Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden!

Once upon a time, in the misty wooly mammoth era frosty Scotland, clans of kilted local hairy neanderthal types grew weary of hiding in caves from Sabre Tooth tigers and all manner of dangerous four legged beasts desiring to nourish their own bodies by snacking on said kilted neanderthal specimen caught frolicking in the heather.

So these kilted highlanders cunningly developed a game with a real long stick and some small round rocks that served to keep them fit and spry as well as land them the odd avian specimen for dinner, if they got lucky.

This long stick was fairly versatile in that it could also be used as a tool to inflict serious damages on wild creatures intent on snacking said kilted hairy Highlanders al cruda sans said pebbles and rocks.

Over time, these guttural kilted cavemen grew their long stick skills and sport into an art form of sorts that also served as dual weapons against sudden attacks that may have befallen them from said wild creatures or other kilted clans of equally hairy and violent savages.

In any event, back in said misty highlands of a bygone era, said Woolly Mammoths and Sabre tooth tigers et al became extinct and the surviving flora and fauna flourished to a state of near civilized status for humans to roam around in to a high degree of relative safety.

The kilted cavemen were soon the apex predator and many clans formed with various clan chiefs which then evolved to the chief of chiefs becoming the King and then all sorts of castles were built to defend their realms with the remaining chiefs getting titles such as Barons, Dukes, Earls and Princes and such human bureaucratic mind games as rewards for fealty and loyalty to the sitting "King" and his power base.

The politics of survival in this environment became quite tricky...

This primitive stick and round stone lark never went away, however.

In fact, said dalliance morphed into a great many variations on the sporting front thanks to the English, French and invading Viking hordes who all perfected the Roman bastardizations in various guises of this simple whack a stone with a big stick game.

Some Highland clans called it "Bandy ball" for some unfathomable reason.

Lacrosse and Hockey can be traced back to these early caveman shenanigans that stemmed from this long stick and round pebble game as well by the way.

Eventually, some bored Scottish aristocrat with way too much time on his hands grew tired of chasing well wicked Scottish wenches and started messing with said sticks and the round stones they were using as missiles instead and presently we had a bag of various types of sticks to hit a smallish rounded ball type thing with said sticks that was no longer a rounded stone and which could be whacked a fairly impressive distance with said bag of specially made sticks he had developed for various distances they desired to whack the early ball type thangs.

Other bored aristocrats joined in with their takes on the clubs and we soon had a "my clubs are better than your clubs" rivalry thing going...

Clan McGreggor clubs were most sought after in those days and the other Highland clans soon all had their own club making gigs on the go.

In around 1473 they had found that if you stuffed goose feathers compressed into a treated leathery bag you could press and squeeze it into a rough ball shape that was fairly solid and compact and also went a fairly long distance.

They called this ball thing a featherie because it was stuffed full of feathers.

The best makers of featheries were prized by these various Highland clans and quite a war ensued to ensure the most skilled artisans were employed by each clan chief.

Due to the injuries that resulted from early shenanigans on the Scottish Highlands playing this game with this early equipment it was strongly suggested that only Gentlemen should partake in what was now a fairly popular blood sport amongst the landed gentry.

It never really had a name other than the game that Only Gentlemen played.

When a couple of well stocky and fit gals from Aberdeen started knocking these featheries around a fair distance, the Gentlemen who were partaking in this dalliance got a tad upset and started posting signs by Royal Decree emphasizing the fact that the designated areas where this game was usually played were for Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden - By decree of the King - long Live the King and all that jazz....

And so the sport came to be known by the abbreviation of this long winded decree using the first letters of the salient words in said long winded royal proclamation.

This was how the sport of GOLF came into being and how the strange name for the sport was derived.

I myself once had great disdain for the old men types who partook in this sport while I was aspiring to be a serious rugby player myself.

Little was I to know.......

Life is so ironic, its just not funny..

Thus the term "Ladies Golf" is truly a contradiction in terms par excellance, as my snobby pals would quip.

So fast forward to June 22nd, 2002 at roughly 1:37 PM - which was when my life and it's then very distant relationship with Golf changed forever due to a series of most unfortunate events at roughly this point in time.

That is to say my data logger stopped recording data at the point my aircraft impacted with terrain which was at precisely 1:37 PM......

My Smyk PW-5 after impact with Terra

So shortly before said time the data logger stopped recording data, the PZL-PW5 glider I was piloting had its tail removed by a nasty Redwood tree with plenty of bad attitude and I promptly nosedived into terra-firma right next to some CDF firefighters who had very considerately made a very wet spot on the grass for my aircraft to impact nose first into - sans tail of course.

This made me notice aircraft lose all properties of flight sans a tail control surface.

This was to prove itself rather quite impactful mere milliseconds later!

The resulting injuries to my person were best described as a tad on the horrendous side of the equation.

I lost the sixth nerve on my left eye which snapped like a tight violin string on impact as the left side of my body took most of the force that impact with terrain distributes across an aircraft frame and my body was crushed in alignment with the distribution of said forces at the behest of the gravitational fields acting on the aircraft and the mass of all who were in it (moi).

It was a rather emphatic and impressive living example of Newtons third law of motion actually.

I did learn rather succinctly that Force = Mass (x) Acceleration in a very demonstrable way that at least impressed the first responders who arrived on the scene, who fortunately had been playing pyromaniac and fireman in the immediate vicinity that I impacted old terra.

The instrument panel of my PW5 decided my chest was a great place to nest in the face of such gravitational forces it was reckoning with and demonstrated the reason why we humans have a rib cage while it was at it.

My ribs all snapped off rather neatly around the sternum. Miraculously they did their job and my heart was somehow just bruised but mostly protected.

Both of my feet snapped in half and the left leg lost 5 inches of tibia microseconds after impact and the top right femur took the shockwave right above the knee and snapped like a twig. The left Fibula was rendered into a shattered state of some 17 fragments.

My right hand holding the right air brake paddle was shortened considerably with a ton of broken fingers thrown into the bargain whilst dealing with the shock wave that gravity shared with it on that side of my body.

The final act was the First Aid box, which in this aircraft is directly behind the pilots head and which took a massive impact from my cranium which was what severed one sixth nerve and stressed the other considerably.

It also wiped my memory completely clean while it was at it but did mercifully rob me of my consciousness which was probably fortunate given the wave of pain that my sole surviving synapse would have had to cope with.

The left leg, which had bits of said tibia on display at the top and bottom of said ex bone, 17 assorted fragments of fibula and a new bright red gaping 7 inch hole from which that red stuff bearing oxygen and said bone fragments decided to vacate the scene of the trauma from was no longer a pretty sight to behold...

