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Golf Equipment Chronicles 2006 (Part 5)

Competition Begins – Early Season Equipment Suggestions

By Leith Anderson

It rained 25 out of 31 days during March in San Francisco. That’s an all-time record – at least since they started counting in 1885. One golf course we know recorded the lowest number of rounds played in 20 years. I only made three mornings at the Muni. The good news is that it was dry and cozy inside the Golf Lab where we had a lot of time to work with customers who were getting their bags ready for the 2006 competition season.

The Amateurgolf.com Mid-Amateur and Senior Tournament came off on April 1st and 2nd without a drop of rain. Virtue was rewarded. The tournament was held at Stevinson Ranch in Turlock, CA. My first competition of the year delivered great experience. Alas, that’s not exactly the same as “a great experience”.

My iron shaft swapping experiment continued. I was trying to knock the Ping Eye 3+ blades with the Nippon 1150 Tour shafts out of the bag. That happened at the beginning of April. Then, I made an interesting modification to that set to give it another chance. I spent a lot of time practicing and thinking about sole grinds, inspired by Hogan’s clue: “It’s all in the dirt”.

I changed my mind again on driver makeup. (Was that Phil’s influence?) I wonder how long it will last this time. Finally, I found out some things about putting that might make your season more productive.

Tournament Play Sharpens Your Senses

Forget betting for money. For amateur players, the greatest pressure in golf is knowing you’ve got to post your score on the wall for all of your friends to see. There’s nowhere to hide and no excuses when you’re standing in front of the wall.

I was worried enough about that prospect that I made the 250 mile roundtrip trek from Palo Alto to Stevinson Ranch to play a practice round with the college kids the week before the Amateurgolf.com tournament. Stevinson ranch is one of those dangerous Championship courses that have certain places you just can’t hit it. I wanted a refresher. Oops!! Another two or three rounds and I’ll know all of those places.

I started the tournament intending to avoid double bogies, planning to play conservatively. Nevertheless, in 36 holes, I made six double bogies. At Stevinson Ranch, if you hit it into trouble, you pay the price. That’s the big difference between a championship golf course and the average Muni. At the Muni, you punch it out and scrape it in. Bogey at worst. (Unless you follow a bad shot with a stupid shot.) When you finish a round at Stevinson Ranch, you know that you played a championship course. A couple of weeks later, I still remember every shot.

The Better the Tournament, the Bigger the Thrill

There’s a pecking order in everything. On the PGA Tour, Major Champions get paired with Major Champions in early rounds. Tournament winners get paired with tournament winners. Nobodies get paired with nobodies. That goes right on down the line. In Amateurgolf.com tournaments, “newbies” tend to get paired with other newbies. Imagine my surprise when my 77 on day one at Stevinson Ranch earned me a place in the cart next to Bob Olds, the 2005 NCGA California Senior Champion. Then it got better. Rob Thompson, a multiple winner and NCGA season High Points Champion joined the group. Where do you get a chance to play with that caliber of player? For a guy who never won a point in an NCGA event, it was The Big Time. Unfortunately, we all finished back in the pack. The senior title went to Dave Carroll of Napa, California with an even par 144.

In the Master Division, the lineup was another “who’s who” of Northern California Golf. Bob Niger won the title at 3 under 141, barely edging out Randy Haag who posted the low round of the tournament, a 69. Casey Boyns, another top NorCal amateur, finished fifth.

Amateurgolf.com is not all about famous names and scratch competition. There is always a net division if you want to try to beat your handicap and win some crystal in the process.

The next Amateurgolf.com event in Northern California is the Monterrey Bay Championship at Bayonet and Black Horse in Seaside, California on May 27 and 28. If you’re thinking about taking a step up to the next level of competition, log into Amateurgolf.com and sign up. Test your game on a championship course. Maybe we’ll be paired together in the first round. I’ll be going for an upgrade in the second round.

If Monterrey is closer to you than Palo Alto, the Golf Lab Tour Van will be at Bayonet and Black Horse that weekend. Call the shop for a fitting appointment or bring your clubs in for any tweaks that they might need. Also, look for a complete showing from Amateurgolf.com sponsors, Bridgestone and UST. Meet us in Monterrey. It’s better than a demo day.

Here’s a rundown on the lessons learned at Stevinson Ranch.

First Lesson: It will be a long time before I play another 400 cc Driver

For the last several months, my “gamer” driver has been a Taylor Made R7 with a Diamana 63 gram Diamana shaft. That’s turned into a love-hate relationship. Early on, I thought that the R7 was a rather useless gimmick. That was before we acquired the state-of-the-art Max Out launch monitor that is precise enough to tell us exactly what is going on with the ball a few microseconds after it leaves the face of the club.

