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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2005 (Part 4)

Total Rehab, Nike Blades & Customizing Wedges
by Leith Anderson

A month ago I made a pledge -- and repeated it in front of my friends so it would be harder to forget. I refuse to give up, accept my higher handicap and win 25 bucks every other tournament at the Muni. I resolve to trade all of those third places for one more Low Gross. (Golfers always dream.) I planned a new practice regimen to bring my handicap back down. I hoped it would be easy. Alas, that was a false hope. It all started when I got my driver’s license renewed.

I hated the picture. I never expect the DMV to take a portrait, but I couldn’t help comparing my 2005 mug shot with the one taken four years earlier. Renewing your license is one of those milestone events. You lay the two pictures side by side and look for clues of impending demise. I didn’t like the comparison. When I filled in my weight, I knew I was fudging when I wrote down “250.”

It got worse when I went in for my physical. My doctor is polite. He’s not inclined to lecture about touchy subjects for the millionth time -- I appreciate that. We discussed the usual aches and pains. I peeked over his shoulder while he documented the visit and I caught him paging through diagnoses that included “obesity.” That really hurt. I raced home to check the Internet for my appropriate weight by BMI (body mass index). No problem, I’ll be perfect as soon as I lose 25 pounds.

But the real problem is my golf swing. I don’t like what I see on video. I don’t like my move through the ball. I’m falling back. My hips don’t open quickly enough. I’m just carrying too much ballast. There’s no alternative. One last sip and smash the bottle. I’m getting back in shape.

We see a lot of players at the Golf Lab who are fighting against the odds. Playing up to your true potential requires the fitness of an athlete. It’s one thing to say you’re going to get better and something else again to do the work to make it happen. You might have to get fit before your game improves. I’ll set an example and step on the scales for you next month. I’m motivated. But that’s only a start.

Effective Practice -- and Lots of it.

Most of us who learned the game as kids had “practice buddies.” They get you out when you don’t want to go. My practice buddy was Mike Wise. I probably played 500 rounds with him. Before video tape you needed a buddy to help you with you swing. We did that for each other. Lucky for me, he was a good coach. I must have helped him also. He went on to win the small college individual championship from Kenyon College in 1967. After a couple of years trying to get on the Tour, he became a Zen Priest.

I don’t believe in “beating balls.” I just don’t learn that much at a driving range. The balls aren’t what you play on the course so you can’t be sure about your trajectory, shot shape or even feel. You can’t see where the ball is coming down so you don’t really know how far it’s going. Finally, you can’t see what the ball does when it lands, a crucial bit of knowledge. The best range in the Bay Area with good grass on the tee and targets you can actually see is at Poppy Ridge. Driving an hour each way to practice is a little too far. Metropolitan is an acceptable second choice.

You can get bad information testing clubs on a range. An example is the Burrows driver. It is a notoriously high spin design. On the range with hard balls it does great. Take it to the course and hit your balls and it turns into a disappointment. But then you own it. The only reliable way to make sure your driver fits is to test your club AND your balls on a launch monitor. And not any launch monitor will work. To be sure of spin, you need to find a launch monitor that utilizes marked balls and high speed photography. Some launch monitors can’t measure spin.

If your golf muscles are rusty it doesn’t hurt to bash range rocks but you’re really practicing the golf equivalent of lifting weights. There is one thing that you can do at the range, assuming you’re hitting off grass. You can feel the way different irons “dig the dirt.” I frequently take a couple of bags full or irons down to Pin High to find out if I’ve got the grind right.

You’re much better off to practice on a golf course. In California, if you’re not a member of a private club, that takes a lot of ingenuity. For me, it’s a lot better to hit a real ball off real grass at a real target. I added a bit of precision recently by buying a laser rangefinder. Now I know the exact distance to the target. Highly recommended.

Mornings at the Muni

A month ago “The Dane” showed up at the Golf Lab professing his dedication to improving his game. We made a mutual pact to practice every day. Suddenly, I had a new practice buddy. It’s a lot harder for him than me. He makes it to Palo Alto every morning by 7:30 from well north of Berkeley. If you don’t mind getting up early and would like to join us for “Mornings at the Muni” just let us know you’re coming by phoning the Golf Lab. Monday through Thursday, shine only.

Omaha Beach & Other Crazy Games

When you’re only playing nine holes, you have a chance to change the game to increase the value of your practice time. When there are few other players on the course, you can invent some interesting alternatives.

