mirv

my dad and i played the first of two rounds of the annual september scramble at our local club. we came in with a 69, which is actually the best score we've posted in four years of playing this tournament. the leader in our flight was 67, so we're gonna have to do better than 69 tomorrow if we are to have any shot at winning. i'm thinking 66 ought to at least place, if not get us into a playoff for first. here's hoping!

90 is the "bad score" line for me. if i shoot 85-89, i'll gripe that i had an off day, but if i cross 90, i just go silent and don't even want to talk about it, haha. fortunately those 90s don't show up very often anymore... i can only recall three rounds that were higher than 89 this year.

well, not exactly my personal score for the day, but my father and i were practicing for a scramble tournament coming up this weekend and managed a 29 on the front nine holes, which was far and away the best we've ever done. i jinxed us at the turn by saying "we might be able to shoot 59 if we keep this up." we fell into steady pars for the remaining nine and wound up with 64, which was still a personal best in of itself (our previous best had been 65).

picking up an oldie thread here, cause i was reminded today of something that actually happened about a year ago in a 2-man scramble tournament my father and i played. this other father/son team we were paired with, we never could PROVE it, but we strongly suspected they were cheating in the form of moving their ball considerably multiple times. on one hole, they both tried to drive over a grove of trees to the green, and it didn't look to me like either of them were even going to be close. dad and i were just simply up the fairway. we get to our ball, not really paying attention to the other guys, discuss our shot options, look up, and suddenly they're standing right next to the green talking about how they're chipping for eagle. well, okay, whatever, i could have been wrong in my assessment of their drives. fast forward to two holes later, they both hook into the woods. like, deep into the woods, at least 15 or 20 yards. dad and i are down the right side of the fairway... look up, and these guys are suddenly standing at the edge of the woods hitting a punch shot to the green. well, okay, maybe they got a lucky ricochet. except then the exact same thing happens on the next hole - they both hook deep into the woods, and suddenly they're standing at the edge of the woods with a convenient punch shot opening to the green. i turned to dad and was like "for the remaining holes, we watch them like hawks, cause this is getting ridiculous." there weren't any more possible cheating moments, though by then we only had about 5 holes left. not that it mattered much, but the son had like 17 clubs in his bag. also, my dad and i weren't keeping count, cause we figured everyone would be playing honest, but you are allowed 2 mulligans each per round, and i'm pretty sure these guys took 3 each. i actually did call them on that - they started to burn more mulligans putting for eagle on a par 5, and i said "whoa guys, haven't you already gone through all four?" "no... no, don't think so... pretty sure we haven't..." and i just shrugged and let it go. after that was when the suspiciously convenient ball placements started. they wound up in a sudden death playoff for 1st in their flight and won $300, which chaffed me quite a bit. i went to the course super and told him, and he said he'd had complaints about them before and that if they played any more tournaments there he might send a marshall out to keep an eye on them.

86 on a pretty tough course today, right around 7000 yards and the firmest, slickest greens that i personally have ever played. if you think you might have left it short, it's going to get to the hole. if you think you hit it just right, it's going 5 feet past. if you think "i hit that a little too hard," you might be as far past as 10 or 12 feet.

played 36 holes today, 80 and 78 over a 6600 yard par 72.

i was not aware of this program, thanks for bringing it to my attention! the course i had planned to play today is not participating, so i may have to switch my plans around a bit and play one that is.

i bought a dozen pd softs last week, despite having read this thread previously. i thought maybe the OP had just got a bad batch, and the local store had them on sale, so i thought, why not? here's why not: they were just as bad as previously described. after wondering whether i was just not swinging well or if the ball was falling out of the sky, i hit three drives with three balls on the same hole (don't worry, it was the evening, i wasn't holding anyone up): a titleist prov1, a nike one vapor, and a nike pd soft. i managed to put pretty similar swings on all three and landed them all in the fairway. the prov1 and the one vapor were almost identical, with both being about 260 out. the pd soft was 20 yards shorter. after reading this thread and seeing it for myself, i'll not be purchasing any more pd softs.

i'm going to go with this, except to change the last one - i think tiger will get the PGA (i'm assuming that by then he'll have his problems figured out)

what's the point of a driving range, again, if not to work on your game? seems to me that you can work on drills all you want at home, but until you hit some balls and actually see how they fly, then you're swinging blindfolded.

i actually avoid telling people what my handicap is. when i'm on, i'm on, and when i'm not, brother, i'm really NOT. i can shoot an 88 just as easily as i can shoot a 74 it seems like, so to avoid embarrassing myself by saying "i'm about a 6 handicap" and then shooting 16 or 18 over par, i give a broad estimate of my game. "what do you usually shoot?" "ehh... depends on if i'm having a good day or not. usually somewhere between 75 and 85." that way if i blow up and shoot 88, i'm still pretty close to my advertised game. and if i somehow manage a 72, that's reasonably close to my assessment as well.

the "replace the ball in it's original spot if it's been moved" rule is lost on a lot of people that i play with. in the past month alone i've explained that rule probably half a dozen times, and in point of fact, most of the people i've had to tell were higher handicaps.

