Wisguy

OK, I think we've established that the following should occur upon hearing the term "breakfast ball": 1) Locate the lowlife who uttered those vile words and approach him; 2) Grab his score card, rip it in half, throw it to the ground, stamp on it, and spit on it; 3) Pull out your glove, slap the heinous miscreant twice across the face; 4) Take off your shirt and show him where on your torso you have the applicable Rule of Golf tatooed, then wait for an apology to the honor and tradition of the holy game; 5) If no apology is forthcoming, grab his driver, break it briskly across your knee. 6) If the reprobate continues to fail to make amends for this affront to all of those who, across the centuries, have held this game sacred, continue to break his clubs until he is no longer able to engage in the striking of golf balls with metal heads at the end of steel or graphite sticks (NOTE: This is NOT the game of golf - this bastard was playing something else entirely, maybe billiards or croquet or something like that). Then ..... 7) Pull out your wallet, walk him to the pro shop and ask if anything they have in stock will do, after he explains that what he actually said was "Breakfast ball? What's that? We always just play whatever ball we hit."

There was an episode of the Fox animated series King of the Hill (KOTH) where Bobby, the slightly nerdy son of all-Americanish lead character Hank Hill quits the little league American football team on which his dad wants him to play and instead joins the soccer team, coached by a long-haired, bespectacled, East Coast hippy peacenik. At the beginning of the episode, Hank gives his son a little advice about the sport: Bobby, I never thought I'd need to tell you this, but I would be a bad parent if I didn't. Soccer was invented by European ladies to keep them busy while their husbands did the cooking. Toward the end of a very lengthy nil-nil (tied at 0-0) game, Bobby gets a fast break (if such things are called that in soccer), is heading toward the goal with the entire field empty before him and suddenly his coach screams out "Slow down! We've already got the tie! We don't want to hurt anyone's feelings!" Sorry, but any sporting event where all of its fans think it's incredibly cool to scream GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLLLLL for a full 96 seconds after that rarest of events - someone actually scores - occurs is but one thing: lame. Don't even get me started about all the diving those cry-baby Europrancers do. Soccer is lamer than a two-legged dog. Some may wish to disagree with me, but you would be more wrong than if you contended neither Tiger nor Jack were even good enough to be considered scratch golfers. That is all.

Erik, I think you are confusing having a reason with having a reason that makes good sense (i.e. a logical reason). I guarantee that if you were in Martin's shoes, had a golf cart and then (hypothetically - it doesn't appear this was even offered to him, just a ride and drop-off) were told to take an oldster's scooter instead, as you were trying to recruit teenage athletes, you would very much feel disadvantaged and put in an embarrassing position, for no good reason. I guarantee that no USGA official takes a scooter around one of their events - I saw a number of them on golf carts at last year's USWO. Now maybe a cart would get in the way at Merion two weeks ago, but no way would some minor event like this one have more than a few dozen spectators per hole - it was a non-issue at the event that Martin attended and whoever took the cart away from Martin was doing the same as issuing a speeding ticket for going 57 in a 55 zone..

It's a catch-22 - there's little interest in the sport because it's viewed as not being very competitive and it's not very competitive because there's little interest in the sport and it is not attracting as many skilled athletes at any level of the game. I have heard the very easiest of all college athletic scholarships to obtain is women's golf - any high school girl who can shoot in the 80's can get a free education somewhere. On other threads, people have practically ridiculed young guys asking about golf scholarships who aren't regularly scoring, if not breaking, par. Part of the problem is that from a young age, many girls are discouraged from playing or watching sports in the US. For every elementary school girl in my neighborhood who is doing some sort of sport, there are probably two taking dance instead. But hey - I'm at least trying. We've had our daughter in the First Tee program the past two summers (every course in the area that has a kids program offers it mid-morning on weekdays, impossible when both parents work. I agree that the LPGA does need a strictly implemented new policy to speed up the game. Slow sports are boring sports. I remember back in high school I saw an Ivy League men's basketball game in the era before the shot clock, when Princeton's coach had basically ordered his team to play keep-away once they had an eight point lead about ten minutes into the game. Final score: Princeton 24, Columbia 18 (seriously, I'm not making that up). The students started sarcastically counting out loud the number of passes without a shot and the chants got over 100 several times. Still, I think the "boring" labels are based more on bias than on actual deficits in entertainment value. Women's tennis is fun to watch, even though no woman could compete with a top level men's player (I think Serena, who is the strongest and best female tennis player in the history of the sport, recently admitted she wouldn't win more than a point or two, if any at all, against Andy Murray and she'd have to go at least 300 deep in the men's rankings before she'd beat a male pro). Same with women's volleyball. Soccer - well, once you get beyond age 6 or so, soccer truly is more boring than watching paint dry regardless of the gender of the players. Finally, to go back to a point made earlier, the fact that Annika did not make the cut in the single PGA tournament that she entered is a pretty meaningless fact. No one on this board put under that much pressure and scrutiny could shoot within 5 strokes of his handicap. Tiger misses cuts and so did practically everyone but Byron Nelson (and even he and Hogan missed some in their less-than-best years). Two weeks ago at Merion some guys missed the cut shooting 15-16 over - does that mean they're crappy golfers with no potential to compete? I think Messieurs Cabrera, Olazabel, Furyk, and Clarke would think otherwise.

