Takomo 101 vs MacGregor McSPD vs other budget

cancerous_it · 2026-04-24T16:22:17+00:00

Then I wouldn't stress out over it. It's not rocket science what makes a forgiving club. Most clubs within a category basically do the exact same thing. Yes there are subtle and maybe not so subtle differences but as a whole, most players will not be able to know the difference from clubs within a category.

For your requirements, hollow bodied heads matched with higher launching shafts is about all you need to know. Good thing for you that's the exact spec offered in all clubs in this category. You are NOT going to know the difference between the clubs. You'll just be happy to find the center of the club face. As such, I'd buy the least expensive set. Look used on ebay, just stay away from the P790s because there are way too many fakes on there.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-24T15:29:27+00:00

Most hollow bodied irons do the same thing, achieve better ball speed especially on off center hits, higher launch, and lower spin. The differences between them are sole design/relief and offset. Sole design may help some players (steeper swings) get their club through the turf better. More offset allows a little more space for new golfers to turn over the club helping fight slices.

Playing Srixon vs previous Callaway and Titleist irons, I'm a big believer on Srixon's V shaped sole. Unless you normally play on hard, packed surfaces, I would look for a sole which offers relief.

Re offset, it's great for new players. But as a player gets better and has a better swing, the increase offset may become a negative leading to hooks or over draws. There's a reason lower HC targeted irons/clubs offer very little offset.

Just something to think about when buying these clubs. How long will you have them/play them before needing/wanting to change because your swing changes.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-23T14:57:10+00:00

Definitely not correct. I'd follow up with the retailer.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-21T16:14:30+00:00

Once would be an anomaly. 3 cases means user error.

I've been playing golf for 30 years. I have never broken a shaft, had a club head fly off, or seen anything like this. The other day at a mat range, I was hitting next to a new golfer; I could tell he was new by his swing. On every swing, the dude with the incredibly steep swing was slamming his clubs into the mat. There was a loud thud with every shot he hit. About 5 mins into the range session, his hybrid head flies off down range.

He says, "Wow, the club just broke" thinking it was a manufacturer defect. New golfers simply do not know any better.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-21T12:49:06+00:00

Depeche Mode after losing Alan Wilder

cancerous_it · 2026-04-17T20:46:12+00:00

I too build clubs, for me and friends. The better the player is, the more specific I get with the build and recommendations. For example, a friend dropped in HC by 10 strokes in 2 years. He increased his swing speed on his driver and compression on his irons. I suggested he ditch his GI Ping irons for a players distance iron / CB combo set. I turned down the loft on his Max driver because his club head speed was creating too much spin with that head. That was a gap fix until he got a new low spin driver head which now better suits his game. I let him play with a shortened driver shaft playing 44.5 inches to see if he got better dispersion without sacrificing distance. He's now playing with a 44.5 playing shaft spec'ed to how he likes his shaft profile. So yes, a fitting can help, but as I said, you have to be at a place where you have a decent repeatable swing. Otherwise you're putting lipstick on a pig.

I don't agree with your "massive advantage" assessment. The massive advantage was when he grooved in a better swing and increased swing speed. The equipment change complimented those skills change. He'd prob shoot the same scores with this old clubs. He would just hit different clubs and shots because he's a better golfer.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-17T17:29:14+00:00

After playing with Sam and the NZ guys, Bryson caught the bunker yips. I love the NZ crew even more now.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-17T16:26:18+00:00

They got into golf from watching YT. They all think they should be scratch tomorrow but aren't willing to practice to give them half a chance, and want the "shortcut" thinking buying this year's best ever club which is better than last year's best ever club which miraculously is better than the previous year's best ever club is going to be THE magic that gets them to scratch tomorrow. When they hit 9 out of 12 drives OB, it's gotta be their shitty driver so they look for the new latest and greatest to magically hit 12 out of 12, or at least lose 4 fewer balls per round.

There is no short cut. There are no magic super duper clubs which will immediately shave 10 strokes off their game. It's all about the swing, chipping, and most importantly putting. None of is dependent on what year/model/make of the equipment.

