Help understanding LM's - specifically GCQuad

[vtpachyderm]

Apologies in advance for this slightly long winded post, and I'm hoping that some of you may be able to help me out here.

 

The outdoor season here where I live is over, and I'm lucky enough that we've got a pretty nice indoor center that is outfitted with a 15 bay range with GCQuads, plus 6 FullSwing motion simulator bays. Before the season started up this year, I took lessons indoors where we mainly focused on swing path and club head position, and didn't really look at the ball flight data i.e. spin, speed etc. When I did practice, I would pay attention to the distances and path as well, and thought I was doing ok. First 10 rounds outside, it was horrible. I was making good contact, and the ball was flying but I had gone from a slice/fade/miss right, to the complete opposite! Took about 5-10 rounds to get used to the new swing etc. and then started playing pretty decent. Hitting the ball longer than I've hit before, and was enjoying myself. Every now and then would duck hook, snap it right, but for the most part, was making progress, until finally towards the end of the season, shot my best round on my home course (77 +5), and got my handicap under 10! To say I was happy would be an understatement. I had figured out my distances and was really happy with my swing, contact etc. and the last two rounds I was still hitting it well and long.

 

Fast forward to the other day where I go indoors again, and thought I would check my gapping on the monitors and let me tell you, I have never been more confused. This time, they had bays where we could hit our own ball, and not their range balls (they use premium balls since they don't get lost), and there were some things that stood out.

1. With my 50 deg gap wedge, I was hitting it consistently 90-95m (100 - 110yds) with my normal ball, Srixon AD333 but had only about 7000-8000 spin. I tried a TP5 and the distances were the same, but the spin was now 9500-10500! Tried alternating balls, and consistently the same result. Now, I know the TP5 is a premium ball, but this was pretty wild! Will have to start the new season with a few premium balls and see what that does for me!

2. Start hitting all my shots with the TP5 - working my way up from the gap to 4 iron. Up to about the 8 iron, my shots were looking like what I would expect outside - 8 irons reaching about 140m (155yds) on the monitor. Then picked up my 7, made good contact, swing felt the same, and the numbers are saying I'm at 165m (180yds) ! This is my 150m (165yd) club outside on the course! Thinking I was feeling it, and my swing was really better, moving on to the lower irons, from 6-4 the distances were all between 165-180m (180-200yds). Now the swing felt good, contact with the ball felt good, watching it hit the net looked ok, but the monitor basically was saying I was hitting these 3 clubs all the same, and I can attest that playing outside this is definitely not the case. Tried with 3 different balls, and it was the same pattern. Now I'm thoroughly confused. Thinking I was tired, went back to the 8 and 9 and they were the same as before, maybe a hair longer as I was now well and truly warmed up.

3. Switched to driver - was really pleased with how I've been hitting it - carrying about 210-230m (230 - 250yds) the last round I played, nice flight, etc. Could not hit it past 200m (220yds) on the monitor, and it was saying that I was spinning it at 4000-5000 rpm and the flight was ballooning up! Ball speed about 135-140 mph, and I have a 95-100 swing speed, so that's what I was expecting. Tried different balls, tee heights etc. but the shot was nothing like what I saw outdoors. There was no correlation between what I saw outside to what the monitor was showing me inside.

 

Settings on the machine were all the default, with temp 70C  and no wind with the premium ball option checked.

 

This is a bit of a bummer, as I was hoping to get some more lessons, and keep working on my swing in the winter, but now I'm not at all confident of the feedback and data I'm going to get back. I'm heading out there again this week, and will try a different bay and only use their balls, to try to see if I can get some sort of consistency in the feedback. Of note, I did not put the dots on my clubs this time, since I was only trying to see my distances and gapping on the clubs.

 

Does anyone here have any theories as to what is happening besides the fact that I may have completely forgotten how to swing the ball since the outdoor season is over 😂.

 

TIA.

[RagnarD]

Were you looking at carry distance or total distance? One thing I notice about FSX Mobile is that it seems to give excessive roll-out relative to my local reality.

 

 Your monitor must be seeing a downward strike on the driver to give such high backspin. Are you sure you weren't swinging differently indoors vs on the course?

 

I often use my GC2/HMT outdoors on the range, and think the stats are generally right. Except with some slick range balls it will read very low backspin (1500) and give me too much carry. I suggest putting on the dots for your driver at least to see whether club path and angle of attack is matching the ball flight.

 

 

[vtpachyderm]

7 hours ago, RagnarD said:

Were you looking at carry distance or total distance? One thing I notice about FSX Mobile is that it seems to give excessive roll-out relative to my local reality.

 

 Your monitor must be seeing a downward strike on the driver to give such high backspin. Are you sure you weren't swinging differently indoors vs on the course?

 

I often use my GC2/HMT outdoors on the range, and think the stats are generally right. Except with some slick range balls it will read very low backspin (1500) and give me too much carry. I suggest putting on the dots for your driver at least to see whether club path and angle of attack is matching the ball flight.

 

 

Thanks for the response! Appreciate you taking the time.

 

It was carry distance - get very little rollout here outside on the course, so I only focus on that. Besides, roll out on sims is a crap shoot in my opinion :-).

 

Went again last night, and it was the same trend, but this time was paying a bit more attention to the strike. I think it might have something to do with the mat, and the way I was swinging it. According to the dots, I was generating very little swing speed on my longer clubs compared to what I thought I should have - maybe a bit of a reality check 😂 as to the state of my game. The other thing the dots said was that I was seriously out-in path and contact across the board was a heel strike - absolutely no toe strikes on any of the clubs, which is also very different to what I was seeing outside, so it really points to my swing changing indoors on the mat.

 

One thing I did notice though was the mat was super soft/spongy that I felt like I was bouncing a little during my swing. Maybe that's just in my head, but they did put in brand new mats - which aren't as hard and I felt like the ground contact felt strange with my clubs.

 

My feeling now is that it's all about my swing indoors not matching outdoors due to visual keys/indicators. I'll try in the simulator bays which project the course and see if that does anything.

 

Would like to sort it out as I would like to buy a new set of clubs (thinking slightly heavier shafts as I've been playing with light graphite while recovering from an arm injury), and would like some decent feedback to test them out.

 

Man, this sport is hard - not only in the swing but also in your head...

[karstens_ghost]

On 10/27/2020 at 11:33 PM, vtpachyderm said:

 

 

Settings on the machine were all the default, with temp 70C  and no wind with the premium ball option checked.

 

 

 

 

My goodness that's hot!

[vtpachyderm]

Just a little update now that the outdoor season is done for me here, and I'll be moving back indoors. I did end up getting heavier and stiffer irons and my game was remarkably better than previous and got my handicap down to a 7.2 at the end of the season. Distances I was seeing outside playing off the turf was unfortunately way off from what the GCQuad was telling me i.e. I was hitting it longer outside than in on average. First couple of rounds to the season were a lot of shots that were flying the green. Still my predominant miss was to the left, whereas indoors was to the right - go figure. Suprsingly - indoors I was hitting a hybrid better than a driving iron, but after struggling with the hybrid outdoors for the better part of the season, I tried a driving iron, and it was a much better fit for me - in fact, I was hitting my 4-6 irons pretty well with a lot of confidence, which wasn't the case indoors.

 

The conclusion so far is that I hit better off of grass than off of mats and visual feedback of ball flight and landing location is easier to process than data/numbers off the machine.

 

Plan is to hit the simulators now to get an end of season baseline. As it's fairly expensive, I won't swing a club again until about Feb, but I need to know where I ended the season at in terms of data/sim numbers.