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Choosing Clubs - Which Do You Prefer

SuperStroke
I'm honestly not sure that I could pick one.

I'm an info/education geek when it comes to golf gear, I want to know everything I possibly can, but I also put a lot of value in getting reps and reps with something.

Ugh. I suck at this choice thing.
 
It's a good question, and the answer is, B. I'd rather have a few extra rounds. It's a tough choice, but unfortunately, I equate 'education' with sales pitch. Taylormade can tell me about that speed slot all they want, or Nike can explain why a square headed driver is better, but it's kind of pointless if it doesn't work on the course.

Don't get me wrong, I'd love to be educated about the clubs I want to try, but the "education" I get tend to be bullet-point speaking topics from golf store salesman.

Which is why I have to educate myself, and that's why I come to THP.

~Rock
 
Depends on where the line is with no education. Regular or Stiff?

Lotsa variables


TTing
 
Choosing Clubs - Which Do You Prefer

JB said:
You have a choice on how you are going to get new clubs.

A: You get an education about them and put them into play for a round to see it yourself.
B: You get no education about them and get a few more rounds in with them.

Which do you prefer? Any why?

The reason I ask is that many of us talk about "getting dialed" in and assume we are speaking of just getting distances down properly. Because I am guessing most of us do not change our swings based on a new club, so therefore with driver and really most clubs, it would simply be a quick trial correct?

Now this would be taking fitting out of the equation and assuming that regardless of A or B, you know the equipment fits you.
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Education. New clubs are expensive enough, there's nothing worse than buying new clubs only to find later they aren't right for you and then having to sell then and buy clubs that are right for you.
I've wasted a lot of money buying clubs on Ebay without trying them, only to realize after a whole that they weren't right for me.


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If you say take fitting out of the equation, then give me choice B, I want more time with the clubs to get used to the weighting and the looks of the clubs. I'm not sure how much education on a particular club is going to make me hit it better.
 
For me it's A. I get an education about the club and what it's supposed to do and then I demo it a few times. I never buy before I play it. I'm not a split second decision maker. I'll demo it 3 or 4 times before I'd even think of pulling the trigger. Most of that is because I once bought a Cleveland wedge that looked great and set up nice but felt awful after I bought it. Still have it in my 'retired clubs' bag. Personally, I also like to see if I can be consistent with it. I've had really good days at the range and really bad ones as well. If I hit this new club at the range really bad one day there could be any number of reasons wy (tired, slept wrong, stressed, no energy etc....). Gotta give it a few tries for sure. And with the internet and availability of information these days, I say get informed.
 
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
 
I think people adjust. We see it all the time, like ball position with the Mashie fwy's for example. I'm not consciously changing a swing with new items, but I do know that many of my first thoughts are very different than my final thoughts. Fit Extreme was a heel side miss machine for me the first two weeks. It was 1-1/2 inches longer than my current driver though. It definitely took me time to get used to it and I just plain had nothing good to say about it for a couple weeks.
 
I don't have different swings, per se. However, I feel it takes some time to maximize the performance one can get out of a club. Every club head and shaft feels different.

I'd compare it to driving different sports cars. It would take a bit of time to get used to the different shift throws, clutch pedals, engine acceleration and cornering. Sure, you could be provided with all of the technical specs like torque, horsepower, and ride weight, but it would still take you some time in the driver seat to adapt to the car.
 
I'd go B all day long. That's not to say I wouldn't research the club, but in the end it has to fit my swing and learning about the specifics of the club won't tell me that as much as hands on experience will.
 
Given that I will be fitted with these clubs either way then I'm going to take option B. Personally I feel that you can know as much about a set of clubs as you want but at the end of the day if they just do not have the best feel then it's really going to be hard to really be confident when you flush one. I love my new clubs. There awesome I play spectacular with them and so on. As much as I love them they have a different kind of sweet feeling when you flush one. When I look at my scores I know I made the right decision but if I didn't have enough time to really play them I don't know that I would have made the switch.

