rolopolo

I belief you , not where I am from though - I have never ever seen a course here in SA with a course rating of 72 yet only 6500 yards long, regardless of how difficult it is. Anyways, not the point. The point that I am trying to make is that it seems to be that courses are getting longer yet the course ratings have been adjusted over time to accommodate advances in technology. I was wondering wether this is in fact true, and if anyone maybe has evidence that these formulas, espcially the length factors, have been adjusted over the past 20 years or so?

Yes fair point, but wouldn't your slope ratings and course ratingscalculations be adjusted from time to time to reflect tech advances? I do not have proof of this but would be interesting to see if the course rating formula have changed over the years. As mentioned earlier, we don't have slope ratings here, only course ratings. Here, a course at sealevel with a course rating of 72 would have to be more than 6700 yards from the club tees. In my area (at altitude), there are really only 2 courses I can play and access that have a course rating of 72. One is called Wingate Park and the other the Els club, both around 7200 yards from club tees. Anyways, I don't have evidence, but I wonder if these courses would have had the same course rating with such length 20 years ago? All in all, I am a bit frustrated with the length of courses. I often feel that I would enjoy it much more if I could play of forward tees, even if they were to have a rating of 69 or whatever. It's just really frowned upon here and unless you are playing by yourself, folk would probably tell you to play the proper tees

Courses of course have gotten tougher, so golfers really have improved even more than what those number suggests. Especially green speeds. However, just saying that " Golfers are getting better" is open to interpretation. There is obviously a nominal improvement, but is there a real improvement? I.e., if we take todays golfers and gave them the same courses and equipment as 20 yrs ago, would handicaps be the same? So for me, handicaps are lower: fact; golfers are better: no evidence

Oops sorry, was referring to others' rounds only. I have been struggling to break 80 too recently, my golf have gone to sh*ts. (pardon, have updated the hc). Nothing special about the courses - just normal old golf courses from the club tees. BTW, here in SA it is really frowned upon to play anything other than the club tees. You might on the odd occasion get someone who plays from the tips, but you won't get people playing forward tees, unless they are seniors. Heck most clubs probably won't even allow it

I play on average 1.5 rounds of golf a week, 6 a month. I almost always play with randoms and don't have a regular 4ball. During the whole of 2015 I witnessed a sub-80 score exactly 5 times. That's out of roughly 72 x 3 = 216 rounds. 5 out of 216 rounds broke 80. Now that I look at that stat it's shocking, but it's true, I can remember all 5 of them .

Bit off topic but I really enjoyed watching the young SAfricans on show. Brandon Stone won in the end by two shots over Bezuidenhout. Bezuidenhout has a nice story - he was the top ranked amateur in the country a couple of years ago. Then was banned for 9 months after testing positive for beta-blockers (due to medicine taken for a severe stutter). On his comeback won the Sunshine Tour Q-school and now a second place in the SA Open. I think he is one to watch for the future

Missed cut by 2 strokes in a poor field . Possibly gone at the game me thinks. They say he will also play next week in Joburg open. Might be time to pack it in and get a comms job or similar. He is quite a presentable and well spoken lad - there must be other opportunities out there for him?

Have debated tennis vs golf in terms of skill for hours with friends. For me, the biggest difference is the fact that good hands/eyes alone won't make you a great tennis player - a very big part of tennis is the athleticism/legs part of it. You need to be a very good athlete to make it in tennis, especially in the pro ranks. You can have the best hands/eyes in the world, but if you dont have the physique and athleticism you wont make it. Think someone like Ernie, Duffner, etc - I am sure they will be able to hit amazing tennis shot with a bit of practice, but would never have made it far in the sport. Golf really is unique from most other sports in the extreme level of hand/eye skill required, imo. Best tennis player I ever got to watch live was Jim Courier at Wimbles, it was also my first tennis tournie as a live spectator. It left me a bit "meh" to be honest. What impressed me was how fast they were covering the court, but that was about it. Nothing in terms of live sports has really ever impressed me as much as watching Tiger/Rory/Schwartzel, Monty, etc hit golf balls on practice range.It really is "wow". Other sports I love watching live is Rugby and Cricket, but it doesnt impress me as much as watching golfers. Another thing that sets golf apart from most other sports is how long it takes for a player to reach his peak. Good golfers typically start playing serious/competitve golf by age 11-13 or so, and then take them about 20 yrs of continuous practice till they reach their peak at around age 31, 32 or so. Also quite unique to the sport of golf is how close the fields are in terms of skill. In a typical ATP tournie, there are realistically 4 players at most with a chance of winning. The number 20-30 ranked male tennis players in the world are usually not close to the giving the top 5 guys any competition.There is a huge difference in their capabilities. In a golf Major though, you have a lot of guys who can realistically win. Guys here on our little shitty Sunshine tour destroy golf courses, -20s, -25s for a tournie, yet you have and never will hear of them. So yeah I think in golf vs tennis, you have a lot more golfers who are a lot closer to each other in skill level than is the case with a sport like tennis.

