TourSpecGolfer

What do you guys think about this RC-F?

Go ahead stew post away :) I'm a little backed up at the moment but got some fresh goodies coming today for you guys. I didn't care or really see anything at the show that was special, A-Grind imo was great, 7D was there, New RomaRo gear, Titleist JDM, but other than that not much that had substance too it. We got a lot of great content coming but it's from our meetings after the show not at the show.

They won't answer any of this, we basically asked what head has the best performance of all tested the engineer quickly said Jbeam 535 and 435 without hesitation and of course I pressed on what about second best and then they declined to answer and said we only focus on our shaft quality. Shingo Katayama was there, he has been going to 7D at least a couple times a week for a few months and is practicing very hard this year in hopes to raise in rankings to represent Japan in the Rio Olympics Golf.

I have SEVEN demo #7 irons heads that I can shaft up and send around. drop me an email if you want to try it out first.

It's not a question they appeared to want to answer but it wasn't what head works with 7D shafts well, it was what head have they found to have the best performance. Of those brands you mentioned yes although there are some smaller brands or models I'm sure they don't have. They also buy almost every high end shaft in Japan to do testing and add it to their collection of info. Right now 7D is building a web portal 7D customers to login and see their fitting data, notes, and compare their gains and performance against others with similar information, very expensive undertaking that I got to catch a glimpse of. As for new products iron and hybrid shafts in the future, they already have driver and FW. Also small but something is for the 7D shafts soon you can select a small color band on the shaft like the image below:

Shingo Katayama Design Collaboration Wedge by A-Grind

None on these, CNC'd requires programming to change the design or even stamping. TSG can do finish and paint fill and hand stamp but not sure how it would look on these heads, I have a demo club back home I can send, I think in Satin with less paint fill it may look pretty cool. For custom the route to go is the Suda-Grinds, a few days ago we ordered Suda-san's version of the K, F, and M grinds so excited to see how that goes and will post when we get them ( 2 months maybe ) I'll get into how his grinding is different in a later post but to give you an idea it takes 4 days for him to grind 1 set of MB's, then it has to be stamped then finished.

I went with Jbeam ZY-11, Jbeam Black Out 435, Honma 455S, and Glorious 3 Wood. Hows this one... when we asked the top engineer what is the best performing brand driver in their collection of results he said Jbeam 535 and 435! I let the head engineer decide my options for me.

If you live in japan and have a haute and it's not performing properly you can take your driver in and this process is free. International it is not free. There have been no returns in Japan yet. The customer needs to answer more questions, send back entire club (attached) to driver, they take it apart, analyze the build + your info again with the new feedback, measure the head cg weight etc.. make the new shaft designed to solve the issue re assemble & re box and send back to our office to ship to you. My cost for them to send me the box is 80 bucks, no kidding. my cost for them to install a matrix is 150 bucks for the install, thats unprecedented but so is this type of shaft, technology, facility The 200 bucks the way it was explained to me seems totally justified and knowing what I know it's what I would expect from this brand fyi TSG keeps not a penny of that 200. Book markers are 80 bucks and business card holders are 500, this is totally in line with 7D imo.

The 200 fee was recently decided and only for International clients. I was just informed yesterday and imo it's better than no returns. Everything is expensive at 7D, for those who own one that hard box and soft bag it comes with costs them over 100 to produce alone, just the shipping cost to one of their accounts is 80 bucks within Japan. Want your Matrix installed? Installation fee is 150 while haute is free. Don't forget this is the company that sells a 120k shaft, a cup coffee is probably 20 bucks there. As for how your swing changes I was told its not as drastic of a change that one would expect. But really what's the alternative at this level? A track man and a world class fitter can't get this data. Just a really cool option, imo it's the performance that makes it stand above the other makers

No not yet, I have a few of each coming which should arrive by early next month, then I figure 1 week to get in a round.

Guys while these are not in the store yet they are shipping now. please email for price, we can do head only or shafted.