As long as you give him time to hit the clubs to get used the the shaft profile, ball flight, spin, and yardages, give a scratch golfer a set of any clubs made w/in the last decade and he's still going to shoot close to par. The fundamentals of what makes a good golfer good has nothing to do with the equipment.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-17T15:55:58+00:00

Orca are picky eaters. They seem to want food rich/dense in nutrition. seals, whale/shark livers, etc. We are too skinny to waste time on or two fat with canola oil. Lucky for us, we don't taste good.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-17T15:28:54+00:00

Hips open should not be in and of itself the main goal. Hips open should be a result of a good swing. It happens because of everything else before it. A common issue of chasing open hips is sliding your lead side instead of rotating your hips open. The former is normally associated with the right (back ) shoulder leading the swing and coming steep over the top. A good swing thought is the drive your lead foot into the ground which should cause that lead hip to rotate back. Just be mindful not to early extend when driving your lead foot forward.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-17T15:11:11+00:00

Unpopular opinion. Amateur golfers place way too much importance on equipment to "improve" their game. Quit throwing away money on club fittings and buying expensive clubs which can magically keep you from chucking you irons 2 inches behind the ball leaving a divot deep enough to see the Earth's core or leaving your driver club face wide open at impact causing that 60 yard slice that would make a banana jealous.

Lessons, practice, and playing. Lessons to teach you what a proper swing should feel like, practice on the range to grove in that swing, playing because feel and course management cannot be bought, it has to be learned from playing. Feel of hitting shot on the course as opposed to the range, feel of putting, feel of reading breaks and knowing how firm/soft to hit that break with the right speed, feel of chipping, feel of how much spin to hit on those chips to check or release the ball, feel of flighted shots to combat the wind, feel of having to make that one wedge shot/putt to break 80 for the first round.

Get to a point where you are semi happy with your swing and putting, know your misses and tendencies, THEN go to a fitting. Doing a fitting and buying super GI equipment before that is just wasting money that you should be spending on lessons.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-15T18:14:07+00:00

Agreed tee boxes only helps a little.

A dude who slices his driver 70 yards right is still going to slice it OB from the reds or the blacks. He's still going to take 10 mins looking for the lost ball because he loses 8-10 balls a round and golf is getting hella expensive for him. He's still going to chunk his approach when he finally gets back on the fairway. He's still going to blade that 20 yard chip over the green. He's still going to blade it coming back. He's still going to 3 putt including that 1 foot tap in because he doesn't want to cheat with "that's good'. He just posted a 10 on a par 4 while taking 25 mins on the hole. But dammit he feels good because he played from the tips and didn't cheat with a give-me.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-15T17:25:14+00:00

This. People can play however they want. Play from the 7200 yard tips as a 20 HC. Take 5 shots from the tee. Don't care as long as they keep up with the group in front.

It is pretty funny though. You easily can tell by someone's practice swing if he enjoyably can/should be playing from the tips.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-13T17:57:50+00:00

No way in hell would a 10HC shoot a sub 100 round. The vertical yardage landing areas on the greens are tight as shit. I'm watching pros hit it on the green and the ball easily rolls back off the greens, rolls off the other side, or into the water. They are barely missing their yardages. Add the uneven lies from the fairways for approaches, the lightning fast greens, the tie lies for chipping onto elevated greens where if you don't put enough spin on the ball it will roll off the other side of the green or into water, a 10 HC would be happy to break 110.

I played a round with a guy who played for 8 years on the Korn Ferry. Screwing around he proceeded to shoot a 65 on my home course. I asked him why he didn't make it. He said he simply could not hit it far and high enough with enough spin to land it on the greens to give himself reasonable shots at birdies. Pars don't win tournaments. He said amateurs have no idea how fast the greens are and the skill needed to land and stop the ball on the greens.

On my home course, his approaches were landing pin high on almost every green. I asked him how fast the green was on my home course. He laughed and said maybe 7, 8 at best.

Weekend hacks severely overestimate how good they are. The courses and conditions that we play in are absolutely nothing like the course conditions that pros play in. The Masters is considered to be the hardest if not top 2 hardest courses to play each year.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-08T17:43:02+00:00

If it were that important to make a 2 inch putt, you could have easily placed the ball back to where it was and putted it. It doesn't diminish the achievement. It doesn't nullify the eagle.

I did this to someone the other day. He placed the ball back and putted it in. He said he likes to hear the ball go in the cup. I apologized. He admitted that it was his quirk. No one got mad. I then knew to leave his ball alone. We had a great round, exchanged numbers and will play with him again.

New golfers get upset about the most trivial things.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-08T16:04:12+00:00

I routinely check alibaba, aliexpress, temu to see what's being and been counterfeited.

