NEOHMark

I'd get him more upright - closer to his old set up. He looks awfully hunched over these days at set up.

I've had an ace - only one. And it was pure - first swing off the tee and the ball never strayed from the flag in flight. A small bounce; a short roll; and it disappeared. I wish that joy upon every golfer. I've never even THOUGHT about taking a second crack at the tee shot on a par-3 and considering it an ace. It'd remove all the joy of the experience IMHO. Quite the contrary, it'd probably add the frustration of knowing you had that shot 'in you', but failed to execute it when it counted.

Ditto. Today, I'll be using my Bridgestone 330-RXS, #3, on its fourth consecutive 9-hole round. I'll play it until I either: lose it; or it gets a significant abrasion on it.

Um...don't pair up then with anybody and wait your turn as a single? Or perhaps get three buddies that are equivalent and book your tee times with them exclusively? Or don't sweat it? ;)

Situation is this: - I play in an after-work weekday league of 9-hole rounds for 26 weeks during the summer months here in NEOH. - A couple guys out of 16 are incredibly slow. - ONE of those guys incessantly insists on playing in the lead group. - Said guy is a slow player, and often struggles...making him even slower. - Assigned groupings won't work because several members struggle to get there on time after work - so we always have to leave a slot or two open in the last group, which..... - leads to awkward groupings of having foursomes at the front of the league and usually twosomes and threesomes at the tail end of the league. - The front/lead group of four has regularly been clocking in at 2.5 hours per nine lately. - There is another league behind us (we're the 'early league - with tee times from 4-4:30 and they have 4:30-5:15). - The course has reprimanded us several times over the past 3-5 years for overall slow play - their pace of play expectation is 2:06 for nine holes. In a nutshell, the best solution we can come up with is a 'double-bogey (DB) mandatory pick up' rule. Let the player play through his DB stroke, and then prohibit any/all shots on that hole. Our ESC basically has everyone on a level playing field - for the most part. So HCPs are all mostly truncated at DB. Our contract with the course says we get one warning, and then are required to pick up at SINGLE bogey if slow play is incurred on any particular round throughout the season. Maybe a third of our players struggle to average bogey golf - so that's a bit beyond their avg expectations. FWIW - the league director and a few others of us that are getting fed up with the slow play rep of our league prefer the proactive approach of mandating a pick up at DB for all league players. But we're really open for any other suggestions that may help improve the pace of play...without causing WWIII within the group. Any and all suggestions are MUCH appreciated. Thanks!

Ditto.

LOL, I hear you. It's just the sports official in me (high school/college baseball - and high school basketball) coming out. I can defend virtually ANY rule in baseball, fastpitch softball, and basketball...and explain it with logic, and reason, to any person/coach/player who challenges it. Golf boundaries and penalties? Not so much. OB/foul in any other sport is treated equitably and evenly in any situation. Your example of home run fences equating to OB doesn't really apply because a home run is only a home run if within the baselines. A water hazard in the fairway is a better comparison - where the penalty isn't stroke PLUS distance. In baseball, a foul ball out of play is simply a strike. If golf rules were applied to baseball, a foul ball into the stands would be a strike, yet would be an out if the ball left the stadium. No one with any genuine logic would agree that's equitable IMHO, as the 'penalty' isn't nearly the same for virtually identical situations.

That's not at all what I'm saying. If a hole has a lateral on the right, and OB on the left, there is a much more severe penalty - double the penalty in fact - by missing left than right. There's no other sport/game, that I can think of, that has this inequity of playing venue. Launching the drive into the lateral, in the stated example, is just as lost, and has left the bounds of playability just as much as the OB or lost ball. Yet it's at least a full stroke higher in penalty because there is no guaranty the player will make up the lost distance in a single stroke. Meanwhile, you're sitting on the tee box waiting for the knuckleheads in the group in front of you to find their ball - utilizing their full five minutes. Then a lone cart comes driving back to the tee box while the knucklehead sheepishly tells you he has to play another tee shot (because he didn't bother to play a provisional). By the time he's hit his third from the tee, driven BACK to roughly the same spot he was searching for the lost ball....fifteen minutes has elapsed while NObody behind said knuckleheads has had a chance to play a single shot. No wonder the game is in dire straits and losing participants by the tens of millions.....

