Why is it unbelievable I can drive 300+ ?

[onlybereaved]

Jimbo is most likely never coming back (aside from ghosting).  Although, it would be cool if he came back and posted his Trackman session results like he said he would.  The issue is that he knows 80% of the people here will be the "I told you so" guy lol.

Ah well, after a certain amount of time we should let Darkman officially hijack the thread and we can ask for his Trackman proof.

lol

[Elmer]

Yesterday, 8th hole. 388 yards par 4. #1 handicap.

drive was 307 yards!!!!!

[divot dave]

Originally Posted by iacas

No you didn't. You posted video of you hitting a golf ball on a sim. That's not nothing, but it's closer to nothing than "proof" of anything. I asked you several times to stop posting in this thread, as it is not your thread, but now you get to sit on the sidelines and observe for a day or so.

You might very well hit the ball 350. I don't care. Aside from thinking it's amusing that you believe video of a sim is proof, I don't give your posts any merit.

The OP hasn't been on in 1 day and 13 hours: http://thesandtrap.com/u/38633/jimbo-slice . I'll send him a PM.

Holy power trip bro, why are you singling this dude out? EVERYBODY in this thread that has posted since like page 20 has contributed to the hi-jacking... Its clearly a joke of a thread anyway and abandoned by the OP who hasn't posted in days (a week or so?).

[ApocG10]

Originally Posted by iacas

Guys, please don't respond to Darkwhatever while he's sitting in the Penalty Box.

Jimbo Slice, how'd your session go? Did you visit Jeffry?

LOL. Jimbo is not coming back to this thread to post.

[ApocG10]

Originally Posted by divot dave

Holy power trip bro, why are you singling this dude out? EVERYBODY in this thread that has posted since like page 20 has contributed to the hi-jacking... Its clearly a joke of a thread anyway and abandoned by the OP who hasn't posted in days (a week or so?).

Its his playground, he can do what he wants.

[Golfingdad]

Originally Posted by onlybereaved

Jimbo is most likely never coming back (aside from ghosting).  Although, it would be cool if he came back and posted his Trackman session results like he said he would.  The issue is that he knows 80% of the people here will be the "I told you so" guy lol.

It's too bad.  You could be very right that he may think that, but he would be wrong.  I'm guessing that most of the people here (especially the "i told you so" doubters) expected that he would disappear exactly like he did.  (I didn't, I really thought he was going to follow through)  So if he were to follow through on the promise and come back, he'd get respect, along with a little bit of good-natured ribbing, from most people here.

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

It's too bad.  You could be very right that he may think that, but he would be wrong.  I'm guessing that most of the people here (especially the "i told you so" doubters) expected that he would disappear exactly like he did.  (I didn't, I really thought he was going to follow through)  So if he were to follow through on the promise and come back, he'd get respect, along with a little bit of good-natured ribbing, from most people here.

I thought he'd be back to, but then I'm not usually the cynic that some around here are.  He seemed like a nice guy who genuinely wanted to know how his swing stacked up.  There's no shame in finding out that an assumption is wrong.  I hope he does come back, and I hope too that those I told you so types tone it down, if they can't keep quiet completely.  That  is, assuming that he doesn't show them up.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by divot dave

Holy power trip bro, why are you singling this dude out? EVERYBODY in this thread that has posted since like page 20 has contributed to the hi-jacking... Its clearly a joke of a thread anyway and abandoned by the OP who hasn't posted in days (a week or so?). Why so anal?

Because we try to keep threads on topic around here, and I'm still holding out hope that Jimbo Slice will come back and report his findings. Given my earlier math error, and the simple fact that he lives and plays in Las Vegas, I thought there was a good chance he'd prove these people wrong, and that he could drive the ball 300+ on occasion.

But none of that has anything to do with some other guy claiming that he can drive the ball in a simulator. If Darksun wants to start a new thread, he's more than welcome to. This isn't his thread. There's no ill intent here - we just like to keep things on topic, and I think the majority of members would agree that we do a pretty good job of that.

Originally Posted by Golfingdad

It's too bad.  You could be very right that he may think that, but he would be wrong.  I'm guessing that most of the people here (especially the "i told you so" doubters) expected that he would disappear exactly like he did.  (I didn't, I really thought he was going to follow through)  So if he were to follow through on the promise and come back, he'd get respect, along with a little bit of good-natured ribbing, from most people here.

