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I just read it as well. golf definitely has been in decline for some time. I do think just like anything in life there is ebb and flow. Golf is going to come back.

I want to win a Callaway Big Bertha Driver! Rafael CABRERA-BELLO -8 Stephen GALLACHER -7 Mikko ILONEN -6

Took me a good one full months without swinging at all. I couldn't even putt!! Light swing in 2nd month. Full swing but distance diminished. After almost 8-9 mo, I still feel it time to time but now I just reduce swing and take some rest. Ice and rest are two best medicine. Time to work on putting and gradually chipping.

I saw this article some time back and really opened my eyes. I mean I never even heard of Steve Marino and the way it was described just blew my mind away. The last part where he missed U.S. Open cut by shooting 17 over for two days... That is something. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/01/AR2007070101221_2.html?sid=ST2009071701245 It's all matter of perspective. From 25 hcp like me, scratch is light years away. For scratch, a tour pro is light years away. For an average tour pro, Tiger Woods or Adam Scott is light years away. Just another similarity of golf and life

This is a good suggestion. I'm really tempted to do this.

Outlier is not even talking about 0.01%. He is talking about Bill Gates', Michael Jordan's, Tiger Woods' of the world in their own field. Also, Gladwell took a lot of the stories from researches all over the places. He is a good story aggregator and teller so it's good read but the concept isn't new nor a de-facto rule. Him saying it doesn't apply sports further confirms there is no such 10K "rule" What he did is look at a few exceptional human beings and found a common ground which happened to be they worked on something for long time. Is this something new? We all know even from this forum that it takes long time to even become a decent golfer. And again it doesn't even apply sports. LOL

Maybe get some lesson and allocate some consistent practice time? Two things I see. 1. You are getting blisters. This tells me you are indeed swinging, grabbing way too hard. 2. You have no depth concept of distance. This tells me you need more practice with irons. It's not just contact, swinging loose. It's combinations of all contributes. Take at least 1 hour practice 4-5 times per week for about a couple months. Don't go out to course during that time because your old instincts will take over.

Apparently Dan did not read the fine print. Gladwell's own quote, "There is a lot of confusion about the 10,000 rule that I talk about in Outliers. It doesn't apply to sports." source: http://www.businessinsider.com/malcolm-gladwell-explains-the-10000-hour-rule-2014-6 I take Dan's effort as nothing more than his own publicity building. Good for him if he can build his publicity but bad if he actually believes he can become an "expert" or "pro" in golf. Also let's not lower the standard of expert. Scratch is definitely not an expert in golf as Gladwell's examples focus on really really exceptional larger-than life human beings. Expert in golf in Gladwell's example would be Tiger Woods or Jack Nicklaus, not a scratch golfer. This is one bad case of gross oversimplification of success IMO. It's like almost saying pure ball striking will make one to become a tour pro. Yes, it is a prerequisite but the entirety of becoming one.

This doesn't add up. If you are hitting 150 with 7i on fairway, you will not be able to carry 150 with 7i in sizable rough. I believe survey mentioned tough but not US Open tough rough. My hard 7i is 160 - 167ish but from rough I sometimes can't even carry 150. I believe one should be able to hit the same club in both scenarios and have similar result. 140 vs. 170 and 150 vs. 180, not 140 vs. 180

I'm surprised the result is lopsided to the other way. I thought people are more accomplished here so people would go for the longer but predictable condition. I voted for longer distance with flat fairway since either way my shot would be a toss up but given my past experiences I ended up having better result for having a ball in fairway than rough. I had harder time judging distance from the rough

I actually like this one a lot due to my tendency to overextend and go crazy. It's a good mental set-point for me that a club in my hand will carry certain distances even I don't go all crazy with swings.

This. I have seen some of my friends do this to the extreme and it looks so awkward. Thank heaven they don't have fast swing speed; otherwise their head would've been totally twisted. One of friends usually comment something like "I didn't keep my head down" so the ball went so and so. Doesn't sound all the convincing to me given how inconsistent his swing was.

Thanks for the old thread. I read it and enjoyed thoroughly. It somewhat reminds me of the journey I took since last year. I'm still not good but I have a desire to improve. Only thing missing for me is actual playing I agree with a lot of what you said in old thread and this thread. What I believe is high hc'ers should always pick the safest club, aka straight, within reasonable distance rather than most comfortable or farthest club. Most comfortable or farthest is really false information for most high hc'ers because I know for a fact high hc'ers are never comfortable with any club regardless of length or shape. What I mean is even though high hc'ers think they are good at this or that, but usually their swings are never consistent enough to translate such feeling into actual shot. The same for farthest. Even though high hc'ers think they can reach farthest with certain club, that doesn't necessarily translate into actual distance after taken into all directions, topping, fat divot, etc. This is similar to what you were saying about smooth distance. I also agree 100% that high hc'ers should stop trying to cheat in his mind. No more mulligans, double par ESC, movable lies, blatant omission of strokes, etc. These rules are bad for someone who wants to improve. Before strategy, before swing path, before all the techniques, one should try to stick with the basic rule as much as possible to know where exactly problems happen. I play with mostly high hc'ers so I know all those rules fuzzy up their scorecards. I really don't care they want to improve or not but I also don't take their score as real.

