SubPar

He really is a great instructor. It is strange to play with him and see how effortless his swing is. He gets a lot of distance and spin with a swing that seems too relaxed to produce the result you are seeing. Perhaps the most unusual yet effective thing he promotes is the idea of simply dropping the club with relaxed arms and grip pressure, allowing the body rotation to generate the speed. He often says if he could get people to feel how relaxed his arms are during the swing they wouldn't believe it. That technique combined with good mechanics and ball striking is what I am looking for. I can get the relaxed arm thing, but the timing and ball striking are still not there for me. SubPar

#6 is a par 4 with two water hazards on the left and traps on the right. From the tee the fairway looks about 10 yards wide. The hole bends to the left, so anything a little right is in the sand, anything left is wet. You have to hit a perfectly straight drive to have a shot at the green, which is oddly shaped with lots of levels. You regularly drive the ball 300+ so it probably is less of a problem for you. Anyone driving 230-250, anything other than down the middle, has reason the worry. If you look at it on a sat. image you can see that a long drive down what looks like the center could even hit traps on the left. The greens are as fast as Rustic but with many more tricky slopes and level changes. I usually have 30-34 putts, Sunday at Sterling I had 41! My main complaint about the course is the condition of the fairways. It was rare to find a lie in a fairway that was anything other than rock hard. Other than that, even though the greens were firm they had tons of spiked up areas. Even soft spikes left inprints and little bits of grass popping up. They have the best cart GPS I've seen. It knows the distances to the pins and every hazard, measures how far you are from the tee, and keeps track of where the carts ahead of you are. SubPar

As a 27 handicap you don't need a high cost, high performance ball anyway. I play a lot of different balls because I find about 50-60 a week at a par-3 course I practice at. I've found I score just as well with a Pinnacle CLR (which I have found online for $9 a doz.) as the Precept IQ180 ($19.00) or a Bridgestone. In fact the more expensive balls hurt me by spinning too much. If your ball striking is consistently in the sweet spot, a ball that spins more is a good thing. But if you slice, hook and hit the ball all over the club face, a low compression low spin ball is probably a net positive. Cheap new balls or good used balls are fine. It takes the pressure off you if you lose a few. SubPar

Having a positive frame of mind is essential, no matter how you achieve it. I've read most of the pros have some little thing that makes them feel lucky or positive. It might me a lucky coin or a mantra they recite or some special ball marker. I noticed Greg Norman stepped back from the ball put his right hand in his pocket and touched something before he hit a drive at the Open last year. He wasn't checking to see if he had enough change to buy a beer at the snack shack. Odds are it was some "lucky" coin. I don't have a steady "go to" good luck thing yet, but I really really need one. SubPar

Set your sights on something more readily attainable that might be a stepping stone to golf stardom. Get your handicap down to a 1 and try to qualify for the US Open. There are thousands, of stories of excellent amateur golfers who aspired to make a living as a touring pro, but never pulled it off. Where are most of the guys who finished second to Tiger when he was an amateur? There may be one story of a 20+ year old 4-8 handicapper who managed to make it onto the tour. If anybody knows that one story share it with me, because I can't find it. Call me a downer if you want, but sometimes a dose of realism is called for. Someone wins a power ball lottery drawing now and then, but the odds are still 76,275,360:1 and it’s still a stupid investment. While you are giving up your life to work on golf every day you might want to also buy some lottery tickets each week. Also, if you can’t handle people questioning your chances of success, you don’t have what it takes anyway. Take this as motivation in the form of a challenge to prove me wrong. SubPar

My guess is if one had the skills and drive to work their way into professional competitive golf they would not be asking about it here. They would already be doing it. SubPar

