Wisguy

I think I'm like most guys (at least like normal, non-metrosexual ones) - I found a hair style I liked and have stuck with it for over a quarter century - it just works, so why change? My wife is not like-minded and views keeping the same hair style to be roughly equivalent to reading nothing but the same issue of a magazine for the rest of one's life. So a couple days ago my wife gets a hair cut, quite a bit shorter than normal, and naturally, she first acuses me of gross-indifference-bordering-on-spousal-abuse for not taking the initiative to comment on it. Then of course, she asks that corrollary of those other well-known, damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don't questions like "Does this dress make me look fat?" or "Do you think that [smokin' hot but you wouldn't take her home to meet your mother] woman is pretty?", namely the infamous question "Do you like my hair cut?" First, it's shorter than I like, and second, it was really, really jagged and uneven (turns out the wind blew it out of place and it was fine when brushed back in place) and initially looked like it could be a really bad hair cut. I hesitated and tried hard to head to the basement on an errand, but she cornered me and said "WELL???" I mumbled "Uhhh, well... it looks a bit uneven." I'm in trouble no matter what because she saw me look with concern at the jagged part and I'm horrible at lying and she knows it. I get a "I can't believe you don't care enough about me to even say something nice!!" and she storms out of the room for a quarter hour. I would have been caught and put in just as much trouble if I tried to deliver a white lie, but I'm a jerk for telling the truth, too. Anyone else have this problem with your significant others? I'm trying hard to think of anything similar, but I'm pretty sure no man in the history of the planet has ever asked his female significant other a question that he knows will go badly and then throws a tantrum when he gets the anticipated displeasing response. Changing topics, I heard some stand-up by comedian Anthony Jeselnik on this topic: "My girlfriend just got a hair cut and she really hated it. So there she is sitting there in front of a mirror crying,and I say to her 'I don't see what you're so upset about - it's just hair and it will grow back. I'm the one who has to go find a new girlfriend.'"

In my youth I was a headbanger - saw Iron Maiden, Motorhead, Scorpions, Michael Schenker Group, Accept, Saxon, etc.... Starting college I was more into Rush, the Stones, The Who, ZZ Top, Dire Straits, etc... then got a lot more varied, anywhere from the Cure to The English Beat to Jimmy Buffett. Subsequently I got into the blues after seeing Chris Duarte at a music festival (he's been called a Stevie Ray Vaughn clone and they're somewhat similar, with SRV obviously being the bigger innovator and better songwriter, but Duarte is technically superior to Vaughn and any other guitarist I've ever seen or heard, out of at least 350 concerts). I've been mostly into blues over the past two decades when I realized that most of the greatest guitarists on the planet are bluesmen, but have forayed into surf music quite a bit, also (check out Honeybomb on Youtube by The Mermen - Jim Thomas is the best guitarist in the world that no one has ever heard of). A couple of times a year when my wife has a girl's weekend with our daughter at her mother's house and I don't go out with friends, I'll grill up a bigger steak than I could get away with when eating with the family, tip back an extra beer or two, and watch some Youtube music videos (or just songs) from my younger days that I might not ever have bothered re-acquring on CD, on the home theater, cranked loudly. Stuff like Genocide or Green Maniilishi by Judas Priest from Unleashed in the East, Black Tiger by Y&T;, Lovin' You Sunday Morning or Coast to Coast by the Scorpions, Swords and Tequila or Outlaw by Riot, Kickstart My Heart or Dr. Feelgood by Motley Crue, or a few really gritty blues numbers like Brown Sugar by ZZ Top (not the Stone's song - it might be the nastiest blues number ever) or Color and Shape by Joe Bonamassa. Aside from just maturing a bit and expanding my horizons, the thing that turned me off heavy metal was something that's practically a sacrilege to say to most metal fans, particularly younger ones - the rise of Metallica and the proliferation of their subsequent clones. They have to be one of the three most overrated groups in history. I find their tunes dull and boring, they display little musicianship, and I cannot stand James Hetfield's phony, ultra-tough-guy-wannabe growly vocals that have given rise to numerous scary-monster-voice copycats (worshipped by D&D-playing; "winners" who live in their parents' basements a decade or two past highschool). I recently used a beer analogy to a friend to explain why I don't like Metallica: "It's like a really poorly made stout brewed by a really pretentious brewer: dark, heavy, bitter, unpleasant, displaying little craftmaship or skill in the making, hard to consume in any quantity, and saying anything negative about it immediately gets you labeled an ignorant dick." My friend said "You know, I've never really like Metallica much and your analogy pretty much hits it on the head why."

