mdl

If everyone waited until there were no chance any cart path bounce or ricochet could end up even in the vicinity of the group ahead then every round would last 6+hours!

Great list. #2 might be my biggest pet peeve. How many times have you seen someone in the group ahead whom you've been watching all day drive it 220, drive it 220 then stand by their ball holding 3w waiting for the green to clear 250 yards away? The other one for me is pre-putt routines like you're on the back nine at the masters in contention. No you don't need 3-5 minutes to read and set up each putt!

I think not being bothered to notice that the course is wide open in front of you but that there's two groups on the tee box waiting for you to clear the fairway on every hole is... almost definitionally selfishness! Everyone understands queuing and fairness. And maybe not everyone knows the ways to be efficient and fast enough without feeling rushed, but everyone knows how to hustle if they can be bothered to notice that they're being an asshole by not hustling 🤷‍♂️

Interesting. My brother got me an orange whip for christmas which I've really been loving. Partially because it's kinda been making me feel this! Like you need long and slow down of the club going back and transition to be able to whip it through and not have your hands get *way* out in front of the "club head".

I don't think this is a crazy recommendation. I'd just add shaft flex to your list for a golfer who has the time and interest to invest in getting better. Slow swing player with a stiff shaft or ex-athlete with high swing speed but low skill playing a regular flex shaft are both going to learn bad habits trying to adjust to incorrect flex. But with that I agree that for a newer player who's excited about the game and is planning on investing in lessons and learning and practice, it makes sense to just get the cheapest used clubs you can with the right length, lie, and flex. Then invest in solidifying the pattern of your swing before getting fit and spending all that money on new clubs.

Hope you keep posting here. Lots of stuff to work on. Interested to see how your coach(es) approach your plan!

I've honestly never been fit for a putter outside my Edel. So I don't have great comparison points. All I know is the one I got fit for 2-3 years ago turned my putting from a big weakness into the strongest part of my game where I only lose 1.2 strokes versus scratch per round! I cant' imagine ever changing putters! So I'm biased towards giving them the benefit of the doubt that their fitting system will continue to be awesome. I'm taking my inference from my outdated n=1 sample and sticking with it 😆

Just the look of it?

Well that video doesn't give you much But that's how Edel fittings at least for the torque balanced putter have been for years now. The fitter comes with a kit with sets of shafts, hozels, heads, weights, alignment markings and grips. I don't remember what's magnetic and what snaps or screws together, but they're all interchangeable. The long part of the fitting is interchanging hozels and heads, shifting left-right bias, offset and head position, loft, and eyelines/looks, etc. All that is done with a little magnetic mirror stuck on the face. You line up your putter at the laser pointer set up the same height off the ground as the mirror. Then when you're aimed they turn on the laser and you see how left/right and up/down you are. The shifting of most of the pieces causes surprisingly large shifts in where your aim biases. Leveraging Arccos and meticulous marking of flag positions and first putt point I saw that I gained almost 2 strokes putting after getting the Edel putter. That's my putter for life!

I can't endorse @ChetlovesMer's post enough! I got fit for an Edel putter a few years back and it shaved just shy of 2 strokes gained a round off my game (from Arccos with meticulous correction of 1st putt and pin position on every green)! With my old putter I was aiming high and right and biased a bit too long. Now when I'm playing/practicing enough to be putting well I will often gain strokes versus scratch on the green. Transformed my game. What you're saying about the driver is for sure not true. Last time I was fit for a driver I would go from reasonable to great to driving like triple my handicap with almost every shift of shaft or club head, at least during the early, wide exploration phase. You don't need an all day event but a full fitting will absolutely get you better results than taking the first driver off the shelf where you don't hit only duck hooks (i.e. "reasonable well suited")

I've been focusing on this a lot the past couple years. The big breakthrough for me was 8 holes I played with my daughter for the first time on a real course. We were out there during the holidays with family and she and her cousin were just teeing up from 100y out. The adults played the full holes. I only cared about how much fun my daughter was having (obviously hoping/investing in the future ). I had a few crappy holes and cared not at all. Then ended up finishing birdie-birdie. And had *way* more fun than I'd had on the course in forever, holes I played well and not. Like you, it struck me how ridiculous that was given golf is supposed to be my fun time! I'm not perfect but I've managed to significantly shift my attitude on the course and have way more fun out there now than I used to, even if I'm playing poorly overall. Good luck!

