Mac62

^^ Both great choices. I've played both the Noodle ("Long and Soft" or "Easy Distance", depending on your swing speed) and Gamer. Both are inexpensive balls which feel good off the club and perform reasonably well. The Gamers are a bit more expensive than the Noodles, but I'd give them the nod as the better ball if the few extra bucks isn't a big deal. People shy away from Top Flite because of their reputation over the years for rock-hard distance balls, but the Gamer is probably the best ball they've ever come out with.

And therein lies the obvious I was missing - I didn't realize the International Team didn't include Europeans! Thanks gentlemen!

A lot of it comes down to personal preference and/or how you hit particular clubs. Example: a friend of mine took his hybrids out of his bag because he hits nasty hooks with them almost every time. He can hit a beautiful 4 or 5 iron with a slight draw, but give him a 4 or 5 hybrid and that thing is going to make a snappy left turn and probably end up somewhere ugly. I, on the other hand, can't hit a 4 iron to save my life (and 5 iron isn't much better), but I love my 5 hybrid. I used to carry a 7W and loved it. Even if the wheels were falling off and I couldn't hit anything else to save my life, it seemed like I could always get a decent shot out of that 7W. Hybrids were relatively uncommon at that time, but when they became more popular I tried them and found that I could hit them from some challenging lies easier than the 7W, so it came out of the bag to make room for hybrids.

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but it seems strange not to see Justin Rose on the International Team. #8 OWGR and #5 FedEx Cup rankings, 7 top 10 finishes this season, one of their best players at the Ryder Cup last year and he's not in the lineup?

The two courses I play most often (from the tees we usually play) are just under 5900 and just over 6000, which are right in my comfort zone. Any time I play an unfamiliar course I'll choose to play from whatever tees are closest to 5800-6000, and I'll err on the short side rather than the long side if forced to choose. I'm paying to enjoy the round (at least in theory, lol!), so I see no sense in torturing myself by playing longer tees and being pissed off all day long. Quote: ...I have a friend that's convinced he can hack it at 7500 yards.... I'd definitely "hack" it at that distance, in the truest sense! Playing a 7500 yard course would surely guarantee me a score upwards of 100 and a long, miserable day. I'm sure I'd get my money's worth from ESC.

Golf is difficult, but when you started out you couldn't miss the ball if you tried? That's not the experience of most new golfers, you must be blessed with tons of natural ability. You've played 15-20 rounds of golf, don't really keep score, try to make double or triple bogey on most holes, but have a 16 handicap? I'm an 18 and with anything more than 2 or 3 double/triple bogeys, the chances of breaking 90 are circling the drain unless I have an otherwise pretty solid round (lots of pars and a few birdies mixed in). And if I'm not breaking 90 fairly regularly, that 18 handicap is headed right back up into the 20s. So you "crushed" a bunch of 200+ yard "blasts" again and again using a driver with a caved-in face, and never noticed anything wrong with it until you were done? Hitting the ball 200+ (assuming that means 210-220 yards and includes rollout) probably equates to a high 70s/low 80s swing speed - Bubba Watson, who plays a G30, has a swing speed somewhere around or upward of 115 mph and can't manage to cave his driver face in. And you say you don't top the driver as much as you used to when you started , but above you said that at the start of your young golf career, you couldn't miss the ball if you tried ? I'll gladly apologize if I'm wrong, but at this point my troll meter is pegged. The OP either defied astronomical odds and somehow got two defective drivers in a row, or we're being trolled by somebody with an anti-Ping agenda. Maybe one of the mods could run an IP check and see if the OP's address returns to taylormade.com.

I voted yes (it's a sport), but TBH I've never really thought about it and don't much care what anybody else thinks it is. If somebody wanted to argue with me that I was playing a "game" rather than a "sport", I'd just shrug my shoulders and say "OK, whatever". Either way, I enjoy it and am getting some exercise and having fun with friends, so call it whatever you want.

My wife has absolutely zero interest in golf and we're both perfectly okay with that. We have our things we enjoy together and we have our things we enjoy apart. I don't bug her to play golf, she doesn't bug me to watch chick flicks or go shoe shopping with her.

Thing is, I'm sure that the Patriots are just the tip of the iceberg. It would be naïve for anybody to think that every other team in the league is pure as the driven snow and the Pats are the only big fat cheaters. The Pats got caught and have been under increased scrutiny ever since, probably at least in part due to their fairly continual success, but I don't believe for a second that they're the only team seeking every little advantage they can get to win - honestly or not-so-honestly. I'm not absolving them of blame or trying to justify it by the "everybody is doing it" defense - I'm not saying it's right, just that they're not the only ones doing it. Football is a multi-billion dollar industry and players/coaches who aren't winning don't hang on to their big money contracts for long.

Nah...who'd want a washed-up loser like Spieth as one of their endorsers? [/sarcasm]

Seconded. Something's not right here. [ETA:] As a n=1 counterpoint, I've been hitting a G30 driver for several months, have topped and skyed my share of shots with it and had no problems whatsoever. I have, however, in the past, somehow managed to crack the head of a Taylormade R11s driver.

Nah - as soon as he bogeyed a hole, the speculation would start that he was 'done' and they'd be looking for the next latest and greatest.

How about George Thorogood's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer"?

Can you imagine the satiety factor (or lack thereof), though? I'd be pissed-off hungry about 23 hours a day eating a diet like that!