Enjoyed watching the end of that video Ant! Time to get rid of the club on the ground perhaps! 
haha you’re referring to the 24/12 session…I was going to take another video but though bugger it.
No problem Texa. I guess we’re all trying to figure it out in a way.
Couple of updates. First of all, got the urge to hit the range earlier this week, with an eye on comparing technologies. 2005(?) Ping I5’s vs 1960 Wilson Dynas and 2007 Taylormade Burner driver vs 1960 Wilson 4300 persimmon driver. I hadn’t swung the new clubs in a while, so was shocked to take a practise swing with the Ping. It’s so light. Hit a couple then went to the dyna, to confirm it is just a much heavier iron. This is funny because one the reasons I chose the Ping was due to it’s heavier feel compared with other brands I tried. Range time was slightly ruined by not being able to see distance, but I already knew the dynas are a lot shorter iron vs iron, but nothing here made me feel they are anything but perfectly fine to use as a day to day club.
The drivers were interesting. The persimmon was left in an unfortunate position, as the tees there are stupid heights for persimmon, and I just couldn’t hit off them. So I was left comparing driver off the mat and titanium off the tees. Again titanium was ultra weird to stand up to. It really doesn’t belong in a golf set, it’s some special club (and that could be special olympics special too). I knew this when I bought it, but tried to listen to the sea of people saying “you’ll get used to it.” It somehow still had good results, so I can’t throw it away just yet, but I don’t see it as a great learning tool.
Onto the course this morning. It’s the first time staff have kept out of my way, so I got a decent 9 in. Results were pretty bad, and I really shouldn’t be expecting much when I go out for my first 18 this weekend. However, I will seek to enjoy a full 18 holes of golf, and try my best to not to let any pointless shots be wasted, which is about all I can expect out of any round of golf. Interesting points of the round. I tried to get the titanium going, and just couldn’t keep it on the fairway. Strikes where clean, but it just wouldn’t go straight. Pulled out the persimmon for two holes and hit a couple of long straight shots (distance not far off the titanium at all either). Titanium will stay at home, perhaps find a new home through ebay soon. Chipping was very good. Under 60m was like I had the ball on a string, hititng some miracle shots. However, I got into those positions through poor ball striking (and titanium disataster starts to holes), and after playing my solid recovery shot still missed most putts. I still had a few sizzling iron shots, highlights being a crisp 7 iron over water hunting the flag, and a pin high 5 iron that finished 1 foot from it’s divot, as flush and straight as I’d ever hit. Also I was happy with all the shots in the last two holes.
Looking forward to the weekend, even if I do end up playing a lot more shots than I need to.
Did you play on the course with the Dyna’s or the Pings this morning SB? @ North Ryde?
Played the dynas, and I will again in competition this weekend. They are the regulars for now. Pings are as good as sold to be honest, no need to hang onto them. I have a feeling I’ll end up playing Hogans more when they arrive as they are a fuller set 2-PW(or E), as long as I like the feel of them. The dynas are good, but don’t expect magic with them. They are there to tell you when you suck and when you rule. My hand is still shaking from a couple of mis hits, but all my mind cares about is the sweet as sweet 5 iron, I know exactly what part of the club that hit, because it felt like magic.
I play at Strathfield, 10-15 minutes down the same road as North Ryde. It’s a little longer, and I think nicer than North Ryde, although I haven’t played there to confirm. Strathfield is far from championship quality, but it’s a very tight course and well kept (mostly), very easy to get on for social play, and has great practice areas. It’s interesting about the persimmon posts by everyone here, because not only is this course made for persimmon, it’s made to discourage big titanium hits I’ve noticed. The lengths make it a nice challenge if you land 220m-240m drives, but the hardest part on the fairway is usually at the 230m-260m. Not to mention you risk a lot to make the par 5’s in two, as there is usually OB’s or danger for the drive, then OB or danger around the tight greens. Things that wouldn’t trouble a couple of layups and a wedge, but would be very dangerous for an approaching 4 wood. I mean, Lag and two probably shoot 4-5 under first time they come here (green fees are on me guys 
), but I’m sure this course would crush a few low handicappers that like to bomb their titanium into wide landing areas.
