I've been experimenting with the length of my driver shafts for some time now.  With my height, floor to wrist measurement and set-up it's quite obvious that a 46” driver is too long for me, the typical lie puts the toe way up in the air so I end up cutting them down to between 43.625” - 45.25”.  The usual result is that I hit them longer and straighter.  Sounds great and logical so far huh? Enter the Ping K-15.

I was at the range last summer and there happened to be a Ping demo.  After hitting a bunch of balls to warm up I wandered over and looked things over.  They sized me up and gave me a 12* K-1.  This was the day of the release of the K-15 series, so I was thinking it was cool to try out the brand-new line.  I did what I always do with somebody else's club, I made smooth deliberate swings and the ball went right down the middle, 10 yards further than the 43.625” driver I was hitting.  The K-15 they gave me is 45.75” long with a TFC 149D shaft in soft R flex.  Ping's specs show the club as no offset and a swing weight of D3.   There's nothing listed about how closed the face is, just from looking at it I'd guess it's closed a degree or so, but I didn't measure it.  It's got a weight pad in the sole towards the heel that is supposed to let you more easily close the face of the club at impact.   My swing speed puts me right at the line between Reg and Stiff, but they handed me a soft R so it's what I used. I loved hitting it so much I nearly bought it on the spot, I just couldn't pay list for a new club and thought I should think about the longer shaft.   In hind-sight it's a good thing I didn't buy it, I likely would have found the shaft far too soft.

So what's with the extra distance?  Is it because it's 2” longer?  Is it because I was swinging someone else's club smoothly and deliberately like you're supposed to swing?   Is it because the shaft was so soft and whip-like?  I'll try to come back to that in another post.

The model of iron heads that I used to build my set had a pitching, gap/approach, sand and lob wedge in the line up that matched the rest of the set and that's what is pretty typical for most irons.  In the case of my irons that meant they had very wide soles and enough bounce to be a little scary on hard fairway touch shots.  I built the pitching/46°, and the sand/54° wedges. I later built the lob/58° wedge. I didn't get around to getting the approach/50° wedge until I started second guessing my wedge needs. What I noticed was that where I played I often found myself on a hard fairway 10 to 30 yards from the pin and I wanted to try a club that had a narrower sole and less bounce than my game improvement wedges provided. That way I could pick the ball off the fairway and bump and run it. After looking at my options I chose a Maltby 50°/6° bounce “M” series wedge. It worked quite well and at first I thought I'd get the matching 56° and 60° wedges. Then I walked into my local pro shop and there it was, a 62°/7° bounce Vokey spin milled. It made sense, I'd have even 4° gaps between wedges so I got it. And loved it, 60 yards out I could pop it up and stop it on a dime.

So that left me with a dilemma. I had graphite shafted irons coming down to a FST steel shafted traditional shaped Maltby wedge, then 2 graphite shafted fat sole wedges and then the Vokey. The only logical choice to me was to get all Vokey's and call it done. I drank the kool-aid.  I'm a Vokey guy.  I now have a 50°-08, 54°-14, 58°-04, and my 62°-07 Vokey spin milled with old style grooves. And I'm quite happy with them. My handicap index has gone down and I feel confident with my wedge play. I'm not convinced that they are any better than Maltby's (or Snake Eyes, SMT, Scratch, etc.) but they are very good.

Dean.

Wishon 311 Hybrid

I've heard a great deal about Tom Wishon's work and his line of golf components so I thought I should try one out one of his heads. I got a number 3, model 311 hybrid head at 21 degree loft and paired it with a Aldila VX driver shaft. The head has a .335 ID hosel so it's designed to use a driver shaft instead of a iron shaft. I built the club 39.5 inches long and weighted it to come out at 380 grams total weight and D2.5 swing weight.

I've only had it out for 2 rounds but so far I like it, of course I like anything new so that's not surprising. Built at 39.5” and with a high launch shaft it's very easy to hit for me. It doesn't seem to want to hook like my Taylor Made Rescue Mid does. Sets up very nice. It appears offset but Wishon's site says it's no more offset than the average long iron that it's built to replace. I'll post more info after I have it out a few more times.

Dean Bridges

My goal with this site is to have reviews of Nebraska golf courses organized in appropriate files as well as have a place for me to post about golf in general.  I encourage readers to contribute course reviews or submit ideas about this site.