Posts Tagged ‘brian blackburn’

Tour Striker Review

Welcome Guest Author Brian Blackburn, aka “Club Ho“

Well my equipment ho ways continue with this training aid I purchased not long ago.  It is called Tour Striker and is designed to teach you to swing your irons with your hands in front of the ball…..making a descending blow……hitting the ball first then the ground.  I am sure you have all heard these things before….and I have read many times that this is a very common amateur mistake.

Well I thought, I might as well give this a shot.  What do I have to lose besides some cash.  I started checking eBay and could not find one cheaper than around $100.00 and thought like most of my other purchases….if I don’t want it I can put it back on eBay and get all or most of my money back (sometimes I even make a few bucks).  It arrived about a week later and I was lucky enough to get the box off the front porch before my wife spotted it.   The club comes with an instructional DVD that is fairly simple.

The way this club works is this, it has a rounded leading edge at the bottom of the face of the club.  If you cast your club from the top, or if you flip your club at impact your bottom lead edge will hit the ball first as opposed to the sweet spot in the center of the club face.  It is also called “scooping”.  If you hit this way with the rounded bottom of the tour you are likely to get a skulled ball, or worm burner.  With a typical “game improvement” iron you are likely to get a high shot that lacks power.  So basically you get better feedback if you are impacting the ball too low on the club face.

I took it to the range immediately and noticed that among my many, many swing problems, this is not one of them.  No skulled shots for me.  It did hit the ball lower than any other “8 iron” I use but that would be expected since it is thinner at the very bottom, the opposite of any other clubs I use.

The other thing I learned is that “trying” to hit down on the ball causes the exact opposite.  When I made an effort to ensure that I was holding my wrist cock through impact, or that I had a descending blow….I achieved the opposite.  This is the only time I skulled this club.

So the club did not work for me and will be going on eBay soon where hopefully I will get all my money back.