JessN16

I was playing my home course early in the morning in a rainstorm. I was dumb enough for being out there in the first place and since I didn't have a witness the ace wouldn't have counted, anyway. I was teeing off on one of the longer par-3s on our course (about 180 from my tees) and it was so rainy and even a little foggy that I just went up there with an old Taylor Made Raylor (roughly a 4-wood) and hit a low liner in the general direction of the green. I thought I could see it roll up close to the pin but I couldn't tell. I'd already decided to go to the clubhouse at the turn so I was just trying to get through. When I got up to the green, the ball was sitting 4 inches to the right of the hole. I could even see the trail of water the ball had displaced as it had rolled onto the green and by the hole -- it came within less than an inch of dropping in. Well, that particular par-3 has a steeply pitched green, back to front, so I was putting sideways relative to the break. I needed to hit it firm to take the break out of it but I was already shaken up by the near-ace, and not only did I not hit it hard enough to get through the break, there was so much water in the grass that I didn't account for how much the ball would slow down. I lipped out on the low side of the hole. Second putt was 2 inches, which I thankfully made. Jess

Hit to within 4 inches on a par-3 once. Two-putted for par. FOUR INCHES. Jess

You can still get Killer Bee LD (which appropriately enough, stands for "long drive") in 6-degree, I think, from Golfsmith (I know they still have the 7.5) -- and people swear it's an easy club to hit. I can't imagine it. Jess

Welcome to the economy. In nearly everything these days, we're seeing a cycle of consolidation, and it's not over yet (see: Chrysler, GM talking about merging). Maybe we'll see a cycle of expansion in a few years, when a bunch of new, smaller companies fire up and start producing balls and clubs. Right now, however, corporate money is tight, and it shrinks R&D; departments, ad departments, marketing departments, everything. My company is not immune. Anywhere money can be cut, it will be cut, so the Precept brand may very well be in jeopardy. Jess

I'm interested in using them to double-check what's printed on the scorecard as much as anything else. I'm pretty good at estimating distance bare-eyed (goes back to doing a lot of target shooting when I was younger), but there are times when I hit a shot, and what I'm seeing and what the scorecard is telling me I should be seeing are way off. I played a course a few years ago where every hole on the scorecard ended in a zero. Yardages were 350, 360, 400, 190, 270, etc. That's way too coincidental. Then I actually got onto the course and realized there wasn't a single distance marker anywhere on it. No stakes, no numbers on sprinkler heads, anything of the sort. I played decently but I also had some big distance misses going into greens. Jess

Have you hit it in the Viper Tour Black driver? I don't really like the Mamba 2, which I was hoping I'd like, so I'm thinking about putting together the Viper Tour Black driver. Jess

Try the XT shaft if you decide to get new ones. I'm having problems with a VSE shaft in another club, related to distance loss. My hybrids with the XT shaft, however, outflew the irons they replaced. Jess

I've got one and you guys can keep talking them down all you want. :) Mine is a Dunlop job that I bought at a Wal-Mart about 15 years ago for less than $20. I can take a full swing with it from 120 or do whatever I want from there in. Pluses: The construction is a combination of a wedge and a putter, and it has clear alignment tools on the top. Versatile. Easy to use. Confidence inspiring. Hits go straight. Darn near impossible to hit a hook or a slice with a full swing. Minuses: The ball is going to roll regardless of how you hit it. Not possible to make the ball check up from most lies. I can't use mine out of a bunker very easily, but some people apparently can. I'm going to be buying one of these shortly -- http://www.golfsmith.com/products/SE...ing_Wedge_Head -- and see if it's better or worse than the ol' Dunlop. Jess

Just played them today. These may be the best clubs I've ever played, of any kind. They are soooooo easy to hit. They go straight as an arrow, maybe with just a pinch of draw or fade at the tail end if I don't hit it right (considering I'm a 20-25 handicapper, operator error happens a lot). Satisfying, expensive-sounding "ping-click" when the ball is struck on or near the sweet spot. You can definitely feel when you've hit it good. I hit them about 10-15 yards longer than the corresponding irons in my bag. I've got the weight ports set up neutral right now, with the heavy weight center-back in the sole and the light weights in the heel and toe. The Snake Eyes Mamba 2 driver I built recently still needs some bugs worked out of it, but the Viper Tour Blacks are wonderful. They also make a driver that matches it and I might have to try that sometime as well. Jess

Just put together the 2H, 3H and 4H, but I haven't used them yet. I used the XT shaft. These things are some of the best-looking clubs I've ever seen. I figure with the tri-port setup, you'll be able to adjust the hook out of them if need be. I'll play sometime over the next week or two and post a review, if you like. Jess

Same here. Anna Kournikova is still the leader in the clubhouse. Jess

Thanks for all the info, guys. Can you use a rangefinder to determine distance to specific points on the ground; i.e., a fairway bunker? Jess

I just assembled a set of Snake Eyes Viper Tour Blacks. I made a 2H, 3H and 4H for myself. I've yet to hit them. I'll say this, though -- for a Golfsmith component, those things look to be top-notch in quality. Interchangeable weight ports, too. I believe I'm going to like them a lot but will report back after a few rounds. Jess

Specifically, how do they get yardages and how accurate are they? If I keep getting back into the game, I'm either going to eventually go with one of the GPS systems or a laser rangefinder. The rangefinder is attractive to me because I play a lot of courses that probably aren't mapped (i.e., cheap golf places in the rural South). But if it's not accurate, I don't want it. I'm guessing these things use some kind of laser bounce-back system not unlike LIDAR, but how difficult is it to, say, try to get yardage to the pin and end up really getting yardage to a tree behind the green instead? Can you get yardage to a point on the ground (like the front edge of a green, or a bunker)? And assuming they're accurate, how much should I prepare to spend for a competent one? Thanks, Jess