It's ridiculous when, as is the case in most other countries, the service-providing employee is being paid something in the vicinity of a living wage and tips are typically small and/or optional, generally reserved for only above-average service. However, in the US, even very mediocre, average service deserves a tip because the price of the food, drinks, etc... does not include the employee's full wages and it is understood that the customer must factor in an appropriate tip into the cost of what is being purchased. If the service provider is doing such a disinterested job that it becomes bad service, well, then one can tip a very small amount or no tip at all, as it is indeed ridiculous to pay someone for service when that service is outright bad and deficient. However, if the service is simply OK, then tip 15%. This should not be a surprise for any foreign visitors to the U.S. - there are dozens of travel websites and travel books out there that very clearly discuss the tipping system in each country and how much to tip for Americans traveling outside of the US, so I am sure that there must be an equal number of sources out there for information on tipping available to those from other countries visiting the U.S. I have a hard time believing that any somewhat sophisticated foreign tourist to the US who doesn't tip is doing it out of innocent ignorance - I think our system should be sufficiently well-known and clear that most foreigners who aren't tipping are being cheapskates, not out of lack of knowledge.

Looks like there used to be a golf course there once. - Sam Snead, riding a train past The Old Course at St. Andrews on his way to his first British Open. Four worst words in golf: Still your turn again. - Me, on multiple occasions over the past two years, to one of my golf buddies who badly needs a new putter and/or some time on a practice green.

I think your shortened course would be very attractive to kids. My daughter's favorite course in the area is a little par-3 course that's the only lighted course in the state, with holes running from about 90 yards to 140 yards. She has told me that she likes the length of this course, but I think a good part of why she likes it is the novelty of playing at night, plus this is the course where she had the 85-yard 7-iron two summers ago and last summer she saw me hit a gap wedge to a couple feet for a birdie on a 105 yard hole. In August we were on vacation in Michigan and the Ferris State University course has kids tees on their course with really low greens fees for those playing from the family tees and she was very interested in playing there. I also wanted to see how the course and tees would be set up and play from the shorter lengths, but a bit of rain that week messed up our activities schedule and we ultimately decided to go canoeing and fishing on our last day instead of playing golf. One thing I've seen people do is for their 10 and under kids, have them treat the 150 yard marker on a typical par-4 or 5 as their tee box. I'd absolutely play a shortened course with my daughter. I played only a couple of times a year for the first five or so years after she was born just because I wanted to spend time with my family and felt guilty about taking basically a quarter of a typical weekend to play a single round of golf. I'm really liking the fact that she enjoys the game and has some natural talent at it (she's not a prodigy but I suspect that if she keeps up the interest, she'll be able to play at least on her high school team), as it lets me combine one of my favorite sports with family time - no guilt trips any more. Unfortunately, none of my daughter's friends play golf. I suspect that she'd be even more into the game if she had a friend or two who we could regularly take out to one of the local par-3 courses with us.

