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> But being from Michigan, I play a lot of 'up north' golf, which means, tight fairways, many trees, and (because it's usually a golf trip with the guys) a few extra barley pops. +1 for the Northern Michigan golf.. playing those holes caved out of forest can be challenging. Great place for a golf weekend with the guys. The balls of choice for me are from MG Golf. They are re-badged balls from a mainstream manufacturer (used to be hogan balls, then I think Callaway). They are balls with the spin rate of premiums, and the price of cheapies -- $20 per dozen. No marketing, minimal packaging, just the best new balls $20 will get you.

I know this thread is really old, but I am searching around for a spreadsheet to track a simple golf league. It's for my father, who is in a small church league. I told him we could find a spreadsheet to track the players' handicaps for the 9 hole league. The previous post mentions an attached spreadsheet, but I don't see it. Is it available somewhere? Or, does anyone have a pointer to a decent spreadsheet? Thanks for any help.

Anchoring the putter to your body. Use a putter as long as you want, but anchoring it to your belly or chest seems inconsistent with all the other rules governing club form, grip, etc. A vertical shafted putter is non-conforming. Croquet style putting is not allowed. I'm not sure why belly putters are allowed.

Good point.. Honestly, I never remember whether a situation allows for one or two club length relief. So, I usually just go with one driver length to be cautious. But, I don't see the logic for why the small difference in relief in various situations. Standardizing would eliminate a lot of confusion, and speed things up.

I don't think filling divots is a rule, it's a courtesy. I walk whenever possible. I replace my divots whenever possible, and I fix any ball marks on greens I encounter. I fill divots with mix, if the divot is destroyed and mix is available. But, I don't carry my own mix because of the weight and convenience. Frankly, those of us who are aware of the issues are most likely not the problem, and any attempt to change behavior of the clueless is futile. The problem of idiots not raking the traps is probably even worse. It happens a surprising amount even at nice courses. When my ball settles into a deep footprint, it pretty much eliminates the chance of getting up and down, and sometimes even getting out of the trap. As for the OB comments earlier: The OB stakes didn't move.. they were there when you addressed the ball and should play into your choice of club and line. No one forced you to use driver, if you decide to take the risk, take your punishment like a man. If I don't like the OB placement (e.g. all the courses with homes hugging the fairways) I avoid those courses.

With almost any GPS device, you should be able to check the stats and see how many satellites it is locked on to and what its accuracy is. With the iPhone, there is a free app called "GPSLite" which has a screen that shows the GPS signal strength and accuracy. When I was checking my iPhone on the golf course last weekend, it said the accuracy was 150ft. My Garmin car GPS unit usually is around 15 (feet or meters, I'm not sure what the units were). I'll have to check my SkyCaddie this weekend to see what it says.

Mine's on a mount attached to the umbrella holder of my push cart: http://thesandtrap.com/forum/threads...gear-GPS-mount So, it's always out in the open and locked in to the GPS signal, so I immediately have a good yardage as soon as I stop my cart next to my ball.

I have had my 60* wedge for three years, and the grooves are looking quite worn. My wedges get more wear and tear than most of my irons, because they are used more. I practice with them, chipping around in the yard, etc. I'm wondering if the fact that they look worn necessarily means they are not performing up to snuff. Or, if this really isn't a big issue and they perform as well as new wedges. I know people who swear by their ancient rusted wedges, and claim that the rust gives them better bite. How about re-cutting the grooves? Do many people try this?

Black Max is a good ball. Opinions vary, but I find them to be comparable to the expensive premium balls. But, make sure they are Black Max, and not Black Max Distance or some other variant. The other versions of that ball are nothing like the original. Where can you get them, and for how much?

