That’s exactly what I needed.

True Temper is the brand, Dynamic Gold is the model, 105 is the approximate weight in grams, R300 indicates it’s a regular flex.

That would definitely be in the ballpark for a 150 yard 7-iron. If the shaft had been a say, Dynamic Gold 120 S300 I would have strongly suggested you fire your fitter.

Otter check your mailbox.

lol, what about a guy playing Srixon Z forged irons, S400 shafts?

this guy strikes irons well. his issue are tops and chunks (perhaps related to posture as he's recently learned).

Thanks! That's pretty interesting. Assuming flex refers to the rigidity of the shaft, I suspect the shafts on my old TaylorMade Rocketballz irons are more flexible than the shafts on my newer p790's, just based on remembering how the old clubs felt. I got up to check if there were any stickers on the old clubs, but then remembered that I had given them to my brother, minus two irons I had broken with that set. I'm always trying to coax him into getting more interested in golf so that he'll play with me more often. I also gave him my old bag and bought him the Costco wedges and putter for his birthday after hearing that they were decent quality and price.

I wouldn't be surprised about the posture, considering I just shot my best round yesterday and keeping my spine straighter (but not necessarily changing the angle relative to my legs) seemed highly relevant. I stopped topping my 3 wood off the tee so often and even really crushed some of them.

Congrats on the personal best.

How far does this guy carry his 7-iron and what’s his handicap?

Although I’m a bit confused on the striking well with tops and chunks. Perhaps when he tops and chunks he tops and chunks them really well?

7 iron carry.....165-170.

handicap......i currently suck. i'm lucky to break 90. yeah i top and chunk too much but my real issue is 100 and in. i am just god awful with wedges.

i do "have it in me" though. i have broken 80 and used to average 39 for 9 holes in my league (easy course).

i do consider myself a good ball striker but maybe that's dumb. when i connect on irons i get oohs and aahs from playing partners. i honestly think my irons, when hit well, are god damn impressive.

i took lessons last year from Cindy Miller and all she kept saying was "slow the F down" which is just so hard for me to do.

oh and my divots are always at a 45 degree angle left of target. ball tends to go straight though. long irons fade but i wouldn't say they slice.

ok let me rephrase, sometimes i strike my irons really well

nate it sounds like u have good lateral control of the clubhead(you dont hit it on the toe nor on the hozel), but the vertical control is lacking. not sure where u play the ball in your stance, but sounds like moving it back an inch(i like it halfway between my feet for 5 iron, longer irons more forward slightly, and shorter irons closer to my back foot; the instep of my back foot is in line with the ball on my pitching wedge), and experimenting at the range will have 2 effects: first youre less likely to hit behind the ball, second you will hit more from the inside.

also some relevant stuff that any serious golfer needs to search on youtube:

seve ballasteros short game (theres a really good 1/2 hour or so tutorial out there).

lee trevino burning wedge

lee trevino chipping

lee trevino (insert golf words here) ad nauseum imo.

lee trevino us open (the 30 min documentary is really enlightening. guy is the man).

gary player bunker

gary player (insert golf words here) ad nauseum.

steve stricker wedge

johnny miller us open oakmont

johnny miller etc etc

ok i'll stop but i could keep going. lol.

oh and definitely look into "laying off the club" if u dont already know what this means, it could drastically improve your striking.

OK, let's back up here for a moment.

Bob, how do you know anything about Nate's swing? Have you seen it on video? If not, then you can't know anything about his swing. I haven't seen his swing therefore cannot offer much if any suggestions regarding his swing.

First off, most amateurs play the ball too far back in their stance because they are scared to hit shots thin or fat or whatever. But that's not a fix, that causes more problems than it might fix. If you play the ball off your right instep, you approach the ball at far too steep an angle and cannot control either trajectory or distance. Divots are too thick. That is not the proper way to strike an iron. With irons, ball position does not change that much from wedge through long iron. Perhaps a ball to ball and a half back of center with the wedge, that much forward with a long iron.

Second, laying off the club at the top is not necessarily a bad thing. Rickie Fowler does it, your hero Trevino did it, anybody working with Hank Haney does it. Tiger did it when he was under Haney's wing. Everybody does things different with their swing, look at DJ's wrist position at the top. I'm not saying I would necessarily teach being laid off, but I wouldn't turn my nose up at it either.

Third, we don't know if Nate strikes shots toward the toe or hosel. Note, hosel is not spelled with a z.

Youtube videos can offer good learning opportunities, but you've got to be careful not to just watch anything and everything. Learning how tour pros do things increases knowledge base, you just have to learn how and when to incorporate that into your game. Because you won't be doing it exactly the same as they do.