I think this could possibly apply to a) golf prodigies; b) who are hitting golf balls 4 or more times a week all summer long; and c) these figures are their best shots of the week. For normal kids getting into golf who play once or twice a week, these figures are grossly exaggerated - 6 to 8 year olds are hitting fairway woods maybe 50 to 110 yards, wedges maybe 30-40 yards. A 9 year old hitting a 200 yard fairway wood?? Come on - the majority of higher handicap adult golfers I see aren't getting over 200 yards with their fairway woods more than about 40-50% of the time. I think this is yet another case of the internet adding 20-50 yards onto claimed shot lengths. This was the third summer that my daughter has been playing golf, the second season with lessons, and she was hitting as long as any of the boys her size in several municipal golf lessons and leagues, as well as in the First Tee program (she is tall for her age - around 90th percentile). This summer, at age 7, my daughter hit a 75 yard hybrid tee shot on a 165 yard hole, which went 80 yards farther than my tee shot (which came off the toe, hit a post, then went backwards, settling behind a tree 5 yards behind and to the left of the tee box). She then overshot the green by 3 feet into the fringe with her second shot (I figure a 100 yard shot), chipped on, two putted and made a 5, legitimately beating me by two strokes after I had to take an unplayable lie. That was her best hole ever and she has reminded me of our scores on that hole more than once since then. I think she's hit one or two other shots in the nearly 100 yard range. The summer before, she had an 85 yard 7-iron that just had the purest-sounding click off the clubface a kid's club can produce. In a local kids golf league run by our municipality this spring, they had kids from about 6 to 13 playing and one of the assistants (a girl on the high school golf team) told me my daughter was hitting longer than some of the 10-12 year olds. I watched their fivesome play a few holes and that was clearly a matter of my daughter having a smoother swing and making better contact than the older girls, not a matter of strength.

I read years ago that North Korean dictator King Jong-Il, who was an avid golfer, typically claimed he broke 60 and was often said to shoot in the low 50's for a full-length 18-hole round. I guess there's something about the possibility of facing a firing squad that made Kim's playing partners more generous with gimmees, by up to 100 yards or more, than the guys with whom I typically play. Kim to caddy: "102 meters, is it pitching wedge....?" Caddy: "Glorious Leader - it's good! Pick it up, oh great Supreme Commander."

I advise you not to watch women's volleyball or you'll get more uptight than a fundamentalist cleric waking up in the middle of a San Francisco drag queen show. The teams hug, high-five, and slap butts after EVERY point, win or lose. I really don't understand that - it doesn't seem like a whole team can be that impacted from point to point by their mental games like players can be in tennis.

Hard to imagine they're under more pressure than the average player who went through Q school (particularly a somewhat older one with a family and mortgage to worry about) or the 126th-ranked player in danger of missing the cut with only a few holes to go on Friday of the last tournament of the year. Now Brian, he's got a different situation than everyone else, with his team captain, Chris Doleman, seemingly trying his best to be one of the biggest jerks in reality show history. The couple of times I've had something negative happen to me (beyond my frequent wildly inconsistent play) on a golf course that really pissed me off, I did not play well. It's got to be hard to focus when your team leader thinks you're a POS, you actively despise each other, and you know he's going to put 100% of the blame on you if your game falls below 100%. I commend Brian for rising to the occasion on the several episodes of this season that I've seen, given the pressure and animosity. Of course, he may well have been a choking prima donna in prior episodes I didn't see - feel free to set the record straight.

Ditto. She has a harsh, angular, very unnatural look to her. I suspect that she'd take a 4-point tumble on a 10 scale seeing her crawl out of bed first thing on a Sunday morning with no makeup versus her normal TGC appearance. Of course I suspect that might not be true for most guys if it was their beds in which she was waking. I say ditto for Paula Creamer not being on the list - she definitely makes my top-5 cutest LPGA player list. But has anyone else noticed that she seems to look better wearing a visor in her golf outfits than she does with her hair all styled out (kind of an 80's hairstyle) and looking fancied-up? Maybe it's just me, but it's kind of the same thing as Danica Patrick looking better in her racing outfits than she wearing a dress in glamour shots.