Out of the millions of people playing golf the guys in the top 1000 make up a very small percentage who are the best of the best. And the guys ranked over 400 struggle to make a living on Tour. I've heard it said that the gap in ability between a scratch club pro and touring pro is the same as the gap between a 15 handicap and a scratch club pro. I've never mentioned that to a player with a 1 handicap or better who disagreed with that assesment. A lot of guys go from a 10 handicap to a 6 and think they will just keep going lower, only to discover that each point becomes exponentially more difficult to shave off. Five years ago Billy Andrade's scoring average was 71.12 with a world rank of 157 and he made over a million dollars. This year his scoring average has slipped to 72.59 with a ranking of 919 and he's made $19,654 in 13 events. Unless you have some wins in your past that produce fat sponsorship deals, like Duval had, it is not easy to even cover your expenses once you fall below a given level. SubPar

Without the benefit of a formal lesson, he had a handicap of plus three by the age of 17. He could by the time he was a senior. I found this in a bio, re: nine holes... "Started playing golf at age 5, but couldn't break 40 until he was a high school senior." Check out: How to Become a Professional Golfer By Jennifer Gregory I know guys who are +1 to +3 handicappers who cannot make a living playing golf. My understanding is a +3 or +4 who can perform well under pressure can manage to get by on the lesser tours. The guys on the PGA Tour are generally +5 or better. I believe Sergio was a +5 when he turned pro. It's hard to say because they do not carry handicaps, but you could figure it out by taking their scores and estimating the slope of the courses they play. I think someone figured out Tiger's handicap at Isleworth would be something crazy like +11. SubPar

The penalty is "Stroke and distance", unless there is a local "90 degree rule". Some courses will let you drop the ball two club lengths in bounds, with a one stroke penalty, 90 degrees from where the ball came to rest. This is to avoid slowing down play by going back to the original spot. SubPar

Tiger is not dominating? While Els is "still recovering from knee surgery" done four years ago, Tiger came back after 8 months off due to knee surgery and a stress fracture and... Above average driving, above average greens in regulation, above average scrambling, scoring leader, FedEx Cup leader, money leader, has won 37.5% of his full field events this year, 8 for 8 top tens in full field events. You could take half his accomplishments for the year and give them to most other tour players and it would be their career best season. He's only begun to "dominate". SubPar

It's like selling a car or a TV, they want the sale and they will try to give you incentives to decide in their favor and do so quickly. They are just salesmen (or women). One of the most common "misleads" in recruiting is telling you you can change your job after you sign up. This is possible only under very specific circumstances. Circumstances you will most probably not encounter. SubPar

I joined the Army National Guard. Once the war was virtually over I went active because I enjoyed the work I was doing and I wanted the GI Bill. SubPar

Lack of core strength and flexibility will cause us to do all kinds of things to cheat a bigger take away, but you don't need to get the club back to parallel to pull off powerful shots. (Watch Villegas). Sliding backwards and flopping the wrists at the top are ways a lot of us try to get a bigger take away, but you only need to go back as far as you can without too many moving parts getting out of line. Take a shoulder turn till your left shoulder is under your chin without worrying about how far back the club is going. If you work on leg strength, ab strength, and flexibility you can get a full enough turn to generate power. It is more important to maintain your angles and proper head position than it is to get the club back to parallel. When I take what feels to me like a “half back swing” it is actually a full enough back swing when I see it on video. SubPar

I am former Army. I have two sons who are Marines and niece who is an MP in the Navy. If you are not sure what to do with yourself, the military is a good place to get some valuable experience and good benefits. Recruiters will try to nudge you into an MOS they need to fill at the moment. There are some jobs better than others. If you have the test scores, consider your range of MOS options. Communications, intel, or logistics are good areas to get into. If you happen to good with languages, Arabic or Pashto skills broaden your options and help you make more money. SubPar

I have a tournament at Sterling Hills the 12th. If it is possible to get a tee time there Saturday the 11th, I wouldn't mind a practice round. I would be up for Tierra Rejada after that weekend. SubPar