When offering instruction, one does not simply throw a bunch of thoughts against the wall in hopes one sticks. That puts much too much thought into the golfer's head which it extremely detrimental to their game. Like a neurosurgeon, the first rule should be do no harm.

To everybody, nothing said on this forum should be interpreted as gospel. Teaching this game is not an easy proposition, and without video it's close to impossible. Don't just automatically go out and try something because someone on the internet said so. Nothing can replace the hands on instruction of a PGA professional.

Lastly, have fun with golf. Don't let anybody or anything take away the fun. Including yourself.

OK, your shafts are in the ballpark as well if you have the ability to carry a 7-iron in the 170 range.

If you have broken 80 then yes, you do have it in you. And that's an important point for you to recognize. Yes, I can do this!

This much you can say for certain, you do have it in you to be a good ball striker. And perhaps you are at present. Because if you've done it somewhat consistently, that is the bare minimum of your ceiling.

OK, here's something I'd like you to try with your wedges. I want you to hit a bucket of balls with nothing but your wedge, let's say gap wedge, something in the 50 degree neighborhood. Ball position should be between 1 and 2 balls back of center, weight should be slightly on your left foot (assuming you're right-handed) between 55-60% at address.

Start by hitting 20 yard shots in the air focusing on clean contact. Once you hit several in a row clean from 20 yards, move to 40 yards once again focusing on nothing more than clean contact. Then 60 yards, then 80 yards, and so forth until you are hitting a full shot. The focus throughout is making clean contact, if you make clean contact the shot will take care of itself.

This drill teaches repeatable basic motion. The arc path the club travels for your 20 yard shot, is the exact same path it travels on your 80 yard shot, it's just longer on both ends from 80. Point is, if you can't do it from 20 yards, you certainly aren't going to be able to do it from 80.

Will be curious to hear how this goes. Good luck!

Speaking of ball position at address, I must admit that I'm baffled as people will seemingly put the ball back in their stance to create loft in some instances, and to decrease loft in other instances, which seems like a contradiction.

Specifically, when I bought the wedge at the PGA store, the guy wasn't having any of my flop shot curiosity, and instead insisted that I play the ball way back to get loft IIRC. To be sure, maybe he just meant spin, but I think I remember him talking about popping the ball up high. At any rate, although I wasn't wanting to hear any of that, when I tried it out on the simulator, the ball indeed popped up really high, and he was even impressed.

In a video on the Internet, I'm pretty sure I saw Ian Poulter recommend putting the ball back in the stance with irons to keep the ball down in a windy situation for instance.

Would anyone say that you could put the ball further back than normal to achieve either of these results? Apologies if I'm encouraging a slight derail here.

because he has said that he chunks it a lot and his divots point 45 degrees left of target.

yes moving the ball back is a quick fix, but if he's chunking it very often than this is likely a problem with ball position (too far forward forces out to in swing path), and or not laying off the club. i actually mentioned the part about laying off the club because i think its an important part of the swing(but the way haney taught ray romano was bullshit imo. i think its more like a slight downward movement of the hands bent at the wrists. not so much a dropping of the arms, which comes naturally once you get used to the movement at the top of the backswing). not sure why you thought i meant laying it off was bad. he's hitting from the outside thus he needs this movement.

i didnt. i used information to come to a pretty simple conclusion. its just geometry.

moving the ball back delofts the club and makes it fly lower. depending on acceleration through the ball and ball position, spin varies.

he notes oohs and aaahs when he makes good contact. not once did he mention a shank. this all indicates that yeah he probably gets pretty consistent path laterally.
aw man i really like it here. if we're gonna get along please stay out of my face with **** like this.

i never said it was gospel according to bob. of course nate should take everything he hears here with a grain of salt and do it his own way. im just pointing out things that i think would help. feel free to disagree but do it on level ground please.

plugging this at the end of a ramble aimed at me is poor form imo. the obvious insinuation being that i'm making it less fun for anyone by discussing this on a golf forum. sory i dont have nice words to end with. i regret posting now.

whoa whoa whoa let's settle down people.

a couple things.....

1) As I said I went for lessons last year. Cindy Miller. Incredibly popular here and supposed to be a great instructor. I did two 1 hour lessons and 2 half hour lessons. I spent maybe $300? to hear her tell me to slow down 200 times. So I'm open for additional feedback.

2) I don't take something like Bob said as gospel. I looked up this "laying off the club" thing and watched a video. The guy was comparing Rahm and Couples. I thought, hey this could work. Went to range (my brother was unexpectedly there) and tried it. Night and day with previous sessions. A couple thin but no tops. And I guess one or two would have been chunks. But that's out of a large bucket, I'll take it.