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If its fit me, then I need very little time to adjust.
 
I honestly do have a different swing with different manufactures. Maybe it was because the shaft was different but I was messing around with my friends g20 3W and had to make myself swing down more using it than I do with my R11. I am a sweeper type of swing and I could not get the ball 10 ft off the ground with my normal swing with his until I tried to start taking a divot with it.

JB said:
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
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A. I would rather do my research and make an educated decision. Try them out and see how they work with little risk of commitment. Unfortunately, all of my decisions seem to be made with a lot of risk.
 
JB said:
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
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This is going to sound funny...but it depends on the club. I had a conversation with a guy not long ago where I said I'll change driver at the drop of a hat, because my "driver swing" (such as it is) is an ever-evolving beast anyway, but my fairway woods are almost like Charlton Heston's rifle. I know and am comfortable with how I swing that particular club. I'm getting that way with my irons, as well.

But all the education in the world isn't going to help when it comes to replacing my woods, because I have a very good feel for the ones I have.

Also, I think education can get in the way a bit. For example, using a putter that, hypothetically, doesn't match your stroke. You can easily outthink yourself into saying that something should or shouldn't work instead of just relying on feel.
 
The entire reason I now find myself at THP is because I am on option A. I was looking for a new iron set...

As an engineer I have to know all about it. But also agree with McRock

McRock said:
...unfortunately, I equate 'education' with sales pitch. Taylormade can tell me about that speed slot all they want, or Nike can explain why a square headed driver is better....


...and that's why I come to THP.

~Rock
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It all sales pitch to me, but I start at the manufacturer looking to see what is different between them all. So after I narrowed down my search to a couple of iron sets from the company sales pitch, I then went looking for actual reviews of similar golfers that had used the clubs. And I found this site.

I still have not bought my iron set. I have now narrowed it down to two sets. The next step is to go to a store and try them. I will do that a few times before I chose the set. So the initial research narrows the field, followed by real world test by others, then the in store feel will decide the winner. After all that I will take them to the range for a week or two before I take them to the course. Just to make sure I have the feel down....

Sucks to be a perfectionist and try to play golf :struggle:


Yeah, definitely A for me.
 
JB said:
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
Click to expand...

I think that anytime something changes, there is an adjustment curve. You may not be changing your swing but getting used to something new is a process. Obviously it would be a more dramatic adjustment if the old and new clubs were vastly different. To use the FW wood example, lets say you had been playing with a X Hot 3 wood with its D3 swing weight, then you are handed a OptiForce 3 wood with its D0 swing weight. The OptiForce is designed to be lighter and generate faster swings. If you have a repeatable swing you could likely hit it well out the gate but it might feel uncomfortable due to the difference. After getting used to the club its feel will become the norm.

So to the original question I definitely lean towards B. Getting to know the tools of the trade is essential for me.
 
JB, when you say you get no education about them, does that include research done on your own?
 
JB said:
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
Click to expand...

The biggest part for me is trusting the new distances with irons. Just takes me a good 5-6 rounds, sometimes longer to fully adjust.

FW wood would only take me 1 or 2 rounds to get an idea of how far I can hit it. I don't worry about the distance change too much for FW wood's because they aren't a club that you need to be super exact on, like say your 8 iron through wedges.
 
JB said:
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
Click to expand...

Having more time with it on the course allows me to get more comfortable with it in that environment. You can groove a driving range swing by hitting balls every 30 seconds with the same club, but on the course is different. With a fairway wood, I might go an hour or more between shots with that club. Plus, your option A gives me 1 round with the club, I might only hit a fairway wood (for example) 3-4 times in that round. I'd want more time than that to figure out if a club works for me or not.
 
JB said:
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
Click to expand...

More time with a club make me better?

Yes, but I would concede that it could all be mental for me. I start to trust myself with a club after we have had some time together. Surely we all have that goto club that we pull out when we want to get our confidence back. Doe we really swing that club better or do we just believe we can swing the club better then go and do it?