Omaha Beach takes a lot of time but it’s fun and puts pressure on exactly the part of your game that probably needs improvement -- bunker play. Each player hits two balls. One of the balls MUST be played from a trap on every hole. Lowest combined score wins the hole. Omaha Beach is fabulous for taking the fear out of landing in a bunker. Plus, it takes skill. It’s a lot harder to hit a greenside bunker than the green.

If you’re trying to work on your irons, try hitting nothing but irons off the tee. Resist putting a peg under the ball. Your second shots will be a lot more challenging. Winner of the previous hole calls the tee club. As a variation, hit two balls and play the worst, or the best. If you’re working on chip shots, make a local rule that you MUST chip from the fringe. No sissy putting allowed.

If you want to build up your confidence, hit two tee balls with a driver, choose the best and then play out the hole. You get the picture. If you’re just going nine holes and want to get the best benefit out of practice, there are a lot of games you can play to keep the game interesting.

Tom Wishon’s New Book

From time to time, I mention Tom Wishon in the Chronicles. Since Elmore Just died, Tom is the leading candidate for Patron Saint of Custom Clubmakers. He has a good claim to the throne. First, he’s a dedicated “lifer” in the custom clubmaking business -- 32 years and counting. Over the years, he has worked with all three of the major distributors: Dynacraft, Golfworks and Golfsmith. A couple of years ago, he left Golfsmith and founded his own custom component company, headquartered in Durango, CO.

Tom’s credentials are substantial. As a designer, he has been responsible for dozens of ground-breaking club heads and shafts. He published four other books on custom clubmaking. He has written hundreds of articles. He contributed to the development of early shaft fitting systems that are still in use. He writes a monthly column for PGA.com. Now he has finished the first new book on clubfitting and clubmaking that has been published in the last six years. This book is a long time coming. Most of the published works on clubfitting and clubmaking are sadly out of date.

The Search for the Perfect Golf Club is targeted for just the kind of reader that likes Golf Today and the Golf Equipment Chronicles. It deals with basic and advanced questions. Since it is new, I haven’t spent enough time to do a meaningful review. I’ll finish that next month. But I can tell you that it’s a good read and worth the effort. I highly recommend picking up your own copy. If you can’t find it at your local bookstore, you can order it from the Golf Lab.

Ratio of Shaft Weight to Club Head Weight -- Part Two

Last month I “discovered” that a low handicap player with a 90 MPH 5-iron swingspeed could play with 80 gram graphite shafts. That’s a pretty outrageous recommendation by current clubmaking practice. I rebuilt a set of Ping Eye 3+ irons and they worked out great. Since then, I’ve played two more rounds with them. I love the balance. They’ll be contenders for the tournament bag this summer.

I followed up by fitting a set of Nike blades with the same Aerotech Steel Fiber 80-gram shafts. I was testing the limits of head weight in over length clubs. With standard weight shafts, if you use heads based on a modern 256 gram 5 iron, you’re going to end up with swingweight well into the “E” range. That’s just too heavy. I bought a set of clubs just like that once so I know. The reason I ended up as a custom clubmaker is that I just wanted a good set of clubs to play at 1” over.

Utilizing 80 gram shafts opens up the possibility of using “standard” weight heads with over length clubs. That’s like coming off Atkins and diving into a bowl of ice cream. (You can tell what I’m thinking about.) I pulled a set of Nike heads from one of our stock sets. They weighed out a couple of grams heavy. Mounting the Nike heads on the Aerotech shafts at 1” over (39” five iron) the swingweight came out to a tolerable D-6.

Another View of Swingweight

Clubmakers usually pay too much attention to the swingweight scale. Over the past couple of years, I’ve begun to take a different view of measuring swingweight. Most accomplished clubmakers are meticulous about weighing all of their components, including the grip, aiming for a specific swingweight. They get nervous about a couple of grams difference in grip weight. That makes no sense to me. First, very few players can even feel two swingweights. When we were working the AT&T in the SST Tour Van, the consensus of all of the Tour Van clubmakers we talked to was that the only player who could feel a single swingweight on the PGA Tour was Jose Maria. Most amateurs would be hard-pressed to detect a three swingweight difference between two similar clubs.