Had I not been upside down as my final resting position post impact with terra this wound would have killed me within a scant few minutes.

Fortunately my sole surviving synapse did not require an abundance of O2 to keep me from expiring on the spot.

The Sacramento Bee reported my demise as the Lake county Police Officer who was first on the scene moments later took one look at me being scraped up, bundled into a sheet and then shoved sans ceremony into the Red Reach helicopter that had arrived on a long shot mission of mercy that he was fairly certain that calling my demise as a foregone conclusion of fact based on what his visual sensors were telling him was the sum of things as he saw it - he shared such with the reporter in a convincing manner at any rate.

How I did in fact not expire in this one is still quite the miracle in fact!

On the very short helicopter ride from Loch Lomand in Lake county where this Redwood tree had done its dastardly deed to the Santa Rosa Hospital helipad, they had given me several transfusions.

They poured it in and via my mangled left leg holey shrine, it promptly poured right out again.

I am told I died 8 times on that short flight but the Reach Rescue crew were not taking my demise as a foregone conclusion like the Lake County Sheriff had done.

Later I was told "do not die again, nine is the max!" What humor.......

I believe the chopper was quite a mess by the time they landed it and I had used the last drop they had 1 minute before landing.

So neways, you may be idly asking yourself, what has this gory tale got to do with Golf?

Well, everything, actually!

So fast forward to 2 years later, I am out of my various 18 months induced comas, I have had over 48 surgeries to piece me back together again with Ilizarov fixators and the like, had the exotic left eye Jensen procedure to make up for the severed sixth nerve situation and even climbed back into a cockpit to go fly again and all and I even get a job again once I can "lurch" walk.

Chiron Corp in Emeryville had a South African exec who came from Glaxo Welcome Plc and who also captained several provincial rugby teams in South Africa in his youth and due to my own rugby network connections with Northern Transvaal (Blue Bulls) Rugby I found myself given the opportunity to get back into the workforce with what was left of me at any rate for my contribution to the game of rugby in South Africa, at Chiron Corp in Emeryville, California.

Who would ever have called that one?

Sean Lance himself got ousted shortly after I joined but I only needed 18 months or so to get it back together again and I was there about that length of time before I too got ousted, learning invaluable lessons of diplomacy when working with modern Viking like corporate invaders like IBM GIS.

Chiron corp were a Flu Vaccines and blood testing outfit and the opportunity to build their new Global Data Center environment was a miraculous Godsend.

So anyways, about a year of Windows Domain tinkering and prep goes by and I start to wonder one day why all my work colleagues are disappearing for 3 hours around lunchtime every single day.

Eventually, one of them tells me its to go play a "quick" nine hole round near a golf driving range down highway 13 that also had this micro 9 hole setup.

In Golf "quick" is a relative term only.

So another 6 months goes by and by now I am getting pretty irked that I am doing all the work on these NT 4.0 to Windows 2003 Global Domain upgrade projects.

Well, Jerry Wang was doing most of the Windows based work, but I was orchestrating the global when and how rollout shenanigans in concert with ol Jerry in-between getting the vaccines boffins to regale me with their flu vaccines MO.

After I had done my PMO piece successfully it was all down to Jerry to do his magic and I had time on my paws.

So I decided to join these miscreants on their daily lunch time plus jolly down Highway 13 out of sheer curiosity one day as I had been riding my mountain bike then a road bike 30 miles every day to get back to full fitness levels and I needed a new challenge.

While doing this Golf lark with the team and chatting between whacking golf balls, I learnt they had resorted to this antic because Jerry and I were seemingly to them doing all the work and they were not happy about it.

However, I impressed on them in the idle chatter between holes that they lacked the experience and skills and were supposed to follow along and learn so that they could go forth and repeat what they had learnt elsewhere and asked why they had not got the balls to confront me with it.

One of the team members who joined us was an actual Microsoft employee so we had a lot of skills and experience with Microsoft, routing, storage and Networking and he pointed out the team feared me as a Tyrannosaurus Rex type character.

I never laughed so much in my life at the very notion, but it was useful feedback.

I set about teaching said young pups about the psychology of dancing on a timeline and the no prisoners MO one needed to deliver a global project like ours on time.

They were all mostly young junior contractors. Some stayed and became IT directors and others left to go do great things elsewhere.

I took the opportunity to explain the plot realizing the actual Chiron IT Manager was not doing this task and I had just assumed that he was. Bad assumption on my part.

I learnt a lot of things at this stage from them and they learnt a lot from me.

It was truly Wunderbar!

So I used these golfing sessions to smooth feathers, illuminate their paths forward and hear what they wanted to do and accommodate their desires as far as I could accommodate them on a regular basis on said golf course.

I had also initially hired them all so I knew what traits they had which I wanted in the team and explained the "everyone in the team has a role to play concept" while I was imparting many strategically chosen pearls of wisdom.

Here I was actually tackling what I had shunned my entire career and some people started to notice and play the usual corporate games in defense of what they were not contributing themselves for some bizarre reason.

A bad habit of mine is doing what somebody else should be doing myself after three asks had failed.

I was considered a polarizing force by some, others were rabidly liking my approach and a few threatened others had dark forebodings about the imagined threat I was presenting for them as they saw it.

I did not lose much sleep over the latter folk feelings by the way. People who think like that have other issues they need to sort out, IMHO.

I have always been a get the job done now, deal with the fallout later type guy because political corporate games take time and time I usually do not have the luxury of on these projects.

I am also from a Military Family and was in the Military myself.

Short, sharp, shock has been my MO my entire life, no time for PC BS there but one had to be diplomatic to a fine degree.

So anyways, I also started to hit a gazillion balls at the range with some clubs I had bought second hand from the nice Korean chaps who ran this 9 hole short course and range business at the advice of my colleagues with the golfing experience.

$20 to $30 a club is chump change was my thinking then.

I was totally horrible at Golf for about 5 years but she who must be obeyed saw it as a way for me to self recuperate from my many injuries and bought me my first set of clubs from Overstock dot com.

She thought she was being sneaky and cunning about my path to fitness..

Those AMF clubs she bought me for cheep were thoroughly horrendous by the way.

The Worst Golf clubs ever made

I used the sand wedge for all shots and then the pitching wedge a short while after that to mix it up a tad but I essentially played with three clubs (Sand wedge, Pitching wedge and a putter).

None of the other clubs in that set were workable.

I was later to find this was probably due to the exceedingly poor grips they were shod with.

I also started to hit a gazillion balls at the range with said AMF horror club thangs.