Moveable weight drivers work. We have proven that time and again by moving weights forward and back to decrease or increase spin. Put the weight forward, less spin. Put the weight back, more spin. For players who need to increase or decrease spin a few hundred RPM’s, that’s the way to do it. When you get your driver tested with a launch monitor that can tell the difference, a few hundred RPM’s, one way or the other, can add ten to fifteen yards to your carry distance.

Changing the shape of ball flight is more difficult. In our testing, we found that it takes extreme weight placement to cause a significant change in ball flight left to right or vice versa. I have turned my R7 into a “hook machine” by installing a 14 gram weight in the heel position and maintaining additional extreme weight bias toward the heel.

The Diamana shaft is an enigma. There have been days that I thought it was the most stable and consistent shaft I ever hit. Then, I hit five drives into the junk at Stevinson Ranch with dire consequences. That proves that no shaft will overcome a bad swing. Mitsubishi’s extraordinary success in 2005 was fueled by their PGA Tour relationships that resulted in getting Tiger and several others on top of the money list using Diamana shafts. It was the perfect storm for Mitsubishi. But Tiger has moved on and the Diamana has moved out of the spotlight. For 2006, Mitsubishi released a couple of new models – the Diamana Red (or “Redboard” if you’re into the jargon) and Bassara. The Diamana Red is a Blue with a softer tip. The Bassara is a relatively low priced shaft by Mitsubishi standards that spent a few weeks in Michelle Wie’s bag. It is a normal progression for companies who make a hit on Tour to “dumb down” their line to work better for normal amateurs after their graphics have become recognizable.

Still unknown is the effect of Mitsubishi allowing Nike to use their Diamana graphics on the Nike stock line – with “Sasquatch” in the blue oval. My experience is that buyers of high priced shafts aren’t too pleased when something that looks the same shows up in a cheaper line. When you pay a lot of money, you expect to look different. I have detected little interest in the Diamana line this year and as far as I know, no players at Stevinson Ranch teed it up with a Diamana – except for me.

The R7 was in my bag through the Stevinson Ranch weekend. Until then, it never missed right. Then came competition. I’m not tournament ready early in the season. When the pressure rises, I hit a few wild shots. I fanned a few right and I spun a few left. I can’t tell you why. There’s one thing that I know. A little bigger head would have helped. Bottom line: I’m going back to a pear shaped head that’s at least 425 cc in size. I think that players who miss it out on the toe do better with pear shaped drivers. I’m a toe hitter.

So how important is 25 cubic centimeters in a driver head? I have heard that influential designers concluded that 420 cc’s is the optimum size for drivers. Will we see a fall back to that size? KZG is a company that has worked to produce their own adjustable weight driver. It was designed by industry legend Clay Long at 425 cc. KZG concluded that it is impossible to create a 460 cc head with four weight ports. That’s pretty well confirmed by the latest Taylor Made 460 R7. That head has three ports but it looks like one may be non-standard. I think that for most amateurs it’s “the bigger the better”. But, for low index amateurs, it’s not obvious that there’s much difference between 460 cc and 420 cc drivers. For players looking for a couple of MPH in increased swingspeed, launch monitor testing will give you the answer.

You can adjust the spin rate of a driver head if you can move the weight forward or back. If you are thinking about a moveable weight driver, I recommend drivers that give you that freedom. You’re going to need a launch monitor to verify what you think you see. The TM R5 offers only two weight ports, both located at the back of the head. I would not recommend that setup for a player who wants to fine tune his spin rate. If you’re buying an adjustable weight driver, pony up for an R7 – probably in the 425 cc size. If you don’t like the price, KZG is a great alternative.

Second Lesson: the Pursuit of Distance is All-Consuming for Seniors

Senior golfers are the biggest equipment nuts in the world. They have the money, time and absolute need to squeeze every last yard out of their equipment. When we pulled the Golf Lab Tour Van up to the tee line at Stevinson Ranch and set up our Flight Scope launch monitor, I didn’t know exactly what to expect. We didn’t have time to perform individual fitting or club gapping services, so we created a “Driver Challenge” and let each player test his own driver against an assortment of Bridgestone Drivers with UST shafts to see if we could knock the gamer out of the bag. Bridgestone and UST are Amateurgolf.com sponsors.

On the range, it’s nearly impossible to get good spin data. The Flight Scope does an admirable job, but radar can’t give a precise spin number. When we compare our outdoor Flight Scope spin data with indoor Launch Max data, the Flight Scope comes in around 500 RPM’s high. That’s a material difference. However, the Flight Scope is very good on trajectory and ball speed. That’s enough data if you’re testing two drivers head to head.

