[G]od [O]nly [L]oves [F]ools

So, due to a slight realignment of my game, my bag contents have changed yet again.

Not playing with my DC Tour450 anymore, although that is still around. I am now carrying a PureFit ID RAW 460 with an Accuflex Creation 65 Silver Shaft. 45 1/2 inches long and around a XX stiffness. The club is handpicked to 9 degrees although it says 9.5 Also, I have backweighted it with about 30 grams in the shaft up by the grip. This club is really nice, and the shaft, at 480CAD and only for the tour, is really something special. Vijay and T. Immelman play these shafts. Also, I have a Tocare grip on this club. Logo down on all my grips.

3 Wood – Taylor Made V-Steel, S300 True Temper shaft, 15 degrees – This hasn’t and most likely won’t ever change. I hit the crap out of this club.

5 Wood – As above, but 18 degrees. I went back to my Taylor Made from the Nike club.

Hybrid – 25 degree My Escape by Purefit with an Accuflex HL shaft in X Flex, and I added a 21 degree version of this club. I hit an approach on a Par 5 this weekend with the 21 about 235 so all in all impressed with the addition.

Irons – 5-PW, Here is where I have changed. Back to my 2001 Hogan Apex Plus irons. Hogan has re-released these this year. Forged clubs that are a pleasure to play. Back to the beginning Vizzini.

Wedges – 51, 55 bent to a 56. Took the 59 out of the bag as I really wasn’t using it. Hitting the other two very nicely though!

Putter – GM2 Exchange by Never Compromise. This is made by Cleveland and has exchangable weights. Nice pure putter. Bought a Sophia by YES putter, but the BC is trying it out. Still have my Scotty, but it is the GM2 for now.

Wearing Hi-Tec and ECCO shoes depending on my outfit. Both are very comfortable. BC is wearing Hi-Tec now and loving them, and Dennis is wearing a pair of my NIKE shoes that seem to fit him very nicely.

I tried the new Taylor Made TP Black golf balls this past week and really loved them. I think that the Red version fits what I want to do, but we shall see.

As mentioned elsewhere, I am using Golf Pride New Decade Multi-Compound grips for the most part, except for my driver and a hybrid. On my 21 degree I have a Feel-Tec grip which I like as well.

Well that’s it for the update, so until my game sucks again forcing a change in equipment,

Keep it in the short grass.

Boomer

So, being a club junkie, I have in my bag now the 450cc offering from Pure-Fit, the DC Tour 450. In it I put the new Evolution Nanotech shaft from Accuflex. Have to tell you, this is a winner. Although I am still waiting to see the new ID RAW from Pure-Fit, this head will be in play for a while to come. The first thing you notice is that there are no score marks on the clubface. This actually helps the ball flight believe it or not, and it looks cool too. The head has a great sound off the ball, and in general, just a nice club to hit.

The shaft on the other hand, is sick!! I mean it. It is so in tune with the way I swing I cannot believe it. I actually have to play this club a little open so I get my little fade happening. I tend to release a little late, so that helps me not snap hook the ball. This shaft is incredible to hit, very in control, and the paint job is really, really, cool

Click on the link to Adrenaline Golf to see more, and to see some reviews.

If you are looking to re-shaft your driver this year, look no further.

till then,

keep it in the short grass,

Boom-boom

No golf this past week for us as a foursome, I’m afraid, though Croucher went to Parkview and hit a 78 on Saturday. Dennis needs a couple of weeks to heal up his bad shoulder, and as I’m not yet in possession of a set of clubs built for my size, I’m still on the sidelines. So after taking my driver, woods and hybrids to the driving range to work through some slice-fixing techniques I’ve been reading up on in Golf Digest, I went to Golf Town and hit a whole bunch of clubs for a couple of hours. I’ve got a wish list I’ve been building for a year that I’ll share with you here.

