smaug81243

It depends on how much you want to curve it. If I need to hit a huge, low cut I am going to pull out a 4 iron. Setup with an open stance and the club face more open than normal. I actually try to alter my swing path and swing out to in while leaving the face open and adding a great deal of shaft lean. Another option if you only need a small cut/would rather not try to alter your swing path is to set up with an open stance, open club face and take a normal swing while delofting the club face.

I'll powder the face and check the next time I am at the range. Will also look at getting a video to start a swing thread.

Not all that new but as I keep improving as a player this is now my major weakness. Last few rounds my driver has probably averaged 2 penalty strokes a round on a wide open course from putting it in hazards. I don't really care about whether I play a draw, fade or straight ball with driver, I just want to be able to do one consistently enough without huge curvature.

I'm having issues with consistency using this method. Trying to hit up on the ball and approximately half are very straight or a small pull fade. The other half are either large pull draws or a straight fade that starts dead center and slices 30+ yards. Any thoughts what is going on with these misses? Ball position too forward? Hitting too far up on the ball?

The distances between tees varies on each hole. For the hole you overlook the difference might be 10 feet, for another hole it might be 75 yards. You should go to a driving range and see how difficult it is to consistently hit a ball on target. You bought the house on the golf course, you assume the risk. It sounds like you also purchased a house in one of the worst possible locations (a short to moderate distance in front of the tee boxes). Perhaps you should have done a bit more research when making a purchase as large as a house.

Get the lessons but make sure you get them from a reputable instructor. I went with lessons upon starting and had a rather poor instructor. He was able to hammer in the concept of weight forward but wasn't good at teaching much else. If you want to develop a few good habits before you start lessons take a look at the 5 simple keys videos and begin with mirror work! It will be much more productive than heading to the range and just beating balls initially.

It completely depends on what you need to improve as to which is more effective. As a 35 handicap I'd imagine you still have major flaws in technique. I would recommend fixing those for pitching while taking lessons or practicing the full swing. I'd suggest starting with the pitching technique posted in instruction and playing tips (will link to it later when I'm not on my phone). It's pretty easy to learn, fairly forgiving and will at least allow you to get the ball on the green once you get reasonably close. The 5 simple keys video threads are another place you will want to look for full swing help. Once you start getting to the point where you aren't worried about hitting the ball solidly is when the course can be much more beneficial for improvement. Play as much as you want and have fun with it but the most efficient way to improve at your skill level is going to be practice.

A procedure similar to drops for water could be used. Drop in the exact location of where the other ball was or in a direct line behind it as far back as you would like to go, no closer to the hole of course. I'm sure there are other issues with my proposed change (that will never happen, yes, I recognize this) but I doubt that they couldn't be solved relatively easily.

Although I still believe it would be a reasonable rule change, I do like these arguments: On another side note, what on earth is going on with my picture. I definitely didn't set it up to be anything. Is the default barney just to get people to change it? Note to self, change it when I get home tonight :D

Subtlety has never been your strong suit! But, like I said, we will have to agree to disagree. If you know your ball is one of the two and you intentionally take the worse lie/position you gain nothing. I believe that is a more reasonable (and saves time) solution than the current rule of reteeing. Perhaps i'm too young and too new to golf to value the tradition of golf as heavily as you. And to reiterate again, I agree the solution makes it irrelevant but for some reason I see it happening again in the future.

5/5 Made me laugh! I agree, simple solution that solves the problem but in this case a man who apparently follows the rules very closely had not marked his ball. I'm sure it will happen again with another individual. We will have to agree to disagree on this. Modifying that rule to something along the lines of: Play the ball furthest from the hole or play the ball with the worse lie/worse situation is not anywhere close to the same magnitude as allowing a King of the United States of America in my mind. On a side note, thanks for the content in the lowest score wins/videos you have posted here. They have helped me a lot and helped take me from complete hacker to the ability to get the ball airborne (usually)/moving forward :D

