Clambake

Although they can't avoid losing money in the mail and parcel business despite limited competition and heavy subsidies, now the USPS is going into the clothing business. Because of course the apparel business has such little competition and strong profit margins, I guess. Sometimes I wonder if there is any intelligent life at our governmental agencies. http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2013/02/from-mail-to-clothes-usps-launches-apparel-line/ So, who will be the first PGA Tour Pro sporting this hot new look on the course?

^^^ Good choice! I'm glad to hear I'm not the only one who thinks Tina is adorable. Gorgeous eyes, lovely features, intelligence, and wit....a killer combo.

A few of my favs, in no particular order: Daniella Bianchi (in "From Russia With Love") Scarlett Johansson Christina Hendricks Stana Katic

Jetfan, I just want to say I've enjoyed your swing saga. I'm reminded of that Jim Carrey movie "The Truman Show" where the whole country tuned in religiously each week to see Truman's ongoing life. Similarly, I find your path of exploration to be insightful, educational, and entertaining. Thanks for taking the time to share your experience with us!!!

Probably the best advise that can be given for any golfer. Regardless of the swing or the clubs, it is really up to the ball and the only way to play well is with balls that have demonstrated they know what to do.

With sled dog teams in the Arctic, when a dog was acting up and misbehaving the musher would take the dog out and shoot it in plain sight of the other dogs, and the other dogs would immediately react and follow orders. Very harsh, but I suppose when your life in the middle of an Arctic wilderness depends on it, one does what one has to do. I use the same philosophy with my golf balls. It is important to clearly establish the master/ball relationship and ensure the ball is acting in your best interest. As long as the ball is doing what I want and listening to me when I talk to it in flight, I don't care how ratty it looks. A well behaved ball is a good ball. But the moment that it starts mocking me or otherwise acting like it forgets who is the boss, it is toast. Even if it looks shiny and new, it will be viciously sacrificed, and I make sure the rest of the balls in the bag know of this action. It usually works for a while, and then a new ball may start acting uppity and independent as it feels its freedom, but it too will suffer the same fate.

It's either very clever writing with a great ability to stay in character throughout the different threads, or a crystal clear reason for chlorinating the gene pool.

I'm not sure why, but for some reason the OP's posts make me think of the movie "Deliverance". But with golf clubs instead of a banjo.

Just for fun, I went back and read some of his other posts. They all would easily make it to this thread, but here's one of my little favorites: Prolly wouldn't even help. Also, I just read the first sentence of your post. I plan on reading the rest on my lunch break. Apparently reading more than one sentence at a time requires blocking out some time on his calendar. That's pushing time management skills to the limit!

If you think it's erotic, maybe you should spend more time listening to the pastor at your high end church. Or your English teacher.

I think I just found my entertainment for the afternoon. I think I'll sit back with a nice cool beverage and enjoy the responses on this one......

If you're saying that they play better than they look, that isn't really saying much!

I was just thinking the same thing when I read that thread! Ignoring the many grammatical errors, one of the things I think hilarious is that he thinks being on the Do Not Call Register is supposed to prevent someone from putting flyers on his windshield. Another fine product of our public school systems......

"Memories"? I think you really mean "mammaries"

That's very cool. What is it embroidered onto? One of the cool traditions Bing did with the tournament was to commission special whiskey decanters for each year's event (keeping with the theme that the Clambake was really just one big drinking party). Here's one I have from the 1970 tourney. There is a little shop at Pebble right beside the pro shop called "Links from the Past" and they have quite a few of these they sell for $200-500. I found mine on eBay for $15. They still do these each year for the AT&T;, but they just aren't as classy or interesting looking as the decanters from Bing's day.

