Why can't I hit my new irons to a consistent distance?

[mahonie]

I’m not the only who sees that he is inferring that Apex 19 Forged are blades.

Also, watch the Crossfield video showing how much tighter dispersion with blades actually is. Having said that, I actually suspect that shaft stiffness has far more impact on dispersion than clubhead design and people looking at MOI for the forgiveness of a clubhead as a basis for picking their clubs are being lead up the garden path.

[Valtiel]

Fair enough, but I still stand by what I said given that WristySwing obviously knows that the Apex Forged is a cavity back iron.

And which Crossfield video are you talking about? I just watched this one and there was virtually no difference aside from the slightly higher spin of the MB, which makes perfec sense given the CG differences.

[Pepperturbo]

Thanks for your input. I don't take Malty ratings as gospel. For that matter, I don't take any alleged ratings as gospel. If the number is listed I check it out but base most of view on what I experience testing the club. In my updated Malty listing I couldn't find 2020 Callaway Apex Pro listed. There is similar head that is listed at 460, and conventional but I don't buy the conclusion. Maltby has the Callaway Prototype-R #6 listed as conventional 461 and I knows guys that 12-14 index still enjoying that club. I tested that club too, it's surprisingly easy to smack. It looks like a blade but Callaway CAD designers IMO tricked that one up.

I have set of Titleist 620CBs which are rated conventional 465 and set of 620MB listed at 287. For me Apex Pro irons are very similar to my original 2006 X-Forged, way more forgiving and much easier to hit than my 620CBs. Even the stock Apex shafts are less than you'd find guys in my index range using. Maltby says they are more difficult than my 620CBs, don't buy it. They qualify as game improvement.

[mahonie]

Try this one:https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nnIR2oCRWYM

[Philflop1]

If you have ever been to the Golfworks fitting studio, and you see how much time and expertise is involved in the MPF iron ratings, you might have a different perspective.

[Valtiel]

That is an interesting and well done test on the surface, but I have some major issues with it. First, you can't simply label good/bad/very bad strike as though they are all going to be the same. You can maybe for the "good" strike, but the others leave a lot to be desired in terms of granular data. Whether or not they are high/low/heel/toe is of massive importance in this case and they are all being lumped in to a "bad/very bad" umbrella. A counter to that argument of course would be "it shouldn't matter, the Callaway should be forgiving enough to compensate for any misses", to which I would add: Second, he was clearly WAY more comfortable with the old blade over the big Callaway. He had 3x more "good" strikes with the Spalding blade which completely explains the tightness vs. the Callaway which he was comparatively all over the place with. And you might say that the "all over the place" shouldn't matter if the Callaway is that much more forgiving, but if we don't know where these bad/very bad strikes were, then it is hard to say.

It is also a little funny that during the video he talks about the "forcing the card" idea where he would suggest certain things during a fitting to push the customer towards feeling certain things, all while this is EXACTLY what he is doing in this video. If we look at the strike data afterwards, he was clearly struggling with the Callaway and was comparatively flushing the Spalding, and yet he made no mention of that during the hitting. Not only that, he suggested the opposite; talking up the Callaway and confidence inspiring it was and what it should do and talking down the Spalding saying it felt slow, punishing, and less versatile, all while he was clunking the former and striping the latter.

This is the main issue I have with Crossfield related tests. Like in this one, he says things like (paraphrasing) "i've got the bigger data set, i've got the stats guy, I wonder what comments people are going come up with THIS time" which is right out of the gate framing ANY criticism of his process as being irrational or unfounded. He has done the same thing with shaft testing as well, all the while blatantly messing up key variables in the test such as even the basic "which shaft is supposed to be which" in terms of performance. It compromises the integrity of the test and the integrity of the data, plain and simple. I think there IS something to what he is getting at here, but more than anything else this was just a video that proves that tiny blades are more consistent than SGI irons for Mark Crossfield, but not as an objective fact.

