youngskip40

Oh wow, awesome. Yeah, I didn't know about those. That's awesome. Thanks, Doc. Actually I just decided I am going to come down this weekend instead of next. Any tips you can give in the meantime I'll be sure to take into consideration! Thanks again!

Thanks everyone for the responses! This is actually perfect. I'm really looking to avoid golf "destinations," I'm more looking for an area where a serious player can work on their game in a warmer climate, and be able to test skills in competition on a more regular basis. Seems like a good fit, without having to deal with the downsides of tourist-ey golf destinations. The eGolf tour, right? The old Tarheel Tour... yeah I saw they hold almost all their tournaments in the Charlotte area, along with their Amateur tour. Looks pretty cool. I checked out the Bman's golf site... looks pretty cool, I'll have to surf around there. Thanks for the tip! Awesome! Thanks for the response. Certainly more than tolerable for me. Those are basically the temperatures I play in during the end of our season (October/November) and beginning of our season (March-ish) up here anyway. Any course(s) specifically you'd recommend checking out when I come visit in a week or two? Anything else you'd recommend checking out? Or just anything to do in general that might help give me a feel for what it might be like to be down there full-time... Thanks again!

Handicap Index: 1.4 I promise I am still alive. And I still play golf. In fact, just this weekend I had a very good practice session during which I hit balls off of the most pristine types of grass driving range, sought after by most professionals -- the 97% crabgrass driving range. Thank you, Tee's Golf Center for your unparalleled upkeep of your facilities. I feel great about paying money that is so clearly going directly into somebody's pocket, rather than into maintenance or improvement of your property. Ditto on the huge rocks in your "practice bunkers." If I ever get to play golf inside of the Grand Canyon, I feel I'll be supremely prepared. As for the crabgrass, thankfully, I've put in plenty of (free!) time practicing short irons at this Golf Field , so I'm plenty used to hitting balls off of weeds. As for the title of this blog, perhaps I should change it to Shane Practices Golf And Plays When Time And Finances Allow It . Because most of the time, well... I practice golf and play when time and finances allow it. I play about 9 holes per week now, playing an additional 18 about every other week or so, simply because at the moment I do not have the money to play golf as much I want to. In fact, I am suffering now because I indulged the first half of the season, racking up credit card debt up to my ears which I have disciplined myself to pay down. Still not there yet, but by October I should have paid everything to a zero balance. And while this feels great and is saving me money, it is killing my golf game. I still practice, although with the daylight waning in the ebb of summertime, it is becoming increasingly difficult to get in a really good practice session aside from the weekend. When I do practice, it is mostly 100 yards and in, especially with most time on the putting green. This is by no means a bad thing, but I'll admit I practice this way more by necessity due to the lack of finances to afford hitting the hundreds of balls I want to hit in a practice session. Sadly, I have not played in a competitive event since the end of June and I have none scheduled. I had originally planned to play in anywhere from 6-8 more tournaments between July and the end of September, but my schedule knocked out 3 of those... and my budget deflated any possibility of playing in any of the others. At $70 a pop for the cheapest, and $160+ for the most expensive one-day tournaments or tournament qualifiers, it's a bit of a conundrum for a cash-strapped golfer to get into tournaments. Your options are as follows: 1) You spend all your money on playing and practicing golf to hone your skills so that you can become competitive in tournament golf, but then have little to no money left to enter tournaments. 2) You use your money to enter as many tournaments as you can possibly get into, but don't practice or play as much as you should/could because you're out of cash, and therefore don't play well enough in qualifiers to make your investment in the entry fee worthwhile. Okay, enough excuses. Enough complaining about bills and C.R.E.A.M. Time to get back into the groove and back to working hard. I believe diligence pays off in one form or another, regardless of what you do. In other news... I am considering relocating to a warmer climate. Right now, Charlotte, NC sits atop my list. I'll be visiting soon to check it out. Updates to come. Thanks for reading. =)

That's good to hear, actually. Most courses around here are pretty much done after the first snow, or December 1, whichever comes first. Either they close completely until April 1, or they have "temporary greens" aka fairway with a hole in it for a good 4 months, if not longer. Thanks for the input.

I am considering relocating to the area and I'm trying to figure out how the golf piece fits into things... How is the weather for golf? Obviously it will be warmer than where I am now (Philly area), but is it really a location where golf can be played 12 months out of the year? I don't necessarily mean warm sunny weather all year round, I play in 50-degree weather all the time up here as long as the courses are open... I just mean is it feasible or realistic for a die-hard golfer to be able to play/practice all year, or is it not really that mild down there? How is the quality of golf down there? How affordable is it? How about competitive golf? I am accustomed to playing a few local amateur events, and I'd like to play even more, and while I assume there would be plenty down there throughout the year if only the summers, I don't really know. I am planning an extended weekend trip to visit in the next couple of weeks just to check out the area in general... hopefully I can make a couple stops and play at least once or twice while I'm there. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!