I guess with a username of "Clambake", I must comment on this thread! There is a book called "The Crosby: The Greatest Show in Golf" by D. Netland that presents a wonderful history of the tournament from its inception up to the book's 1975 publication date. It's a great look at the history of what was once considered one of the tournaments most treasured by the pros outside of the Majors. Other books such as Dodson's biography on Hogan also provide a lot of insight into the tournament and how it has changed. Originally started here in the San Diego area and played at Rancho Santa Fe CC, Bing's whole premise was to bring together a bunch of friends who were passionate about golf and even more passionate about partying. Like many of his golfing celebrity friends, Bing loved to play and be around the top golfers of his time. Many of the pros of those early days were much bigger carousers than what we see today, and the opportunity for them to be part of one big Hollywood-hosted parted occasionally interrupted by golf was something they loved. Even the seemingly reserved Hogan loved the Clambake; he was somewhat infatuated by Hollywood celebrity and he was driven by a desire to "belong". In those early days, American celebrity was essentially movie stars. Television was still in its infancy, and there was no such thing as the vacuous form of celebrity we now see with phenomena like the Kardashians. Movie stars were huge in those days - they were our American royalty. The Crosby gave the pro golfers the opportunity to hang with this royalty, and it gave the stars a chance to do what they loved to do best - drink, carouse and drink some more (one of Bing's close friends Phil Harris claimed he played out of the "Jack Daniels Country Club"), and play a little golf. . It was a classy event, with men in fine suits and mink-clad women holding martini glasses in one hand and using the other hand getting chipping tips from a US Open winner. But, the era of television changed all that. Although TV provided access to the event for more and more viewers, the business side of TV also intruded with the dawn of sponsorship. No longer could tournament organizers pay a purse out of the gate proceeds and a little bit of TV revenue - they started to require large amounts of money, and the era of corporate sponsorship began taking over the golf world. Bing Crosby's widow, Kathryn, was quite dismayed at this change and eventually pulled the family's name and involvement off the tournament in 1985. The changes that corporate sponsorship brought were seen in two primary ways. First was the inclusion of corporate executives in the ProAm to appease the egos of the big sponsors. Slowly, the A-list stars such as Jack Lemon, Dean Martin, Clint Eastwood, Paul Newman, Jack Nicholson were dwindling from the ranks and replaced by CEOs from major corporations that were putting up the money. Instead of Dean Martin, we get a Charles Schwab. Another area that saw the amateur ranks impacted was the influence of the TV network; as part of their deals, they also got to promote their business more as well, putting key stars from their TV seasons into the amateur mix as well. But there still remains a bit of the culture that amateurs who play in the tournament get priority to be invited back the next year, so we have a lot of players like a Ray Romano who once was positioned in the tournament by the network as publicity for his show but is now past being relevant. So here we are today, and the AT&T; Pro Am bears only a passing resemblance to the Clambake of old. Like many things in life, what started out as a fun idea grew to the point where it became of such a scale that it attracted and required large money, and with that money came the changes that whittled away at the core of what it was in the first place. It is probably only a short matter of time before the further decline becomes almost unbearable - can the the days of paid product placements with the amateurs be much farther off, with someone holding a Pepsi while being interviewed? Will the infatuation with reality TV place its mark on the tournament, where the winner of Survivor 23 gets one of the coveted amateur slots? Will the networks influence become even more dominant to the point where the whole cast of "2 Broke Girls" become the featured pairings? Sadly, those great days are long gone, and shall never return.......

See 8-3 of the USGA Handicap Manual for details. By the way, the Handicap Committee is required to notify you prior to modifying your handicap to gain your explanation of something they have determined to warrant modification.

K-Troop, I think you've captured the essence of much of my thinking on this as well, with some further clarification below I think what Vijay is really guilty of is gullibility and naivety. Besides the deer antler spray, he's indicated he's using the holograms and other hooey that SWATS was selling. He's been suckered in by some really flaky marketing by a very questionable provider of snake oil products, showing either a lack of intelligence, an unwarranted sense of trust, an irrational sense of desperation, or all of the above. I think the Tour will have to react fairly strongly, but I don't think it is so much to make an example of Vijay to other players but more to make a statement of what the Tour stands for. It's a subtle difference, so let me explain what I mean. Years ago, I had to fire a senior executive with my company for some questionable activities that weren't illegal or immoral, but were not consistent with the high standard I expected from my leadership team. This wasn't done to send a message to other employees to make sure they didn't do something, but it was more done to show to everyone in our company the specific values we stood for. I think the Tour is in a similar situation here and will act not so much to serve up Vijay as an example to others but to show a core set of values to the world that the Tour stands for. They need to show that they are an organization of utmost integrity; that a fundamental foundation of its sport is the self responsibility of its members to follow the rules; that it has an established drug policy that is clear and unambiguous; and that it cannot bend its own rules for the sake of convenience. The message the Tour will be sending is more about defining the Tour itself than any issue over PEDs or other substance abuses.

