John333

Probably right around even par, maybe a little below, especially on my home course. Putting is a strength for me and I very rarely 3-putt, so I can almost always make par at least if I hit the green in regulation. My problem is missing the green and having to scramble for my pars, which seems to happen most often when I'm out of the the fairway off the tee. So yeah, I think I could do pretty well if I had a pro driving the ball for me.

Did you try calling the pro shop? The number is usually somewhere on the scorecard. Not sure how your course does it, but at ours, even if it's a time of day where we don't have a ranger on the course, we'll do something about a fivesome. I send some other member of staff out there to talk to them because a slow fivesome will slow up the course for the whole day. I would rather go out of my way to break up the fivesome early than allow it to continue and get complaints about pace from every other group that comes in.

For me, it was hitting solid iron shots to get greens in regulation. My putting is good so if I can hit greens, I can usually make pars with no problem. However, the real key was setting myself up for those solid approach shots... so hitting fairways. When I look at my stats, the biggest indicator of how I score on a given day is how many fairways I hit (Or at least that was the case earlier in the summer - I'm working on it and I'm getting better at hitting greens from the rough. This was the key to my first sub-80 score last week).

Yesterday on the first tee (#1 is a short par 5) I pushed my drive into the rough on the right side. We were playing a best ball and my partner had laid up, and he was looking at an easy par, so I decided to go for the green despite being in the rough. Well anyway, I took my 3 wood, hit it a little off the toe and it went straight into a big evergreen 40 yards ahead of me. It didn't come out. I could see it and it was out of reach so I had to take an unplayable lie. Now lying 3, I hit my 4th shot with a 3 iron just short of the green. I proceeded to chip in for the weirdest par I've ever had. As for the golf ball, #7 runs parallel to #1 so when we came back around, I checked the tree and my ball had fallen to a lower branch where I was able to grab it. So I lost the ball then recovered it 6 holes later. All in all a weird sequence of events.

I don't know if I would trust that net to hold me up...

I was going to say...this is one of many good reasons to do your closest to the pin on a par 3.

I'm pretty consistently at about 31-32 putts per round lately. It seems to me that on my good days, I hit greens and 2 putt. On my bad days, I miss greens, chip badly, and still 2 putt. Go figure.

I tried a 10 finger grip at the suggestion of my friend a few years ago (I'm an interlocker). I felt like it was causing me to lose control of my wrists and I also felt like I was forced to palm the club instead of hold it in my fingers, which was a feeling I didn't like. By the way, this was during high school, and this friend had been very short and small his entire golf life up to about a year before that, so that's probably why he learned with a 10 finger grip. Like GaijinGolfer said, juniors learn it because it makes it easier to release the wrists.

I'm a college student that works in a golf pro shop on the side. Only wish I could keep doing this forever.

I have two pairs of Contours...It's a really comfortable walking shoe and good if you want the classic golf shoe look. Although the DNA looks pretty interesting. I'd give that a shot if I wanted to spend the money.

I think his only mistake is implying that all bogey golfers have terribly inconsistent swings. It makes good sense that if you can't swing the same way twice, there's no sense trying to fit a club to that inconsistent swing. But when I got fitted for my clubs last year (15 handicap at the time) it showed great consistency as far as lie angle at impact, etc. Better advice would be to go get fitted, and if it shows you're all over the place, get some lessons before getting fitted again and buying clubs. Because in my case, the clubs turned out to be a big part of what was holding me at that bogey golf level, and now my handicap has been steadily decreasing since then as I'm much more comfortable with an iron in my hands.

I work in a pro shop and our head pro does all the club work...I had somebody bring a Ping PW in for a regrip, and he ended up showing be about 6 tiny things that were wrong with it that told him it was counterfeit. Interesting, and it's amazing how close they can get to the real thing. At least I know how to spot counterfeit Ping irons now, though.

Nice! I broke 80 for the first time yesterday with a 79, beating my previous best on my home course by 3 strokes. Posting the score and seeing that single digit differential sure felt good.