After 3 months of 5 buckets a day it started to pay off somewhat.

I was still terrible on average but the ball flight was awesome on the odd occasion I got it right and I was hooked on pulling off a grand old shot.

I then decided to get some Ping G5 clubs in a whole set form from Golf Smith in Pleasanton one day.

The problem with this scheme was the guy taking the measurements at Golf Smith was bored and not paying attention to how long and short each of my limbs was.

Truth be told most of them had the IQ of a long dead ferret.

My assigned specimen was doing the Ping sizing which catered to average people of average limb dimensions.

I did share with him that my body geometry and movement had been impinged by said medical maladies that were an unfortunate consequence of resulting laws of motion from flying a mass of fiber glass impacting a very nasty Redwood tree and suddenly losing all properties and characteristics of flight sans a tail and the resulting dreadful jarring impact with mother Earth that ensues care of gravitational laws a la Newton.

On seeing my frustration from using these "sized" for me Ping G5 clubs, she who must be obeyed bought me some golf lessons at Santa Clara Golf and Tennis Club as I was then working for the now defunct Silicon Valley Bank and said range was literally right next door to my new place of work.

I went there three times a day to hit balls, before work, at lunch time and after work.

The Golf Instructor was a great old guy but he had also failed to note my many maladies.

I did learn the right way to hit a club from him though.

I swiftly realized that the Ping G5's were not working for me so I bought a Mizuno set at plus 2 inches, then being convinced due to my ex 6 foot 4 stature that I was over tall - based on the erroneous Ping Measurements.

So I played with these for 2 years before deciding they too were in fact the problem.

Those Mizuno clubs did not work due to their extra length that I had mirrored from the Ping G5 set by the way.

I was of course questioning if it was the Indian and not the arrow that was at fault at this stage as the chances the clubs were the problem were not stacked in my favor.

I had also by now roped a project manager I was deploying Windows 2003 with globally to be my golf course partner in crime.

Sergio and I played for some 7 years before my crude sarcasm and wit hit a major nerve and he married a South African girl for more sado-masochistic action than what mere golf or I myself could ever offer.

So anyways, one day I run into a guy from Portland who watches me play at Bridges Golf club Golf driving Range and he tells me my problem is that my golf clubs are way too long.

Something I had already suspected as being a fact as I happened to hit other folks clubs better than my own and these things were regular length clubs....

He then points me to a web site in Oregon called PinemeadowGolf .com as I bleat about the fortune I have spent on clubs and I am still getting nowhere angst.

Oh, he tells me, for a mere $379 you can get a whole set of clubs with graphite shafts on this web site!

I was dubious about said claim and was not understanding the cheapie golf club manufacturing game at all and life has taught me to be weary of too good to be true statements via real world examples by the bucket load.

I climbed on the interwebs thang and found a lot of outfits like this one and many other club manufacturers who were much cheaper than the Ping, Mizuno, Nike, Wilson and all collection of mainstream golf club manufacturers who were out there in this space.

However, I did some trig and math with some laser measurements with the aid of my video machine as said Portland chap also remarked I was tall not because of my leg length but because my torso was very long.

So I called the Pinemeadow Golf phone number on their web page and had a great chat with a down to earth type who made me measure a few things and he flat out told me on review of said stats that "yeah, standard length clubs bud, your legs are not long at all".

So $379 worth of all Graphite standard length Excel EGI Hybrids for a right handed player are duly dispatched via Fedex and heading my way molto pronto.

When they arrived at my Danville home I nipped orf smartly to the Las Positas driving range near Livermore Airport to get used to using them and the very first time I played with Sergio with these things I immediately saw I could start giving him a run for his money.

The range had not convinced me these things worked any differently to the Mizuno clubs but I immediately started hitting reasonable shots on the course grass, where it actually counts.

It took me three more years of hitting these EGI Hybrids and I got rather quite reasonable at it I can tell ya.

My score went from 105 to 84 over said three year period. Of course I was playing 3 times a week then.

By 2014, I was ready for my first "real" set of clubs and went to Ping in Arizona in person thinking this would have a better result than at Golf Smith sizing shops, where they again made the customary bad measurements and sent me a set of clubs their sizing tool told them to make but which they could not.

Their tool told them Purple Dot 5, degrees upright.

They were taking forever to make them and I just called them in frustration one day and the Ping factory person eventually tells me "er yeah we cannot do Purple Dot at those settings, we can only do Silver Dot".

So now I am irked and highly irritated that I went to Arizona in person for this gig where I get regaled with the "Science" and such BS behind the manufacturing process only to run into "er, yeah.....er... we cannot make that".

So I ask why they did not pick up the darn telephone and tell me or the Golf Smith bad elf who I had to send them to as the dealer, and they have no words.....

Eventually they say try them and see, Full refund guarantee.

I did, they didn't, so I sent them back and happened upon the Mizuno rep in Golf Smith who had been hearing my loud tale of woe about this Ping time wasting malarkey misadventure of mine (I had been there complaining to their management that nobody wanted to take my $2500 dollars I was offering for the task)..

He pulls me on one side after watching me hit a few on the sizing rig mat at Golf Smith in Pleasanton and tells me that stuff Ping told me is utter garbage and a gimmick, all I needed was a bog standard Mizuno JPX graphite set with 2 degrees upright lie and that's it.

So in desperation I agree and throw money at him for said irons plus a few other sticks he tells me will suite my "style" with a snigger from him which had me admire his powers of sarcasm only he was not being sarcastic at all.

It was my last chance hail Mary with Golf and I just went for it. Think it was all in $1599.00 or therabouts...as I recall.

Nothing to lose at that stage but the good ol Yankee Dollah...

These clubs worked so well that I bought their JPX driver as well shortly after that and a few of their fancy wedges.

Those things also transformed my game big time.

This was my first "set" correctly sized for my body and very ugly swing.

The rep threw two JPX High Fli Hybrids into the equation as well - the Irons were 6-PW with a Sand Wedge.

I added the 60 degree wedge and the JPX driver later, as I stated.

My Second Mizuno set of clubs sans 5 Iron

That's nice, but so what, you may be asking yourself?

Well, the thing is, I had recently gone from Silicon Valley Bank to working for a Computer specialist consultant company called Forsythe Solutions Group, and despite the fact I was still pretty awful at Golf in 2006, I had used it very effectively to get to know people I was selling to and I was rather good at the whole getting to build relationships thang.

Some of the Forsythe folks in Pleasanton I worked with had real big issues that my sales guys and I, with a few golf focused customers were racking up some impressive numbers - all on the golf course.

