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.

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!

Training Aid review - Talon by Ojee Golf