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That is true. A lot of college teams also wouldn't like a playoff instead of bowls. Sure it would be great for the 16 teams that make it but there are like 30 bowls now. There would be 40+ teams that used to go to a post season game that are now sitting home. And the teams that make the championship game would have played 3 (2 if you go off the play off) more games than the current one. That might not be a win for those players either. And there will always be complaints. If you go to an 8 team playofffs your 7-10 teams are Georgia (1-2 in against the top 15), LSU (2-2), A&M; (1-2), SC (2-2) would be fighting for those last 2 spots and we are back to a beauty contest. Given how SC crushed Georgia and had the Clemson win, why are they the not the better team? Sequences of losses is the big one. And you can do that logic for the rest of them. And are any of those teams better than OK who has 2 losses against top5 teams (granted no big wins). Bump it up to 16 and we are talking margin teams (maybe Northern Ill will suprise me). I mean take a look at Clemson. 0 top 25 wins, Nebraska (just gave up 70 pts to a Wisc team. and doesn't have a top 25 win either), Or St (1 top 25 win, 3 losses total). I am sure on any given saturday any team in the top 50 or so can beat any other team. Using a play off to big a national champion isn't a better or worse champion than using the regular reason. Last season was Alabama really a better team than LSU? Not really. The order of wins was just different. Well and LSU looked pathetic in the championship game.

I am not a coach or personal trainer. And I have also never said anyone can be scratch or that time and effort can make you elite (not sure if I would call scratch elite or very good. Depends on your definition). You have read that into what I have written. What I have said is that to maximize your golf potential 5 hours a week of golf isn't going to cut it. If you area 5 and don't want to spend time practicing the short game (i.e. the original post), it isn't clear that your limit is talent. And yes this is stuff gets harder the better you get and the more you practice. If you are a 5 on 5 hours a week of practice (pretty much made up numbers), it might take 10 hours (3x the practice) to get to a 2 and and 30 hours (6x ) to get to a 0. And to be clear, hours are just a proxy. You can spend 30 hours a week at the driving range but if you are not working on the right stuff, it isn't going to help your game. You can look at stats that say only 1% of players (I have seen numbers from .1 to 2% I assume they use different data sets) are scratch and say that 99% of us have no chance. You can also look at the practice habits of most of those golfers and say that 99% of the golfer are making no effort to be the best golfer they can be. Most of the golf population with handicaps are made up of guys that play 1-2 rounds a week and maybe hit the range/practice green for an hour a week. I don't think that gets most of us close to our golf potential.

Anyone know if these are still available? I had a list of a halfdozen training aids to try next year (making a christmas list) and about half of them no on longer seem to be around.

Ok. We can also resume the discussion after you decide to actually work on your game. 6 months of 30+ hours will give you a little perspective about what hard work can do.

I never said anything about the accuracy of urban dictionary. And I really hope at least 2/3s of the definitions are made up....

To be fair you should post the whole handicap history. You know the one where were he got to 10 bounced around between 10 and 12 for 6 months and ton of people posted that he has hit his limit and he would struggle to get into the single digits. Then he dropped to a 6 and now has been stuck there. Improvement isn't a linear process. It goes in starts and stops. Personally I expect him to have another decent jump next year to a 2 or so. I am basing this that he has only hit the long clubs for ~ 1 year (I know a ton of hours) and I think there is certain amount of learning that is measured in total days doing something rather than just time practicing. That being said I have lost a lot of faith in Dan of the past couple months. Not working with a coach much for the last year and becoming a club ho is not what I consider good practice strategies. I have said it a couple times but now is the fun part for Dan. The easy stuff is all done. Can he grind out another 12 strokes to be a PGA pro (I doubt it). Another 6 or so to be scratch seems possible if he can actually last another 3 years. Maybe but if you can get to scratch with the work, the limit is your desire not physical ability. When you start scaling it back to what most good 30-50 year golfers do (2 rounds a week, 3-4 hours of hitting balls, and 16 oz curls on the couch would be the high end of the guys I know), you can see the room for improvement. Quote:

I don't think many people will disagree with the first. The disagreement is all in the 2nd. My position is that very few people come close to maxing out your physical limits. Your a 5 but I am guessing you don't spend 30 hours a week practicing, 12 hours playing another 5 in the gym and so on. Your 5 is a reflection on your talent level AND practice habits. You can't change the first one but you can the second. However it isn't remotely practical for most people to set up their life so they can max out their golf game. Quote:

I always use Urban dictionary for these type of questions: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=hand+grenade . You can decide what definition fits....

