AzGolfGeek

Here's my 2-cents. Of the 14 clubs in the bag, I have approx 18 clubs to choose from. The bag setup is specific to the course and the course setup that I'm playing. For the most part, the only clubs that get switched out on a routine basis is the hybrid, 3 iron and gap wedge. My normal setup, of the courses I play about 90% of the time, is to carry a driver, 3 wood, hybrid, 4-9 and 4 wedges (46, 50, 54, 60). Depending on the length of the course, and setup, I can replace the hybrid with a 5 wood, or 3 iron, or remove the 50 degree wedge. Most of the time, my changing of bag setup comes from data that I keep on every round. I track every club played so that I know which clubs I am mostly likely to need on a specific course. The 4 wedge setup has been a pretty consistance setup for the last year or so, keeps me from having to manufacture half and 3/4 swings in some situations, and gives me options when I need to reduce spin or play something other than a stock shot. The top end of bag becomes more of a specilized setup more dependant on 1 or holes. Maybe 5 wood instead of the hybrid depending on approch distances of the really long par 4's or par 5's. Also depending on a longer par 3, I may carry the 3 iron instead of the hybrid or 5 wood. Bottom line is, there is no standard setup to my bag, it is completely dependant on how I play the specfic course and a few holes on that course. There are time during practice rounds when my bag might have 18 to 20 clubs, but after a few rounds it gets figured out pretty easily.

VJ is a jerk, he should have known what was on the banned substance list. (whether it should have been banned is irrelevant ). That said, unless he failed a drug test, there should be no case against him. The tour has enough money to drug test each and every member of the tour prior to the start of the season and throughout the season, for that matter, every professional sport should be testing all players multiple times per season. This seems a little drastic, but its the only way to restore the integrity of the sport.

At the match play tournament in AZ I over heard Bubba Watson discussing the distance loss due to the frost delay. Between him and his caddy, they figured it was about 25 yards of carry, but that distance was made up by 30 yards extra of roll. At the Phoenix tournament, I remember someone in the 1st group off on Friday hitting an 8 iron from 130, didn't seem to hit it bad and ended up pin high. Temperature has a big effect on how much the ball is compressed at impact.

I grew up playing with a guy named Dave McGualy, nicknamed Dave Mulligan because he was always hitting a 2nd ball, sometimes a 3rd and 4th. Even saw him get a hole-in-one once with a mulligan. Everybody at the course just dealt with it, nobody ever got upset. The course didn't have a driving range, and it was excepted to hit a mulligan on the 1st hole, Dave it took it to a whole other level. I will say this though, he was always mindful of groups behind and didn't play slow.

I think everybody should be a bit of both, the key is to know when to be which............

Personally for me its a bit of both, and depends on the situation and circumstances. I also feel that conservative and aggressive have different meanings to different players and different abilities. Swinging hard with a driver to me is not aggressive, but fitting that tee shot into an area that could be of great advantage but with risk is. Going dead at every pin isn't aggressive, only when there is high risk of making a large number if you miss your target. I see a few example so I'll try and explain one here. A course I play at has a 309 yard par 4, dogleg right with water between the tee and green, sand on corner. Traps both left of the green and right of the green. A lay up is usually with a 3 iron, leaving about 85 yards. To go for the green, a carry of 265. In the last 8 rounds, I have layed up 4 times, and went of the green 4 times. I'm 2 under in those 8 tries with both birdies coming from the green side trap off the tee. The 4 lay up attempts have averaged 12 feet from the pin on the approach, all good looks. But from the sand, I was within 5 feet 3 of the 4 and 10 feet on the other. Statistically I can see that I need to work on 12-15 foot putts, and 85 yard wedge shots, but the risk of the water and sand is not as great as consistently making birdies. However, I'll add, it only takes one bad swing to change all that, next time I play that hole the outcome might be completely different.

I wouldn't worry at what others think, every body is going to have their opinion and know one is going to know for sure what your ability is. Also in talking your self up, there is always a certain amount of ego that goes with getting better at anything a person does. Some show that ego more than others, in the game of golf, confidence is half the battle and a little ego can help in that confidence.

Here's a little perspective. Monday qualifying for a PGA Tour event, this starts with a Thursday pre-qualifier. In Phoenix there were 3 pre-qualifiers, 99 players in each, only 9 from each advanced to Monday. I played in the qualifier at Aguila GC, par 72, about 7100 yards. 69 (-3) did not advance, meaning that there were 9 players -4 or better. The other 2 courses were very similar, and I noticed someone shot a 62. This only got them to Monday, where only 3 advanced from a field of about 99. And again 69's and more went home. What does this all mean, you need to be able to routinely go out, and shoot 68 or better in competition from the tips of the course. A zero hdcp (scratch) doesn't cut it. Figuring out what a hdcp is for any given pro is that hard, pgatour.com has the stats and scores. They are normally playing on courses with ratings in the 74, 75 area and slopes higher than 140. Rarely do they ever play courses shorter than 7100 yards, and they are still scoring below par week in, week out. One other thing, 99% of the current pro's, have won multiple titles at every level they have played. Whether they were junior golfers, high school teams, college teams and then amateur and open events, they have won...before getting to the pro level.

