First round of golf since December, and so much has changed. I’ve got the new TaylorMade M2s in the bag, Superstition Springs Golf Club has allowed most of the ponds to go dry and – especially on the 9th hole which used to have water all down the left side – replaced them with what I think are ultimately going to be waste areas filled with native grasses and flowers, and I’m anxious to see what kind of game I have.
Yanked my drive off the tee into a sand bunker, but had no trouble getting out with my 8-graphite, leaving me with a chip just off the green and a putt from 5 feet for a par. I’m thinking, here we go, baby!
Err, not so fast. Not the greatest drive on #2, but good enough to leave me 180 yards to the pin. The play here is not to get snookered into going for the green, because anything left is close to OB or short-siding you with a slippery downhill chip or putt. I choose my 5-iron, planning to leave it 30 yards to the right with a short, uphill approach with plenty of green to work with. I catch it good. But I’m not 30 yards short right, I’m 5 yards past pin-high to the right. 185 yards with a 5-iron. I’m stunned. Of course, haven’t spent much time on my short game, so I proceed to butcher the hole and end up with a six. But that’s OK, I’ll take that six and head to the next tee.
Ah, the next tee is the Springs’ first par 3. Normally 170 to the center, today it was tucked as far back and right as it could be, 180 yards with water right and behind, a large bunker protecting the approach. Back in the Callaway Steelhead days, this was a 5-iron all the way: don’t pull the hybrid because it’s just too unpredictable; instead, play it safe with a 5-iron and leave it just short off the green to the front. I pulled the 5-iron, but it’s way longer than I ever expected to hit a five; instead of nestling into the sand bunker, it’s over the bunker and in the water right. I pull a six-graphite to play my penalty, and it lands 170 yards just left of the green. This is uncharted territory for me – with my Steelheads I would figure my six to play at the most 155. So now I’m facing the prospect of having to gear down at a minimum one, perhaps even two less clubs with my M2 graphites.
And that’s how the rest of the round went: just feeling my way around, hitting clubs for distances I’d never dreamed of. A 7-iron that carried 150 yards. A sand wedge I grabbed for 105 yards and hit it pretty damned close to that distance. On #7, I pulled a six-graphite with 158 to the pin and hit it 172. On #9 I had 180 to the pin. Normally, that’s a 4-hybrid, but I pulled the 5-graphite instead, felt myself push it a little with a bit of a thin hit; it still went 170.
I wasn’t keeping score, but I figure I ended up around a 52 or something, but that wasn’t the point of the outing: I knew my short game was rusty and that I would need to get to work on that before my first bona fide 18-hole, keeping score outing. I threw away at least a dozen strokes just butchering chips and finesse shots from 40 yards or less out. But these new M2s are real, baby. Or rather, unreal in the distance improvement I’m seeing. I remember feeling that the 7-irons I was hitting back at the Golf & Ski looked like they were traveling lot longer than my usual 7-iron, but until you put the clubs under real playing conditions you just don’t know.
Now I know. And they do.
Next step is to get to work on my chipping and prepare for my first honest-to-goodness, every shot counts outing. Now that I have a general idea of what to expect from these new graphites, you can bet I’ll approach my yardages with a different club in mind than what I’ve been used to, like, forever. It’s the absolute coolest thing.