Quote: Originally Posted by Fourputt You make assumptions which may or may not apply in a given case. The OP states that they were playing on a relatively empty course and did nothing to hold up play for anyone else. It is irrelevant whether the course was empty or completely packed. If you are going a rule such as this one 100% of the time there are plenty of times in which you will add 10 minutes to a round to walk back to the tee, hit and repeat the process in the fairway. Quote: The rules are not at fault for slow play, uneducated golfers are the fault. I play by the rules and I play fast, as do most of the guys I play with. The two are not mutually exclusive. My understanding is that rounds on the PGA tour are not particularly fast. Are they uneducated golfers as well? Sure, they are playing for lots of money but they certainly aren't uneducated in regards to golf. Quote: The rules are based on certain fundamental principles which have been the foundation for the game for 400 years. The USGA and R&A; shy away from any modifications which weaken those principles beyond what is absolutely necessary to allow the player to play the game. What would have happened to the US constitution had we left it as it is rather than amend it over time? Just because you created the game/rules/government does not mean that you were able to create rules that were ideal 400 years later. As society changes (into courses that are regularly packed on weekends) and complaints of slow play arise it is foolish to make small modifications. Based on your argument we should still be using the exact same equipment that golf began with. Quote: The rules are not at fault for slow play, uneducated golfers are the fault. I play by the rules and I play fast, as do most of the guys I play with. The two are not mutually exclusive. I agree that the rules are not the primary cause for slow play but do believe rules such as this one contribute to the problem. However, as noted by my comments about the PGA tour above, I believe placing the blame on uneducated golfers is foolish. A better fault for slow play is simply poor golfers. If you hack the ball around on your way to shooting 30, 40, 50 over par it's going to take some time. Even if you know all of the rules, and don't take much time with each shot. I appreciate the change in tone. A debate is much more conducive to a positive and interesting forum.

[quote name="Fourputt" url="/t/76595/what-if-someone-else-hits-your-ball#post_1057571"] This is a rules forum so the answers given to questions must necessarily be correct by the Rules of Golf. If you have no interest in discussing the rules in the context of the question, or in learning about them, then maybe you clicked on the wrong forum heading. [/quote] Such an encouraging post to promote discussion. Since you make it sound like my post is completely irrelevant, and do so in a rude manner, let's have some fun with this. As I'm sure you know, the USGA has been attempting to tackle the issue of pace of play in recent years. Methods that have been discussed for shortening the amount of time a golf round takes have included larger holes, encouraging players to tee it forward, etc. Perhaps another way to boost pace of play would be to modify rules such as this. I mean, in this case, he clearly hit the ball in the fairway. Are we really going to waste time by having him walk all the way back to the tee, go through his preshot routine, hit another shot (hopefully in bounds), walk back to his ball and hit another shot. Your signature sums it up perfectly, "Your proper place on the course is directly behind the group in front of you, not directly ahead of the group behind you." By going back to the tee after hitting the ball in the fairway you are certainly not following this quote and not helping out pace of play. If it is a tournament or gambling is involved in the match, sure, going back to the tee is absolutely the correct play. But, if we want to boost the speed of rounds, why would we not elect to amend rules such as this? Perhaps you shouldn't be so quick to shut down posts in this forum heading that aren't strictly rule 18-1 says X and be more open to discussion of whether the specific rule/case even matters.

This seems a little silly to me. Both balls were in the fairway (I'm assuming good lies on both) and 5 yards apart. Your score should be about the same from each position if you played them both thousands of times. If you aren't playing in a tournament just hit the ball.

... From the ladies tees :D. 4990 yards, rated 68.5/111 for the ladies, unsure what it would be for the men. Next shortest tees are 5678 yards and are rated 67.4/110 for the men. Anyways, I had 4 birdies and 5 pars on the front for a 31 (par 71 course) and 2 birdies/2 bogeys/5 pars for a 36. Both bogeys were stupid mistakes. The first was on a short par 4 (about 270 yards) that is nearly impossible to drive as it is an elevated green with a 20-30 ft high rock wall blocking the front of it and almost no room behind it. I layed up to 150 yds (meant to lay up around 110 but mishit my tee shot) and decided to take an extra club because I was paranoid about coming up short and killing my score. Ended up flushing my shot and was 15 yards over the green into deep rough with an impossible up and down. The next mistake came a couple holes later on a drivable 270 yard par 4 with little trouble anywhere. I decided to pull driver after not hitting a single one all day and ended up putting one in a lateral hazard -_-. Out of curiosity, what's the lowest you guys have shot when playing it forward? This round really put the pros rounds in perspective. To think that anyone can shoot a 62 or 63 from yardages of 7k + is insane. The margin for error is so incredibly low.

