DaveP043

It will be a great and worthwhile trip just to see friends like you again, and to meet some new friends. The golf will be good to, but the friends make it special.

Amen, I wouldn't play a driver with any screws missing. I've been accused of having a screw loose, but its never been in one of my clubs.

I was picturing a "weight port", a hole with a specific bottom extending into the clubhead, but not through it. I do agree that the Canturbury ruling seems to apply to a hole that extends completely through a clubhead, which isn't allowed. I suppose I'd say its the difference between a hole and a tunnel. The hole is acceptable, the tunnel is not.

There are many many things in the world that are "unfair" in just this way. If you don't have enough money, you can't have dinner at the French Laundry, you can't purchase a penthouse in Manhattan, you can't drive a Bentley. Every one of these is available to the general public, all you have to do is pony up the cash. The responsibility of a business is to make money for the owners. If the course is full of golfers at the normal rate, why would they take less money for one of those precious spots on the tee sheet? I'm not opposed to offering a discount wherever the owner or management decides its appropriate, but its their choice. Lowered rates for younger players might be a positive thing for the long-term health of golf, but should individual businesses sacrifice financially right now?

For my own education, can you explain why a "vacant" hole in the underside of the club, normally filled by a screw holding in a weight, would make the club non-conforming? I don't see anything in the Equipment Rules that leads me to the same conclusion.

Work is serious, yet I have fun at work. Golf is for fun, yet I'm serious at times on the course. I do my best to be serious for the 10 or 20 or 30 seconds it takes to plan and hit a shot, and no more. Of course I try to hit each shot as best I can, but in general I can accept my failures and laugh them off. At least I can after a few seconds of well-earned irritation. I do play what I call "serious golf" at times, competitions that matter to me. They might be club tournaments, interclub matches, even something as important as the Newport Cup! But I'm not making a living from these, just getting to compete is fun.

I'm willing and interested as well. I'll be transitioning into retirement over the next year or less, and will have more time available if needed. I've enjoyed my time here from the first, and really value the effort you and the mods put into it.

Section 7 of the Handicapping Rules talks about what the Committee can do. The committee is supposed to do a handicap review for each player at least once a year. Assuming that the player's newer scores aren't consistent with the older scores, the Committee can adjust the player's handicap. I don't see a mechanism for the committee to remove those scores from his record, but it could "adjust" his index based on only the more recent scores.

When Bryson misses more fairways, with his length being relatively unchanged, his SG Driving goes down. There's more "value" in hitting a fairway 360 yards from the tee than there is hitting in the woods at 360 from the tee. So fairways hit is a part of the equation, and fairways hit is a stat that most casual golfers understand. But consider that his SG driving goes down some, and he doesn't pick up the loss somewhere else in his game, he's at a relative disadvantage as compared to normal.

This is my understanding as well. The test subjects weren't specifically exposed to Covid (probably because of the pretty significant risks involved), they just went on with their normal lives. Only a small percentage would normally get infected without any vaccine at all. So the "control" group had 90 (or so) cases, while the vaccinated group had only 5. So the vaccine reduced the incidence of infection by 94% or so.

The term Anti-Handicap was invented, as far as I know, by Dean Knuth as a way to measure consistency. The closer your anti-handicap is to your real handicap, the more consistent you are. But I think it would simply confirm what @TN94z is seeing, increased variability at a time when he's working on changes.

I wouldn't suggest that a couple of bad rounds make a trend to a higher handicap, and I think the variability of scores differs from one person to another. But statistically, a player's average is generally 2 to 3 strokes higher than (par + Handicap). In my own scores, I see a longer "tail" to the higher scores, so while my best scores might result in net -2 or so (say 4 or 5 below average), my highest scores might be 6 or 8 above average, net +10 to par. I'd expect variability to be even greater while making a swing change. Just keep doing what you're doing, it'll all work itself out.

I just looked up a random time period, this is from the RoG from 1980-1984: A player may GIVE advice to . . . ONLY his partner. This has been the rule for as long as I've been playing golf. Rules Of Golf 1980

I can't say I've ever seen anyone cheating, but I did have a pretty uncomfortable thing happen a few years ago. I was playing in a 2-day stroke play event at my club, paired with two friends. On the 16th, a medium length par 3, one of them hit a shot that came up short. He turned around and said "Let me give you some advice..." and I started waving my arms "...take an extra club, the wind is against". I told him that's a penalty, you can't DO that. The other friend suggested that he didn't really mean to give advice, I had to tell him that when you begin a sentence by saying "Let me give you some advice..." that the intention was pretty clearly to give advice. We're still friends, but I hated to do what I really HAD to do.

If I'm selecting just one, as the poll requires, its yardage. I mentioned that I look at the ratings as additional info, but its secondary. I'm comfortable playing from different tees within the group, so I don't often feel pressure to play a set of tees that I wouldn't normally select.