Random Golf Thoughts

hah ya do get it checked

Old iron sets were often 3i to SW or PW

Now you’re lucky to get 4i to PW - that’s because gaps have been adjusted drastically enough so there’s no need for a 3 iron anymore to an extent

It will depend on your gapping, there is a strong likelihood there will still be good gapping between your 22 hybrid and 24 5 iron. There are some videos on YouTube of like for like lofts of fairway woods, hybrids and irons. The fairways go furthest generally then the hybrid and then the iron.

There can be a huge difference, my 5i is 27° which is basically a 7i in the new Taylormade Stealth irons 28° for example...

It's all marketing, as Callaway92 was saying, most people aren't told or aren't aware that their 7i was really a 6i, or even a 5i, in their old set.

Those "gains" have to made up somewhere and it's usually in the shorter / scoring clubs where, rather than having good sensible 4° gaps as was standard, you can now have 6 or 7° gaps between them.

You're "gaining distance" but there's a price to pay for it.

If you can go with an adjustable 4h, you can definitely add/remove a few yards to suit. Otherwise, I'd suggest testing some hybrids for distance alongside the 5w and 5i. On stock 22' loft my 4h nearly matched the 21' 7w - when my old 5w was barely further. Below were my distances from Trackman a few weeks back. It was a crappy cold day but I was happy with the gaps and normalisation actually made the carry distances match on course for me.

• 3w 220yds
• 7w 205 yds
• 4h 190 yds (set to 24')
• 5i 180yds

FWIW my 4h @ 22' was easily further than my best swings with the 4i @ 22.5'. Probably 10 yards on average swings and just much more consistent. I definitely got more all-around use from it. I never had any fear of ploughing it through the rough and it could still trundle on up to 170/180yds. If I didn't have the hybrid, I'd probably have to hit a 7i and never get more than 130/140yds from similar lies.

I may still buy another 3/4 utility iron but the hybrid is probably still more useful overall for me. Probably not good enough on the ball striking for the 3/4i atm. There's always next year.

Think it was Mark Crossfield who had a related video recently. It's really the distances between clubs that's the important thing. Think he had some example of how a lot of us (due to not so great striking) probably end up hitting very similar distances with both our 4i and 5i... He was saying to forget about the number or loft, work it out by how far you hit each club and make sure the gaps are correct on that basis.

I.e if you hit you 5i 180y and the 3h 210y, then you could probably do with one in between without bringing lofts into it.

On twitter today, Brysons lofts. Crazy jacked up numbers, 25 degree 7i

And with the shafts all being the same length he'd need lower lofts.

But the 5-wood I don't understand, what makes it a 5-wood?! 13.5 degrees??

The fact his three wood is probably 9 or 10° I guess!

I've been saying for a while that it's time to just put the loft on the clubs, not a number as it's meaningless now.

Think Ping did or do have a set with just lofts.

that's all to do with his ego si he can claim to hit a 9 iron into a green that everyone else is hitting 6 iron too

that has made me vomit a little bit

I'm sure if the sun was shining it would have looked alot better. Hard to justify the green fee if you've to spend 5 hours in the drench.

A good example of loft differences is the Mizuno Pro 223 and the Mizuno Hot Metal Pro 923, both irons I like the look of. The Pro 223 Pitching Wedge is 46 degrees and the Hot Metal Pro is 42.5 degrees of loft,

That’s the point I’m making, some people don’t have a clue as someone mentioned above. They’d be comparing 7 irons off the tee without having a notion one has a much stronger loft than the other. Chances are the guy playing the players club would know though.

Quick one here

Competition last weekend - Girlfriend entered and shot a good score on the Saturday

Sunday was a wash out - Since then it looks like the comp was cancelled since they don’t have the results up yet (but have newer results up)

A) should the golf club go out of their way to contact her about giving her money back? I think they should. If someone had shot 28 points and wouldn’t bother checking results, they mightn’t even cop it. Only reason she has noticed is because she shot 41 points so wanted to see the results. Even if not directly contacting, surely an email to all participants etc or a Facebook post

B) does the round stay valid/counting on Golf Ireland? I’m assuming yes

C) I’d question it anyway how many people they require for a comp to be ‘valid’. Time sheet was fully booked up the Saturday and course was open the Sunday, so not sure why results can’t be published anyway

I hate clubs that do a 2 day competition.

if sheets are full, no reason not to have separate comps on each day

Thanks lads - I had same assumptions as ye (fwiw I hate two day comps too, weather differences aside, especially now since you can check people’s entered scores on Golf Ireland before you tee off)

Some places might have a ‘minimum’ number of entries for a competition to be valid, but I’d be certain that those numbers would’ve been achieved on the Saturday alone anyway

Our club cancels if one day isn't playable as well. I don't think it has anything to do with minimum numbers in our case... Rather it probably saves a lot of hassle in terms of guys complaining about wanting to have a crack at the prize, or someone fighting for player of the year points etc.

Hence the reason why you've separate comps on Saturday and Sunday.

Exactly that - If she'd have even gotten a €20 pro shop voucher for winning (if she was the best score) she'd be happy out

It's the thing now of it the comp was actually null, players that maybe shot 28 points etc that mightn't have bothered checking results, do they even know their entry couldn't have won anyway?

A question for people here that might know, is there a general rule for what you do in putting through standing water on a green or is this down to local rules. I was playing today and after a prolonged heavy shower the greens for a while had a lot of water and most of the time there was standing water on the lines of putts. The guys I was playing with, not from my club, said you can move the ball to another part of the green no closer to the hole where there is no standing water in your way. I really wasn't sure or comfortable with this so just played through it as best I could. Definitely lost a couple of shots because of it but I'm curious what is the rule here?

Thanks very much for that. So in theory if there was enough water that the nearest point of complete relief was off the green then you can drop there?

That is very good to know alright, thanks. Does animal burrowings count as an abnormal course condition? This is something also happening on our course at the moment on our greens.