If they come down here to play I’ll share the green fees mate… 
I’ll chip in too…
Had a great first round, everything I’d dreamed about. I was hoping for a sub 100, but with what’s been happening in practice, and especially given more pressure in a comp round, I was not going to be too upset if I didn’t break 100. Well, I broke 100. 96 to be precise, and it’s easily the worse score I could have made given how well I struck it. I must have 3 putted about 6 times, and missed a lot of short medium putts too. I melted so many irons it started to get scary, and yes I got labelled a cheat due to how well I was striking it and how poorly I was scoring. In the end I’ll be marked back to a 90 due to 2 absolute disaster holes anyway. But even though I’d love to say ABS has turned me into a ball striking genius, I know from my practice rounds this is still a good day for me, but will be a poor day in a few months time, if that makes sense. I’m not kidding when I say I struck it like a 10 handicap today, and putted like a beginner.
Some interesting things of note.Even though I was playing with 2 young strong guys with low handicaps, my persimmon slices (sliced it all day long) were matching their titanium draws. However, my dynas where about 3 irons less. On one 165m par 3 I striped a 4 iron and fell slightly short, and one of the other guys hit his 7 iron the right length (and 20m right of the green). What I mentioned the other day about this course not being friendly to long hitters off the tee didn’t seem to bother these guys. They hit titanium off every tee possible, and hit the fairway bunkers, or missed the tight fairways a lot. And while these guys hit some good shots here and there, almost all the good scores they made came from their bombing drives not finding trouble, and ending up with wedges into the green. If they had anything greater than a 8 iron, it was closer to OB than the green most of the time.
By the way, thanks to TeddyIrons. After a couple of practice rounds I found myself trying to change my full swing every hole, and I was wondering what I was supposed to do while working on my swing with Lag, but this time, I just kept the simple swing thought “keep it tight” and the results were great.
Hey sb, are you able to make payments through paypal? 
Good to hear about your progress and I’m glad something I wrote has helped somebody! As the weeks go by I can sense that my arms are having less and less influence in my swing through impact and my pivot is taking over. This then feeds back into my drilling which tightens up as a result. The feeling of having both arm pits packed against the body really helps in this regard.
Well, I think this is what forums do best. I put my thoughts up, you put yours, and others put theirs. If between us we happen to mention one thing that someone finds helpful, the idea of a forum has been successful. As it turns out there are plenty of things people should find useful on this forum.
I couldn’t escape my round just yet. I went through it all last night, picking apart the stats, and found a few things. Five 3 putts for 37 putts in total. There is huge room for improvement there. In fact I wouldn’t be at all surprised if I was the worst putter in the field. While my playing partners hacked around, when they got on the green, they were sinking putts from everywhere, and had less 3 putts amongst the 3 of them than I did.
My persimmon driver also wasn’t good. I could get clean contact a lot, but either sliced it, or pulled it too far trying to avoid the slice, and rarely found the fairway. 2 times that I did were 230m into a breeze, both times outdriving the titaniums weilded by young strong players. But the irons were something else. I counted up my flushed iron shots with the 50yo blades, and I found that I hit 7 flush irons that were 5 iron or longer and straight, with a couple of pinseekers with a 3 or 4 iron. I hit another 6 or 7 short irons flush too, and even though I sometimes had a long putt or had slightly missed the green, a lot of this is the experience of knowing the right iron, as a lot of my flush iron shots were going straight down the middle of the green after a fade.
So I guess with this, the round is finally behind me, and I can get back to hitting a bag, but I did want to mention my round had a lot more great shots than the score would suggest.
sb,
Can i warn you from experience against counting your putts and especially counting the number of times you 3 putt in a round, a bad road to go down IMO.
As you improve and you hit more and more and more greens in regulation, this will put an inevitable strain on your putting as you are more likely to be further away from the pin than you would be if you have chipped on more often from the edge of the green, no matter how good you are this is true.
Trust me, there is nothing worse for your score than hitting 2 great shots onto a par 4, then leaving yourself a 4 footer for par then getting into an internal dialogue with youself about how stupid you are for 3 putting so much.
Best take it one shot at a time and forget about stats.
I keep stats on my putts, but I do agree that you should do it with caution and some understanding.
