pittpanther

This is KEY! Chunk one 50 yards off the tee, when you are on that 550-yard par-5, leads to disaster! You now feel pressure to use your 3W or 5W off the deck, which may not be a comfortable club choice, which then leads to a bad shot, etc... That par-5 becomes a snowman or worse. Par 3's and short par-4s should be marked as GIR holes, with 2-putts. To break 90 you MUST have some pars!!!

As soon as the RO saw Stadler kneeling, he COULD have said "Hey Craig? WTF are you doing? That's illegal!" You guys say the officials shouldn't say anything - So according to that logic, they should have waited for DJ to sign his scorecard. And THEN told him "Sorry, you're now DQ'd for signing an incorrect card..." After all, DJ might have given himself a penalty at the last moment...

Straits has never had the US Open. And never will, based on this past weekend. They had a previous PGA Championship, and a US Senior Open. Time will tell if they get another PGA...

All the rich guys at that club play to scratch, so they never hit off-line. They're rich, so have nothing to do all day except work on their game. LOL! In reality, they bring lots of extra balls. They use their foot wedge if they happen to find their ball. If not, they drop a new ball and scream loudly "I found it!"

So we all know about the Dustin Johnson fiasco at the PGA. But it appears there was a rules official walking with DJ and his caddy. Is the official allowed to speak up BEFORE an infraction occurs, and say "Hey DJ, you know this is a bunker, right?" When I discussed the situation with wifey, she says "Why did they wait until AFTER the round to tell DJ he was in a bunker?" Given the way they let the spectators surround the "bunker," I have to agree. To me it just looked like a sandy spot that perhaps used to have grass but was trampled by the weekend. Only after the people cleared out could you see the defined borders of a bunker. Too bad for DJ - a situation where the gallery really screwed things up for him.

What about Bubba's overtime shot into the water? Given the importance of the situation, wouldn't that be classified as a choke?

Good lord... I know we're all different in this world, but no way I would respond positively to that kind of lesson. This is golf, not football practice, and I'm not 12 years old... Talk to me man to man (or woman to man - I had a female golf pro), but yelling sh*t at me will only end badly for both of us.

This is the golf equivalent of jacking up your car and putting 24-inch rims on it...

Interesting topic... If your lowest rounds were 20 years ago, and you admit that your "potential" best rounds is the same as 20 years ago, why are you saying that you are a better player now? By what standards are you better now than 20 years ago, if your scores now aren't better than 20 years ago?

All the other responses have been spot on. They swing hard, and they make perfect contact. But don't forget - the pros deloft the heck out of their clubs also. They take "descending blow" to a new level!

My local Play It Again Sports has about a dozen old Vokey wedges for sale, each about $45-$50. They are obviously used, some more worn than others. The question - is an old Vokey still better than a new "no name" wedge? I have one of those Adams Tom Watson wedges that are for sale everywhere. I know I don't have pics or detailed descriptions, but assume the Vokeys are definitely used and worn-looking. I don't have any idea how much that affects actual play.

This entire "Elin was a model" crap was probably started by people in Tiger's camp, once it became clear they were going to marry. Perhaps an attempt to deflect questions concerning why a billionaire athlete would get together with a lowly nanny. Notice that Chelsea Clinton didn't marry a UPS delivery guy (no offense to UPS delivery guys, btw). She married someone at her level. Tiger, not so much...

You're a 1.5 HC - I'm surprised you have any difficulty with tight lies. To be a 1.5, your ballstriking must be darn near perfect. You could get a ball in the air off of concrete if you wanted to.

I don't think there is a "correct" shape. Few golfers of any skill hit dead straight. Almost everyone tends to either draw or fade. Since you have a draw, ideally you should aim towards the right of the fairway. Let the ball spin and direction carry you towards the middle of the fairway.

If you hit the ball before the ground, a tight lie should make no difference in your game - you should be able to hit off the cart path if you wanted to. For me, that's a pipe dream - first cut of rough is much easier than a dry, hard fairway. But that's because I'm not hitting the ball with a true descending blow. If you're having trouble with tight lies, then you also are not hitting the ball with a descending blow. We need to work on our ballstriking...

At this point forget about birdies - you need pars! Birdies are nice, but you can't rely on them at this point in your game, so don't worry about seeking them. That being said, your chips should be getting close enough to the hole to at least make birdie possible. Up and Downs, right? Look at your home course and identify the likely par holes for you - par-3's of 150 or less, par-4s under 400, par-5s around 500. Make it your goal to par some of these! I have a 212-yard par 3 which is not a possible par hole for me - I play this as a bogey hole. All bets are off if you're still duffing shots - a duff in the fairway or a duffed chip, can easily turn into double-bogey. Ball striking is important. I had two pars over the weekend, but duffs led to 3 triple-bogey holes, so no breaking 90 for me...

