprofitable left-handed sets would be spread across entire product lines so right-handed players would be subsidizing the availability of all those unsold left-handed options. Within a decade the market would adjust and we'd end up exactly where we are now. The current availability of left-handed golf clubs is optimized to market dynamics. It's okay to dislike this situation but it isn't going to change.

The first set of clubs I ever played were built by my dad, another overconfident tinkerer. He cut all the shafts from the tip end instead of the butt end. Not only did the shafts play like rebar…the kick points were all over the place. It’s a miracle I kept playing long enough to get something better!

Can’t disagree.