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You’re not going to make as many putts playing most non-PGA Tour like greens. Slower putts mean less putts made, even when it comes to the Tour. This is the reason why they can’t get putts to drop at a high rate when they make the Cali swing early in the year. Plus, the greens are much smoother on the Tour courses. So getting this idea that because the PGA Tour pros can average 29 putts a round and thus you should be able to have 25 putts a round because you are playing an easier course is really foolish, IMO.
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I pace off my putts and keep a mental note of the distance of the putt and then right it on the scorecard when I’m done. I put the stats in an excel spreadsheet and split the distances in 3-5 feet, 6-10 feet, 11-15, 16-20, 20-25 and 25+. Tiger says you shouldn’t pace off putts, but I think doing it doesn’t hurt and can help a bit with feel and speed. My goal is to be good enough to try and make the Tour average from these distances, although it’s a tall order. I also pace off distance because I use AimPoint golf’s ‘aim charts’ and you need to know what your distances are to use the aiming charts.
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Even though you shouldn’t make as many putts since you are putting on worse greens, you should 3-putt less on poorer, slower greens since your leaves should be from less distance away.
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Since you putt worse on lesser courses, you should strike the ball better on lesser courses. A really good ballstriker on a poorer course should hit more fairways and greens and have closer shots to the pin than the top tour pros. Of course if they were playing Tour type courses, they would hit less greens, fairways and have less shots close to the pin. That’s why a PGA Tour player can shoot 65 at your home course without breaking a sweat. They are likely hitting at least 16 greens with ease and hitting almost all of the fairways and having a bunch of birdies inside 10 feet.
I don’t think there’s anything wrong with keeping putting stats, but your expectations have to be more realistic.
3JACK
Well thanks for the warning. I don’t think I would ever become too much of a stats junkie anyway, but I can see some good reasons why counting putts per round is fairly useless. That said, my putting was terrible, it really was.
I like to keep stats on GIRs, fairways hit, down in twos, and yes also no. of putts. Like Richie I think that putting stats need to be interpreted, so the length of putts is what really matters, or even the type of greens. It’s just a guide, not something to get wound up about. It’s nice to know what the biggest contribution is to our score - is it ball striking, chipping, or putting? I think we tend to know without even keeping stats really, but over time it’s nice to look back and check on progress. I mean, I love looking at my statistics of 9 months ago and seeing 1 fairway hit for one of my rounds! That was some day (wasted looking for balls!).
Had my 2nd round today. It was a new best score, 94, but while there was some good there was also some bad. I mean, the tees were shorter today, so I hit a lot of irons off the tees. It left me with 3-6 irons on the fairway a lot, and realistically I could have hit the driver, or tried the 3 wood to leave wedges (not that I have one), but by keeping it safe I managed to avoid losing any balls. I feel like I had a lot of bad luck with those mid length irons, hitting them nicely, but clipping bunkers, or hitting the green and jumping through the back a bit. Perhaps a bit more experience is needed with lengths, but obviously I didn’t have that last week either, and things seemed to fall in place a bit better, probably just more luck last week. Still chipped great, and putted poorly. Left 5 shots in bunkers!!! Last week, only hit one bunker which I got up and down, today I hit half the green bunkers on the back nine, and it wasn’t pretty trying to get them out, including 3 shots out of one. Obviously need to start practicing bunker play at some point. I’m still thrilled. Two rounds in, and I don’t seem to have a big problem breaking 100 by any means, and in fact with a bit of tweaking around the greens, and some better selection of irons, I’ll be breaking 90 for sure at some point.
Two highlights of the day. Introducing myself to the low handicap of the group, and he says “your clubs belong in a closet.” Left me speachless. He smacks his taylormade monster down the middle. I too smack my first ever hit of the Macgregor driver down the middle. We get there, he’s barely hit it 200m, I’ve hit it 240m, nice (nobody out drove my 4 wood shots today). Next time I pull out this baby on the 405m 5th, dog leg left, an older gent waits for us to hit before walking to the next hole. I get it shaping beautifully down the right side of the fairway following the dog leg, and get it 230m. “That’s what I like to see, listen to that sound,” said the old guy, great feeling.