Yesterday I had a fitting at 7D, if you ever have the chance while your in Japan in my opinion worth every penny, I'm going to highlight a few things that we learned during our meeting: How/what does 7D take into account when matching the club head to the shaft? - They purchase nearly every driver on the market to measure the CG, weight and how accurate the loft is, different brands have different ways of measurement so 7D has to do this in order to get accurate results The CG/Weight/Loft is taken into account before they introduce the 3 shaft options. If the club head is important what happens if you pull the shaft and put into another head? - This brings me to the next point which answers a lot, Do not pull a 7D shaft and put it into another head, these shafts are specifically designed to match with the head, this is why I ended up buying 4 shafts yesterday, I needed to buy a different shaft for each head I play. How do they know what shaft is best for me? - They do have extremely important algorithims but the personal opinion of the engineer/club fitter is vital. I could see the fitter's thinking hard and using a calculator while looking at my info then told me I can get you almost 20 yards more with a Distance option shaft also a stronger trajectory. Difference between Haute vs Matrix? - Matrix & Haute Couture are the same material made the same way, the major difference is the fitting which uses 7 sensors attached to the shaft that are tracked using cameras all around you combined with trackman data then the opinion of the fitter. What happens if you are not happy with it's performance? 7D believes there must be a reason so what blew my mind was if you are not happy you can ship the shaft back, pay 200 usd. and answer another series of questions as to what you did or did not like about it. This can be done once with the Matrix, with Haute it can be done many times. Sort of a satisfaction guarantee. You are not allowed to change club heads or shaft designs i.e distance, control, standard. The sensors on the shaft see where you are losing power, in my case it was just before impact which looks like the head leading the shaft this is common in amateur players also in my trajectory there were points in the ball flight where energy was lost, they did see a couple other things as well. In the end Control option vs Distance option I gained 18 yards. 235-240 yards was my total distance with my TRPX shaft with my 7D haute it was 255-260 swinging at 95mph. My TRPX was SR the 7D Distance option shaft was stiff flex. Below helps a little understand what the 7 sensors pick up, this is my horrible swing, there are tons of little pockets of lost energy transfer which are considered inconsistencies so a big part of 7D is to design a shaft that gets rid of them and what many people will see in real world results is a smoother trajectory and arc. This also helps them figure out how stiff or soft to make different areas of the shaft, for me I need more tip stiff as you can see in the image below with my swing flaws the tip flexes and kicks too early losing lots of power.

I will be posting a few modart updates soon but wanted to show you guys the completed T55 Wedge which is milled from a solid block of S25C before it's been forged. This wedge was made for the better player who wants low bounce with a rounded grind that will slide through turf easily. Feels very soft, produces a lot of spin as the grooves are engraved and the face also has milling marks.

Its heavier, made of better materials 80T but imo it feels a bit numb so stronger players will be able to get more kick out of it than average speed swingers. good shaft for accuracy and getting spin down due to this 80T but for distance focus there are better options.

They just confirmed the GT3 version of the AMG GT is going to be released to the public, wonder how it will stack up against the Porsche GT3 and GT3 RS...

Tomorrow I'm spending the day with Suda-san, if you have questions let me know and I'll pass them on to him. shortly after I will post the new MA01DS and some info on the progress of the new Suda-blade.

I knew we could count on you for this..:) Rocket Bunny says April release. Silvia S14 is 240SX correct?

Couple more pics:

The new shoes line up from Mizuno Japan, coming to the proshop soon!

Available Now: Driver UT Hybrid Wedge Coming Mid March: MB CB CB2 FW Everything now available ships head only pretty quick so drop me an email [email protected] if interested. We also have future plans to offer Tour Only wedges hand ground by Ako-san shortly.