Looks like you have a pretty good list. One thing I see missing is the ability to determine where your game needs work. To achieve your goal, your going to have to fine tune area of your game, not just improving everything, but either getting better at something or learning about yourself on how you handle situations or parts of your game. Not only to make a big jump in ability such as your goal, but also how to maintain that goal, you will need to identify every area of your game. Not just keep stats like GIR and Fairways, your stats are going to have to be extremely detailed so that you can identify the area, and practice it. Things such as, from 150 yards, what is your percentage up getting up/down, then you look at how to improve that percentage, how many feet is your average approach shot, are you leaving the ball on the proper side of the pin, are you consistently missing the putts the same way. Same goes for getting off the tee, are you missing fairways left or right. Are you in the fairway on the correct side. Keeping as detailed stats as possible will help you determine where you need EXTRA work. I say extra work because, you will always have things to work on at the range, every part of the game has to be practiced, and then various area need to be fine tuned. A scratch golfer also knows their own tendencies, their own limitations, they will always be able to play to their strengths to give themselves the best chance to score well.

Its been in my bag for a few weeks now, only play a couple of actual rounds but been on the driving range a bunch. I switched from an R9, mainly because I could not stand the sound the R9 made. I was fortunate enough to have a couple of demo days to try Callaway, Nike, Mizuno and the R11. Titleist was not at either demo day with their drivers, only ball fitting. Coming for an R9, I knew something about the R11 and was able to adjust it pretty quickly, I was sold on it during the demo day because it was flying further and straighter than any of the other drivers I tried. The Nike rep tried real hard, switching shafts and heads, but in the end nothing else proved to as good as the R11. On the course now, I am hitting further than the R9, comparing landing areas and approach shots. I haven't really looked at the driving stats much, because 2 rounds isn't much data, after next week I should have about 5 more rounds in the database to compare.

Yes, in the past there were a lot a disclaimers that homeowners would have to sign for to assume the responsibility of where their house is. Mainly those are for guarding against insurance companies having to pay out in some cases. I've seen more court cases where the golfer looses the battle than wins because now its the insurance company going after the golfer and not the individual. The insurance company pays the damage claim, then sues either the golf course or the person who hit the ball. Courses are having to produce the names of the people in the groups that would have been in that area at that time. Depending on the claim, some insurance companies are getting more and more aggressive in this.

I saw a statistic a few years ago about new golf course construction, when broken down to what costs the most to build, it was said it about 30k to build a green, only 1k to build a tee box. I'm sure this is primarily because of the detail involved with a green, dealing with drainage. where are most tee boxes, gravel is placed and leveled out, then filled with sand and smoothed. Left to settle for a while, sanded and smoothed again and then sodded. Once the sod takes hold, grass is cut and is playable. Greens are more difficult to deal with because of the drainage, too much and you get hard crusty greens, no enough drainage and you super soft and slow greens that are very susceptible to disease and fungus that will kill the very expensive grasses uses on a lot of greens. (excluding Poana and Bermuda.) Golf course management looks at the greens as being a costly investment to have to rebuild, where as a tee box can be slapped together.

Welcome to greedie golf season. Golf rates drop again come April 1st. If your looking for some decent conditioned courses, Papago and Augila (already mentioned) are two of the better courses in the Valley for the price. Both are city of Phoenix courses but run somewhat differently. Papago has a contracted management, so you have a bag drop person running around with a clip board helping you get to the tee on time. Don't mind the temporary club house (trailer), the AGA promises to build a new one when funding is availabile (yeah right). Augila in my opinion is a better track, greens have been in great shape all spring. The head pro is Janet Anderson, a former LPGA pro, and she is usually working in the shop. Very nice person to talk to about the course and golf in general. From the tips, both course about the same distance, however Augila seems to play a bit longer due to 2 up hill tee shots on longish par 4's. Both courses allow you to walk if desired and neither course seems to be overly jammed packed, unlike Cave Creek CC which tries to send 4-sums out every 5 minutes.

The formula used is ((score - course rating) x 113) / slope) this is the differential, it is not rounded off, but everything past the 10th place is dropped...thus 13.775 is just 13.7. The 10 lowest differentials are then averaged, and multiplied by 96%. its important to realize that there is no rounding off of the numbers, they simply drop every past the 10th place. When I calculate my own hdcp, if found this to change a few 10ths either way. The hdcp formula I got from a google search and while back, and confirmed this is what the AGA uses here in AZ.