[WristySwing]

@Pepperturbo @mahonie I was not calling the Apex a blade. I was referring to the couple of posts here suggesting the OP try blades and the OP himself confirming in post 16 that he hadn't tried a blade once and implied he may look to try one or something similar. Even something like a T100 is still too much for a 15 handicap.
I'm glad I lost all my credibility because people jump to conclusions

[mahonie]

You just lost even more credibility for suggesting that a player can’t play a particular club based purely on his handicap. It’s that type of comment that confirms just why I wouldn’t trust someone who has no idea about my game setting me up with clubs that he thinks will work for me. The last fitting I went to, about eight years ago, was purely to check that the clubs I’d bought off the shelf (and played reasonably well with) 2 years prior were right for me.

First question the fitter asked me was what was my handicap. When I told him 13, he made his mind up at that point what type of club he was going to try and sell me. We did the Mizuno shaft DNA thing, Ping lie board/physical measurement matrix to get to the point of trying out some irons. He got me hitting Nike VR Full Cavity and AP1s with mixed results. Then he tried some Mizzy JPXs with some regular lightweight shafts which he thought, from the DNA test and comparison to my MacGregor M685s/Rifle 5.5 Flighted, would be the best match. They didn’t work. I asked him to put a Nike VR Pro MB on a TTDG S300 just to try it. His comment was more or less ‘OK, but you’re wasting our time because you can’t hit that.’ After hitting a dozen balls with a 6-iron that you could literally throw a sheet over, he was shaking his head with a wry smile on his face because he knew he’d lost a sale.

The moral I suppose is that golf fitting and club fitters should not be led by the marketing. My guess is that you would have sold a few more than 2 sets of blades had you given them more of a chance. My 19 year old has just started playing. Out of my few sets of clubs he gravitated to my MP4s and he hits them very well...although he wasn’t fitted for them. He’s never had a lesson, just worked it out for himself. He hits my Mac blades from the early 1970s just fine too but finds them ‘agricultural’ in comparison to the Mizzys.

I know you have a living to make but guys like you need to really study the science behind whole club MOI and not just look at clubhead MOI as a means of guessing what a player should be able to play well with.

I don’t know you from Adam, and I apologise if I’ve tarred you with the same brush as a number of fitters I know who base club selection on handicap, but that is the way you come across and that attitude just rankles with me. Sorry.

[mahonie]

I agree with your sentiments to some degree. I think Crossfield has got onto a bit of an ‘anti-marketing crusade’ but the data is the data.

As I’ve said elsewhere, the only way you will really know which clubhead and shaft work for you is to try out as many combinations as possible over a period of time until a pattern emerges that will allow you to choose what works best for you. For some it will be a noodle shaft with a chunky SGI head, others a rod of iron with a compact blade.

Until you’ve tried them all under course conditions, how do you know which will work best?

[Philflop1]

When you fit a person for a set of clubs, having baseline information on his strengths/weaknesses is important in determining where to begin the process. Questions on handicap, and how it is derived , can help to determine if ball striking is a strength or a weakness, relative to their handicap. Any competent fitter needs baseline information as a starting point. Just because you had a fitting experience that was not to your liking in no way means the fitter is incompetent. Golfers also have biases built in that can hamper the fitting process as well.

[billybaroo]

Inferring is *not* stating. :)

[Plotto66]

A lot of good comments related to club and fitting issues. I think that's fair given the description but I am puzzled as to why no one raise the ball issue which according to MyGolfSpy may be a cause for dispersion issues. @Hubb1e what kind of ball are you playing? Do you see the same dispersion issues on range as on course?

[mahonie]

I don’t necessarily blame the fitters. The OEMs categorise which clubs a certain level of handicap should be playing in order to fit their marketing narrative. It is a myth that the level of handicap indicates quality of iron strike. Iron play doesn’t even make up a third of a typical round in terms of the number of shots played. Driver and short game have far more significance where handicap is concerned. If you’re ignorant to that the marketing machine has already drawn you in.

