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Everything posted by saltman
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"The pin was in play" - Anyone heard of this before?
saltman replied to malincanada's topic in Golf Talk
Sweet, I now have 13 career holes in one. -
I don't think its all that strange, it wasn't a few years, it was more than 10 years of virtually no play. Even now, I only play 10-15 rounds per year, when I was a 1, I played over 100 rounds a year. I stopped keeping a handicap altogether during that time. So it wasn't as though I had old scores that were going to be used. I started playing again, spraying balls all over the place and having a tough time breaking 90. So the handicap didn't really go from 1 to 13, it really just started at 13 and now has moved down to 10 after 3 revisions. Still I don't play enough to get it to move all that quickly. My last 20 rounds still date back to 2011. It will keep creeping down, stay tuned. I actually think my ball striking (save for driver) is as good as its ever been. It's a lot closer than the 10 would suggest. A couple other limiters, I live in downtown chicago, no easy access to a real practice facility. I also do not have a home track, so I frequently play different courses and in many cases courses I have never played. Oh and I also now have an 8 month old.
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lol....I left an uphill 4 footer 3 inches short last week......for birdie.
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Dude, compressing the ball is critical to getting to a certain distance, however at the pointy end the more compression doesn't result in a perfectly linear relationship to distance. More compression also results in more spin and spin dumps off distance. This is why guys like Luke Donald and Zach Johnson are probably only 1 club off Tiger. I consider that close, as I said I consider most pros to be reasonably close in iron yardage. That is what you seem to be missing. You don't see Luke Donald hitting a 4-iron where Tiger is hitting an 8-iron. I don't know why this offends you so much.
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Good rules to live by, Phan is proving to be a nemesis quickly and just gets under my skin. I'm done trying to justify it until and unless he wants to show up somewhere with his wallet. :)
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Okay buddy, there is awful lot of disrespect there since you have never seen me play and do not know my history with the game. Prior to this season, I had played about 15 rounds in 5 years. You play 3 rounds per year and tell me what your handicap might be. I absolutely never practice. I have forgotten more about the game of golf than you will ever know. A 230 yard 3-iron, 200-210 yar 5-iron aint a rarity friend. That is pure and simple my yardage and I happy to prove that to anyone anytime. I don't particularly think its all that impressive, its just is what it is. If you can compress the ball, its not that hard. Virtually all pros are within 1 club of each other with irons. My 10.5 index is not at all indicative of my game. It's a product of having a sloppy short game and a bit of a driver fight right now. I could bag the driver and cut 4 strokes off the index, but I don't want to run from the club just to get to a 6. I want to be able to hit the club and get back to a 1 or better. Back to a 1, because I have been there before.
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stop what? somewhere buried in the member swing threads, included is a 3-iron swing. Feel free to go judge after you view. Until then, no need to be a jerk.
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Guessing he knocked a few over 3 bills at The Open Championship this year. :) But for a couple freaks, most pros club irons close to the same distances and I am probably close to Tiger's yardage with irons as are a lot of reasonably solid amateurs. He just does it more consistently and with better control! I can't hit driver anywhere near as long as Tiger, however. In the last 15 years, my HC has been anywhere from 1 to 13, so tough to judge a book by its cover sometimes.
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I'm the same as him, my driver and I have a fickle relationship. Usually I can still pull out a 3-wood, but sometimes I have to club down to 3-iron. I also hit 3-iron 240ish, 250 would be absolutely smoked, 220-230 slight mishit including runout, not all carry. Tiger hits it further than 230 off the tee. He's probably 250-260 depending on how soft the fairways are, 230 is probably all carry.
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lol....right after I wrote it I decided I was going to say it to a buddy of mine next time we play. He and I are huge smack talkers. We both run marathons, his PR is about 15 minutes faster than mine. Last time I told him I was going to run, he said "you mean fast walk."
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Fair enough, you all sound like good dudes I would play with and I will concede the point. Now who lives near Chicago and wants to play? No breakfast balls allowed, but I'll give you a putt here and there. I'd like to play with FourPutt just to learn a few things. David and I are long overdue for a round, but I never go to Florida.
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Yeah, I'm admittedly trolling now. But if a buddy calls and asks if you want to play golf with him? You know he takes a mulli here and there, plays OB as lateral and so on and so forth, but you enjoy playing with him. In your response to his question, do you say no, but I will play golf while you play a variant? When you hear him tell someone else he enjoys playing golf, do you chime in and correct him and say you mean you enjoy playing a variant of golf? Do you compliment people on their nice round of variant golf, when they tell you they had a personal best? I seriously doubt you do, but that's how you guys sound here.
