jaystock

I have two. The first was an 8-iron from 142 yds when I was 14 yrs old, about a year after I started playing golf seriously. The second was even more interesting. It was the final hole of a 54-hole college tournament. The final 36 holes were played in one day, and both rounds were shotgun starts...why - I still don't know. Anyway, I had struggled to an ugly 79 (par 71) over the first 18, then was 6-over through 17 holes in the final round. I had started on the 18th hole, so my final hole was the 17th - a 200-yd par 3. The wind was at least 2-clubs at my back, so I pulled the 6-iron and hit it smooth. It hit on the front of the green, then released into the cup making a fairly large "whack" as it went in (it was still moving pretty good when it hit the stick!). What a nice way to finish an otherwise crappy round - knock it in the hole and walk off the course! Especially since I'd putted like a dog all day and now I didn't have to!! What's funny is that while I was knocking the ball in the hole, our coach was on the adjacent hole (#16) watching my teammate finish up with a solid triple-bogey 7. Both missed all the festivities... Anyway, it's been 10 years since my last. I'm still chasing my grandparents on my mom's side. Each of them had 6 HIO's! Both my grandma and my grandpa. Strangely, gramps never got to see one go in...always a hidden green surface or he was playing in fog or something. Well, those are my HIO stories...hopefully there will be more to come. I haven't seemed to even sniff one recently.

Well, I started playing when I was 13, made a hole-in-one at 14, played every day that summer and made my varsity high-school team by the end of my freshman year. Wish improvement came that quick these days! Oh, wait, that work thing gets in the way...

Unfortunately, it's not coming through...I can't get anything on the PGA site today...

Um, I'm going to stick to my guns on this one. There are lots of ways to define "good" in golf, and I think that is what we are failing to do. Quantitatively, we've got all kinds of statistics for doing precisely that, and all of them relate to different aspects of the game, but in my opinon score is the most logical. Scoring average, driving distance, GIR, sand saves, putts, etc., are all metrics by which we judge the skill of a golfer, but in order to quantify somebody as 2X as good, they have to be 2X as good relative to some quantifiable figure. My argument is that the most logical way to measure how "good" someone is at the game of golf is by his scoring average. However, even if you look at any other metric (except victories), the 2X argument for Tiger over Phil (or anyone else on Tour) falls down. I'm going to go out on a limb and say Tiger does not hit the ball twice as far as Phil, he does not hit 2X as many greens, get up and down 2X as often or doing anything else except win 2X as often as Phil. But as anyone will tell you, winning can come down to missing a 3' putt on the 72nd hole (or botching a heroicly stupid recovery shot ). That's just one shot out of 275 - give or take a few. At the risk of sounding like too much like Pelz (too late - I'm an engineer too), that's just a fraction of a percent better. PGA Tour tournaments are played over 4 rounds for a reason. Winning means just beating everybody else by at least one shot over that standardized number of holes, and Tiger manages to do that extremely well. It proves he is better than everybody else over the long haul. But this also means that you only half to be marginally better (consistently) than all the rest with respect to scoring in order to win at a ridiculous pace. 1% better with respect to score over four rounds is good enough, if you can consistently do that, and Tiger can and that's why he wins so often. As for Tiger being at best 25% better than you or I, with respect to the most important factor in the game - score - I think its true. Unfortunately, in golf that's the difference between $10 million a year in prize money and a big fat zero.

To me, the notion of Tiger being "2X as good" as Phil means that Tiger would cut Phil's 18-hole scores in half (on average) every time they play. Obviously, that's not going to happen - so I think any idea about anyone being "2X as good" is a bit disrespectful of how talented all the PGA Tour pros are. Tiger may win twice (or five or ten) times as often as someone else, but in my mind that does not make him actually twice as good. You could say that Tiger is 2X as good at winning, and that would probably be a severe understatement, because noone else even comes close to the effeciency with which Woods can put away a golf tournament. The stat I'd like to see (besides his amazing winning percentage per start in majors and overall), is the number of times Woods has beaten his playing-partner in the final round head to head). I'd be willing to bet that number is well north of 80%. (New thread material?!?) Anyway, given the cut streak, his average finishes per start, and his unquestional mental edge, Tiger is clearly a notch above the rest. It's a very large notch, and he's unlikely to be overtaken in that position, but it's not a whole 'nother telephone pole.

I'll be watching most of it on Sunday, but in general I'd rather play myself than watch. Nothing like squeezing them both in though! Saturday I'll be playing in an MGA event first...then parking in front of the tube.

