New sticks

Just ordered a new set of sticks: PING i20s. Not at all expecting a miracle; I'm just an inveterate tinkerer. Sold the Mizunos through craigslist.

Hit the soon-to-be-replaced Titleist 910 D2 driver earlier this week up in Sonoma. Good stuff. Stock oem Mitsu shaft. Higher loft and more flexible shaft than I typically hit, which made me calm down -- as much as I can -- which in turn gave me a nice controlled high draw. Maybe there's something to this easy-is-long thing. Maybe??? lol

I'm trying to find the right driver for me. The easy is long thing works great - when it works. I know bad things happen when I swing hard, especially with the driver. I'm scared the Titleist will turn my fade into a slice, especially under course pressure. The range is filled with good golfers.

Titleist has a rep for being "players' clubs," but with two head shapes (CoG options), kagillions of shafts, adjustability, I'm not sure the current stuff is any more or less appropriate/inappropriate than Adams or Cleveland or whomever. I have some tour-bias drivers that I can hit far better than my more game-improvement Nike, and far worse.

I'm waiting for the Second Ball Tour!

The new kids showed up yesterday!!

Those new Pings look like a player's iron. I had enough blades from my early years. Give me cavities and center of the greens.

Not at all. Lotsa help, far thicker topline and beefier sole than my Mizunos.

Love the new sticks. Forgiving, good sound, solid, easy on the eyes despite the relative size and best of all, and ironically, I hit them lower than my Mizunos, and that's with the standard KBS Tour shaft; I was thinking about going C-Taper but glad I didn't. And I'm really glad I took the lie down that last degree; I had but one pull and that was definitely due to the rough, divots were even.

On length/lie angle: I'm a huge proponent of fitting, but it's gotta be done right. On paper, I spec out 1/2" longer than standard and 2 degrees upright given my height and particularly long trunk/short legs in relation to that height. Yet many times, doing fittings at demo days and the like over the years, my specs often would come back even more radical. Because of years of being lazy and the like, not stretching, I'd worked myself into a very upright posture -- I also assign some blame to a well-intentioned but ultimately flawed "prescription" at golf school. So to get impact anywhere near the sweet spot fitters would suggest even longer, more upright configurations. Hey, it makes sense, fit to the person who is, not who might be. But that's also a mask. Working subsequent fittings in conjunction with instruction, a changed set up and an effort to create and maintain better posture, I have been able to back down the specs. I'm now at 1/2" and standard. I've worked back from +3/4" and 3 up at the most extreme. And the right shaft helps with the heel/toe plane. (And my putter, oh, that's 3 flat. lol)

And since some of you are anal about such things: 85 with two birdies on a tough course; I fought the driver a good part of the day.