billchao

Nicely done. That’s exactly what we were saying about that hole, right? It either needs to be drivable for risk/reward play or it just needs to be much longer.

Glad you had a good time! I’ve only played at Crystal Springs and I have to say, I hated that course. Too quirky, gimmicky, etc. I have to try to get out to Ballyowen at some point. If you get out to the AC area, I recommend playing Twisted Dunes. Fun new style “links” course. I haven’t played too many courses in the area but I definitely recommend that one.

Birdied #7 at Quail Brook which is new. Flared my drive right onto the 6th fairway and couldn’t see the green. Played PW over the trees to the middle and the hole happened to be there. Hit it to 3’ and made the putt. Missed a 3-footer for birdie on #14 though but I have that one already.

Ah ok I didn’t see the “down” on the display at first. Why didn’t they just use negative numbers like everyone else?

Does that say your AoA is 13°? Am I reading that right?

I almost holed out from 220 on #18 yesterday at Trump National in Bedminster. It was 3’ from the hole. Unfortunately, it was the 9th green I hit. Sorry, but it was just too funny not to share 🤣

I think for a scratch golfer it’s 0.2 strokes different. Definitely not worth flirting with any trouble over. A 50 yard bunker shot is jail, V. It’s significantly harder than an 80 yard fairway shot.

The pot bunker is bigger at 3 wood length so technically there's a greater chance of ending up in it, and isn't there the possibility of really getting a hold of one and ending up in the big bunker? And correct me if I'm wrong, but at the scratch level, isn't the difference between 70 yards vs 90 yards out in the fairway fairly negligible?

I don’t usually make practice strokes but when I do it’s always a practice stroke for the distance that I want to hit, similar to how I do for practice swings for short game shots.

Yes, you’re changing the lie angle. Loft causes the face to point in different directions.

I don't think they got this wrong. I think it's almost impossible to take a huge divot if you're using the bounce correctly. If you load up the front foot and swing steeper with the leading edge digging into the ground, you'll take a deeper divot for sure.

I absolutely pured this 7 iron with the tiniest bit of a push-draw. It just caught a piece of the back of the green and spun back about four feet. I'm not scoring well because I've been struggling with my irons playing longer than I'm used to and this shot is indicative of that. I was playing for 175 in the middle of the green. I'm glad I didn't hit 6 iron.

Had a bunch of different things come up one after another that really limited my time and ability to practice, but got some in today: I'm striking the ball pretty solidly, minus the occasional toe shank. As far as my priority piece goes, I'm doing the shift, back and up part pretty well, but the forward thing escapes me. I'm going to have to keep working at it slowly and in parts. It may have to be a timing thing for now. The downswing part works for me because it's just swing my arms down really fast because my lower body outraces my upper body. I'm not going to sit here and pick it apart piece by piece. There are things I'm doing well and things I'm not. Overall I'm pretty happy with how it looks currently considering I've basically been doing only mirror work and playing for the past three weeks. I also did some stuff on the Mevo+ just to get an idea of how I'm hitting the ball and needless to say, it's kind of all over the place: I don't know what the heck is going on with that 9 iron. PW was solid, 8 iron was solid, 9 iron was all over the place. I started with 7 iron and then worked my way up the bag from short to long and that might have been a mistake. I was pretty tired by the time I was hitting the 6 iron.

I don't see them ever being comparable in price to a typical cast club and I don't think they're going to outperform existing irons due to limitations of the equipment rules and physics. So really a person would be paying a premium for the cool factor alone, or maybe they really don't like the look of cavity backs? Those aren't good enough reasons for me, though I'm sure they are for plenty of people out there.

I’ve never really let my kids win at anything deliberately. I mostly just played games a little bit more casually just to try to match their ability to strategize, but if they won it wasn’t because I threw the game or anything. I don’t feel like my kids need to or should win all the time. That’s not how life works, and the sooner they learn that, the better off they will be.

That’s going to be a no from me. Why should I pay extra for new technology just because of their R&D cost? I doubt they’re going to be transformative. I’ll stick with the old tech if it’s cheaper.

I don't think we're really disagreeing on anything. My point was that from inside a certain distance for everyone, though it may differ from person to person, there comes a point where a person is unlikely to miss distance outside of tap-in range. At that point, line becomes more important than speed. Or if you were trying to ram a putt in to take some break out, line becomes paramount. The article is just too generic and addresses no specific situations. This is a good point, too. It's hard to just flip a switch and adjust to different green speeds. It works both ways, too. Pros complain all the time about greens that are slower than what they're used to. I'm a big proponent of heads-up putting. It helped me with my lag putting tremendously. I don't do it inside of about 10', and I'm terrible at putting inside of 10'. Not sure if coincidence or it's related. I suppose the only way to find out is to commit to heads-up putting completely and see if my SG stats change over a period of 10 rounds or so. Unfortunately, it's been my experience that this is often not the case at my local courses. It probably doesn't help that I tend to play early in the morning and the greens change speed as the dew evaporates.

I guess Dry Weather is closest to what I am. I’ve played in the rain before, but generally because I was traveling or something and golf was already planned. I’ll play in some light rain or occasional showers locally, but if it’s going to be steady all day I’ll pass. I played all winter as long as the course was open so the temperature doesn’t bother me.

There’s like absolutely no substance to that article. I agree that speed is more often more important than line, but at some point it flips. If you hit a 20’ putt 20% too hard, you’re going to miss long by about 5’, but if you hit a 4’ putt 20% too hard, that putt still has a chance to hole if the line is correct for that speed. I also think analyzing speed is something golfers just internalize. I very rarely hear people other than myself saying out loud that they want to hit this putt 8’ or something, but I often hear people thinking about the break out loud. I agree with this. I see people say, “it’s going to break a bit right,” and then they miss it high and go, “dead straight.” Dude, you hit it 3’ past the hole. Also it broke 6” anyway but it’s like they’re not looking at the start line or the apex at all.

Reading and doing are two different things, especially considering I had already missed several greens long in the round already. You still need to have full commitment to the plan.

Hit this 6i to 8' and made birdie. It wasn't pured by any means. I actually strategized well on the hole and took one club longer knowing that if I flushed it, I'd have a 30' putt from the back of the green to the front. I missed and happened to put it pin high with a push-draw. If I played the hole with just the number to the flag I would have ended up in the front right bunker. Proper golf and I'm pretty proud of the way I played it.

Birdied #14 at Green Knoll but already had it on my composite list. Missed a 6-footer on #10 that would have been new. I’m definitely making birdie at a higher rate this year than any other but it still feels like the composite list will be hard to complete. Still lots of golf ahead, though.

Right, it’s a 72 hole tournament. Luck swings both ways and it kind of evens out. It’s not like Rory got nothing but bad breaks and Bryson got all good ones. He won by one. That could be almost anything to make the difference, and one could analyze Bryson’s 72 holes and find places where he could have scored better. If people are going to say Rory could have done so and so and won, they should be able to say Bryson could have done so and so and won by 3.

Mulligans cost a beer

Yes, they can, though some of what others have posted leads me to believe he’s also pandering to the public intentionally, which comes off disingenuous to me. He’s having fun and enjoying life and golf. He’s also saying and posting things with conscious intent to win the public over because it’s good for his image and his brand. Both can be true.