To use your example, if you gave me that new wood and even if I hit it great at the range that night, I would not touch it the next day. It is purely mental. I want to use the clubs that believe will work for me. I might be the odd bean and I KNOW it is mental, but that is how I am. I have to spend lots of time with a club before I have confidence with it.
 
JB said:
Do people (IE those here) think more time makes them play better with the clubs? Genuine question. Do people have different FW wood swings depending on the club given to them? Or different 7 iron swings? I guess I have not seen that part of it.

I understand gapping distances, but that normally does not take too long I dont believe. Im sure I am missing something, but I am genuinely curious. Having been to so many THP events and teed it up with so many golfers, I often wonder about this.

Lets say I give you a brand new FW wood and say you have to compete with it tomorrow. Sure you have time to have a round warmup and get some swings in which will help learning distances. But does getting to play it for a couple of weeks make the club perform differently? That goes back to changing your swing and I honestly have not heard that much, but again, definitely could be missing it.
Click to expand...

Quite frankly, I'm just inconsistent. I typically play golf 2 days a week, which makes me a perfect definition of weekend hacker. A club that feels good one day may feel awful the next. It's not that my swing 'changes' because it's a new club, it's because my swing changes because I'm an inconsistent golfer. So I view it as the 'law of averages.' I'd rather have more time with the clubs so as to increase the accuracy of the 'average' shot with those clubs.

Plus, its not that I don't want educated, its just that anytime I've been 'educated' I've really just been given a sales pitch. I'd rather get a feel for the average shot with more rounds with the clubs than listen to someone tell me that it should make the ball go higher. Ok, I'm glad the club was designed to do that, but if I don't see it for myself, consistently, for a period of time, I'm less likely to believe it.

~Rock
 
I don't understand this question. If I know the clubs fit me, what other education is there that could make me hit it better?

That said, I take B every time because A doesn't make sense to me.
 
With my recent quest last winter before diving in I think a club must feel great for my swing regardless of what is said about it. Assuming we are talking the reputable manufacturers of course, I think we can say its a given they are all suppose to be high quality and the longest and straightest best ever. So playing and swinging is in many ways the only real difference in weather or not you will like them regardless of what we may think we educate ourselves about them. Knowing things is great but again with only one choice of how to buy, just because we know something doesn't mean they will work for us.

So the above answers both questions imo for me. Given one absolute choice one way or the other I would elect for playing them if it were possible to do. Or at least do plenty of side by side comparo's in a sim as much as possible. And to also answers the second question for me too. If I had to change my swing to fit the club than that probably means it don't feel right for me in the first place. You say fit was a given. So then what is fit imo? is actually to fit the club/s to us and not us to the club/s. Unless I am wrong about that I think that speaks for itself for changing the swing.
 
jlukes said:
I don't have different swings, per se. However, I feel it takes some time to maximize the performance one can get out of a club. Every club head and shaft feels different.

I'd compare it to driving different sports cars. It would take a bit of time to get used to the different shift throws, clutch pedals, engine acceleration and cornering. Sure, you could be provided with all of the technical specs like torque, horsepower, and ride weight, but it would still take you some time in the driver seat to adapt to the car.
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Honest question here. Do you believe in fitting? That a club fitting you would offer better performance? If that is the case, and yet your swing is evolving as you play more with a club, wouldnt the fitting be obsolete?

toughestsoldier said:
Given that I will be fitted with these clubs either way then I'm going to take option B. Personally I feel that you can know as much about a set of clubs as you want but at the end of the day if they just do not have the best feel then it's really going to be hard to really be confident when you flush one. I love my new clubs. There awesome I play spectacular with them and so on. As much as I love them they have a different kind of sweet feeling when you flush one. When I look at my scores I know I made the right decision but if I didn't have enough time to really play them I don't know that I would have made the switch.

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Click to expand...

Im not sure I understand, can you explain? You are discussing how you are finding out a different feel as you play, but you already purchased your clubs (Im guessing after research, etc), so in that case, I believe you chose option A correct?
 
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