Don’t be fooled. There’s only one way to get good spin data outdoors. You need to buy a dozen or so of the balls you play with. Mark those with the ubiquitous line that every high speed photography system requires to see and measure spin. Then, blast them out into the field. It might be expensive, but it’s the only way to know what happens when you hit YOUR ball with YOUR club. Hitting range balls is like hitting rocks. For most, the spin from range balls will be at least 500 RPM lower than the balls you play in competition. That’s why so many high spin drivers get sold at demo days, only to disappoint when you take them to YOUR course and tee up YOUR ball. If you are trying to tune a driver, the best way is to use an indoor launch monitor and hit YOUR balls into a net that lets you have them back.

So what shafts are the best players in California hitting? For drivers, most seniors are playing the lightest shafts they can find. Not only that, they’re playing longer lengths – 46” being the most common. Most of them were playing regular or stiff flexes. These are guys who play two or three tournaments a month and they know if a certain driver gives them a little more distance. They also know if they’re wasting strokes caused by driver induced catastrophes.

At the Golf Lab, we frequently recommend using drivers in shorter lengths, reminding players that the average driver length on the PGA Tour is 44.5”. But, most of our customers aren’t playing scratch golf in top level tournaments. This time of year, I usually get motivated to build out some long drivers. A couple of triple bogies usually end the experiment. Now, after playing with Bob and Rob, I’m going to deck out a couple of clubs with ultra light shafts, counterbalanced with the Balance-Certified weight system and hope I don’t hit it into the trees. After my performance at Stevinson Ranch with a conservative setup, I don’t see how I have much to lose. Plus, nothing says you can’t have two drivers in your bag – especially after Lefty proved the concept at the Bell South and Masters.

And that leads to the question, which one? And, what flex? If you’re going to the absolutely lightest weight, it’s hard to ignore the ACCRA T40 (40 g.) shaft. The conventional wisdom says play the softest flex that you can control. Our testing with the bigger brother of the ACCRA T40 – the T50 showed the best results in a flex stiffer than you would normally play. In ACCRA nomenclature, flexes are designated by a code M-1 to M-5 with M-1 being the softest and M-5 being extra stiff. I did the best with the M-5 (‘X”) in the ACCRA line when I would normally play an M-4 (“S”). But be warned, this does not apply across the board. Another very popular ultra lightweight shaft is the Fujikura SIX – played by Annika on the LPGA Tour and Stuart Appleby on the PGA Tour. With the Fujikura SIX, I found the “R” flex to be the most agreeable and could barely get the ball airborne with an “S” flex that was tipped an inch or so. I suppose I’ll have to try an “X” flex to complete my experience, but I’m not looking forward to it. My experience points out that the flex profile of a shaft is just as important as the raw butt flex measurement. I have also talked to players who were happy with the Graffaloy Pro Launch, the NV and NVS in 55 g versions.

Third Lesson: The Heavy Putter is Here to Stay

Last year, the Heavy Putter came out to mixed reviews. Low handicap players yawned. Mid and high handicap players who were desperate enough about their putting to shell out $250 reaped the benefits. I shot my lowest round ever, a red-tee-assisted four under par 68 with the Heavy Putter. Since that time, I’ve had numerous players tap me on the shoulder, point to their bags and thank me for making them aware of the Heavy Putter. As is always the case, there is more than one way to skin a cat. If you can’t remember the last time you had a great putting day, I’ve got an idea for you to try if you don’t want to pay full price for a Heavy Putter.

Don’t ignore the original. Last year, the Heavy Putter Company sold something like 12,000 putters. That’s not too shabby for the first year out, especially since they started with a price in the stratosphere and brought it down to just plain expensive. In 2006 you will see a run of commercials on the Golf Channel. The HP Company has reengineered its product once again, this time creating a combination cast and milled head, manufactured, of course, in China. It’s called the “matte finish” and will be available with a weight kit through the Golf Channel infomercial – and Heavy Putter dealers including the Golf Lab – for $199. They think that’s the sweet spot for premium putter pricing and they’re licking their chops thinking about a 50,000 unit year.

There’s another way to go. If you are thinking about a heavy putter and want to build out your own, here’s another way to do it. Most putter heads are around 300 grams. Belly putters are around 400 grams in weight. Long putters get even heavier, up to 500 grams. Last month, one of our Golf Lab regulars with an inventive mind took one of the Cameron Mid Sur Belly putters and chopped it off to standard 35” length. Once I suppressed my shock over the destruction of inventory, I picked the putter up for a little practice. Everything was a little bigger and heavier. I decked it out with a Balance-Certified counterweight and it went into my bag for the tournament at Stevinson Ranch. On Saturday, I made a mile of putts. I was almost embarrassed by draining three heroic par putts from over 20 feet. It got so bad that my playing partners were asking for practice putts before we even finished the round. One partner commissioned a copy.