In their minds eye we were being paid to play golf all day long and were not doing our jobs.

It was only when the veep of our division pointed out our sales numbers compared to the other teams that they all reluctantly shut their jealous maws.

I was making 3x my salary in commissions after a year and it started to get real stacked after 3 years to boot.

All the while, I was getting much better at golf and selling shit. My presentation skills also got pretty darn good while I was at it too.

The golf was awesome therapy for my aircraft induced injuries and is, I find, still the best combo of exercises for my eye calibration issues, judging distances and skills of estimation et al because I do not lose interest in doing it.

I cannot tell you how much money she who must be obeyed has spent on all manner of very expensive exercise gadgets only for them to turn into ornaments after 2 months or so.

I never get tired of whacking the old featherie though!

The impact on sales numbers puts partaking completely beyond question or scrutiny by the way.

Of all the hundreds of trainings and certifications I have done in my career, none has been more useful or impactful than actually playing golf with customers.

Learning from my mistakes and initiating newbies into the art of Golf follows the path of my own mistake strewn experiences as described.

You do not need $1500 worth of golf clubs to partake in the sport ab-initio either.

All you need is a set of Pinemeadow Golf EGI hybrids roughly sized for your body geometry, a will to learn how to hit the ball and a golf range to execute on.

Obviously, this will require some time investment on your part in the beginning.

I wish I had started with the Pinemeadow clubs from day one. It would have saved me $5299.71 and saved me another 3 years of figuring out ball striking schemes and resulting suspicions of applied geometry!

So, for any of you out there who want to figure out an edge and add an enjoyable angle to keeping fit, have some fun and excel at work all in one dollop, Golf as a tool offers quite a lot of opportunities to break down barriers and get to know people that just cold calling them will never afford you with the standard MO approach to your work life.

Its a fairly healthy activity as well.

Even in the Pandemic, the one piece of sanity for many of the myriad of cooped up people wanting to flee to a golf course for a small slice of "normal" offered a great way to get to top of mind for them.

It works. It breaks barriers. It builds relationships. That wins business.

I hardly ever talk shop at these golf sessions either by the way. This is not the point.

That comes later.

You will be shocked at the total of business deals I have closed on Golf courses with my partaking sales folks since 2005, it currently stands at $127 Million US dollars worth of business won to date just due to Golfing activities and my single biggest deal in 2019 was $20 million.

Not too shabby!

So next time somebody gives you a hard time about playing golf at work, ask them how much business they won piloting a desk computer and a phone at an office? I will guarantee it will be a pale shadow of a golfing based approach.

That usually shuts the argument dead in it's tracks....

And in case you think you need to be real good at Golf to do this sort of lark, the guys I have seen pull the most money doing this really, really suck at playing golf!

It's not about how good or bad you are, its about relationships with people and getting into the doorway of their attention span and building relationships.

I could sell literally anything and have the same result too, its not just about how good the product you are selling is (though that sure helps), it's the solution that impacts the bottom line for your customer by making them higher profits that wins the day.

Getting the opportunity to play is the trick and Golf delivers near most of the time.

I have done this with truly awful solutions with the right teams supporting the effort on the back end.

There is, as they say, more than one way to skin a cat in the IT space.

The Golf course is a pretty solid way to get your goals met. IPSO FACTO.

Try it before you knock it.

It has worked for me rather well and I have several disabilities to contend with over what a normal human being faces via consequences of said gravitational compression on my body.

Pinemeadow Excel EGI Hybrids (pinemeadowgolf.com)

If you want to get into Golf, call Pinemeadow up and do the rough measurements thang.

A couple of tips on ordering clubs from them.

Golf grips are pretty key to hitting Golf clubs correctly, so after you select the standard shafts (no need for the fancy stuff at this juncture) pay attention to the grips.

If you have small hands get the standard Winn or Golf Pride grips, medium and oversize are the next options for bigger handed folks.

Do not get the standard Pinemeadow Golf grips, whatever you do.

Here, the more you pay, the better but the Golf Pride stuff is good value for money and will last a relatively long time. I like the Winn Dri-Tac oversize ones myself for their sticky grip.

I advise Winn or Golf Pride choices for newbies. I have played them all at some stage since 2008.

Pinemeadow have left hand club sets as well, they are at the bottom of the RH club selections and make sure you check the box for 3-PW when you select your RH or LH set.

I used to have a LH set as I am actually ambidextrous.

The Pinemeadow online ordering tool also asks you to make selections as to male or female and the shaft type as well and clicking on the standard grip reveals other options they offer.

I recommend regular Pinemeadow Graphite shafts for your first set by the way, few folks need stiff or extra stiff shafts or the fancy shaft options that cost a lot of money.

Obviously, if you are a lady or a senior choose the appropriate highlight box as offered.

This iron set does not get you a driver, wedges or a putter by the way, because guess what? It's an iron set!

In fact, few Golf sets come with all the clubs you need and when they do, the driver, putter and fairway woods are often effectively useless.

Fairway woods are also missing from the Pinemeadow EGI Iron set because they are not Irons, they are in fact Fairway Woods!

You do not need those yet anyways.

There are 14 clubs in a golf set per current golf rules and this selection of the EGI 3-PW set will give you 8. An additional putter and a Sand wedge will take you to 10 clubs.

Later on you will get a driver which leaves you with three clubs too fill your bag.

I suggest you forget drivers and fairway woods for now and focus on these 8 hybrid irons but as I said, do get a putter and a Sand Wedge.

In case you are wondering there are many types of Golf club selections and types.

All sets need a putter.

The rest is a combination of Driver, Fairway woods, Hybrid woods, Irons, Wedges and Chippers.

The Pinemeadow Wedges are actually pretty good by the way. You already have the Pitching Wedge so you just need a Sand Wedge (54 or 56 degree) and a Lob Wedge (60 or 64 degree).

A 52 degree wedge is between a 9 Iron and a PW and is also an interesting selection, I used to play one but it kinda killed my 9 iron. I am still thinking it is a better club than a 9 Iron.

However, on my new PXG 0311 XP set there is no 52 degree Wedge Option....

These also all come in steel or Graphite shaft options too. Get the Graphite shafts for the HY irons and steel shafts for the Wedges.

The Pinemeadow EGI chipper is also a club worth having and for $44 it ain't breaking the bank either. That does not offer grip or shaft choices, it is what it is.

I will probably have it shod with a Dri-Tac depending on how I like the one that it comes with.

For the putter I recommend going to Dicks sporting goods and playing on their putting green for 2-3 hours with their vast selection of putters for a few Saturdays to find the one you like the best.

Do not rush selecting a putter is the bottom line here.

