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Posted
22 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

1.) if you stay on the above plan you will improve.  Be patient with yourself the game(swing, results....) is hauntingly mysterious at times.

2.) it won't make a material difference to your progress.  is nice information to have.

3.) yes, but resist the temptation to go beserk.  Look for highly regarded "game improvement" irons.  More forgiving.

4.) Most golfers are extremely welcoming and nice.  Largely you will NOT be given unsolicited advice, most of us are fellow sufferers.   Learn course/play etiquette.   Know when its time to pick up your ball on a hole.  Don't expect people you are paired with to watch you grind out a 15 on a par 4

#3  Get fitted for the clubs.  Be sure they look good to your eye.  I've never been a Callaway guy, the top line was always to thick looking to me.  Some of their new irons are better though

 

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Posted
16 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Thank you. any thoughts on the DTC brands here? Takomo, Stix, Sub70, etc.

I don't have any experience with DTC golf clubs.  I play a decade old set of callaway X somethings I bought off callawaypreowned.com .  Old golf saying:  Its the Indian, not the arrows.  Plenty of good hits left in 5 year old "technology".   I do agree with getting fitted, that gives you clubs that fit your bodies specific measurement.  Basically rack clothes vs tailored.  

You can take the information from a fitting and have someone like Dicks or local club adjust a set, the callaway site above will adjust clubs too.

Posted
1 hour ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

5) When I’m no longer confusing myself with the above, take a lesson focused on hitting from a tee, and work on tee shots with driver and 5 wood at range after warming up with irons. 

I would suggest leaving the driver at home and using a 3 wood for tee shots. The accuracy will more than make up for any distance you lose.

Once your swing is in better shape then you can work on hitting the driver on the practice range and eventually on course.

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Posted
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

Thank you. any thoughts on the DTC brands here? Takomo, Stix, Sub70, etc.

I got Sub70 wedges and really love them. Bought during one of their sales for about $80 apiece, find them as good for me as a $170 Vokey.

Posted
2 hours ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

As in, not partially or completely missing the ball with the club or hitting the turf 3 inches behind the ball. Literally just putting the club head on the ball.

OK, this is fair and fine.

2 hours ago, WithoutAClue said:

I would suggest leaving the driver at home and using a 3 wood for tee shots. The accuracy will more than make up for any distance you lose.

Once your swing is in better shape then you can work on hitting the driver on the practice range and eventually on course.

With current drivers, most players actually aren't that much more accurate (if any) with the 3 wood. Large forgiving head can be really helpful, esp if it's fit with the right shaft etc. 

Posted
On 7/18/2025 at 12:10 PM, BearSchlong said:

There's no way that's only 38k steps!

Oh wait, LPGA? She probably hits it pretty straight.

I wonder how many clubs she carried?

That's probably the only thing she does "straight".

Posted
On 1/6/2025 at 8:19 AM, nolongerU2horn said:

2025 Intentions:

 

Break 85 (Current 19 hcp/former 12 hcp, shouldn't be that hard)

 

Well, I shot 87 at Sandia Golf Club in Albuquerque on Friday. 

 

48-39!  Easily my best 9 in a long time. Hit every fairway on the back with 2 birdies. Hit a couple into the desert on the front.

 

Sandia was fantastic. One of the best conditioned courses I've ever played and really a bargain at $114 on a Friday morning. That's less than you'll pay at Avery on a weekend. Which is ridiculous.

 

 

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Posted (edited)
On 7/25/2025 at 10:43 AM, babysdaddy said:

I'm going to hurt myself or someone close to me if I can't figure out my putting.  I'm a 1 index and I've had 40 putts and 38 putts in my last 2 rounds.  78 both times.  someone help.  Do I need to become a lab putter guy?  

I got paired with an ex-LPGA professional who retired from pro golf because she had the putting yips. She had 3 putters in her bag. She used 2 of them on the front 9. Only played 9. It's a thing.

She was in the middle of the fairway, hit GIRs. Just couldn't make any birdie putts.

Edited by crash_davis
Posted
5 hours ago, nolongerU2horn said:

Well, I shot 87 at Sandia Golf Club in Albuquerque on Friday. 

 

48-39!  Easily my best 9 in a long time. Hit every fairway on the back with 2 birdies. Hit a couple into the desert on the front.

 

Sandia was fantastic. One of the best conditioned courses I've ever played and really a bargain at $114 on a Friday morning. That's less than you'll pay at Avery on a weekend. Which is ridiculous.

