hree golf swings to give you accurate recommendations

You need to find your swing DNA,” said a Mizuno representative. Immediately I thought of mind-boggling formulas, and confusing explanations but decided to give it a go.

After all, this is the technological era – and if it works for Luke Donald it can work for me, right?

Most competitive golfers in the region are aware of the 34-year-old because of his impressive tour CV.

Before actually hitting any balls, Morris showed me the Mizuno fitting cart packed with 40 heads, 55 shafts and two Ping G20 irons clever pieces of technology – a Shaft Optimiser, which is essentially a 6-iron with sensors along its shaft, and Swing DNA software.

You couldn’t argue with him, he was spot-on. I’d even go as far as saying they were the most comfortable clubs I had ever layed hands on.

The kick angle is quite high and Morris explains how that determines whether I need a stiffer mid section to help me get the best out of my clubs.

The sensors on the shaft monitor five key parameters (head speed, tempo, toe down, kick angle and release factor) as the club is swung, and send that data to a laptop computer, armed with software which makes recommendations for both shaft and clubhead.

It reminded me how much I had missed the game and that feeling grew after hitting the new Mizuno MP59 irons – the club I had quickly taken a feel for – to warm-up .

Morris explains that 82 is my discount golf clubs speed (mph) and is about average for the male club golfer and reflects my handicap of eight. This is the main marker of what shaft flex I will need.

Finally the release factor is somewhere in the middle which means that I have three shaft options available to me.

Exactly a year ago he scooped 34,000 Euros in the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth with a tied 31st finish.
But it’s teaching that takes up the majority of the likeable pros time nowadays so a quick custom-fitting session with me was a stroll in the park.

The most suitable out of the three by far was the Dynalite XP S300 and. after checking the club’s loft and lie position. I finally had the perfectly-fitted six-iron in my hands.

The accuracy was clear for me to see and the results had made up my mind.

A few more shots followed and I seemed to be Taylormade Burner 2.0 irons hitting the ball really well. The soft feel compared to my current irons was exceptional.

“They are an unbelievable set of bats,” he said. “Everyone who hits them feels the same, they can’t believe how great the ball feels off the face.”

However the real test was whether they would actually better my game.

On site at Walmley, Morris is armed with top-of-the-range custom-fitting equipment himself and his impressive piece of kit revealed that I was hitting the MP-59’s an average of 9.4 yards longer per-iron than my current clubs.

Great improve from improvement

"It really was an amazing education for me. You really can't pigeonhole anybody's swing or what they do with different clubs until you actually get on the launch monitor and see the numbers."

Not surprisingly, the new, heavier callaway diablo edge irons shafts, reduced his clubhead speed with the 6-iron slightly, but they increased his distance by as much as a full club through the set.

"It feels like I have a metal ring around me on my swing plane. It just seems like the club just stays there through my whole swing."

Here's how that idea played out for Goldsborough, who plays to a 10.6 index: His current irons, TaylorMade's Tour Burner, feature a stock graphite shaft that weighs just 65 grams. But Goldsborough was fit to TaylorMade's R11 irons with a KBS Tour C Taper shaft that weighs discount golf clubs nearly twice as much.

Today I had a conversation with Glenn Goldsborough, a physics and astronomy teacher and golf coach at Pennsbury High School in Fairless Hills, Pa., who is one of the participants in our study. His intense fitting resulted in changes throughout his bag, but one of the more interesting developments is one even the more sophisticated equipment geeks might find counterintuitive: Slower speeds yielding more distance.

Goldsborough said the opposite was true with his fairway woods and driver, where the lighter shafts produced the better results.

The mission of the Golf Digest-Club Ping G20 irons Champion clubfitting study is to take players who had not been fit for clubs before and see if a clubfitting changes their game. The range of players participating in our project includes low single-digit players as well as those who have a difficult time breaking 90. We'll continue to track the performances and perceptions of the participants in our clubfitting study throughout the summer.

"Even though I'm not swinging as fast, I'm still seeing a bigger distance gain because I'm hitting it more squarely and I also think the shaft is maximizing the energy that I'm putting into it," Goldsborough said.