I can tell you this midcapper doesn't think it is a little more practice. With a LOT more practice and I time I like my chances of being in the 0-5 range. But as I said, I will likely never do that much practice as I don't think I would enjoy spending 3+ hours a day on a course for a couple of years. Most of the guys that I know who play right around scratch but that time in as a kid/young adult. Maybe you know someone who got to scratch practicing 3 hours a week and playing a couple of rounds after picking the game up at 25, but those guys are super rare in my experience.

Weightlifting is too generic of a term to tell you much of anything. People lose flexibility when weight training when they use limited range of motions. If you are doing full range of motions you will increase flexibility (at least for the ROM of the exercise). In theory you if you packed on enough pounds of muscles, you could still be flexibile in a lot of directions but have those muscles interfer with your swing. That isn't likely to happen to anyone without them noticing. Very few people can pack on the 50+lbs of muscle that would be needed. If you start looking like this you are not spending enough time on the course.

Do the stretches and wrist exercises. Hot/Cold helps after a round but until you strength and stretch the muscles, it keeps coming back. I found the break has to be long (6+ weeks) on most tendon things. And yeah it is a nuicance you deal with until it gets real bad (i.e. it hurts to type) and then you get serious about fixing it.

Actually you can teach people to run fast, jump, throw faster, and hit the ball farther.Are there genetic limits? Sure. But it isn't clear where 300 yard drives are for most people. The average guy supposedly swings 90mph and drives the ball about 210. There is a lot of research suggesting the weight/flexibility training can give most people ~5% increase in swing speed in 12 weeks (a really short period of time. You don't build much muscle in that time frame and it is mainly all neurological). In trained golfers overweight/underweight training has been shown to give about 5-10% increase over 12 weeks. That work gets us half way to the needed 110mph swing speed. Can you get the rest through more of that training (i.e. it takes more than 12 weeks to max out any training), coaching (I am sure everyone has one or two power leaks), or equipment (slightly lower weight & ari resistance)? Who knows. We think of 300 yard drives and 110mph as being really far and fast. And they are. But if you think of it as the top guys being 370 yards and 130mph (normal driver not long driver), you realize their is still a huge gap between what we are talking about and the limits of human performance. Now figuring out if the average guy can develop the repeatibility of the PGA pro is the big question and I am not sure what the evidence for that is either way. Quote:

I am guessing Oh ST would be #2 but their schedule was worse than AL. They would have played #13 Neb and #19 Mich while Al would have played #7 LSU, #9 A&M;, & #19 Mich. Personally I wish they would crank up the SOS and devalue wins. I am a heck of lot more impressed by FL losing to GA in a close game than any team playing western carolina. The SEC really needs a 4 team playoff. I want to see Ga versus LSU and AL vs FL followed by the championship game. And I would feel a little bad about leaving both A&M; and SC out. Right now the SEC has a huge luck component. AL getting to play TN/Missouri is a huge advantage versus LSU playing SC/FL or A&M; playing FL/Missouri. And georgia playing Auburn and Ol Miss while FL played LSU and A&M; is an even bigger joke. It is too bad SC or a&m; didn't beat LSU. This situation would be even crazier.

Only if you can hit the 4 iron. There are a lot of guys out there that hit the 4/5 iron about the same distance. For those guys you buy the hybrid. Personally I prefer the 5 wood to the hybrid but that is a personal choice/failing.

5w or 3/4 hybrid. You are looking for a club for long par 3s and 2nd shots on par 5s.

