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Golf Sim Numbers - Irons & Wedges

Nippon Shafts
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elementz

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I booked an hour at a local golf simulator to start to shake off some winter rust. Haven't swung a club since November, save for some putting and chipping in the basement. Now, I will only be able to use my 6i-9i and my PW, GW, & SW. The rest of my clubs are all in the shop getting re-gripped.

My typical miss with my irons, and sometimes even wedges, is to the left (I'm a righty). Not a hook by any means, but appears to be either a pull or maybe even my alignment....most likely a combination of both. Also, my ball flight tends be on the low side. We had a very dry and hot summer last year, so my stock shot of clubbing down and letting the ball hop and roll up on the green worked out pretty well, but I know that is not conducive to shooting lower scores. I would like to launch it higher and produce more spin on my shots....there were too many times to count where my ball lands before the green, and still ends up off of the back. I recall last year when I was on a sim, my club face was getting closed upon impact. I will be doing my best to work on that.

One thing I know very little about, is what kind of numbers should I be interested in and what kind of range I should see as an 18 handicap wanting to improve. Some that I think may be important are face angle, club path, angle of attack, spin and of course, carry/roll out distances. I am limited to 1 hour and I want to practice with a purpose. My expectations are low as there will be definitely be some rust and a time constraint, but I would still like to understand the numbers.

Would love to take a vid or two for some feedback but since I am going solo and have no tripod, that may be tricky.

So in summary, which numbers should I focus on and any tips for (1) square face at impact, (2) launch ball higher with more spin?
 
The ball flight will give you most of what you need. After that, you can grab a screen shot of the numbers and post them back here and tons of THPers can offer some info.
 
As this is your first time swinging since November, I would just focus on clean contact and not try to chase numbers. That's my plan next week when I take my first swings since November also.
 
I’ve had a sim for over 3 years. My advice to you right now is to get to know your carry distance with each club. When you have that start focusing on 120 yards and in. Use multiple wedge swings to nail down those yardages. That’s where you’ll see the biggest improvement on your scores. If the sim has a target practice area, work on different targets from 120 and in. I can tell you what my 54* 1/2 carry distance is. Also my 1/3 and 3/4 and full. I use that system for my PW 50 54 58. This is where you’ll drop scores using a sim.

Don’t worry too much about the other data parameters right now. Learning what to do with those numbers and how to improve is something for you and a coach to work on. When you try to work on these other numbers without a coach you could possibly just be compensating for a deeper problem that a good pro would catch and help you improve.
 
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JB said:
The ball flight will give you most of what you need. After that, you can grab a screen shot of the numbers and post them back here and tons of THPers can offer some info.
Click to expand...

Yup. Spin is just a number combined with launch and landing angle and no 1 size fits all. Probably most important (but not always) is coming into the ball with as many of the numbers as close to 0 as possible. You also want the loft of your club minus your angle of attack (hitting only irons) to be roughly the launch angle. If it’s lower your face is closed. If it’s higher, it’s open. Within a couple degrees is good.

Get a good set of 4-5 shots with a club, grab a scrrenshot, and we will analyze the hell out of it:)
 
Turtlerancher said:
As this is your first time swinging since November, I would just focus on clean contact and not try to chase numbers. That's my plan next week when I take my first swings since November also.
Click to expand...
Yes, you are probably right....I will be doing just that....also I got my other clubs back so I will be going in with the whole bag. Won't be trying anything too fancy, just hit some thoughts through most of the bag for an hour.
 
Having gone down the rabbit hole of chasing sim numbers, I had to pull myself back. For my best interests, I had to stop targeting numbers and instead use numbers to help me better understand my game.
 
My main focus with sim is to train myself to make a repeatable swing. Some days it’s easy some days old habits creep back in. Once that swing is developed then numbers can be looked at.
 
elementz said:
I booked an hour at a local golf simulator to start to shake off some winter rust. Haven't swung a club since November, save for some putting and chipping in the basement. Now, I will only be able to use my 6i-9i and my PW, GW, & SW. The rest of my clubs are all in the shop getting re-gripped.

My typical miss with my irons, and sometimes even wedges, is to the left (I'm a righty). Not a hook by any means, but appears to be either a pull or maybe even my alignment....most likely a combination of both. Also, my ball flight tends be on the low side. We had a very dry and hot summer last year, so my stock shot of clubbing down and letting the ball hop and roll up on the green worked out pretty well, but I know that is not conducive to shooting lower scores. I would like to launch it higher and produce more spin on my shots....there were too many times to count where my ball lands before the green, and still ends up off of the back. I recall last year when I was on a sim, my club face was getting closed upon impact. I will be doing my best to work on that.

One thing I know very little about, is what kind of numbers should I be interested in and what kind of range I should see as an 18 handicap wanting to improve. Some that I think may be important are face angle, club path, angle of attack, spin and of course, carry/roll out distances. I am limited to 1 hour and I want to practice with a purpose. My expectations are low as there will be definitely be some rust and a time constraint, but I would still like to understand the numbers.

Would love to take a vid or two for some feedback but since I am going solo and have no tripod, that may be tricky.

So in summary, which numbers should I focus on and any tips for (1) square face at impact, (2) launch ball higher with more spin?
Click to expand...

