cdriver

I don't have counterfeit clubs, but I am certain that most inexperienced players would have trouble discerning the difference in feel between club brands whether counterfeit or just different brands. I have 6 sets of clubs from GI to blades and except for the occasional mishit, I cannot tell the difference in the feel of any of them. If you hit them in the sweet spot, they go and if you don't they tell your hands and arms about it. This is especially true of blades. I think the bigger question is whether or not the clubs you are playing suit your swing and ability. Unless they do, it really doesn't matter if they are top of the line brand names or some clone. If you can't hit the sweet spot, it is a moot point.

Played with a guy once who duffed a wedge shot and swung his club at a sapling about chest high. The shaft wrapped around the tree, shaft broke at the appropriate time, and he got the clubhead right in his chest. Poetic justice.

Not exclusive, but Dove Mountain is my personal best. It is home of the WGC Accenture Match Play. Actually, I got to play it 2 weeks before they had the first Match Play event there. It is brutally hard.

Always, unless it is raining. Here in AZ, the wind blows lots of stuff around that can end up in your eyes.

I'm with you on that 4P. All the old guys in my club have the suction cup thing. I'm thinking about getting one myself. LOL.

There are some general rules to live by on the golf course. OK, here goes... C-Tech's Golf Rules: 1. If you look, walk and swing like Dorf, you should NOT be playing from the back tees. Either move up or go home, you look like an idiot. 2. If you hit your drive 180, do not wait for the green to clear except on par 3's, waiting makes you look like an idiot. 3. Do NOT line up your 4th putt, pick it up and go to the next tee, studying it makes you look like an idiot. 4. If you think you hit it OB, play a provisional. Coming back to the tee makes you look like an idiot. 5. If you hit the ball into my fairway while I am on the tee, stay out until I have teed off. If you stand in my fairway while I wait on the tee, you look like an idiot. 6. If you hit your drive in the water, do NOT hunt balls with a retriever, it slows play and makes you look like an idiot. 7. Do NOT drive your cart up onto the apron of the green, it makes you look like an idiot and I may shoot you. 8. If you started playing 2 months ago, do not bring your girlfriend and brother to the busiest course in the area to teach them the game on a Saturday morning. It makes you look like (you guessed it) an idiot. Good advice... don't come to the course, get a lesson for everyone and go to the range or an executive course so you can avoid looking like an idiot in the future.

378 yards on a dogleg par 5. He hit it over the dogleg back into the fairway and had only 60 yards left to pin. We measured it with Skycaddie.

Just from my personal experience, I think the short game is the major difference. I was languishing around a 12 handicap when I joined a club that had a really great short game practice area. About 170 yards of fairway with a green and a couple of bunkers they maintained just like the course. I would take a couple buckets of balls out there 3 or 4 times a week and spend a couple hours working mostly from 100 yards and in. My handicap dropped over the next 6 months to 6.6. I was getting up and down from anywhere around the greens. My average putts per round went down to 27 average because I was chipping it so close I could tap a lot of them in. I moved and lost my practice area. My handicap is now back up to 12 and I am hacking it up around the greens like usual.

I have also had really good luck with eBay. I also look for sellers with lots of positive feedback. Also, like 4Putt says, if the deal looks too good, it is probably suspect.

I go to the local munis and the starter almost always puts me with a group. If not, I go alone and almost always catch up with a two or threesome and join them. I have developed some golf buddies that way.

The main thing most desert courses have in common is the "target golf" nature of them. If you miss a fairway or an approach, you are in the desert and must content with all sorts of problems. Almost every plant in the desert has thorns as protection and consequently, you are many times precluded from doing anything but taking an unplayable lie. Of course, there is lots of fauna like rattlers, gila monsters, bobcats, coyotes, pumas, etc. to occupy your mind while you are wandering around in the underbrush. If you hit it straight and have good course management skills, they are lots of fun. If you spray it and can't throttle your game back to a little more conservative level, it is going to be a long day and lots of numbers on your scorecard. Of course, the weather is fantastic and, if you like the desert, the terrain is spectacular. I have lived in the desert for about a year and you couldn't get me out of here with a crowbar.

Posted a 78 on Sunday at Dell Urich in Tucson. Best round I have had in a while. I have been spending some extra time on the range working on iron accuracy and it is finally starting to pay off.