 

 

Sandia is a really fun course.  And Albuquerque is an awesome location for a quick, cheap golf vacation.  Twin Warriors and Paako Ridge are both easily accessible from downtown / the airport.   Paako is pretty spectacular and worth the 45 minute drive.  

About 10 years ago, we did a three day weekend there.  Flew in early Friday morning from Austin.  Landed by 8 AM (gained an hour).  Got 36 in at Sandia.  Gambled at their shitty casino that night.  36 at Paako the next day (27-hole course).  Ate ribs and fajitas at El Pinto that night.  Blakes' green chile burrito followed by 18 at TW early Sunday morning.  Back home to Austin in time for supper Sunday night.  All-in for under $1K.  

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Posted

@Bozo_Casanova we are on the same journey but I’m three months ahead and three years younger.  

Just finished my tenth of ten lessons and they’ve helped tremendously.  I am no longer a hack and just a mediocre player.   I just bought new clubs after my coach did a bit of a fitting.  I wanted TaylorMade but after hitting various types of clubs, it became obvious that I was so much longer and more accurate with Mizuno 925s.  I tried to pretend it was politics and not pay attention to the data in front of me but coach kept directing me back to the stats so I begrudgingly went with them and now I love them (after one whole round with them).

I found no one talks to you about your swing.  And like someone said, pick up a ball if putting group behind pace of play.  No one cares about your score at all, people just care to not slow them down.

Good luck to us newbs.  

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Posted
1 hour ago, Hornbeliever said:

Just finished my tenth of ten lessons and they’ve helped tremendously.  I am no longer a hack and just a mediocre player.   I just bought new clubs after my coach did a bit of a fitting.

This is very encouraging. Are you glad you waited a few months to dial things in before getting new clubs?

1 hour ago, Hornbeliever said:

three years younger

Boy, you are in for a treat. The difference between 51 and 48 is like the difference between 45 and 35.

Enjoy!

Posted (edited)
21 minutes ago, Bozo_Casanova said:

This is very encouraging. Are you glad you waited a few months to dial things in before getting new clubs?

Boy, you are in for a treat. The difference between 51 and 48 is like the difference between 45 and 35.

Enjoy!

I am super glad I waited….but I don’t know if that’s just rationalizing my decision or if that was actually the best choice.  I do know this, I’ve knocked down 30-35 shots off my “handicap” which I don’t even know if one has a handicap when you never ever hit a drive on the (correct) fairway.

My irons and putting would likely make me an 80s player bow but my drives are still pulling my score up 5-7 shots I bet.

I only bought a package of ten lessons and my coach devoted 95% of time to finding my swing on irons/chips/putts and 5% on driver.  Well, my game absolutely reflects that prioritization since we ran out of time.

i also practiced the equivalent of what you smartly outlined.  I have spent hours and hours on this new found hobby….obsession.

Taking a break from lessons for a bit and just pounding balls (huh?) every other day for an hour or so. 
 

and yes, getting old sucks!!  I’m in decent shape and have pulled a groin and strained a hamstring in last twelve months….after only pulling one muscle in 48 years of a quite active lifestyle.  It’s one of the reasons I’ve started playing golf and giving up some other choices.


 

Edited by Hornbeliever
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Posted

Played yesterday after work.  I've been feeling like I was SO CLOSE to turning the corner to the point I can start breaking 80 every once in a while.  Consistently 80-84 for the last few months.  So, what do I do? I lay an absolute egg.  It was like I forgot how to play golf.  Started off OK, but had a stretch of bogey-double-triple-triple-triple-bogey on the front 9 for a smooth 48.  Somewhere in there was a 3-iron that went about 40 yards.  A drive that was in another county and a one-putt triple bogey on a par 3 despite being pin high and 6 ft right of the green off the tee.  I recovered somewhat with a 42 on the back, but it was an absolute grind.  Couldn't find a fairway to save my life and irons were just far enough off line to cause issues.  

I hate golf.  Which is why I'm going back out there to walk 9 after work today.

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Posted
1 minute ago, Incredulity said:

pretty sure I have identified the problem.

You're probably right.  But, that 3i has been my go-to fairway finder for years, especially on short par 4s.  It usually nails on long approach shots.  To the point that I'm considering trading in my old Cleveland hybrid for a 2i. 

Posted
4 minutes ago, Spaulding Smails said:

trading in my old Cleveland hybrid for a 2i

Oh No Comedy GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

 

I get it and I'm just being Surly.  Few things in golf beat the feeling of a pure struck low iron.  I'm nothing special at the game, but could always hit low irons pretty damn good(would promptly give away anything I gained around the green).

