Since I’ve been practicing with older clubs my game has become so much better. Not only is control better in older clubs but so is the feedback and feel. For me the club is always the best teacher.
Another enjoyable video and a perspective I agree with in regard to the game of golf. Anytime I see an old school Persimmon Driver in good condition restore-able condition - at a reasonable price I buy it. I have several old beauties in my collection. I only have 2 that routinely practice with in effort to save the others for the collection and long term hold. When you make contact with a persimmon out of the sweet spot......what a feeling. You can literally feel the ball compressing on the face and rebounding outward off the face toward your target line with some serious heat on it. Such a wonderful feeling --- every serious golfer should it give it a try. It's almost addictive. Striking an old heavy bladed iron is the same way. I am always on the lookout for old blades. Some of the modern "game improvement" irons as they are called just look wrong. They seem like they don't even promote or require golfers to hit down on the irons. So much bounce even in the long irons. How can you truly ever get better at golf if you don't learn to strike downward on an iron taking a divot at -- and in front of the ball. Another fun to watch video. Thanks John. jdp
Accuracy, trajectory control and shot shaping are by far the most important elements of great ball striking. This is why I play forged blades and persimmon. If they made great clubs now, I might play them... but they don't. Cheap metals, too much offset, too light, shafts have bad feel and are not based upon deflection rates as they should be. Very inferior to the stuff I play.
Yes Sir. Agree. Too light. Can't feel the clubhead. For me I have a hard time triggering something I can't really feel. Oversize grips don't help either. Like my grips in my longer clubs to feel thin. Especially in the right-hand trigger. As much as I enjoy watching and admire what DeChambeau is doing with a golf club. I don't understand wanting to entirely take my hands out of the golf shot. I want to have my brain and my hands and my kind of intuitive feel of the clubhead all working together and thinking about triggering and delivering the clubhead at impact in the manner that will produce the result/shot I want.......for lack of a shorter and better way of saying all of the above. Enjoy all your content Sir. Be well. @@lagpressure
Persimmons are amazingly underrated. They don't go as far, obviously, but are better in all other respects imo (feel, sound, look, shot shaping, etc...) Tiger was a phenomenal driver of the ball in the 99'-01' timeframe. Pretty accurate and crazy long. His accuracy really went downhill after about 2003 and he never got it back.
Of course he was a good driver of the ball, and very long... but he hit too many space balls to be considered one of the greatest drivers. Accuracy comes first with driving.. then distance... not the other way around. Watson was not a great driver of the ball... nor was Seve... but of course they made up for it in other areas big time.. as did Tiger.
I recently picked up a set of persimmons D-3-5 with stiff shafts. As I am not competing but merely playing for my own pleasure, these suit me just fine…. and I’m getting my share of pars and birdies with them (along with Mizuno MP54 3-PW irons).
I really love Tiger's iron swing in that era... the driver was a bit disconnected and a lot of right arm throw through the strike... same with Phil. Tiger avoided the super tight courses for this reason. A truly great driver of the ball would embrace the tight layouts... especially those layouts.
@@lagpressure Exactly what "super tight" courses did he avoid in that era? LMAO This I've got to hear. Dude won 9 times in 2000 and 4 majors in a row. He wasn't avoiding anything.
Was the Nike ball not available to other players? Were they making a custom ball just for Tiger? I don't know... I wasn't following golf at all at this time.
@@lagpressure Most of his rivals were contracted to other brands, mostly titleist. Davis Love 3 commented at the time how the tigers ball was miles ahead of the old wound balls everyone else had. A big reasons behing tigers great run around 2000. Titleist brought out the pro v later and set the new standard.
Solid core golf balls were played on tour successfully long before the Nike version with the Tour Edition played by Greg Norman and The Strata played most notably by Mark O’Meara and Jim Furyk among many others. The Strata was nearly as dominant as the Titleist in the 1990’s. It wasn’t his golf ball. Go look at his putting stats from that period.
@@ryanu3708 Tiger's weakness was clearly driving accuracy. Point being that he knew practicing with persimmon was most beneficial for him, and also scheduling events avoiding the tour's tighter courses. The tour used to play mostly tight courses prior to the distance boom in the 90's. The game on tour changed and Tiger had the right recipe for the modern game that is still going on today.
@@ryanu3708 Norman played 2 piece because he spun it so much. Strata was the first solid core with decent spin but they didn't have the marketing to get the big names. Great ball it was. It a while ago, but I think someone bought topflight/ben hogan for the ball technology, possibly TM
John fyi.. Golf Digest on Twitter today posted Rory's numbers. Persimmon 286yds, 4400rpm. Current driver 330yds, 2200rpm. Believe both done w modern ball. Also Tiger's 3 US Amateur titles came at TPC Sawgrass, Newport C.C, Pumpkin Ridge. Not sure if any of those require precision off the tee.. I'd say Sawgrass looks pretty tight. Anyways great video. 👍
Rory with a balata would probably be 270 at most.... but that being said, he probably wouldn't be hitting it that far as he would have to scale things back in his swing for accuracy... assuming he still wanted to win tournaments. Given the same gear... driver and ball.. I doubt he would be longer than Hogan and Snead... or Nicklaus for that matter.