Miller is also the great sage who opined in 1996 that Woods would soon find how hard it is to win at the PGA level and "might have 60 wins" in his entire career. Oops! SubPar

That statement proves Johnny Miller is a good golf analyst but not a great golf analyst. SubPar

It was a good time even though I fell apart on the back. We were a good threesome in terms of temperament. It helps to play with people who don't have wild displays of emotion, up or down. The 4th guy they put with us was a little distracting with all the self loathing and club slamming. Ben has a pretty awesome swing. I envy guys who can park the car and walk straight to the tee and knock off a couple of birdies. Lets do it again soon. Maybe a few others will join us. SubPar

Go to a facility or a par-3 course and practice chipping and putting an hour a day for 6-10 days. (make sure you are using good technique). I was recovering from double hernia surgery a few weeks ago so I spent on hour or so every day hitting pitches, chips and putts for a week. Now am shooting some way better than average scores. Chipping them close, rolling in putts. SubPar

Don't read anything harsh into my tone. I'm just thinking out loud (with my fingers). An 15+ handicapper can go ahead and spend $1,000+ having his clubs fitted and he'll still be an 15+ handicapper with some expensive clubs. Maybe he or she will replace a couple of 20' putts with 15' putts but that's not going to lower their average scores Again, this is just my opinion. That money on lessons over several months will do far more to improve a high handicappers performance. But it is so much more fun to buy new custom equipment!!! SubPar

I didn't say anything about perfection. An 8 handicapper would not have anything close to a perfect swing, but you need to at least be good enough to make solid contact with the ball in or near the sweet spot most of the time. You can spend a thousand dollars getting custom fitted clubs but if you hit one ball out of six in the sweet spot and the rest are off the toe, fat, thin, what ever, you won't get much out of custom fitted clubs. Like I said, anyone should get the basics fitted, which is lie angle, shaft length and grip size. That not what I consider custom built where you replace everthing but the club heads. SubPar

There are two different kinds of fittings. everyone should get what most shops offer for free if you are buying clubs there. They get the grip size, length and lie angle set right for you and recommend a shaft stiffness for your swing speed. IMHO if you are not able to shoot 80ish regularly with clubs fitted like this, the the next level of fitting is a waste of money. What you might call a 'high level fitting' is done by spending a couple of hours on a launch monitor swinging each club many times. Then the clubs are built with custom shafts and weighting to adapt them to your swing. This can cost hundreds of dollars. If your swing is consistent and you make good repeatable contact with the ball this more through fitting will help you out. I know a "plus handicapper" who strikes the ball near perfectly and he said a custom set of clubs in his view may take 2-3 strokes off a round, for someone like himself. But if you are like me and hit the ball all over the club face and swing on a slightly different plane each time, fitting will have little effect on your scoring, other than what you get from added confidence. I've had my clubs customized and I like the added swing weight and the feel of each club relative to the other, but I know I will not be able to gain much advantage from any fitting if I don't improve my ball striking. I do strike the ball much better now than when I had the work done, so it may be time to at least do an analysis to see if any radical changes would be in order. My personal feeling is that spending $1,000-$1,500 having your clubs customized is not of much use until you are at least an 7 or 8 handicap. Golfers spend a lot of money trying to disprove to old saying, "it's the Indian not the arrow". SubPar

I checked the PGA Stats site and saw Duval went from 882nd to 142nd in world ranking this week, and from 204th to 82nd on the PGA 2009 Money list. Nice! SubPar

Not an easy course if you don't hit fairly straight. Lots of places to lose balls. Greens: generally among the best in the valley. When I was a 12 handicap I avoided it because I hit too many balls into bad places. Now at a 7 I enjoy the course. Good prices if you get the "resident rate". I think they still offer the resident rate to everyone on Wed. Something like $31 with a ride. If you are a 28 handicap take a dozen extra balls. SubPar

Not everyone has to display a wide range of emotion. Glover is a modest low-key guy. SubPar