"The Elements of Scoring" by Ray Floyd. It doesn't have a whole lot of technique in it but it contains a tremendous amount of golf common sense and course management advice that would be very helpful to the beginning golfer. This would be good to get him in addition to a main golf technique book or video.

To address some points in prior posts without bothering with the multi-quote: - Shorts vs. Jeans. Depends on what else one is wearing. There's an upscale restaurant I go to every year on vacation and depending on the weather, I'll wear a golf shirt with either shorts or pants, but not jeans - a tucked-in golf shirt with a nice, crisp pair of shorts is dressier than the same shirt with jeans. However, someone wearing a decent pair of jeans with a dress shirt, especially with a sport coat, would be dressier than the shorts and golf shirt look. - Respect for the game and its "Tradition". Nonsense. A sport is a sport. One should show courtesy to others and comply with general minimal concepts of dress code decorum (i.e. even at a sporting even as casual as a softball game no spandex or super short cut-offs), but there is no rational reason for this slavering, deferential devotion that some people have for golf. Look decent, comply with course rules, be comfortable. That is all. Anything more and you're just playing dress-up. If you want to look like a dandy or a touring-pro wannabe, that's your prerogative, but don't get condescending with the majority of golfers who view the activity as fun time, not fancy time, who want to wear clothes they like rather than a costume. - Outfits in other sports: No, one does not see sprinters and divers wearing jeans and hoodies not because it is contrary to tradition, but because it is contrary to what performs best. Olympic swimmers don't even wear skimpy Speedos any more because other suits are more streamline and can save some small amount of time. When a fraction of a second can mean the difference between going home following the first-round heat and progressing into a medal round, athletes will wear the clothing that lets them perform the best. There is little correlation between golf clothing style and form, versus performance-oriented function. ============= Semi-off topic rant on dress/fancy/designer jeans: One of the chief benefits of being a guy is that we can look decent without the time and effort and money that most women devote to appearances. I towel my hair off in the shower, spend 10 seconds brushing it, and I'm ready to go for the day. No blow-drying, no applying products, no "teasing" my pretty locks, none of that prissy crap. I like the fact that I don't have to spend that extra 20 to 90 minutes that most women spend to have a decent, neat appearance. Similarly, for most of my lifetime, dressing casual in cooler weather meant wearing jeans and always, Levis have been 100% appropriate and respectable. I like the fact that I can spend $35-40 on a pair of Levis and they simply work in any situation where I can wear jeans. Levis fit most guys well and look good. However, I've noticed over the past year or two that a lot of the younger guys in my neighborhood, many of whom have trophy wives (who may be dressing them), are wearing designer jeans, ones with big pockets, fancy stitching, beads, buttons, even freakin' sequins on their pockets. These guys are spending $80, maybe even over $200 on jeans and it looks ridiculous to me. I'm dreading the day when some snooty assclown whose wife dresses him sneers at me and sniggers "Nice Levis" to his friends and I'll look around and see not just guys in the 20's or 30's but guys in their 40s or 50s all nodding in agreement, as they squirm in their French designer jeans featuring floral print stitching on the back pockets. I know that in NYC and LA and Miami, people say and at least pretend to believe that men's design jeans "look better." No, they don't. Some of these guys really look like what they are wearing are an exact cross between their wife's "skinny jeans" and their mother's "mom jeans." Sorry, but real men don't need to wear designer jeans. End rant.

I stayed at that Disney resort a few years ago and saw parts of that course from a stroll around the resort. I looked terrific. .......... OK, that may be true, but upon proofreading a bit better, I apparently did not press the "T" key hard enough, so let's change that to "IT looked terrific." Strangely enough, for a series of resorts that boast about their premium golf courses to tempt dads while their kids are standing in line for 90 minutes for the Dumbo ride, they had no information either in the room or at the main resort desk about the golf courses, not even a single brochure. It really doesn't seem like those Disney people know much about their own golf courses or how to market them.