Plus, why worry about a couple of grams in the grip when you’re sure to regrip the clubs in a year and the guy who does that job won’t have any idea what the initial grip weight was? Or, what if you try a different grip. In an extreme case, swap Decade Cords (39 g.) for Tour Wrap Cords (60 g.). That’s a 21-gram difference. Four grams of grip weight changes the swingweight one point. Making that swap would change swingweight five points.

Swingweight is supposed to measure “head feel.” We were introduced to this conundrum when we started using the Balance-Certified counter weights. You put an ounce of weight at the top of the grip. Measured swingweight changes by seven points. But here’s the kicker: when you hold the club, the head feel is the same. The weight doesn’t affect head feel because of where it’s located. Changing grips has more effect on the balance of the club than the head feel. That’s the reason that we’ve begun setting our custom clubs up by measuring swingweight with the grips off. With the grip off, you can be a lot more precise. When you know your specifications, you will develop confidence in a swingweight measurement with the grip off. The grip you choose becomes a whole separate issue.

MOI (Moment of Inertia) Matching

There’s an emerging trend in custom clubmaking. If it takes hold, it’s going to make the concept of swingweight obsolete anyway.

The major proponent of MOI Matching is Tom Wishon. The definition of MOI matching from the Wishon Golf website (www.wishongolf.com) is:

“The MOI of any object is a measurement of its resistance to being placed in motion. Related to golf clubs, if each club in a set requires a different amount of force to swing the club (set it in motion), it stands to reason that the golfer cannot be as consistent swinging each different club in the set, as if each club were built to require the same force to swing. In most simple form, this is what sets MOI matching apart from matching clubs to the same swingweight. Swingweight matching does not make each club within a set the same in terms of the amount of force required by the golfer to make the swing and hit the shot. MOI matching does. However, because golfers can be quite different in their strength, tempo and swing mechanics, the right MOI must be identified and fit for each golfer to allow the concept to properly work.”

A set of clubs that has been MOI matched will not have matching swingweights. We’ve been watching MOI matching gain momentum. The next sets of clubs that we build for the Golf Lab Gang will be MOI matched. Stay tuned on this subject. We’ve been reading a lot of enthusiastic reports. Now it’s time to find out.

Tweaking the Nike Blades

I did my usual thing and took the Nike blades straight out to a tournament. My friend Walt and I entered an NCPGA event at Brentwood. The Nike’s got a quick test. Walt rinsed his ball on the fourth hole, a par three with a 165-yard carry surrounded by water. My turn. I tugged my seven iron a little but ended up 15 feet past the hole. There’s nothing like coming through in the clutch. It makes you love your golf clubs.

I made several more acceptable iron shots. One three-iron was almost great. But overall, I thought that the clubs were out of balance. The blades lacked finesse. The heads were just too heavy. A sure sign of a head that’s too heavy is you drill the ball lower and hotter than you want. Distance control becomes a problem. The case was settled when my eight iron skipped into the gold fish pond behind the 18th. Back to the bench. Rather than sending the Nikes to the parts bin, I’m going to pop the heads, trim, and try again. I’m expecting that trimming the tips a half inch will bring the PCS 6.0 flex up to about a 6.5. That’s stiffer than I normally play, but the half inch will bring the swingweight down 3 points. It might be a good trade off. We’ve had success mounting ultra light weight driver shafts a flex stiffer than a player’s specification. It will be interesting to see how that technique works with irons.

Experiment with Length

It’s common for players to think that there’s only one club length that will work for them. That belief might come from the traditional method of fitting clubs with a ruler. It could also be that golf snobs think it’s cool to play their irons over. I’ve recently been practicing with a set of original Snake Eyes blades with shafts that are shorter than my “spec.” The ball is going straighter. I’m not losing distance. Takeaway: test your “spec.” That’s why I think the Nike’s might work out just fine.

If you read Tom Wishon’s book, I bet you lop at least a half inch off your driver.

The Great Conspiracy Theory -- Unplugged

Here’s an unexpected twist. For a few months I explored the “Great Conspiracy Theory” that the Big Name Brand companies were dumping .350 diameter driver shafts on the unsuspecting public to save costs while they supplied their Tour players with drivers that accepted “high performance” .335 shafts.

It never occurred to me that the performance of .350 shafts might actually be better. Well, that’s what it looks like, at least with one “Magic Driver.” We’ve set a lot of players up with the Nike Ignite shafted with Aerotech Steel fiber shafts in a 75 gram weight. Along the way, we’ve tried every configuration. It usually doesn’t affect performance to install a .335 shaft in a .350 hosel. There are shims made for the purpose and modern epoxy makes a tight bond.

