dave s

On an oddly-related note, our league has a Back In Black (AC/DC) tribute night where we play from the way back, (black) tees. Everyone complains about the added distance to cover but our league scoring guy indicates that in general, the raw gross numbers barely increase on that night. Note: I'm one of the complainers even though scoring from the black tees isn't affected for some strange reason. We keep our usual hdcp numbers even though the course slope/rating is much different from the black tee boxes.

Yeah, they pretty much all have a soft-cover version anymore. I know Top-Flite went to a 'soft-feel' cover on a ball I think they called 'the gamer.' Pinnacle may have as well. But I'll never know!

Not going to get in the middle of a 'this ball is better than that ball' discussion. I play different brands and models and the results don't vary from ball to ball. Looking at my supply just to my right, I have Callaway Chrome Soft, Srixon Q Star Tour, Taylormade Tour Prefered, Bridgestone 330 and 3 dozen Pro V1. When you hit 'em as badly as I do, it just doesn't matter. OTOH, I don't LOSE many balls during a round. Not an OB or drown them in the water kind of player ... I literally wear them out, retire them to the shag bag and play a new one. I just loaded my bag for a FL trip coming up in 2 weeks. Went with Chrome Soft and the Srixon Q-Star Tour. Four sleeves total. I'll probably bring 10 balls home. Playing 4 rounds. Here's a story about golf ball personal preference: After my wife had been playing golf for only 3 seasons, she could feel the difference hitting a Pinnacle or a Top-Flite compared to a quality ball like a Pro V. She has her preferences and only plays what feels good to her.

Agree that athletes of all sport are bigger, strong and faster than even a single generation ago. They are also better trained due to the application of science-based training. Plus, professional athletes now engage in year-round fitness training and practice regimens to insure top performance and to remain in 'game shape.' In 2018, sports are as much a 'science' as they are talent.

No easy way or answer to this conundrum. Late last season, the group in front of us was having major difficulties on a pretty tough course and not good (rain) conditions. They wave us (a 3-some) through on a par-3 hole. The rest of the round, our 3-some waited on the group in front of us and the 4-some we played through waited on us. Sometimes a round of golf is just slow-going. Speed golfers who press the issue will cause more issues when they press your group to play through. It's actually pretty rare to pick up any time or pace when you play through the group directly in front of you. Unless of course, you and the group wanting to play through are the only 2 groups on the course. dave

Your buddy Greg and I have similar games. I can start a round and be +6 after 5 holes. But holes 6-14 I can play my best golf. Then the wheels come off again on one or more of the finishing holes which leads to me scoring right at hdcp level. Reading the initial post possibly gave me an idea: When we play a round, maybe take the BEST 9 holes from a scoring perspective and see what a player is capable of scoring if we could duplicate scoring on the SECOND nine holes. Your buddy Greg could have carded 66 had he been able to duplicate the same 33 he carded on holes 1-9. Just a thought. dave

Not a short-game instructor by any means, but I can comment on the 3 methods I've been taught and practiced. 1. Single club around greens - One instructor taught me to get comfortable with a SW to the point of it being a 'best friend' around the green. Learn how to use it to cover just about any and every shot around the green. The thought a simple approach to chipping / pitching. 2. Using all club options from your most lofted wedge all the way down to 8-iron or even longer. As in, Lee Trevino might even use a 6-iron to pitch and roll to a back pin 80' away. The problem with this strategy is having enough practice time with ALL clubs to get up and down from a bunch of different lies and distances. If you have the practice time and can dial in distances, probably a good method. I do not. 3. A 'blended approach.' I've simplified my short game to two clubs. My most lofted wedge, a Vokey 58* M Grind wedge will go through any lie smoothly and produce consistent results. My other choice when pitch and run is needed, I use a 45* PW. If I want it to spin, bite with slow roll out, I'll put the ball back in my stance a bit and pinch it off a tight lie. When more roll is required, move it up and hit it with little spin to get it on the green and rolling out. The blended approach seems to work best for me. You know ... KISS principle. dave

I'm heading down that way in a few weeks as well. @kpaulhus called out 2 of the 3 courses on our list. St Johns and Southampton. The other two places you may want to consider is the Slammer & Squire course at World Golf Village and my area favorite, The King and The Bear track near World Golf Village. Of those five courses, Cimmeron would be #5. Not in that great shape, (played it twice) and an overabundance of water. Seemed to me, they used lateral water hazards to keep people away from on-course homes. Lots of balls die a watery death on that course. So you're left with 4 top-notch courses in the immediate (south of Jacksonville) area.

I'm like Ron: It's not WARM until it hits 75 or warmer! Northeast Ohio reporting in. Tonight's low temp: 13 degrees. Nothing above 32 in sight for days on end. The other side of living in a warmer climate is what we'd call balmy in Ohio this time of year is 50. In TX, 50 might feel chilly at best, downright COLD to some! It's all relative, I guess.