I hit a shed once and a buddy hit the house right behind it. Years earlier I had a wicked hooked driver off the tee on a hole that ran parallel to a highway and heard a loud metallic clunk as my ball hit the roof or hood of a car speeding by. They didn't stop and I was probably a mile from the pro shop at that point and walking, so I wasn't sprinting to end my round in the off chance the guy turned around and came back. I did stop in at the pro shop at the end of my round and asked if anyone had stopped in about a ball hitting their car in the past hour but the assistant said no and don't worry about it. I did have my car hit by a ball once. I was parked in the middle of a store parking lot far to the left of one of my favorite course's driving ranges, an easy 200+ yards on the fly from the tee areas. I see a ball bounce 30 yards into the middle of the parking lot and I hurry to my car to get it out of harm's way (I had thought the car was far enough from the range but apparently not). I'm grabbing the handle to open the door and suddenly, a second ball hits my door on the fly about 8" from my hand, denting my door. There are only two people on the range, an older right-handed guy on the far right side who doesn't appear to be able to hit a ball more than 200 yards and a tall, pretty athletic left-handed teenage kid nearer the parking lot side hitting a driver. I might not have even approached the culprit, given his youth, but he hit not one but two balls into the lot and must have known he was doing it, maybe even did it on purpose, but if not, his carelessness was pretty close to outright recklessness for not controlling his shots better when he can see there are cars where his ball is going. So I don't have a problem approaching him. I tell the kid that he hit my car and politely ask him for his insurance information. He got kind of scared and tried to deny that he hit my car, but there simply was no other way that the yellow-striped range ball traveled 200+ yards into the side of my car. I tried to reassure him that it would get taken care of by his parents' insurance company and that's why we have insurance, so he doesn't panic. He gives me his dad's name, phone number and address. I also go talk with the head pro about the fact that this range has nets about 15' shorter than several other ranges in the area that are near roads and I tell him that I'm pretty sure the kid would not have been able to get the ball into the parking lot if the nets were of a more typical height that one sees around other area driving ranges. But I tell him that I'm hopefully going to be able to get this sorted out with the kid's parents' insurance company and won't bother him unless the kid's family doesn't have insurance or gives me a hassle. So I called the kid's dad, explain I'm the guy whose car his son had hit with a range ball, and politely ask him for his homeowner's insurance and policy number. He goes ballistic on me and starts screaming at me for making "false accusations" and "bullying his young son nearly to tears" (completely untrue - I actually tried to reassure that it was an accident and the insurance would handle everything). He denies that his son could possibly have been responsible. I tell him that if he doesn't want to handle this through his insurance company, I could always file a small claims lawsuit for the $400 or so it would cost to hire a body shop to do the repairs and it would end up costing him at least $100 more with court costs if I had to file suit. He tells me to go to hell and hangs up. The next day, I'm doing something around the house and the kid's dad suddenly is banging on my front door holding this 36" posterboard diagram and starts yelling at me, calling me a fraud who bullies teenage boys. I tell him to come in, sit down, and let's talk this over. This self-annointed engineering genius has created some sort of diagram of the range and tells me it shows absolutely, positively, that his kid could not have hit the left-curving ball over the fence into the parking lot. He sneeringly tells me I'm obviously not a golfer and am ignorant of ball trajectories in golf, trying to explain to me that a left-curving ball in golf is known as a hook or draw and it flies much lower than a right-curving slice and thus could not possibly have cleared the the top of the fence. He dares me to file suit and waves his diagram at me, sneering how he was going to "get punitive damages" when the judge saw his exhibit that proved I was lying. I had had enough and said,"Buddy, you're the one who is ignorant about golf. Your kid's a lefty and left-handed players aren't hitting hooks when they curve the ball to the left, they're hitting a SLICE. Your kid was the only possible person who could have hit my car." He stares at me for a bit with his mouth open as he thinks, I could see the proverbial lightbulb going off inside of his thick skull as he slammed shut his mouth and he grabs his million-dollar-punitive-damages-winning-court-exhibit and storms out of my house. I follow him out and ask "Are you going to pay for the damage your kid caused or do I have to sue you?" As he's pulling away without a word, I see a political campaign bumper sticker on the back of his car for a candidate that's from that party that likes to scream about "taking personal responsibility." I thought that was highly ironic. Epilogue: I wanted to sue the guy because the look on his face as he got a judgment ordered against him would have been worth as much to me as I could have hoped to recover for the actual damages for the dent in my car door. However, I was getting married in 6 or 8 weeks or so and decided that I didn't need the hassle and drama in my life of a lawsuit coinciding with a wedding. So instead I called the golf course's head pro back and came to a mutually very amicable resolution. Rather than a cash settlement (the repairs would be less then the course's insurance deductible), I instead got them to host my bachelor party golf outing for two foursomes. And a few weeks later they put a taller extension on the net at the left side of their range.