I did a quick test last night to see if the materials I had could be a workable mount. Once I clean it up a bit more, and get a better attachment setup (rather than a screw and a couple washers), it will be okay. Certainly not as good as kregan's, but it will serve my purpose. Here are a couple pictures:

I was wandering around my local Target store last night, looking for potential material to use for a mount. There were several cutting boards. They were thicker than I expected, and pretty rigid. But, I will give it a try. I also looked at other products and materials which could be modified more easily. I found some lighter weight plastic which might minimally work, but didn't seem as sturdy. Probably the best options I found were the spatulas. There were some of roughly the right size and shape. The only issue would be the modification to get it to mount well (and, of course, removing the handle). But, I think it is do-able.

Thanks for the followup info. In the pictures it looks like the plastic is angled upwards. Is this just the result of the way it is attached, or did you actually bend the plastic? (If so, how? Heat?)

That is a great solution! I recently got a SkyCaddie 2.5 and have been looking for a nice clean clic cart mounting solution, pretty much exactly like what you created. The SkyCaddie has the same belt-clip holder so this would work very well. The mounts offered by SkyCaddie look quite cumbersome compared to yours. They look over-engineered, with a screw-down compression fit onto the cart tubing. For those of us without your nice shop gear.. What would it take to make something like this? Is the plastic piece you started from a standard component, or is it completely custom (you mentioned it's scrap plastic, I'm basically wondering about the bent layout and what a good starting point for this is)? I guess I'm looking for something that can be done with a Dremel. Beyond that, I don't have the tools.

That's very interesting from a V1x user. I have not played the Gamer yet. The marketing for it sounded good.. they say it has good spin/feel. But, I opened a box of them at golfsmith, and they just felt hard. In most premium balls, you can feel a little tackiness to the cover, but to me these felt harder than the NXT / HX Hot / e6+. The real test is to actually play with them. But, I would be interested to hear others experience with these. If I grab some and try myself, I'll post here too.

For a while I was really liking the "Black Max" as an inexpensive ball with premium characteristics. But, now they are not available any more (unless someone knows of a source). I've been looking around for the next best thing, which has premium playing characteristics, at a reasonable price. By premium, I mean the standard $40/dz balls (Pro-V1x, Callaway HX, Nike ONE, Bridgestone B330, Srixon ZUR, Taylor Made TP). I have tried the Maxfli Tour Fire, and I find it to be decent, but not as much spin as the premium balls. I really like the B330, but haven't found any decent deals. And, there are always the Practice and X-Out balls. I saw the Taylor Made TP X-Outs at golfsmith for $20. Any other recommendations?

Hit them all, and pick the one that works best for your swing. Several local Muni's have had their "Demo Day" recently, so I went out and hit all the drivers I was interested in side by side. I hit them on the range, where I could see the ball flight, and I'm glad I did. For me, it was down to the Cleveland XLS and the Tour Burner. So, I went to the next demo day a week later, and hit those drivers (and a few more) again. They also had a launch monitor set up, and I hit the Tour Burner on that because I wasn't sure about getting the 9.5 or 10.5 degree version. I went with the Tour Burner 9.5 degree with the stiff shaft. It absolutely launches the ball.

That's funny. I've had that happen before in a foursome I walked on with as a single. One idiot picked up my quarter, and was commenting on his luck. He realized his mistake when he saw the look on my face.. I didn't need to say anything. I now use my Michigan State Univ. marker, with the WWJD? (surprisingly aggressive, in most cases. He didn't come here to lay up.) magnetic holder.

I read a book a few months ago, a very similar theme.. A guy around 30 years old decides to drop everything for a year, move to Florida, get the best coaches he can, and dedicate himself 100% to the goal of making it through PGA Q-School. It was really a great read for me, and I suspect for anyone with a touch of the golf bug. Of course, making it through Q-School is significantly harder than becoming a scratch golfer, but the concept and timeline is similar. The book is called "Paper Tiger", and I think the author is Tom Coyne. It's out in paperback now, I highly recommend it. To the OP: If you're willing to commit 100% to that goal, like described above.. sure, it can be done. But, not many of us have that luxury. Set aggressive goals, but make sure they're not too unrealistic.