When my wife started playing, she was under the impression that all golfers were nearly as good as the guys we watch on TV. Her rationale was 'because they make it look so EASY!' I assured her that certainly wasn't the case. She nearly fell out of the cart from laughing so hard when I 'rolled one' with a fairway metal. Non-golfers have interesting perspectives on the game and the level of difficulty associated with 'hitting that little white ball.'

Tempering the frustration of golf is to manage the expectation of reality. Golf is a game where you invest dollars (practice) and are lucky to get dimes back (results) in return. Never seen another activity where the results are more disproportional to the effort. I'll bet the OP is easily capable of carding a 75. The reality is he's usually going to shoot mid-80s which is right on handicap. Frustrating? Sure. Getting to a point where you can shoot mid-70s regularly compared to mid-80s is a pile of dollars one might not have to spend. The thing I do is to try to BALANCE the frustration with the pleasure of the overall experience golf provides. For me, even shooting a 93 is way, WAY more rewarding than a day at work any day. If I hit the ball great during a round, that number might drop to 85 or 87 on a GOOD day, anymore. It is what it is. And given the fact that I don't practice anywhere near the amount of time it takes to show marked improvement in scoring, I'm ok with the results I'm NOT getting.

Tee ball on #1 at Firestone South course in Akron, OH. Hit 3-wood with the usual R to L draw right into the middle of the fairway. Pick up tee, ride with group to tee shots. No ball. Anywhere. I'm thinking that ball was right down the middle of the fairway, how is it not sitting RIGHT HERE? Well, it did land just right of center fairway and rolled right, through the first cut and came to rest in 4" deep KY Bluegrass rough. Apparently, local knowledge says play the LEFT half of the fairway on #1 if you can't drive it 250 plus off #1 tee box. Balls go somewhere each and every time we hit them. It's out there somewhere, but we just can't find it on occasion. And when you can't find it, lost ball rules takes over. dave

Shirt was much better looking than his high-top shoes and sweatpants he wore last season!

From course to course and region to region, bunkers represent the largest inconsistency in golf conditions as I see it. Example: Many of the bunkers in and around NE Ohio public courses are, a) rarely in good condition; b) can be a sand and micro pebbly mix; playbox sand; worse. Then you go to a quality place and the bunkers are raked, in good shape and you catch a pretty good lie most of the time. That is until you take your swing and find out only the top half inch of the sand is good. Your club bounces off the rock hard base beneath the good sand and blade one over the green and into more trouble. Played a couple of RTJ golf trail courses last year. The sand was powder. More like moist talcom powder than sand. No idea how to hit from a bunker with very dense, heavy sand. Left a few in because I'd never played from that type of sand. Tour pros are fortunate that bunker conditions are consistent from week to week for them. The rest of us suffer with 'no idea' how the bunkers will behave from round to round. Remedy? Stay OUT of the bunkers at all cost. They are not fair, not in good condition and sand consistency is definitely NOT part of bunker play for most of us.

One more tip if you choose air travel with your clubs: Remove the heads from your driver and woods if you can. Those clubs can easily be broken off when using a soft-side bag. Airlines will also make you sign a waiver for clubs in anything but hard-shell cases. Last thought: Ship them via FedEx (again) in the box you can buy from them and ship nearly everything you need IN the box along with your clubs. And take the heads off your woods! dave

Agree with others that municipal golf is not a good or real representation of area golf. Cleveland has a collection of muni courses, some really nice and not so. Also many local area communities own and operate golf courses. Some operate them right into the ground because a golf course falls into the hands and management of the parks program and being able to mow weeds in a park and proper golf course maintenance is two largely different sets of responsibility. My favorite local munis fall into three categories: 1) my 'home course' is the one many other cities visit to see how things are done correctly. It's condition is on the level of Firestone CC, it's always full with leagues, high-school golf, outings and tournaments. It's a cash cow for the city; 2) another local muni owned by another city has been for sale for 5 years because the city LOSES money keeping its doors open each season. Plus, they are one of the more expensive tracks in the area muni or open to public; 3) Another wonderful muni we play claims it isn't making money and the city is trying to sell it off to developers who would build a planned community of housing and retail in a great area currently occupied by the course. When looking at what areas have the best munis it's kind of unfair. Buying, building and maintaining golf courses is not a core competency for smaller cities. They have bigger fish to fry than hiring competent PGA professionals to manage the overall quality of a golf course and run it profitably. dave

