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Training Aid review - Talon by Ojee Golf
It’s the holy grail of the game of golf….. to earn consistency and repeatability. The times we have all heard how the average club golfer wants to be as consistent as possible.
I’ve never really been a fan of the word consistent, purely down to the fact I didn’t feel it was achievable in a game full of variation.
However, there is one training aid that has hit the market to help every level of golfer achieve a level of repeatability within the set-up. The set-up being a crucial area to anyone seeking a high probability of repeating quality golf shots.
Meet ‘TALON’ from Ojee Golf
With the tagline ‘Perfect You Golf Set-Up’ it is one of the only training aids on the market that can boast this line.
How it works?
To put it very simply, Talon measures your spine angle, shaft angle and face position at address in degrees to help repeat the same set-up with every club.
I have to admit, at first, being a slight layman when it comes to fixing things (I need all the help I can to build Lego) I found it slightly fiddly to place on. With a little extra look at the instructions and a ‘eureka’ moment this dunce managed to fix the product safely on.
It comes with two main elements……. The main product which fits onto the butt end of the club, distributing the numbers showing shaft angle, spine angle, the Ojee number (the difference between spine angle and shaft angle) and the face angle, whether its closed, open or square.
The second element is the belt with a remote-control style product that fits snugly into the belt that measures your spine angle, then giving the numerical value in degrees to the main product attached to your golf club.
It is extremely simple to use with easy to understand guidelines in the instruction book to see what sort of angles you need to try and achieve.
What I also like is it is brutally honest. As everyone is different, by different I mean physiologically, motor patterns and various ways in reaching impact, it does suggest see your local pro to ensure you are reaching your ‘angle goals’. Like any training aid out there, the average golfer will need expert advice to gain maximum advantage out of the product.
Is it Different?
In a word, yes. There are a few ways you can check your face angle manually at address for example. One of the most popular is sticking a magnetic rod on the face of the club which enhances the visual from the golfers perspective as to where the face is initially pointing. However, this method is slightly old hat and not quite keeping up with technology that can make it easier to know numerically where the face is actually pointing.
Shaft angle is also important to know and very difficult to discover. Trackman has an advantage as that can measure your shaft angle at impact, but feel free to spend in excess of £20k for one of their units to gain this information.
Overall, the goal of a training aid should be two fold………one, to make the game simpler for the user and two, to give them necessary information to help them improve on some scale. I think this ticks both boxes very nicely.
The true key to the golf of your dreams.........Stop shanking!
I have had more than one golfer come to me with the problem of shanking! You know the shot, the swing feels great, perfectly normal, and then suddenly when we get to impact with the ball…….. DINK, straight of the hosel/neck/heel (delete as appropriate) and we see the ball go straight right and very low.
The next shot, our minds a bit baffled with what just occurred, but we go again. Same swing, same nice feeling, then all of a sudden…… DINK, another one going low and to the right.
Right now, our anger levels and blood pressure are growing suddenly, we are hugely confused as the swing felt exactly the same as if we’d struck the ball out the centre of the golf club, but we ended up hitting one of ‘those’ shots, a shot that looks pretty ugly and can get us into a lot of trouble.
So what do we do to ensure it doesn’t happen again?
Well, like most amateurs, we try and solve the issue by focusing on the swing. Trying to tinker with almost all of our limbs to get them into what we perceive as the perfect position to stop this from happening again. But what happens………… DINK! The changes that we have made have not helped and our mind is now a blur of every single aspect of the swing that we have ever been taught, learnt or heard about. It’s a disaster!
To avert this feeling, we need to ensure we KNOW why we have hit this shot. And by why I don’t mean because X or Y have happened in the golf swing. I mean where has the ball made contact with the club!
In this case, the ball has hit the neck of the golf club, the part of the club where the shaft enters the head. All our task is next to ensure we strike the ball out of the opposite end of the golf club, the toe. And by this I don’t mean trying to manipulate your golf swing or think about the swing. I mean to simply FEEL the ball coming out of the toe.
