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Interesting last couple paragraphs. I tend to fight off the push fade with my driver. and when I really force everything, I can get a pull or pull draw.But it takes a lot of work. So I am going to try to intentinally hit some off center shots, but towards the toe, and see if I can't produce a draw on demand. Not really looking for distance per say, just a shot that I know won't go right if there is something right I want to avoid.

Yes, try it. It works! But as you go farther toward the toe you will find more loss of distance. The contact will feel more spongy (more give on impact).

Really enjoyed the post Randall. (But then like you I can get into the technical stuff. I know if bores others.) The results they found matches my experiences. But the value is two-fold. One, what we feel and what is are often not the same. Two, they are able to quantify things with great precision.

I do have a question.

Can you say more about the +6 Kenny Perry, -6 Colin Montgomery? I wasn't sure what those numbers measured. Was that the number of degrees swing path to target line (or face angle) at impact or something else?

I kind of knew that because I have felt that before. I hit some drives that had a sharp curve to the left then one heck of a roll out. I then looked at the face of my driver and saw the dimple mark just outside of the center. I'm lucky to have a black face onmy driver. At the range, I can lick my finger and wipe the face of the driver, then hit the shot. After that I can look at the clubface and compare that to the result of the shot. Good info. I do this quite often trying to make my set up consistent to hit the ball in the center of the sweet spot.
Now I'm going to try to hit it just outside and see if I can bury a new shot into my treasure chest.

Mark, are you on a job trying to engineer something? Or are we talking golf?

I can and do the same thing with my driver. Great diagnostic tool isn't it?

Mark, I got that +6/-6 tidbit from the first "Secret of the Straight Shot" link above, a 2009 Q/A session with Henrik Tuxen, the Trackman guru (found on page 4 of that PDF). Here's the full Q with the full A:

How good are the tour pros at getting these numbers right?

The tour pros are amazingly good at being consistent with their club path and face angle. Of all the tour pro data I have ever seen, Jim Furyk is the one with the most consistent club path and face angle (about 0.4 degrees in consistency with his driver), and in ad- dition Furyk’s average club path and face angle for the data I have seen are exactly 0 degrees. I am convinced that this is one of the reasons Furyk is always in the top rankings on fairways hit.

Many of the tour pros are far from Furyk’s 0 degree club path/face angle standards. A big part of the pros either hit a small draw or small fade deliberately. Among tour pros, club path ranges from about -6 degrees to +6 degrees. Kenny Perry has an inside-out club path of +6 degrees with his driver and deliberately hits a big draw, while on the other side, Colin Montgomery has an outside-in club path of around -6 degrees on his drives and deliberately hits a big fade.

From my understanding that means the imaginary line that the club's center of gravity is traveling on is 6 degrees right of the target line for Perry, 6 degrees to the left of the target line for Monty. Obviously they need to adjust the face angle to get their draws and fades! Those seem like big numbers. I am dying to know how mine look. Maybe I don't wanna know.

So I went into a TrackMan fitting for the purpose of:
1. Check if my off-the-shelf clubs were an ok fit, or could be salvaged by adjustments
2. Get the raw data on my swing: clubhead speeds, paths, face angles, attack angles, etc... to verify that my OTT move is mostly gone and see if I'm consistently on an in-out path and to see where I stack up.

What an amazing experience. Highly recommended. They were unfortunately unable to send me the raw data yet due to some tech issues, but my stats were overall approximately like this:
Driver speed: 103mph average (top 104, lots low 100s to start, but I got used to swinging faster as the ball was travelling striaght down the range)
6I speed: 89mph
General swing path seemed definitely in to out- my guess is average was 2-3 degrees.
Club face was consistently closed to the club path- my guess is average was 5-7 degrees closed to the path.
Attack angle was down 2 degrees on irons.
Launch angle on 6I/7I was mostly around 20 degrees. Mostly around 10-11 degrees for driver, but varied depending on loft of driver.

Anyway, here's the interesting part that I wanted feedback on. He said that these numbers made my current clubs pretty much useless. TaylorMade Burner 2.0 regular flex (off-the-shelf). He guessed that I was spraying them left and right when I would swing full speed, and I think he's right. I have regulated my swing speed to slow, just to gain consistency. Rarely do I swing hard, because I'm wild.

He had me trying ALL stiff shafts and I was amazed that shots were mostly straight, allowing me to swing through more aggressively. We tried tons of manufacturers, tons of settings each. Mid irons, hybrids, fairway woods, drivers. I'm exhausted. Here's his final recommendation:

Cobra Amp KBS Tour stiff shaft, lie angle 63.5, 2 degrees strong, 38.25 inches (whatever those mean)
Titleist SM4 Wedges 50,55, 60 degrees
Titleist D2 Driver stiff shaft, 45 inches, loft 7.5, A1 setting (whatever those mean)
Tour Edge fairway wood and hybrid, stiff shaft

Total cost around $2000.

Based on what you all have experienced, do these recommendations seem reasonable? The big takeaway was that the regular flex shafts will simply not work as your swing improves in speed. In the past year, I've eliminated my OTT move and increased clubhead speed naturally (I have no numbers from where I started).