On the subject of the 3-PW Iron set by the way, you may want to consider getting Irons to 5 Iron Hybrid only.

I found that for myself, the 3 and 4 Hybrid rescue clubs which are supposed to replace the Fairway woods are often better options than the EGI set 3 and 4 Hybrid irons.

As the set price is cheap just play with the 3 and 4 Iron when you get them and if it is not working out (good chance they do not) take them out your set for now and dabble with the rescue fare on offer.

Pinemeadow Golf also offer a few of these types of rescue club that are also outstanding and way less than the $249-$279 that PXG, Taylormade, Ping, Mizuno and Adams et al demand for their current rescue club variants.

I ended up trying all sorts of these clubs as I found I hit Hybrid Fairway woods from a company called Nickent rather well. Nickent is now owned by Dicks Sporting Goods.

I have a 1 iron Hybrid Rescue club made by Cleveland Golf, 2,3,4 & 5 Hybrid Rescue woods from Nickent, 3 & 4 Rescue Woods from Adams Golf and 4 & 5 Hi Fli Hybrid Rescue clubs from Mizuno.

I also have the vanilla Nickent 3 & 5 Fairway woods but I cannot hit the 3 Wood consistently. I am pretty good with the 5 but this thing has a special swing that requires lots of weeks of practice to perfect striking the ball with.

In fact when I get it right I can hit that Nickent 5 wood further than my driver and I can make shots go left, right or just straight with it as well.

I took the 3 and 5 Fairway woods out of my bag though because it messed the other clubs up.

Talking of bags you will also need a reasonable Golf bag to put all them awesome Golf clubs into by the way.

The Pinemeadow Golf bag is not bad actually and at $139.99 is pretty reasonable fare.

The next item is Golf shoes and yes, you do need special shoes to play golf and this includes range time antics.

You will not want the shoes with the special shoe spikes, get a sole with the little spikeless ridges instead like a normal sneaker choice, but made specifically for golf.

Spikeless and Spiked Golf shoes

You can get an OK pair for between $59-$159.

Footjoy make the best ones in my humble opinion that goes from cheep to real expensive.

The point here is a selection that makes you absolutely stable as you strike the ball.

Shoes with cleats do not offer that stability and are for the pros.

Do not complicate your efforts at learning golf with fancy cleat golf shoes at this stage of the game.

I personally believe the more comfy and stable your feet are, the better your Golf will be.

The only other thing you will need is shorts or Golfing long pants and two real comfy golf shirts and a good golf towel.

Under armor Golf shirts and pants are hard to beat in price and function and Nike make real good but real expensive ones too.

Ones that soak up sweat and keep you dry are what you want here.

Then there is the matter of Golf gloves.

You will be getting through quite a few of these by the way and again Footjoy, Mizuno and Nike make the stuff you need for about $14-18 a pop.

You will be getting blistered hands as a newbie so you may want to buy a couple of left handed and right handed gloves.

I still play with gloves on both hands due to this issue as I sweat a lot as well and it avoids the blister scene.

Mizuno rain gloves come in a pair format out the box and their X-Large works well for my giant paws.

Sweat also destroys your golf grips over time so do not skimp on gloves for both hands if you feel more comfortable and do not play with bare hands - ever!

Practice makes perfect, so also be prepared to hit the range often as a newbie. This would be 3 to 4 times a week for 55 minutes a time.

Start with your smallest wedge and progress up through the set once you can hit them all proficiently.

I start with my 60 degree wedge, hit 6-8 with that, then hit 8-12 balls with the sand wedge, 10 balls with the PW and 15 balls with the 9 Iron and so on until I get to the driver.

I usually do not hit more than 10 with the driver.

If I cannot hit it after 4 balls I go back to the PW and then after 2 or 3 confidence building balls try the driver again. Sometimes I have to hit the Hi Fli 5 for 3 or 4 balls before I can progress to the driver.

Some days it ain't happening but I just hit the biggest club I can instead if this happens.

Never stress when one club is not working.

I have always had issues with a 6 iron. Some days I hit it like a pro and other days it looks like I have never hit a golf club in my life.

On those days I just put it back in the bag and focus on what is working.

Tomorrow is another day as they say!!

Golf is generally speaking not a game you will pickup in a few hours, days or even weeks either by the way, so brace yourself for an 18 month plus learning curve here.

And do get lessons when you start to struggle after 6 months or so of range roving on your own with no improvements.

Sado-Masochists do better at golf than other types in case you are wondering......

If you are the give up easy type, don't even bother with Golf, it just ain't for you.

Other than that, go forth and strike the ol featherie!! I myself just love it!

You will learn a lot about yourself while on this mission by the way....

I learnt a lot of things about my own persona while partaking in this infuriating art.

Most sports I ever played came to me naturally.

Cricket, Rugby, Basket Ball, Swimming, Table Tennis, long jump, triple jump, high jump, soccer (goalkeeper and right back), snooker, billiards, American pool, hockey, polo, fencing, Judo, Karate, trap, archery and long distance running being the few I tried that I was real good at.

Golf took some effort and a lot of persistence on my part due to my many injuries and handicaps so do not be put off by your seeming lack of progress should you encounter it and you will.

If I can figure it out with my long catalogue of medical maladies, trust me, anybody can!

Golf is about mental control of what you are or are not doing on a given day and finding what MO will work for you on said given day.

This is why 30 minutes range time before you do play a round is an invaluable warm up indicator as you will quickly realize the MO of the day and adapt to it before you get on the actual course.

Use the mat for the first 4 months

Even after I got my new Mizuno JPX clubs working I would have my Pinemeadow Golf EGI set in the truck in case the course conditions warranted their use or I was so crap I needed them to compensate.

For example if it was a dry winters day that produced hard ground I pressed them into service often and often if I had no time to range calibrate or I was real off on my visual perception for whatever reason, out came the EGI Hybrids.

As my left eye underwent a Jensen procedure calibrating it to be able to hit a golf ball is for me the most difficult part of honing in on ball striking.

Its also different near every single day. I have to learn where the ball is placed based on what this eye is doing or disaster ensues.

In a Jensen procedure they take a muscle from the top and the bottom of your eye muscle pair and stitch it to the one where the sixth nerve is no longer working.

The brain over time then learns to re-calibrate the eye movement control.

They do not like doing this to adults because most Adults cannot re-learn to do this.

It is common for babies born with strabismus due to muscle or 6th nerve damage from birth defects.

The thinking being that if you are born with it you don't know any different when the operation is performed and will just take it as normal.