I'm still thinking he can do it too, and though I doubt he'll have the swing speed, I virtually guarantee it'll be close either way. Swing speed is not something you learn - you're born with it or you're not. Corey Pavin was always bound to be a short hitter and Dustin Johnson probably hit the ball 300 yards regularly as soon as he began finding the clubface. People are too cynical, or maybe they're insecure or jealous.

I hope Jimbo Slice comes back. I don't really care which end of the question he ends up on, and I'd handicap it pretty evenly at this point.

[divot dave]

Originally Posted by iacas

Because we try to keep threads on topic around here, and I'm still holding out hope that Jimbo Slice will come back and report his findings. Given my earlier math error, and the simple fact that he lives and plays in Las Vegas, I thought there was a good chance he'd prove these people wrong, and that he could drive the ball 300+ on occasion.

But none of that has anything to do with some other guy claiming that he can drive the ball in a simulator. If Darksun wants to start a new thread, he's more than welcome to. This isn't his thread. There's no ill intent here - we just like to keep things on topic, and I think the majority of members would agree that we do a pretty good job of that.

That's fine and dandy, and I'm all for it... I'm just wondering why you've singled him out with all the off topic posters in this thread...and then to take it so far as to suspend him. Kinda over-the-top (pun intended) imo.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by divot dave

That's fine and dandy, and I'm all for it... I'm just wondering why you've singled him out with all the off topic posters in this thread...and then to take it so far as to suspend him. Kinda over-the-top (pun intended) imo.

To be fair, he was suspended only overnight, and in my opinion his posts were far more off topic than the others. You're welcome disagree with that, which is fine, but the topic is a mixture of "can a beginner hit the ball 300 yards" and "we've all seen Jimbo Slice's swing".

Nobody cared whether darksun can drive the ball (especially in a sim). He's not a beginner, we haven't seen his swing and professed doubt, and the whole think just sounded way too much like he was trying to co-opt the original thread. He could have started a new thread, and the topic cloud would have been about the accuracy of simulators or something. Comments like " Any other funny long drive stories?" aren't on the topic, and nobody was asking this guy to prove that he could hit the ball 375+ or something.

He was suspended briefly so that I didn't wake up to find that more threadjacking had occurred and because he'd ignored repeated requests to stop posting what I and others considered off-topic stuff. That policy still stands, though your opinion is noted. (His first post was fine, too - it was on topic. His second, third, and fourth started to veer away into his own swing, and that's when I think it got off topic and became about darksun instead of about Jimbo). I'm not perfect, but I think we get a lot more right than we get wrong here, and I tend towards being firmer in decision-making than waffling. Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I get it right and someone thinks I got it wrong.

Off-topic posts will simply be removed from here on out. Again, this is Jimbo's thread, and I'm curious to know if he's going to come back and post his results. Even if he has to eat crow I hope he can do it. He'll earn a lot of fans if that's the case. And if he proves (most) everyone wrong, he'll earn fans that way too.

[Jimdangles]

To be fair, he was suspended only overnight, and in my opinion his posts were far more off topic than the others. You're welcome disagree with that, which is fine, but the topic is a mixture of "can a beginner hit the ball 300 yards" and "we've all seen Jimbo Slice's swing". Nobody cared whether darksun can drive the ball (especially in a sim). He's not a beginner, we haven't seen his swing and professed doubt, and the whole think just sounded way too much like he was trying to co-opt the original thread. He could have started a new thread, and the topic cloud would have been about the accuracy of simulators or something. Comments like " Any other funny long drive stories?" aren't on the topic, and nobody was asking this guy to prove that he could hit the ball 375+ or something. [LEFT] He was suspended briefly so that I didn't wake up to find that more threadjacking had occurred and because he'd ignored repeated requests to stop posting what I and others considered off-topic stuff. That policy still stands, though your opinion is noted. (His first post was fine, too - it was on topic. His second, third, and fourth started to veer away into his own swing, and that's when I think it got off topic and became about darksun instead of about Jimbo). I'm not perfect, but I think we get a lot more right than we get wrong here, and I tend towards being firmer in decision-making than waffling. Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I get it right and someone thinks I got it wrong.[/LEFT] [LEFT]Off-topic posts will simply be removed from here on out. Again, this is Jimbo's thread, and I'm curious to know if he's going to come back and post his results. Even if he has to eat crow I hope he can do it. He'll earn a lot of fans if that's the case. And if he proves (most) everyone wrong, he'll earn fans that way too.[/LEFT]

I'm with iacas on this one. It was becoming about long drive and if I didn't know better the way darksun was arguing I though he may have been trolling. And the thread completely became about whether or not he could drive that far and how he does it as a sideshow. May have been a good thread by itself but it was unrelated to this thread and almost unrelated to golf as using a ld isn't really part of it. No one cares if you can hit bombs in softball if you can't make contact with a pitch in baseball.