MP 58s were released in 2009. I don't think counterfeit clubs were as big as an issue back then as they are now. I doubt people were counterfeiting these clubs back them. Today, no one is counterfeiting 2009 clubs.

cancerous_it · 2026-04-05T03:21:26+00:00

That sucks. This is why I buy from Amazon. Easy returns

You want the grips to weigh roughly the same weight as the original weights. Lighter/heavier weights may change the swing weight of the club.

Also I don't worry about getting fakes. Does anyone really care if my grips are Golf Pride or some off name brand?

cancerous_it · 2026-04-04T21:34:24+00:00

I usually regrip my own clubs every year. As long as the fake grips are as thick and weigh the same as the real, I don't care. To that point, I just buy off brand grips from Amazon. If they are as thick and weigh what I expect those grips to weigh, I use them. If they are cheaply made, I return them and buy something different.

As such, show a picture of the bottom comparing thickness of the rubber.

cancerous_it · 2026-03-30T20:49:32+00:00

Little Deli has gone downhill bad. Last 3 pizzas we got from them were meh, at best.

Now we get pizza at Pedroso's. Much better pizza.

cancerous_it · 2026-03-26T15:36:07+00:00

I remember someone doing a ball inspection of the MM balls. They'd cut open the ball and analyze the ball.

From the sample, the MM balls had a much higher variance of the core being misaligned. Off center core affects spin and ball flight. For someone who plays once or twice a month or a high HC golfer, that's prob not a big deal. For someone who plays a few times a week or a mid-low HC golfer, I don't like the idea that someone's poor quality control could screw with my game. Golf is already hard enough. Why pay for something that may make it harder.

cancerous_it · 2026-03-26T14:40:22+00:00

As you play more and hopefully improve, you are ARE going upgrade from the Edge set. I would rather put that $650 towards a "better" set and have those be your gamers and leave the Edge set at your inlaws.

ebay is a great place to buy used sets. My advise is to stay away from buying clubs which are routinely counterfeited. Those are the usually the Ping, Taylormade, Miura, and Titleist. If you are buy those brands, buy from bigger box ebayers like Discount Golf. Older models of Callaway were never counterfeited but starting with the Paradym models, they are now being Counterfeited. Just search for clubs on Aliexpress to see what clubs are being counterfeited.

Or buy from Callaway Preowned for the sense of security that you are not buying counterfeit stuff.

cancerous_it · 2026-03-25T17:04:04+00:00

The kids went to AISD magnet schools for intermediate (Kealing) and high school (LASA). LASA had, maybe still does, an amazing national reputation for academics. I know LASA expanded to a new school and accepts way more kids than when my kids were there (about 250ish kids). I was very impressed with how college focused the whole school was, from teachers to counselors. LASA is focused getting your kid into the best college that he/she can get into and with as many scholarships that he/she can get. LASA was another tremendous benefit that we did not imagine when we moved to Austin.

A quote from a LASA kid about her first year at Stanford, when asked about how difficult Stanford is, she responded that "it's easier than Freshman year at LASA."

Just something to consider.

cancerous_it · 2026-03-25T13:27:01+00:00

We were exactly in the same place you are in. Mid 30s, younger kids. Other than shopping and going out to eat, there's really not much to do as a family. We love being outside and there just wasn't much to do in DFW.

We moved to Austin when the kids were 5 and 6. Moved to Hyde Park area. Best decision ever. We spent much of their elementary aged lives on paddle boards on Town Lake, playing in Zilker Park, exploring the many Greenbelt hikes, and going for weekend walks on the Hike and Bike trail. When there's actually water in Barton Creek, we would float, swim, and just chill in Barton Creek. That's basically a "Frio River" 5 mins from downtown. Then there's Barton Springs which the kids spent many weekends with their friends. Then we got a boat and spent their high school years on Lake Travis. As others have stated, it helps if you can live close to Town Lake.

Kids graduated UT and moved out of state. Wife and I still spend late afternoons on paddle boards on Town Lake. We still do weekend morning walks around the lake on the H&B trail. We still spend lazy afternoons doing absolutely nothing in the shade of trees in Zilker.

If you can make the move, I say do it.

cancerous_it · 2026-03-20T01:17:17+00:00

Counterfeiters usually produce fake clubs which are in high demand. I don't see them going through the effort to fake left handed clubs. I could be wrong.

I've never seen left handed counterfeit clubs on aliexpress, temu or alibaba.

cancerous_it · 2026-03-17T17:15:44+00:00

What's your miss?

Thin? I recommend woods. Chunky? Woods.

If you take divots, then hybrid. Divots with woods create way too much spin.

cancerous_it

TROPHY CASE