Tulip City Dispatch

 Once again, I busted out the ol' PVC cutter and chopped up some golf balls!  I've accrued a small assortment of golf balls over the last year, so in preparation for the 2023 golf season, I thought I'd share my findings with Teh Intarnetz! Comparing 3 of the "Poor Man's ProV1" ball - top is a Cut Grey, middle is a Top Flite Gamer, bottom is a Kirkland Supreme V2.  Of these 3, the Top Flite Gamer works best for me.  The Kirkland feels really good to hit in the middle of the season (warm temps, dry weather, etc.), but many an Internet Forumite have talked about how spinny Kirklands are. These are a couple golf course finds - top is a Srixon Softfeel, bottom is a Precept Powerdrive.  Notice the 2-piece construction, which is pretty typical for a golf ball that sells for less than $20 a dozen (not that that's a bad thing by any means, it's just not something that's seen on tour-level balls) More 2-piece balls - top/orange is a Wilson Ultra 50, bottom/b...

 The 2023 West Michigan Golf Show has come and gone.  This is my 4th year attending, so I've become accustomed to the regular booths and vendors - Maple Hill has the biggest booth in the show, Treetops Resort has their Hole In One challenge , etc. The 2022 show left me with an email inbox full of spam, so this year, I created an alternate email account specifically for golf spam.  Trouble is, in 2023, they rolled out a feature at every booth wherein you'd scan your ticker (pre-loaded with your email address) in order to enter their contests and giveaways, so my golf spam email address was moot. Speaking of, in years past, I walked out with a bag full of trinkets - ball markers, tees, stickers, coupons, etc.  The 2023 show seemed a little low on swag.  In fact, it felt like there were fewer vendors overall. There was one guy who had spent time at the PGA Trade Show in Florida who brought a bunch of PGA merch and pre-production balls up to sell...In 2022, I bought...

 I took my Hogan irons out for a quick round at Rolling Meadows Par 3 here in Holland.  I shot terribly...nearly 18 over par; or a double-bogey.  I missed a lot of shots by literally overshooting the green - my irons went too far!  Confused, I turned to a few online sources, who recommended that I get some launch monitor data.  So, I did that!  I went to X-Golf for a half hour of driving range time, and gathered the telemetry data comparing my Hogan irons with my new/good Ping irons.  When I got my Hogan irons out again, at Clearbrook, everything became clear: The Pings are newer, more modern, and better designed.  I simply hit them better.  Everything about them is more consistent.  The Hogans, whether I'm trying to limit distance on a par 3 course or trying to shoot the moon on a regular course, are substantially less forgiving than I'm used to...everything is less consistent.  Backed up by telemetry and data, as well as swingweig...

 Hey, the 90s called!  They want their golf clubs back! I found a sweet golf bag at the thriftos: That is, a vintage Ben Hogan staff bag!  Last time I saw a bag this big and leathery, I had to tell Grandpa to shut the bathroom door! So, naturally, I had to play a round!   I played 9 holes at Clearbrook Golf Course in Saugatuck, MI with these clubs.  It was rough, to say the least.  I definitely hit more consistently with modern clubs.  But, it was fun for the nostalgia of it all! I sold the Scotty Cameron Bullseye to a fellow collector, and was able to use some of those funds to pay for this round of golf!  In lieu of that, I used the Ping Zing 2 putter that I used in last year's challenge .  While the Zing 2 putter doesn't strictly  fit into the 90s theme, nothing actually matters and I'm just some douche on the internet, so you can go suck my putter.

 In a weird turn of events, the putter I picked up for the $50 Thrift Store Challenge Part Deux seems to also date from the mid 1990s.  A screenshot from the forums at Titleist.com  tell the tale of the fabled Bullseye putter: The SC stamp on the sole of my putter indicates that this design was lightly modified by Scotty Cameron when he joined the team at Titleist in 1994 or 1995.  So, that's cool. I now have an entire mid-90s era golf set, with which to play a round...for less than $20 when all is said and done.  That's pretty sweet.

 Last winter, I set out on a journey - a budget of $50 to assemble a complete, useable set of golf clubs .  My rules were as follows: Total budget of $50 for everything (including clubs, bag, balls, and tees) A standard, USGA-conforming set...that is, a maximum of 14 clubs All clubs must be in USGA compliance - no mega-sized drivers or "illegal'' wedges The irons must be a complete set - wedges and woods can be piecemeal For the 2022 season, I've added a little hitch:  The set must be period correct from the mid 1990s.  My earliest golf memories were playing at the now-defunct Rolling Hills Golf Course in Hudsonville, MI in 1996, 1997, and 1998, so Part Deux of the $50 Thrift Store Golf Challenge is my attempt to pay homage to those early days.  As such, I've been using a lot of information from Golfclubspec.com , the PGA Value Guide , and 2nd Swing to nail down production dates of clubs.   All that being said, I've got the foundations of a set alread...