I agree with all three of your ideas. Fairways should be a haven of a good lie. Greens should be a haven of a clean, flat roll. And there is usually no logical reason why OB or a lost ball can't be treated the same as a lateral. It would help speed up the pace of play too.

But that's the crux of it, isn't it? Unlike bowling, where a crappy bowler doesn't affect the pace of play of the scratch bowler two lanes over - golf is played on a 'two-lane' road. There's no passing, unless there is a safe opportunity, and (in addition) the lead car (group) actually has to 'let you' pass by. In comparison, bowling is played on an 18 or 20+ lane highway. What is happening in the far right lane, has no bearing on the other 20+ lanes. Golf is played on a narrow conduit. If the individual feels, by virtue of paying his greens fee, he has a 'right' to play from the tips, by God he's going to do so. The fact it causes the 34 groups behind him (17 more holes times 2 groups per hole, roughly) to endure a 6 hour round? Too f-ing bad. You can see it in the attitudes displayed right here in this forum. Lot's of folks find it astounding that some of us think a 4 to 4.5 hour round for 18 holes exceeds the limits of a reasonable pace of play. So the lowest common denominator wins, and 90 million people give up the game because they have virtually no opportunity to move past the little old gray-hair doing 35 mph in a 55 mph 2-lane zone.

I think it's a no-win argument. Sure it takes some amount of athleticism to play well, but it probably comes down to more hand-eye coordination. Billiards, darts, bowling all take that too. Someone said golfers probably take the physical conditioning part of it out of proportion. I'd tend to agree with that. The pros aren't all chiseled like virtually every NBA player, but certainly they have some strength and stamina. Baseball was an interesting comparison - it's a natural comparison because there have been some very un-athletic MLB pros over the years who have done very very well at the 'sport', or 'game', or whatever, at its highest level......David Wells, Bartolo Colon, David Ortiz, and even back in the old days you had guys like Boog Powell - who had more definition in his double chins than he had in his triceps. I can't see how this can be ANYthing but controversial because there is so much ammo on both sides. PGA golf is probably more a game than either NFL football or NBA basketball are sports. It's difficult to frame any winning argument when you've had some huge success stories in the likes of some very un-athletic bodies like John Daly, Craig Stadler, Fuzzy Zoeller, et al. Even a smaller, wiry guy like Ian Woosnam used to get caught on camera chain-smoking ciggies between holes. Making the case it's a sport, with examples like that all over the place, is a hard argument to win IMHO.

I quit about 20 yrs ago after smoking for 15 yrs or so. What did it for me was the lack of opportunity. I was married to a wife (still am) who didn't want me smoking around her and our two sons. We took a two-week vacation where I was - quite literally - with them 24/7. No work to go to, no 'sneaking away' for ANYthing. I was serious about quitting - and that vacation gave me the jump start I needed. If you can figure out how to eliminate your 'opportunities' to catch a smoke, you're more than halfway there IMHO. Ultimately you have to REALLY want it. And it doesn't hurt if you have someone close in your corner to help you through it and be the hard-ass when you might have the odd weak moment now and then.

I can't choose just one - they're all good. It's like asking who is your favorite supermodel? Tough to pick just one. Interesting comments and choices - especially about some of the 'green-bottled' choices. I know a few home-brewers who will tell ya green bottles are terrible choices for bottling beer because the most destructive of light's wavelengths get through and can make the beer skunky relatively quickly. I've found that to be pretty accurate. Of the Stellas, Yuenlings, Heinekins, etc......I much prefer them draught versus from a green bottle. Even out of a can is an improvement IMHO. Cleveland, OH is home to a pretty credible micro-brewer called Great Lakes Brewing. Their Elliot Ness brew is a great everyday choice, but their Christmas Ale (available only during the holiday season) is truly outstanding.

You guys are SOOO bad. Can a guy with purportedly an 8 hcp really be serious with this question? Just in case he is: Some courses are literally carved out of a wooded, heavily treed area. Some courses are built and shaped from a blank slate and add trees as features and obstacles. Some courses have no trees, or nearly no trees (is there even one tree on the Old Course at St. Andrews?). What was the question again?

Nice choice. Then again, I'm a bit partial......