Here are more photos taken that day, some very dramatic and the waves were rather big on the day. http://m.smh.com.au/photogallery/sport/golf/tiger-woods-huge-waves-and-pebble-beach-20120209-1rnc8.html Digitally enhancing a photo with whatever technique in photoshop doesnt make it fake imo. They might have played around with it a bit in terms of colour balance etc, but its highly unlikely that they stuck some fake waves in there or made it bigger somewhat. It's just the angle the photo was taken at as another poster mentioned.

Aye, obviously a much better system than what we have, we only have a course rating which is purely based on length if im not mistaken. So 69, 70, 71 etc. They want to adopt the USGA system here, and even though we only have around 400 golf courses in SA and it shouldn't be difficult, what with typical African inefficiencies it could take a very very long time for this to realise Apart from that, I think handicaps are calculated the same way - best 10 rounds of last 20 rounds. Average differential times 0.96.

Interesting, the decimals. In America, when someone asks what's your handicap, do you say "11.4" or "11", for example? Here in SA we don't go into decimal points. An 11.4, for example, will become 11 and an 11.6 will become 12. Here is a screenshot of handicaps displayed when you do a search for a course, in this case The Els Club at Copperleaf:

Fair enough, not the place to discuss this. My reference to hunting is very much from an African perspective, which is where I'm from, and I probs don't have enough knowledge of American deer hunting culture. Just hate seeing people posing with dead giraffes, hippos, lions, 100 year old elephants, etc As you were.

Mmmm bit of a grey area. Are you saying that you like the hunt, but not the part of pullin the trigger? Something you have to do to feed your family? In that case I might let you off the hook .

Shooting a beautiful live animal in the face for fun and then posing with it for a photo is very f&cked up imo

just read a local article where they say he will also play the Joburg open and then a couple of the Arab tournies

No doubt that the long game has a bigger impact on score for just about all golfers. Also no doubt that the short game is where it's at for the average recreational golfer - due to much much less time needed to "master". In my opinion: Real good golfers (say 0-5hc players) are set apart from avg golfers (say 12-18hc) by their long games more than their short games, however, if you are a working man and want to get down to 5-10ish hc level - then you are gonna get much more reward for your time by focussing on the short game.

I see Trevor is playing in our national champs, SA Open, tomorrow. Paired with Ernie. Said in an interview that he wants to be competitive again and looking at this tournie as the start. Won it back to back in 2003/2004 I think - that's a very long time ago. Anyone knows what he is up to tour-wise in 2016? Looks like his official website has also been closed He finished outside the top 200 on the PGA tour last season - does that mean hecan still play a few tournies?

Voted Monty. Monty was a tremendous player, in an 8 year period or so from 1993/4 to 2001 he won on average 3 Euro tour tournies every year. In that same period he missed a bunch of cuts in The Open and really didnt perform well in the other majors either bar a couple of second place finishes. Was in two playoffs for a major title, lost both. In fact, Monty has been in heaps of playoffs during his Euro tour career and never ever won. Thinking that somehow he just didnt have the bottle to win one. Sergio can still win, Dustin probably will win one or two - but we can now reflect on Monty's career and say for sure that he massively underachieved in the majors.

dull as dishwater this lad, not much personality imo. happy gilmore drive about the most cringeworthy thing any pro can do?

Sorry to say but I do think it is too much to ask. If you want to hit the ball when you arrive at it, it means that you want oe expect all golfers to play at your speed and or hit the ball the same distance as you. What about beginners or the elderly? You surely cannot expect, that if you have a 60 yr old 20 handicapper in front of you, that you should be able to just walk up to your ball and hit it, no? Some people play slower than others, not necessarily because they are wasting time, but often because they move slower or have to hit more shots.

Sorry for the late response! I just think that An has done more than Bae this season, he just missed the auto qualifying, is clearly a tremendous match-player, and he is just outside the top 5o in the world (think Bae is around 100th?). I think if I was in my An's shoes I would find ti difficult to understand why i wasn't picked.

very unfair to Byeong-Hun An imho

don't mind lads in front hacking it all over the place, new golfers mean more are taking up the game which is a good thing. has golf really gotten that much slower? were we all playing 3hour rounds 20 years ago? some folk are just slow, they walk slowly, same as wimmin - short legs innit?

I'm not a wise man but if there is one thing ive learned it's that it's very very difficult to really know a person and how good/decent he is unless you have spent considerable time with him. Being a nice guy infront of cameras, having good sportsmanship, signing autographs, praising your peers, etc has, in my expereince, absolutely feckall correlation to how good a person someone is.

mmmm thats a lot of reading