Unexpectedly, we’re seeing the best performance from .350 diameter shafts installed in the Nikes. Shim up a .335 in the same head and it just doesn’t hold up as well. It may very well be the shaft, but at least in this case, .350 is superior. Go figure.

Weird Wedges

I’ve got a set of wedges in my bag that just can’t get knocked out. They’re totally counter-intuitive but that’s what happens when you try a lot of clubs and choose the ones that work the best.

My wedges are a matching set of Ping Eye 3 O Size (U,S,L) shafted with Project X nine iron shafts. The weird thing about this set of wedges is that they are an offset design. If I were writing an article about the right way to choose wedges, I would surely say that your wedges should have very little offset. This is because you frequently hit wedge shots with your hands ahead in “knock down” position. I have always felt that offset and knock downs don’t go together. Alas, that opinion has changed since I’ve been playing the Pings and it might not change back for a while.

To be fair, these aren’t standard Ping Eye 3’s. I’ve spent quite a bit of time changing the bounce and sole configuration to make them work the way I like. To start, I rounded the sole from heel to toe and took a little extra off of the heel. Standard Pings have very little radius. They tend to be square on the leading edge. I like more radius to help you dig down into messy lies. I think that radiused blades tend to twist less in the rough. Heel relief makes it easier to lay the blade open so you don’t catch the heel and twist the blade on flop shots from the rough.

Then I touch the front edge of the blades with the grinder to sharpen them up and create just a little more “bounce” behind the leading edge. This helps in situations where I’m in a tight lie and need to “nip” the ball. That’s good from the middle of hard fairways with short grass and fringes around greens. I finished the job by removing some of the trailing edge, once again to help in situations where the blade needs to be laid open. Finally, everything gets a high polish.

Why are these wedges good? I already alluded to some of the things I was trying to accomplish. But the most important feature is that they are “forgiving.” That sounds strange for a wedge. I can’t tell you how many times I caught a shot a little heavy but because the sole was rounded, rather than digging the blade slipped under the ball and I got a good result. If I’m playing from rough around the green, I want to open the blade to pop the ball up and make it hit softly. You can’t get spin on the shot from that position no matter how good you are. Reduced bounce makes that possible.

So here’s the takeaway: have a good look at your wedges and think about where you’ve been missing shots. If you find yourself chunking your wedges from the fairway or blading chips from the fringe you should get a little more bounce on the leading edge. If you find yourself past the hole from greenside rough, make sure you don’t have too much bounce on the back of the sole. Above all, don’t be afraid to modify the shape of your wedges with a little trip to the grinder. If they happen to be chrome plated, you’ll skin them. They won’t look new, but that could be considered an advantage. When your opponent looks in your bag, he’ll think you have a short game.

Finally the shaft you choose is crucial. If you’re playing off-the-shelf wedges, you’re shafts are stiff as a pipe. That might be OK for you, but some experts like Dave Pelz and Tiger Woods think that a little flex in your wedge shafts is a good thing. One of the tricks that the old timers used was to mount an 8-iron shaft in wedges. That’s a way to get a little kick at the moment of release. I tried Royal Precision Project X shafts in my wedges and so far have not found a shaft I like better. Once again, rather than mounting the “W” flex, I backed off and use a 9 iron shaft to get a little more feel in the shaft. Other good choices are to test Rifle Spinners which, when properly trimmed give you a very soft feel but don’t get too high in the air. There is no need for your wedge shafts to match the rest of your set.

Most players are fixated on their drivers and don’t pay enough attention to their wedges. I highly recommend experimenting with different head grinds and different shafts to improve your touch and feel.

I’ve got a great story coming next month: “Game Improvement Clubs for Low Handicap Players.” That should shake up a few golf snobs.

Watch for the Golf Lab Tour Van coming to a golf course near you. We’ve got it loaded with the most advanced launch monitor available -- the Flight Scope. If you have a few friends who would like to get acquainted with Golf Lab fitting and customization services, give us a call at the Golf Lab and we’ll come to you.

Leith Anderson is a partner in the Golf Lab in Palo Alto. He will answer all questions related to clubmaking and clubfitting personally. Contact Leith Anderson by email: Leith@calgolftech.com. Cell phone 650-743-2816.