Heap of fun, love the actual playing just about as much as the practice to be honest.
And you know what I love? When I get off the 18, wondering what I can work on to improve my score next time, the answer is easy. I don’t have to improve my score next time, let it be 110 for all I care. I just want to improve my game long term, so onto module 3 it is. If I get any spare time, I’ll still be chipping (my game strength right now) and perhaps might look at some articles on how to play bunkers.
I no longer keep putting stats for many of the reasons 3jack mentions. I play a lot of muni’s and the green conditions simply won’t provide much in the way of statistically meaningful data. Too many parameters that can’t be controlled that I’m afraid I’ll start working on the wrong stuff. Personally I think most touring pro’s would be lost as easter eggs on many of the greens we play on especially when you see the sort of conditions they find “unplayable”. I’d love to see the tour start slowing the greens down and taking away their aimpoint charts so we can see what kind of skills these guys really have.
I played yesterday, hit 16 greens, had 32 putts, shot 71. Putt count is meaningless, particularly when you consider just how many “tap-ins” you have in a round. Total feet of putts is an interesting stat and maybe it’s good to know how many I made or missed in a certain range, but do any of us really walk off the 18th green and not have a reasonably good idea of how well we putted that day? Did I hit my start lines? Was my speed good? Did I commit to the process? Were my reads good?
Perhaps my thinking is too simple, but I don’t see how one can be good at 10 footers, bad at 20 footers, decent from 30, and awful inside of 5 feet. If I’m reading the break accurately, hitting my start line (that I’m committed to), with good speed, I probably had a decent day and did all I could do. If my speed sucked, or I was missing my start line then I need to go work on those things.
Robbo
I highly, highly, highly recommend David Orr’s ‘Green Reading 101’ and ‘Green Reading 201’ vids. The 201 video goes into the AimPoint golf work. If you ever watch a tourney on The Golf Channel and they show you the exact line of the putt and where the golfer should aim, that is AimPoint technologies at work. The 201 video with AimPoint Golf completely opened my eyes to stuff I had never heard before and back when I played college golf, I was probably the best putter in our conference (mainly because my ballstriking stunk).
I play pretty decent greens, so keep stats isn’t a bad idea for me. But if you play muni’s like Robbo talked about, I would just focus on getting your routine down pat and making a good stroke on the ball. That may be a good thing to keep track of, the amount of putts that you have a good routine and make a good stroke vs. the putts you don’t. Then try to cut them down each round until you get to the point where almost every putt consists of a solid routine of green reading, practice strokes and aim, and then a solid stroke.
I spoke to Dustin Johnson about this, a good putter in his own right, and that’s what he said he basically concerns himself with when it comes to putting. Even if he misses a 3 footer, as long as he has a good routine, and makes a solid stroke, he told me that he felt there was nothing more he could really do and if it misses…he would have to live with it for the meantime.
3JACK
Definitely not too simple thinking Robbo, but perfectly simple and I totally agree. Same with driving stats, up and down stats, bunker stats–if you don’t know intuitively which area of your game which needs work on, then maybe no work is needed. I’m definitely not at a loss as to why my scores are as they are.
Stats, unless ridiculously extensive that you spend your round recording them instead of playing, which alters your play in itself, will not even approach your intuition after a round. Maybe you were feeling bad this day or the greens were poor, or it was extremely windy - should we count today’s stats or not, or maybe half count them? Intuition does this automatically. The only important driving distance is your next drive.
Some greens I’d rather be off than on, some fairways I’d rather be 1 yard off the left than on over to the right. If a putt misses left, did I pull it or did I read it incorrectly? What should I work on? Too many variables to track.
Statistics can be misleading, particularly for any one round of golf… but they are rarely misleading over the course of a season.
I’d much rather be chipping from 12 feet off the back edge having gone for a tucked pin than putting from 60 feet with an official GIR…
Stepping off putts can be time consuming and slow down play if you are pulling out a pen and notepad on every green.
Also, if I am striking the ball well, I might sometimes have less putts because I am positioning the ball under the hole, leaving myself a lot of easier to make uphill putts during a hot ball striking round.
But there is always value in understanding what you are doing, and what your tendencies are.