First of all, don't beat yourself up for being a bogey golfer. If on your bad days you shoot 95, I think you're doing better than most golfers in the world... To shoot under 90, you need PARs! As a fellow bogey golfer, there are two solutions to your problem: 1. Long approach shots need to get ONTO THE GREEN! Up until this point in your golf career, you really didn't care WHERE you hit the ball, as long as you hit it. Now to be successful, you not only have to hit the ball well, you need to have a definite target in mind, and always be trying to hit that target. Hitting at the range gives a false sense of improvement, because if you make good contact and hit the ball well, you might not think about the fact that you wouldn't have hit your target. You have to know your natural ball flight, work on your alignment, and choose the correct club for the distance. A good test - can you get on the green at all your par-3's? If not, your approaches need continued work. If you can't GIR a 135-yard par-3, with a perfect lie, then it will be more difficult to GIR from 180, out on the fairway with a less-than-perfect lie. 2. Missed approaches need to lead to Up and Downs Practice those chips, you need to come within 5 feet of the hole to have any chance of up and down. 3. Also, a bonus tip - you'll never break 90 with triple-bogeys on your card (because you can't yet make birdies to help offset them). Triples need to be removed completely. Doubles need to be rare, so that your pars can take you below 90, instead of just offsetting your double-bogeys. Wow, this is really easy to write down - too bad I can't yet do any of these things...

She was as much a model as your waitress is an actress... If she had any kind of money-making career as a model, she would not have given it up to become a nanny. Sorry, that dog is not gonna hunt.

You need to relax with the insults my friend. No where in my post was there any sympathy for Tiger. Just a statement that Tiger has learned a hard lesson, given to him by some scandalous ho's. He put himself into the situation, without a doubt.

Most are saying "Don't shape until you are a single-digit HC," but I'm going to disagree. I think most bogey golfers have the skills to learn to shape shots, at least off the tee. Also, most courses will provide several holes that don't match up with your natural shot shape, or will penalize a straight shot. For example, my natural shot is a draw, but when I face a hole that veers to the right off the tee, this penalizes a draw. Even a straight shot might go into the left rough unless it's aimed perfectly. If I had the ability to implement a fade, I would be able to make my shot follow the natural shape of the hole. And if I screw up the fade, am I really any worse off than if I hit my natural draw? Only if I push it right instead of fade it. Is that any worse than if I pull it left instead of draw it?

Problem is, he can't get back on that train. For probably the first time in his life, Tiger received a hard lesson in just how scandalous and scheming some women can be. So now he can't trust ANY woman, for fear that whatever he does will be in the tabloids the next day. This is something he never had to worry about before. If he tries to jump back on the "ho train." every ho he's with is going to try to sell her "I was with Tiger Woods" story to TMZ.

I have a theory about this... I think that men under 6 feet tall tend to look better on camera when performing dance moves and singing. I think if someone 6-4 tried to dance like Usher, even if he did all the moves correctly he would still look awkward when compared to a guy under 6 feet.

Arrrgh! My big problem with golf training - the terminology. What does "flipping" mean? Does it have anything to do with "turning the hands over?"

Wait a minute... How did this become MY fault? I think everyone on this board, and most semi-serious golfers, DO pay for quality. Almost every golfer you see has graduated from the Wal-Mart WIlson clubs, to one of the name-brands. And, by the way, I have Callaway clubs (and so do you, I notice). That being said, paying for quality doesn't mean I'm going to throw my money away. If Callaways were significantly more expensive than the other brands, no one would buy Callaway - because they don't differentiate themselves so much as to justify a huge price difference. What's interesting is that I never knew that ANY club were manufactured in the US - I assumed they all were foreign made. Callaway should have stood up and said "Proudly Made in the USA." Too late now...

I've said this a thousand times - conventional wisdom on this board is that the short game is where improvement comes, but I disagree. For those who are not single-digit handicaps, it's the APPROACH where things go wrong. Duff, fat, thin, or just plain "it didn't go in the direction I wanted", when these happen on the approach shot, they keep you from GIR, they waste strokes, and suddenly you're shooting for bogey instead of par. When I'm 20 yards out, things can only go so wrong, but when I'm 150 yards out, lots of badness can happen.