if the ball lands behind me and rolls past me, i'm not going to be very phased. the only time i get legitimately upset is if the ball carries to where i'm standing and lands in line with me or in front of me. if it's got enough on it to get to where i am, then it's still a danger. rolling on the ground isn't going to hurt anyone, but a ball that hasn't come down to earth yet still has plenty of power to crack someone's skull open. that's just flagrant disregard for safety there. but to more specifically answer the question, if a ball gets to where i'm standing, in the air or rolling, then i've been "hit into." i'm just not going to get mad about it if it's on the ground, where i will if it's flying.

blah, an 85 on a pretty easy 6800 yard par 72. it was like i was TRYING to make bogeys almost. 2/3 of the round, i would find SOME way to mess up. i never strained myself for the bogeys, a lot of them were relatively long par putts that i would miss by just a few inches one way or the other, but i think i only hit six greens in regulation today and i didn't hole any putts longer than 5 feet. seven pars, ten bogeys and a triple (hooked my tee shot OB on a 180 yard par 3, then three putted it to boot).

i went with "cost too much" and "like to figure things out on my own." i did recently get one lesson with a local pro, and it was a very productive hour - within just two or three swings he spotted several things that were costing me distance and accuracy. definitely worth the $45, because they were things i would have never looked for or thought of. of course he encouraged me to come back on a weekly basis, but i told him i'm going back to school and the budget is pretty tight right now so once every month or two would probably be about all i could afford. but that's fine, because my preferred method of working things out is being told what i'm doing wrong, and then giving me several weeks alone to work on it. i don't like being watched when i'm in that awkward "trying to learn a new element" phase and every third shot is a shank.

my dad used to being a cooler full of diet sodas to the course, and a few months ago i told him "when it gets hot in the summer, those sodas aren't going to cut it, we're going to need water." unfortunately, neither of us care for drinking water particularly, so we compromised on crystal light.

this pretty much sums up how i feel about it. i do kind of get what the OP is saying, though - i feel like i have more leniency somehow when i'm on a par 70, like i've got 2 free strokes to play with and still be under 80. i never quite feel so jazzed saying i shot 74 on a par 70 as i do about 74 on a par 72, but yeah... under 80 is under 80. one way you might get around this is, when someone asks you what you shot, don't give them a number, and instead say "9 over par for the round" or whatever. that way you don't have to hem and haw and clarify anything like "well, y'know, i'm a 70s shooter on par 70 courses... still an 80s shooter on par 72s."

i was trying to pick out a ball i felt comfortable with not long ago and changed balls every six holes. i tried a nike pd soft, a titleist nxt, and a nike 20xi. the pd soft fell out of the sky (my drives were only going about 240), the nxt was okay but i didn't really care for the feel of it, and the 20xi took off like a rocket and had Great spin. that's the only time in recent history i've purposely changed brands mid-round, but it was a good thing for me because now i've got a ball i feel real confident with. so to answer your question, i prefer to play the same ball 99% of the time, most notably for having a good idea of what distances i'll be getting (ie, the pd soft only going 240 vs the 20xi going 260). i have a lot more confidence that way because i can tell myself "i KNOW this 9 iron will go 140 as long as i hit it clean" as opposed to "um, what am i hitting, let's see here... hm. callaway today. well, here's hoping i don't leave it 10 yards short or fly the green."

i usually play a kind of unspoken "first in gets the pin," with the exception being if the flag is clear across the green or something, meaning i'd have to do a fair amount of (probably distracting) walking to get to it, and then it's more "whoever happens to be closest to the pin gets it."

i read a blurb that lee trevino said, years and years ago, that if you can shoot par from the tips on any golf course (meaning someone could point to any random course in the world and you go shoot par, not just "pick any one course and shoot par"), you're about ready for the tour. that was probably back in the 60s or 70s when he said that... i guess if we were still playing persimmons and balatas, it might still be an accurate assessment. it's pretty amazing how much lower the scores have gotten in the past two decades, and not even the scores to win, just the scores to even hang on tour.

milk for me, but i have recurrent pancreatitis so the docs all strongly advise against me consuming alcohol. wouldn't want to wind up in the hospital directly after winning major. "golfer parties himself straight into hospital after major" probably wouldn't be a very good headline.

go steve! i hope he doesn't let the leader pressure get to him.

dustin johnson and rory are probably my two faves of the 2011 lot.

whenever i rip a real solid drive, one of those that i don't even have to see, i KNOW it's going right up the middle, i snatch my tee out of the ground like it owes me money. it's almost like a victory move for me, haha. but even if i hit a bad shot, i'll get my tee out of the ground, and like a lot of other people in this thread, if it's good, back into the pocket... if it's broken, toss off to the side. i would throw it in the trash can if there was one on every hole, but most of the courses i play at, there's only a trash can every third hole or so.

i freeze my left wrist in a somewhat hinged position before ever taking the club back and just hold it there through the entire chipping stroke, and i only take the club back maybe a foot and take it through an equal distance. using this, i'd say chipping is probably one of the strongest aspects of my game. what club do you try to chip with? i tend to go between the 7, 8 and 9 irons for 95% of my chips. i put the exact same stroke on each chip shot, but allow the loft of the club to vary the distance the ball travels for me.