3) My brother remarked "your tempo actually looks fine." Maybe what I was trying helps with that.

4) My misses are towards the toe. Rarely towards the hoSel. And then I say towards the toe I mean just off center, in the toe direction.

5) I'm not into the moving the ball back or forward ide so I ruled it out. I tend to play the ball fairly in middle of stance with slight adjustments for club.

6) I will try the wedge drill. I have nothing even close to a repeatable motion so I'd like to work on that. I spent a TON of time last year working on chipping and I'm close to being "ok" at it. If I do the wedge work I can't see why it wouldn't be the same result.

anyway, let's all take a deep breath.

oh, too add about my swing, i take enormous divots. Even a good shot can produce a divot a mile long that flies 20 yards. for whatever that's worth.

edit: and a random tidbit. I was golfing with best golfer I know about 20 years ago and I still remember him saying after one of my good shots "man your swing is steep"

What, you don't like a good old fashioned pissing or dick measuring contest?

LOL, well being in the middle of it probably warranted some mediation.

i'll pass. could probably go to every single other sub-forum here for that.

alright...for some strange reason (i.e. keeping the last handful of people that come around here interested in still coming around here), i feel compelled to jump head first into the fracas.

Bob, you may not be wrong with your analysis, but BO is right that until you see Nate's swing you're just offering up possible reasons and results without knowing for sure the cause and effect. he may be doing what you assume as the basis for your advice, but he may also be doing something completely different that has the same result.

i've seen BO post for 15 years or so by now, and that wasn't 'attack mode' BO, that was 'coach mode' BO. coaches aren't trying to be your friend, they're just trying to get their point across to make you better.

we should all be thankful that BO still comes around these parts and shares his thoughts, same goes for ship-this/Scott Fawcett. both of them are offering their opinion to us randoms for free. you don't want to know what the price would be if we were their clients and hired them for the same advice.

in summary, just because somebody says something that contradicts what you say, it doesn't automatically mean they are attacking you. most likely it means they have an opinion to offer that was formed from a different perspective than yours. consider it with an open mind and go from there.

i didnt take any of it as attack. i thought the spelling correction was petty and describing lee trevino as "your hero" is indended to make me feel dumb. both of these things add absolutely nothing to the discussion. then he found a way to disagree with what he assumed was my stance on laying off the club, which was a strawman. the grand finale suggesting that my previous posting made the game less fun for anyone based on our very limited interaction is stupid, uppity, and arrogant behavior.

im actually totally chill about this i just didn't like those parts. bo may be the best golf coach in the world, but anyone that chooses such language in a post directed exactly at me will get the same reaction, particularly when we have not yet been acquainted by even slightly pleasurable discussion or interaction of some kind. so yeah we got off on the wrong foot for sure. should i apologize for offering free golf mechanics information? nope not gonna happen. nobody owes anyone any apology here. i just wanted to make it clear that if we are to get along then we should try to disagree without being petty nor attempting to make anyone feel dumb.

Bob, i'm going to offer some advice and i mean it sincerely...go back and re-read what he posted. maybe not today, it may be better to do that tomorrow with a different perspective.

you say in your first sentence you didn't take any of it as an attack, but the rest of the first paragraph reads as a list of how you think he attacked you...'make me feel dumb', 'which was a strawman', 'the grand finale', 'stupid, uppity, and arrogant behavior'.

we all learn the most when we have an open mind and are open to hearing opinions different from our own. we don't have to agree with them, and in the end we may not find them to be true, but hearing what they are and actually thinking about them in relation to our own belief system and not just automatically shutting them down will make us all better.

one of the biggest reasons i still keep coming around 2+2 is poker taught me a long time ago that you're not always right, and even if you think you're right you just have to accept it when you're wrong with a level head and move on to the next hand. one of the worst things you can do is let past results affect future decisions, in poker and in life.

i dont equate attack with taking shots at people. if i felt attacked i surely would have attacked back. i do believe he was taking shots at me with the parts you mentioned. maybe its "just his personality" as some would say, but taking shots at strangers on the internet that you have no rapport with(bo and i have interacted a total of twice, i believe this is the second interaction) will surely end up in this exact position. unless the subject of the original ramble(me) is the type to attack and or deflect, in which case i would have sworn much more than i did. instead i chose to deal with the things that irritated me head on by saying dont do that. if u think thats out of line then maybe look at my alternatives, such as getting mad and attacking, or just ignoring. i don't like those options so I chose to say dont do that.

as my Dad (rip) used to say...about our god damn cat Uncle Whiskers, that somehow made it to 21 years....when provoked he attacks, when attacked he counter attacks