Golf can still be enjoyable even if you completely suck. It also doesn't have to represent thousands of dollars as fee for entry into the game. Case in point. Yesterday, I played the longest 9-hole round of my life. Didn't matter, wife was at sister's pool all day and I had 4 hours to play, clean up and make our dinner plans. In front of my 3-some was 2 women. In front of them 4 guys representing the final 4-some in a golf outing that went off around noon. We caught both groups on the par-3 5th and par-5 6th holes. Trust me when I say there wasn't enough talent between the six of them to break 60 on the front nine. But you know what? Everyone hacking and stinking up the place was having fun. From the younger women ahead of us teeing up balls 'til she got one she liked to the guys in front of them hitting pop-ups and straight-right squibbers off the tee, they were having fun and enjoying themselves. We weren't going anywhere and I was in no hurry to finish so what was going on around me didn't affect me one bit. The biggest barrier to golf I experience is people who think the game is easy to be good at and drop it like a bag of dirt when they find out it's NOT easy to be anything CLOSE to mediocre within a couple rounds or a couple of seasons if they happen to be a real 'go-getter.' My wife is the best example of squeezing every ounce of enjoyment from golf. She enjoys being outside, sharing the company of others, marveling at the beauty of a golf course on a gorgeous day, drinking a few adult beverages if she feels like it. Shooting 100-120 is the least of her worries during a round of golf. Go out. Hack it around. Enjoy yourself. But don't hold up the rest of the course. That's my free advice.

4 wedges here and no plans to drop 1 or reconfigure the short end of the bag. PW - 45*; UW - 50*; SW 54* LW 58* Yardages are 100-110; 90-100; 80-90; 80 and under. Also, I use the 58* wedge for a lot of shots around the green. It's my 'go-to' greenside wedge. Dialing in short, or scoring irons is important to my game. Hitting it close from 120 out is the only thing keeping me in the game anymore. To me, wedges are critically important. dave

Plus it only has a 6-way club divider so it's a few years old, or older. Might not be used, but it's not new. $600? No way. dave

Kinda agree with David In FL. And to elaborate, maybe focus your practice efforts on your scoring clubs from 150 yards and closer. These are the 'money shots.' Get 'em on and get 'em close so you can make birdies and save pars. Ideas for you: Go to range often. Take (if you have one) a range finder and start dialing in distances from 7-iron all the way down to your lob wedge. Scoring clubs are just as much about distance control as direction. Work on establishing distance consistency for all the scoring clubs while working on direction as well. Knowing yardages on the course and being confident about which club goes that far is key to getting 'em on and close. Should result in hitting more greens, as David In FL pointed out. dave

Agree 100%. After understanding how to use the range finder, I spent the early season two years straight dialing in yardage distances for 7-iron down through wedges. Can't hit a green with anything longer then a 7-iron anymore so understanding distances with scoring clubs is the other main component to the range finder. Last night, I shot pins at 40, 68 and 52 yards. All 3 lob-wedge shots were inside 10 feet. This is where I see the biggest value using the tool. Again, it helps that I understand full swing with lob-wedge (58*) is 80 yards tops and can vary swing length and opening up the blade to control distance on short yardage shots. dave

Probably going full-time in a riding cart. Ankles, knees, hips, feet. Walking and carrying 18 might render me bedridden to 2 days. My other summer interest is playing gigs with my hippie 60s show band. Trust me when I say 2 hours of playing on hard stages in beatle boots in the heat produces similar results. Gettin' old isn't all that fun! dave

I've commented before on range finder threads on where I believe the tool is most valuable. Third shot on a par-5 hole. You have a great look at the stick and you must make an important yardage decision. Pull range finder, shoot flag and confirm you are 78 yards from the pin. EXACTLY 78 yards. Smooth lob wedge goes 80 yards. Line it up and hit it close to the hole. What happens with those who DON'T use the tool is that most of the time actual distance to pin is underestimated. Any wonder why so many people leave approach shots SHORT with wedges and short irons? Lack of accurate information. Start watching your playing partners who don't use a range finder and tally up the times they come up short. I offer mine up to anyone in that 120 and in range so they can make the right club decision. Sometimes I'll ask for their estimate before shooting the flag to get accurate yardage. Nine times out of ten, they underestimate the yardage number. Great tool. Glad I have and use it. dave

Not a fan of FOX golf coverage either. It doesn't flow because they try to cram too much 'action' into every telecast minute. Compared to CBS and Golf Channel, I'd put FOX a distant 3rd. Joe Buck is a baseball announcer by trade--not a golf guy. The other reporters don't seem to have much of a rapport with the players, either. I guess you can't show up one week out of the season and expect to have much of a relationship with the PGA Tour in general. Lack of relationship with Tour players comes across during the telecast and in interviews. At the end of the day, (and like everything else) it's all about the money. FOX bid the most $$ for US Open broadcast rights and have it for a long time. Let's all be thankful they didn't get The Masters.

What tailgaters don't realize is when you drive 5' from the car in front of you, your options are slim to none. Tailgater in video had absolutely no option or answer for the car in front hitting the brakes. Lucky the tailgater didn't end up in the opposite direction lanes involved in a head-on collision. dave