Yes, different things will happen in the swing but the trick here is to not be conscious of these changes. Our task is to simply feel the ball coming out the toe anyway we can.
Results are everything in golf, it’s not the one with the prettiest swing that shoots the lowest scores and wins tournaments.
Too many wedges spoil the loft!
I am very much an advocate of golfers, no matter what level you are at, copying something one of the top players does, whether it be what they think on the course, what a certain swing thought is and so on. However, I think amateurs (high handicappers in particular) would do best to stay well away from this one………. Putting more than 3 wedges in the bag! With the expertise the pros show in their short game, the finesse, the touch, it’s brilliant to watch. I notice a lot of amateurs, in need of a better short game and touch around the green, investing in numerous wedges with lofts no more than 4 degrees apart starting from a modern day 45 degree Pitching Wedge, all the way through to a 60 degree lob wedge!
‘Why’ I hear you cry. To put simply, to be a great chipper and pitcher of the ball, you need to have the ability to ‘control the loft on the club’. For example, if you have a wedge which says 52 degrees on it, to control the trajectory of the shot (the flight path) and contact the ball as well as you possibly can, you need to have the ability to ‘feel’ what the loft is at impact. This is controlled by either leaning the handle of the club towards the target or slightly away from the target.
Now, when a high handicapper hits a chip or a pitch, the likely outcome is he/she will thin it through the green or duff it barely 3 yards in front of them. Why is this? In my experience the majority of golfers try and lift or scoop the ball up in the air, trying to, subconsciously, add loft to the golf club. This doesn’t make sense however since there is already a lot of loft on the club itself…… in this case 52 degrees! The results are even more disastrous with a lob wedge. If we catch the ball well and we increase the loft at the same time, guess what’s going to happen? The ball flies up the air barely reaching half way to your target. Next time when we swing the lob wedge? We put a longer swing on it as we are reacting to the result we got previously. The danger in this is if we don’t catch the ball very well we run a massive risk of thinning it and, combined with a long and powerful swing, is a recipe for that ball shooting 50-80 yards past the green……… a highly embarrassing result!
One of the keys to good golf as mentioned previously is to keep things simple. Investing in 4 wedges is giving the golfer far too much choice over the shot which leads to confusion which leads to poor short game play.
Do yourself a favour…….. stick to 3 wedges maximum (pitching wedge, gap wedge and sand wedge) and learn how to manufacture shots with them, hit it high, hit it low, but most of all, get to know them and love them before discarding them for a lob wedge.
Always advise someone who has a weak chipping and pitching action who owns a lob wedge to treat the loft with caution!
Divots!
I once had a gentleman for a lesson, in his 70’s, who used to play off a 9 handicap but has crept up and up as he has matured in years to a 19 handicap. You can imagine he was a tad annoyed about creeping ever closer to the 20’s seeing as he was a former single figure golfer, something only a small percentage of golfers ever achieve.
It was his first lesson and, before we started, I asked him, as I do with all golfers on their first lesson, what they want to get from their game and what have they been working on, if anything, this past few rounds or practise sessions.
This guy was very honest. He said he watches a lot of golf, especially the PGA Tour, with lush fairways and quick greens. He had noticed something very striking in all the time he’d been watching the best players in the world in action. He noticed they took HUGE divots! Even some taking divots with their fairway woods and hybrid clubs. Now, I bet you know what he was trying to do in his game? Yep, he tried to take as big a divot as the pros on the TV.
‘But why is that a bad thing this guy tried to do that?’ I hear you say. Well, first of all, here was a man who predominantly cut across the ball and hit slices, played on fairly soft courses, especially in the winter, and he was trying to hit DOWN on the ball to an extreme effect to emulate those tour professionals and take big divots to help, what he thought, enabled him to play better golf and reach that level he had before.
Unfortunately, the tactic was not working for him and he was getting frustrated with his game and, quite literally, was hacking up the course taking divots the size of a small country with the ball going barely 30 yards.