Well, Lendl won 8 Grand Slams and is second all-time on the ATP tour in career wins. That would be the equivalent, in golf major wins, of Tom Watson's record and would be one fewer than Hogan and one more than Snead or Bobby Jones. What would you think of someone on a tennis forum asking if Watson, Hogan, Jones or Snead counted as famous people? Three of Lendl's five daughters play golf in the SEC, two for Florida and one for Alabama.

Well said. I've never visited the Twitter website even once and have unsuccessfully attempted to remove the app from my last two Android phones to free up storage space.

Cycling. The summer I started playing golf, I was doing 15-20 mile rides 3-4 nights or mornings a week on my road bike and would do a 50-70 miler both Saturday and Sunday mornings with a club that had a lot of fun people right at my level. Then I moved and partially from golf replacing cycling, partially from a new cycling club that seemed to be filled entirely with people who were either too casual or too competitive of cyclists and weren't fun to ride with, I was down to maybe 30 miles a week on average the following summer. The past few summers, I've had my road bike out only about 4 times a season. Having a kid cut back my golf tremendously. A decade ago I played probably 4-8 times a month. The first three years after my daughter was born, I think I played a round by myself on Father's Day and then maybe 1 to 3 rounds on a week-long annual family vacation, and that was it for the entire year. Last year I played maybe 12-15 rounds, more than doubling the annual amount of golf I played. This summer with a whole bunch of vacations and out-of-town trips clogging up my schedule, I probably played only about 6 or 7 18-hole rounds and maybe another half dozen 9-hole (or fewer) rounds with my daughter, who has been playing for two years now. If I was really industrious about it, I could probably have played a bit more, but I don't regret one iota devoting my time to my family instead of golf. The way I figure it, I've got a few short years to enjoy with my kid before she becomes a teenager who is too busy with her own extracurriculars and friends to want or be able to spend much time with mom and dad (I've gotten her into golf to provide at least the potential for spending time together on the golf course throughout her youth). I'll have decades after she's off to college and out of the house to play more golf, but I've only got a finite amount of time to spend with her enjoying her childhood. Sure I could probably have begged out of some of those trips to the zoo, the library, to a nature center or state park, to her various sports, music and dance lessons or recitals, to an apple orchard, or just spending a few mornings teaching her how to play checkers and chess, and played golf away from the family instead. Sure I could have tried to lower my scores, which have grown worse, not better, over the past decade, but hitting a few more greens wouldn't give me as much satisfaction as seeing my daughter's excited smile as she picks some really unique pumpkins out of a 20 acre pumpkin patch. I bet a lot of the dads who play a lot more golf than I do get to hear "You're the greatest dad in the world" just once a year in a Father's Day card. That's not a worthwhile tradeoff for me.

