Welcome Players! Read below for the Week 36 Update.
Contents:
Habit Tracker
Training Log
Club Fitting
Golf Performance
Wrap-Up
Habit Tracker
Nothing crazy this week, may seem like not a lot of practice but I’ve found that if I can full-swing hit balls once every 3 days it really helps me stay in rhythm with my swing.
Putting at home in between the fitting and round led me to go into the 8th feeling very grooved, which was a good thing. On the 9th I travelled so a justified excuse there.
Training Log
Resistance Train (Gym): 2
Conditioning (Road Bike): 1
The ol’ 2-1 punch came out on top again this week.
Club Fitting
While technically not practice, I did get professional fitted for a driver this week.
Overall, I didn’t have the best experience but I was extremely happy with the club I got fit for.
So I went to the Rick Smith Performance Center which is located at Trump Dural, where True Spec has a base and does their full-service fittings.
I got there, warmed up (physically), and gave my fitter some background on my golf game, where I struggled, etc. He didn’t ask any questions, and likely would not have heard my background if I didn’t jump the gun and tell him. That was red flag number 1.
Then I warmed up with my irons as he left the room. A yellow flag for me, not that I need him to see me warm-up, but as a professional in the physical performance field the more information you gather, the better.
This guy clearly was just in his day-to-day routine of seeing a client, fitting, and going home. He didn’t seem to be invested in the process.
Then I hit my stock driver, which he was fully present and aware for. He talked about some of my swing faults and related the problems I was having to my current equipment. He seemed very knowledgable about the fitting and equipment process, so I appreciated that.
Then we proceeded to try 3 or 4 different heads with 2 different shafts.
Going in I told him that I was partial to trying a Titleist TSR2 and the Ventus black velocore shaft.
After going through a few different heads he seemed pretty set on what club I was going to end up with, and honestly I thought it was the perfect fit.
We went with the Ping G430 Max and the Black 6S TR Ventus Velocore shaft. It provided me the right stiffness and stability in the shaft to handle my (much improved) swing speed and the Ping head was easy to look at (big), and provided a ton of forgiveness.
For me the goal wasn’t to get as much distance as I could but really to reduce my dispersion and to limit the severity of my misses. With this club set-up I would be doing exactly that.
Some more things I didn’t like about this fitting process:
Once I told him what I was partial to trying, he seemed to throw out any other adjustments out the window. He wasn’t interested in figuring out if there was a better match-up of heads/shafts, and didn’t toy around with any settings.
He didn’t adjust any of the settings on the head, loft, lie, etc. Now I probably didn’t need these settings adjusted, but for a professional fitting I had expectations that he would be doing everything possible to get the most out of my swing, this was not the case.
One thing I really did appreciate about him was that we went to move on to fairway woods, and I couldn’t make solid contact with my 5 wood. To be honest, I was a bit tired from crushing drivers. I wish we would have taken a small 1-3 minute break every 10 balls or so, as taking 50 full-swing driver back-to-back had even me a little gassed. I felt like it was more of a performance lab where I was trying to optimize output instead of actually settle down and swing my swing.
So, because I wasn’t hitting my fairways well, he suggested that we actually don’t do a fairway fitting and instead give me a few months to work on my fairway woods swing and come back when I’ve got a more consistent swing. As he put it, no club can fix a major swing fault, and I was just coming in way to steep with my fairways as if they were irons and a new club wasn’t going to fix that.
So in that part, I appreciated his honesty and agreed. No sense in buying a new 3/5 wood if I couldn’t hit the one I’ve got.
And now here’s where things went downhill.
With all of the technology at the fitting bay, you get shot-by-shot data of ball contact with the face of the club, all of the spin and distance metrics of the ball, and then a full dispersion chart. This was one of the coolest parts about it and one of the main reasons I chose True Spec to get a professional fitting.
I checked with the fitter no less than 2 times, making sure I was going to be able to access all this data from my session. He assured me that I would. Great!
One final time before leaving, I asked, “OK, so I’m going to be able to see the shot dispersion chart, shot data, and club-face impact from my session today?”
