A Great Start!!

This past weekend I met with a husband and wife - he is interested in perhaps a new 3 and 5 wood and she has never played and is interested in starting.

Helping new players get into the game is a lot of fun. Not having a lot of experiences with the best way to set up a set for new players (though I had some ideas that proved pretty close), I posted a question on the AGCP forum, and got some great suggestions from Keith Chatham from Texas. Most of the folks that Keith works with are female players and somewhat older folks, and he has lots of experience developing sets that can help players get the most fun from their golf.

So the approach that will be taken for this player is the following:

1. First, I built here a 6 iron - very soft flex, very light swingweight - that she can use to start hitting some golf balls and particularly to take some lessons (from Des Mahoney, my partner) so that she can get a good start with her swing.

2. Second, I found a good 15 degree driver option and 20 degree fairway wood option. These will be built with, again, lightweight shafts, soft flex, and light swinweight. Easy to swing.

3. Finally, based on help from Keith, I will build her some hybrid irons - 5, 7, 9, PW - and a 56 degree sand wedge - so that she has the basic clubs for her bag. Same thing - light swingweight and soft flex. If she decides she needs the clubs in between these, they can be built later. The option that Keith recommended is the Kent Sports RM-5 hybrid heads.

4. Finally, will fit her for a putter, which I believe will be in the 31 to 32 inch length when fitting complete. For this short length need heavier head and I found one that will work.

Success for this player will be for her to get a great start with golf, hit a number and hopefully lots of good shots, and keep playing!!

Tony

4 of My Favorites!

Four of my favorite suppliers of great golf components are Tom Wishon Golf, Kent Sports (Alpha golf heads), SK Fiber shafts, and Infiniti golf heads. Today they were all part of my efforts to build some new clubs.....


1. This weekend I brought Des Mahoney, the teaching pro I partner with, two new 6 irons to test. These used Wishon Superlight steel shafts - I had rebuilt his irons about a year ago and he wanted to compare his older clubs with two newer clubheads. So I built two new clubs to exactly the same specs as the 6 iron I built for him a year ago. Today I ordered 11 more of these shafts to use to assemble new clubs with the head he chose from the testing.

I also ordered a demo wedge head from Wishon today - the wide sole lob wedge. A great option for a player who wants some help getting out of sand traps.


2. Today I also ordered some Alpha Response Offset fairway woods - 18 and 21 degrees - and an Alpha Response offset hybrid - 25 degrees - to build for a client who needs some help closing the clubface easily.


3. I nearly completed building a new Infiniti Assure gap wedge for a client who needed a distance option between his pitching wedge and sand wedge. This is one of my favorite heads, particularly for someone who loves who likes to play a club with a wide sole.


4. Finally, for the Alpha fairway woods and the Assure gap wedge I am using SK Fiber VIP and TT 80 graphite shafts. The great thing about these is the consistency of them in terms of buildin frequency matched club sets.


All of these companies make the highest quality golf heads and shafts - easy to build with and designed to produce great golf results.


Tony