the-infidel

409 during a long drive comp. i remember it like it was yesterday. Swing felt nice and smooth, the actual contact... felt absent. I felt like I whiffed at the ball. it was the most perfect contact I have ever had. Started right and moved left just a little, hit the top of a yardage marker on the pole and shot forward like a rocket. It actually left the range and people had to walk in the field to find it. drive ended at 409 on the nose. I won a putter, 125 bucks, and 2 free rounds w/cart. I have never come close to hitting it like that since, and trust me i try every time and it ends badly.

its a little over 2 hours from us, but we played this place today. it is one awesome course!!! I made an album on imgur if you care to see: http://imgur.com/a/NFzOo

my dad was taking practice swings with his old driver. he asked me to stand behind him with my go pro and video him to see how his back swing looked. he took his back swing and the head of his driver flew off. in slow motion i watched it sail towards my nether regions. i was able to turn to the left a little bit and it nailed me right in the hip bone. stung like a &*(%. he laughed, my brother laughed, i cried, we all had a good time.

I want Turbulators to help me drive it long with the PING G30 Driver! I predict that the BLUE (East Coast) TEAM will win the 2015 Newport Cup by a score of 32 to 24 . The MVP will be @GolfLug with 11 points won.

if you get the chance, head south(ish) to Parma and play La Roca golf club. its one of the more unique courses I have played down there (i live in Germany).. Also if you want a once in a life time trip... Play the golf course in Venice, I believe you hit over one of the canals and the rest of the holes are along the lagoon. welcome to TST!

if you ever get the opportunity go play Hubbard Golf Course at Hill AFB.... they should name it tree AFB.. welcome to TST looks of awesome info here

welcome... Northern Cali... Beale or Travis? I used to love playing Beale because it was relatively open for hack such as myself!

Thanks for the post(s) Gent's and Gal's. One of the main reasons I put so much pressure on myself was because it was my first time at anything even remotely close to something like this. I have played in many, many 4 man tournaments before with friends, best ball of course, and they were all just plain fun. They had nothing to do with money or fanfare which is probably why they did not bother me in the least. My main thought the entire day was that I did not want to disappoint the Pro I was playing with. I know that at what I typically shoot I would not come close to Par and since I was being scored on Stable-ford I thought I had some what of a chance. I talked to the Pro yesterday briefly and had him take a look at this thread. He told me I put way to much pressure on myself for no reason at all. He says we are going to do it again, but in order to prepare myself start using some mental tricks. One of which was to stare down the fairway at address and imagine the tree line as people. I went to the range and thought about this, thinking it would make zero difference. I picked a spot on the range that was to the right of the tree's and tried. Sure enough, when I took a second and imagined the tree line as a line of people, it made me step back for a second. Though the anxiety was no where near as bad as it was this past week, there was still a tinge there. We have these weekly contests at this place down town that is a mirror image of Top Golf back in the states. You pay (i think) something like 20 Euro and get to smack 15 balls, picking your longest and straightest one to enter and you usually go against 10 other people at a time. The top 5 advance, something like an NCAA bracket type thing, winner gets a certain amount of money and some stuff from the venue. These always draw a crowd of people to watch, as I have been going to them on Saturday afternoons for a few weeks now just to watch them. I might embarrass myself again with my pathetic game, but I will do so in front of people, hoping that it will help me get used to having the nerves come out a little again, and allowing me to learn how to focus out the distraction's that caused the adverse side effects I felt. On a closing note I wanted to make sure I let you good folks know I did not post this to receive any type of praise, or 'atta' boy's from anyone. I posted this to share an experience from a novice golfer's perspective only thank you for all the positive comments, input, and constructive criticism

