Having a loft and lie machine is great…I have an antique one, but it bends the clubs just fine… and is as accurate as I need it to be. I also like to bump them around a bit so they fit my eye… because I want an iron to look right also.
Your divots will tell you more than any machine ever could… because not only does a divot show heel to toe flatness or upright… but it also shows path, and steepness or shallowness…and of course alignment.
There is so much information in a divot if you know what to look for…
How true. I also like to look at the “dirt lines” on the clubface to see if it runs parallel to the grooves or not. All things being equal, dirt lines running parallel to the grooves indicates a proper lie angle given its path- but does not speak to
steepness of attack. Have seen boatloads of people with dirt lines that transverse the face between the 2nd and 8th grooves. There is a company in Toledo marketing single length irons- all irons in set are same length. Another company tried this years ago without much success. Beyond all the fitting dynamics and nightmares that would appear to be present,
what’s your take on that type of iron set. Thanks
I know Tommy Armour had a set a while ago, the problem is the long irons go too low and the short irons too high, all the club have the same speed at impact and there’s not enough of a distance gap between them.
Would like to get some feedback about whether a set make-up like this would actually benefit beginning golfers. On the surface it would seem that it would be easier handling one shaft length, perhaps one ball position, and acceleration awareness by using this set. Our driving range is considering selling them this summer and would like to get some opinions. The company’s name is One Iron Golf out of Toledo.
I think this observation is spot on. I wouldn’t want a one length club. I need my gaps to be larger not smaller. With my fairly slow swing speed, I believe gaps would become smaller. This alone would keep me from owning them. I guessing it would take a higher swing speed to make the gaps large enough to use these. But I am no expert here. Just an opinion.
It really goes to show how messed up the whole situation is.
That an equipment company for one, has any business suing the governing body of a game, because they at one time were trying to protect the integrity of it… but Kartsen in his endless arrogance says “the hell with you and integrity” and gets the best lawyers in the land and really leaves this as one of his big legacies to the game that made him hundreds of millions of dollars. That must go down as one of the worst rulings in US Court history.
I would love to have heard Hogan or David Graham’s take on Karsten.
The 2-7 irons don’t look all that unusually different. In fact, I thought the new Mizuno MP-68 blade irons, look wise were a dead ringer for the IPT’s. And I’m quite confident that Mizuno designed these irons and other lines of irons after many of the vintage Hogan blades. The 8-E of the IPT’s are very round and you won’t see an iron today that looks like the short irons of these old IPT blades. The IPT’s are very short, 5-iron only 37.5" in length. Lofts are extremely weak as well. And they are flatter, but nothing crazy. The lofts are far weaker than the lie angles are flatter. But if you are wanting to use some irons from the modern age than have more or an old school look, I’d take a look at the MP-68’s by Mizuno. They are also very soft and you can bend them quite flat. Mizuno supposedly can make the clubs any swingweight you want, but I don’t know how good their QC is. But they also have quite a few shaft offerings. I do like the KBS Tour shafts (the KBS 90’s are wayyy too light). Hopefully in 3-4 months I’ll get pretty close with my swing where I want it to be and I’ll take the 5-iron in the IPT, make the loft strong and put an KBS shaft with a standard length in the club and see how it goes (I hit the IPT’s right now too short, but I like the club and the forgings).
If the Hogan’s don’t meet expectations, I’ll probably go to either the MP-68’s or the Scratch Golf SB-1’s and just use the IPT’s for practice and casual rounds. If I do wind up like the Hogan’s with the flatter lies, stronger lofts and new shafts, I’ll probably just get them all re-done by the Iron Factory.
I just finished watching the touching film on the life of Steve Jobs. It was interesting to hear from his closest friends and competitors and even enemies reflect upon his path through life and the many challenges he embraced and overcame.
His goal always seemed to be to take technology and make it as simple as possible to the end user. There was a discussion about the first computer keyboard “mouse” and how Jobs wanted only one button instead of the proposed three. Complexity to simplicity.
His advantage amongst his peers seemed to be his ability to see through the complexity of the circuitry right to the end user… along with his vision for simple sleek design work in the form of his product line.
There seems today to be an assumed correlation between new and better. Understandably if you assume that every new offering is built upon the shoulders of the previous version or model. While this may be true for some things, I would argue that this is not the case for all things… and certainly a lot of this would fall into the category of “subjectivity”. I know there are a few musicians around here who know that tube amplification processing a quality recorded analog source from tape or vinyl is far superior to any digital offerings of sound and or music reproduction. Convenience over quality.
While I type here on my archaic Apple ibook G4 running on the long forgotten Motorola based processor,
I couldn’t help but think about the parallels between the computer age and golf.
Obviously I don’t think the modern gear is better than the older gear… I think it is quite inferior when it comes to a design geared toward accuracy and learning a proper golf swing. On this computer, I prefer to use my two handed skills as a typist over one finger picking on a mobile device most are using now. I prefer talking over texting. Talking is quicker, and the communication is better even if it is a message being left on voicemail. The sound and intonation of a voice is generally lost texting which can be significant in communicating ideas or someone’s feeling about things, positive or negative.
Golf now is certainly convenience over quality. The clubs, the balls, the courses, the golf swing, the shoes, golf carts, laser scopes and so on.
Jobs was a walker. He loved to walk… he took long walks alone and with friends. Many of his most important business deals were walking meetings. He and Larry Ellison would take long walks. He and Gates would walk… and many others.
If you haven’t walked a round of golf in a while. Take the time to do so… and think about how it might improve both your score and your enjoyment of playing golf.