I work in KOP... you'd love it here this week. 95 and humid (head index above 100 degrees) all week. Yay.

Anybody know which will typically have a longer life, a Desktop or a Laptop computer? I've owned two Mac notebooks (a PowerBook and a Macbook Pro) in the last 8 years, both of them lasting about 4 years before starting to experience very significant performance deterioration and some general problems. I've never compared against a Desktop computer but I'm curious if one or the other will typically perform better for longer.

My Dad's name is Skip. He used to coach hoops at my old high school, and I had a freshman biology class with one of his senior players who always used to call me "Young Skip." 40 was my number on the b-ball team freshman year. That was 12 years ago now. Haha, wow.

Gotcha. That's exactly what I was looking for. Thanks!

...and of course, it is a pretty dumb question. It's also irrelevant, but I've always wondered the answer, so I'm going to ask it. What specifically constitues a "scratch golfer" from a Handicap standpoint? I know that the USGA defines it as: "An amateur player who plays to the standard of the stroke play qualifiers competing in the United States Amateur Championship. The male scratch golfer hits his tee shots an average of 250 yards and can reach a 470-yard hole in two shots. The female scratch golfer can hit her tee shots an average of 210 yards and can reach a 400-yard hole in two shots." But I'm wondering, when looking at a Handicap Index, what is the exact range that defines someone as a "scratch" golfer. Theoretically, a scratch golfer is one whose handicap is zero, but there are also decimal points in an index. So I'm a little confused as to when this term is actually used correctly. For instance, my most recent revision puts me at a 0.8 (my best to date!), so does that makes me a scratch golfer? Because depending on slope of the course I'm playing, my course handicap could be either a zero or a one. If I round up, I'm a 1 handicap. If I look at the 0, then I'm a scratch. Again, totally irrelevant to anything related to actual scoring, but I always wondered if there was a rule of thumb here, because I have met people throughout my years of playing that have been anywhere in the range of +1 to as much as a 3 handicap that described themselves as "scratch golfers."

So, I've been blogging since February of this year, tracking my progress as it relates to my play this year. I am treating this year as my "do or die" season, my year to really get my a** in gear to start pursuing my dream of playing golf on a highly competitive level. I'll start updating my blog here as well, but in the meantime, here is the link to all my past blogs this year (17 of them at this point): http://shaneplaysgolf.blogspot.com/ Mostly it's just a place for me to log my progress, my roadblocks, and in general just keep a record of my game going forward. But if you happen to follow, thanks!

Right, so as I understand it, I could hit 70% of fairways but still score horribly... so I'd find that my "worst" rounds would have Fairways at roughly 70%, whereas if I hit only 20% of my fairways but scrambled for my best scores, I'd see my "best" rounds with 20% Fairways Hit. Obviously you hope it's the other way around, but theoretically this type of statistic could show up in this feature. This is a lot more useful than what your best putting day was or your best day for GIR... because ultimately this feature will show you what key stat or combination of stats causes your highest scores, and what combination of stats yields your lowest. Without that you'd certainly take a lot longer to pick up on any trends that cause you to have a bad day on the course.

Totally agree with this. I just replaced my 58 degree with a conforming wedge and love how it performs... more importantly, I love what it doesn't do, i.e. spin back 30 feet. I feel like I can actually attack back pins now. =) Add me to the list of people that really enjoy reading these updates. Keep up the good play.

This is probably the only downside to the Penta that I have seen, although they really don't get scuffed nearly as much as an old balata ball did. No balls nowadays really do. And personally I think the cover is more durable than the ProV1's cover. The only time that the cover gets shredded for me is when I take a swing with a wedge that has aggressive grooves. It doesn't do it with my short irons, and I just got a wedge with conforming grooves and it really doesn't shred the cover like the more agressive milled square grooves do. The cart path, of course, is the enemy of all golf balls so there isn't really much one can do about that kind of damage. In any case, the point is that a soft cover ball is a soft cover ball and it will get scuffed up throughout the course of a round. Personally, I just think that the Penta is among the more durable balls in the "premium" market right now.

I bought a Bushnell Pinseeker 1500 Tournament Edition over the winter, and up until the last few rounds it's been great. It would regularly scope targets with ease well over 300 yards, and beginning just recently, it has slowly but surely given me more and more problems until now it is unreliable at best for anything beyond about 150 yards. Most of the time I will just hold down the button and try to hold as still as possible but it will just stay as 3 blank dash marks (indicating it is not picking up the yardage). Unfortunately there is no information on the Bushnell website nor is their information regarding this kind of a problem in the troubleshooting section of the manual. I know there is a 2 year limited warranty but I'm sure this requires a receipt and I do not have the receipt. Anybody have any idea what the problem might be? Or has anybody had similar problems, either with Bushnell or another laser rangefinder? Any tips or solutions would be much appreciated!