Georgia is up a set at all six singles positions

Georgia Tech’s women’s team played earlier today and lost to No. 9 California 4-0. That ends the Yellow Jackets’ season at 16-12. The men get underway tomorrow.

I dropped by the UGA Golf Course Taylormade Rocketballz Irons before here to catch the end of the NCAA Athens Regional. Georgia is hosting 12 other teams in that event, with the top five advancing to nationals. They’ll play 36 more over the next two days to determine which teams advance.

The star of the day was North Florida’s Kevin Aylwin, who shot a round of 65 that included an eagle on the par-4 11th hole then three straight birdies.

“I think the faster the start you have, the more relaxed you become,” Alabama coach Jay Seawell said. “If you get off to a poor start, you start thinking about what can happen. But a good start kept us in the golf frame of mind instead of the qualifying frame of mind. All five guys got off to a good start, and I’m really proud of them.”

“I holed out on 11 from 87 yards, and that pretty much got me started. There’s a little bit of luck involved, but it definitely was a jump start for me. … I thought I was doing pretty well, then I started to hear that everybody else was doing well, so that felt great.”

While making the top five remains the ultimate goal, the Bulldogs insist they are still in it to win. Their aim is to run down Alabama, a team they played every round with at the SEC Championships on Sea Island.

The Bulldogs had a so-so day, closing strong to finish at 4-under as a team and in fourth place. But they were shown up TaylorMade R11S Driver by some visitors, including top-seeded Alabama, which came in with a blistering 15-under, and North Florida, which is two back at 13-under. East Carolina is in third with an 8-under team total.

Bama’s start got Georgia’s attention. The Bulldogs closed strong, with junior T.J. Mitchell making birdies on three of his last four holes to shoot and 68 and Brian Carter rallying for a 69.

Meanwhile, I’ll take this opportunity to catch you up on some other news happening in and around Athens and UGA sports.

“We’re just as good as they are,” Mitchell said. “They’re playing well. We’re starting to play well. But we know we’re just as good they are. We see what’s out there and we’re going to go out there and make as birdies as we can.”

“I looked at the scoreboard through nine discount golf clubs holes and I saw Alabama was tearing it up and I saw we were just hanging in there,” said Mitchell, Georgia’s elder statesman. “We knew there were some birdies on the back. I was hitting good shots, just not making any putts and they started falling.”

Bandon Preserve at the Bandon Dunes Golf Resort

Not taken completely seriously, par-3 courses are a frequently overlooked part of the golf world. The holes are generally under 200 yards, and the greens can usually be reached by players of modest ability in one shot. Par-3 layouts are not usually sanctioned by the United States Golf Association and hence need not adhere to particular rules. Some courses might have 9 or 18 holes, though they are almost as likely to have 6-, 10- and 12-hole layouts.

“No different design tenets come into play,” Coore said. “I’ve always felt that short par-3 holes can be some of the finest holes in golf. They negate the need for strength. An 18- or ping g15 irons 20-handicap player can hit a shot that’s as good or better than the shot a tour player can hit. Par-3s balance the playing field, and that makes things fun.”

The first known par-3 course opened in Portsmouth, England, in 1914, primarily as a diversion for vacationers. Short courses gained some competitive élan in 1933 with the launch of the Professional Short Course Championship, now known as the British Par 3 Championship. Whitten said par-3 courses began appearing in greater numbers after World War II, partly because of the architect Geoffrey Cornish, who built many short layouts in the United States, Canada and Europe. “With a little luck, beginners could hit some greens, maybe even make some birdies,” Whitten said.

“People have less time for golf, and you can get around a par-3 in just an hour and a half,” said Mike Keiser, the owner of Bandon Dunes Golf Resort, which features four regulation courses. “And baby-boomer golfers are getting older. Many of our clients used to play 36 holes a day for several days. Bandon is a walking-only facility, and some of these players simply can’t walk 36 anymore.

