Octuple Bogey

Yeah, kind of wonder who they think they are fooling. It's even better when some hacker who never can seem to find the fairway starts throwing up tufts of grass to determine wind direction as well. Used to be a 260 yard par 4 on a course I played that required a 250 yard carry over both a lake and a deep bunker just to reach the green in one blow. Then of course, you had to somehow get the ball to stop rolling in about the next 15 yards before it rolled over the green into a few grass pot bunkers. I'd never seen anybody successfully pull it off. But some guy who hit a wormburner off the tee on every prior hole that day suddenly decides to wait for the group on the green to putt out while he throws tufts of grass into the air to determine wind direction...

Your method, actually noting the exact backstroke length on lag putts, sounds too complicated for my tastes, though it might work well for you. I go completely off of feel myself. I usually take a good look at the hole, but I don't stare at it too long, before stroking the putt, and somehow my mind computes just about how hard I need to stroke the putt without my having to really consciously think too much about it. I suppose that with enough practice on lag putts you get better at doing this. A couple of good drills I know for lag putting are "the ladder" and "around the world". In the first drill you place about five to ten balls in a straight line, each about five or so feet apart. Standing about five feet from the closest ball you start putting balls. Try to putt the first so that it stops between the ball that is five feet away and that which is ten feet away. Try to putt the next so that it stops between the balls which are ten and fifteen feet away. Continue in this manner until you have putted the last ball in such a manner that it stops between the farthest two balls you placed. In "around the world", you place a marker somewhere near the center of the green and putt to each hole on the green from that marker, counting your total score for 18 holes. (You will have to putt to each hole at least twice, maybe more, to get in 18 on a typical practice green.) I feel that this drill is better since it forces you to focus on hitting your lag putts not only the correct distance, but on the correct line as well, and it gives you a considerable amount of practice on short putts.

I had to deal with a difficult foursome a few months back. On the third hole they had me play through them despite the fact that there were two old guys directly in front of them and several foursomes in front of them. While putting out on that third green a ball comes skimming accross the green. I don't even look up -- I just strike my putt. I don't really care because a rolling ball isn't going to hurt me and I am a fairly tolerant, easygoing person who'd made that same mistake. Then as I pick my ball up out of the hole a ball pretty much comes out of nowhere and nearly strikes me in the head. Now I'm starting to get peeved because that shows poor judgement on their part. They make an apology a few minutes later and I tell them it's fine -- remarking that despite almost hitting me it was an excellent shot. For the next few holes they took my nice guy stance as a green light to continue to push the envelope. I had to keep a good eye on them and repeatedly tell them that, "no you won't go any faster if I play through the old guys ahead of me". Finally, on a long par four while sitting under a huge dropoff and out of view of the tee box I got nervous and bellowed loud enough to be heard over 200 yards away that they were not to hit I was still in range. (I knew they were going to if I didn't say anything.) They didn't approach me on the next tee box but nevertheless rolled a drive on that hole up to where I was standing. On the next tee box, the ninth, I tell the two elderly guys in front of me who didn't want to let me play with them earlier, "I'll take you up on your offer to play through. I have the foursome from hell behind me. You can deal with them if you want." I just don't get it. I try to be nice a nice guy and forgive them once for their poor judgement and they take it as a signal that I don't care if they continue to endanger my safety. I wouldn't do the same to them. What do I have to do anyway? Challenge all four of them to a bloody, bareknuckle fight out there on the course? It's bullshit if you ask me. The truth is that even though I feel compelled to treat them with reluctant tolerance I almost wouldn't mind running a sword through their gut for holding me in contempt for taking a relatively unnagressive stance towards them.

Yeah, I've noticed that my iron yardages vary quite a bit from day to day and month to month as well as during the very same round, even when the shots seem to be struck properly and follow the correct trajectory and all other conditions are the same. The key is to develop the sixth sense that you need to determine whether you are going to hit your seven iron 150 yards or 170 yards on that next shot... When in doubt I usually take more club than necessary because if I hit it well I come off looking better to my playing partners. Better to look like you don't know your own strength than to say you're going to hit a 6-iron and come up 20 yards short in my book. Though there are risks to overshooting a green. I used to have a friend in high school, a great guy, that would occasionally hit his club over the green and then get all excited and exclaim, "Octuple, did you see how far I just hit that five?!" I would say, "that's great, I'm happy for you, I really am. But your ball just went into the lake behind the green. That's a one stroke penalty dude."

Most certainly. But there could, (in theory), be a day where the golf is so bad that I might actually begin to wonder about that...

Congrats! It's a great feeling to get that first eagle. I've only putted in a couple of eagles on short par fives. Par four and par three eagles, though, are actually rather rare.

