A Great Time With The Tennessee Guys!

This weekend we had a great day of clubfitting and some golfing with the members of the AGCP Tennessee Chapter. We did this at the Stoneybrook Golf Club in Columbia, TN. This is the third meeting of the TN Chapter that Jim Holley, one of the TN AGCP clubfitters, has organized. I had to miss the first two of these, and have been really looking forward to getting together with this group.


Dan Wilt - Link to the Links Custom Clubfitting - has a fitting and clubmaking facility at Stoneybrook, and he gave us a tour of his shop. Dan had his Zelocity launch monitor set up and most of us hit some drives and looked at the specs of our swing speed, etc. from the Zelocity.


One of the neat capabilities that Dan uses is directly linking the output from the Zelocity to another great clubfitting software package - Optimal Flight. Optimal Flight can be used to take driver (and other club) ball speed, launch angle, and ball spin data and identify optimal conditions to increase shot distance. I knew that this capability was available in Optimal Flight, but had never seen it in action. One of the things I took away from the meeting is that I need to set my Zelocity / Optimal Flight system up in a similar way to collect data directly into Optimal Flight.


We spent most of the morning outside under a tent at the driving range giving golfers who came to the range some fitting tips. There were a few players who hit some shots who could REALLY hit the ball far - but who also hit a lot of offline shots. For most of these players, having them hit a driver with a much heavier shaft - 75 to 85 grams instead of the 60 or so grams in most of the typical OEM clubs - resulted in some obvious improvements in their drives.


Then, because all of us are golf nuts, we played the Stoneybrook course in the afternoon. Some vendor representatives from Leaderboard Golf, SK Fiber Shafts, and Global Tour Golf, were also there and played with us. We did a blind draw two man point quota tournament, and closest to the pins on all par threes, and gave out some prizes for some winning teams and individual winners. Late in the day we parted ways, but all of us were excited about the first year of our state AGCP chapter.


It is exciting to see this small group chapter group growing little by little. Jim Holley is doing a great job of organizing get togethers, and each one seems to be a little better and the group is growing.


SHORT GAME MUSINGS.....I continue to, more and more, believe that improving the short game one of the fastest ways to improve your scoring. This weekend I tried a tip I read in a recent Golf Digest article by Raymond Floyd - in the September 2009 issue. He suggested you should never ground your club on short shots. I did this while playing, and all of my short shots were improved.....you might consider reading this article if you can get it!


Tony