I wanted to fly again and had to pass a rigorous FAA medical and I used Golf as a tool to train my eye and brain on that aspect to help me do it.

It actually worked!

I never play my good irons on very wet or bone dry courses and I do not hit a ball not on a good piece of grass either.

My current PXG Gen4 XP clubs at $379 per club give me no ethical problems with not breaking them when doing this. I am not Tiger Woods playing for the big bucks!

Of course I evolved from the EGI hybrids to an Adams Hybrid set to go with my JPX irons and I recently replaced the Mizuno JPX Irons with PXG Gen4 XP irons but if money was ever an issue I would get the new EGI hybrids in a flash.

You just cannot go wrong with them.

Once you can hit the ball, grass at the range is always better but Winter = Mat

In fact I just ordered a new set of Pinemeadow EGI hybrids as my now very old Adams Hybrids also need replacing and they were not cheap and whilst typing this I convinced myself to go this route (again).

The Adams Hybrids were also not better than the EGI Hybrids BTW.

I also dabbled with all of Pinemeadows other club sets and you can go a lot wrong with those, so stick to the EGI Hybrid fare if you are new to golf and struggling.

I have 20 people playing them right now and there is not a disappointed customer amongst them yet.

The 3-PW EGI set with Winn Dri-Tac grips will run you $521.87, the Sand Wedge will run you $61.44, the Chipper will run you $44, a Golf bag $139, under armor golf shirts at $55 each, UA Golf pants $68, UA Golf shorts $39.99, Puma Golf shoes $65, gloves $28 and a UA Golf cap for $25.

Oh and never arrive at a golf course without bottled water or sunscreen either by the way.

Here in California Ticks exist in large numbers in the grass and trees so if you go hunting for balls in long grass or plant matter you may want to have someone spray you with tick repellent after your sunscreen has dried before you play.

Do not ignore this aspect!

This will all come to about $1,100.00 depending on how you shop around on the interwebs thang.

A decent putter will run you over $200, so it will be around $1300 for everything with the putter bar the driver - with all the shoes and clothing trimmings.

You can add the driver and other clubs later.

Decent drivers will run $299 upward and PXG have a driver at this price point that I just bought that is really awesome, Callaway's latest and greatest Big Bertha is $599.

I also bought the new PXG Gen3 XP Irons to replace my JPX set I bought in 2014 only because you cannot buy the original Fujikara shafts on the JPX clubs when they break and you want to renew them.

I broke the PW and replaced the shaft on that with as close as I could get to the Fujikura but when the 9 Iron shaft broke at the hosel the other day I was not keen on the shaft options and decided it was time for new Irons.

The Pinemeadow EGI Set with Chipper and Wedges - bare basics to learn Golf

The Pinemeadow Driver and Hybrid Combo suggestion

The only thing missing from this set suggestion is the Golf bag and the putter.

Add the Chipper and a putter with a bag and it comes to $1238.18

This is around $457 cheaper than the $1695 for the PXG 0211 Z starter kit and includes 14 clubs, which is exactly what you need.

So that is the look at the starter sets from Pinemeadow using the EGI Hybrid Irons, driver with rescue clubs and wedges combo with the putter and a courier cart bag.

For intermediary players like myself, I still think the newer Mizuno JPX 921 Hot Metal clubs are better than the PXG 0311 Gen3 XP irons though but with the PXG fare you can do more things than with what the JPX 921 hot metal goodies offers the average player.

That is to say I myself find I can work the PXG irons better.

If you are after just consistency the JPX 921 Hot metal clubs take a lot of beating and they are priced real good as well.

The PXG fare, apart from the driver, was, er, exotic in the price department....But I treated myself as my Rabbi tells me you only live once......

Some feedback I had on this blog related to players getting into Golf who are not comfortable turning up with a set of clubs made by Pinemadow Golf because it just does not convey a certain "Je ne sais quoi" they want to be the badge of their brand as it were.

Good news! The maker of the most expensive clubs PXG, has made a stunning entry into this market space with a full bag offering called the PXG 0211 Z full Bag.

Now this will not compete with Pinemeadow on the $$ front, but for the discerning gentleman or lady wishing to pick up the game this set does indeed rival the Pinemeadow EGI offering combined with the Pinemeadow Wedges, driver and putter as well as a few Hybrid clubs and a Pinemeadow Golf bag.

This PXG 0211 Z set is an attractive offering for this type of beginner.

At $1,695, this is not the cheapest way for beginners to get clubs, but that's the whole point for beginners with means, right?!

For someone who has fallen in love with the game and who is committed to playing, it is an uncomplicated way to get some state-of-the-art technology in their grubby paws to make things a lot smoother.

The driver, fairway wood and hybrid are available for $795, and the 6-iron through sand wedge are also available for $795.

The driver, 4-wood and hybrid have adjustable hosels, and PXG knows most sets will be purchased online because beginners are often intimidated by the custom fitting process.

On the PXG website, golfers only need to tell PXG their gender, age, height and whether they are right-handed or left-handed.

Using this basic information, PXG will build a set for ya and ship it.

Everything about the 0211 Z woods and irons was designed with beginners in mind.

For example, the set has 10 clubs in it instead of 14 to keep things simple for golfers who are just learning to play.

There is a driver, a 4-wood, a 5-hybrid, a 6-iron through sand wedge and a putter. A golf bag and headcovers also come standard.

The 0211 Z driver is designed to be confidence-inducing and easy to hit.

Drivers designed for experienced golfers display a loft, but this is really a “1 Wood” to keep things simple.

In truth, it has 16 degrees of loft, which for most golfers would be a 3-wood, but with 460 cubic centimeters of volume and titanium and face and chassis, it packs a punch for slower-swinging golfers who need to maximize carry distance.

The carbon fiber crown is much lighter than the titanium it replaces on the top of the club, so more weight could be positioned low and back in the head to increase stability and promote a higher launch angle.

At the same time, an internal thermoplastic elastomer (TPE) piece in the back of the sole soaks up vibrations to enhance sound and feel.

A second internal TPE piece has been added to the back of the crown to compliment it as well.

The Top of the 0211 Z Driver

PXG drivers are typically 45.5 inches long, but the 0211 Z driver comes standard at shorter lengths for both men and women.

The men’s club is 44 inches and for women, it is 43 inches. With a lie angle of 61.5 degrees, the 0211 Z is also more upright than most drivers, to promote a distance-enhancing right to left ball flight.

PXG includes one fairway wood with the 0211 Z set and it is labeled with a “4.”

The club has 18 degrees of loft, and like the driver, is designed to be forgiving and get the ball into the air easily.

