My tools of the trade.

My clubs are a mish-mash of custom new and second-hand acquisitions with the newest addition of an Odyssey O-Works putter purchased last week. More on that later. The oldest club in the bag is a Taylor Made Slidr 3-wood in 15° loft. I purchased it and the matching driver new online two years ago after it was vastly marked down as an out of date model. At $159 for the pair I felt like I got a great deal. I hit the 3-wood on average 190 yards off the tee and my driver 195 yards (which is why I don’t carry the driver – why bother for a sprayed 5 extra yards?)

After I started golfing again I was frustrated that I hit my 4 through 6 irons the same distance and not well at that. I decided to replace the long irons with hybrids and my current makeup is a second-hand Ping 3-hybrid, and new Cobra Baffler 4, and 5 hybrids. I am working on making the 3-hybrid my go-to club off the tee and am now consistently hitting 8 of 10 in tests with a high fade. I still have the 5-iron in the bag as as a low punch out of trouble club. The hybrid gapping is 3H 170 yards, 4H 160, and 5H 150 yards.

The irons are a set of Ping G’s that are the first professionally fitted new clubs I’ve purchased. I went to the Club Champion location here in Austin where the fitter had me hit my own Wilson OS 6-iron to gauge my current capabilities in a trackman appointed bay. Then he had me hit 6-irons from a variety of manufacturers with differing shafts until we found a combination where trackman displayed a consistent dispersion and length improvement. According to Game Golf stats I went from hitting my old Wilson 6-iron 132 yards to hitting the new Ping 142 off the deck. At the time of the fitting I was just learning the new dynamic swing method and he coached me a bit on that during the fitting as well. I hit the PW 100, 9-iron 110-115, and so on up through the 5-iron. I am debating replacing the 5-iron with the 5-hybrid in the future as I am just as likely to hit the 5-iron 130 yards as 150 yards.

I have cycled through several wedge configurations over time. I ended up with Titlest Vokey wedges mainly because I like the look and feel of them. My ping PW is a 45° wedge so I went to a 50° Gap wedge. My Sand Wedge is a 56° wedge. I own a 60° Lob Wedge, but I seldom used it because I always left it short and didn’t have confidence using it. I didn’t feel I needed it anyway because I have practiced laying the SW wide open and flopping when I need a high soft shot, which is almost never. I therefore replaced the Lob Wedge with the Cleveland Smart Sole 3C chipping wedge. My wedge gapping for full shots is PW – 100-105, GW 90-95, and SW 80-85. Three-quarter swing GW is 75, and SW is 65. Half swing GW is around 60, and half swing SW travels a frequently practiced and confident 50 yards to a 20 foot target circle.

Time for a new putter

I purchased an Odyssey putter 15-20 years ago and as you can see from the following picture, it has seen its share of use. To me a putter is a tool in the bag and on many of the courses around here low hanging tree limbs require a ground hugging shot so I’ve whacked my way out of trouble quite often with the putter. Thus the many rock dings along the bottom edge.

My lag putting method is to read a line and pick a spot on the green like an old cup mark that I want the ball to roll over, maybe 10 feet ahead of the ball. I then stand beside the ball and make one to three practice strokes at the speed I need while looking at the hole. I step up to the ball, align the line on the putter in the direction of the spot and make my stroke. The problem has been that I have been missing my mark a lot and I realized that I wanted a better alignment aid on my putter than this short single line shown below.

The new Odyssey O-Works putter has exactly what I envisioned – a long single line that really helps me line the putter up to the target mark. I almost never looked at the pair of lines on the old putter. I did know that with an average of 34 putts per round that I was more than happy with the length and lie and offsets of the original putter so I went with the same setup except for getting a half mallet with the long sight line. I have putted short and lag putt tests with great results and also had good 9-hole putting rounds as well. I will take it out for the first game tomorrow. I do know I plan to use a hybrid for low punch from under trees. I don’t want to mar the new putter yet.

Future Upgrades

After the success I had with the iron fitting I am planning to get fit for new woods. However, I won’t get fitted until I regularly score below 90 and can hit 8 of 10 3-wood tests consistently. After reading several articles and seeing you tube videos lately about the efficacy of a 3-wood vs 4 or 5-wood I may choose to get fit for a driver and 4 or 5-wood. The theory and tests showed that slower hand speed swingers may hit the latter further than a 3-wood. Also, I’m never going to be Tiger long so I will put a premium on tight shot dispersion over length so I will request the fitter to keep me in shorter than stock driver shaft length. I’m hoping the shorter shaft and my steadily improving dynamic swing will result in more solid club face contact and 210 to 220 yard driver distances. I have hit my driver over 240 more than a few times with good contact.

Hybrid fitting might be next but on my budget it will be a long time before I get there. Other than not carrying a driver, I’m happy with the clubs I have for now. I believe that with the clubs I’m playing with now and using Scoring Method strategies, I should get to regularly hitting in the 80’s.