If you click on the link there is a post that says he isn't hitting real golf balls but is hitting almost golf balls. I'm assuming they are foam?

Quote: Agree. I've noticed this as well. If you have a smooth pendulum stroke, rather than a "hitting" stroke, then you're going to start to notice a correlation between swing length and putt distance. I really like this method but recently switched to a new home course that has really slow greens. The pendulum stroke works well for short-medium length putts but any long lag putts are impossible for me to handle without using an incredibly fast tempo. I'm still figuring out how to combat this and am temporarily trying a bit more of a hitting stroke for long lag putts.

I've started using a much different swing for my driver and it seems to be working out really well. Does anyone else do the same? My driver swing is very steep while my irons/woods are very in to out. Driver tends to be very straight while my irons/fairway woods range anywhere from large straight draws to push draws to straight pushes.

Out of curiosity, what does your dynamic stretch routine consist of?

[INDENT][/INDENT]It's probably [quote name="David in FL" url="/t/76312/odd-round-today#post_1033653"] The difference is that he's missing his GIR by one stroke.[/quote] This is especially true. At the course I typically play I very rarely do not have at least a NGIR. With the exception of a couple greens, they are all fairly flat and do not have tricky terrain surrounding them (most aren't elevated/no heavy rough near them). However, the greens do seem to be smaller than other courses I have played. On top of that, I am smart about avoiding penalty strokes (ex: I typically don't go for a par 5 that is protected by water in the front in two because I am not consistent enough at getting a higher ball flight to carry the water. Too often I will hit a lower shot that rolls out to a similar distance. I have been working on it and seen a lot of improvement, but it's still not consistent enough yet.)

I went to a new course today with a couple buddies (Crystal falls golf course in Leander, Texas. Rated 70.6/126 from the tees we played from) and was shocked at how different it was. Previous courses I have played have generally been long, flat and mostly wide-open with a fair number of bunkers. This course was gorgeous but had massive elevation changes, was incredibly tight and did not have a single bunker. I ended up shooting a 91 while hitting 9 GIR (:O) and only losing one ball the entire round. I'm happy with the GIR as I usually only hit 6 a round and only losing one ball on a course this tight. However, putting/chipping on a completely different course killed me. I had 43 putts. 43! I usually end up around low 30s for putts. It also probably didn't help much that we were running late getting to the course and weren't able to warm up in anyway. A couple of shots that I was particularly proud of: 1. Short par 4 (320-330 yds or so). Tee shot has a tree hanging over the right half of the fairway at my normal trajectory. I was able to hit a stinger with a baby draw on it right up the fairway. A big deal for me as I've been practicing it on the range lately and hadn't used it on the course yet. 2. Another short par 4 with a similar yardage. I hooked a 3 wood into the woods and had around 160 to the green but had tree's lined up that I had to hit a low hook to have a chance at the green. I was able to pull it off and get on the green by hitting a 7 iron stinger! Frustrations with the round: 1. Ball striking wasn't particularly crisp all day. I hit a lot of shots reasonably well but none pure. Many would be slightly thin and end up in a reasonably good spot. 2. Short-game was awful!!! I didn't blade any chips or mishit any putts, I just had no distance control until hole 12 or 13. 3. I had a really solid back 9 going (2 over on the back 9 going into hole 17 and 18, an easy par 4 and easy par 5) and blew up. I triple bogeyed both holes :O. On 17 I hit a solid 3 wood but caught a bad break as it hit a tree, ricocheted backwards and left me with a tough second shot. I was able to hit a 6 iron over a few trees just right of the green and then pitched it on. Then my putter failed me with a 4 putt :/ On 18 I could not hit the ball. I hit my tee shot extremely low and it went about 50 yards. Topped the next shot and then was able to put 2 mediocre shots together in a row to get next to the green, chipping for 5. Awful chip followed by 3 putts. Yikes. Other thoughts/questions: 1. It really seem to need a few minutes to warm up on the putting green and on the driving range or it really hurts my game. Are most golfers this way or are any of you able to go out with no warm up and shoot similar scores to your game once you warm up? 2. Does anyone have any suggestions on how to hit a low slice? I have been just trying to finish low while holding off the release for my low shots and have been able to hit them dead straight all the way to major hooks. I have not been able to slice them. 3. What's the worst score differential you have had between your handicap and your score? I'm currently a 9.5 handicap and did not come anywhere close to that today!