On a related note, who else has noticed that Miguel Angel Jimenez is gradually losing syllables from his last name? Commentators started out with "Hih-men-ez," then it became "Hih-men-eth," then "Hih-men-eh," and last weekend one of the Golf Channel announcers had shortened it all the way down to "Hih-menna". By the middle of next year, his last name will just be the letter J and a period. Jess

I'm in Prattville, which is about 15 minutes north of Montgomery. We're fortunate to have some good golf around here, most of it on the cheap. I'm about 5 minutes from RTJ Capitol Hill, where the Navistar LPGA was this week, and I've got Emerald Mountain (Wetumpka) and Lagoon Park (Montgomery) within 30 minutes of my house. Jess

Don't know if you're aware of this or not, but Jackson used to call golf. He was on the mike for at least one Ryder Cup and I'm sure he did some of the regular tour stuff if he was doing the Ryder. I want to say he's done the Masters before but I can't be sure of it. He also was once the NASCAR play-by-play guy, did the Indy 500, baseball, NFL, basketball, you name it. If you think you hear enough of him now you should grab some tapes of 70s sports highlights. More likely than not you'll hear ol' Keith. Jess

I don't really set experience prerequisites on my announcers. Howard Cosell never played sports at all. Harry Caray wasn't a great baseball player; neither was Mel Allen. I could listen to Keith Jackson do play-by-play on the Terminex guy killing bugs in my storage shed, but I don't recall him being a great player. On the other hand, ESPN has a studio full of ex-jocks who can't string together a sentence and if the teleprompter ever goes on the blink, who knows what they'll start spitting out. Launch codes for nuclear warheads, probably. There's a reason broadcasting is a major at most reputable universities: It's an art form much like singing or writing. Some guys are naturally talented at it, but most are uncomfortable at it or just downright terrible. Jess

Welcome! I'm in central Alabama right now. I'm envious that you just picked up the game a few months ago and managed to shoot a score it took me about 15 years of golf to achieve. :) Jess

Sounds like college football commentator Dave Rowe: "He's all alone by himself out there on an oasis." WT*? Jess

"Getting"?!?

I was teeing off at my old home course, where the men's and women's tees are on the same teeing area on one of the holes. I hit a worm-burner that hit the women's tees, shot over my head and went backwards into the preceding hole's fairway. I had a minus-50-yard drive on that hole. (g) Also took a friend of mine to the driving range at that same course -- he had never played golf before -- and he laser-sliced a drive into one of the trees lining the range, and it stuck in the tree. The tree had been hit by lightning and was a little rotten, and he plugged the ball into the tree about 20 feet up the trunk. Jess

Golf is my "alone time," and a lot of those times, my wife is glad to see me go. (g) I'm not playing very much right now for financial and time reasons (I cover college football for a Web site when it's in season as part of my job, so weekends are basically out from September to December), so it has never been a problem. I bowl more than I golf, and when my wife and I were dating, I got her to join a bowling league and got her some lessons. Now, it's simultaneously the best and worst of times. Ninety percent of the time, I like having her there, but when she's not bowling well, she tends to take it out on me, her primary "coach." So I'm not rushing to bring her into my golfing world, in other words. Jess

Reading the "worst courses" thread below, I have decided that what I typically base my ultimate decision of value on (presuming it's an average-priced course to begin with) is whether the greens are good. We've got one local track that's a muni and pretty boring. Layout is nothing special, there are no bunkers, the tee boxes could be better, etc. But the fairways have decent grass and the people are friendly. Still, it's more expensive than all but one other public course in a 30-minute radius. However, its greens are exceptional. Second-best in the area next to a Robert Trent Jones Golf Trail course that charges $70/round. Putts roll true, there is no dead grass anywhere on any green and they don't nut up the speed by cutting them improperly (or not cutting them at all). Therefore, this course is a pretty good value to me. I can play on crappy fairways but if I hit one within 10 feet I want the green to be playable. Thoughts? Jess

Fortunately, the two that top my list have both been closed (actually, one closed completely and the other has been rebuilt into a new course with 14 of the 18 holes changed). The worst ever was Harry Pritchett Memorial at The University of Alabama. I played probably 20 rounds there in my life and always left there feeling like I had been beaten up. Some of the highlights included: * A double-dogleg par four; * Three holes on the front side that played over a ravine; however, the ravine was too big on one of those holes, meaning you had no choice but to hit your drive into the face of it and then play your second shot uphill at about a 30- to 45-degree angle. It was someone's attempt at playing downhill, then uphill, but the layout didn't work. At least they cut it at fairway length; * One hole had a fairway that sloped dead left into OOB at a steep angle, so even if you hit a good shot, by the time it stopped rolling, it wasn't a good shot anymore. Plus, the tee boxes got redesigned and moved once and they didn't tell anyone where the new boxes were, so we had teed off in the wrong place by the time we figured out what was going on. And, the approach to the green was blind. The other course, in the same town (Tuscaloosa, Ala.) was Mimosa Park. No irrigation system on the course, anywhere. The No. 1 green was just a circle where they'd cut the fairway at half-length. Sign on the fence off the No. 1 tee read "Golfers going into the pasture to retrive balls will be removed from course." Yes, there were cows there. No. 18 was a tee off over water, then an approach shot back over water -- irrigation ditches protected by dike walls, and if you hit too close to them, you stood a real chance of hitting the face of the wall with your subsequent shot. Why did I play these places? For many years, it was all Tuscaloosa had (now it has two very good courses, Hidden Meadows and Ol' Colony, a Jerry Pate design). Plus, Mimosa was like $12 to ride 18. Jess