I've had 3 fittings over the years, and even though the numbers have confirmed that a stiff shaft (usually S300) paired with a MB works best for me, the fitters wanted to sell me something more ‘forgiving’ with a regular shaft because that is what the marketing says. My ‘handicap’ had pre-determined what I could play in their eyes regardless of what strike I was putting on the ball.

I agree that a fitter should have some baseline data, but it should be derived from strike not handicap. I don’t think fitters are given enough time to fully assess a golfer’s ability in a typical fitting. A couple of hours doesn’t give you enough of a data set across a range of clubs to fully determine what works. Half-a-dozen decent strikes off a mat is not adequate, but that seems to be the criteria that is adopted.

How many people do you know who have a fitting and then have another one within 2 years because the clubs don’t work for them? The really cynical would suggest that it has become a self-perpetuating industry that is fed by the mugs who get wrapped up in the marketing and fall for it every time. I just think there are a lot of mis-informed people on both sides of the fence.

 

[cavanagh]

Have e you tested the swing weight ? I have found it makes a hell of a difference

[WristySwing]

You certainly have a strong opinion of someone you've never met based on 4 sentences online. This is how I qualify someone as competent enough to hit blades. 1) Their strike point and efficiency. 2) Face control. Does their face-to-path relationship deviate very much or do they deliver the club the same way almost every time? 3) Their angle of attack. Are they steep or shallow? Blade players are typically pickers of the ball more often than not. So let's count what the OP has going for him here: 1) No. They go from 170 to 145 swing to swing. 2) No. They admit they smash it off the toe more often than not, and blades have centres of mass at the heel -- the opposite strike point. 3) No. He said his miss is typically fat, so why would I give him something with less bounce?

Just to put it out there. I put little stock in the "MOI" ratings you're rallying against. I can truthfully say I have looked at the MPF ratings about 3x in my whole life. Some of the stuff on there is absolute trash and is completely off from reality of how a golf club works when it is in motion and interacting with the turf. Sorry you had a garbage experience but all of these things matter and handicap is definitely a valid question to ask. Another valid question is to ask if they are planning on improving with a coach, fitness, etc. If you are a 13 handicap, typically shooting on average 85 or worse, you don't "need" blades. As I said, nobody "needs" a blade unless you are shaping shots almost every hole both in direction and height. No one worse than a solid low single digit has ever shown me they can do that repeatably and on command. You would likely do equally well with any sort of smaller, thin-soled iron if that is well and truly what you hit best.

I have said my piece and that is that. If this comes across as an attitude I don't know what to tell you my man, I've never been so calm typing something in my life so you're likely reading into this or having your own negative experiences colouring your judgement of me. I do just fine and get rave reviews from my fits with a long waiting list. I'm not butthurt over an anonymous person online who's never met me being angry because I said a 15 handicap shouldn't use blades. I'll go to court under oath and admit that because in only exceedingly rare cases is this going to be the truth and in all of those cases it is the truth something like a T100/620CB is going to do the job just as well if not better.

[mahonie]

Again, I still wonder why handicap is a valid question. Surely your 4 point approach gives you the baseline data you need?

Let me ask some more questions.

How long do you take over a fitting?

How much relevant data are you collecting in that time?

Have you ever been surprised by someone’s results?

How many guys come back for further fittings?

You never know I might change my opinion of golf club fitting on the back of this ?

[Golf4lifer]

So if a customer comes to you and says they want a set a blades what are you going to do? In your 17 years of fittings you’ve never had this happened?

[Pepperturbo]

True. However, "Inferring = deduce or conclude (information) from evidence and reasoning rather than from explicit statements." People been on social media too long. They have forgot all the words in a dictionary are there so we can articulate thoughts in writing.

I can infer from your smiley face you're response was said with a smile. Have a good day.