I played in my first ProAm this weekend. It was a German sanctioned event. The Pro I played with played pretty dang well. The practice day I played ok. The day of I played worse than I have ever played in my life. A little historical info. I am by no means decent at golf. I have had my moments with birdies, eagles and many many pars. I have a higher handicap, 22 at the moment. I had a buddy of mine caddy for me, and he was awesome! He excels at training folks in various work related things and excelled at helping me with chips and putts. When I was on the range things were going great. I was making good solid contact with all of my irons. My drives and woods/hybrids were all crisp. We were joking around with each other (as we always do) and it seemed like a regular day of golf. When we got called to the tee box everything changed. I instantly became quiet and started to become filled with regret that I agreed to play. There were a few people on the tee box (we started on 10) but by no means many. I would guess roughly 15 to 25 people there watching. Everyone seemed to be on the #1 tee box to watch people. We watched the 2 groups in front of us tee off and i became more and more nervous. When it was our turn our Pro tee'd off and made a nice long smooth drive. When it was my turn i started shaking so bad my buddy said it appeared my club head of my drive had 15 shots of espresso. Right before I reached the top of my back swing I closed my eyes (no clue why I did this) and swung... OB. I honestly felt like I was going to puke. Our Pro told me to relax, which was easier said than done. I took my penalty shot and blasted it down the middle of the fairway, about 270'ish (best guess). When we all walked to our shots I did not say a word, where I would usually cut up or talk about my next shot. My buddy tried to engage me but i remained quiet. My second shot (which was my 4th) made it just shy of the green and I ended up 2 putting. If it was not for my buddy walking with me I would have likely quit by the 3rd hole and went home. It carried on like this all day long. I would not rotate through a swing, I would sway. I would not release the club, I would pop up, pull my head up and look at the sky during shots, etc. Needless to say I was not only embarrassed as all hell I was rightfully ashamed of my self. I apologized multiple times to our Pro for such shoddy play, but he took it in great stride (he won a little money after all so I am very happy for him). My buddy did his absolute best to try to help me get my head back in the game but for the first time ever, I shut him out when he was talking. When we finished we all had a very nice dinner, but I felt physically sick. I did eat, but it was more of a forced meal because I had not eaten since lunch. As we are sitting at the dinner table I knew the day was over and I slowly started to open back up and crack jokes, etc. At the end of the night I was back to my old self. I woke up yesterday morning and I felt like I had been in a fist fight. I felt physically exhausted, and still do a little bit today. I did a little reading today and educated myself on what emotional reactions can do to the body physically. I had no idea this could happen as I guess that I have never had an emotional event traumatizing enough to do this to my body. Overall what I learned for the first time is how much golf can impact nerves. I have always heard about it when watching on TV or talking to our club pro. I had no idea it could impact a person so much. I think the only thing I can honestly do to get over this is try again. Continually putting myself through the same process would (i assume) make things a little easier. I believe that it would never be "easy" if you could call it that, to compete in any type of tournament, but practice (playing them) would make things a little more bearable. I have found that there are many league/tournament style events near me that I can play in to get some practice in this and I am going to take advantage of it. Like I had said previously, it could only help the situation by exposing myself to it more and more. All of the above is based on my personal experience only. I am sure others have been affected differently. I am now looking at this as a learning experience. TL;DR I played in a tournament as an amateur and learned a lot about nerves.

I posted this question over at reddit as well but figured it's best to ask here also. I am playing in my first ever PGA sanctioned Pro Am, me being the Am in that, of course. I am playing at what appears to be a very awesome course in Germany. Since I have never done anything like this of course, what type of things should I expect different from this, and just playing with my buddies. I understand I am not going to win at this and the "have fun" part but are there any other tidbits of wisdom someone more seasoned at something like this could pass on? Thanks in advance!

military

welcome! i play also in Germany at the Neckertal Golfclub in BW

I am proud of where I come from, and I use this even in France. I have only got one or two odd looks over in France, but most people say its a cool looking bag, im proud of it.

I have not seen one, and my iPad is being very funky right now, when I try to search I get a solid white screen... Anyway, for those who decide to have an adult beverage, what s your poison of choice? Right this second for me it is considered one of e finest beers in the world http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripel_Karmeliet