Our first session took place on the golf course on a rather damp day, the kind this player didn’t like for obvious reasons. What did he do down the first hole? First 4 shots were heavy, huge great divots with him hitting very much down on the ball, attempting to copy the worlds best.
Now for me this was an easy one. No need for technical instruction, no need for mechanics or endless amounts of time needed to spend out on the practice area. I simply said to him, ‘brush the turf, feel as though you’re taking the top layer of grass off and hardly touching the soil underneath’. This idea was completely alien to him! ‘Well hang on, why do the pros take big divots?’ he asked me. I explained to him that because they generate lots of club speed and create a consistently good angle of attack (approx. 4 degrees down with a short iron) they are able to make that ball then turf contact. When (with all due respect to him) 70 plus year olds don’t generate the same club speed and when they hit excessively down on the ball (approx. 8 to 10 degrees down) you get the turf ball contact that so many amateur golfers dread, watching the ball trickle 10 yards in front when they had 120 to go.
I allowed him to hit a few shots from the fairway to practise this new theory, whilst I could see him still thinking I was mad for telling him something that he thought was completely wrong and against the grain!
And, after 5 in a row that were the 5 sweetest shots he had struck in a long time, the penny dropped for him! It was like a miracle had occurred, a eureka moment as I like to describe it! He simply had to feel the club bruising the turf. He didn’t have to take massive chunks
out the ground to be able to play his best golf, he barely had to touch the turf to get the ball to where he wanted it to go.
The divot tells us a lot about your swing and how you play golf. Do you take a divot? Do you take too much of a divot? Next time you’re out on the course, take a look and see how much turf, if any, you take up during your shot. A lot of people put emphasis and thought into the swing when the swing can’t give us much feedback into why we played a good shot or a bad shot. On the other hand, a divot can tell us a hell of a lot and provide us with necessary feedback……… direction of swing and angle of attack (hit down too much = big divot, hit too much up = no divot).
Don’t try and emulate the best in the world when it comes to divots or you will probably leave a lot of greenkeepers unhappy!
Mark Crossfield Vs TaylorMade (The Rematch)
What a start to the year! The major manufacturers announcing their new technology for 2018 and how it will help golfers of all abilities. Along with Christmas, this is the most wonderful time of the year as it is truly exciting to see what the experts in the industry have come up with to enhance the enjoyment of the game for every golfer in the land.
The likes of TaylorMade for example have recently announced the new technology in their driver called 'Twist Face', whereby the face of the club has been manipulated to ensure that even off centre strikes go straighter than a normal 'bulge' faced driver. Note: This technology has been around since 2012 in a Cobra driver but we won't mention that!
What has intrigued me and a lot of others in the industry is the 'feud' (I might be overdramatizing it but feel free to insert your own word here) between the most Googled golf coach in the world, Mark Crossfield, and TaylorMade themselves.
Let me give you a brief background. Mark reviews clubs and creates unbiased content that is informative to the golfer and therefore has gained an incredibly large following. Mark has just signed a deal to play Titleist clubs during 2018. A good move in my opinion from Titleist from all the exposure he will create for them.
However, the hierarchy at TM were unhappy with this and will not give MC any clubs to try and test for his viewers stating he will be 'biased' towards Titleist owing to the new contract.
Now, the interesting thing here is TM'S approach to Crossfield and the new contract he has with Titleist. It appears that TM are not trusting the viewpoints of MC and fear he will be biased towards Titleist. This is a guy who has (at time of writing) over 233,000 subscribers on YouTube and, in one of his latest videos posted on Facebook regarding this issue, has had 158,000 views. That's a fair chunk of golfers who are engaged with Crossfields content. What I don't get is why TM don't want to be a part of it?
I'm guessing the vast majority of subscribers to Marks YouTube channel are golfers and not 'paid for' fans with names such as Busty Brenda or anyone like that, they are all true golf fans who want a part of the game and a part of new technology available to them.