Depends on your handicap tracker, and if it as your course rating and slope rating built-in. Par is not used in handicap calculations. Only course ratings and slope ratings. There is a course near where I live that is par 71, and has a slope rating around 66. Most courses won't have such an extreme range between the two, but obviously it can make a big difference. Also, if you want to get an exact handicap calculation, you'll need to follow the USGA rules for rounding/truncating numbers, and you'll want to do the 96% adjustment after rounding. (If you're just doing it for informational purposes, these things are unimportant, and should only cause errors in the 1/10 to 1/5 of a point range. If you want to double-check your official rating, you'll want to strictly follow the formula). It's probably not worth messing with the details, with so many good options for calculating it for you. Just pick one of the programs or www sites that do it for you. I just went through the exercise of figuring it out in making my own Mac OS X handicap calculator program: http://divottracker.googlepages.com

But I see a ton of softspike scuffs. I think those are often worse than metal spike marks. The only one I can think of is relief from an embedded lie. I think this came up in the British Open a few weeks ago. A U.S. golfer requested relief and was denied. But, you're right, other than a couple corner cases, the rules for both are identical (maybe even using the same document?). But, my main point was that the rules of golf are not immutable. They change, or at least are refined/clarified often. Most are logical and reasonable. But, there are some that could be amended within the spirit of the game and of fair competition.

I'm surprised noone has mentioned being able to repair spike marks on the green. I agree with the other posts on the divot relief. If they set a guideline for how deep a hole, or type of hole (i.e. created by the strike of a club, not just any random disturbance) then it's just a judgement/honor call, like so many other things in golf. It's not too unlike deciding what qualifies as casual water. Relief from player-caused sand trap issues (foot prints, ball resting against rake left in trap, etc.) seems reasonable. A "fix and drop in same location" would be fine.. Dropping a ball straight down in a trap will likely give you a fairly crappy lie anyway. In general, I guess I don't think a player should be penalized by the actions or negligence of other players. Also, remember that the rules of golf were not handed down from upon high.. They have changed over time, and will continue to change. Anyone want to play with the stymie rule in effect? USGA rules differ from Royal and Ancient rules. The USGA even experimented with no penalty for O.B. in 1960. They allowed a re-hit with no penalty (e.g. re-hit from the tee, lying one). That rule may have given Palmer the U.S. Open that year, saving him a stroke on the 14th at Cherry Hills ("The Eternal Summer", Curt Sampson, p.132).

I think a simpler option would be using something like "Magic Pen", which allows you to draw on your screen. Then, you could just use a standard video playback app. It's still not as good as a real swing analyzer app, but it's better than dry erase markers of modifying frames of video. http://homepage.mac.com/fahrenba/pro.../magicPen.html As for the video playback app, I'm not sure if there are any apps that are better than the others. With motion as fast as a golf swing, you want to have as much detail as possible. I think some of the Windows apps display each "field" of the interlaced video, to get 60 fields per second, rather than combining two fields into a frame for 30 frames per second. There would be less resolution in each field, but more motion detail with twice as many samples shown. In the past when I looked at swing video in QuickTime, it looked like it was showing less detail than the Windows swing apps.

Yeah, something that does the basics would be very useful: - Good control of frame by frame, or even field by field, playback (long slider, so it's easy to control the motion of the swing) - Line / shape drawing on top of playback window. Some more advanced items, version 2.0, could be: - Show two video windows side by side. Compare good & bad swings, or compare to video of a pro. - Ability to trim video into individual swing clips And, if you want to extend it to the super-deluxe, to be used for lessons (and charge a lot more for), there are things like: - DV-Cam control for live video capture - Control / Sync multiple camera angles - Auto-detect swing by detecting impact sound - Incorporate data from launch monitor and impact cameras It seems like the basics would be pretty straightforward for someone familiar with QuickTime. Several of the Windows apps of this type have demos available, to see some of the features in actual usage.

Yeah, tournament scores are probably the best indicator. In Europe, don't they use only tournament rounds in handicap calculation?

There are some good video analysis programs for Windows (V1, CSwing). But, I have never located anything for Mac OS X computers. Does anyone know of a swing analysis app for Apple computers?