turtleback

And it only took him 15 years to realize it.

Do you know how that cut line was established? Low x and ties? What would x have been?

You are pretty new to the board. One of the things you will find out is that ALL of this stuff has been discussed and, more importantly DOCUMENTED here in this thread. From the records we talk about and what was said at the time, personal experience from a guy who was there, etc. And if someone like @iacas or @brocks makes a factual statement in this arena they absolutely know what they are talking about. Don't you remember when instead of 125 exempt players there were only 60. And the other tournament spots were filled up by rabbits qualifying on Monday, rabbits from the previous week who made last week's cut and sundry other non-touring pros? Would you believe what a guy who was there and posts here and was one of the guys trying to qualify, @Phil McGleno? How about the week to week story of the tour, in Jack's day, contained in Frank Beard's 'diary' book about the 1969 season when he was the leading money winner on tour. There was no Nike tour, no viable eurotour*, no foreign tours*, nowhere* that someone not in the top 60 could play full time tournament golf. You were either one of the sixty or you were a club pro with aspirations. And, frankly, the bottom of that top 60 was heavily populated by guys who were club pros and would return to being club pros after they lost their card. It was a completely different golf world. Since you are so 'offended' (really? Golf is something you actually get offended over), what do you base YOUR statement on? * i.e., nothing that a US club pro could make a living at to build up the experience to make the jump to the US (and only world class, at the time) tour.

It would be interesting if someone could compile numbers, broken down between domestic and international, showing the number of golfers engaged in substantially full-time tournament play over the time period from the end of ww2 to the current time. Sadly, I doubt the data exists in accessible form. But I know enough about golf history over that period and the demographic impact on international golf of ww2, that I believe the numbers and their pattern would be quite startling.

I'm a pretty above-board kind of guy so I will certainly let the pro shop know what I am doing. If they offered a discount I'd take it, but I wouldn't just ask for one. And I appreciate those who expressed possible concerns, as it was all done in good faith.

Why would they be driving up to the green when I drop and hit from 75 yards? How is that slower than if I had just hit the ball from far away and was now playing my shot from there. Please understand, I'm not trying to argue with you. I have tons of respect for you and I take your comments seriously. I'm just trying to understand HOW slowing the group could occur so I can avoid causing it, but I honestly do not see how dropping and playing in from 75 yards could be slower than playing the whole hole. Thank you all for your responses. I will have heightened awareness of any slow play issues, but I think I'm gonna give it a whirl. My SinLaw and I are going to go to a range tomorrow so I can remember how to swing a club, then maybe go out on the counter next week. I also figure it'll be the best chance I ever had/have of breaking 70. LOL

I wouldn't be a fifth player, so I don't really see how it would slow down the group. Sure, slower than if I wasn't there, but how does it slow play down compared to me playing the full hole? Hopefully any following group can count to 4? I think you may have misread the plan. It is either my son-in-law and I as a twosome, or playing with 2 other guys to make 4. In my plan I'm not an EXTRA guy, I am in place of a 'full course's guy. So I am not ADDING approach shots, I am SUBTRACTING tee shots and long (i.e., anything more than about 75 yards) approaches. And will probably not spend any time searching for my ball.

I haven't been able to play golf for a couple of years due to physical infirmities. I probably won't ever be able to play full blown golf again. But I still get the itch. I'm pretty sure I could handle pitch and putt since the stroke is much gentler. Unfortunately we have no pitch and putt course anywhere near. So I'm thinking of doing my own version. I'd go out with my son-in-law to a local course and pay the full regular greens fee. But I would just ride along with him until we got to within 50-75 yards. Then I would drop a ball and play the rest of the hole in the normal manner. So my question is, if you saw someone doing this would it bother, irritate, or annoy you?

People forget how difficult and rare it is for a player to maintain a top-notch, top-3 level game for more than a couple of years. It doesn't matter if you are Rory, Justin (rose), Dustin, Justin (Thomas), or Jordan. And that will, in all liklihood, be the case with Brock.

It is not that guy's lack of knowledge that is so irritating, it is his utter lack of anything resembling critical thinking. The minute someone dismisses something because it cannot be proven mathematically is the minute they show themselves unserious. Because nothing outside the realm of math can be proven mathematically. And even things that ARE within the realm of math can be proven mathematically and still be wrong because mathematical reasoning depends in part on the veracity of the postulates. And thanks to Goedel we know that there are statement which are true but cannot be proven. The interesting thing is that one of the 'reasons' that is put forth as to why we can't answer the GOAT question is that we don't know how they would have fared against each other. Well in the case of tennis we KNOW Nadal is ahead 24-15 in all matches and 14-10 in finals. And still the same arguments made for Jack are made for Roger.

When you don't even know how many majors Tiger has I think your credibility has suffered a fatal wound. But thanks for that link which disproves all of the nonsense about how Jack would hit it 360 with modern equipment. With old equipment Dustin hit it just as far as Jack did in his heyday. Yet according to some, a young Jack would outdrive DJ by 60 yards on average. There's a circle that cannot be squared.

Yeah, no. I grew up watching Jack and was, and still am, a big fan of his golf. But because I was an observer for his whole career I know about the advantages he had over his fellow pros, who were driving - not flying like Jack - from event to event, who couldn't carve out a couple of weeks to get tuned up at the next major site like Jack did, who couldn't easily afford the trip to play the British Open like Jack could. Personally I think the confluence of weak fields and changing logistical conditions made the period of Jack's career the most propitious for accumulating majors. All most young folk really know about Jack is the '86 Masters. There is a lot of ignorance about what the tour was like in the 60s and early 70s. I've mentioned this book before, but if someone wants to see what it was like, Frank Beard's book: Pro Frank Beard on the Pro Tour lays it all out. Unfortunately it is rare and expensive. It was one of the earliest 'diary for a year' books that get prettied up by a real writer (Dick Schaap, in this case - I think he did several). Frank Beard was a successful tour player in the late 60s who, while not a top top player, won over 100,000 several years when that was a significant benchmark. Never won a major, but by one of the strange quirks of fate he was the leading money winner in the year covered by the book. Aside: Yeah, a guy many even here barely know was the leadinto money winner right in the middle of Jack's prime. Despite being one of pro golf's elite, Beard paints a picture of hauling his young family around in a station wagen, staying at the same cheap motels as the other players, and living a pretty challenging life, logistically. Nothing like the life of even a mediocre tour player today.

You are right. How could what Jack actually said have anything to do with what he was thinking. You must lead a very strange life where you do not believe anything that is not proven, in the mathematical sense. But of course that is just your posture here, not in real life, because very few things you rely on in real life have been 'proven' in the sense you are using the word here. Since I do not believe someone could put forth such a stream of irrationality in good faith, I am going with the troll diagnosis.

So the fact that at a time when American golf was absolutely dominant, only 4 Americans - none of which you ever heard of - entered the '59 British Open wouldn't weaken the field as compared to, say, the field in EVERY major won by Tiger. I think you just jumped the shark. I remember when the arguments on the other side had a little rationality here, but I think either @Vinsk is right and you are just a troll, or you are sitting there with you fingers in your ears saying 'nah nah, I can't hear you'.

One of Jack's earliest 'drafts' of what it would take to be the GOAT was beating Snead's record. Then he figured out he couldn't/wouldn't break that record and switched to an intellectually dishonest standard he had already achieved, but in which he had a HUUUUGE structural advantage over his GOAT rivals. And if we 'normalize' number of your victories by using a common set of criteria, between Tiger and Sam, of what it takes for an event to 'count' then Tiger is already significantly ahead of Sam. Statistical inference is most assuredly math. It is even maths.