Welcome to another edition of our newsletter, in this week’s mail we encourage you to re-grip your clubs, we update you on our latest competition news and we share our Lady Captain's fantastic achievement of raising a phenomenal amount of money for a worthwhile cause. Enjoy the read!
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Junior Captains Drive In We had a Junior Captains Drive In for the first time on Friday in conjunction with their first competition of the year. Hannah Golding and her Vice-Captain, Ethan Evans, teed off into the sunshine and I think it’s safe to say they beat the combined yardages of the adult Drive Ins as they play off 3 and 5 handicaps respectively, in fact this was Hannah’s first competition playing from the white tees. |
 | | Junior Captain - Hannah Golding |
 | | Junior Vice-Captain - Ethan Evans |
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On the course... In this week’s competition, Division A was won by last year’s Junior Captain, Ellie Ashley-Brown with Joe McCandless winning Division B. |
Get a grip... The Golf Pride FREE #7 iron re-grip promotion has been very popular. We’ve gone through half of our free grips already and have 15 left, so let me know as soon as possible if you want one of them. Most popular so far has been the Tour Velvet 360 and MCC Plus 4. Everyone agrees that new grips make their clubs feel like new and of course we’ll measure them to your specific hand size as well.
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A new rules update Ahead of the first qualifying men’s and ladies’ competitions, there’s still lots to do with regard to the new rules of golf and helping everyone to get accustomed to them. Just imagine what it’s like in the Southern Hemisphere where the rules were introduced mid-season! The carnage this could cause has been evident on the PGA Tours as there’s been an incident every week so far with the new rules of golf. Rickie Fowler fell ‘fowl’ of them last week as he was penalised for playing a shot after dropping the ball from shoulder height. It’s important to realise that he wasn’t penalised for the incorrect drop - there is no penalty from dropping the ball from the wrong height, you simply have to re-drop from the correct height before playing your shot.
I spent time this week trying to ascertain the interpretation of a rule as it relates to marking out some areas of the course and as I contacted the R&A, The PGA, many Championship golf courses and many other courses online, it was apparent that the vast majority of golf clubs are way behind us in their clarification of the rules. So, please bear with us as we get new cards printed with local rules, mark out the course and bombard you with signs and notices. A lot of golfers seem to be believing a lot of different rules at the moment and it transpires that many of us learnt much of the old rules by being caught out by doing them wrong in the previous 30 years. Effectively we’re now all in the learning situation all over again.
One factor which has stood out so far from the lunchtime golfers is that rounds of golf are taking 20 minutes less than they used to - and they weren’t slow before. Three and a half hours is now a slow round of golf for them. |
A huge donation to a fantastic cause Jane Parrot went to the Birmingham Children’s Hospital on Friday to present a cheque for £4143.85 after the conclusion of her year as Lady Captain and was quite rightly delighted with the total raised in the year. In the photo is her granddaughter Livy Gamble, unfortunately her brother James, who had been for therapy was too shy to be included in the photo. They both benefit from the excellent care they receive there and I can testify how brilliant the hospital is. Trish Franklin begins her Lady Captain’s charity fundraising this week at the Ladies Coffee Morning - usually resulting in the Pro Shop Staff gorging on Anne Ree’s shortbread for the afternoon!
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She’s raising money for Lyme Disease Action UK and the charity focuses on awareness and prevention rather than finding a cure. Having this prior knowledge could have prevented the disease from spreading into all her daughter, Emma’s, organs and causing her life-threatening symptoms; the road to recovery from that has been long and hard and her treatment is an ongoing full-time job for her. She is hoping to be well enough to attend on Wednesday to speak to the ladies at the club about the disease and how everyone can help raise awareness whilst protecting their own family. Just think how much has been raised by the golf club for charities in the past 125 years by Captains, charity days and donations of tee times and such like - I would expect the number to be close to £1,000,000 which is amazing.
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An interesting find... Here is a scorecard I stumbled across the other day, which may not make sense to any of you but on closer inspection, it is the detailed swing weight of a set of irons. Well, in fact, these measurements show a perfectly Moment Of Inertia matched set of irons, not a swing weight matched set. What is the difference? |
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- A swing weight matched set is where all the irons have the same feel of head weight from club to club, but the longer the club, the more effort it takes to swing it. - A Moment Of Inertia matched set has the same level of effort to swing from club-to-club and each head down the set will feel lighter and lighter to swing.
We consider these aspects in every club fitting we do and you can see the inference of this as we use progressively heavier shafts throughout a set, very often from 60 grams in the driver, 70g in the fairways, 85g in the hybrids and then onto 120g in the irons and 130g in the wedges. There are so many factors that we account for from club to club in a fitting that we don’t even talk about as it would melt your brain - it certainly nearly does with mine on a busy day! |
TaylorMade M6 irons - 120g Stiff flex
Srixon Z785 irons - 90g Regular flex
Mizuno JPX 919 Tour irons - 105g Extra Stiff flex
Miura MB001 - 105g Regular flex
PING Stealth wedges - 120g Stiff flex
Vokey SM7 wedges - 95g Regular flex
Vokey SM7 wedges - 130 Extra Stiff flex
Cleveland RTX4 wedges - 115g Stiff flex
PING driver - 60g - Extra stiff flex
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Mizuno driver - 55g Regular flex
PXG driver - 55g Regular flex
PING Voss putter - 135g
PING G Le Hybrid 65g Average flex
Callaway 5 wood - 65g Average flex
Srixon 785 Driver - 60g Stiff flex
Srixon 785 3 wood - 70g Stiff flex
Mizuno CLK hybrid - 80g Stiff flex
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It’s taking time to get my new fitting system all set up but I’m receiving clubs daily and I’ll soon be able to fit the identical shaft from head to head with drivers, fairways, hybrids, irons, wedges and putters from all these manufacturers: Callaway
TaylorMade
PXG
Mizuno
Srixon
Cobra
Titleist
Tour Edge
Miura
Cleveland Watch this space!
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| 75 yards? Up-and-down for me... |
The majority of golfers know how far they hit their driver and irons with a full swing, but wedges require you to be a lot more accurate if you want to start shooting better scores. So, whilst it can be useful to know how far a full PW or LW goes, you'll benefit far more from dialling in your wedges so you can hit specific distances that you regularly find yourself with on the course. |
Give yourself options You'll notice that different swings with each wedge will result in yardages that overlap - see table above. This is important as it'll give you options when considering the conditions. For example, if you're facing a strong breeze, we'd suggest going up a club and utilising a shorter swing so the ball flies lower with less spin, helping it to penetrate through the wind. |
Dial in with Cleveland We'd recommend having a wedge system of the same brand and model, so you remove any variables in feel and spin across wedges. One model that we love is Cleveland's RTX-4 wedge. Some of you may have previous generations of RTX - which stands for Rotex Face Technology - but this current model has the sharpest grooves yet for more spin and maximum control around the greens. 18 bounce-grind combinations available between 46 and 64 degrees mean that a custom fitting is key if you want to get your next purchase exactly right. |
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