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JPsuff

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About JPsuff

  • Birthday 11/30/1956

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    Hacker

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  1. It's not about testosterone. It's about having a finishing hole which actually complements the course as a whole. I remember back when I was playing an old TaylorMade Burner for a driver that I used to bomb it over the bunkers on 18 on a regular basis. In fact, many times I have actually placed a tee shot on the upslope of the green, for cryin' out loud! Sorry, but I don't think that one should be able to almost reach the green from the tee on the finishing Par 4 of a top 100 course. At least the Blues bring the bunkers into play somewhat. But the real test is from the Open tees. For years we used to complain to anyone who'd listen that the Championship tees for the 18th ought to be behind the green of the 4th hole of the Red course, (which is where the Open tee is now). Before they made that change, I used to see the 18th as the only "Mickey Mouse" hole left on the Black. Years earlier, the 9th hole was the #1 Mickey Mouse hole there, but they re-arranged the tees and made it play like a "real" par 4 should. (The tee for the 9th used to be in the woods way to the left of the 8th green, [looking at the green from the tee], and we used to tee-up a ball as high as we could and up-swing a three wood, hit it over the trees and land on the green). The modern changes are great and the entire course now has an overall theme. Much better than it used to be "back-in-the-day", when the whole place was a dump that no one wanted to be bothered with.
  2. You played 18 from the Whites?! Dude, you've gotta play it from at least the blues to do it justice. And if you really want a great finishing hole experience, then play it from the Open tees. The Whites are basically ladie's tees for the 18th.
  3. Take an old clubshaft, (or a stick), and place it vertically into the ground so that the top of it is just above your belt line. Take your normal address stance with your target-side hip just touching the stick or shaft, (your left hip, if you're a right-handed player). The stick or shaft should be embedded in the ground deep enough to provide moderate to firm resistance when you push against it. Take a swing and when you sway sideways, you'll contact the stick and feel it pushing against your hip. Practice swinging so that your hip does not move the stick. The feeling is similar to standing with your hip against a wall and the image of a wall should keep you from moving too far sideways. A lateral movement towards the target is natural, but too much movement causes the results you've described. This "stick drill" will serve to remind you where your hip should be at impact. Once you get used to the feeling of slightly contacting the stick, remove it and practice shots without it. If you feel like you're swaying again, put the stick back and practice some more. Soon, you'll build some muscle memory to avoid pushing into the stick and you'll be on your way to solving the problem. -JP
  4. There are no ladies tees on the Black. Of course, if skirts are your thing, then party on! But the 270 carry thing is real. That is to say that to set up a shot in an ideal spot as opposed to just an OK spot, there are several holes where, from the Blue tees, a 270 yd carry is a must. For instance, on the 5th hole with the diagonal cross bunker, you could land in the fairway with as little as a 220 yard shot, but you'd be way left and looking at 240-ish to an elevated green and having to hit a draw. But a shot up the right side with a good strong carry would put you at the perfect angle to the green and only looking at about 175-ish and be able to fade the shot in. Lots of holes are like that and that's one of the reasons that I'm a real Tillinghast fan.
  5. The U.S. Open tees are a real stretch, but the Blue tees make it fun. From the Blues, you'll need a good 270 yd. carry on several holes to set yourself up properly, but overall the course plays very fair from them. From the blues, the Par-5, 7th is an easy reach in two if you can squeeze your tee shot past the trees at the dogleg. But the Par-5, 4th, though reachable in two with a good tee shot up the left side, is dicey because the small green and the runout behind it can have you staring at a third shot up a 30-foot hill through trees. The 5th, the signature hole, has a diagonal waste bunker running mainly up the right side. The ideal spot for a second shot is also up the right side. A well-struck tee shot, (which has a built-in extra 10 yards dues to the elevated tee), should put you just past the tip of the bunker on the right side of the fairway with about 160 or so left to an elevated green. Strategy and course management and shot-shaping are what it's all about on the Black and there is some margin for error on some holes, most require accuracy and good shot placement. You'll love it. -JP
  6. What tees are you planning on using? From the U.S. Open tees, you'd better bring a cannon. The Black is a classic Tillinghast-style course and as such, there are lots of elevated tees and greens. The average tee elevation is in the 40-foot plus range, so it's worth an extra 10 yards or so. The tee on the per-3 eighth hole is about 70 feet or so and the green is fronted by a pond and depending on the wind, it can be as much as three clubs LESS than you would normally hit for the distance, (around 200 yds. or so from the back tees). The Black has a great mix of "draw" holes, (for right-handers) and most tee shots need to be placed well in order to take full advantage of your approach angles. There are also several holes, ( the 2nd, 6th, 7th, in particular), which require good placement of a long iron or fairway metal off the tee rather than a booming driver shot. Most of the elevated greens require at least one club more to reach and often the pin/putting surface