My original search for all-new clubs began with The Hot List 2005 from Golf Digest. As the bible of club-testing issues, The Hot List professionals take all the major brands and score them accordingly. Because I don’t have a ton of cash to spend on clubs, I looked at the ‘Top 10′ ranked game improvement clubs, found the lowest price of the ‘Top 10′ in each category [drivers, woods, irons, wedges and putters], and went to Golf Town armed with that list. I also supplimented that list with some random reviews from ’round the ‘Net, so you can see what others think.

BC’s Wish List

Driver: Nicklaus AirMax 460 DPT. I originally went to Golf Town thinking I’d hit the Nicklaus AirMax 440 ML as well, but I didn’t find either of them there, so I’m still looking to test them out. Both drivers are excellently priced [the ML at $270] and get excellent write-ups wherever I look at half the price of anything else. It might not be a Taylor Made R7 [nothing is], but it’s not $500, either. I’m looking forward to testing this one myself, and I still want it sight-unseen.

Woods: Adams Ovation. Man, these things are beautiful. Go to your local Golf Town and smack the 3-wood around off a deck, because it really flies. The difference between these and my Spaldings are night and day. Again, like all the clubs here, these are pretty reasonably priced at $98 a pop, though I’d probably get them from The Golf Warehouse if I were buying them today.

Irons: Nike NDS. I’ve hit these three times at Golf Town, and I continue to love them. I don’t reall like the way they look, and the weighting feels a little Mickey Mouse to me, but they’re so forgiving and easy to hit that I don’t care about the appearance much. These are right in the middle of last year’s ‘Top 10′ list, and at $500 cost significantly less than the Pings [$850] and Callaways [$800] they’re getting ranked with.

Wedges: Cleveland 588. I didn’t hit these against the screen, but I did fool around with them around the store, and they’re so beautiful it hurts. Croucher gave me a Cleveland wedge I still use, and there isn’t a club in bag that compares to it. At around $100, these clubs are the best value I’ve seen when you compare Golf Digest ranking against price.

Putter: Ping G2i CRAZ-E. Pretty weird-looking, but it’s the best roll I’ve ever felt off a clubface. Now updated to the G5i, it’s an incredible feeling club – and that’s coming from a guy who has almost no ability to ‘feel’ anything on the course. I love this thing, and I want this thing. At $200, though, it’s a stretch. My best bet? To go to TGW.com or Ebay for one.

- BC

So this is God Only Loves Fools [aka GOLF], a blog designed to chronicle the progresses, setbacks, victories and frequently humiliating defeats my steady golf foursome experiences on the golf course every week. Save for the Valleywoods Cup and Pink Purse that you’ll read about later, I think you’ll find we’re very much like your average group of golf buddies. We get pissed when we send a ball into the water, we get happy when we clear it and plop it on the green, and we try to have as much fun as we can along the way without killing one another.

Here’s who we are:

Kevin Croucher. Croucher, married and the a father of a fine young lad, is a well-travelled golfer in his early forties who works as an office nerd for a logistics company. Clearly a wise man, he counts The Family Guy, Spaceballs and P.G. Wodehouse’s Jeeves series amongst life’s greatest works of art. He’s also the best golfer in our foursome, having played the game many years now. He can hit the ball a country mile past anyone else in the group, has a wonderfully accurate chip shot and putting stroke, and more than a solid knowledge about the game. His score hovers in and around an 85; when he’s really ‘on’ he plays plays very quietly ‘on’, and before you know it he’s flirting with a 79. When he’s really ‘off’, though, it’s an ugly kind of ‘off’, and it hurts to watch him hitting a 92 when I know it’s his equivalent of those times I’ll completely crap out and shoot a 107.