Have I totally outgrown my set? His theory does seem possible that I've slowed my speed down because I'm wild when I swing the speed I want to. I just thought that was my swing breaking down, not the regular flex shafts whipping around unpredictably. Must I upgrade to stiffer shafts? Based on the ball flight today, I'd say yes. I was definitely straighter with the stiff shaft clubs that I'd never seen before than I was with my own clubs.

Anyone else gone through a similar beginner to intermediate swing transition?

I believe you can't lose by going to stiffer shafts. they should always be more accurate. and if the trackman folks suggested it, then its for the most part, probably good info.
Here is my problem: if two golfers go in for the same session you just paid for. One a beginner, and the other an accomplished, low handicap golfer. Both will walk out with advice to their own specific swings. The accomplished golfer may benifit greatly. the beginner not so much. Why, because the beginner is still searching for his swing. He may change it every other time he is at the range. He sees something on a video or on TV and goes to the range and tries it. If he likes the results, that becomes his new swing for the time being.
So i thinkI will give a heart felt Kudo for Larry right now. Go take lessons. Build a swing from a good local pro. Then, once you are comfortable with your swing, then go do the fitting thing. Just my $.02.
See Larry, I knew you had some good in ya................

Randall, first of all, I second Don's comments in his latest post.

Second, can you outgrow your clubs as you improve? Sure.

Third, I have some questions about their recommendations.

Categorically, I don't see much difference between these and your current Burner 2.0. Both use steel shafts and are considered in the game improvement category. Did you really hit your irons appreciably better? or perhaps are they just trying to complete the set?

Similar to the above, what is the compelling reason for changing out your wedges? Do none of your current irons match these loft angles or can be bent to match? Certainly if you want to change out your whole set you can do so. But these two areas could be less about performance and more about sales commission. If money is an issue, I'd look at these two areas. However, if you do, make sure you don't have big yardage gaps between the old and the new in your bag.

I think the key for his iron recommendation was that I was hitting the stiff shaft GI clubs better than I hit my regular flex clubs. We were hitting into a moderate headwind, and the stiff clubs resulted in straighter shots overall. He said that I was "on the cusp" with my club speeds of moving beyond the GI category, so we tried a bunch on either side of the cusp. We looked at the overall numbers and discussed feel for each club, and we settled on the GI side of the cusp.

As for bending the current clubs, he said that my TaylorMade Burner irons had a fairly narrow range and there was only 1 or 2 degrees max that adjustments could be made. He had ruled out adjusting my current clubs fairly early on. Unfortunately, one of my hopes going into the session was to make some tweaks with the current clubs to get me through the next couple years, but it seemed that was not much of an option. My budget won't allow me to buy anything new, so I was a bit disheartened.

Regarding the wedges, he based those on the gaps in yardages with his Cobra set recommendation. I did hit a bunch of different wedges, and they all felt good, to be honest. But then again, mine feel just fine too. Wedges were not a big part of our day, but I guess he felt he needed to include a recommendation based on the results sheet they give you at the end. If I find a good local pro later this year to continue my lessons, I'd explore that more. My short game needs improvement and I probably need a 60*, but that was not my goal yesterday at all, so I stayed focused on the irons and woods.

All in all, it was eye-opening and I'm glad I did it. At the same time, I'm disappointed that I didn't leave with anything concrete I could work with on my current set. For example, we saw that the toe of my club was taking most of the impact on the lie angle test. So now I have clubs where the flex is a mismatch to my swing speed and the toe tends to dig hit the ground first. I should have pushed more to get them to help me live with my current clubs for a bit longer. I should have asked what it would take to adjust the lie angle on my current set, but I allowed them to focus only on new clubs.

It'll be a while before I'll have funds to invest in new equipment, so I think I'll continue to groove a nice swing with lessons (but that costs money too). Since I'm on "a cusp" as they said, it might be wiser to get over that swing cusp and purchase a set that is not GI, since as you say, that's what I have now. I just need to live with regular flex shafts or swap out a few key clubs in my bag.

One funny thing from the fitting experience was the kudos I heard regarding "smash factor." The guy next to me was fairly new to golf and his swing was obviously a work in progress, but the TrackMan guy complimented him on his 1.49 smash factor. "hey that's as good as the pros!" I got a similar comment.

As long as you hit the ball with the sweet spot, won't any swing and any club make the ball's initial speed be about one and a half times the club speed? It's not like it means your swing was great, right? You could've just gotten lucky... unless you can duplicate every time.

Lastly, it looks like to hit a 300yd drive (I can't seem to get over 255 or so), I need an initial ball speed of 172mph, which is about 114mph club speed. Seems like a tough task! Here's a ball flight simulator that you can play with different parameters-->

http://www.flightscope.com/ind..

If you are curious like me, it seems like you can put in anything for "Altitude" there. I used 30yds for everything. But if you change altitude, literally nothing seems to happen. It's mainly just speed, launch angle, axis, and spin rate that matter.