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Dustin, Rory and Stricker are my picks, in that order of preference.

74 on a par 70 today - mostly pretty consistent scoring, but i went haywire on the par 5s (birdie, double and triple).

76 on a 6600 par 72 this morning. notched my handicap on down to 5.7 (first time i've ever been below 6, i think).

shot 75 from the tips this evening on a par 72 links-style course that i've only played maybe a dozen full rounds on. my previous best score had been 80 from the white tees, so i'm pretty pleased with myself going 5 strokes better from the blacks, which measures about 7030 yards long. got my handicap down almost a full point with today's score (from 7.0 to 6.2). :)

i agree that for a major, a 260 par 3 is an interesting challenge, and i'm sure all of those guys are perfectly capable of hitting it. me personally, jeez, i could barely hit it with a driver since i average about 260 off the tee. if i had any wind against me, i'd just be hoping to get up and down.

a friend of mine is at least a 20 handicap, and he's one of these macho sorts that feels like he simply MUST pull a driver on every hole and go for it. of course, he would constantly find himself frustrated and often take a month or longer off from the game before the bug would bite again and the process would repeat. one weekend, we played both saturday and sunday, and he'd had his usual horrible day saturday. so as we walked off the course that evening, i said "look man... tomorrow, let's try something different. let me caddy for you. for every shot except for putting, let me club you." so we played 18 like that, and only twice did i hand him the driver, and those two times being wide open fairways where he could afford to miss a good 50 yards on either side. he shot 8 strokes better, mostly because he only lost one ball instead of his usual five or six (which were 90% of the time the result of a driver sailing deep into the woods or into a water hazard 220 yards out). i think it kind of got in his head at that point "hey... there might be something to this 'playing the safe shot' business."

there's a par 3 entirely over water at a local course. it's about 175 yards from tee to center of green, though it's set pretty far down so it plays 155ish. i get to the box and there's a guy up there hitting ball after ball after ball, and plunking them all in the water. he looks at me and says "i'm sorry, but i am bound and determined to hit this f#@!*$ green, and i've got ONE ball left." he hits it, and it looks picture perfect, but actually went a hair too far and rolled about 5 yards off the back of the green. he's beaming, though, says "good enough for me!" and drives on down to the hole. he takes his stance over his ball to chip it up, blades it, and the ball scuttles across the green and into the pond. he just stands there for a minute, looking at the ground, as i watch from back up on the box. finally he goes to the cart, takes his bag off, and throws it into the pond and drives away. well, y'know... whatever. his clubs were just department store junk anyway, so he probably threw away all of $100 bag and all. i get ready to hit my ball from the box when i see the guy coming back. he takes off his shoes, climbs down into the pond, pulls his bag out... gets out his car keys from one of the pockets... then throws the bag back in the water and drives away again. this time presumably for good.

jack nicklaus advocated one basic golf swing. like the previous poster said, just swing your driver the same way you swing your 7i. if you're hitting your 7i through PW fine, then you can hit your other clubs just fine as well. check this clip out:

me too. my dad, if he sank a long putt that he was proud of, would just cross his feet and smile at me like "that was such a good putt, i'm going to let you get the ball out after you put yours in on top of it." something about knowing there's a ball already in the cup just bothers the bejeezus out of me, so i let him do his proud pose a couple of times, then finally said "i can't putt until you get your ball out."

you should make part of your pre-shot routine saying "no whammy, no whammy." (love your avatar)

the internet is obnoxious. we should use it for farmland. (har)

i popped the head off my driver one time after hitting about my 6th consecutive slice off the box. the ball curved right into a pond and i just started saying "damn it" over and over and thumping the club against the ground. not doing a two handed slam, mind you, just holding it in one hand and (too aggressively, i guess) hitting it against the ground. i guess after the fifth or sixth thumb, the club had enough, and the head just popped right off the shaft. easy fix, at least. i also try to make it a point to never throw clubs, although on occasion i do, usually when i flub a really easy shot under 100 yards. i'll hit it fat or top it and not even be able to watch my ball. i'll turn around and loosely toss the club 10 yards or so away from me (as if the club is to blame).

having quality gear helps, but in the end, it's the indian, not the arrow. i played two rounds on the same course one day, one with my usual clubs and one with persimmon woods and a set of old hogan blades, and shot 81/82.

only 19 of those so far for me. i need to get crackin'.

wow, i'm really glad i stumbled on this thread. nike pd softs used to be my ball of choice a year or two ago because they were affordable and felt decent enough to hit. i had moved into the nike one line (which i really like) but am on a bit of a budget at the moment due to going back to school, so i was quite literally on my way out the door here to get some pd softs. i guess i'll have to find something else to work with.

it is a very interesting notion, but as awesome as hitting every fairway and green would be, there was a US open at cherry hills years ago where ben hogan went 36+ holes hitting every green and only missing one fairway. arnold palmer, meanwhile, sprayed his shots all over the course throughout the tournament, but still managed to shoot a pretty miraculous score on the last 18 and won it.

according to the article i read, he's pro-emeritus at the greenbrier, and had wanted to play it last year but couldn't make it, so he promised that he would play this year instead. he said several times in the article when asked why he wasn't playing the open "I made a promise, here i am, and that's that." edit: here's the article: http://sports.yahoo.com/golf/pga/news?slug=ap-golfnotes

pebble beach would be my first pick, followed by st andrews, pine valley, augusta, and oakmont.

i've got a set of hogan apex irons, though i don't think they're outstandingly old, but i've got them matched with a macgregor nicklaus persimmon driver, a compass 3 wood and a tommy armour 4 wood. i'm pretty sure all three of those are at least 20 years old. every five or six rounds i'll take the persimmon/hogan bag out with me instead of my nikes. i usually don't have much difference in scoring. i played 36 holes one day and shot 82 with my modern clubs, 81 with the persimmons/hogans.

my dad and i won $300 total for first place in our flight in a local scramble tournament a couple of years ago (which we had to win in a sudden death three-way playoff). my dad insisted i take $200 of it since i made about 2/3 of the shots we played, so after the tournament fee of $50, i pocketed $150. also won a really nice callaway golf bag in a post-tournament drawing five years ago that i still use today.

meh, 80 on a par 70. i was really trying to keep it to 79 and needed to birdie the last hole to do it, but i lipped it out. replayed the front nine after i finished 18 and pitched in 9th hole for what i think was my 10th eagle, so that was cool.

best to date is one under par, 69 on a par 70. that round also featured my best nine holes to date - i was four under par on the back nine after being three over on the front side.

yeah, it was an incorrect scorecard. "Just when it seemed like 2011 was beginning to get on track for Anthony Kim after a top-10 finish at the Open Championship, the American made a stop at the Dairy Queen following the second round of the RBC Canadian Open. Kim was disqualified following his second round at Shaughnessy CC outside of Vancouver due to signing an incorrect scorecard. He wasn’t playing the weekend anyhow, though. After an opening 69, Kim shot 81 on Friday en route to a missed cut. The round included a triple bogey, a double bogey and seven bogeys."

8.5 degree nike vr driver. no shot leaves me more satisfied than a solid baby fade off the tee that leaves me a short iron into the green.

and in the opposing corner from ben's post... slammin' sam snead. one of the most beautiful swings in golf ever, and with 7 majors and 82 pga wins to go with it.