What’s In Kevin’s Bag:

Driver – Ashton X1 8.8deg loft with a X and a half Accuflex LD Graphite shaft
3 Wood – Taylor Made Supersteel 15 deg loft with a Rifle 6.0 steel shaft
5 Wood – Taylor Made V-Steel Fairway 18 deg loft. i’ll get back to you on the shaft
Hybrids – Ashton 22 deg loft with an Accuflex Hybrid X stiff shaft; PureFit 25 deg loft Escape with the same shaft as above
Irons [5-PW] – Ben Hogan Apex Edge plus with Hogan 3 steel shafts
Wedges – Cleveland Tour 900 52 deg loft; Taylor Made RAC 54 deg loft
Putter – Scotty Cameron Studio Design 1.5 with a 35″ shaft

***
Dennis Davis [on the left, when you click the link]. Dennis, also in his early forties, is the oldest player in the group and a self-employed landscaper and handyman with a growing business. Married and a father of three, Dennis is a native of Texas who marired a French-Canadian and settled here in Toronto. A closet fan of science fiction shows in whatever form they take, Den’s much deadlier with his 6 and 8 irons up close than he gets credit for. He’s one of those golfers who often has two parts of his game working and one part not; if his drives are great and his chipping doing well, you can rest assured he won’t be able to putt worth shit that day. On average, Dennis will hit around a score of 100, sometimes going as high as 102 on a bad day when his bad shoulder’s acting up and as low as 94 when he’s feeling right as rain. Denny’s goal is to break 90 before this year is out, and he’s working with some new tools this year to help him do that.

What’s In Den’s Bag:

Driver – Big Ti Bear forged Titantum 10 loft & 360cc
3Wood – Splding Tour super oversize 16 loft
5Wood – Golden Bear AccuForce ll Tour Steel
Hybrid – Pure Fit My Escape 15-ssuperstainless TS 21 loft
Irons [3-PW] – Golden Bear, AccuForce ll shafts
SW – Alien Sport Alien2 Pro Series I – A Pat Simmon Design
Putter – Pro Select No Doubt

***

Amir Rahmani. Amir’s single, in his early thirties, and holds some sort of high-falootin’ financial planning job he’s never been able to really explain. Probably one of the coolest geeks you’ll ever meet, Amir’s the kind of guy who would go to a Fan Expo convention and ask the guy in the Darth Vader outfit which of the buttons on his chest calls his mom to pick him up [precisely the kind of guy, in fact]. A fan of both pop culture and the latest technologies in almost every form they take, Amir’s got the longest set-up over the ball in the entire history of the game of golf [I clocked a mid-fairway iron shot this year at 50 seconds from the time he stepped up to the ball until the time he struck it] and more money than he knows what to do with. Subsequently, he owns every golf teaching aid ever made, as well as the world’s most neglected car. Amir generally hits somewhere between 85 and 95, and hits the ball so crisply sometimes that it’s scary-good. Explosive out of the sand!

What’s In Amir’s Bag:

Driver -
3 Wood -
5 Wood -
Hybrids -
Irons -
Wedges -
Putter -

***

Tim Wood. That’d be me. About the only distinction I have in the group is being the tallest player [I'm around 6'5"], and my clubs – a set of Spalding Executives I bought when I took the game up a few years ago – are far too short for me, which causes me to suck even more than I should. I’ve added a Nickent hybrid and a Knight hybrid to replace my 3 and 4 irons, and I love using them more than I should. My sand wedge cost me $5, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing. I’m married with a couple of stepkids, I manage a commercial building in dowtown Toronto, and I generally hit around the same scores that Dennis does. My best score ever was a 90.

What’s In Tim’s Bag:

Driver – John Daly Pro Model 10 degree 460cc with Precision Performance 76 graphite shaft [mid-firm]
3 Wood- Spalding Executive with medium-firm graphite shaft
5 Wood – Spalding Executive with shaft as above
Hybrids – 20 degree [3] Genex 3DX Ironwood with Aldila 75-R shaft; Knight TEC Plus [4] 22 degree with HM Platmum medium shaft
Irons – Spalding Executive [3-PW] with True Temper steel shafts
Wedges – Dynacraft Summit Sand Wedge with steel shaft; Cleveland tour Action 900 with True Temper steel shaft
Putter – Goliath Blue Boy Four mallet
So that’s us. I’ll use this thing to keep track of our scores and progress, as well as document the goings-ons of our weekly game. The other guys will probably chime in here from time to time, too.

But first… the Valleywoods Cup.

- BC