I wish I could hit that well with my non optimal swing! Yeah the coaches I’ve seen started with my back swing and down swing too. I guess I should take it is a positive that my new coach in my most recent set of lessons felt that was good enough that my biggest issue was throwing my hands out and finishing super steep instead getting a bit more body rotation and finishing more on plane🤷‍♂️😆

Given your results you're clearly a more talented golfer than I am, so take this for what it's worth. Are you not concerned with how being too steep and hands too far to the right (from this view) at these two spots? In my latest round of coaching that was probably the biggest piece my coach had me work on. For me I'd worked previously on not being as steep at ~A5 but looked a lot like you at ~A9, and still sometimes looked only slightly less steep than below at ~A5. And my misses were also push-fade with longer clubs and block/push with shorter clubs.

I'd argue weird holes for the sake of weird holes is bad architecture. So if anything this is evidence you do care about architecture 😁

Ha. Well that's good to hear I just meant, if pace of play were at 8 hours I wouldn't play even like a lifetime dream course like the old course! Heartily agree on #3. I can have a great time with a lot of compromise on conditions off the green, but shitty greens ruin a round.

Sure. Mickelson was a generational talent too. Just not nearly as talented as Tiger!

All of these dimensions have a line over which they overwhelm the others. Like, I wouldn't play an 8 hour round at the old course. In answering I assumed that all of them were in the not great to awesome range, with none in OMG this is horrible territory. Given that... Condition/architecture/company My main struggle was architecture versus pace. I made the call by thinking about the fact that I don't have any notable golf memories of blah courses with great pace. But I do have ones with excellent to world class architecture and some waits for fairways and greens to clear.

That he was a generational talent with obsession and ambition to spare?

You know we have the large societies we do through government which is funded through taxes, so earnings doesn't equal money in the bank? 😉

I agree the current format isn't great. But if it weren't so poisoned by being like the Leni Riefenstahl content for the rulers of Saudi with their medieval values, I could totally get into the team aspect of it. Like, imagine a new PGA with teams where, say, half the tournaments each year are team only – as in no individual prizes – with 4 rounds and cuts and varying formats: total team score, best ball team score, team match play brackets, alternate shot, hell even a scramble or shamble! And then the other half of the tournaments are of the traditional, current PGAT format. That would be super fun!

This feels incredible regardless of any plantar issues!

Maybe you're lazy? I have a job and a family and I find it incredibly easy to find 45 minutes most days for a good general workout and then another 45m on top for all the preventative/PT type stuff I need to do to keep all my tendons and joints from getting worse and worse as I plod through middle age

Bummer. I've only had an acute version of this from jumping off a two story building on a challenge as a teenager... Chronic version sounds very not fun! Getting older sucks, body wise at least.

Sorry this is pedantic but I tend pedant so... For a division 4 golfer you used to add 0.4 * (Score - (Cap + 4)) to your cap if Score > Cap + 4. That means you can add up to 0.4 * (ESC Max - (Cap + 4)) in a single round. So it's always at least possible to undo a cap lowering in one round! But yeah, I'm just being annoying. Your point about the strong bias downwards remains. Interesting point about the history of a scratch and a net leaderboard in old clubs. That is super cool and not something I'd want to throw away either. Maybe they should do something like flight it like most American club tourneys and then do a championship net round(s) with only like the top 3 from each flight so it's less often just the outlier high cappers winning net.

Last weekend I lost in the elite eight round of a 64 team two person best ball match play tournament. Went two 20 holes against two low single digit cappers. I won the first hole because I parred and got a stroke then didn't contribute the next 10 holes. Shot 50 on the front. Then I shot 38 on the back. Tied it up on 14 with a 4i up hill to a pin tucked maybe 6 feet past a brutal false front. Arccos has my 4i as my 214y club. Changed from 5i to 4i on the teebox into a cold quartering wind. Hit it pin high at 183y to 4 feet right! Then I defended 15. Pulled my tee shot but got lucky and found it, chipped out and up a bit to middle of the fairway 140y out. 9i up the hill to 12-15 feet. Drained the par putt to halve the hole! I gave it away on 17 though. All four of us hit solid drives. Then all other three players hit crap 2nd shots. I hit the green with 6i about 30 feet out but on the wrong level. Not great first putt to 4 feet. Standing over it felt like I was aimed right. Instead of stepping away I went for it and pulled it to 3 putt and tie the hole. Partner and I both got strokes on 18 and we both parred to win the hole and tie it up but that should've been for the win. Super fun round though and super fun format!