Well, since you asked..... Frankly, I don't think much of it. I own an Orange Whip trainer and find it is a very good training tool, but I don't feel the commercial does an effective job of promoting the benefits or stimulating interest. To me, effective advertising is something that catches the eye; connotes the benefits of the product; creates a desire to associate with the product; and stimulates a call to action by the target audience member. I think your commercial spent too much time on the first part (trying to get something that catches the eye) but left out the other parts of effective advertising. It feels to me like one of your creative people had the idea to mimic that old male enhancement commercial (I don't recall the product) with "Smiling Bob", but stuck to the idea to the point where the product is lost in the commercial. At some point, someone should have said "Okay, the parody is cute but does this really work for our product?". You have a good product, and you have a visual image already created with the big orange ball on the end of a stick, and your product name "Orange Whip" matches that image. You didn't build on this, and I feel in taking such a different tack you've lost some of the key things you can market the product around. Hey, you asked!!!

Don't know if this will help you, but I have both the Eccos and the True. I loved the Ecco feel, which is probably why I ended up getting 3 pairs of them in different colors. When I slip them on they just feel so comfortable, and they felt that way right out of the box. I wanted a pair of shoes in white/black, though, so late last summer I picked up a pair of Trues. My initial feeling on them was they felt fairly good, but slightly odd. The tongue felt a bit stiff and the corners of it sort of rubbed on the top of my feet. I wondered if I made a mistake buying them, but I did like how they felt on the course, with a good feel for the ground, so I decided to persevere a little longer and see if they ended up feeling better. It didn't take long before I noticed that I left the Ecco's in the trunk and always slipped into the Trues for a round. That slightly odd feeling is quick to get used to, and they just really feel "proper" on a golf course. I think the Ecco shoes are fantastic, but now to me they almost feel like a very comfortable casual knockabout shoe while the True feels like a very comfortable golf shoe.

I'd agree, especially when he indicates he uses it “every couple of hours … every day" and also then says that it's very hard to tell the difference after a couple months. Here's a clue Vijay....if you use it every couple hours every single day and still can't tell a difference in a couple months, it is snake oil, pure and simple. Vijay also says he “sleeps with the beam ray on and has put chips on his ankles, waist and shoulders.” I know world class athletes will seek out almost anything to give the tiniest of advantages, but falling for this whole scheme hook, line, and sinker makes one really question his intelligence. I wonder if he also has a little hat made of tin foil to help keep the aliens from reading his thoughts.

Your first post to the Sand Trap and this is what you decided to contribute? Welcome to the forum.....I think.

Hope that you don't get the X Hot Extreme because of Phil, 'cause the one he's using is the RAZR FIt Xtreme. From Callaway's website: In his first tournament round with a new RAZR Fit Xtreme Driver in the bag, Lefty shot 29 on the back nine (his first nine of the round), made four more birdies on the front side and barely lipped out a 25-foot birdie putt for 59 on his last hole. All in all, it was an incredible debut performance for Mickelson’s new driver, which has 8.1° of loft, a 5 gram weight in the toe and a 3 gram weight in the heel. “I finally gave our new RAZR Fit Xtreme a chance,” Mickelson said. “And I tell you what, on Tuesday, when I hit it, I kept looking up and I was almost in disbelief at how easy it was, how straight it was, and the misses weren’t bad. I put it into play in the Pro Am yesterday and I hit it great. I drove it phenomenal, and felt really good with it,” Mickelson said after his round. “And the thing that’s so great about it is I can make the same swing with my irons as I do with my driver and the ball goes very straight and easy…So that was the big thing. I drove the ball much better here.”

The numbers represent the number of video frames it takes for each of the backswing and downswing when looking at a player's swing on video. In his book "Tour Tempo", John Novocell describes how he would study hours of video of the game's elite players, going through them frame by frame. He found that although different players may have a faster or slower total time for their swing, they pretty much all had a consistent tempo where time of their backswing compared to the time of the downswing was a 3:1 ratio. Novocell's method of characterizing these different swings was to count frame by frame throughout the swing; each frame is 1/30th of a second. Thus, a player who has 27/9 tempo took 27 frames for the backswing (just a tick under 1 second) and 9 frames from start of the downswing until impact with the ball (just under 1/3 of a second).

Then how do you get it out of a bunker? :-)