I never bother. I usually play Srixon AD333s, which I've never seen anyone else play and I've never found one on a course, so there's practically no risk of confusion with anyone else's ball. I don't play competitively and the people with whom I play know that I'm honest about my score keeping (not that it would matter to them since I don't play for money or have an official handicap), so there's no need to distinguish which ball is in play and which is a spare in case I lose one. The AD333s are discontinued, but I stocked up on about 6 dozen when Dick's Sporting Goods was clearing them out for 2 doz.-for-$25. I haven't played much this summer, but a streak of really awful slicing off the tee has significantly depleted my stock. I'll have to resort to one of the eBay ball sellers for used mint condition AD333s once I run out of my stock of new ones; Wal-Mart still carries them new, at the full original MSRP of $20/doz., but I prefer not to do business with such a slimy company.

Wearing jeans on a golf course, when permitted, does not mean the person is a slob, it means that the person is dressing in a fashion which makes him or her comfortable. That makes good sense, dressing comfortably for an athletic activity. Speaking of saying something about an individual's personality, remember the old Billy Crystal SNL skit with Fernando: "It's better to loooooook good than to feel good"? The Fernando character was intended to be a ridiculous caricature - a dolt and an ass. Your comments make it clear that the only reason you wear pants instead of shorts or jeans is because you are highly concerned with appearances and what people will think about how you dress (i.e. you do not have a legitimate health-related reason to wear pants). When you play dress-up out on the course, does that make you feel especially proud of yourself and make you feel like you're someone more important than you really are. Are you fantasizing that you're Phancy Pants Phil Mickelson? My daughter loved to play dress-up, with her Disney Cinderella dress and she would pretend to be a princess. But she outgrew that about the time she outgrew the dress, at some point in first grade. Do your golf dress-up outfits include plus-fours so you can pretend to be Old Tom or Payne? Do you try several outfits on and spend half an hour in front of a mirror before you select one, telling yourself "I'm a Very Special Boy?" If you had just said "I prefer pants" then nobody would have given this a second thought. But when you clearly identified yourself as an irrational snob for whom appearances matter above all other things, you opened yourself up to criticism. ==================== If it's too cold to wear shorts, I usually wear a pair of relaxed-fitting khakis because they are less restrictive than jeans, particular the pockets - I generally carry 2-3 golf balls, along with tees and a ball mark repair tool in my pockets. If I'm playing a municipal course, where most people wear jeans in cooler weather, and it's cold enough to wear a jacket with pockets where I can stash my usual golf stuff, I may wear jeans, which is what I typically wear on a colder weekend day running errands or hanging out around the house.

Sorry, my BS detector was going off almost as strongly in this thread as in the "I Hate Tiger" threads when every last person denies that race has anything to do with why they can't stand that damn Tiger (definitely not MISTER Woods). Of course no one is going to admit that he's a pretentious twit who just wants to play dress-up when he's out for a round. Of course every last one of you pants-no-matter-how-hot guys has a legitimate reason unrelated to keeping up appearances. But hey, it's a free country. Say what you want if it makes you feel better. And if the course allows it, wear what you want. This thread almost makes me want to go buy a black Dale Earnhardt, Sr. wifebeater and take a pair of scissors to an old pair of jeans for my next golf outing. Maybe I'll cut 'em high enough to have to use sunscreen on my legs after all. Ouch. P.S. My moniker here has to do with geography (i.e. the Badger State), not the adjective "wise." It was coincidental that it had a bit of a double entendre effect with the admins tacking on the Wise Guy photo.

