New Club to the bag?

I am hooked by the new Miura Giken MD390...










Looking at my bag now...

• Driver: Nakashima NP-1 + Fujikura Speeder 757 = $300 + $250 = $550
• 3 Wood: Mizuno MP-001 = $299
• Utility: TaylorMade Rescue Mid + Banzai 83 = $180 + $50 = $230
• 3 ~ P Iron: Mizuno MP-32 + Dynamic Gold S300 = $850
• Wedges: Mizuno MPR 54 + MPR 60 = $99 + $99 = $198
• Putter: Gauge Design GAA = $250
  

Total Retail Cost: $2377

Ebay worth value: maybe 40% of retail?
Golf, can drive me nuts, really.

Golf and Photography

One of my talented colleagues, who is a good amateur photographer that I admire, told me this tips once...
"How do you take a good picture in the dark without tripod?"
"The answer is simple, breathe out slowly before pressing the shuttle, that is the time when the body is most quiet and relaxed."

Most quiet and relax.... Most the time we pull an erratic swing in golf is due to our tempo is missed or off. In other words, either we hold our breath too long or we introduce too much "force" to generate an erratic powerful swing, rather than the smooth and relaxed swing that is desired.

I tried this method on golf course the other day, breathe out slowly before I initialized my driving swing, the result is rather impressive, I managed to keep 12 drives out of 15 trials on the fairway.

Thanks to my colleague's expertise in photography and generosity to share, this is the best tips I ever received, through the art of perspective in colors...

Golf and Stocks

Always feel unjustified when golfers with the lousy swing mechanics play a better score than I do.

While I am struggling to get my shoulder turn correctly, making sure my spine angle is maintained, stable footwork, strong grip... These guys with hands way outside the left foot at address, bouncing vertically up on downswings, hands dominant rotation end up with a score unjustifiably impressive.

It is then I realize a similarity between golf and stock investing. Stocks in general go bullish over the time. A guy who is ignorant to stocks, providing that he is not too greedy and just simply purchase some fundamental strong stocks, most likely he will earn a good return over the time.

A golf swing, no matter how is it being produced, generates enough force to push the ball forward. With less distance and less airborne time from these poor swings, it actually reduces the chance of generating errors on course. It is the same that as if the same person invest in stocks, without rapidly getting in and out of market, the chance of him being dragged down by directional movements in the market is greatly reduced.

It it golfers that understand the half of it yet not skillful enough in consistency that will lead huge problems onto the golf course.

To improve and play to the full potential, full knowledge and capable of applying it on course is the ultimate challenge. Yet, knowing half the knowledge and incapable of applying it is worst.

Hot Face
...
Long drive contestants always have a bag full of drivers - names like Alpha, SMT, Bang and Ashton - built to withstand competitive abuse of swing speeds north of 140 mph. They constantly test their drivers to try to figure out which one will perform best. One of the tests they use is to lay the edge of a credit card across the face of their driver. In time, the driver face begins to flatten. At that point, the face has weakened. That's also the point when it flexes the most, when the face is the 'hottest'. Once the heads reached this stage, they are reserved for competition.
...
The flex and hot face mentioned above also known as the trampoline effect... Where USGA has limited it to 0.83 COR..So I guess keep using the same driver.... If change to a new driver, buy it used and always carry a credit card for measurement.... After all, it is true that the more and hard you drive, the further the ball goes...

*source: GolfTodayMagazine.com

USGA Limit on Driver Head Size

As manufacturers discovered how to make driver heads out of titanium balloons, the USGA decided that they had to set a size limit. They chose 460 cubic centimeters. Why?
...
A few lesser component companies had released drivers in the 500cc range that looked like something a circus clown would carry. There was no evidence that super-large drivers delivered any performance advantage. Why bother?
...
One of the most renowned designers and manufacturers of golf equipment is Katsuhiro Miura. Mr. Miura is the founder and inspiration behind Miura golf, widely regarded as producing the best forged irons in the world. Mr. Miura has planned to introduce his own drivers and fairway woods for several years. In that time, he has studied performance and workability. When his new driver is released in a few weeks, it will be less than 400 cc. Just as skirts always get longer after they get shorter, I predict that better players will be rediscovering drivers in the 400 cc size range in the near future.

*source: GolfTodayMagazine.com

Rhythm is a Hacker

If hips rotate faster than hands,
I will send the ball to the right pushing the shot.
If hands swing down faster than hips,
I will send the ball to the left producing a pull shot.

It is the swing tempo that is to blame,
Why am I busy checking my grip, spine angle and stance?
Swing rhythm is a real hacker,
It creeps in whilst I am golfing tired and asleep.