Posted
10 minutes ago, Incredulity said:

Oh No Comedy GIF by The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

 

I get it and I'm just being Surly.  Few things in golf beat the feeling of a pure struck low iron.  I'm nothing special at the game, but could always hit low irons pretty damn good(would promptly give away anything I gained around the green).

That's been my golf game the last few months prior to yesterday.  Solid off the tee with good distance.  Decent long irons.  But struggling to capitalize on short approach shots.  Chipping has been suspect.  And putting fell off a cliff.  I was averaging under 30 putts/round last year.  Up to over 33 this year.  Not a lot of three putts, but missing makable putts constantly.  So, for the strokes I've picked up off the tee and from the short grass, I've given them back around the green.  I also have the inevitable 2-3 blow up holes per round.  I feel like I'm a 5-6 hdcp tee to green, but have been a 20 hdcp around the green and putting.  It's all about putting in the work, which I haven't.  

I'm hoping work slows down in the next year so I can try to turn that corner to a consistent single-digit handicap.  

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Posted
3 minutes ago, TXSooner518 said:

Would highly recommend tracking with actual SG data. Number of putts per round is nearly entirely useless, and sometimes there are unexpected nuggets in the data. 

I know what it means obviously but for the other readers, can you elaborate on what SG means in this context?

Posted
7 hours ago, Spaulding Smails said:

...So, what do I do? I lay an absolute egg.  It was like I forgot how to play golf....

Lol I feel seen.  I've been playing okay since picking up the clubs again a few months ago.  Really striking the ball well, but losing a lot of strokes to missed GIRs and bad chipping mistakes.  Overall though, it's been encouraging.  

Walked on at Lions Sunday morning at 0730 and proceeded to card five 7s in row.  Somewhere along the way, I started spraying wedges just blade open wide right.  On 5, I wound up right of the trees, tried to play a mostly conservative pitch out to the fairway, hit a tree and wound up twenty yards backwards.  Next shot, hit another tree.  Third shot, beautiful punch out to 90 yards...

I chalk it up to getting paired with this older dude who had just enough Dad energy to put the thought of my old man in my head, and I always played terribly around him. 

Golf. 

2 hours ago, Hornbeliever said:

I know what it means obviously but for the other readers, can you elaborate on what SG means in this context?

Surly Golf (TM)

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Posted (edited)
16 hours ago, Hornbeliever said:
I know what it means obviously but for the other readers, can you elaborate on what SG means in this context?


For the other readers, “SG” means strokes gained and it describes where a player is gaining or losing strokes against a given benchmark.

There are apps where you can compare your performance to various standards, tour pro/scratch/5 cap/10 cap etc. I have generally used 15 cap as that was my target but now that I’m passed that, may move to 10.

The basic idea is that, say as a 15 cap standing on the tee of a 370 yard hole that my expected score is 5.1. I hit a drive 230 down the middle. Now that I’m in the fairway 140 out, my expected score is 4.6. I “gained” 0.5 strokes with that drive.

The book “Every Shot Counts” by Mark Broadie describes it in full detail. But you don’t need to specifically grasp the science, the apps will show you the data. The two I use are Arccos and Shot Pattern. No need for two but I’m a data nerd and each does something I like that the other doesn’t so . Here are some screenshots of the type of thing you can get, some pics from Arccos of my last 20 rounds, and a summary pic from Shot Pattern of a recent round and a sample pic on SP where it lists the SG for each shot (Arccos doesn’t do single shot).

378f27fa7989d93a5ffd86ce9fc84ff8.jpgd7fca715e1d36700a7432c2cec074c5f.jpg)c045de515f229aa6a92c0bb1d5bd42e7.jpg4b3938ccd26185dc535dbf0f054111e4.jpg58e7ce8b526e35aa58ca84f958b56b83.jpg

Edited by TXSooner518
Posted

There is light at the end of the tunnel for golfers who desire to improve but haven’t been able to do it. Here’s how. 

I’ve been playing golf for 50 years. My first lesson was with Harvey Penick and Ben Crenshaw at Mo Willie. However, over the years I only played a few times a year, went to the range a few times a year, and took a few lessons here and there sporadically. As a result I always struggled. 

In my 40’s I finally got down to a single digit handicap. However I had grooved a flawed swing. So I could never improve from that. Then, in 2015, I experienced a number of injuries that kept me out of the game until 2021. 

Once back, I still didn’t improve and had lost my single digit handicap. It was bad. Breaking 100 became a challenge. Finally, in 2024, about a year ago, I finally said “enough”. I was either going to fix my game once and for all, or quit. 

