Watching the Tour Pros hit balls on the range
 

I watched a little bit of the late afternoon practice session on the range, at this week's Canadian Open. There was a total of only about 10-12 of these insanely gifted human beings on the range at the time.
Didn't get to see Elkington, Baddeley, Brian Gay (and J. Riegger's not here)

I noticed a couple of things:

on the range, the heaviest sounding compression came from none other than Pat Perez. His long irons sounded like fairway woods. But when I watched him make his practice swings, it looked like he had "throwaway" through impact. Any idea why he gets a louder "sizzling" sound than the rest of the guys?

Vijay was using the Swingrite training aid. I didn't know that anybody still used that!?! He was swinging that as hard as he could. I've never seen a Tour Pro put that much effort in trying to swing anything that hard. It looked very strange (the amount of effort).

The 'original' Swingrite? A very good aid IMO, one that would help most people. I haven't seen any of the 'real' Swingrite in a while. McLean was selling a heavy club by that same name, and the closest I've seen to the original is on Wiren's site, the Drivemaster 2. Overpriced IMO, they'd sell more if it was cheaper.

I had a cheap copy of the 'original' for a while, but the thing broke quickly and I couldn't find replacement parts. Too bad, it is a good one.

Nicklaus
 

I played in the US Open in 1971 at Merion. On Tuesday at the practice range, I was on the right side of the range, Nicklaus was on the left (at my back) with about 10 or 15 players between us. I could always tell by the sound when Nicklaus had hit it - very different that anyone else.

Bruce

Edz,
It probably wasn't the original. The bottom part of the Swingrite looked a little newer than the original. But it was definitely the same as a Swingrite.

He stopped midway while walking over a short bridge, pulled out a club, turned to face the hand rail, placed his club over the railing, and proceeded to practice his backswing takeaway. I guess it helps to be tall as he is.

But, I'm still surprised by the fact that on the range it looked like a lot of guys were USING throwaway through the impact area (during their practice swings).

Wow, it must be a great memory! I think it must be so tough to hit balls in front of all those people (other players and the spectators). I mean, you got dozens of blank faces staring right at you. sheesh!!