I think you have a pants fetish. Seriously, what makes it boring is that you haven't consciously or subconsciously made any of the LPGA players into heroes or villains, like you have with Tiger vs. Phil, Jack vs. Arnie, etc... Paying "homage to the tradition and class of the game"?? What does that even mean? Because one major was named after a snack foods company, the fourth major has changed venues, events, sponsors and finally host countries so many times that no one can keep track of it and they added a fifth major in France, that it makes the entire tour crass and mean? Because the media ignored women's sports until Nancy Lopez came along, the sport has no history? To me, anyone talking about "tradition and class" is creating a pretty strong presumption of snobbishness. I recently noticed that a course in my state has a female head pro, her name looked familiar, and I looked her up on the LPGA website. She had played on the LPGA tour over a decade, and had multiple top-5 finishes and multiple top-10 finishes in majors, but what was most astonishing as I flipped through a few of her year's stats from the 90's was how many tournaments where she made the cut but won less than $1000 - as recently as the mid-90's, LPGA tournaments were paying so little that placing worse than 40-50th place didn't pay enough to break even, not even in terms of gas money to the next tournament, six nights at a Motel 6, and fast food 10+ meals a week.

I probably lose 4-7 balls a round because of slicing like a damn fool moron, but I usually play courses with a lot of woods, deep grass and water, all containing very powerful female golf ball pheromones. I lost probably 9 of them the first round of the season, but at least 3 of them were on OK tee shots that landed on the fairway and rolled into some really, really thick rough. I probably lost at least one ball that was within 2 yards of the fairway - I just couldn't find them on that course, the grass was so thick. On a more wide open course, I might lose only 1-2 and take a ball or two out of play with scuffs. I've gone about 22 holes on one ball before but that was extremely rare for me.

Some points: Those arguing for relative parity between the PGA and the LPGA are statistically wrong, as several people above have pointed out. The LPGA hasn't really seen someone since Annika who could compete stats-wise with the top PGA pros, and the men simply putt better and make fewer mistakes than the women do (and aren't spending 2+ minutes per green having their caddies read the breaks and line them up, like the LPGA players do). However, that matters very little in terms of television viewing - how can you claim watching the PGA on TV is exciting and the LPGA is boring unless you are mainly talking about following favorite or disliked players on the men's tour? They edit golf on TV so much that you're typically not seeing too much mediocre play, whether it's a PGA or LPGA tournament - it's basically a 2-3 hour highlight show. If one of the leaders has a bad hole, they'll cut over to someone in a later hole who just hit an approach or bunker shot to within two feet, or who just sank a 40 foot birdie putt. If someone comes up a club short and puts a ball into the lake, if the player is at all prominent, either on the tour or in that tournament, the network is going to show that bad shot. Are you seriously trying to tell me that the splash from a PGA player's ball is poignant and exciting, but the 1" lower splash from an LPGA player's ball is dull and uninteresting? Sorry, but getting the ball close to the hole or in the hole is matter of feet/meters and inches/centimeters, not a matter of whether the player who hit the shot is wearing a skirt or pants. A man making a 20' birdie putt isn't any more exciting than a woman making a putt of the same distance, unless you have a personal bias in favor or against the particular golfer. No doubt the WNBA plays a much slower, tamer, lower-scoring variety of basketball than the NBA and that is very evident while watching it on television, but there aren't those sorts of notable difference in watching PGA vs. LPGA golf. No one is saying "I just can't watch a barely-triple digit swing speed -it's too slow." You cannot appreciate distances from the visual aspect of watching golf on television - you know intellectually that an approach shot to gimme range is more impressive on a 470 yard par-4 than on a 380 yard one, but it doesn't show on TV like a jumper from half-court is more impressive than one inside the foul line. If you watched all of the players playing all of the holes, you'd see a lot more mediocre and bad shots from the women than the men, but that's not what televised golf looks like, is it? Anyone thinking that the LPGA players don't have some pretty remarkable athletic abilities compared to a better male golfer not on the PGA tour really ought to go see an LPGA event in person. At last year's US Women's Open at Blackwolf Run, I watched the final twosome hit their second shots onto the 9th hole. They were something like 210-220 out, the green was sloped with a forward pin placement and the front and part of the side of the green was surrounded by a creek. Both Na Yeon Choi and Amy Chang hit hybrids that were so solidly struck, their shots went high and far, and they both gently placed their balls on the green in makeable birdie range, truly excellent shots. I don't gamble, but I'd put a fair amount of coin on a wager that not a single golfer on this website could have hit a better shot from exactly that location onto that green - realistically, I would put my ball in the creek at least 15 times from that location before I could even get one on the green; hell, I bet only 10 percent of the people on this board could hit that green. I saw more players hit their balls into the water on a few holes than I think I would have at a PGA event, but it was still very exciting to watch and I saw some terrific shots. Bottom line is that the PGA players are better from a statistical standpoint, unquestionably. But anyone saying that LPGA golf is boring is either not giving it a fair chance or is measuring "interesting" only in terms of watching favorite athletes, much the same as watching the European tour is less interesting to me than watching the PGA tour, because I've never heard of 80+% of the European players. That doesn't make their golf boring, it just means I'm less interested in the overall competition since I've got less emotional stake in many/any of the players.