What does your baseball skill have to do with your golf game? Lets look at the numbers. The USGA says there are ~300k scratch golfers in the united states. How many minor league ball players do you think there are? A quick google suggest there are ~200 teams in the US and lets say each one has 30 players (I have no idea between call ups, cuts, and the like how accurate that is but I am guessing it is within a factor of 2). That is 6000 people. As far as people putting in the time and getting to scratch, read Paper Tiger. The guy goes from ~15 to a ~+1 in 9 months by practicing a zillion hours a day. Or look at the Dan plan where a guy has gone from no golf to a 6 in about 3 years. We can check back in another 2 and see if he gets to scratch. The dream on guy (24 handicap to breaking par at a muni. Yes that isn't scratch but it is also only 1 year of training). And yes to be fair there are the failures littered across the internet of guys that have put in serious amount of time and are still 8s. The point is that for most of us it requires a crazy amount of practice (i.e. something few people over 21 can do) to get to scratch with our physical abilities. You can consider that a physical limitation. I consider it a time one. Quote:

I am guessing playing minor league baseball is an order of magnitude harder than being scratch. Lets not pretend that being scratch is close to a pro level. The difference between 0 and the +5 or so of a PGA pro probably a bigger gap than the difference between a 20 and 0. Being world class is when talent and hard work intersect. Being very good at something is in the reach of most people that put in the hard work. I never said spending 20+ hours a week is easy or a good life choice. But it is what most of us need to do to get to scratch. I accept that I am only going to practice 200 hours/yr maybe about that much of playing time means that I am never getting to scratch. I will probably be lucky to get to mid single digits. But it isn't lack of talent that is holding me back from being scratch. It is time.

I agree. But if you don't put in the work, you will not get better. A 5 that doesn't spend time on the practice green is a heck of a lot different than a 5 that has spent 1000 hours a year for the past 5 years practicing. There are a lot more guys in the first category than the second. And I keep mentioning time a lot but that is only half the equation. You need to practice in ways that make you better (which is hard to know) and on the things you need to make you better. Both of those are hard. I have no clue what percentage of people would be scratch if could do the work, but I am willing to say if you got a 150k dollar check each year being scratch, you would have 100x as many people doing it as it would be worthwhile for a lot more people to put in the time.

how many days in a row did you practice golf for 12-16 hours a day without taking vacation or sick days? Your work ethic at a job is not going to help your golf game. My comments are is based on your statement of " I also did not have the patience to spend hours hitting balls or to spend hours on my short game as I got bored too easily". If you practicing 30+ hours a week, then you can talk about talent being a limiting factor in your golf game. Up until then the limiting factor is your lack of time commitment. Again I am not criticizing you or your choices. I am just commenting that not willing to practice is not the same as LOFT in my book.

Yes given your work ethic, you suffered from LOFT. With Tiger Woods work ethic, who knows. I think you (or pretty much any of us) is delusional in trying to guess how good we would be if he put in 10k hours of practice over 10 years. People's improvement curve is all of the place. Obviously I am just going off your comments on your lack of desire to practice. But as we both agree, it isn't worth the time for most of us. The sacrifices required are too much for the limited reward. Most of us do the best we can with a couple of hours of practice and a round or 2 a week.

There have been several stories about pros going out to your local muni. Here is one: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101221.html?sid=ST2009071701245 . Make it a 6400 yard course with nice greens and give the guy a practice round or two and you will start seeing the mid-low 60s.

You don't seem to understand that the plane will not be stationary. It will be going forward at some fast speed. Again the force accellerating the plane is not applied to the ground. Having the treadmill just makes the wheels spin a bit more.

The plane will move forward and hence have airspeed over the wing. The fact that it is on a belt moving in the opposite is irrelevant. Feel free to google any of the zillion a websites but the summation is that the wheels on the plane are not there for propulsive power. They are there to reduce friction. Think about how sea planes(or snow planes with skis) can still take off. The wheels on this plane will spin like crazy bu the plane will still go forwards and generate airspeed over the wings. If your a physics geek, you can draw up a free body diagram where the forces in the x direction are the F = (thrust of the propeller- drag from the wheels). The drag on the wheels has nothing to do with thrust. Quote:

I don't think that really answers the question. The question is why is better to have a 38.5" 5 iron instead of a 37.5" 5 iron for this particular player. He obviously can swing a 37.5" club (when he swings his 7 iron). Obviously you might have to mess around with lie angles and the like to get everything to right but what would be wrong with swinging a 5 iron with what would normally be a 7 iron swing? Off the top of my head the AOA would be a bit steeper than normal for a 5 iron but I am not sure if that changes much. The other thing is that his 9/PW/SW will be extra short relative to what the other guy is playing but we are talking like .5" at that point.

The scratch player should have picked a better day. He needed to make sure it was either a 2 hour round or a 7 hour one.