After getting fit at golfsmith and hitting a variety of clubs here is what I decided to order and fit into my $800 budget. Driver (229.99) - Nike covert 2.0 tour (squeezed the budget for this one because I ended up really liking it) 3 wood (79.99) - taylormade rbz stage 2 5 wood - Kept current rbz nike covert tour 3H (84.99) Cobra AMP cell 4-PW, AW (339.99) Cleveland 5888 RTX black 54 degree wedge (109.99) Kept current putter Including a couple additional headcovers the total was $784.16. All clubs have stock stiff shafts.

I go to UT Austin. If you are in Austin at any point this summer or want to meet somewhere in between and play a round just shoot me a PM! Thanks for the compliments, I appreciate it!

Quote: Originally Posted by Jakester23 By the looks of your setup you should probably be hitting a driver with a stiff shaft. I would definitely agree. Quote: Why do you want graphite shafts in your irons?? Your swing speed can easily handle steel shafts? ( cheaper also ) but you should get fitted for irons. I currently have a steel stiff shaft in my i3s (unsure of the specific shaft other than that). My primary reason for wanting graphite shafts is that they are lighter and I would probably gain a few mph in swing speed (I'm definitely not particularly strong for my age so figured this was an easy way to gain a small boost in iron swing speed). But, I could be talked into steel. Quote: What is the reason you don't want to change the putter? is it a good one, or you don't care? I'm not super concerned with changing my putter as I am able to get the ball to come off consistently and don't think that upgrading it would make much of a difference. Any inconsistencies I get putting seem to stem from issues on my end, not from my putter. Quote: Get fitted by a good fitter. shafts load different for each brand, model, flex. Get fitted, and find out which combination works best for you. I will go ahead and see what is available in the area. If anyone has any suggestions on locations in central Texas I'd love to hear them. Quote: I think you should look at a more players club than the TM RBZ (driving irons). As a mizuno lover i think you should try the JPX EZ forged, or 825 Pro, MP 54. Titleist AP2, TM Tour preferred CB or MC. You will feel a totally different iron. Could you elaborate on the benefits of a players club? I don't know much about them and didn't know I was good enough to consider them an option but will look at them as well.

Yea, my handicap is really a 12.7 after 9 months of playing. But, I am a senior in college and have probably spent more time playing/practicing than most people do in their first 2-3 years. I'm hoping to get into single digits by the year marker but that may or may not happen, it is definitely getting harder to improve! Interestingly enough, my 5 wood fits that range perfectly but my irons are typically a bit shorter than your suggestion for a 4 iron. ***Just looked up lofts for x-hot irons vs my ping i3s - looks like there is approximately a 4 degree difference between them. Ex: My 7 iron has the same loft as your 8 iron. Might account for some of the difference? Or maybe I don't swing an iron quite as hard as I could based on my driver swing speed? Distances: Driver - approx 260 5 wood - 210-220 4i - avg 180 5i - 170 6i - 160 7i - 150 8i - 140 9i - 130 PW - 115 GW - 105 SW - 95 What is the difference between a "better player" set of irons and x-hot or rbzs? Also, I think you have a bit of a misunderstanding with a 7 wood versus a 5 iron. My understanding is the 7 wood goes around the distance that a 3 iron would. So far 2 recommendations for the 588 wedges, any suggestions on the amount of bounce I should be looking for in Texas? I typically take fairly large divots if that matters. Just looked at the covert 2.0 as well but it is probably a bit out of my price range unless I skimp somewhere else in my set :/.