This reminds me of a couple of guys in my dorm in college. One of them liked to tell everyone about how upper class his upbringing had been and how sophisticated he was, but apparently toward the end of his high school his multi-millionaire dad found a new sweetie, left his mom, got a shark of divorce lawyer and his mom was so shell-shocked she rolled over and didn't fight his proposed settlement that basically left her and her kids with nothing. So although he had Beluga tastes, he had been forced to live the last few years on a Spam budget, but kept trying to keep up the old pretentious airs, instead of just being a normal college kid. A friend of mine who got a pretty generous monthly allowance drew this riches-to-rags guy in the Secret Santa gift exchange our dorm was doing and gave him a hell of a bitter pill to swallow: he bought him a bottle of Lafite-Rothschild, but wrote all over the front of the label "Happy X-mas Big Steve! Hope you enjoy the hooch!" So while he got a hell of a nice bottle of wine, it did him little good, because he couldn't use it to impress anyone.

I'd call hindrance, make you Sharapova/Nadal types replay the first one and then start docking points for excessive gamesmanship any subsequent times. That is an awful habit, it's unsportsmanlike and it should have been nipped in the bud when Monica Seles first started doing it. Oh wait.... wrong sport.

I guess my perspective on golf is different than some of you. I rarely gamble and if I do, it's generally closest to the pin on a par-3 for the next beer. I've got a few friends who I think occasionally forget a stroke or two, but nothing is riding on their scores, so it doesn't matter. However, if we were to gamble, I am confident that not a single one of them would drop a ball without including the stroke and penalty and I am just as confident that my friends know I would do the same - we're honest enough and trust each other enough that there would be no issue about a spare ball in the pocket being used for cheating. But it seems like some of you on-course gamblers don't trust your friends to this extent or they don't trust you. That's kind of sad. Precautions or no, I wouldn't want to play for money with friends like that. I guess announcing the marked balls when playing in a tournament with people you don't necessarily know makes sense and gives warning that you're being completely upfront. A few balls in the pocket isn't an issue for me playing in shorts - I don't go for some tight bun-hugging Euro threads, so my shorts are loose enough and the pockets are large enough to carry 3 balls, 4 or so tees, a pencil, and a ball mark repair tool without me ever noticing it. I guess I must have less sensitive thighs than some of you. In cooler weather, I'll usually play in a pair of casual khakis, which are looser than jeans and have almost as much pocket room as shorts, although I might put spare balls in the pockets of a jacket, if I'm wearing one.

Damn public course riffraff.