Of course, I am not naïve enough to not suggest TM might be questioning the integrity of MC now who has signed (I presume) a paid deal with Titleist (but obviously none of our business), but still, the exposure he creates for any golf brand will surely be worth placing their product in his hands to show the golfing world and encourage the sales they need after a poor couple of years financially for the company.
TM are missing a trick here and limiting their audience. A slightly closed mindset has taken place and the blinkers have come on.
Yes, they have enormous clout with the likes of Tiger, Rory DJ and Rose on-board their gravy train, but they are paid to play it and talk about how good it is. Their view will be as biased as anyone's with the millions being paid to each of them to play the equipment. Mark on the other hand has always given the golfing public the truth about clubs, instruction and equipment and that's why he has had success, he hasn't sugar coated anything. Just simply given his audience information that will help them make an informed decision themselves.
Consumers these days are not stupid. Yes, the temptation of new toys that will revolutionise their games still make us part with our hard earned cash. But, we can still see through the sellers and biased views on a certain product which can sometimes have the opposite effect and put us off that product and, even worse, stop spending with the company who have designed and manufactured it.
A truthful, honest viewpoint is desperately needed to separate the wheat from the chaff.
Manufacturers, if you believe in your product, put in the hands of influencers in the industry and let them talk about it. Your brand depends on it!
Donald Trump is good for the game of Golf!
There, I said it. Part of me feels dirty, part of me feels I have got something off my chest.
Love him or loathe him (it seems dependent on where you live), Donald Trump has done the game of Golf some huge favours, not just in his time as President of the United States, but for many years before.
Now, you're probably thinking that I'm either hungover from the excesses of Christmas or had a migraine for the last 4 weeks that has sent me slightly over the edge. I am glad to confirm none of the above have occurred so please hear me out!
Here is a man that has plainly caused controversy over the course of his life. He has said some things that, quite simply, shouldn't have been said by anyone, let alone by anyone in the public eye as much as he is now.
But, as a Golf Professional and a lover of the game, I can say he has done me a favour.
He has done me a favour in a number of ways:
- He is owner of 17 courses worldwide (source: Golf Monthly Jan 2017) and has invested millions in maintaining and improving the standard of these courses. Why is this beneficial to us as golfers? He is investing millions into a game that many are 'doomsdaying' with decline. Yes, he may be investing in the higher end of the market, but even the smaller end will see some benefits of this. Why? Confidence. Many other investors in golf courses, large or small, will see Trump putting his money where his mouth is and have the confidence to invest themselves. If one of the richest men in the world (on paper at least) is investing in the game, why shouldn't other investors do the same, not just in their own countries but around the world. The more investment in the game, the more opportunity there will be from grass roots to the veteran players.
- Every public figure who plays the game of golf, grows the game of golf. If he is out on the golf course, we hear about it in the media. If we see someone high profile playing golf, it's a human nature thing to want to emulate what the high profile are doing, therefore play golf! Of course I am not naïve enough to say that everyone is going to want to play simply because they saw Trump playing golf on Twitter., but it will help market the game by putting it out in front of our very eyes with the most prominent people in the world participating. Remember, the only type of bad publicity is no publicity!
Source: trumpgolfcount.com
- He's a decent golfer. There is a perception that golf is a difficult game. Don't get me wrong, it isn't the easiest game. Being an individual sport, if you have a bad day, there is no hiding place. You play football and have a bad game your team can still win. Golf isn't like that! So why is Trump being decent at golf a good thing? It gives golfers hope. Hope that no matter what age you are you can still perform at a decent level and not feel like you're hacking around and making a fool of yourself. Granted Trump plays a lot of golf (every 5.6 days according to mic.com during his presidency.............. didn't he say when he got elected ''I'm going to be working for you. I'm not going to have time to go play golf''????). Yes, a slightly foolish thing to say (not the first foolish attempt at a speech) but he continues to play and there's not much stopping him barring a disaster.
Trump, keep on investing in the game, keep on playing the game, keep on marketing the game. It makes a golfers life that little bit better!