[Pepperturbo]

Takes more than a misstatement to lose credibility. You used the wrong words to express your thought. I read your choice in words and based my understanding on those words. A better choice in words to express yourself would likely have received an different response. We can't read minds in either 2D or 3D world.

[Pepperturbo]

A fitter or teachers judgment is not the holy grail but an opinion that hopefully is based on something other than a weak bias. If "he" thinks his opinion is gospel he's in his own way.

Years back I went to a fitter and was told I should not be playing blades. I asked why and his response was tied to my age. He didn't ask my index or game. He assumed. As a consequence his behavior affected how I see and speak of most fitters.

If someone comes in and says he wants blades, nobody should talk him out of what he wants. He's an adult and rightfully makes his own decisions. The fitter should say I can't help you or fit him to the best of his ability with his club choice. If however someone says I want to be fit and use your best judgment, then do exactly that. A professional knows his boundary.

[Double Dodger]

I play 6.5 rifles and I have arthritis pretty bad. Decided I would give some graphite’s a try. Purchased a nice set and built them up. Ohhhh so sweet feeling....but....

I am an above average ball striker but would get huge differences in the distance on some strikes. And I used the same head I had been using. Slightly heavy swings went no where. I mean maybe 30-40% short. Yanked them out and put the rifles back in. Back to normal. What I’m saying is it could be shaft and club head. Maybe shaft alone. Crazy game. I wish we all had access to the tour trailer fittings these pros get.

[WristySwing]

 

Handicap is by and large a pretty good indicator of your ball striking ability. You hear the legends of the 15 handicap tour pro that 3 putts every single time. I haven't come across one yet. Score is directly related to ability. I've said it before here that a good swing can hit anything from the fattest SGI iron to the smallest blade if the first two things I discuss are under control: contact and face control. The worse those 2 are, the more benefit you will get from a more "forgiving" club. More times than not, the person who is worse on these two parameters are higher handicaps. Show me one scratch handicap that has poor efficiency and poor face control and show me one 15 handicap with a wear spot the size of a dime on their irons and wedges and I will happily retract my statements.

1) We fit for 90 minutes per session.

2) The data comprises swing speed, launch angle, back spin, tilt axis, face angle, angle of attack, club path, face to path, apex, face closure, lie angle. The relevant data is collected for every shot.

3) I have been. For instance yesterday I fit a 12 handicap into Honma TW-X irons. He was very shallow (-1.5* down) but needed a metric tonne of bounce. We had to bend the clubs 1 full club weak to get the proper launch, spin, and turf interaction. I tried a myriad of different heads, sole profiles, balls, shafts, and nothing came close to this combination. This is an extremely atypical scenario. This was the only combo where he didn't fat it and produce like 45* of loft at impact because of the fat shot. He was very uncomfortable with shorter length clubs as he had expressed this to me multiple times.

4) Many of them are returning customers. I couldn't say exactly how many. I can say out of the 301 fits I did where I started tracking this stuff and where I sold the clubs to that person only 5 came back expressing an issue with the product. That's a 1.6% failure rate. Ideally I want 0% of course, but I think I'm running a pretty tight ship. If they don't come back it is very common to hear from a client that "so and so told me to come here because they enjoyed it." I might not have necessarily sold so and so but there is that chain of referrals in general occurring. I've had it happen probably around 10x. If they want a blade, they want a blade. I'll show them what they want. I will have them try other things I think will work but ultimately they made up their mind what they want going in. I don't consider this fitting someone for a blade, though. They have the idea in their head and are running with it and I am merely the person selling it to them, I had no hand in fitting them for it.I didn't, you and the other guys misread what I said. I said he shouldn't be playing blades as he had expressed interest in a previous post. You automatically assumed I was talking about his Apex's when I clearly say "Na Yeon Choi uses Apex Pros that have the same face tech as yours do and she has no problems with distance control". I never once in my post said the Apex's were blades, you guys assumed I was. I knew from the get go he was playing APex CF'19s. But again, not losing any sleep over it if a random internet stranger thinks I'm stupid and thinks I believe an Apex CF to be a blade, which I know I didn't say.