You're making an assumption, a false one, that all golfers are never more than a few steps from their bag. This is generally true of those who walk, but it is not the case for those who ride a cart (something I've unfortunately found myself doing lately as my usually golfing buddy has a bad knee and can't walk more than 9 holes). Carts often must be parked on the path 40+ feet from the tee box. To speed up play, one player often drops the other one by his ball with a few clubs and a putter and then speeds off to his/her ball, to meet up at the green - on holes where I've sliced and my buddy has hooked, or vice versa, it's not uncommon to find myself well over 100 yards from my bag. You're making another assumption for those who walk that they have their bags organized - I've watched golfers spend up to a minute hunting through multiple pockets in their bags trying to find a ball they wanted to play, out of a couple of dozen found balls or balls left over from past rounds. ====================================================================================================== I can't speak as to the custom in playing tournament golf or in playing golf in countries other than the U.S., but if you went to the typical golf course here, approached golfers on casual rounds, asked if they had a spare ball in their pockets, and proceeded to call those who answered yes "potential cheaters," you'd find that at least half of the players on the course would be telling you to go copulate with yourself.

NTG, I think it's a mistake these days to underestimate the ignorance that is possible when dealing with younger people and referring to the not-so-distant past. I can't tell you the number of times in the past decade I have talked music or sports with younger generations and encountered dull, blank looks over what are household names to me and my friends. "Jimi who? He must have played guitar, like, back in the 50's or something? Never heard of him - was he any good?" "Reggie White? Didn't he play for the Yankees back when my dad was a kid?" At a work outing, someone put on some late 70's music and a guy in his early-mid 20's, a kid who had previously boasted about having seen hundreds of concerts, asked who played Heart of Glass and And She Was and admitted that he thought he had heard of Blondie but had never before heard of the Talking Heads. Priorities are different these days for many/most younger people than they were in prior generations - they don't care so much about the past, the present is most of what matters. Hell, cars aren't even that important for a lot of teenage boys these days. I read a car magazine article not long ago that tried to get some random urban college kid interested in cars and it was comical how ignorant of and disinterested in cars he was - at one point, he was shown a Lamborghini and asked "Is that, like, some sort of Ferrari?" Several friends who have teenage kids have told me the same thing about their kids and their friends - one friend actually had to have quite an argument with his 16 year-old son to get him to take driving lessons and get his driver's license - he stated that son and his friends intend to live in a city, take public transporation, and don't want to drive and pollute the environment. Of course this isn't true of all younger people and I'm not advocating stereotyping all teenagers in this fashion. However, for someone like Casey Martin who did not set any records, I think you'd be surprised at how few youngsters know who he is. Next time you see some teenagers on a golf course, ask them.

The one problem I would have with this book is that unless the tips were carefully chosen and edited to present a consistent set of instructions as a whole, I would guess that it would have significant potential to be confusing or at least far less than cohesive. People have different ways of learning physical skills - some can just pick it up watching others, some can read instruction, some need to be physically guided through the motions, etc... - and however it is that I learn best, I'll give the caveat that it's not from reading instructions (and I had no problems reading Tolkien by age 8, so reading comprehension in general has never been a problem for me). Having said that, I have often been amazed that so many of the tips I've read in Golf Digest and Golf magazines are written by people who communicate and teach for a living, as I will read through them a couple of times and still say "Huh?" I find many of those instructional articles to be very unclearly written and it's not just because for every problem in golf, there seems to be sixteen different ways to skin that cat. I can't cite to any examples off the top of my head, but I am positive I have read tips over the years in different issues that seemed contradictory in nature, particularly with regard to weight shift, ball placement, and swing plane. Erik or anyone else who teaches golf, can you comment on this - is it simply me and my no-better-than-partial understanding of the golf swing, or are golf magazine instructional articles as inconsistent as I find them to be?

I'd gladly give you some of our rain here in the upper Midwest. We had a storm Tuesday night/Wednesday morning turn a normally pretty dry gully area behind my house into a river 40' wide and at least 4' deep. It completely washed out my compost heap down to bare ground and took out a tree I planted last month. We had handily broken all records for June precipitation by mid-week and it rained again last night and today, canceling my kid's golf lesson this morning.

Like I said above, he probably was on a recruiting or scouting trip. The teenagers he's trying to recruit wouldn't think twice if he was on a golf cart, but some will think, consciously or subconsciously, "Dude, I don't want to play for some handicapped guy on an old lady scooter." It's not a matter of vanity just for his own pride's sake, it effects his job.

I get it - you're one of these guys that really hated Martin for suggesting that walking wasn't that big of a part of golf. If the rule doesn't have a particularly important rationale and can easily be changed to make more people happy without inconveniencing anyone, then why not change it or make exceptions to it? The spectator cart/scooter rule doesn't have anything to do with the fundamentals or traditions of golf.

