Back Into Golf - Sydney, Australia

Hi Everyone,

New to the forum, I’ve been reading a lot over the past month. This community fits my style of absolute gear tragic perfectly, so that’s been awesome! Some background about my game first. I was a super competitive junior golfer from about the age of 10 until I turned 18. I’m now 28 years old and have re-gained my love for the game that I lost for 10 years. To be honest, I can’t really remember the one reason I stopped playing golf 10 years ago. Like everything in my life, I tend to find one thing and go hell-for-leather at it for a period of time before the next bug catches me.

When I stopped playing, I was playing off about a 4 handicap. Short game was always my weakness, and commonly I would hit around 32-33 putts per round back in the day. My mental game was pretty weak too, and I think that was a large contributor to me giving up the game for so long.

Anyway, fast forward to last month and I’ve found myself at the range 3-4 times per week. Investigating joining clubs here in the Northern Beaches of Sydney and like always, dreaming of the new gear that’s come out in the decade since I last bought clubs.

**Current Bag Setup**

I’m currently in the same set of clubs I stopped playing with 10 years ago.

Driver = Titleist 905D2 with Speeder Stiff Flex

3-Wood = Titleist 904F with Aldila NV Fairway Green Reg Flex

3-PW (1 Upright, 1" Long) = Srixon I-701 Tour with NS Pro 950GH Stiff

Gap Wedge = 52 degree Srixon WG-706 with NS Pro 950GH Stiff

Sand Wedge = 56 degree Srixon WG-706 with NS Pro 950GH Stiff

Putter = Taylormade Rossa Daytona I-02 plumbers neck 34”

**Rough Numbers**

6 Iron carry 170-175m – 185-190 Yards

Height = 6'4" / 193cm

Weight = 85kg / 188lbs

Swing Speed = Unknown

So, that brings me to the title of this thread. I’m going to spoil myself after another month or two of practice.

First cab off the rank is a fresh set of irons & wedges. I also want to re-shaft my 3-wood as that has actually been snapped before by a friend of mine and it’s been shaved down on the tip to fit back into the head.

So, luckily, I have a friend of a friend who can hook me up with some Mizuno stuff for a good deal, and I’ve always wanted to play a set of Mizuno irons so it’s a win-win!

I went to a Mizuno demo day recently and was fit into TT AMT Tour White X100s demoing both the HMB, MMC and MP20.

The Mizuno shaft optimizer picked out my 3 top shafts, them being the AMT Tour White X100, the DG 120 X100 and the Project X 6.5.

My numbers with both the AMT and DG 120 were very comparable, though I guess to be fair the bigger differences will come in the long irons, where the AMT will become lighter.

Good shots with Project-X felt amazing, but my dispersion (albeit with some ordinary shots) was worse with PX.

I would like to do a few more tests with some more practice under my belt. But overall, I loved the feel of MP20, MMC and HMB. For me, the MP20 was pretty well controlled. MP20 launched the lowest, and spin was very consistent.

HMB definitely launched the ball higher, which is why I think I’d love it in 4 and 5 iron.

My plan is to combo a set of HMB in 4 & 5 iron, then flow into MP20 6 through 9 iron.

I want to play a non set-matching PW, and I also want to play 4 wedges since I currently only carry 13 clubs. So, I was thinking a T20 in 46, another in 50, a 54 and 58 (still deciding on bounces). I really feel the light shaft in my current short irons and wedges having the NS 950GH in them now, so I love the thought of a 120-135gm shaft in the shorter clubs.

I’m also ditching the 3 iron in favour of either a hybrid or utility to cover that space, I’ve never found myself hitting many 3 irons. I think if I swapped it out for a utility I’d end up hitting it off the tee a lot more.

**2020 Bag Setup**

Driver = See what comes out 2020 PGA Show?

3-Wood = Titleist 904F with new shaft

3 Hybrid = Replace 3 iron with 3 hybrid/ultility

4-5 Iron = Mizuno MP20 HMB with AMT Tour White X100

6-9 Iron = Mizuno MP20 with AMT Tour White X100

PW-LW = Mizuno T20 Blue Ion with DG S400 TI

Putter = See what comes out 2020 PGA Show?

I’m going to invest in a few lessons here over the next month or so to make sure as I’m coming back everything is still looking good in my swing, then once I’m comfortable head to Cool Clubs here in Sydney for an outdoor full bag fitting with good golf balls to not only get new updated carry numbers for my clubs but to also confirm the AMT Tour White X100 in a few different iron heads.

I’ll use that time to also go over Driver, 3-Wood, find a nice 3 iron replacement and have a roll of a few putters.

From what I’ve seen, there’s really nowhere else in Sydney with the range of product that Cool Clubs carry that you can hit premium balls onto a range to actually visually see ball flight either. Even if I walk out of that fitting with nothing but a lie angle confirmation (1 upright) a length confirmation (+0.75”) and confirming that AMT Tour White X100 is indeed one of the better shaft options I think I would have had a great day. I love the numbers game and data is really appealing to me.

So anyway, a long way to say I’m enjoying my transition back into the game and those new MP20s sure are beautiful to hit.