Introducing A-Grind Golf and while the brand and name itself is new the people behind it have been part of the Japan Tour for over a decade. Let's start with the man himself Yusuke Ako-san who was the lead designer for Royal Collection from 2004 to 2013 for all their clubs including woods, irons, wedges, and utilities. Yesterday I sat down for lunch with Ako-san in Kobe Japan to talk about A-Grind and to organize special offerings for our members Above a photo from the Japan Golf Fair, this is the A-Grind Classic Driver intentionally made to be a mix of new and old with a sole design and head size reminiscent of the wooden club era yet it contains materials, manufacturing technology, and many shape angles like the face that are vital for distance, forgiveness, and performance. For those familiar with Royal Collection woods the face shape shares a similar design, Ako-san is known well in Japan for how his woods look and perform. The A-Grind Classic Driver is 350cc's and available in 9.5 and 10.5 lofts, it features a Forged Titanium 6-4 face dead square face angle and a standard head weight of 202 grams. it's a club for purists and at impact it's sound/feel is near perfect. Here is a prototype fairway wood that Ako-san has been working very hard on, he is "the man" when it comes to fairway wood design you can give him full credit for the royal collection and also the old sonartec fairway woods of past. This fairway wood will be coming end of march to TSG and Ako-san promises it to be his greatest FW design ever. I will post specs soon on this one as it's not released yet but in person it's dimensions and especially face profile has us very excited. Below the A-Grind Hybrid Utility, there are two utility clubs by A-Grind one a Hybrid style the other driving iron, Ako-san has been a Tour Rep on the JPGA Tour for nearly 10 years, he travels in the tour van during the golf season to nearly every event which is one of the big reasons why after only 1 year in business so many players have A-Grind woods and wedges in the bag and also 2 JPGA tour victories within months of the official brand launch. The A-Grind Utility is available in 4 different lofts # 2/18 ° # 3 /20.5° # 4/23 ° # 5 / 25.5 ° and all very compact and sleek looking. Made using a 455 Stainless face and 17-4 SS body. Below the Driving Iron Version, with already 2 JPGA victories under this particular product's belt make no mistake it's for the professional level golfer, It's #1 goal is accuracy in a more forgiving long iron. It's trajectory is medium it's a 2 piece SUS431 head done in a beautiful satin finish. Made in # 2/18 ° # 3 /20.5° # 4/23 ° # 5 / 25.5 °. Below is the A-Grind Muscle Back forged of S25C in Japan and finished with a nickel chrome satin finish hand ground with a very thin top line, sole, and extremely minimal offset. The lofts are traditional at 47* on the PW. The MB and CB will become available Mid March they are currently in production, the cavity back iron targets top players with its thin appearance as well, it's a great year to be considering new blades or players cavities , Ako-san designed these with the input of Japan Tour players who play MB irons implementing what they wanted to see in a professional level CB. Lofts are semi traditional with a 46* PW. Below a new prototype semi mid sized forged iron in the works no release date confirmed on these. Probably the best selling product and most used on the JPGA Tour is the A-Grind Tour Wedge offered completely raw or in a nickel brushed satin finish in 50/52/56/58 lofts. We hope you enjoyed the brief introduction to a very exciting brand, We will have more in hand images in about 1 week followed by proshop listings and on course reviews so please stay tuned!

On the irons yes due to MSRP. On the woods and wedges resale much better than average especially the Suda-Grinds as so few have them.

Lunch is after 9 holes which is pretty wild to foreigners its a big lunch and a 1 hour break at the turn, so you get a front 9 tee time and a back 9 tee time. And the bath, I've played here a lot and have never seen a group of foreigners hanging out naked together in the onsen. Anyway back to the show, bigger than last year that's for sure. None of the boutique brands show up due to cost.

Yes playing golf in the states makes us super spoiled! In Japan while it's a great experience it's not something you would want to do frequently. Everything is so formal and it takes about 7 hours in total, it cost a lot of money figure on a good track 250-300 weekends. Just getting there and back turns golf into a 10-12 hour event including transport time.