The PGA Show Insights (Jetlag), Golf Swing Basics & Short Game Practice

Happy Monday,

We’ve returned from the PGA Show in Orlando, with some cool interviews for you and a great look at the coolest new equipment on the market.

What we learned?

Club design continues to become more forgiving and powerful for off-centre hits

The maximum ball speed for a given club head speed with driver (see COR) has been limited by the rules of golf for over 2 decades.

As a result, manufacturers have been focusing on optimising those numbers for off-centre hits, and how they can straighten out your ball flight for such off-centre impacts.

2024 won’t see anything groundbreaking, but we will be spoilt for choice with some super forgiving and great-feeling golf clubs. The Mizuno ST Max driver (we grabbed an interview with the designer, John Freeman – a great guy) and the Ping G430 Max 10k driver are two clubs that really impressed in testing last week.

Tech for fun, tech for feedback

If you haven’t heard that AI and tech are changing the world then you’re likely living the dream of playing and practising golf every day…

There was an abundance of tech and AI at the PGA Show, integrated into existing products (we grabbed an interview with the CTO of TrackMan, Fredrick – a super clever guy) and a host of new products built on the AI revolution.

Most of these look great but have little substance. However, some do provide really great feedback for golfers, which is a key ingredient for learning.

Other tech products were just dam cool and will make golf more fun!

We’ll be doing our best over the coming weeks to distil the ones that are well worth their money from the rest of the pack.

Data & golf performance

This indirectly leads to some positive news for us all. With better access to data, we (the golf performance community as a whole) are getting better at understanding what truly matters for golf performance.

Fredrick, from TrackMan, shared some great insight into how TrackMan had been used by Viktor Hovland’s short game coach (Joe Mayo) to increase his angle of attack on pitch shots from -1 to -2º down to -10 to -15º to revolutionise his short game in 2023.

This flies in the face of a trend we’ve seen in golf coaching for the past 5 years that players need to be shallow into the ball to use the bounce and hit great chip shots.

I for one am delighted this rhetoric has started to shift. As a result, I hope coaching information online, and in-person coaching, starts to become more consistent, making the game simpler for all of us to learn.

PS- sorry for not updating last week’s email title, I was on low sleep, in case you missed the new article it is here.

Tip of the week

This is too good not to share, most of this (points 1-3) apply to golfers of all levels. If you don’t follow Michael online, go track him down, he offers some great insights.

Master your basics

For those who struggle with consistency in your driving and iron play, this is well worth a read. The golf swing is a sequence of events, so you have to master your setup if you want to build the foundations of a great golf swing.

Break X Golf practice game

This was a practice challenge created for a golfer at Exeter University who is making great strides, Tom Morris. Below is the simple skills game we built for him to dial in his short game fundamentals.

The scoring fits nicely in with strokes gained and putting conversion rate data.

Rangefinders under $200

If you are in the market for a rangefinder check out this guide. We cover those that are worth it and a couple of rangefinders that you should avoid.

The key takeaway is that budget rangefinders can still work just as well as a Bushnell, but you need a bit of a steadier hand. Some budget rangefinders are just as accurate, while others have 2-3 yards of error.