is not visible while contemplating your approach shot. The greens are not usually too fast, but they are true so reading a putt properly is crucial. The rough is still there, though it's not as it used to be in years past. Waste areas have now been manicured and either bunkered or grassed. Back in the 80's and into the late 90's, these areas were mostly left natural and were in play. When people would ask me in those days what the rough was like on the Black, my standard answer was: "Well, there's the primary rough and then there's Vietnam". Primary rough, (which is still plentiful but has been tamed over the years to speed play), is a very wiry fescue which lies over on its side. In the summer months, when the grass has really grown in, it is entirely possible on some holes to lose a ball that's just trickled a few feet off the fairway. All in all, I like the way they've dressed the course up for the Open, but I remember it from the "old days" and I do miss some of its old character. It's still a stern test of a golfer's skill though and if you play it from the Open tees; you'd better bring your A+ game. Have fun! -JP
  7. When I got serious about golf, I too needed to know my distances. So, I found that out by going to a schoolyard near my home. I would load up a shag bag with 50 balls and head down to the school. This particular school yard was big enough to hit a full driver without going off the property. But I chose the far corner where there was a baseball diamond. A baseball diamond makes a good practice target because the infield grass can represent the green, the infield dirt represented bunkers and anything outside of those areas was just a piss-poor shot. Anyway, when I first started to figure all this out, I chose what I felt was my "150" club and I would pace off 150 yds. from the center of the infield grass to a point somewhere out in the field. I was lucky enough to have the advantage of a football field nearby and the yard lines helped as reference points. I'd hit a bag of balls at the infield and then go see how many actually stayed on the grass and if the majority, (say about 30 or 35), were more or less in the same area, then that was my distance. Naturally, if most of the balls were beyond the infield, then I'd back up a few yards and try again. If most were short, I'd move up. Over time, I dialed in all of my distances for all of my irons, right down to my 1-iron, which I used to carry back then. For instance, I knew beyond a doubt, that my 9-iron was good for 138 yds., My 8-iron was 152, my 7-iron was 163, and so on. This was all back in the 80's before the livelier ball and more upright lofts we have today. (Today, my 9-iron is my 150 club, my 8-iron is 162 and so on. It takes a lot of time, but after a few weeks, I was so confident in my distance knowledge that short pins, sucker pins, water, etc. were no trouble at all because as long as the markers on the course were right, I knew just what I'd need to clear whatever lay ahead. Not only that, but practicing to such a target has the added advantage of improving accuracy overall. I used to try to get all 50 balls on the infield grass and my best ever effort was 42 out of 50 with an 8-iron. On average though, I'd look to get at least 30 or more on target. I used to hit anywhere from 3 to 5 bags per night. Yes, it's a lot of work, but man , the payoff is spectacular. Practicing this way beats ANY driving range hands down! Not only because you can more accurately assess your true distances, but it works wonders for your accuracy as well, because walking after errant shots gets old real fast. If you can find a field such as a school yard or other sports fields to do this on, I guarantee your game will improve and you'll never go to a driving range again.
  8. JPsuff

    Handicap

    This is directly from the USGA: You must be a member of a golf club. The USGA® defines a golf club as an organization of at least ten individual members that operates under bylaws with committees (including a Handicap Committee) to supervise golf activities, provide peer review, and maintain the integrity of the USGA Handicap System™ A golf club must be licensed by the USGA to utilize the USGA Handicap System. Once a player joins a golf club, the player should post adjusted gross scores. When the player posts five adjusted gross scores, and a revision date passes, the club will issue the player a Handicap Index. _______________________________________________________________________________________________ It's easy to get your handicap, just play an accredited course regularly and submit your scores. The course takes care of all the USGA Rules mumbo-jumbo. Basically, all you have to do is play and have someone sign your card after each round. There's a local County course that I play quite often which simply requires that a player place his attested scorecard in a box at the end of his round. Someone at the course enters all of the data in a computer and keeps track of the handicap. They comply with the "membership" requirement by requiring that your reciept, (greens fee ticket), remain stapled to the scorecard as it was when you signed in. This apparently allows them to regard the greens fee in a similar way to a membership fee. This way, you can get a handicap without having to actually join a country club. Another way is to join a golf club, in the same way as one would join a bowling league. Then the club is responsible for submitting scores. Usually, you're required to play at least five rounds before a handicap can be calculated. I have not heard of any online handicapping system which is recognized by the USGA. They may very well use the same formulas as the USGA, but they are not accredited by the USGA and most sites clearly display such a disclaimer. It's possible, I suppose, that being part of an online group could constitute being a member of a club, so there may very well be legit online ways to obtain an official handicap. But most of the sites I've seen usually have the disclaimer.