Many do not consider Jack a premiere ball striker like Hogan and Sneed. However, IMO he is underrated because he was so good at course management and clutch putting. Lee Trevino said many times that Jack was one of greatest driver of the ball very straight and he had an extra gear if needed on long par 4's and Par 5's. He also could hit a 1 iron as high as most of the players of that generation hit their wedges and there has never been a club more difficult to hit flush than a 1 iron blade. Certainly he would excel in today's game and be equal or maybe a better driver than Rory.
@@7777mantle Rory hits way to many space ball drives to be in any kind of great driver conversation. Jack was a great driver of the ball... one of the best. If Jack had a weakness, it was his wedge game at times.
@@lagpressure Scaling back? That is not at all a position I agree with. Palmer, Player, Chi Chi, Knudson, Trevion even Moe Norman and numerous more legendary players truly attacked the ball, particularly with their long clubs. Hogan performed similarly, but his footwork seemed a little more balanced or fluid compared to some of the other players I described. Theirs a highlights package of Johnny Miller in his round sixty-three. As he swings to his finish, at Oakmont Miller busts a driver and his feet are all over the place. Henry Picard believed that Hogan could really bend around, and that he had ‘great posture, footwork, everything’. It was Picard who, in the 30s, had told Hogan to weaken his left hand grip. This was necessary because of Hogan’s flexibility and the amount of counterclockwise motion with his left hand and arm in the downswing. It was Picard who told Hogan to ‘wheel it’ and to ‘turn it loose’, because he believed that if you have a true swing (as he believed Hogan possessed by then), ‘the harder you hit it, the better you hit it’. If you return the club at full capacity to the ball, the club head will true itself up at impact. Hogan mentions something similar PAGE 96 Five Lessons. This is great advice for beginners in that they should focus on learning to swing hard with the longer clubs
@@Hogantactics Well, thanks for the lengthy post about your opposition to scaling back. However, not once in my video did I mention scaling back. This video was about Tiger using a persimmon driver to practice with while he was in possession of all four major championships. If you can find were I said "scaling back" in this video, you are able to hear words that were never spoken. In the ABS school, we teach our students to hit hard and hold shaft flex from a hitter's protocol, not a swinger's. Maybe re watch the video?
@@coeenc123 It's fine for weekend golfers.. like corporate softball games etc... but never should of been allowed for high level competitions. The USGA has done a horrible job of preserving the integrity of the game....obviously. Rolling back the ball is just them admitting this...clearly.
At Torey, Tiger was so close to the ball with his driver (unlike in the Golden days); I watched it the other day, it looked so uncomfortable. He won because of his irons, escapes, shortgame and putter. In the 2006 Britsh Open I think he used 1 driver/round; the course was hard and running; he dominated by not getting into trouble, shortgame, putting and great irons.
There are no players at this point on the regular tour that grew up with persimmon and blades. In that sense, their swings are not going to develop properly if masterful ball control is the desired result. Tiger did grow up playing persimmon and blades and understood that feel and feedback were critical. Practicing with persimmon was extremely beneficial for him. I don't know if others around that era were doing that, I suspect very few if any. It gave him a significant advantage. That being said, he always appeared to struggle with the driver. His golf swing with his driver was very different than his iron swing. Too much right elbow throwing and the shaft was pretty steep coming down which would make for difficulty controlling a right to left or gentle draw shot off the driver. He mentioned this in the video.
Bryson hit a persimmon and got 182 ballspeed....with a modern ball. Sooooo I dont think Persimmon is that far behind modern drivers as Bryson gets 190 without a long drive club.
He was 6'2" and 185lbs in the video. Someone convinced him to get big. Same with Hovland. The short-term gains are negated by long-term skeletal and soft tissue destruction.
It was his ego! He wanted to be considered an athlete. If he were humble enough to admit that a smaller frame that is flexible is what he needed, he would have Jack's major record by now. Now he is done!
I have a set of Mcgregor Tourney M clubs from the early 50s. 1 through 4 woods and 2 through 11 blackface irons. I play with the woods from time to time and really don’t feel my modern clubs are much better. The irons on the other hand are hard for me mostly because the shafts are extra stiff.
Is it possible that his demonstration during that clinic was just a gimmick to put on a show ? I don’t understand why a professional player would honestly spend a great amount of time using a tool that he wasn’t going to use for his job. Do you think Bobby Jones continued to use hickory shafts in an attempt to improve after metal shafts were introduced? There is no doubt a persimmon has less margin for error, but that wasn’t what he was using for competition. An 8802 putter is harder to use too. But I don’t see him practicing with one over his anser -type Scotty cameron
I do not have the answer for what this clinic was about but Bobby Jones retired at age twenty eight at the end of the same calendar grand slam with his hickory, steel shafts were out before then many did not like them. Bobby designed the first number matched set with Spalding, when he made the eighteen short films on golf instruction he used his hickory and did with normal matches with friends until he couldn't in 1948 because of an operation for the spinal disease. He did hit steel and hit them well but he just liked the feel of hickory.
Yeah, if only Tiger would have skipped the older club he might have become something. He really should have had you there to tell him what he should do so he would have had some kind of success.
@@britishrocklovingyank3491 Tiger trained with persimmon to improve his golf swing. This is nothing new, he's spoken about this many times over the years. His words not mine.
Tiger was a very good driver of the ball relative to his contemporaries, but not one of the greats. He knew this, and practicing with persimmon was the best thing for him to keep improving his driving.
