plop

I also think it's similar to hinge and hold method. Could you elaborate a bit more why they are different?

It's like saying that casino always hold an advantage so you won't play casino. I think you don't have to try to minimize your score every time you are out there. I guess we play golf to maximize our happiness (sorry for the lack of better word) and the number of strokes is just one factor. For me, leaving a driver home is like taking some fun out. So I guess it's an ego thing and there is nothing wrong with that imo, well, unless you slice the ball into the wood and spend 15 mins finding your ball.

I have a couple of questions and hope some folks here can clear these up. - If I can hit push/draw, does it mean my hip already slide correctly? In other words, is hip slide a neccessary condition for push/draw? - If I slide my hip correctly, would the club be on the correct downswing plane? Or I still have to drop my arms at the beginning of the downswing+slide my hip. Thanks!

That's a big IF. Given that people are skeptic about handicap shown here, it's just like a lemon market. With an assumption that it's biased downward (not follow the rules strictly, delusion or whatever), it however serves as a nice lower bound. Do you actually have data and run some regressions? If so, could you give me to the data source or the article about this estimation? I would like to do some econometrics as well. I suspect there are tons of endogeneities so that R-square means nothing but I might be wrong.

Man, I trust you more than those three and I believe many people in this forum do as well. How about "Swing Analysis Iacas's Way"?

Maybe a little off topic. Why this forum shows handicap in the first place? What's its advantage and disadvantage?

Very informative article. Casio Exilim EX-FS10 which also records 210 fps video at 480 x 360 runs around $100-$110 at Amazon. I think it would be great if you would also write an article about how to do "basic" swing analysis--how to draw a plane line, common mistake in analyzing swing video, etc. I guess learning by example particularly from Swing Check is the best bet as of now. I'm sure there are some people (like me) who wouldn't dare posting their swings. So, I had better analysis it by myself

Being Asian myself, I can say that it's mostly, if not all, about beauty. Non-American born Asians prefer girls with white fine skin as opposed to tanned one. I think this applies to most east and southeast Asia. Not sure about other regions. For some genetic reason or whatever, Asians won't become tanned. They just turn black and that doesn't suit Asian eyes. I guess Michelle Wie is an exception.

My wife started playing around three years ago and she has committed since then (lucky me!). At that time, she tried slingshot and hate it because of its look and weird sound at impact. It's like ringing a thick, muted bell. So, she went with callaway x20. She also hit the new model of slingshot a month ago and said the sound is much better than its previous version but she doesn't like it anyway because the clubhead is heavy. I guess she gets used to her set. Are you also considering buying the new model but fewer clubs? like 6-pw?

Thanks for all answers! From my understanding, it's like we assume that I hit the 3rd shot from the tee to where I drop the ball. That's why it's 4th shot. I guess I had better either hit a fairway or use a pink ball .

What penalty should I take in a situation like this? I hit a tee shot, see with my own eyes where the ball goes but I don't see it bounces. (it's not on fairway of course!). For some reason, I look around and cannot find it! I didn't hit a provisional and I cannot go back to the tee box and rehit. (well I guess I shouldn't do that in a crowded public course). I normally drop a ball where I think my ball first hits the ground and take one stroke penalty. I want to make my score legit but I'm not sure about the best practice. I wish I could hit every fairway and don't have a problem finding my ball. Sorry if this has been asked before!

Burberry

This may be true for driver or wood. It's a different story for iron I guess. I actually found that Japanese made tons of irons with traditional look. Take Fourteen, Yonex, RC or so. Sure there are some exceptions like JPX which aims towards higher HCP players. I would think in this aspect both markets are similar--better players prefer more traditional looks. I also think Japanese may in fact tend to favor luxurious looks. BTW, I haven't seen any Japanese iron that looks as fancy as TM Burner.

Not really related to the OP question. I have tried several "Japan spec clubs" as I sometimes travel and play in Asia. As far as I know, Japanese/Asian spec clubs are in general a bit shorter and has flatter lie angle which match Asian build (shorter legs relative to arms). My mom uses Maruman. It's so light and its shaft wobbles a lot when I waggle. It seems that Asian spec shafts are lighter and have higher torque? Almost all of my Asian friends complain that US spec clubs are heavy. One of my friend who is a Asian tour pro and can easily hit 180 yards with 7I uses 695MB with NS pro shaft...I once tried to sell my used driver with Aldila NV-65S in Asia and the shop didn't want to buy it because the shaft is too heavy!

I found this paper very interesting. Does anybody know where to obtain the data they used? The paper just says that the data source is PGA. Does PGA have a public database? BTW. is there any economist or OR guy around?