jamo

I played Hillandale a half dozen times in a few days last October in a Ryder Cup-type thing with some friends. It's not an amazing course but has nice variety and they keep it in solid shape. Some very weird OB areas (there are some little roads that runs along a few holes very close to the fairway) that can make it feel a bit restrictive, but for a course that isn't super long it does a solid job of testing you through the bag without being gimmicky.

I like the idea of awarding extra FEC points for things like low round of the day. I love the addition of more Shotlink-driven data. It's such a waste how little they use that stuff. I also remember I think the NLU podcast a while ago talking about how when you go watch old broadcasts from the 80s and 90s they used a lot of picture-in-picture showing the players' reactions to the shot. I always wish we could see that stuff, and I think it would help them show more shots since when a player has an interesting reaction they re-play the shot anyway. If they just showed it all at once you could do it in one fell swoop.

I don't think I mentioned this anywhere, but I played in the local qualifier at Taconic. Did not make it through (a triple on the second hole and two doubles later in the round will do that), but it was certainly an experience. Despite 0% of rain in the forecast, it downpoured from our 4rd hole through our 7th hole, and was otherwise pretty windy. I'm not a rain gear guy, but I had the rain gloves, so I was mostly fine in the rain (plus the triple had already put me out of it), but it was interesting watching the other two guys in my group scramble to have people run to their cars for rain gear. Ended up having a decent back nine until a bogey-double finish killed my score. Both of the guys in my group were teaching pros and ended up making it to sectionals, and one of them (Fran Quinn) ended up making it through sectional. Definitely a good learning experience - I was pretty consistently longer than both of them off the tee, and hit a few of the best iron shots of the group, but they were significantly more consistent than me and made all of the important putts that I missed.

Feels like breaking 100 would be impressive.

A few years ago I took the first ferry in the AM to Orient, drove around via Riverhead to Montauk, grabbed lunch at the Lobster Roll, played Montauk Downs, and drove back around to barely make the last ferry out. The Hamptons have a real way of making you late no matter how much buffer you put in your schedule.

I put them back on after every shot - certainly when I'm walking, almost every time when I'm riding. It's less to prevent damage to the clubhead than it is to prevent losing the headcover.

I like the oversized Odyssey Stroke Lab grips a lot. I bought a few extra on eBay and even installed one onto a TaylorMade putter. I got fit for a putter a few years ago, and we went the #7 drop-in weights from Balance Certified Golf, which can be installed onto any grip with their tool kit. I also like the Ping PP58 midsize cord grip, though it seems like they may not make that anymore.

I'm going to wait until it's actually warm enough out to use it, but I think I've talked myself into getting a Mevo+ for the upcoming season.

There's a flavor called Lemon-Lime+Strawberry that used to be (like 15 years ago) widely available but now I can only find online (and it's out of stock so who knows if it's ever actually available). My favorite available one is Frost Glacier Freeze. The Zero Berry is also pretty good.

I'm friends of friends with the guy who runs Piper. I've played a few of them, including the tour-style one, the Gold. They're solid; no complaints. Plenty cheap compared to something like a ProV1, certainly.

(Sorry, didn't mean to jump on you about it, meant to jump on them about it.)

Fenwick is actually about 15 minutes from me. It's an extremely fun course, some of the most enjoyable golf you can play for $20-$40, but it's in no way a links course. I will grant them that it is often quite windy and they do get it playing pretty firm and fast, but the course isn't played on the ground. Even if you wanted to, there are too many fronting bunkers, a long carry over water, etc. Here's the view from the back tee on the 4th hole, for instance:

After you wash them, especially if it's a cord grip you can run some coarse grit sandpaper over it. But you're really just buying yourself a bit of time, it doesn't last long.

Mine was fitted at 45".

I was pretty lukewarm on "Guardians" originally, but it has already grown on me. I like the logo of the G with wings over the baseball quite a bit.