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Who is going to caddy for him? I would think that is going to be a pretty high pressure gig with the focus from the media/public and also from tiger and his game.

If Tiger is still feeling his injury (even only slightly) then I'm not sure he is going to be able to do anything to his swing to get round it / make up for it. I think his only chance is if he doesn't feel it at all anymore and then just hits it like he wants to. I also suspect there are plenty of golfers who had a loosey goosey swing (to use the technical term) who ended up with injuries that meant they couldn't play anymore. Just because Jack and Phil are ok it doesn't necessarily all come down to their swings.

You will definitely need to practice with your driver to get better with it! But just because you don't hit it well doesn't mean you shouldn't use it on the course. A big part of learning to play golf for me has been understanding what I'm capable of today and what I need to improve for tomorrow. So when I'm out on the course I understand the risk and return of each club and can make a decision about which one to hit. It is something that I have found really hard to get right because it makes a big different to short term scoring. So sometimes I've not used a club because I don't feel like I'm hitting it well enough and have to practice more with it. And sometimes I've decided to use a club even when I know I don't hit it that well just because I feel like I need playing time with it to get better. Rotating clubs in and out of the bag based on how well I'm hitting them seems to be just a part of building and maintaining your golf game. I think it is something that even the pros do (e.g. Stenson with his 3w/driver is a good example). I would say if you want to play with your driver then do it. And if the results aren't what you want then either switch to the 5w for a bit and work on your driver, or just accept that your scores are going to suffer until you get it under control.

Yep me too - the preview of the link in the status bar says amazon.com but when you copy and paste it you get advert spam. When will I ever learn?! Never click a link ... never click a link ... never click a link

Shot 76 - 36 40 Played with someone who is a solid 4 handicap and I think it really helped my game. Watching someone who regularly plays at a higher level makes it really clear where my game is lacking.

At the rate I can lose them, about 7 rounds worth.

It does seem a bit strange if you think about a golf course as a business that provides a product. It is probably true to say that everyone who plays a round of golf will remember and have an opinion on (a) what they scored (b) how long it took to get round. These aren't the only metrics by which people judge their enjoyment or value for money but they are probably common to most golfers. But the golf course (the service provider) has no idea about either of these two metrics for the majority of golfers (users), and in effect they have no idea how well a major factor of their 'service' is being received.

I was wondering if tiger might be able to broker some kind of symbiotic deal with Nike where they do the shirts and TM does the hardware.

I remember reading about Greg Norman's business operations (possibly in his autobiography) and I don't think he ever invested his own money. He just said I'll give my time and the fact that I am Greg Norman and someone else provides the cash. If it works for him I think it would work for Tiger. And if I was thinking of buying TM then given the choice of paying all the cash for 100% or paying all the cash for X% and having Tiger front it, I'd definitely be interested in finding out what x% would need to be.

Played another slow round at my local course yesterday. It got me thinking that the nobody in the clubhouse really has a clue how long rounds are taking. They sign people in (although some groups don't even bother with this) and then probably don't see the group again that day. I guess if someone has hired a cart they might get the key returned but even then I don't think they record anything officially. There is apparently sometimes a marshall on the course but never when I've played. Does the course where you play know when you finish and if so how do they do it? It seems like it is going to be impossible to address slow play if the course doesn't even know when it is happening so I'm interested to find out how most courses gather data. For someone who is bothered about slow play I can see that they could feed back to the clubhouse after every round but for a group that don't care or don't know is there a way to capture timings?

The later you leave it to start the less likely you are to make it, and that probably applies to most sports. There are very few competitive arenas where you are able to become one of the best in a continent in 5-7 years, regardless of how much talent you have. This is especially true where large amounts of money are up for grabs. Even more so where most of your competitors start working at 4,5,6 years old. Could you be the exception? Of course you could be! First question is, seeing as you are the only person here that has seen yourself play golf, do you think you are that good?

Maybe all this noise about his return is just a smokescreen to get up close to the European Ryder Cup team!

He does seem to have had a bit of a pattern this year of playing better in the big events. Which is fine if you are always going to be guaranteed to be there but not so fine if your performance for the rest of the year determines your attendance!

I think it is going to come down to what looks and plays the best for the individual's swing. I just can't seem to get on with hybrids but woods always go pretty much where I want them to. Maybe I just need to try out even more clubs!

Given this and his performance in a couple of the majors this year (t21 Masters and t15 U.S.Open) I think he has had a pretty good year. He certainly looks like someone who can handle the pressure of the big moments. You could argue his whole season came down to getting his tour card and he got it done. Throw in a worldwide high profile and reinvigorating an equipment and clothing genre and his sponsors must be pretty pleased.

I try to keep the same mindset whoever I am playing with. If someone is hyper competitive then I just see it as a good opportunity to practice staying in my zone and playing my own game. If someone doesn't take it too seriously then it is the same opportunity but from a different way round! I do have limits though and there are a couple of people who I have played with in the past that I just don't play with anymore because their view of how to play is so wildly different to mine. At least with your neighbour you now know what to expect - if you can find a way to deal with it then the upside is probably going to be more golf!

If I was looking for a 12th pick and I hadn't already then I would include Bubba. Seems to me he has proven his desire to represent his country and passion can go a long way in the Ryder Cup. Plus the fact that he always has the potential to bomb one way down the fairway could be a psychological weapon in match play.

Mark crossfield is doing a bunch of videos from crans Montana this week and it does look like an amazing venue.

Looks like Bryson is playing on the European tour this week at crans Montana. Some very entertaining videos from mark crossfield who is there all week.

I read an interview with Scott where he said that the year he changed to long putters he was actually number one strokes gained in putting. But because they didn't have the stat available to them at that time he had just convinced himself he was a really bad putter and so needed to change. I think he said that he wished he had known then what he knows now as it might have saved him some of the intervening hassles!

Doesn't really count but I watched the vlog from Mark crossfield which gave a pretty good view of the course. The linked article includes links to the vlog so if you haven't seen it before it might be interesting: http://www.yourgolftravel.com/19th-hole/2016/07/29/the-new-turnberry-review-by-mark-crossfield-coach-lockey-steve-buzza/

Shot 81 on a very hot day which is never a good thing for me. After practicing my drives quite a lot in the last week I still put it O.B. twice off the tee (but boy did they go far!)

I'd agree that op's numbers sound about right (in the sense that they are similar relatively to mine). I'm 160 with 7i up to 195 with 4i and 240 average with driver.

Congratulations on competing and thanks for sharing your experience with us on this thread. It's the closest I'll ever get to playing in a qualifier and it has been really interesting following your progress. Looking forward to hearing about the next one!

I think that given the human body is a very complicated thing with lots of inbuilt error correction and prediction capabilities just because the distance is 13% more doesn't mean the error will be anywhere near that order of magnitude too. I'm 6'4" but I would say the scale of my errors in golf due to height are probably almost all covered up by the errors in just being human , golf being hard and my level of talent. If you ask me to pick up a golf ball from the green I'm not 10% worse at doing it than the guy I play with who is 5'9" even though I am further away from it. My 'height induced error' in that task is probably not even measurable. I may occasionally hit a bad one 'because I am tall' but generally I think I do ok out of having a bit of extra height.