  9. I dunno, NC... Sounds to me like you just talked yourself out of it. All I know is that if I had a plus handicap and the time to do it, I'd be there with bells on. Yeah, there's guys there that are probably better, but they feel pressure just like everyone else does. All I know is that somewhere down the road I'd be kicking myself for not giving it a shot when I had the chance. What's the worst that could happen? At the very least, you'll have a few war stories to tell your grandkids. Or, you might even catch fire and end up as deep as the finals or even the Open itself. But I know one thing that's an absolute certainty: You'll never know unless you try.
  10. Wolf, Flex is related to several things, but the most common thing is shaft loading. The basic question you need to answer is: Are you a 'Swinger' or a 'Hitter'? (OK, now that you've stopped chuckling, here's the deal)... A swinger is someone who swings the club with an even tempo and a hitter is someone who makes an aggressive move to the ball from the top of the backswing. An example of a swinger, (even though he has a powerful swing), would be someone like Freddie Couples. He generates a lot of power, but his motion is very smooth and very even. A hitter would be someone like Tiger or better still, John Daly. The difference is that a swinger evenly loads the clubshaft from the top of the backswing and gradually accelerates to impact. This even loading allows the clubhead to gain speed smoothly and then release almost automatically at impact. A hitter severely loads the clubshaft from the top of the backswing, (actually even slightly before the backswing is complete), and then makes a very deliberate and forceful move towards the ball. This motion severely flexes the clubshaft and the release is primarily generated by the hands pronating quickly at the point of impact, (sort of like snapping a towel). A smooth tempo generally requires a whippier shaft because the shaft itself is the main source of power, (the energy is stored in the shaft), and you need it to do most of the work. In a hard, hitting tempo, a too-soft or flexy shaft will cause the clubhead to lag too far behind the wrists at impact, often leaving an open face and producing a weak shot. A hitter's swing demands a stiffer shaft, (because his energy is stored in his arms and wrists more than in the shaft), so that the clubhead can keep up with the wrists at the point of release. For a 90 mph swing speed, a regular flex shaft is usually the recommended shaft. However, if you are generating that speed aggressively then a slightly stiffer shaft migh be what you need. Sometimes, that can be addressed by tip trimming. Normally, most driver shafts are installed and trimmed to length by removing material from the butt end. But if you feel that a regular shaft is still a bit too whippy, trimming a half-inch or so from the tip prior to installation will stiffen the tip slightly, producing a sort of R/S flex. This gives you the advantage of allowing the shaft to still do most of the work, while allowing for a slightly more aggressive "snap" at the point of impact. As for irons, control is much more important than distance - particularly in the short irons, say, from the 7 or 8 iron down through the wedges. Longer irons might still require a regular flex. It's not uncommon to see sets of clubs with stiff shafts in the short irons and regular flex shafts on the long irons and woods. Lightweight steel shafts will offer less torque related issues while allowing for a full flex and graphite shafts can offer very light weight but keep an eye on torque specs to be sure that the tips aren't too soft. Other things like swingweight have effects on flex as well. If you like a heavy clubhead, then that will force a shaft to flex more than a lighter clubhead. So, if you're testing clubs, for example, and find a shaft that feels good and performs well, but the club is, say, a D-1 swingweight, that shaft will feel more whippy if you take it home and add some lead tape to bring it up to, say, a D-5. Lastly, to a lesser extent, shaft length also affects flex. If you like a standard length in your clubs, then choose a shaft which complements that length. But if you prefer oversized lengths, particularly if your extending them by an inch or more, then the club will feel more whippy as well so choose a shaft with that in mind. A good clubfitter will address all of these issues with you and you can end up with a set of shafts, (either all the same flex or of varied flexes), which will serve you well over the long haul.