Golf is one sport that looks so easy before you get into but once you get in, it is one of the hardest ones. First, I'm not sure your personal circumstances but most adults have other obligations than gunning for scratch in golf. Second, even if you can breathe, eat, and live with golf, it is probably darn near impossible in short amount time unless you were trained early days in your life. I feel that there are so many subtleties in golf that simply can't be crammed. Try out and in 5-6 month, if you can get to hc 5-7, I think you may have legit chance to get there? If not, take it slow and enjoy.

One time I paired up with this couple who were generally very nice. In the first hole, however, we chatted and I told him it was my first time playing this course. Maybe it set him off. Maybe he wanted to show off to his wife or something. He started talking about how to hit where for each hole and how green looks like and how to hit what shots, etc. You get the picture. Problem is he doesn't need any of the information. He doesn't know how to chip, putt, hit decent approach, or driver. Basically just about hack every single shot. Half way through i got tired and irritated and eventually affected my game. It wasn't too bad like op mentioned but still didn't feel good after a nice afternoon golf outing.

jimmy walker -1 patrick reed E marc leishman +1 MarcLei ishman

True because weekend golfers mostly think he/she can hit far/best by swinging hard. Pro's know that it's not the case. Proper sequences, balances, extensions will carry the ball to distance they want. Also we all know there is really a lot of power leak when we swing so all that physical moves don't translate to impact. So if you are talking about efficiency, yes most definitely agree with you.

First, true to that. Golf can be easily denigrated to swing as hard to the farthest. Of course, we all know this isn't that straight forward. Second, I don't believe pro's make "effortless" swing. I think you mean to say they make fluid swing. When I watch slow-mo of many pro's drives, I know how much efforts they are putting in to one swing. It really opened my eyes how much extensions they have, how much acceleration they put on the down swing, how they extend arms through, how their head is far behind even when their torso is twisted so hard. With so much practice and work they put on, I think they look "effortless" but I see how much efforts in that "effortless" swing.

If high hc players lack only course management...... they wouldn't be high hc any more... I second the ball striking to be the most important for hc. Take 3w for example. I haven't seen a hc like high 90 above who can hit decent 200-210 with reasonable consistency with 3w. That includes myself . I went from what is hc to kind of bogey+ player. The biggest difference between then and now is the ability and confidence to hit a shot without thinking too much. Once there is some confidence sinks in, course management can be easily applicable.

This can go tangential... Golf if not dying. It's just trying to adjust post Tiger era. It will continue to grow but much slower speed than we have seen past decades. Growth in golf has been insane just as Tiger's career has been so far.

There seem to be 2 faction; one who thinks they can get rid of one or two flaws This is one of big difference when I was shooting over 100 to 90's. In my play group, people usually do ESC after double par and this rule encouraged me give up a hole if it started going bad. Once I got rid of this rule in my mind, I focused more and tried to grind out and ended up scoring lower.

Rangefinder is great..... in practice range. I have seen it slow games quite a bit. Have a golfbuddy or something small to track automatically so no need for manual checking for each shot. I think some people use rangefinder because they think it looks cool rather than they want to know yardage. sort of like hollering "see I'm playing golf"

Of course, it's game of golf We all have been there done that. Playing "safe" isn't always laying up and hit wedge. It doesn't always generate the best result for one particular hole but it will help reduce expectations of high hcp golfers which results in better score. One of my friends with hcp ~35ish who recently switched from longest club to always laying up. His scores were pretty much the same because he doesn't yet know how to chip, putt, sand save within reasonable strokes and adding strokes by laying up from ~160 to 170yd. Before he was going all over the places, now he goes close to fairway but with a lot of short swings, chips, and putts. But overall I think he will eventually learn to lower his score since he knows his limit and try to go safer route

I did watch golf before I started playing. I just like to see competitions whether it's something I play or not. Having said that, it is really different thing I was watching back then and now because obviously now I "know" how to play the game . I now watch vertical ball flights, draw/fade, pin locations, green undulation, address, club selection, putting strokes, etc. Millions of information that was not visible before now I can related to them. Also appreciate how easy they make it look. I always want to go out and play after watching since I get all hyped up with images, etc. Such energy usually vaporizes after first tee!! Yesterday, I was watching Players for the last few holes. It was fantastic to watch struggle, recovery, good drives.

Play in easier course maybe? My take is if someone is over 20 hc, he/she has many aspects of game missing, not just one or two, that is including myself. What I mean by that is this. If someone says he/she is only missing one part of game such as driver, try to eliminate that driver and see how much score improves. I have tried and it wasn't better. In fact, it was as close as I would've shot with driver. I thought my iron game was better but it in fact wasn't at all. Sometimes I score a bogey after 3 putts in par 4 while the other someone scrambles all over the place and still a bogey. It's the same score yet the latter is not the route you want to go. That's where the blow-up happens. For high-handicappers like you and me I realized it's better to go for the safer route like pitch to fairway for 90 yds rather than try to hit 190 yd from rough behind the tree. I was watching Players yesterday, Kaymer did the same thing after rain delay. He hit 190 behind tree which settled to the left side with no green to work with and ended up shooting double. It even affected next hole where he was very lucky ball didn't fall into water and somehow miraculously saved par and went on to win. Stop trying to hit 3w from 260 yd rough; just hit 150 with 6-7i and hit 9-pw for rest of 110. Eliminating flag hunting mentality was really key for better score for me because I no longer try to hit the maximum distance for each club, which happens once in maybe 10 tries, but rather try to swing 75-80% to stay safe. Having said all that, I still have to learn driver better, hit approach better, effectively pitch, sand save, putt.... Did I say high handicappers have a lot of holes to fill?