I got an opportunity to play the new Ritz-Carlton golf course at Dove Mountain. This is the course that will host the Accenture Match Play in Tucson this year. It is the most beautiful course I have seen out here in the desert. The course has been finished for two years, but they only allowed play to start on it two weeks ago. I got some great pictures. The course kicked my behind (as well as everyone in my group) and we didn't even play from the tips. Here are some pics: Tee box markers don't even have signs attached yet. One of the par 3's The clubhouse You can see some of the Corporate Tents under construction. Par 3 designed by the Devil! You can see the TV tower frame behind the green.

I just recently took my 1-iron out of the bag. I bought a 3H and changed from a 52/56/60 wedge set to a 54/58 wedge set so I could add a Strong 3W as well. I like the 1-iron, particularly off the tee on short par 4's, but it really was a specialty club. It was too short to go for par 5's in two, too long for most par 4 approaches and I just never needed it for par 3's. I finally decided that the Strong 3W would give me enough length to challenge some of the par 5's in two, would replace the 1-iron off the tee on short par 4's, and that let me add the hybrid to bridge the gap between my 3iron and the 3W. The jury is still out on whether this set up is better, but I did have my best round in months last Sunday after making the change.

I have always thought of myself as a good putter...even when I first started playing a few years ago, I couldn't hit a green if you held a gun on me, but I could get it in the hole once I got on the green. I still make a lot of putts, enough that my companions will comment on it. How do I do this you might ask? I don't have a clue other than I get behind the ball, imagine the line it will take to carry it through the hole, step into my stance, make one stroke to check my speed, and then believe in my heart that it is going in if I make the stroke I just practiced. Lo and behold, it does. I average around 28 putts per round most of the time. I know that sounds simplistic, but I believe putting is 75% confidence and 25% technique. I still practice putting at least a couple of times a week for 30 minutes just to keep my stroke consistent, but the rest is just a mindset. Now if I could just hit more greens in regulation!!!

I hate to burst your bubble, but I grew up in Arkansas where the copperhead is one of the most common poisonous snakes. I also grew up in the outdoors where I encountered lots of critters including snakes enough to identify them without the help of a library. This particular snake was just off the backyard of a house in a subdivision and I assumed there were children in the neighborhood. Not counting any of that, I kill poisonous snakes just like I would remove an explosive mine if I found one. I have heard all the arguments about how they are a vital part of the eco-system, yada yada yada, but in reality, they occupy a very small niche and don't eat enough frogs and mice to make a dent in the population. If we rid the planet of them, birds of prey could easily make up for the populations they prey on and I never saw a hawk strike and kill a child just because it stepped in the wrong place.

One other one... I bent down to replace my ball and remove the ball mark just as a guy teed off on an adjacent tee and hit a line drive screamer over my head that my buddy said missed me by about 6 inches. He said if I had started to stand up it would have killed me.

As I started my downswing, a Copperhead slithered out from behind me and stopped directly behind my ball. In an effort to miss the snake, I topped the ball about 30 yards. I then used my club (7 iron) to beat him to death. My golfing buddies were all across the fairway watching this. When we got to the green, they said I had to count the first stroke, but they wouldn't count all the ones I made to kill the snake.... nice bunch of guys.

I only wish my ballstriking was as good as my handicap. If not for a really good short game (chipping and putting) I probably couldn't break 90. In the last 6 weeks, I have been going to the range at least 3 times a week and working on nothing but irons. It is starting to pay off, but it is a slow process.

I got a club travel case from my wife. A divot repair tool with ball mark, towel and tees from a Secret Santa, a discount card to one of the really nice local courses from a co-worker and a couple of gift certificates to Dick's Sporting Goods which I have already used for golf stuff.

I like these!

I really dislike hidden hazards. I played a mountain course once where you had a blind tee shot to what looked like fairway over the hill...even the hole diagrahm showed it as fairway...but when I hit it there, it landed in a gully full of weeds and brambles that encroached 3/4 of the way across the fairway in the normal landing area. Not exactly my favorite feature of this course. We started driving down to check it out before hitting and there were lots of this kind of problem.

Seriously, I try to think one thing only, "Freddie smooth". If I manage it, ball go far and ball go straight.

I want one, but I don't want to pay $2Mill for it.... I like distance.

Rather than specify any particular layout, I want a course that fits naturally into the terrain. I want the course to be set up for walkers...no long distances between greens and the next tee. I want water at regular intervals. I want a marshall with a gun who knows how to use it on dawdlers. I want a good driving range and practice area. I want a reasonably well maintained course without bare patches where they shouldn't be. I want a designer with an imagination who gives me something to think about and risks to contemplate. I want reasonable greens fees and I would like it to be one of the courses listed on my Skycaddie website.