 Hokay...so...To recap my journey, I set out last winter with a budget of $50 to assemble a complete, USGA-legal set of golf clubs, just to see what I could find in the local thriftos and secondhand stores. I got out today to play a round of 9 holes with the whole set!  The price, as played, was a follows : Bag was $3 Irons were $7 Wedge was free with  coupon Putter was $3 Driver* was $3 3 Wood* was $3 5 Hybrid was $2 For a total of $21 *I found an honest-to-goodness set of Callaway Big Bertha woods sometime after my last entry and had to buy 'em.  I've been enraptured with their advertisements since I first started reading about them as a 10 year old.  What a wacky name, eh?  Big Bertha?  So funny, for such a serious game as golf.  Then I proceeded to eat a booger or something because I was 10...or whatever the hell 10 year olds did in 1997. Check out my awesome headcovers The balls I used were old-ass Titleists that were either $4 a dozen at th...

 As mentioned in  The Thrill Of The Hunt , fortune struck twice as I found a set of great condition Ping Eye 2 irons.  I'd already had a set of MacGregor MCX irons, so I headed to X Golf in Holland  to jump on their simulator and get some telemetry data comparing the two iron sets: MacGregor MCX Distance Club Ping Eye 2 Distance 150 3 Iron 160 130 4 Iron 150 140 5 Iron 120 140 6 Iron 120 120 7 Iron 110 110 8 Iron 110 95 9 Iron 90 95 Wedge 100 Now, these are drastically shorter than my modern gamer set, the Ping G400.  My modern Pings are substantially more consistent, with my 9 iron going on average 120, and each club getting about 10 yards farther each step up. There are also discrepancies in the telemetry system...

Club Cost Ghurka Marley Hodgson Golf Bag $3 Knight Heater driver $1 Affinity Copper Tungsten 5w $1 MacGregor MCX Irons $1 apiece; $7 for the 3-9i set Spalding 1 Iron $.50 Spalding 10 Iron $.50 Ping Zing 2 Sand Wedge $2 Adams GT 3 Wood $2 Ray Cook Putter $2.50 Tour Edge belly putter $2.50 Ping Zing putter $2 Maxfli A-10 Putter $3 Ping Eye 2 irons $2 Apiece; $16 for the 3-PW set Adams Idea 5 Hybrid $2 MacGregor Tourney Wedge Free*   *Originally $10, but had a $10 off coupon Seen above is the exact breakdown (minus Michigan's 6% sales tax) for every club I've purchased in the pursuit of the $50 Thrift Store Challenge.  In the spirit of said Challenge, the goal is to assemble a USGA tournament...

 In a strange turn of events, I've found another set of irons that were specifically called out in my original $50 Thrift Store Challenge post :  Ping Eye 2's. They were $2 apiece, for a total of $16 for the set 3-W. In keeping with my $50 budget , if I stick with the same bag ($3), driver ($1), 3 wood ($2), 1 iron ($.50), and putter ($2), that puts me at $8.50.  If I add the Pings in, that brings the total to $24.50...up from the $20 with the MacGregor MCX irons. Believe me when I say, I was floored to find these Pings at the thrift store!  I've got some data to share in forthcoming blog posts - I hit up X Golf and got some numbers/data/telemetry off of their simulator. Hit 'em straight, friends!

While this whole series on golf draws heavily on the delightful Youtube personalities at Stacked Golf, I've also got a destructive personality.  Just by the nature of being around golf since the mid to late 90's, I've accrued a plethora of golf balls - a whole shag bag full from a neighbor who moved, a spare dozen or so from the golf bag I bought at the thrift store, finding a pocketful of golf balls, and picking up a sleeve or two as door prizes at golf outings.  It's just one of those things. With that in mind, I busted out the ol' PVC cutter and took a leaf out of Rick Shiels' book:  I gathered up a bunch of old and spare golf balls and sliced them open, to record for posterity! Kirkland Signature 3-piece Bridgestone e6 Soft Callaway ERC Soft - note the "infamous" off-center core, towards the top of the ball Dunlop DDH Distance - one of my favorite balls as a junior, that I was happy to find being reissued Top Flite XL Top is a Taylor Made Noodle, b...

  The clubs above were a total of $9 - sold as a package not to be broken up.  That's a 3 through 9 iron MacGregor MCX, which my sources tell me retailed for about $495 in the early 1980's and sat below the MacGregor Muirfield line and above the MacGregor Tourney line.  I know the Tourney line has a pretty cult following, so I'm optimistic for the MCX Irons.  The driver is a knockoff of a Taylor Made Burner Bubbleshaft.  The actual model is Tour Model Heater - obviously well used and loved, but it came with the package.  Methinks the driver might've come from Maple Hill Golf back in the late 90's or early 00's.  Tour Made was a mail-order company, and Maple Hill used to have a program where they'd order clones and mail-order club components and assemble them as some sort of quasi-custom built golf outfit (my first set of clubs was like this). The bag is a Marley-Hodgson Ghurka bag that I picked up for $3.  Ghurka is a high-fashion brand of handbag...