“Yup! It will all be in the report I send over to you. You’re all set!”
And then he went in to the club-sale process. Of course these guys work off commission, and in the respect of honesty I decided to tell him that I would not be buying the club through him because I was fortunate enough to get wholesale pricing through one of my partners. He was honest with me about the fairways so I wanted to return the sentiment.
And then to my dismay, the next day, he sent me the specs for the club without the shot report.
So I had to press him and ask where’s the report? You told me you’d get it…
He then said some bullshit about ‘the system’ deleting all his sessions and him not having access to it.
10 minutes later he sends me another email and says, never mind, ‘luckily’ he was able to get it!
WTF?
And on top of that, the “full report” that he sent looked like this:
The “full report” was my worst shot with my stock driver, and the best shot with the fitted driver.
Again, WTF.
I was supposed to be getting all my shot data for every club I tried AND the shot dispersion chart.
I checked with some high-level players and another professional fitter I know, and they all confirmed, this data is available through the fitting and should have been provided. It’s abnormal to only receive such limited data.
This part pissed me off the most because I checked with him multiple times in person and he said yes, I would be getting everything.
So the final email I sent to him was just saying, where’s the full report? and he said this was all the information he had access to through ‘the system’.
Bullshit.
I don’t know if he was just lazy, incompetent, or wanted revenge for me not buying the club through him, but that really tanked my experience.
What the hell did I pay $200 on a professional fitting for if I wasn’t going to be able to access the professional data that I came for?
Any semi-knowledgable golf pro could have fit me into a shaft that I already knew I liked and the most forgiving head on the market. So for this guy to drop the ball multiple times on the data left me with a very sour taste.
Needless to say, I won’t be going back to him or recommending him to anyone.
With that out of the way, I think getting formally fitted for your driver is a very important step in the evolution of your golf game.
I think I waited maybe a littleeeeee too long, but I’d much rather be fitted too late than too early.
Golf equipment is so complicated and individualized these days that if you don’t have a repeatable, consistent swing, you could be spending $1k for a club that in a few months of practice is the wrong equipment for you. Learning how to develop a consistent swing on whatever equipment is available is a valuable part of the process in my opinion, and it makes you earn your upgrade.
You end up much more appreciative for the upgrade and are also much more capable of handling it with care and using it appropriately.
My biggest problem with my old driver was that the shaft was short (44”) and a Regular stiffness.
I was clocking swing speeds of 111mph-114mph, which is comparable to some of the slower swingers on Tour. Of note, the longer hitters get up to 120+.
This warrants a Stiff shaft at the least, sometimes even an Extra Stiff depending on the swing.
So for me to have that high of a swing speed and be using a regular shaft meant that I had to deal with the “whip” of the shaft on the downswing and time it appropriately. Time it too early, and the clubbed would get out in front of the ball causing a sharp hook. Time it to late and the face wouldn’t close at impact leading to a push-fade or slice.
The snap hook had become my predominant miss in the past few months because of this issue with the shaft, and I thought it was more of a swing fault. The reality is I wasn’t actually making impact with the face closed during my swing, it was that the shaft wasn’t allowing me to maintain my swing speed with the clubhead in the position I thought it was.
All this to say that with a new driver, I’ll be able to swing fully without needing to “time” the impact due to the shaft. A much needed and necessary improvement!
My point about getting fitted too late vs. too early can be made an example of here, in that if I had got fitted 2-3 months ago before I understood what the impact of different shafts can have on impact and ball-flight, I wouldn’t have comprehended why my new driver was such an improvement over my old one.
I’d just be a big kid saying “OOO NEW EQUIPMENT I HIT BALL GOOD NOW!”
The more you understand the equipments impact on your performance the better your connection with said equipment and the better you’ll be able to manipulate, which I now feel ready to do.
So overall while I definitely wasn’t happy with this specific fitting experience, I am elated with the result and very excited to start playing with these upgrades.
Golf Performance
OK. If you’re reading this, you already know.