What kind of golf ball do you play? More spin may be as simple as switching to something with a Urethane cover. There is enough variance in performance among balls that it is important to keep track of what you play and test with.
 
Rusty Dave said:
I’ve had a sim for over 3 years. My advice to you right now is to get to know your carry distance with each club. When you have that start focusing on 120 yards and in. Use multiple wedge swings to nail down those yardages. That’s where you’ll see the biggest improvement on your scores. If the sim has a target practice area, work on different targets from 120 and in. I can tell you what my 54* 1/2 carry distance is. Also my 1/3 and 3/4 and full. I use that system for my PW 50 54 58. This is where you’ll drop scores using a sim.

Don’t worry too much about the other data parameters right now. Learning what to do with those numbers and how to improve is something for you and a coach to work on. When you try to work on these other numbers without a coach you could possibly just be compensating for a deeper problem that a good pro would catch and help you improve.
Click to expand...
^ This x100

I've got a sim, and used to nerd out on the numbers. Now I use it to dial distances. One game I play with myself is to pick a club, say 7I. That is a 155 max for me. I'll then set the sim to randomize between 50 and 155, and I have to hit the shot with the 7I. It really helps you understand in between shots.
 
Not much to report here....went to the Sim for an hour and I found the settings pretty jacked up....I certainly don't hit my 7i 200 yard carry. So I just went thru most of my bag without paying attention to the numbers.
 
elementz said:
Not much to report here....went to the Sim for an hour and I found the settings pretty jacked up....I certainly don't hit my 7i 200 yard carry. So I just went thru most of my bag without paying attention to the numbers.
Click to expand...
Sorry to hear man. Could tell you were excited to peel the onion and learn more about your game. Probably had it jacked to sell clubs? Any way they could normalize your numbers and send you a report of what you should've seen? Might get you something a little useful from the time and $$ you invested. Or maybe lobby for a free redo with the sim set up correctly?
 
Daddio said:
Sorry to hear man. Could tell you were excited to peel the onion and learn more about your game. Probably had it jacked to sell clubs? Any way they could normalize your numbers and send you a report of what you should've seen? Might get you something a little useful from the time and $$ you invested. Or maybe lobby for a free redo with the sim set up correctly?
Click to expand...
I expressed my concerns to the owners but there was a pretty strong language barrier to hash it out, also while a line up of people were waiting to get in. I wasn't looking for any freebies, just wanted to point out my observations. Apparently, there are settings in the software to boost more power, but I can't confirm if that was actually the case since I didn't want to go playing around in the menu. The odd thing was that not all shots were juiced up like that, so it also may have just been a misread of where I had the ball placed.

After reading more in this thread, it is probably better that I just made some swings without chasing the numbers. Just wanted to shake some rust off. My buddy and I are going to another place next week to play the sim so we will see how that goes.
 
elementz said:
Not much to report here....went to the Sim for an hour and I found the settings pretty jacked up....I certainly don't hit my 7i 200 yard carry. So I just went thru most of my bag without paying attention to the numbers.
Click to expand...

What launch monitor? What the software TGC?
 
elementz said:
I expressed my concerns to the owners but there was a pretty strong language barrier to hash it out, also while a line up of people were waiting to get in. I wasn't looking for any freebies, just wanted to point out my observations. Apparently, there are settings in the software to boost more power, but I can't confirm if that was actually the case since I didn't want to go playing around in the menu. The odd thing was that not all shots were juiced up like that, so it also may have just been a misread of where I had the ball placed.

After reading more in this thread, it is probably better that I just made some swings without chasing the numbers. Just wanted to shake some rust off. My buddy and I are going to another place next week to play the sim so we will see how that goes.
Click to expand...

If they ain’t helping you out, play around with it. Who cares? At most they’ll tell you not to? I can deal with jacked up settings for it, but I found once CHS went above 105 it went to normal. Ok? Thanks for letting me hit my 7i almost as far as my driver since I kept it just below that. That’ll mess with you until you know what happened.
 
For whatever reason, I don't hit it the same on an indoor simulator as I do outdoors with or without a Trackman. This was confirmed again today when I had my first long outdoor range session last October. I got so much more confidence from today's session than my dozen or so sessions combined on the indoor sim this winter. It's likely some mental block or the fact that I had nothing more than a few sessions a year on a simulator the first 40 years I played golf, but I much prefer range time outdoors, especially off real grass. I'm not 100% sure owning a Trackman would be beneficial other than optimizing fitting on new clubs/shafts as I might get lost obsessing in the details of too much information.

I need the feedback of seeing the ball flight after picking a real target vs. picking a target on a screen. This is especially true when working on wedges and partial wedges from 30-130 yards - the sim is not a decent substitute for being at my club's outdoor practice facilty. One third of my greenside shots last year were from a bunker and obviously that's not happening on a sim either, lol. I subconsciously swing differently with irons off of mats indoors, and it's never been good for my golf game to swing a bunch of woods or long irons off a tee indoors or out. I'm much better off swinging the SpeedSticks indoors than drivers and FW woods on an indoor simulator.
 
Last year when I spent a ton of time in my sim I found the most useful thing being wedge shots. The next best thing is just practicing in general and learning tendancies with each club.

What Rusty said was the truth. Scoring happens went you put the ball in play and learn to get close to the hole.
 
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