The stainless-steel face has a higher toe and boxy shape that broadens the sweet spot, and the addition of a carbon fiber crown helped PXG designers lower the center of gravity location.

The club has a low profile, from sole to top, but it is long from back to front, so the center of gravity could be pushed as far back from the face as possible.

Also, beginners tend to find that getting low-profile fairway woods under the ball is easier than deep-faced clubs, so they tend to make solid contact more often.

To enhance sound and feel, PXG added a honeycomb-shaped TPE piece inside the head, on the sole, to absorb excessive vibrations created at impact.

The 0211 Fairway Wood Crown

I found both of these pretty easy to hit and was very impressed with the results I saw at Brentwood Golf course playing their Diablo 9 hole circuit.

The 0211 Hybrid Z club

The hybrid that comes with the 0211 Z set has 25 degrees of loft and is labeled with a “5.”

It also has a carbon fiber crown, an internal piece of TPE to improve sound and feel, and a squared stainless-steel face that helps to broaden the sweet spot and shift more weight to the perimeter of the head to increase stability.

The 0211 Z Set Irons

Manufacturers of game-improvement and max game-improvement irons do not make 3-irons, and 4-irons are becoming rare for golfers who struggle to shoot below the mid-80s.

The exception is the Pinemeadow EGI Hybrid set because the 3 and 4 Irons in that set are Hybrid Rescue variants to start off with so for this set this statement does not apply.

Making the 0211 Z irons with beginners in mind, the PXG designers decided to offer the set with a 6-iron and progress up to a sand wedge, so there are only six irons in the set.

For people who are new to the game, this is plenty of clubs to work with for now.

The 0211 Z irons are the first non-filled, hollow-bodied irons PXG has ever released. Other clubs like my 0311 GEN4 irons are hollow-bodied but filled with polymers or foams, but filling irons this large with those materials would add too much weight.

Each club has an extremely-wide sole, to help golfers who hit the ground behind the ball first maintain speed through impact, and significant offset to help players who have developing swings square the face on the downswing more easily.

The low-profile design should also help golfers avoid hitting dreaded thin shots.

In the address position, the golfer’s eyes clearly see the chrome behind the ball while the black, back portion of the heads fades into the background.

The enormous size of the heads allowed PXG to drop the CG location and pull it away from the hitting area.

The 0211 Z Sand Wedge

It also boosts the moment of inertia (MOI) to increase stability on mis-hits.

The sand wedge is designed with 12-degrees of measured bounce, but the extremely wide sole design gives it a more effective or “playing” bounce.

It can be used in the sand without the player having to open the face.

The 0211 Z set comes standard with an 0211 Hellcat putter, identical to the 0211 putters that were released in August.

The 0211 putters have a unique alignment system called Runway Reticle that is based on the lights and paint scheme used on airplane runways.

Along with a line on the topline, several lines in the back help players set the club down behind the ball perpendicular to the target line.

The face also has a unique, milled Pyramid Face Pattern which features tiny diamond-shaped pieces across the hitting area.

The pattern is formed by tiny pyramids that are designed to grab the back of the golf ball at impact and get it rolling instead of skidding after impact for better distance control and consistency.

So there you have it, for $1695 everything you need in a 10 club set combination with the bag included.

Most part time golfers could use this single set for the life of their Golf playing endeavor if they wanted.

For players like myself with the challenges onboard with injuries etc. I am thinking these are actually a well engineered set to take care of the usual driver and other clubs learning foibles one has to go through in that this is easier and simpler to master.

They do not need your club lie stats for this set by the way but I would call them as they come with midsize grips and if you are my size in the hands department that ain't gonna work.

My pal Jake Z Let me hit these at the range this week and I was pretty Impressed with the Driver, Irons and the Hybrid club.

That Fairway wood is also good but for me needs some different foot placement work to go with it.

You will find via Golf Range antics some clubs need a specific setup with regards to where the feet go for maximum effect.

I have notes for each club in my bag to compliment my score card and setup arrangement.

The PXG Hellcat putter also takes some getting used to but the alignment stuff will help any noob with scant putting skills for sure!

Other things you will need when you start going to a golf course by the way is golf balls and golf tees.

Hit thousands of range balls first though, as losing golf balls can be a seriously expensive endeavor!

I used to go buy the lost balls harvested from golf courses re-sold by the dozen and would also often harvest 20 or so myself each time I played at certain courses..

This is far cheaper until you know what you are doing.

A few words on foot placement and ball placement when learning golf.

For people not suffering from bone shortening due to sudden impact trauma with terra, these are the salient guides for foot and ball position as you address the ball.

Due to the shortening of one leg and one arm mine start 4 inches to the right from these positions for wedges.

You should use this picture as a guideline regardless of your body geometry as a starting point from where to hit the balls for the various clubs.

You will notice the wedges and lower irons are different lengths which means the ball cannot be in the same place, or if it is, you move back as required as you get to the 3 iron level.

Beginners are advised to only worry about the Sand Wedge, Pitching wedge and 9 Iron until they are adept at striking the ball.

Do not try smacking the ball or striking at it with the club with any force.

NFR (no force required) is the hardest thing for most beginners to fathom with this game. Just believe it is a fact!

A golf swing is a circular motion where the club is swung in an arc starting from behind the ball to parallel with your shoulders at the top of the swing to behind your head but also parallel with your shoulders again at the finish with the club head now behind your own head.

Perfect swings move through 360 degrees or more of arc.

For handicapped folks like me, for whom this motion is not possible, there are ways to more than make up for it and there are in fact some professional golfers who only use a 95-110 degree arc swing with great effect.

Do not beat yourself up with what should be happening, find your way to get the job done. There is no must do anything, these are all guidelines.

It was the hardest thing to learn that a practice swing with no force applied actually made the ball travel a lot further than a forced hard swing that was subjected to the Popeye Brutus MO.

Once you understand this, subtle power can be applied and the ball struck in different positions to get the best result out of it for you as an individual.

Generally speaking try and get it into your head that the ball is not being struck in its 6 O'clock position where it lies, but in it's 7 O'clock position, after you have already swept through it.

Your instinct will be to strike it in the 6 O'clock position. Resist such folly! This is a game where you have to imagine things that defy what logic is telling your brain is the situation.

Another trick is not to focus your eyes on the ball directly in your swing but to keep your head as still as you can as you sweep through the 7 O'clock strike position, taking in the ball peripheral vision style.

Your eyes in your head should be looking down at the ball area as you start your back swing and follow through slightly after the hips.

Imagine you are swinging the club in an arc around your static head which follows through to see the ball after the follow through motion.