As is usual in breakthrough thinking, the Heavy Putter philosophy is exactly the opposite of what you think. The conventional wisdom would say that the Heavy Putter is better from shorter distances as it smoothes out your stroke. I found it to be exactly the opposite. I think that the Heavy Putter shows its mettle on long putts. On Sunday at Stevinson Ranch my driver was getting me into trouble, as you know. As a result, I had a lot of long putts. Most of my lags ended up dead stony. There was one other Amateurgolf.com tournament player who had been using the Heavy Putter for a few weeks and he couldn’t restrain his enthusiasm, recruiting players on the practice range to try his out. Whether you convert a belly putter or buy the original, this is a new idea that you should try. Most Heavy Putter dealers will let you take a demo to the practice green or even try one for a round or two. When you become a True Believer, remember you heard it from me. And thanks to Michael Quagletti for cutting down the Cameron.

The All-Time Best Bargain in Golf

I love to travel to exotic locations to play golf. I’ve been to Scotland and Ireland enough to find my way around without a road map. There’s nothing like the traditional links courses. If you want to take the pilgrimage to Europe to play the famous courses, figure it will cost you about $4000 for the week, and that’s if you go on the budget plan. From time to time, players stop into the Golf Lab who have visited the golf Mecca’s in the United States. Bandon Dunes, Whispering Straits and Pinhurst are the great places you can pay to play. And pay you will. In round numbers, figure it’s about $1000 per day – and that’s if you don’t order steak. Pebble Beach goes for a little more.

Or, you can drive down to Turlock, California. That will cost you about $20 in gas. You sign up for the mid-week special. You get two rounds of golf and a night in one of the resort’s cottages. To be fair, the accommodations are rather Spartan and the swimming pool is a little small for a place that describes itself as a resort. But hey, who needs a fancy room? If you want to save money, you can microwave all of your favorite treats right in front of the television. If you want to eat out, the clubhouse serves a great menu of red meat for reasonable prices.

At Stevinson Ranch, it’s all about the golf. The grass on the practice range is equal to Poppy Ridge, the Bay Area standard. The short game area is the best I’ve seen. When you sign up for the two day special, you get unlimited practice balls. Be sure you buy a couple of extra rolls of Gauze Tex for your blisters. In the summer, the greens are the fastest and firmest in the region. Touring pros that live in Central California come to Stevinson Ranch to practice because it’s the closest to tour conditions. The course itself is reminiscent of the links courses in Europe. The greens feature false fronts and aprons that remind you of Scotland and Ireland. You’ll be putting from fifty yards out.

I forgot to mention that two rounds of golf with cart and a night in the cottages will set you back $150 mid week. If you’re thinking about taking a couple of days to tune up your game with play on a championship course, unlimited practice and availability of instruction from PGA Professional Dee Roadman and his staff, this is the best deal in golf. I challenge anyone to beat the deal at Stevinson Ranch.

How About Them Irons?

So, what do you do with your best set of irons? Answer: you try to make them better. My gamers for the last several months has been a set of Ping Eye 3+ Blades. I have three sets of those heads. My idea was to mount different shafts with the same heads to figure out what shaft setup works the best by only changing one variable. The Ping Eye 3+ Blades set up with Nippon 1150 Tour shafts are great feeling irons and I’ve hit some surprising shots under pressure so I trust them. This month I set up an identical set with the E21 Scandium shafts and have a third ready to go with the Aerotech progressive weight “Players’ Spec” steel fiber shafts. How else would you know which shaft works best for you unless you test them with the same head?

I had one launch monitor session with the Ping Blades to compare the performance of Nippon 1150 Tours against E21 Scandium. Performance, measured by ball speed and carry distance was virtually identical. That’s not too surprising because our experience tells us that shafts that weigh the same and have the same flex perform the same. Feel was very close – how do you measure feel? It’s going to take a while longer to figure out if Scandium can beat out Japanese steel.

The flip side of this technique was mounting my Miura forged combo heads on a set of Nippon 1150 Tour shafts. That was the surprise of the month. I’ve been playing medium level game improvement irons for several years. Like most seniors, I’ve convinced myself that my skills are waning and I need help. I tried a progression of Ping, Bridgestone, Callaway, Taylor Made and examples from most of the component companies over the last eight years. I had one aborted attempt with a set of Byron Nelson prototype blades that some Chronicles readers may remember. That lasted one day.