[Golf4lifer]

@WristySwing So are you saying you wouldn’t try to fit them for the best possible shaft, lie angle, length, and grip? You’d just sell them blades?!?!? Would the same apply if they asked for the t200’s for example?

[mahonie]

You’ve seen the guy who hits OOB 2 or 3 times a round right? You’ve seen guys hit clubs with no offset the same as those with massive offset? Fair play...anything with offset for me just hooks like crazy...I can adapt and compensate, but why should I? Offset typically has more bounce in my experience...again, that doesn’t work for me.

My fitting sessions have lasted a minimum of 2 hours and it is not enough time to get a proper data set for each type of iron with each type of shaft. I know handicap is used to narrow down the choice to maximise the time available...I understand the economics.

If a guy is hitting every shot fat and he’s a 12 handicap, there must be something about his existing set up that works...did you start there?

If I was a fitter and I was having a lot of returning customers, I’d be worried that I wasn’t doing my job properly unless they were starting as beginners and then improving incrementally due to my expertise.

You talk about people benefitting from a more ‘forgiving’ club. How is that even defined? GI clubs don’t have the sweetspot out towards the toe and MBs don’t have the sweetspot heel-side...it is typically somewhere near the middle of the clubface for both. The whole club MOI including the impact of the shaft is more of a consideration which you don’t seem to factor in.

As I said you have to make a living and you have to make it work with the deck you’re dealt...just don’t assume that handicap is the be all and end all when it comes to club selection. A slightly stiffer shaft with a smaller clubhead length is the correct answer more often than you may think...I’m not joking...try it on your next fitting and see what the numbers are...you might be surprised.

[mahonie]

[billybaroo]

You accused him of something he simply didn't do.

[WristySwing]

Okay let's step this back a little bit. You're attacking everything I am saying for no reason all because I said blades are very often not the right answer. I understand you're trying to prove a point here that you know more than I do. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. But you are blowing this way out of proportion and making it personal against me and trying to gain some personal validation for your own club choices.

Yes, just as I said, poor face control and bad strike. If you are blowing 3 shots OB over the course of a round you are doing exactly as I described.

A 2 hour fitting session for a single club, be it driver, fairway, iron set, whatever, is overkill. Most people have a limit of about 60-70 swings before they become fatigued. That is equivalent to a large bucket of balls at most places or equivalent to a round of golf including practice swings. Do you hit more than that when you go to the range? Do you hit more than that when you are out on the course? Most people would answer no. If you need 2 hours at least to dial in a feel sensation or proper ball flight the person you are working with doesn't understand how different club heads and shafts will manipulate delivery. You don't need near that much time if you know what you are doing. You don't need to try everything. There are a finite number of heads and finite number of shaft weights, bend profiles, and balance points. Your delivery is everything and will dictate what I grab here. If I need to retool if something isn't working, I will.

The 12 handicap came to me because he doesn't like his irons. He was hitting them fat, hated the look, feel, and design. He bought them because his pro told them to get them if he wasn't planning on practicing at all and just being an out of the trunk player. Which he was for 10 years because of 2 kids, a busy job, and no time to practice. In that regard, why would I start with what he has, a set of Ping G20s, that he absolutely despises and never liked from day 1? He came 6* from the inside, stalled his rotation at when his hands were parallel with his hips, flipped his hands at it or alternated between presenting way too low dynamic loft with a mega shut face, was super shallow (even hitting up on it at times with an iron), and really bent his knees through impact and hit everything fat. I had him retool his ball position, get a more neutral path through adjusting his feet, and forcing him to feel like he had to come more over the top by using lighter shafts. All things you should do in this scenario. In the end he was hitting his 32* 6i (bent 5* weak) the exact carry as his old 28* 6i but higher, more spin and tighter.