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nope, if I play 3 on 3 or 1 on 1, I tell people I am playing basketball. Commisioner Stern has never had a problem with me saying so. If people must use the term variant of golf than I expect people also to tell everyone they are playing handicap golf not real golf when they don't complete a hole or otherwise modify their score due to ESC. Real golf doesn't allow ESC, only real handicap golf.
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google is your friend mate, it's not that hard to find.
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Yeah it's tricky, why 1 stroke penalty's vs. 2 stroke penalty's vs. stroke and distance. Those are nuances even seasoned players don't always know. Well, we know stroke and distance, but not so for beginners. There was one I missed about a ball being stuck in a tree which resides in ground under repair. I assumed the ball stuck in the tree could not be identified therefore there it is not known or virtually certain that it is your ball stuck. As a result, I assumed it was penalty under lost ball. Turns out its ground under repair and free relief. That makes about as much sense to me as the ability to repair ball marks but not spike marks.
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Definitely not quite that simple. I'd encourage you to go take the basic rules quiz on usga.org. I'll be surprised if you don't miss a couple.
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"Probably the whole book of the rules of golf should be changed. If you try to figure it out, it should be common sense, yet common sense never seems to prevail. A USGA rules official said that it was much more difficult to pass the test to be a rules official than it was to pass the bar exam. There's no reason for that. The game should be simple. People should be able to understand the rules and the rules should be common sense." Jack Nicklaus
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If your club makes contact with a loose impediment in the bunker it isn't cheating. It's a rules violation. Cheating wouldn't occur unless you didn't penalize yourself accordingly. No it does not take vast knowledge of the game to understand hitting it in the water is a penalty. It does take a little more understanding to know your drop options and thereby not take an illegal drop. Mulligans on the 4th hole is an obvious rule violation. A breakfast ball on the first, maybe not so much considering I could simply stop playing my round and start over. Now you and I know that would be considered handicap manipulation, but maybe the average 25 handicapper doesn't though I agree its a stretch. With respect to handicap manipulation, the more egregious violation comes from those lower handicap players that start playing poorly early on and turn their round into "practice".
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That is precisely the point I have been trying to make. You learn a rule and apply it forward, but I hope you also recognize that your handicap prior to that was based on your original lack of knowledge? As you become a better player, instances of this become fewer and further between and in fact ESC kind of eliminates really big numbers. For example, if I jack 3 OB off the tee in a recreational round, I am done on that hole for the sake of pace of play. In a tourney, however, I have no choice but to keep playing.
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That's true, my problem is virtually everyone on this forum is indavertantly guilty of it including you. I guarantee you have cheated on a golf course. Tiger has, Phil has, I have. I don't intentionally cheat. It happens more often to those who know less about the game. In general there is a correlation, (not perfect), but a correlation between knowledge of the rules and handicap. The general tone of this forum just bothers me. It feels as though this place attacks the moral character of beginners because they don't know that OB is stroke and distance. We tell them they aren't really playing golf. Honesly, what purpose does that serve? Help beginners understand better, don't just sit back and pass judgment.
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Thats great that you feel that way. You are wrong. Please show me in the rule book where the penalty is based on knowledge vs. lack of knowledge.
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I'm happy to come play you for money FourPutt :). I live in a major city and many courses are locked in with no place to expand. I played a course last Friday that had OB left on about 11 holes. I can imagine the days when I had less confidence in my swing adding up to about 15 strokes. Fortunately for me, those days are behind me....at least for the time being.
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There is not other sport in the world with a more complicated set of rules than golf. Again, I don't mean to be condescending, but I am willing to bet you inadvertantly break a rule more frequently than you realize on a golf course. I played high level junior and amateur tournament golf growing up and I still occasionally run into a situation on a golf course in which I either do not recall the rule or never knew it. I've never even seen a rule book for a church league softball game. When can we stop with the over dramatic comparisons?? The last time I printed off the full copy of the USGA rule book it was something like 200 pages.
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When you compare recreational amateur golf to other professional sports is loses all credibility. What you and I do on Saturday on a golf course is recreational golf, save for tournament play. Calling people learning the game cheaters is bush league. I am not talking about blatent single digit handicap players cheating. I am talking about weekend warriors that have never played a round of competitive tournament golf in their life. Again, playing someone who has an artificially low handicap because they are largely ignorant of the rules only helps you. I can't remember the last time I lost money on the golf course. When it comes to playing for money, I politely help my opponents understand the rules as situations arise. As one would expect it generally turns their 90 into 100. I don't run around calling them cheats, but rather beginners.
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I have no problem with a 23 handicapper playing by the rules UNLESS he takes 5.5 hours per round and I can't finish my round as a result. Then you are darn right I have something to say about it because he/she just cost me money. It's called recreational golf vs. tournament golf.