You mentally try keep your head as still as you can but due to the motion of the swing this will not be entirely possible.

Swiveling your hips after that follow through motion is a natural motion you will learn, as is the follow through motion itself.

For some reason the follow through motion affects what is happening with the ball. This fact still perplexes my sole surviving synapse, but it somehow is so!

Also, note that many injuries result from people trying to hit the ball with great power, so forget trying to hit it with any force as serious spinal injuries et al can ensue..

There is a video and training set of DVD's you can buy called Stack and Tilt that shares golf swing techniques that will not injure your body.

My swing is a variant of stack and tilt. I have only once suffered a golf injury since I started playing in 2004.

Many people who see my swing cannot fathom how my very short swing at very slow speed results in such amazing distance.

If the angle of the club face as the club hits the ball is correct, little power is in fact required to make the ball travel a long distance.

Part of force that is a factor applied to an object is mass. I have plenty of mass to apply for moderate acceleration forces that result from smacking a golf ball.

You also need to hold the club with a light grip from both hands as the power is not coming from a swipe with the club at the ball, it comes from the smooth arc and distance the club travels before striking the ball in one smooth motion.

A golf swing is a gentle and relaxed motion that does not come naturally to the human body and mind.

Once learnt, it is endless repetition of the same motions repeated with a different club.

The different clubs make the ball travel different distances when using this repetitive golf swing.

The only club for which this swing is different is the driver and some fairway woods, which is why I recommend leaving this club to the very last.

You can play a great round of golf without the driver.

Many People forget that the great Gary Player for years never had a driver in his bag as a pro.

His biggest club when he was a tour pro was a 1 iron or a 2 iron.

A 1 iron is the most difficult club you can hit by the way, which is why his experimentation with that particular club was very short and sweet.

Gary won almost all of his tournaments via precision ball placement with his irons.

Some players like Tiger Woods should be banned from playing a driver as it gets him into more troubles than it is worth and subjects his knees and spine to too much power and force (IMHO).

His handicap should actually limit power than can be generated by a driver.........

The rules should state that if your driver shot does not end up on the fairway you have to suffer a penalty stroke and have to play a lesser club as well.

In fact, I would do the same for any shot that ends up in the rough with any club.

This would allow players to focus on accuracy and ball placement which requires more skills than a bang it with a driver and chip it approach.

I would also ban fairway woods if I had my way and only allow Hybrid rescue clubs like 2 Hybrid, 3 Hybrid, 4 Hybrid and 5 Hybrids to be selected for the long shots.

Some Par 5 holes are getting really ridiculously long due to the length some folks can smack a driver which is changing the game for the worse.

Some folks when learning to hit a driver can only hit wedges and few other clubs in their bag.

I would even change the rules of golf to stipulate which clubs could be hit on which holes to get the player to use his skills with his irons and wedges.

As a beginner your job is to hit the ball straight and as high as possible, selecting the different clubs for the distance required.

So how do you determine the distance from where you are in the fairway to the flag on the golf green then?

Well there are various tools for this job but the most effective one involves using your phone and some software from a company called GolfLogix.

Your phone has a very sophisticated GPS chip on the circuit board that is accurate to 2.5 feet.

The GolfLogix software has databases of all the popular golf courses and when you fire it up you tell it which one you are on.

This tool will be your personal caddie.

However it will not tell you which club to play.

You need to figure that out at the range.....

This is not the entire distance the ball rolls by the way, its where it first hits the ground before rolling forward.

The extra distance that comes after that is called the carry.

Golf stores have driving mats with equipment that measure this stuff while you whack the ball with the various clubs.

You can pay some for them to measure this for you.

I carry a spreadsheet in my bag with my bi-annual range hits recorded to aid club selection.

I use this with the GolfLogix readings on my Samsung phone to determine the likely club that can do the job based on the distance to the flag which is the target on the green.

Now bear in mind all clubs will have a short, average and long range, depending on how you hit them that may overlap with another club.

You get to refine your judgement here and select how the ball will arrive in the target vicinity.

For example if the course is wet you will want a soft high landing with lighter energy than a strong and fast arrival that could make quite a trench and even bury itself deep in the mud under the grass layer when it arrives on the green.

These are all factors of consideration to make for every shot you play.

GolfLogix subscriptions start at $29 a year and the more expensive ones give you detailed green info for putting and other features that may make your boat float such as tracking your shot performance but you are the data input clerk while sitting in your Golf cart on each hole.

I find club tracking on these apps quite infuriating and detracting from my game plan.

For me I just need the distance to the flag, thank you very much!!

I have mentioned my accomplished sado-masochist status at some point in my ramblings, yes?!

In any event these ramblings of mine over my journey with Golf are all true and I hope you found it somewhat humorous too.

I made said blog because a lot of folks ask me questions related to my awful looking swing that only this tale can answer.

I regale folks with many stories of vast humor that happened in between whilst on this interesting journey and hope y'all grow to enjoy Golf and have as much fun as I do and urge you to lose no time whacking the old featherie!

In my bag currently:

Ping Tour S 64 Degree Wedge

Ping Tour S 58 Degree Wedge

Ping Tour S 54 Degree Wedge

PXG Gen3 XP PW with Mitsubishi MMT 70g R Shaft (2 degrees up lie)

PXG Gen3 XP 9 Iron with Mitsubishi MMT 70g R Shaft (2 degrees up lie)

PXG Gen3 XP 8 Iron with Mitsubishi MMT 70g R Shaft (2 degrees up lie)

PXG Gen3 XP 7 Iron with Mitsubishi MMT 70g R Shaft (2 degrees up lie)

PXG Gen5 XP 6 Iron (2 degrees up lie)

Mizuno JPX 5 Hi Fli Hybrid with Fujikura Orochi 65g R shaft

Mizuno JPX 4 Hi Fli Hybrid with Fujikura Orochi 65g R shaft

Nickent Hybrid Rescue 3i R Flex Graphite shaft (19 degree)

PXG 0211 10.5 degree Driver with Evenflow 5.5 R 50g shaft

Nike Method B01 Putter

In case anyone wuz wondering....

I also have wedge sets from just about anyone who ever made Golf Wedges as backups.

My current Mizuno Wedges gave been in service since 2015 and I have Ping tour wedges, Taylormade wedges and various others in my vast collection.

If wedges are baffling you get the Pinemeadow Golf wedges, those things are like huge spoons.

So I suggest two approaches here and the cheaper Pinemeadow EGI approach is also the best and cheapest route to take.

That PXG 0211 Z set is also a fine way of doing it, but for a lot more moolah ($$). Pick your poison, but whatevah u get, enjoy it!