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[grochol17]

Time for an end of the season update...

 

A few weeks ago I had a chance to get on a trackman (indoors off of a mat, unfortunately) to compare the RTX6s and my usual wedges (MP5 PW, 54.14 Vokey, bent to 53, and 58.12 Vokey).  The first thing I did was to get my lofts compared and adjusted as needed... the 58 was spot on and I left it alone.  The 54 was also spot on, but my gamer wedge is 53, so I got the RTX6 bent 1* strong.  The RTX6 48 was actually at 49, so I got it bent 2* strong to match my 47* MP5.  Once those were all set, I compared distance, spin, ball flight, etc.  It turns out that, at least within the bounds of how consistently I was hitting the ball, the RTX6s performed pretty much identically to my gamer wedges.  I haven't been able to use a LM outdoors, but I'd be curious to see how well the numbers compare when hitting off of grass. 

 

Since getting the lofts adjusted I've only had the chance to play one round of golf and it was in a tournament.  We're not going to talk about what I shot because score isn't important in golf, right?  During the round I ended up with a number of 3/4 swings with my 58* (usually out of the light rough and from a terrible angle attempting to save par... like I said, we're not going to talk score), and I was getting a ton of spin on those shots.  The greens at the course had a lot of surrounding areas that sat below the level of the green with light rough in those areas.  If I'm short sided, I typically play those shots with a flop shot style set up, but I won't use my wrists on the swing, so that I get a "mini-flop" shot that gets up quickly, lands pretty softly, and doesn't fly too far in the air.  I'm used to those shots still rolling out a bit, especially when hit from rough.  With the RTX6 58*, I was getting an insane amount of spin... even when the ball was sitting down a bit in the light rough and I was only trying to hit the ball about 5 yards, the shot took two hops and stopped dead with no roll out.

 

Below I've attached a couple of photos showing what the wedges now look like.  Keep in mind that I haven't used them a ton, so I would guess this wear is maybe typical of a third of a season.  I think they are still looking pretty good and I really like the patina on the raw wedge (though I'm not sure spending an extra $20 just for the finish is worth it to me).  As I mentioned in a previous post, there's a bit of "greying" on the sole of the 58* from bunker shots, but nothing worse than I'd expect in terms of wear on the finish.  The weather has turned cold here and I've probably hung up my spikes for the season, but the 54 and 58 will definitely be in the bag when the spring rolls around.

 

 

 

 

 

[grochol17]

Just thought I'd do a quick "mid next season update"...

 

I wasn't sure if I liked the DG Spinner shafts on full swings, so I picked up a set of RTX6s with X7s from 2nd Swing Golf.  I went with the X7 because that is the shaft I should be using based on Howard's "spinner trick."  After a bunch of testing on the range and around the greens, I really prefer the X7 on anything close to a full swing compared to the DG Spinner.  Shorter shots (chipping and pitching) it is a wash.  So, for now I'm sticking with the wedges with the X7s in them.  My last round I had four wedge shots from 50-75 yards and hit my 58* to within 5 feet on all of them.

 

The 54* I got from 2nd Swing was the 54*/10* mid, not the 54*/12* full like I picked for the original testing I was chosen to do.  I was a little worried about the difference in bounce and grind, especially since I can get kind of steep and we had a lot of rain in May.  But, aside from a couple of chips where I thought myself into hitting a bad shot, I haven't had any issues with the mid being too low of bounce.

 

I've attached a couple of photos below comparing the full (left) and the mid (right).  It is a little hard to tell in the photos, but the mid's sole is overall about 1/16 of an inch wider.  Because of the trailing edge grind, the "normal" part of the sole is about 1/16 of an inch narrower than the width on the full bounce wedge.  I don't think I'm good enough to notice 1/16 of an inch (and I may not really need the extra 2* of bounce) which is probably why I haven't really noticed any playability difference in the two wedges. 

 

 

 

As for the 48* I also received, I still like my set PW better, so I've decided to use the RTX6 for a bit of testing... I recently put a DG Mid 115 X100 in it to see how well I get along with a slightly lighter weight shaft.  Some brief testing on the range showed that it performed pretty similarly to my set PW on full shots, and a bit of time around the chipping green gave the same result.