Learning from Pain

I love practicing in the winter season. Love it because the driving range that I go to provides discount on balls. For the regular "Eagle" size basket, I could get "Albatross" size during the winter season for the same amount of money.

That is a whoopy 250 balls at one shot. For a weekend golfer like me, this is a lot of practice balls. If I pre-swing averagely one swing per ball, I will easily swing 500 times during that practicing period. Swinging these many times only lead me to one result: Extreme exhaustion and muscle pain all over.

Muscle pain has become a routine that I live by on most weekends. Depending on what I am working on, I will get pain from different areas. Of course, this includes pain in areas that is not suppose to be but caused by improper golf swings. I have learned to notice that it is such a good indicator to inform myself if I have done something correctly intended or something wrong unconsciously. For instance, if I am working on spine angle for the first time, I will feel tremendous pain at the lower back afterwards. If I am working on the weight transfer, I will feel pain from the knee areas.

After some time of pain torturing every week, I start questioning what is the point of punishing myself with consistent pain and no immediate result? I was asking this until I read Tiger's thoughts in Golf Digest today: "My whole idea is I will outwork you, so that in the end, I will be better than you." It is then I get to realize the truth behind "No Pain, No Gain." I need to out-pain myself, so in the end, I will be better than myself yesterday.

This is really a painful lesson, literally.

Struggling Waist

"I had paid attention to everything that I knew, I was swinging fine and hitting good shots, what is going on now?!" Golf likes to throws puzzle at me from time to time, out of the blue.

I was swinging and hitting ball badly, disappointed and disturbed. All a sudden a sensation of muscle spasms from lower back snapped me. On other days, I would have not noticed what the difference was, but on that particular moment, doing the painful practice repeatedly had put a lot of strain on the muscle group and it alerted me. I realized then I had a problem of stretching the lower back muscle properly. Even though I cautiously trying to maintain my spine angle and hips rotation, a discomfort lower back muscles had forced me to think I was doing the right movements which were actually improper.

Golf is interesting; it helps me to understand a lot about body movements which I never knew before. What I noticed then was that like any rubber bands, stored energy in muscle group is lost when it is over stretched. How did I know I sprain too much on the lower back muscle? I tried a simple torso rotation; I could not do it smoothly without consciously controlling my upper shoulder turns. This consciousness confused the swing rhythm of my body and hand synchronization. As a result I was not able to maintain a constant spine angle, even though I thought I did and rotated clumsily even though I thought I didn’t.

I have heard over stretching limbs and over swinging turns, perhaps I should add this new vocabulary of over stretching lower back to my little-white-ball’s dictionary.

Putting Speed

The interesting thing in golfing is the shorter the club length goes, the more it demands sensitivity in the golfer’s touch. When it comes to putting, sensitivity of the speed is the ultimate factor.

Just the other day, all the putts that I tried to make, I continuously lipping them out of the hole, the ball just refuse to drop in. It followed the right path, the right line, but it would circle around the edge of the 3 inches hole and roll out in the direction where I least desired it to go. I figure it did not drop into the hole for two reasons: 1. The putt was not accurate enough and the ball touched the edge a bit too much. 2. I had introduced too much force on the ball and the speed did not dissipated when it reached the hole.

If the ball had carried just enough speed when it reached the hole, it would have dropped into the hole as gravity would pull it down.

“Never up, never in” is always a common slogan in putting, yet to satisfy this, the first condition has to met where it has to be accurate enough. Here is the catch, if the ball carries enough speed to pass the hole as “Never Up” suggested, the path will not be right as it might has less break along the line because speed overcomes gravity. Thus, condition 1 will not be satisfied where it needs accuracy. If condition 1 is not satisfied, then “Never Up, Never In” will not be true because there is no chance for the ball to get into the hole at all when the path is off and more than enough “speed” is introduced.

I say to successful read a putt, first determine the speed, and then read the break. Only when the speed is right, only then the path could be accurate.

Within myself

"I want it now or I am going to freak out" has always been my impatient attitude on the course. Unfortunately this is never natural to the game of golf. When I carried such thought to the course, usually I was going to choose the wrong club and performed a swing that spread wider than my posture allowed.

To maximize the distance, I have to apply the maximum strength under the synchronized tempo but swing within myself. To achieve better accuracy, I have to exert a compact swing but swing within myself.

My posture, when ready, is within my two feet, with weight balance transfering from one side to the other during the downswing. Whenever I demand a result impatiently, I am going to throw myself off and the result is as wild as my imagination can leads to.

Swing within myself with maximized effort is the most contradictive logic I could think of. Though like in daily life, I think it is what golf is about.