I don't know what you're implying here. Are you saying I'm bad at my job because 5 people out of more than 300 total purchases needed a slight tweak here or there? Or are you saying you think it is worrying that people are coming back to me after the fit to purchase other items? Either scenario doesn't make sense to me. Show me any other customer-oriented profession where 98.4% of the customers are elated with their purchases, and many of them sending friends and family to get fit by my and my team. Perhaps it is more common than I think but I can't think of any off the top of my head.

The CoG on traditional blades is absolutely closer to the heel than a cavity back iron with tungsten in the toe. You are wrong on that. The tungsten draws the centre of mass (aka the sweet spot) closer to the middle of the head.

I know from experience your last paragraph is absolutely not true. I have tried it in numerous fits and it never works. Proper shaft flex contributes 2.5% more club head speed. Now that "flex" can mean a range of things as each manufacturer doesn't make flex equal of course. The number one reason people can't swing a club effectively is due to poor head awareness. There are two things that contribute to this, 1) is a shaft that doesn't provide any sort of sensation of loading or unloading because it is too stiff or the balance point is off, 2) swing weight is too light. However, a lot of people have slower speeds than there are faster players so slightly lighter swing weights do tend to favour more golfers than not. As for the smaller head, if you actually go out and talk to players day in and day out as I do, many of them are intimidated by smaller heads. But there is a time and a place. As I said, shallow = small, steep = big. Not a hard formula to figure out. If I do what you are suggesting I am giving them sub-optimal results all because it's a cheating way of tightening dispersion. I don't need to cheat, I can find you a combo that will beat that without having to resort to a hack trick to tighten dispersion.

You know what I meant and are twisting my words. I fit for the blades but I don't consider it a fitted recommendation because more often than not, a smaller CB will out perform that.

[Philflop1]

Where does offset come into play in this discussion? I have fit for CC and have done numerous demo days for multiple OEMs. Fitting sessions of 2 hours or more leads to fatigue and a breakdown in mechanics for a great percentage of golfers. That is precisely why beginning a fitting session with a frank discussion is critical to determining what the golfer expectations are in the fitting process. Stating that a "smaller blade length and stiffer shaft is the correct answer more often than you may think" is a completely false assumption for a vast majority of golfers .

[Golf4lifer]

I was hoping you just excluded that piece. I agree there are no need to play blades, but it’s personal preference and they may help the op.

[mahonie]

Okay, I’m happy to step back a little. I get bent out of shape when I hear a fitter say that a 15 handicap player can’t play blades. It’s such a broad brush statement that has no basis in anything. You forget there were only blades in the dim and distant and everybody seemed to cope back then. The attitude that only plus handicap players should be playing blades just gets my back up because it is absolute nonsense.

On your 12 handicap customer...I know 3 people who play G-series iron and they all hit it fat albeit only a fraction ? ?

If your repeat business is from recommendations and not people who are coming back to ‘upgrade’ every few months that is cool and fair play to you...I possibly misunderstood your situation.

I have a flow set of CBs (4-6) with tungsten running into MBs (7-PW) also with tungsten...the sweetspot is in exactly the same place within the set and also compares with my MP4s (non-tungsten). Classic 1960s and before blades l’ll give you may have had a heel bias, not so much modern MBs.

I understand that length of blade can be intimidating...it’s just interesting that clubs like my Cobra CBs and the 718CBs (can’t vouch for the Titleist 620s) are actually shorter in length than most MBs but they are still sold as being more forgiving. My Cobras are no more forgiving than my MP4s...just feel a tad less harsh on mishits and are actually worse on shots high on the face because there is no mass at all behind the ball.

The other thing that narks me about fitters is that some get a higher percentage mark up if they sell a particular brand over another...not sure if it works that way in the US but it certainly limits the market if you’re looking for MBs and the fitter doesn’t want to sell them because there’s no bonus.

Anyway, all cool...you have a job to do and I no need to validate my club choice as I know what works. Lets move on ?