“My mom would drop me off and say, ‘Here’s 10 bucks, I’ll get you in three hours, have fun,’ ” he said. “Sometimes, you’d have to search hard to find a guy that you could pay. The holes were pretty pedestrian and didn’t have much in the way of features. The greens were taylormade burner superfast 2.0 driver all identical circles, usually crowned, and they were often lighted for night play. Not much effort was ever put into their creation or their maintenance. It was always fun to play the par-3s, but I wouldn’t label my experiences then as anything too special.”

“If you were to review every par-3 course in America, most would fall into the ‘rudimentary’ category,” said Ron Whitten, Golf Digest’s architecture editor. “However, the same can be said for most regulation golf courses. Par-3s play an important role. They are the sandlots of golf, where people can go to build a passion for the game.”

But although the image of par-3 courses is decidedly downscale, they need not be ugly or unchallenging. The par-3 course at Augusta National Golf Club has holes that replicate some of the greens and approach shots of the famed site of the Masters. The par-3 tournament held discount golf clubs the day before the Masters has been televised in recent years, helping to elevate the status of par-3 golf, Whitten said. There is also a par-3 course at San Francisco’s Olympic Club, where the United States Open will be held in June.

There is reason to think par-3 courses will gain popularity. First, there is the economics: short courses do not require as much land, and the holes are cheaper to build and maintain. Other trends also favor short courses.

Bill Coore, who designed Bandon Preserve with the two-time Masters champion Ben Crenshaw, said they approached the design of the course the same way they would approach a full-length course.

Ross Arrington is a little nervous

Arrington leads the way for Owl golf, but he hasn’t always been a golfer. He took up the sport in his eighth grade year on a whim.

Arrington spent part of last Wednesday on the driving range at Pecan Lakes working on his mid-range game. With the pin 155 yards away and the wind blowing in his face at about 15 miles per hour, Arrington took his 7-iron and hit. And hit. And hit. He placed most of the balls within 6 feet of the pin – to what would possibly set up an easy birdie or par.

“I got bored one day and my dad asked me if I wanted to play golf,” he said. “I got frustrated with it. I don’t like Ping G20 fairway wood not being able to do things.”

“I like when it’s windy and I can see the other guys kind of struggling because they’re not used to it,” Arrington said.

“I had no problem hitting the ball,” he said. “But in my short game, the ball wouldn’t go where I wanted it to go. But I played, and played and played and I loved it.”

For the longest time he couldn’t break 100. He only took three professional lessons, with the only other lessons given by his father, Camp Arrington, and impromptu instructions by a couple other players at Pecan Lakes Golf Course.

Before Arrington, there was no golf at Anderson-Shiro. He was golfing when golfing wasn’t cool. Arrington was the only golfer at the school his freshman year until he talked a friend into playing just so he wouldn’t be so bored on the road trips. A couple more joined during his sophomore year. By his junior year, Anderson had enough golfers to have a boys team and a girls team – five golfers make up a team. And this year, there were two boys teams and one full girls team and a couple of more girls to almost comprise another team. Anderson had both a boys and girls team Ping K15 Irons qualify for the region tournament this year, and both finished fifth.

“I couldn’t break 100 for four months,” Ross said. Then I broke 100. Then I broke 90, then 80 and started playing in the mid-70’s. Then I got into the 60’s.” His score of 64 at Pecan Lakes during a Bellville High tournament is only two strokes off the course record of 62.

Arrington qualified for state by shooting a 1-under par at the Class 2A Region III Tournament in Bullard. The champion at the tournament shot 4-under par.

The Roy Kizer Course in Austin is very similar to Arrington’s home course of Pecan Lakes. It’s wide open with lots of water and it’s very windy, Arrington said.

Ross will tee off Thursday once again discount golf clubs at the Roy Kizer Golf Course. He was scheduled for a practice round Tuesday this week, and he was to stay in Austin until the two-day tournament began.

Arrington went back to state as a junior, but he didn’t spend much time practicing that year, he said, because of his time on the Owl baseball team. He said he’d only practiced once before the regional tournament, and he finished ninth at state