We sell a lot of Miuras to good players at the Golf Lab and I’ve wanted to see if I could play a small size forged blade successfully. My first attempt was a false start. I mounted the Miura heads on a set of Aerotech Steel Fiber graphite shafts and that just didn’t work out. It might have been that I was playing the set in a period of bad weather, but I couldn’t get over the impression that they were short and soft. That’s when I figured that Japanese blades must want Japanese shafts. I reshafted the Miuras with Nippon 1150 Tours. I would have played the Miuras on Sunday at Stevinson Ranch (a new set of irons in a tournament round is exciting) but after posting my first day score and seeing my pairing I decided to stick with my old friends and avoid embarrassment in front of the wall..

The Miura breakthrough came the first week in April. The Golf Lab Tour Van was at the Poppy Ridge demo day and we had great grass and unlimited practice balls. My first relief was that the Miuras were going just as far as the Pings. Then I hit three hundred wedges and nine irons with the Miuras. The Miura short irons have very sharp leading edges, described as “diggers”. I found that the Miuras wanted me to take more divot than I’m used to. But, they didn’t want a deep divot. They wanted a shallow divot. If I did that, I caught the ball a little higher on the face of the club and the result was fabulous. The ball flew a little lower but hit the green with a lot of spin. After a while I was hitting high cuts and low draws with my short irons. The session reminded me of the countless days in the back yard when I was twelve. When was the last time you hit three hundred shots with the same two clubs? I found that I could hit small forged blades with sharp leading edges just fine. Sixty one is not too old for forged blades. That gives me a little tingle.

There was one more surprise. My combo set transformed from muscle back blades to cavities at the six iron. For some reason, I couldn’t hit the six iron down nearly as well as the muscle back blades. Who would imagine that sharp edged muscle back blades would be easier to hit than cavity back irons with a friendly sole grind?

If you’re playing irons that are supposedly easy to hit, have a good look at the soles. It’s certain that they have built in “bounce”. The leading edge will be blunt and the sole will look a little like a pillow. That’s an insurance policy against an erratic swing. The club is designed to avoid taking a clean divot, but rather to slide along the surface of the dirt. You get satisfactory results even if you don’t make clean contact. The worse the player, the more bounce is required to make sure the ball moves forward. It is common for Tour players to “relieve” the leading edge of their sharp edged forged irons to provide just a bit more margin for error. So far, I’ve not wanted to grind the leading edge of my Miura blades – thinking of that as a sacrilege - but who knows what the future holds? If you’re not satisfied with your ball striking, check out your iron soles and then try something different.

That same compassion doesn’t hold for my Pings. The Ping Eye 3+ blade sole grind is primitive. My gamers have just completed a trip to the grinder and are currently in the recovery room, hoping for another chance in the bag. If you’re interested to see what the modified sole grind looks like, I’ve posted it on www.calgolftech.com. Without radical surgery, the Pings are going from the bag to the garage.

Miuras in the Bag

I’ve got a few tweaks planned for the Miuras. I built them out just a little shorter than the 1” over (39” five iron) that I’ve been playing. A quarter of an inch may not sound like much, but it’s in my head that I need a little more shaft length to get down on the ball like the Miura diggers seem to want. I’m going to do that by adding Balance-Certified counterweights – the old kind that gives you a half inch shaft extension. It’s been a year or so since I set up a set of irons with counter weights and I’d think it’s time to revisit that tweak. While I’m at it, I might just drive a wood dowel down the shaft. That’s another one of those old style modifications to soften up the feel of steel shafts that isn’t too hard to do. I wonder if I’ll be able to feel the difference.

Then, I’ll get into the question of whether blades could possibly be easier to hit than cavity backs. That’s going to require building out the low end of the set with blades and a few more range sessions. I’ll certainly try soft stepping the long irons. It should be an interesting month. Meantime, if you’ve been short selling your skills, get yourself a forged blade nine iron and pitching wedge, some great grass, a monster bucket of balls and have some fun.

Mornings at the Muni

The invitation is open. With the weather clearing, I’m planning to be at the Palo Alto Muni most weekday mornings at 7:30 – except Fridays. If you’d like to join me for nine holes and breakfast at the Grill – great omelets – just give the Golf Lab a call the day before to make sure it’s happening. I’ll give you a free evaluation of how your clubs are working where it matters – on the golf course.

Leith Anderson is a Partner in the Golf Lab, Palo Alto, CA.
He will answer any and all questions relating to club fitting and club making. Contact: Leith@calgolftech.com.