[divot dave]

Originally Posted by iacas

To be fair, he was suspended only overnight, and in my opinion his posts were far more off topic than the others. You're welcome disagree with that, which is fine, but the topic is a mixture of "can a beginner hit the ball 300 yards" and "we've all seen Jimbo Slice's swing".

Nobody cared whether darksun can drive the ball (especially in a sim). He's not a beginner, we haven't seen his swing and professed doubt, and the whole think just sounded way too much like he was trying to co-opt the original thread. He could have started a new thread, and the topic cloud would have been about the accuracy of simulators or something. Comments like "Any other funny long drive stories?" aren't on the topic, and nobody was asking this guy to prove that he could hit the ball 375+ or something.

He was suspended briefly so that I didn't wake up to find that more threadjacking had occurred and because he'd ignored repeated requests to stop posting what I and others considered off-topic stuff. That policy still stands, though your opinion is noted. (His first post was fine, too - it was on topic. His second, third, and fourth started to veer away into his own swing, and that's when I think it got off topic and became about darksun instead of about Jimbo). I'm not perfect, but I think we get a lot more right than we get wrong here, and I tend towards being firmer in decision-making than waffling. Sometimes I get it wrong. Sometimes I get it right and someone thinks I got it wrong.

Off-topic posts will simply be removed from here on out. Again, this is Jimbo's thread, and I'm curious to know if he's going to come back and post his results. Even if he has to eat crow I hope he can do it. He'll earn a lot of fans if that's the case. And if he proves (most) everyone wrong, he'll earn fans that way too.

I'm not gonna disagree with you here... and I agree that starting his own thread would have been his best play. I really don't necessarily think you got it wrong either... but to throw the book at him ONLY (maybe a harsh term there) and not the people who were regularly responding to him and egging him on is kind of where my emphasis lies. But this is as far as i'm gonna take it. I think its a fair move to delete off-topic posts moving forward. Not that I serve on the "universal golf forum ethics board" or anything either... I'm just a stickler when it comes to partiality I guess (except when its in my favor of course ).

'Preciate the explanation. And unless Jimbo resurrects I'll digress...

oh and... (had to)

[lobbob2]

I am glad to see a new golfer who can wail the ball. A little physics will go along way also. Keep in mind the ball always goes where the toe of the club is is pointed at impact. good luck and have fun.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by lobbob2

I am glad to see a new golfer who can wail the ball. A little physics will go along way also. Keep in mind the ball always goes where the toe of the club is is pointed at impact. good luck and have fun.

What does that mean?

[Fourputt]

Originally Posted by iacas

What does that mean?

Nothing.

I'm not sure what he meant to say, but that is just nonsensical.  Unless you hit the ball with the toe.....

[mchepp]

I am afraid you are right. My popcorn has gone stale waiting for the trackman results. To be fair, this sort of wild claims, then telling people to fly out to see them hit the ball is not new. They almost always end in a myriad of excuses, and then finally culminate in a disappearance.

I was hopeful on this one.

[bigwave916]

Originally Posted by Elmer

The joke in my golf league is that I hit it a ton, but cant chip or putt.

Driving has alway been easy. You just swing for the fences. Having a 20 year baseball/lacrosse background I can just whip that stick around. However when you get to the finesse and accuracy shots, I get the yips.

So I guess it is possible.

I didnt want to join the conversation as much as I want to get it out into the public arena that I had a 302 yard drive!!!!

Flame on!

The joke in my golf league is about the guy who trained a gorilla to hit a golf ball 460 yds. Takes him out to #18, a 460 yd par 4 and the gorilla hits it 460 yds and leaves the ball about 2 feet from the pin. Guy hands the gorilla a putter and the gorilla hits it 460 yards over the clubhouse into the shopping center across the road. Since the guy and the gorilla were never heard from again, we're thinking maybe the gorilla never learned to putt.

[Wisguy]

Originally Posted by iacas

I'm still thinking he can do it too, and though I doubt he'll have the swing speed, I virtually guarantee it'll be close either way. Swing speed is not something you learn - you're born with it or you're not. Corey Pavin was always bound to be a short hitter and Dustin Johnson probably hit the ball 300 yards regularly as soon as he began finding the clubface. People are too cynical, or maybe they're insecure or jealous.