  11. Oh for cryin' out loud. I was just using torque as an example. Read my posts. I have said on numerous occasions that Torque, Weight and Kick Point are the basic parameters of shaft technology. And no, I didn't mention flex, but flex has to do with weight, torque and kick point combined as well as wall thickness and profile, so flex is more of a product of those things than it is a specific design criteria. And then there's tip stiffness, tip trimming, swingweight, head weight, shaft frequency, club weight, lie angle, (or more importantly, dynamic lie angle because the shaft flexes downward at the point of impact which brings the toe of the clubhead down and flattens the lie). Then there's closed face, neutral face, open face, bounce, hosel offset. And there are also characteristic changes which come from through bores, blind bores and standard bores and tip diameters and even things like grip thickness will influence a golf club. I get all of that. And I've been building my own clubs for years. I've also hit quite a number of shafts of many types and brands as well as having spent a considerable amount of time on launch monitors assessing my swing and deciding which components work best for me - all with the help of qualified fitters. But even with all of those things, all I've been saying is that there are too many shaft types out there and the differences between them are, in many cases, insignificant. Especially when you consider that in a given run of shafts, there can be a wide variation in overall specs. Or, simply put, it's rare to find two shafts of the same design with absolutely identical characteristics. Specs can vary between shafts on any given production run. So in any given lot, there may be those couple of decimal point differences between shafts which makes all of this "micro-fitting" rather silly. So do you get what I'm saying yet, or do we need the flash cards?
  12. Hypocrisy? In what way? Did I say in any of my posts that I didn't like graphite shafts? No. Did I say that I used them myself? Yes. Did I say that I was thrilled with them? Yes. So where's the hypocrisy? As for those "specialized sticks", I bought those shafts based on weight, kick-point and torque. Period. Nothing else. And when I was looking up their specs, the torque rating, (in the case of the NV, for example), was 2.8, which is the same as my driver. In fact, the YS-9's are also 2.8. But you know what? If they were 3.0 I still would have bought them because I really don't see as how I'd notice the difference - which is the point of my whole post. This country has gone shaft-happy, is all I'm saying. And I really don't believe that if a guy was fitted with a shaft with a torque of, say, 3.5 and the only shaft available to him was rated at 3.7, that he'd throw himself under a bus because of that. Stand in line with a bunch of guys talking to a fitter and all you'll hear is a cacophany of club specs. But I think that all of this spec-happy nonsense is just that - nonsense. If shafts were offered with torque spaecs which only went up in increments of 0.5, (like 2.5, 3.0, 3.5, and so on, do you honestly think that someone is going to end up dissatisfied? Is 3.6 all that differnt from 3.5? I use graphite for the same reason everyone else does, because they allow me to increase my swing speed. So that's a weight issue. I want the shaft to be relatively firm and that's a torque issue and I want them to have either mid or high bend points. To me, if I'm looking for a shaft weighing about 75 grams, and if I can only find one that's 77 or 73 grams, then what's the difference? I guess I'm just trying to say that I find it more than a little amusing that we, the golfing public, have become so enamored of all of these specifications to the point where we've begun to actually argue in terms of tenths of a unit of measure. What makes it even funnier is that if your swing is off and you mis-hit the ball, then all of these tightly coreographed specs go right out the window anyway. I dunno... Maybe I'm not coming through as clear as I think I am, but I just get a kick out watching the way people in this country react to technology. Keep It Simple. Low, Medium and High works most of the time, until we recalibrate the scale to include all of the infinitesimals. Then it starts to get silly. Like having a seven speed transmission on a home lawn tractor. It just gets stupid after that.
  13. iacas, Let me be the first congratulate you on bringing new meaning to the word: "Didactic". Tell me, do you get struck often?
  14. You may be right. But what I'm saying is that from a buyer's point of view, what is Graphalloy showing, in terms of specs, that demonstrates the difference in these shafts? At least with DG shafts, there's an obvious difference between X's and R/S's, (the amount of steps in the shaft). But honestly, if I'm browsing a shaft catalog and I came across that particular set of specs, I'd be inclined to think that they're basically offering the same thing just with different packaging. I never said that there aren't differences in shafts. What I AM saying is that there are so many shafts out there that any real differences between manufacturers is miniscule. Kick-point, weight and torque are about it. Beyond that is simply hairsplitting and something that I believe is lost on the average golfer. And whatever differences do exist on that hairsplitting level - quantifiable as they may be - they are not of such significance as to have any major effect on performance. My point in all of this is that golf is one of those marketplaces where when someone comes out with the next "great thing", you can be sure that there will be hundreds of follwers all looking to cash in on it. Thus the endless stream of shafts flooding the marketplace. It's gotten to the point where people are spending more time deciding what shaft to use than they are actually swinging a golf club and I think the whole thing is silly. I don't think that graphite technology is silly in and of itself. I use graphite shafts myself and yes, I CAN tell the difference between SOME shafts. But when I look at what's being offered out there, I can't help but think that this whole graphite thing is like some runaway train and has evolved into a confusing, often contradictory pile of nomenclature that few people understand and that ultimately is of little discernable difference other than the three categories I mentioned. This is a game, remember? We're not designing instrumentation for interstellar spacecraft, so why are we treating it as if we are?
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