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I want outrageous speed with a Callaway XR Driver Choice 1. Henrik Stenson -5 Choice 2. Ricky Fowler -5 Choice 3. Graham DeLaet -5

If I Win I'll choose the P2 wrap to start my 2015 golf season with a PURE advantage! Ricky Fowler -8 Jonas Blixt -8 Bubba Watson-12

I was out with the other mid-atlantic TST'ers early in the year. Par 3 and I fatted the tee shot...ever see the ball leaving like it's on a magic carpet? One made of grass? Anyway, now I'm not even to the forward tees on a down hill lie with 141 to the green. Optimistically I tell the guys "There's more than one way to make a par!". The shot doesn't leave the stick, hitting the flag about 3 feet up and ending up about 8 or so feet away. Made the putt for a memorable par.

I appreciated your commentary and the funny little laugh. Golf is indeed hard. Delightfully, simply, addictively difficult.

I had a feeling that this was related to body hair and googled "Bubba top button", sure enough: “I didn’t like how my chest hair stuck out from the top of my shirts, so I started buttoning them all the way up to the top. Now, everybody recognises me as the guy who buttons his shirts to the top, so it’s just something I do naturally.” - Bubba It's born from insecurity when he was a teenager and just kept going from there. Now he's stuck with it, if he got caught unbuttoned it would be a social media meltdown.

Same deal with course m parents lived at. Management just ran it into the ground. Did not market effectively to the large popular resort that was just across the lake, in fact the manager actively antagonized the resort manager. Didn't get enough events to come out, events that had gone there for years stopped coming. He didn't care because they weren't "golfers". He kept going off to low level competitive events on the weekends instead of running the business. His buddies kept coming and playing for free. Low revenues fed shortcuts on maintenance that then started a death spiral of disappointing golfers not coming back. There was a Google review where someone stated that it was as if they were trying to win a contest for the worst golf course ever. Regardless, the retirees in the community kept on using it as the center of their social day, playing along on terrible greens. Then one day the place was empty and all of those invoices vendors hoped would be payed were certainly not going to be. I suppose the manager trying to sell "lifetime" memberships for cash was a pretty good indicator. Sad, the course has good bones and if it was effectively managed and marketed it could have been a good little lifestyle business for a owner. To expensive to fix now that it's been 3 years gone. It was a 26,000 round a year course at it's best and was never going to make anyone rich, but it could have done OK if run correctly. Oh well.

This looked plenty hard. Hit 300 yard drive onto the fairway and then a 230 yard shot onto the green. That's plenty hard, if players do that then that's what the course is playing that day. Short of bear traps or flaming pits in the fairway I don't know what you can do. It rained everyday, greens were soft, but so were the fairways.

I was running an errand and was listening to the radio coverage through the app on my phone and the commentators there were convinced that the person that was ejected had said "Don't crumble Rory" and "Go Sergio" to him prior to the 15th. The radio hosts had their knickers is a bunch and were pleased that Rory had pointed the guy out and that he was escorted off.

Take solace in the fact that kids (and at 18 he is still a kid) go through phases, and what you mention seems to be a productive one rather than destructive. Look back on the good times you had on the course, allow him to follow his passion and hope that with some distance from the game he will miss parts of it and get back into it again. Perhaps an invitation to a Fathers Day round is in your future, or a round on your birthday for old times sake.

I suspect (could be wrong) that the greens keeping is also a long way ahead now too. That has probably affected the style of putting over the years. There aren't as many "pop" stroke putters now, which I think is better for slower greens. Or...I don't know what I'm talking about.

The rule of thumb on this is pretty clear, if you are directly behind the group in front of you, you are in the right position and there is nothing to worry about with the group behind. Now, if the group in front is a problem, call the clubhouse and ask a marshal to roll through. Edit: What David said

Ahh...here is the commercial that I was talking about earlier. Actually thought the whole thing was pretty well done, and JB's delivery of his line was great:

I'd like to be able to go a full round just making golf swings and not trying to hit balls. I tell you, this space between my ears is fighting me all the way.

Remember a ball commercial a few years ago where there is some statement about dimples and at the end JB Holmes hits a ball and makes the statement "Well, there's a dimple on it now". That dude just hammers the ball. I'm no expert, but his swing looks more conventional than Bubba's, and certainly the ball flight is more conventional.