mdl

Can't endorse the video point enough. Sure, there are some things you can pretty much feel correctly with enough experience even without video. But I can't tell you how many times I've had a day or a week or a couple weeks where one or two new feels worked incredibly and had me feeling like suddenly I was a wildly better golfer. Then, one day, those feels stop working. If you're not 100% sure what actual issues those feels were helping you fix, then you have no reliable way to figure out the next feel that keeps those issues fixed (for now). And you're stuck just bouncing around fixes and feels until you get that magic combo for a while again. I'd highly recommend taking video next time you're at the range. Hopefully the stuff that was working for you last time continues to feel great and give better than previous results, so you can record what it is your swing looks like when you're hitting it better and have a reference when new issues crop up.

It's too late. Damage done. Punishment will be drawn out and severe.

Definitely look at the quickie pitching video and flighting wedges threads. Quickie pitching totally changed my game around the green, and honestly I can use the feels/techniques I use inspired from that video up to swings with a back swing up to A3 (lead arm parallel to ground on back swing) and get up to maybe 70% full swing distance that way. And the flighted wedge technique I can game but is not nearly as well instilled as the pitching. But it's still often my most reliable scoring club shot, and it goes 90+% my full swing distance.

Usual caveats about feels and not being universal or whatever. But I actually really like the Xander Schauffele (sp?) bit in GD this month. One drill I think I might try that he recommended is setting up normally, then stepping your front foot back to hip width, with club head only coming back a bit. Then start your swing and near the top step into the swing. I've only done this with dry swings, but I like the way it gives you the feel of using your whole body to drive power through the swing. Then again, I grew up as both a pitcher and hitter in baseball, so this kind of feel might be particularly attractive for me. The other feel/thought he mentioned that I like is the one of trying to get very high speed but only right AT the ball. The motivational story he told was the drill his dad made him do, trying to hit a nail all the way into a board with only one hit. Sort of forcing you to figure out how to smoothly approach the hit with control so you don't smash your fingers holding the nail, but to explode with enough force that you get the nail all the way in. I know these aren't really directly guaranteed to increase your swing speed, but they seemed somewhat relevant...

Challenge (Answered without looking at other answers first) *Edit. I see I gave Erik's answer. Does that make me a winner? Though really I think @djfajt71's answer – "Thankful" – is objectively the correct one.

I don't think this really requires much thinking for most of us. It's not like I have four different ways dialed in to hit it 160 that I'm going to want to choose from. I'm probably aiming right half of green given the possible misses. But mainly I'm just trying to stay smooth and get good contact so it goes the right distance. I'll deal with how to not putt it off the green, or get up and down, when it comes to that!

I feel like it's less a question of risk – if you wanna stand close and risk getting hit, fair enough – than it is of competition. Like one of those recovery shots tiger tried from the pine straw where if the spectators hadn't been standing too close the ball probably would've bent and then rolled down way closer to the hole. But because he hit it a bit right of what he wanted, instead it hit a fan and stopped way short.

Maybe get Game Golf or Arccos (I have neither, but a good comparison here) and play 5-10 rounds to get really specific stats on yourself. I've heard around here that you need to do a little work editing your putts to get the most accurate stats (I think because neither knows where the pins were when you were playing?). But if you do that you could get the really detailed stats plus exact strokes gained to compare against the top and barely staying on tour pros. Also, I liked the point above about seeing if there is a big hole in your game. Having GG or Arccos level stats would help you see that. If you're lucky you won't be in the position of @p1n9183, where you're just solidly worse than pro in all facets, on easier courses to boot...

More to the point, I have no real wisdom to add here. But damn I'm jealous how good your are! I've only ever played with one other "natural". He was a small kid, maybe 5'8", skinny. He'd just graduated from high school and had decided to turn down a DII baseball partial scholarship he'd been offered and wanted to take up a new sport now that he wouldn't be playing baseball. He did that in May/June after high school baseball was over. I played with him in September. He out-drove me (I'm a big guy, not pro long but long enough to almost always the longest in a random muni foursome), played sweet golf, and carded maybe a 75 with a few strokes left on the course.

I know this isn't really your point, but if he's playing tough courses, someone who averages in the mid 70s could well be +, if not realistically +3. Like, if your typical course for a score submission is rated at like 73/140, a player who shoots non-competition scores averaging ~75 with always a handful of gross scores below par in the past 20 rounds, then that player could well carry a + handicap. Though again, not a +3.

I've always had pretty straight 10 yard differences between clubs and have wondered why all the pros, even the ones that are short hitters and only hit it a bit farther than I do, have such bigger gaps at the top of the bag. I average in the 260s carry with my driver in, so pretty much right in between red and black, but my long clubs, say hybrid-5i, are only a bit longer than the red numbers. Then my shorter clubs, 7i-PW, are pretty much exactly right in the black column. Then the SW and LW numbers are too high, with the red number for LW too high even in the red column. Not sure why I have such a flatter distance vs club curve than everyone else...

I don't watch a ton, but when I do it's for tournament coverage. I generally like the way they do that. I agree with the above it's annoying when commentators sound disappointed, that was "okaaay", when a 160 yard PW ends up at 18 feet. But that's true of all golf announcing, not just GC. I used to watch big break. Also agree they should bring back playing with the pros. I liked that back in the day. And I'm with @iacas. Tiger is the needle. And, honestly, I've been pumped about it over the last month. Totally looking forward to the Masters, hoping Tiger's in the mix on Sunday.

Well you didn't ask me, but that's the worst one of the ones I've looked through, IMO. Basically it makes downhill or severely sloping short putts slightly easier with no obvious benefit. I agree with Erik that the pace of play argument is bogus. I mean, I've left flagsticks in when I'm trying to charge through 9 holes during nap time on an open course where I can honestly save time by jogging up to my ball, fixing any mark, and banging the ball towards the hole. But for anyone not playing speed golf on a wide open course, I don't see it. Yeah. There were definitely some courses that seemed like they had legit ESAs. But I definitely played at some courses that basically wished they had the new penalty area option available to make some generic SoCal scrub into a penalty area, but didn't, so just called the area they wanted to make a hazard an ESA.

Well, I think usually they were marked as "environmentally sensitive", but you were often told to treat it as a hazard, and they were marked as such, not OB, though if memory serves I've seen both. Not sure if the "environmentally sensitive" label changed whether or not it was legit.

These pretty much all make sense to me. Not totally sure whether they really make the rules THAT much easier. But it seems they're a bit easier, and there's definitely a few really nice improvements that clear up things that just made unnecessary penalties for things that didn't unfairly advantage a player, like accidentally touching the sand with your club while walking into a bunker. I really like the grounding allowed in penalty areas change. I used to live in LA, where a lot of scrub/brush was marked as a penalty area to allow relief other than lost ball, but where often, especially if you didn't hit it that far into the brush, you had a shot not much worse than from the rough, or at worst like a messy fairway bunker. It always seemed to me like it made sense to be able to just treat this like a regular shot. Glad they did that. And I agree with Erik. I like making it official that a course is allowed to use an official rule to speed play but still make a score submittable for OB shots where it's ridiculous in a casual round, for pace of play considerations, to go back and re-tee. Over the years I've gotten in the habit of taking liberal provisionals in order to avoid the situation, but when I've been surprised, I've literally never gone back to re-tee. I've always played by this new rule, though with a less generous drop area!