Evenin all,

(following on from my last post re me slicing my driver but hitting my hybrid straight(ish) - albeit only about 170-175 yards, this looking for advice on decent 3 wood to give me some more distance off the tee...)

I've got a couple of real old looking mizuno  t-zoid fairway woods in the garage, never bothered using them 'cos they look really old and i "inherited" them as part of another deal...  Cut a long story short, i dont really have the money to spend on a decent 3 wood at the moment, so i took the 3 and 5 t-zoid down the range this mornin and lo and behold, i was hitting them long and straight - even though my driver was still going like a banana! 

In fact, I hit them both much better than my hybrid (ben sayers m8 17 degree draw).. so much so, im thinking i should just  regrip them, stop being a snob and be happy i can hit the ball straight most of the time with them. 

Does this all sound familiar? Is it a common mistake to think i need the latest greatest clubs? From looking on line, t-zoids seem to be about 7 years old... have clubs really come on that much since then?   For example my driver is a Callaway FT-3 draw, and i can hit with it, yet thast supposed to be one of the best out there (when it first came out).

Or is it just that a 7 year old mizuno is always gonna kick a ben sayers club's ass, regardless of age?  (and that the my swing with the driver is a seperate issue)?

Look forward to hearing the advice of the "wise ones" on here!

Many thanks

T 

The T-Zoids were good clubs in their day, and will still hold their own today. I don't think fairway woods have advanced that much in the last few years. I always buy kit that is 2 - 3 years behind the latest gear, as you get it for buttons on eBay.

 But as you say, let's wait to see what the "wise ones" have to say  

IMO driver technology has moved on in the last 7 years, especially shafts and getting fitted.

But if you have a club that works for you then it works. Simple as that. I can give you 2 recent examples.

1) My mate has been after a driver for ages, checked out all of the top new ones with no joy. He borrows a TM R380 from a friends garage and low and behold it suits him and he his hitting it lovely, just the flight he is after, one new(old) driver for £30.

2) I played today with a lad off 3, booms it miles, great all round game. His fairway woods are Ping ISTs, how old are these beauties ? And he absolutely nailed these clubs.

New is only ever any good if it fits you.

The only thing that's really come on over the past few years is the availability of tour quality shafts to the public. 

I recommend to most of my customers, who are on a budget, to buy a decent club second hand or older model off fleabay for peanuts then we'll fit the best shaft we can for them into it, this usually reduces cost by anything up to £150.

Casing point the Mizuno MP-001 is still, IMHO, as good a fairway wood mizuno has ever produced, and you'll pick one up for £10-£20.  Get a decent shaft fit and fitted and it might cost you as much as £150, but that's with a hell of a lot of shaft in that!

I use a 5 year old Mizuno T Zoid 'Blue Rage' 3 wood and the 5 & 7 fairways occasionally. I am in the process of swapping the shaft on the 3 for something more exotic than the standard Exsar Platinum. The 5 & 7's have Dynamic Gold steel shafts and are pretty predictable - so they stay. 

Cannot see how they can be significantly outperformed by more recent stuff and I am well used to them and how they work.  

My irons are 15 years old Hogan blades

The wedges are standard wedges, could be 30 years old, same in every way.

Putter is 30 years old.

But the driver and 3 wood have everything there is to offer in modern technology.

Could I play with my persimmon? Of course, the 3 wood in particular would be fine, the drive just a bit shorter.

But...........................balata?!  Not a chance, they were utter shyte compared to the modern ball.

TonyR,

You're right about getting the correct shaft.

Don't worry too much about the flex (R, S, X) printed on the shaft as there is no industry standard rating. Two companies can have the shafts with the same frequency but one show it as Regular and the other shows it as Stiff.

So don't be put off if you feel good about two shafts with differing rating as they may be the same frequency.

If you have your swing speed checked and it is between 85 - 90 mph don't be told that that is a Regular SS because that SS might be appropriate to a Reg or Stiff depending on the shaft manufacturer.

Hope this makes sense and is of some use to you.

Good hunting.

cannot debate about the shaft flex affecting the loft, but the shaft is the engine room on any club, and unless that's right then you will always have quite marked variances in the club performance.

The shaft itself does not work independently to change the loft. You need to take into account the golfers transition, tempo, downswing, and release. The other factor to be included is that the CG of the driver head is also going to affect (in conjunction with the golfers dynamic/mechanics) how much the shaft flexes. For any given wood head and shaft combination the further the CG is back in the head the higher the shot can go. It is less marked in irons due to the lack of depth that most of them have when compared to woods. But to say it is just the shaft is misleading. 

Although you were using the example to illustrate a point, talking of extreme variations is in a way immaterial as no-one on this planet would try and fit, for example, Tiger Woods into an L flex, so to say that you can get 10 degrees of tip deflection if something like that did happen (btw I agree with WB here that it is extremely unlikely) using that as the model is not real world.

Typically it comes down to a very narrow choice of shafts for a particular player, and the overiding factors that it comes back to for most golfers is how the golfer feels about the shot, how accurate they feel with it on the course, the feedback in their hands, and they typically get this by using their senses. Not by some computer generated number that, given the nature of a golfers swing is a variable. 

The reliance on LM numbers is an interesting one, with the message being that it is impossible to be correctly fit unless you have been on a trackman/vector. Certainly that is the message that comes across to me on a number of forums. I have lost count of the amount of times that I have seen people make a judgement based on a number of miracle swings during an LM session, bought an extremely high end shaft/head combo, and still do not either increase the % of fairways hit, GIR, or lower their scores or handicap significantly. 

Now, that is not to say that I am anti-fitting, because I most certainly am not. I believe it is to the advantage of the golfers game to be correctly fitted. I just think that the view that is being pushed is that unless you have been on an LM then you are somehow missing out is false. One of the best launch monitors that has ever been invented is the golfers eyes in conjunction with their senses. 

Technology has defiantly moved on during the 20yrs I have been playing. The shafts as already said & driverhead materials, buts it’s all a load of balls if you ask me. It’s the ball technology that's improving peoples games the most.

TSD.