My specials : 1) Ocean Course at Kiawah Island - site of 1991 Ryder Cup and 2012 PGA - played in 1993 when I was 16. A 7500 yd course at sea level was an absolute monster at that time. Holy crap. #17 is one of the toughest par-threes I've played. Another hole was 495 yds, par 4, into the howling wind. I spanked driver, spanked 3W, then holed out from 40 yds short for a sweet birdie. That's the only good thing I did that day en route to an 87! 2) TPC at Scottsdale (Stadium) - Actually not a particularly tough course. Fairways are fairly generous, but trouble if you miss. 3) Troon North (Monument) - Scottsdale, AZ - Pure desert sweetness. Best greens I ever played on. 4) Karsten Creek - Stillwater, OK - Very tough track. I don't think it's gotten much press, but it's in the GD Top 100 You Can Play. Awesome conditioning...and you can consider it lost if you hit any kind of foul ball. 5) Wolf Creek - Mesquite, NV - Another scenic masterpiece with one exception...a blind uphill par 3 of 190-200 yds that seems out of place (#5, I think). The rest of the course is gorgeous...the only one in the Mesquite area worth the 150 green fee. Oh, and don't pay the $20 to have your picture taken on the tee...not worth it. 6) Entrada at Snow Canyon - St. George, UT I'd played this a ton of time on Links 1999 on the PC, so I was excited to play this one. Holes 15-17 are a dramatic shift from the rest of the course as they run through an ancient lava flow field. Jet black lava awaits any missed fairway on these three holes - and they're pretty tight. Watch out for ricochets (I speak from experience!) Amazing and punishing. 7) Grand National (Lakes and Links) - Opelika, AL I believe these have hosted the NCAA Div I Championships, men and women, along with some other bg time amateur stuff. Part of the RTJ Trail, they are both challenging, well conditioned, and relatively cheap. I highly recommend every course on the RTJ Trail. The Judge at Capitol Hill , near Montgomery, is a beast at 7800 yds - including a 717 yd par 5 with a 255 yd carry on the tee-shot. I hear they have an 8,000 yd course now as well! This fall: Trying to arrange a trip to Santa Fe/Albuquerque to play courses on the Santa Fe Trail, including Paa-Ko Ridge and Black Mesa .

Currently three: Odyssey TriHot #1 (34") TM Rossa Sebring (35") Yes! Natalie (34") Currently using the Natalie, but none of them work worth a damn right now. Perhaps I need another ...

I'm an environmental engineer (mostly water issues). Occasionally we get to work on water supply, drainage, and wetland issues that involve golf courses, bt not as much as I had hoped when first going to work here. I can log on at work until the resident internet Nazi blocks this site...

Hey fellas, I'm an environmental engineer in Austin, TX. Grew up in Houston, played high school and Div III college golf. Used to play a lot of amateur events, but I've recently curtailed that activity some. The title says "decent stick", but I'm not sure that's entirely accurate anymore. I've gone from scratch to a 4 hcp in the last year trying to revamp my swing and short game, neither of which wants to take hold. Currently I can't make a three-footer to save my life, but we've all been there I guess. Gotta love this game! Anyway, looking forward to reading and contributing to the forum as much as I can. Seems like there's a lot of knowledgeable folks on here. Jarad

I can weigh in on this. I received the SkyCaddie for a Christmas gift, and I was pretty excited about it. My excitement was muted when I got to my home course and found that the yardages were off by as much as 15 yds (as compared to a friends Bushnell Pinseeker 1500 and the on-course yardages). The reason apparently has to do with crappy signal strength in the area. On other courses I've played, the yardages have been pretty good (though not always), but with my SkyCaddie useless at my club it's mostly just been taking up space on the shelf in my bedroom. I agree with the other posts that the rangefinder is way more versatile, and better for use in practice. The only time the rangefinder sucks is for blind shots or when you are deep in the gunch, but then again you probably shouldn't be trying to hit the green from there anyway... I definitely need to get me a Pinseeker and stop mooching off my friend...anybody looking for a SkyCaddie?!?

I'd say look back through the history books, cuz' it surely wouldn't happen now with the top pros like Tiger only playing a handful of events outside the majors every year. Maybe Vijay has a shot...

All due credit to Ogilvy, but this Open was lost. Phil and Monty both "lost" it...in more than one sense. Yes, Ogilvy did par the last 4 holes, but he had to have some serious help in the form of a sturdy flagstick to do so. Hitting the pin with the bunker shot on 16, then chipping in on 17 for a par after otherwise slogging it around on that hole. Clearly, there is alot of skill involved in hitting those shots, but none of those guys can hit the pin on consecutive short games shots like that with any kind of regularity, so take that as you will. He was definitely the steadiest of the them all for 72 holes, with no doubles, and in this case that got him the win. Anyway, back to the losing... Monty's was just a pure and simple physical choke job. Seven-iron from the fairway and he lays the sod over it. Pure Open pressure at its best. He may have also made a slight mental error on his first putt, possibly thinking he might need to make it to get into a playoff at +4, and then running it 12 ft by. But he didn't know exactly where he stood. Very similar to the situation on 18 at Southern Hills in 2001. Phil, on the other hand, knew exactly where he stood. Par for the win, bogey gets him into a playoff. Even after the poor drive (club selection very dubious), his worst error was clearly going for the green on the 2nd shot. Since he had pulled off a very similar shot on the 17th hole (a 20-30 yd cut from the trampled gallery path), I'm sure he figured he could pull it off again. He did have a clear path back to the fairway, and with his wedge/short iron game, he should have played the percentages and tried to get up and down to win, and at worst get into a playoff. I actually feel bad for Dave Pelz. He just put out his newest book...the title? "Damage Control". Now his star pupil has a mental meltdown for the ages. That's somewhat funny, yet quite sad to me. Hopefully, Phil will read (or reread) it for next year.