I shot a career-best 89!
At a good course from a decent distance. Let’s get into it.
1 Birdie, 3 Par’s
7 fairways hit
4 GIR
ZERO PENALTY SHOTS (1 fairway bunker)
2 three-putts
Only 1 triple bogey
Wow. A hell of a round.
I performed excellently in my three main goals that I know are needed to shoot low.
Eliminate penalty shots ✅
Minimize 3-putts ✅
No triple-bogeys ✅ (ok I had 1, but still)
The crazy part is, I wasn’t even trying that hard!
I know that seems silly, but hear me out.
The morning of this round I did a resistance training workout and strained a small muscle in my neck. It happens time to time when I’m doing heavy overhead presses, and was nothing serious, but definitely bothersome.
I didn’t want to cancel the round so said screw it I’ll just go out and swing easy and have a good time.
And swing easy I did! By not swinging my full swing it slowed down my speed to eliminate the whip of the shaft (remember from the fitting section what my misses are?) and that allowed me to hit a hell of a lot of fairways more than I usually do.
My iron and approach game has been only getting better and it was on regular display, and then I chipped and putted great!
The two three-putts were only there because I had a feeling throughout the round that I was playing very well and knew I had a shot to be close to breaking 90, and just the thought started to make me a little nervous.
After those three-putts I knew I needed to re-focus and get back in the mindset of just playing easy which I was able to do.
I don’t tally my score as I play for this very reason!
So coming down 18, I hit 3 not-so-great shots but was able to get on the green in regulation with a long 15-foot putt for birdie. At the time, I didn’t know that would be the difference between 90 or 89, so there wasn’t much pressure.
I took my time, lined it up, and made a nice easy stroke. KABOOM! BIRDIE BABY.
It wasn’t until we were packing up our bags at the cart-depot that I tallied up the 8-9 and let out a few Ric Flair’s:
Then the celebration began.
Boy it felt good to finally reach my first major milestone of Project Par.
Wrap-Up
After 9 long months of consistent effort and practice and training, I finally broke 90.
I’d be lying if I didn’t feel a sense of relief along with accomplishment. I honestly thought I’d be able to break 90 within the first 3 months. Silly me…
But regardless around the summer I really settled into an attitude of not playing to shoot a lower score, but just to continue to get better. If I was always improving my game my score would naturally drop whenever I was truly ready, and I felt like this round was the turning point.
My swing is the best it’s ever been, my understanding of the game and the equipment is night-and-day to when I started, and I’ve got a better attitude on how to approach the game from a mental perspective.
Golf may be a physical sport, but the physical component pales in comparison to the mental approach necessary to succeed.
You can’t get lucky to a low score. Over 18 holes, any dysfunction in your game will get exposed and you will lose strokes.
For me to be firing on all cylinders by hitting fairways, hitting some greens, chipping and putting well, and eventually break 89 just shows me the possibilities if I continue to work.
I’d like to say that going from 89 to 79 is going to be a piece of cake, but we all know that reality.
For me next 10-stroke drop I’m going to need to put some more distance off the tee box, which is already in motion with the new driver I got.
I’m going to need to hit MORE greens, closer to 40-50% to give myself a chance at good looks for birdie putts, at worst making 2-putt pars. I’m going to have to completely eliminate triple-bogeys, and reduce double-bogeys to no more than 2 or 3.
I’m also going to need to level up my strategy, not focusing on just hitting the ball well but actually focusing on hitting the ball to where I want to be for the next shot, playing the game of position and approaching where I have the most confidence to get up and down.
Of course I’ll need to continue to stay penalty-free and eliminate the bad misses.
It definitely feels invigorating to finally get some objective validation of my effort this year. It shows that I’ve been working hard and earned this score. And for that I’m proud.
It also gave me much needed confidence and the energy to continue up the same pace of practice that I’ve been doing over the summer to hopefully carry this momentum into the fall and make a strong push to attack the 80-barrier by the end of the year.
We’ve got 3 more months to go, a new driver on the way, progress is the name of the game!