I suppose that this is the sort of issue that can arise when people play for money. I suppose that as long as the stakes aren't high and everybody remains good friends no serious harm is done. But honestly, I also agree that everybody probably should have putted every shot out until their ball was in the hole. Everybody was playing under the same conditions on every one of these greens. Getting a 2-putt from 5 feet on a bad green does not take as much skill as getting a 2-putt from 50 feet on that same green. But I suppose if you had all already agreed upon this rule that in the sake of being fair and sticking to your word you were all right in honoring the rule. It can affect playing strategy. But in doing so a weakness in that rule became apparent...

I just remembered another rather harmless incident that occurred many years ago. I struck my tee shot, it hit the red tee marker (a rock), about 20 yards in front of me and ricocheted back and struck my playing partner, a high school buddy of mine, in the calf. I'll bet he never expected in a million years to get struck by my shot being as it was that he was standing a good 15 yards directly behind me....

That's awesome! My first came on a typical par 3 after I'd been playing for about a year. I hit the ball to a few feet and then sunk the putt. Good luck and may you have many more birdies... perhaps even an eagle someday.

If you really do have an 18 handicap after 6 months and you are 14 you have some sort of natural talent at this game. You could probably become a club professional somewhere with continued serious practice. The PGA Tour? Well it is great to have dreams and I wouldn't want to discourage anybody, but I wouldn't put my eggs in that basket. To become a club pro you need to among many other things pass a PAT or Professional Abilities Test, which usually consists of two 18 hole rounds on a specified course. The maximum passing score is usually something like a combined total of 5 over or 7 over for the two rounds. The thing is whether it is really worth it to become a club pro or to just have fun playing the game as a great amateur. I've worked at a semiprivate golf course for a number of summers and I honestly can't say that as much as I love the game I'd want to be a club professional. They spend most of their time tending the cash register in the pro shop. Most are a long way from being rich. Most of those that I knew for some reason either had less desire or opportunity to play or practice than I did. Once they stop practicing and playing most of them get rusty just like the rest of us and their average scores go up, even into the 80s sometimes. My advice is to continue to enjoy the game as an amateur, maybe shoot for playing on a high school or college golf team, unless of course a miracle happens... Instead focus your career goals on getting a college degree in a field that both suits you and is in high demand.

I've broken 4 while swinging them at the golf ball. I broke an aging 1-iron shaft as a beginner simply by taking a divot with my shot. In recent years I've broken the shafts of two 3-irons when I made contact with the ball. Overuse caused it in the first case and faulty manufacture in the second case. I once snapped the shaft on a 4-iron. I hit the ball very well but the club simply snapped on the follow through when it struck the tree I was standing under.

I shot 5 under and bilked three clubhouse professionals out of thousands of dollars in a friendly $100 per hole match... No seriously, I had an 88 on a local municipal course... all in the company of a fine elderly gentlemen.

Can't help but think if we made all of today's players use the old equipment, i.e. blades, that the same guy would end up winning every time he showed up to play. Ditto if we transported some highly engineered clubs back to the 1950s in a time machine and gave it to the players back then. Can't help but think the same guys would be winning each week. Sure the winners would be hitting it further, perhaps even straighter, but so would the losers...

Anybody ever played with a golfer that is unique or unusual in some manner besides the way they score? I've played with a guy in a wheelchair once. He apparently was good enough at one time to qualify for the PGA Tour but tragically was paralyzed in an auto accident a few weeks before he was to play his first tournament. I've also played with an older guy at a municipal course that was legally blind. Not totally blind, but legally blind meaning his corrected vision in both eyes was 20/200 or worse. He could find his way around the course without walking into a lake or anything obvious like that but he needed his partners to line him up, watch his ball, find his shots for him, etc. He wasn't too bad really... Nothing else unusual really pops into mind except for one person that had a rather high profile career. So, any good stories?

What is the best round you've witnessed, (besides at a PGA tournament)? I'm talking about friends you've played with, strangers you've played with, or yourself if you've never seen anybody score any better. I witnessed a 69 once from an amateur a few years back on the par 72 Dobson Ranch municipal course in Arizona from the blue tees. I witnessed a 70 on the par 72 Ken McDonald municipal course in Arizona by an amateur from the blues. In that case the guy could have done even better had he not had a tragic double bogey on the par three seventeenth. In Spokane I witnessed a 72 on the par 72 Meadowwood Course by an amateur from the whites. I'm wracking my brain but honestly I can't think of any other par or subpar 18 hole rounds that I've witnessed... and I usually take note pretty quickly when I see it happening. But then again I haven't played with many clubhouse professionals (one), golfers on university scholarship (one female university player and three male community college players) or other elite players, just the guys who show up to the local municipal courses, (and a good chunk of them are lucky to even break 90 or 100.)