Palmer4Ever

Agreed with dennyjones, I've tried plenty of Camerons before and have no reason to ever buy one. My Odyssey White Hot Tour #1 feels better off the face, has been reliable since day 1, and saved a couple hundred off what a Scotty would have ran. But being that the market is more saturated with well-to-do folk for whom price is (a) not only not an issue, but (b) their main indicator of quality, the demand for Camerons is there. And they do a good job of producing and marketing them as top-of-the-line. Now I'd have to be daft to say they're no good... (see Spieth, JThomas, etc..) I think a decent comparison would be putting some fancy Nike running shoes up against a pair of New Balances -- the price difference is a lot more significant than the actual difference in quality.

Our local course recently lost their access to water, and over the course of a couple months the place has dried to the bone. Greens still in great shape (for now), but everything else is hard, dead dirt/ground. (Fantastic for getting those booming drives with the 30+ yards of roll though..) Since this change in course condition, they have adopted a "lift and place" rule: 1 club length, no closer to the hole, you can lift and place your ball onto any blades of grass or decent patch you can find. My issue is a playing partner of mine will use this rule to provide himself some severe relief when in a spot of trouble. Say his drive ends up in some reeds/tall plants. He will use this rule to move his ball one clublength away, to a point where these reeds are no longer an issue for his swing. I have tried telling him he is "improving his lie", but he's either ignoring me or not seeming to care/see the issue. How would you go about addressing this? As well as, is this actually a rules violation if the course has a policy where you can take this "free" relief? (Note: we are not playing for money, but we do like to still make it a competition, and will refer to a "winner" at the end, so I feel like this has more of an impact than if we were just hacking our way around without a care)

Having e-commerce enabled vs. not makes the biggest difference, in my opinion. If your friend wanted a simple site that is flexible and where having a shop was not a big part of his strategy, I would say 100% use WordPress and use Bluehost for hosting. This combination isn't only cheap, but flexible and reliable. You won't have access to high-quality support, so you may want to work with someone who can be in charge of all the website updates and who can fix issues when they arise (which will happen). There is an ecommerce plugin for Wordpress called WooCommerce and it is pretty good, although I don't have a ton of experience managing it, so I'm not sure about what issues it may have. Hosting is like $90/year and you may have to pay a domain mapping to use WordPress with your own hosting (around $20/yr), then there are the domain name annual fees ($15/yr). The second option is to use shopping cart platform (Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento). Choosing the perfect one is not going to happen because they are not perfect, you are going to experience integration issues and, if his business grows enough, different features will potentially become n obstacle in the future. Magento is the best one, but it's too expensive for small companies and development is more complex than the other 2 options. So, that one is out. I have used BigCommerce and Shopify and they both work fine, they cost around $30 per month and integrate with multiple 3rd party solutions. Depending on the # of products, I would use Wordpress with WooCommerce (less than 50), but if he has a larger catalog, using one of those 2 is probably best. I personally like Shopify better and I think they adapt quickly to market changes, so they are more up-to-date with eCommerce resources and technology features. All the easy DIY site makers you can find online are cheap, but they are sh#t. They do not have good SEO features that allow you to optimize your site for crawlability and have an actual strategy that can build traffic, so you pay extra in sweat. Shopify and BigCommerce are very easy to use and set up, so you don't have to be a developer but you must understand and get familiar with the basics of the platform. WordPress is a little more complicated, so you will need support if you are not good at it. DM me if you have further questions.

Genius idea to post that here. Question: are you married to this logo? What I mean is, is it awesome enough to warrant all the extra work? Sometimes fixing something old is harder than starting from scratch. There is enough talent and services like logo tournament, where you can get great ideas and work at good prices. Not to mention, hosting a more formal logo design challenge is a good marketing opportunity and, if you have the right platform, you could even get some press and links which are valuable for your SEO. Just an idea.

Hey guys, relatively new to the site, but I've been reading this thread (big GSW fan, so obviously I love what Curry's done in this event so far). Apart from what this is doing for golf's exposure - Curry being a megastar at the moment - I was also thinking about the impact this could have on Under Armour's status in the golf retail/equipment kingdom. A few days ago on the first, UA reported their shares fell (though less than expected), but they saw growth within their golf sector. We can pretty much attribute this to Spieth's recent hot streak (man, can UA pick their guys or what..) but I'm thinking if this "Curry experiment" keeps attracting eyes/clicks/interest (and Spieth stays hot), UA could be in line for a big push to challenge the top dogs for apparel/shoes/etc. What do you guys think? Any chance UA can get up there more so than they already are? Or do they need more legitimate tour players under contract like Spieth?

Jim, Thanks a lot for doing this! I agree with the benefits of slow yoga. In spite of enjoying yoga and being flexible enough to get into it, I haven't made it part of my workout routine. But I want to and I'm looking forward to your instructional videos!

Thanks for the book recommendation, I'll read it for sure! I think it's true for most sports that, even when the data science behind them has advanced quite a bit, the mainstream perception and tv announcers seem to be on a different level. Yeah, this is an interesting perspective. Definitely worth exploring. Has anyone tried, though?

First of all: I'm not a golf expert by any means, if anything, I'm a newbie. So, when I make the assessment that data science has not reached the golf industry, I might not have all the facts, I'm just reproducing what it looks to be the pattern from the outside and as someone who is familiar with the data revolution in baseball, basketball, and football. I also just finished the book: "Everybody Lies Big Data, New Data and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are", a great book on data science in general, not only in sports, so the topic is very vivid on my mind. How much of the Moneyball revolution has transpired to the world of golf? Are we valuing players and predicting tour results better in the face of big data? If you are into this, I would love to learn more and know your opinion on this matter. Also, if I am completely wrong, I am ready to learn about the advanced quantitative methods used in golf today. Thanks!

Wow, the results of this poll are very surprising to me. I don't mind the golf attire, and maybe I'm too much of a newbie, but I do not see a problem in branching out of the traditions that might have helped to keep golf as a sport that is distant to the masses. There is also an obvious class/status component to the game, which I think is why dress code is so important. But... if I run a company and want to increase the number of users of my product, I would want to remove all obstacles, and dress code might be an obstacle for some younger people that would get into it if it wasn't presented in the way it currently is.

Hey! I'm excited to start participating. Golf foruming can get pretty fun with the right amount of Happy Gilmore references.