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Originally Posted by KingJames
Awesome as always to hear how these qualifiers go - thanks for the update.
US Sr Open qualifying coming up or what's next?
Yes, my Senior Open qualifier is this coming Wednesday, May 10th at an average public course here in the metroplex. Played a practice round there Tuesday and it's certainly a course I can play. Decent fairways, off the fairways it's pretty rough with a lot of bare ground from cart traffic. A few of the greens have some poa annua in them so there could be some dribbling putts.
Two of the three years I've done this I've gotten an alternate spot which got me nothing. Time to take the next step. Took some time to get my swing sorted out as I had gotten into several bad habits. Part of that was body related as I had a minor lower back issue which had caused me to make some compensatory moves and we all know that never ends well. But I thought it through and took the time to refocus on my basics in order to grind it back together. Ball is currently launching out of the window I like with the feel I like. Powerful trajectory.
A little over a month ago went through a driver fitting with my old boss. Gaming a 47+" driver just wasn't paying the dividends it used to. Had to do everything just perfect in order to get the desired results and the body wasn't always up to that.
So going in we decided to game a driver at 46", the legal limit for any event. Didn't want to just go 2" shorter all of a sudden, that's a bit much. So we settled on 46" as a good compromise.
Three of us entered the simulator at 4pm, the third being his other teacher/fitter. Three of us exited the simulator at 6pm with me hitting drivers non-stop for two hours. The easy question was which Ping G430 head to go with and the LST definitely did better for me than the Max. Was just spinning the Max a bit much on average and thus the ball flight wasn't quite what I was looking for.
The interesting part was which shaft and at what weight and flex. Due to my current swing speed, many options were on the table. 55 vs. 65 gram shaft, and believe it or not, R vs. S shaft flex. While I can still get it out there around 300 yards at times, that doesn't necessarily mean a stiffer shaft is the best for me, it's all about how the golfer loads the shaft.
I hit no fewer than a dozen different shafts with differing specs. In the end we agreed there was a clear winner, the numbers were just right, the ball flight was just right, and most importantly, the feel to me was just right. Oban Kiyoshi White at 55 grams, regular flex. Head 10.5 LST set down to 9.5 degrees.
But there was one thing we now had to take an educated guess at. I'm going to game this driver at 46" but all shafts in the fitting matrix are 45.25". That extra 0.75" is going to make the shaft feel and play weaker than standard. So do we want to stay with the R flex or move up to the S? Wasn't too difficult of a decision to go with the S which would play like a weak S at 46". Just too much chance of overpowering a weak R(even with a Kiyoshi) when I can still find ball speeds in the 150's.
The educated guess turned out to be correct and the driver at 46" feels amazing. While I don't carry it quite as far, I make up for it with the roll out due to lower spin, flatter ball flight, and flat out finding the center of the face much more often. Best thing is, I can work it both ways very easily. Fun to be able to hit a flat tumbling fade on command.
It's an unwritten rule in fitting that you don't fit yourself, impossible to remain impartial. So once we got in the sim, I told him to just put stuff in my hand and I'd swing it. I didn't want to know the shaft details, I just wanted to dummy up and beat drivers. Of course I knew the brand of shaft I was hitting by the paint scheme, but had no clue as to the weight and flex. I didn't ask about heads either although I could tell that because the 430 LST head has a carbon composite crown while the Max does not. I did do my best not to think about any of that during the session however.
Really looking forward to testing the new driver under pressure along with the rest of my game. Feeling really good mentally right now, felt like my brain was just taking so much in during the practice round and that I can methodically connect the dots on course when game time arrives. Only one way to find out.