I don't really agree with this statement, even though I read something similar from Tiger Woods' first golf instructor, Rudy Duran, in his In Every Kid There Lurks A Tiger book (kind of a poorly organized book, only so-so, btw), that you have to start out swinging hard or you'll never be able to get much distance.

One summer around 12 years ago I vowed I was going to get better at golf and took a lesson, spent a lot of time on the range, and played a lot more.  At that point, I had been playing for around 7 years and except for a brief period five years earlier when I had a lot of free time on my hands and was playing 3-5x per week (had two low-mid 40's 9 hole rounds then) had not shot any lower than maybe a 93 and had not driven the ball beyond maybe 270 yards and basically had not become any better or longer for years.  By the end of that summer, I broke 90 (barely, an 89 and had to par the 18th hole to do it) on a reasonably tough course compared to ones I more typically played and was hitting more than a club length longer, sometimes 25 yards longer per club; I went from around 110yds for a PW to around 135.  I attribute this partially to having stronger muscles from practicing more, partially to having better technique and hitting the sweet spot more frequently (also from practicing more), and partially to having more confidence to be able to swing harder.  I had several 3W tee shots that summer that went around 275 yards.

In the years since, my distances shrank until this past year, when I've been going out more frequently, and over the past few years I have acquired a new set of irons, new driver, new 3W, and a longer ball that have all been hitting longer than my old equipment and I'm nearly back to where I was that summer.

Obviously, the size/genetics/biology factor has a great deal to do with how hard someone can hit the ball, but I think that a lot of it also has to do with how hard the player tries to swing.  Some players really hold back trying to focus on control over distance.  I'll give a bit of an anology from another sport.  I recently picked up tennis again after not having played much since my youth, when I was good enough to have just squeaked into a varsity spot on an average high school team (so I know how to play but I'm not great).  My serve was really, really rusty and everything I read said it was far better to take something off the pace of the first serve to get it in more frequently.  I kept having people tell me the tennis cliche "You have a great first serve when it goes in, but if you took a bit of pace off it and hit it a bit less hard, it would be much more effective."  It was frustrating, since I was already serving at maybe only 55-60% - I was taking more than a bit off the power.  But for weeks I tried listening to that advice and practiced a lot, all to less-than-really pleasing results, with serves that were no better than average in power compared to the other guys in my league.  Last week, I got aggravated during a match, so I started serving harder.  And I discovered that not only was there no change in my first-serve percentage, but that when I was serving it at 80-85% effort, most of my serves that went in were winners - I doubled the number of aces compared to any other night all season and probably doubled my percent of first serve points won.  I got a bunch of compliments on my serve that night and suprised a few people who didn't think I had a very hard serve.   When you think about it, what do most golf instructors tell your average amateur player?  -"Don't grip-and-rip it, instead, hold the club lightly in your hands as if it was a bird, swing smoothly" etc....  Well, a fair percentage of golfers actually do listen to that advice and never try to swing for the fences, much the same as I had been holding back a whole lot on my tennis serve.

My first year playing, I ended up walking-on a lot early Saturday mornings with this super nice little bitty (5'1 in shoes, maybe) guy around 60 years of age who if he had one (I'm not sure he did playing at a cruddy little muny course so frequently), would have been a fairly low single digit handicap.  Back then in the days when a Big Bertha was still a bit new to have a head that large, he played with a driver that he said his son bought him in Japan (might have been a Honma) that had the biggest head anyone had ever seen (probably 460cc) that everyone who saw it joked was either a pumpkin on a stick, or asked him if that turtle minded being swung by the tail.  He had this smooth, effortless swing that took it out 200-210 yards, but always (literally, I don't think I ever saw him slice or hook) in the fairway and then he'd hit a slow, smooth wood onto the green.  On longer par-4's, he might not make the green, but he had a wonderful short game and usually put his chip inside 5' and poured his par putt in the hole.  He gave me a few tips and one thing he told me was the very obvious truism that short and in the fairway will almost always score lower than bombing it into the rough and trees - he said he said that if he wanted to, he could get an extra 30 yards or so  out of his tee shots, especially with that driver, but it wouldn't go as straight and he'd play a lot worse and maybe his back wouldn't let him play again for a few days.

So with a few exceptions, a typical fit, coordinated, lanky 6'2" player is always going to hit it farther than a typical fit, coordinated 5'7" player.  But I disagree with the idea that once a slower/shorter player, always a slower/shorter player.  Some times people who aren't bombing it are really holding back.  Better equipment, plus practice that can result in improved technique, stronger muscles, and better confidence can all add significantly to a player's swing speed and distance.