Just a guess but I'd say that he's asked before, he has been accommodated as he requested with a regular cart, and no pedantic, self-righteous/important rules-gunner has ever previously had the audacity to embarass him as the USGA official did recently. Maybe personal politics played a role, too - some people got pretty hung up on his lawsuit to be allowed to compete using a cart. ========================================================================================================= I feel for the guy. With all he's had to deal with as far as his disability goes, plus with all of the nonsense people yell at golf tournaments these days, who'd want to risk some jackwad yelling "Hey, Wal-Mart called and they want their cart back - there's some blue-hairs who need to get to the Depends aisle." It is entirely possible to accommodate people in this by treating them with dignity, without having to jump through hoops, either. This is especially true if he was there on a recruiting/scouting trip - think about how silly and judgmental your average teenager can be - some might not be willing to give him fair consideration if they saw him riding around in a scooter. and maybe he wanted an empty seat next to him to hold notebooks, folders, or whatever else a college coach might have with him to keep track of athletes on a recruiting trip. As for the carts clogging up the paths, I recall plenty of carts driving officials and others around at the USWO last year and they were getting through without issues, and I'm guessing this tournament had one tenth of the attendance of a pro major. But maybe Martin was driving his cart around this tournament like a jerk - who knows?

Uhhh, just a guess, but I'd say a combination of greed and laziness? A friend of mine had a ball teed up on a hole requiring a carry over water, then went back to his bag to get a different ball, which was a Warrior ball. Turns out he wasn't feeling too confident and wanted a water ball, which is the purpose to which he had relegated his Warrior golf balls. He said he had bought a club or two (now stored in a corner of his basement) and some balls from them but they harassed him a bunch about buying more equipment.

I think the USGA rule is absurd. There is a "cripple" or "oldster" stigma attached to using a scooter cart. I understand completely why Martin was upset about first having the circumstances changed on him for no apparently logical reason and secondly, being offered an unsatisfactory alternative. The USGA was being "fair" in the same way that Jim Crow laws were fair - "Hey, we aren't picking on any particular person of color - they ALL get the same back of the bus seats, separate water fountains, and segregated schools." I don't imagine there's any great amount of space being saved by a single scooter versus golf cart - I don't recall seeing any mobility-challenged fans on their own transportation at the two pro tournaments I've attended (I saw a few larger 6-person carts ferrying older people around, but I wasn't particularly paying attention), let alone scores of them stacked up around the tees or greens taking up valuable spectator space, so I don't see a problem with having a few carts per hole versus a few scooters. Is there any rationale behind a scooter versus cart rule, other than to save space? I can't think of one. I think that the USGA can reasonably accommodate a handicapped person without embarassing him/her. But here I am again making points that some of the people on this site despise because I'm one of those damn pinko-types who has this crazy idea that rules (and people too) should be .... gasp ..... fair, logical, and reasonable.

I don't get how someone would have the cajones to play that ball, particularly when paired with someone he didn't know, and not have a sense of humor about it - that's really odd. Maybe he was out of new balls and down to the last few found-balls at the bottom of his bag? The last few years the only thing I've had to worry about as far as the identity of my golf balls is having someone pronounce the name. I play Srixon AD333s and I've never encountered anyone else playing them, so I don't bother marking mine. Unfortunately, they are discontinued and I'm down to my last box and a half. I'll have to look on eBay for one of the use ball vendors before the end of the summer.

If I ever joined a private club, I think I'd only be able to keep from getting board if I could play from all the different sets of tees.