If it's not going to be rainy and/or windy, I'll wear shorts as long as the high temperature will be at least 53-55*F. Shorts are much more comfortable for me than pants - much cooler and less sweaty, less restrictive. I don't happen to like the feel of any sort of pants - lightweight or not - on my legs when it's hot. To whatever extent they block the hot sun, that is usually outweighed by the extent that they block the breeze and just feel hotter to me. I also don't bother with sunscreen on my legs when I play golf, although I apply it quite generously to my face, arms and neck. I've got kind of hairy legs that my wife teases me insulates me from the cold and shields me from the sun - there may be some truth in that, as I'm comfortable in shorts about 10* cooler than most people and never get sunburned legs and they don't even tan very much. I also play most of my golf these days from a cart, so I'm often in the shade. If I'm spending the afternoon at the pool or on a beach, I'll put sunscreen on the legs and particularly the ankles and tops of feet, but there is no real need for sunscreen on my legs that I can discern when I play golf. I understand and don't really have a problem with a course/club pro wearing pants - it's part of an uniform and shows professionalism and attention to detail, much as one expects one's doctor or lawyer to wear a tie even when there is no practical purpose for wearing one. However, I think it's silly and old-fashioned to require tour pros to wear pants regardless of the weather - why not go back to the dawn of the sport and require jackets and ties while you're at it?. Let them be grown ups and decide for themselves what they want to wear or at least make shorts an option if the heat index is over 85*F. At the moment I can't think of any other sport that has a uniform that is so unathletic - even equestrian outfits are more purpose-built for their sport than requiring golfers to wear pants while competing at the highest levels. I have to laugh at all of the people I've seen on really hot days sweating through pants on a golf course, which looks ridiculous. I understand the old guys ashamed of really scrawny legs or the people with some genuine skin concerns and medical issues, but I suspect that they're in the minority. Most people wearing pants on the golf course when it's clearly shorts weather are doing so for one of two similar reasons: 1) "It's a matter of decorum!" - somehow wearing a nice pair of shorts isn't showing the game enough "respect" (these same guys somehow think it makes them look classier if they refer to Bobby Jones or Ben Hogan as "MISTER Jones" or "MISTER Hogan" ); and/or 2) because they want to emulate the tour pros and have everyone perceive them as a super-duper-serious golfer who dresses just like his favorite PGA player. Sorry, but business casual attire neither looks nor feels comfortable while engaged in an athletic activity on a hot day and I really don't feel any need to dress like my heroes - I'll leave that to 11 year-old girls who want to dress like Katy Perry or Selena Gomez. For those claiming they don't find shorts comfortable, I think that's analogous to someone saying that after working for hours out in the yard on a hot day, they'd rather have a glass of warm water than a tall glass of icy, fresh-squeezed lemonade. The bottom line is that when the thermometer is hitting over 85*, most guys wearing pants on a golf course, when it's not part of a formal or semi-formal golf employment-related dress code, are doing it because they are pretentious. I'm anticipating that some people will retort "Why do you care?" My response: "Why do you dislike the Judge Smails character in Caddyshack?" Same reason.

It wasn't a sweet or terrific shot, it was an underclubbed shot that got lucky and instead of bouncing back into the water fronting the green, bounced upward off a rock or a patch of hard dirt onto the green and hit the flagstick. Sure luck plays a role in every golf tournament, but that wasn't the sort of luck exemplified by a chip-in (i.e. "the more I practice, the luckier I get" sort of "luck"), this was just dumb luck.

See: The Emperor's New Robe See Also: The infallibiilty of democracies and the uncanny ability of the masses to avoid voting for stupid/dishonest/greedy politicians. OK, enough already. I'll stop.

Maybe I'm just in denial and am fighting conflicting feelings, too insecure to admit if I actually like something so instead I just lash out in cowardice, unable to come to grips with my own emotions and preferences.... maybe I'm... trying to suppress my guilt about being a secret Futbol Fan!? Or maybe I really, really dislike every single solitary thing about adults playing and/or watching adult soccer. This is a thread where one can discuss/vent/bitch about, etc... one's sports dislikes, is it not? So I kvetched a few times about the world's most popular/boring sport? If you want to complain about excessive repetition, how about the dozens of near-identical posts by the several Slow-Play Gestapo guys. Sheeesh, I have to wonder, are some of you secretly wearing little tricolor French flag bikini briefs?

Obviously you don't - if you did, you wouldn't be a soccer fan.