Old Man Yardages

harpo_72 said:
I like to explore the heel as well for the little movement, but it’s quite different nowadays given I was brought up on far smaller heads .. the amount you have to move to really see any movement is or feels huge or the exaggeration for actual shot shapes. I am now in a good place with my driver given my understanding of my outputs.
I am hoping I have finally solved it and can just do what I used to do with my 3 wood .. which was look at a hole pick the shape and hit the shot.
But I really must address my putting deficiencies!! Will you have a putter fitting as well ?
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You’re not wrong modern drivers have done so much to improve accuracy and stroke on off centre hits working the ball is getting harder. That’s why I’m also considering a double fitting for the driver and a mini driver with 13° of loft and a small head with neutral weight settings could be my little go to club in tight spots.

Putter fitting never considered it. Without owing big headed I’d naturally consider myself someone with a good short game including putting. I prefer to have a putter I like the feel of rather than the fit, the putter I have now isn’t not top end at all but the weight, roll and feel in the hands I can’t see me changing it unless something happens to blow it out the water when I pick it up.

Even playing junior county events many moons ago when people were switching to Odyssey putters and Scotties I stuck with a ladies version of the old Wilson TPA
That Faldo had because once I trust a putter it sticks. Wish I still had it own🤣
 
I like the idea of the mini driver heads but as you say 13 degrees.. bit too much loft possibly ☹️.
That Wilson TPA was a beautiful putter I think Scotty Cameron copied it with the Del Mar ( I have the honey dipped version which comes out when the greens are proper)
Good luck with the fitting definitely look at the mini drivers and please ask about the launch spin characteristics if they see variations between brands.
 
nickjdavis said:
Yes...the Model x and the Triad are both Wilson balls.

I will do a direct comparison session looking at Driver and 7 iron with maybe 4 different balls...was going to do it previously but a domestic knee injury pretty much prevented me from swinging a club for 2 weeks.
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Well...today was the day....took 5 different balls with me and hit driver and 7 iron....have anonymized the balls because there is an obvious outlier which may (or may not) surprise you.

Screenshot 2026-03-03 203638.jpg
 
nickjdavis said:
Well...today was the day....took 5 different balls with me and hit driver and 7 iron....have anonymized the balls because there is an obvious outlier which may (or may not) surprise you.

View attachment 61151
Click to expand...

Ball 3 looks bang on for driver spin and not surprisingly your longest shot as a result of speed and spin. Yet horrific on the 7 iron but still maintained a good descent angle seems a little odd.

Ball 4 got some serious spin on the driver! Would expect that to just drop out the sky! Yet weirdly that’s the only one with the 7 iron with where I’d want to see the spin rates. The rest look seriously low to me but then I generate quite high spin numbers.
 
Lucifer MorningStar said:
Ball 3 looks bang on for driver spin and not surprisingly your longest shot as a result of speed and spin. Yet horrific on the 7 iron but still maintained a good descent angle seems a little odd.

Ball 4 got some serious spin on the driver! Would expect that to just drop out the sky! Yet weirdly that’s the only one with the 7 iron with where I’d want to see the spin rates. The rest look seriously low to me but then I generate quite high spin numbers.
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I dont generate much iron spin...relatively low club and ball speed sees to that...its why I'm trying to find a ball that launches well, has a decent peak height and descent angle. Its probably why my driver spins are reasonable despite my slightly cutty out to in stroke. (I've omitted stats relating to what the club was doing, simply because it was so consistent across the board with each club/ball, and so as not to overwhelm with data).

Oh yeah...these are not single shots but averages with outliers from the data set removed.
 
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Ball 3 is a Titleist Velocity, or Callaway Warbird+ ? Either way (or whatever ball it was), that's your gamer. That's such a distance difference that you can disregard other metrics
 
nickjdavis said:
I dont generate much iron spin...relatively low club and ball speed sees to that...its why I'm trying to find a ball that launches well, has a decent peak height and descent angle. Its probably why my driver spins are reasonable despite my slightly cutty out to in stroke. (I've omitted stats relating to what the club was doing, simply because it was so consistent across the board with each club/ball, and so as not to overwhelm with data).
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Yeah that’s the 2 killer numbers for you without those going up it’ll ways be difficult so descent angle is always going to be the most important thing bearing that in mind. My main concern with ball 3 though is when the ground firms up even with that descent angle such low spin is going to struggle to hold the green. In which case ball 1 may be the better choice the driver will still roll out in summer with that higher spin but the extra 700rpm will give you a better chance at holding the green over ball 3.