That's maybe the most asinine thing I've ever read on this forum. I've been playing golf for 20 years (save the comments about why I've not gotten any better since year 3) and I have never, ever heard anyone suggest that carrying an extra ball was for any reason other than to have one handy in the event of hitting one's shot into the woods, water hazard, etc.... Maybe honesty or lack there of has been an issue for you personally Shorty or with the people with whom you play, but in my two decades of playing non-competitive golf (never played a tournament) I've never heard of anyone equating having more than one ball in one's pocket as being a sign of cheating. ====================================================================================================================================================== Given that the PGA tour average for fairways hit is 60% http://content.usatoday.com/sportsdata/golf/pga/stats/leaders and not many amateurs are coming close to touring pro driving consistency (unless they're one of those old guys who always knocks it 180yds straight ahead), most people are driving half or more of their tee shots off-line. Unless one is missing the fairway by only a few degrees right or left or playing wide open, hazard-free courses, that eventually will lead to lost balls - it's a part of the game. Most people I know lose at least one or two balls a round. Granted, I tend to play courses with a lot of woods, deep rough and water. It would be nice to complete a round or two with the same ball, but let me assure you that the typical higher handicap golfer (i.e. one of the overwhelming majority of golfers) loses balls regularly - single digit handicap golfers may not lose balls often, but the rest of us do. =================================================================================================================================================== Clearly, Shorty's comment is motivated by the fact that I criticized him for aggressively and cowardly bullying a 12 year-old in another thread (how else can one describe an adult calling a child names on an internet forum?). Shorty, focus on being more insightful than snarky and it will be a good thing. ======================================================================================================================================================= *** I'm temporarily using an older computer that has problems with this site and even though I cleared out my cookies and browsing history, it's still ignoring my paragraph breaks and running everything into a single mega-paragraph, hence, the extra lines in lieu of paragraph breaks.

You make this sound like it's tantamount to cheating. I start every round with three balls in my pocket and I'm always surprised about people who don't carry at least one extra. It's called Ready Golf - hit a dubious shot that is either lost or maybe lost? You can either reach into your pocket and pull out another ball for a provisional, or you can be one of those dorks who always seems to have to walk back to the cart with a surprised look on his face, as if a lost golf ball wasn't a possibility that occurred to him in this sport, and spend 30 seconds rummaging around for another ball, wasting over a minute to get another ball. If I lose a ball, the stroke and penalty go on my scorecard regardless of whether or not I have another ball in my pocket, so why waste time by not having another one handy?

Last year I bought a new Ping G20 3-wood with stiff shaft after demoing one and having terrific results with it. Although I liked my Titleist D905T, I couldn't help but wonder if a matching G20 Driver wouldn't be even better. Late winter I started looking at a G20 driver but they were still at full original retail price (Ping does not allow their dealers to discount) and I could not justify spending $500 on two golf clubs in less than a year, so I looked on eBay and ended up winning an auction for a bit more than 1/3 of the MSRP on a used G20 driver. The club hit great the two times I took it out onto the range, 10-15 yards longer and about 10-15 yards closer to center than my old D905T and I got a few good drives with it my several round I played with it (but was hitting all my clubs very poorly). I got a Ping Half Wack-E putter for a Father's Day present and it's the best putter I've tried in over a decade. The third time I was going to play with my new/used G20 driver, very first ball on the range before the round, I hear a duller "clunk" sound and the drive did not go very far. I looked down at the clubface and saw a big crack across the top; I couldn't even blame old rock-like range balls, as these were brand new balls they just started using this season. I figured I had flushed $130 w/S&H;, down the toilet, especially since it was past the 45 day dispute period with Paypal/eBay and I had already had some issues with the seller delaying shipping the club to me and then lying about when he shipped, so I knew no refund would be forthcoming from the seller. I called up Ping's customer service, was very candid with them about having bought the club used on eBay, and asked about how much it would cost to repair. The CSR told me to send it in and if the club was defective, they would replace it, free of charge. I sought confirmation that there would be no charge even though I bought it used, and he responded "If we made a defective club, we will replace it for you." Yesterday I got a confirmation e-mail from their club repair manager that they were replacing it without charge to me and were shipping that day. 30 minutes ago my doorbell rang and there was my brand new G20 driver, complete with new headcover even, on my doorstep - they had Fed-Exed the replacement club to me overnight. Wow. Talk about terrific service. A co-worker of mine had an old set of Ping irons that had some issue with the finish on them and when he called Ping CS, they told him to ship them in for them to look at the clubs. A week or so later, they sent the clubs back to him, completely refurbished to like-new condition, free of charge. I tend to be a more critical than average person, but I think I'm also pretty fair, too (I've called managers over at restaurants 3x in the past year to compliment an excellent server) and I have to say that Ping's customer service is exemplary. I'm seldom a fan of buying premium-priced products for items that cost much more than, say, beer unless they are discounted, but in this case, Ping's first-tier pricing is commensurate with their reputation and outstanding service. I'm pretty happy with my Nike irons, but when the time comes to replace them, Pings will be the first clubs on my list to try and if they're an improvement, I'll probably just buy them without bothering with any other brand. My hat is off to Ping customer service. =========== Disclaimer: I have no affiliation of any sort with Ping. I'm just a very, very pleased Ping club owner.