So I tore my swing down to the beginning, and began taking a few lessons from various folks in Austin. None of the instructors helped much at all. That was really frustrating. 

But in parallel I did two things. I joined an online golf service to finally really learn about the golf swing. And I joined an indoor golf simulator service to get feedback from a Trackman device on my swing. I also started playing more regularly, once or twice a week. 

Last week I finally broke 80 for the first time in a long time, and followed that up with a 39 on 9.  My handicap has dropped from 20 to 12 and I’m on my way to an 8 or better. I’m confident I’ll get there. 

So what have been the keys so far?

1. Learn everything you can yourself about the golf swing. Amazingly over 50 years I never really understood what causes hooks, slices, etc. I didn’t understand how the wrists should move in the swing. I didn’t understand swing planes. I was an idiot. I relied on instructors, but most instructors aren’t very good. 

2. Practice, obviously, but get feedback from a simulator. It will tell you things an instructor alone can’t.

3. Work on all four parts of the game, or one part will kill your rounds: putting, chipping, irons, woods. 

4. Be patient. I still have WTF moments and completely lose my swing every few days. I’ll go to the range and hit like a beginner. While I understand the golf swing much better, I still can’t diagnose which of the 40 different swing factors has gone wrong to ruin my swing on any given day. I hope to have that figured out in the next few months, though. That’s the last key piece. Because when I’m on, I am on!  I just can’t figure out how to get back on when I’m off. It’s 1.2 steps forward and one step back.

Good Luck!

 

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Posted

After 25 years of never swinging a club, I picked up my clubs from the literal last century this March and started playing again.  Yeah, I'm complete shit.  I took a few lessons with the pro at the local course to get my swing rebuilt, and have spent a lot of time with coach YouTube over the past six months.  I like that it's a sport my wife and I can play together as we age (currently mid/late 40's).  I've worked out a ton of stuff to get to my current state which I could call "absolutely bad," but that's a step up from "doesn't make consistent contact with the ball."

My wife and I play now an about 3x-4x month and I might go with my bud about another 1-2x more.  Fun when it's working and so so frustrating when it's not.  I'm around 100 on average (like I said: SHIT).

Issues the pro and I worked out:

Driver - when I started back I could hit my small irons decently but the driver was like voodoo.  I would top the shit out of it, worm burners all over, and when I made good contact I would open the face terribly and sent it off to the right.  I had to learn a lot more about setup and address for the driver being different.  What cemented it for me was when the pro told me something like: "Golf isn't one game.  It's 5 games: driver, long irons, short irons, chipping, and putting.  And the swings for each of those are a bit different."  Now I can make good and fairly consistent contact with my driver, in May I gave up my 30 year old Dunlop driver from high school and got a 2 or 3 generation old TaylorMade SIM2 at the golf store for $250.  It feels great and makes that beautiful sound when you hit it sweet.  I'm still not getting the distance I want out of it; I'm averaging around 200 and my club head speed on the monitor is only mid-90s.  If I try to push it faster my form gets out of whack and I mis-strike it, so that is a work-in-progress.  I've been watching a lot of videos of the pros and the long drivers specifically with regard to weight shift but I still don't feel like I'm recruiting the power of my lower body enough.  For reference, I'm not weak and do lift 😅, I squat and deadlift north of 400 lbs which is decent for my age I guess, I just don't feel like I 'm putting that strength to use on the swing!  Tips welcome.

Irons - I have really worked on delaying my release and getting my hands in front of the ball so I can hit the low point of the swing in front of the ball.  Wow that is hard (for me).  I still regularly chunk the shit out of it and hit fat/behind it.  I drill this a lot but feel like hitting at the range those pads lie to you and hide fat hits.

Chipping/Wedges - I've done a lot of work here but I feel like I blade a good portion of my chips.  Recent video I watched and incorporated described the ideal feeling as "putting with a wedge," which is a good mental model for me to keep in mind.  I tend to chop at it and abbreviate the swing in an attempt to muscle or lift it out but I need to trust the club face more.

Putting - I'm actually not a terrible putter and can read breaks ok.  What I don't have experience on is understanding green speeds.  I played with a buddy the other day on a new course and I guess they had just punched and sanded recently and my 20 ft putt went about 5 feet lol.  I think just need more reps.  And a L.A.B. putter, obviously. 

My friend, who is a big golfer and is retired/gets to golf a lot, saw my 30 year old irons and said "here borrow my extra set of 7 year old TMs."  But I'd like to get my own set that is at least modern and give those back.  I think I'm probably going to get some Takomo irons to supplement my driver.  

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