But based on such little data and not knowing the balls as a blind test it’s hard to know. Very interesting though 🤔👌🏻
 
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I went for a fitting to get Mizuno HL irons last Spring. I took my Eleven irons with me....I got higher flight and more spin with the Eleven irons....still have the 8-pw and will likely replace them with 6-pw soon.
 
nickjdavis said:
Well...today was the day....took 5 different balls with me and hit driver and 7 iron....have anonymized the balls because there is an obvious outlier which may (or may not) surprise you.

View attachment 61151
Click to expand...
I'd guess 3 is a soft, low-spinning ball, maybe even a two-piece surlyn type. Or maybe like an AVX? Ball 4 must be ProV1X or some other high spin high compression ball?

I think I'd be saying ball 1 is the best. Not the absolute longest but second longest and still with a bit of spin on the iron, which ball 3 was lacking. So what was ball 1? Random guess - Wilson Triad since that's my new favourite. 😆
 
I would select ball 1, myself. The spin numbers are all in the right ballpark. But if you have doubts do a reduced back to back perhaps on course to bring reality into play. On ball 3 I just feel that the spin numbers may be a bit too high and you may see issues into the wind.
I would also say normally the ball difference is quite small and you can make possibly bigger difference with your impact .. so choosing something that is not on the boundaries of the operating windows is better. By all means select something that is directionally suited..
 
D-S said:
Interesting that your swing speed was higher with ball three on both your driver and your 7 iron did you try to hit it harder?
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Not consciously. As much as possible I tried to remain blind as to what ball i was hitting but obviously once you've picked the ball off the floor and placed it on a tee peg several times you will surely notice what the ball is.

I also made an effort to reduce the effect of tiring throughout the hours session...so that balls hit at the start or end of a session weren't compromised by rustiness or tiredness. So after warming up I randomly selected the first ball, hit half a dozen 7 iron shots, then did the same for the remaining four balls. I then had a short rest and repeated the process with the driver. I then went back and hit another half a dozen shots with the 7 iron, reversing the order from the first batch of balls. Partly because there were some less than ideal shots struck in the first batch. I didnt do the same with the driver as I ran out of time and the shots hit with the big stick were pretty consistent across the board in terms of quality.
 
harpo_72 said:
I would select ball 1, myself. The spin numbers are all in the right ballpark. But if you have doubts do a reduced back to back perhaps on course to bring reality into play. On ball 3 I just feel that the spin numbers may be a bit too high and you may see issues into the wind.
I would also say normally the ball difference is quite small and you can make possibly bigger difference with your impact .. so choosing something that is not on the boundaries of the operating windows is better. By all means select something that is directionally suited..
Click to expand...
Bit confused by this statement...ball 3 has the lowest spin numbers for both driver and 7 iron.
 
Lets throw one ball out straight away....Ball 4...high driver spin, acceptable 7 iron spin but launches lower, has a lower peak height, decent descent angle with the driver (but that's probably because its falling out of the sky) and exactly 7.3% less carry with both driver and iron.

I threw this ball into the mix as a curveball simply to see how it compared.

BALL 4 was of course a humble RANGE BALL that I nicked from a session at my local range. The balls at said range are some of the better range balls that
I've used...they're not rock hard marbles but do have a bit of feel to them. A couple of shots i felt I absolutely melted with the 7 iron but they just didn't go anywhere.
 
nickjdavis said:
Lets throw one ball out straight away....Ball 4...high driver spin, acceptable 7 iron spin but launches lower, has a lower peak height, decent descent angle with the driver (but that's probably because its falling out of the sky) and exactly 7.3% less carry with both driver and iron.

I threw this ball into the mix as a curveball simply to see how it compared.

BALL 4 was of course a humble RANGE BALL that I nicked from a session at my local range. The balls at said range are some of the better range balls that
I've used...they're not rock hard marbles but do have a bit of feel to them. A couple of shots i felt I absolutely melted with the 7 iron but they just didn't go anywhere.
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Ha, that's a genuine surprise. The shorter distances are expected, but I always imagined the typical range ball to be very low-spinning.
 
Just while I've got a minute...

Ball 1: Callaway Chrome Tour X
Ball 2: Wilson Staff Model X
Ball 3: Callaway Chrome Soft
Ball 4: Srixon Range Ball
Ball 5: Wilson Triad

i'll do some charts later showing the spread of data for each ball for a couple of metrics, rather than rely on simple averages.
 
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