B-Con

I just came across this article: http://www.technologyreview.com/view/424278/mathematics-reveals-new-approach-to-the-perfect-putt/ On a flat, gradient surface (ie, no saddlepoints, etc), all equidistant putts have ideal targets that are about the same spot. So you can read your own putt by reading several different putts of the same distance, as they should share a common target point. The paper is from 2 years ago, but it was neat to see analysis behind this approach. I forget where I first read about this approach, I think it was on this forum. Regardless, I've been using it for a while. I've found it particularly useful on mid-short putts where I'm having trouble deciding how much break there is. Mainly just throwing this out there, in case anyone else finds it interesting. :-)

Was hoping to find half-naked photos of TST staff... Left disappointed. ;-)

This is an effective shot? Maybe from a tight lie, but I would think any presence of grass would make dragging the clubhead at least as risky as not.

Just leave it at home for the first couple casual rounds. Or do you literally have to get rid of it (ie, sell it to afford the gap wedge)?

My gear is pretty spread out over several major brands, so I probably have everything covered anyway. Adams, Titleist, Callaway, Ping, and Odyssey are currently in my bag in one way or another. My current visor is Titleist. It was the right colors, so I got it. No need to match anything.

My local course is shorter and has two sets of tees, white and blue. The par-3s are reasonable, two in the 180s, a 130s, and a 150s (from the blues). [url=http://plantationgolf.net/ready-to-play/scorecard]Scorecard link[/url]. Three, play into the wind though and two have very deep greens, so effective yardage on those is 20 more 1/4 of the time.

How do you play the clubs? Which one is least comfortable for you to hit? Least consistent? Least versatile? Least likely to actually be used? Least replaceable during a round if you actually needed it? The simplest advice is to just pull the club that is [i]required[/i] the least often per round. For me, my 3-hybrid is my go-to club on a lot of holes because it's the longest club I'll use off the fairway. My 58* wedge is nice to have, but I only pull it a couple times per round and I can make do with my 52* laid open 80% of the time anyway. I might only have 1 shot per round that I actually [i]needed[/i] it for. I really like having it, but it's probably the club that would go if I needed one to.

I'd give Woods a slight edge. He plays in a few more PGA Tour events per year. (Right now it's 17 events for Woods vs 14 for McIlroy, I believe.)

I have noted that different balls sound different and feel different. [list] [*] Sound tends to range from soft "thuds" in more expensive short-game oriented balls, to sharp "tings" in cheaper/harder distance-oriented balls. [*] Feel tends to range from softer more seemless impact in the more expensive short-game oriented balls to harder more punched impact in the distance-oriented balls. [/list] But I have not noticed any actual difference in performance. I have taken several balls of various types out with me onto putting greens and practiced putting, and I have yet to be able to determine a difference in actual performance. If there is one, I'm not good enough to, side-by-side, tell a difference. If someone were a terrific putter and could control their putts down to the inch consistently, I wouldn't be surprised if one ball traveled an inch farther than another or had 5% less skidding, but I would expect that to only be a very minor deviation in performance, only relevant for a really good player, and probably only noticeable between the extremes of ball types. Part of the problem is that, psychologically, we get primed by our senses to expect some things. When we see and feel a certain kind of impact, we're mentally prepared and probably biased toward observing it. I've heard people say that certain balls seem to go farther/shorter, or roll differently. But people also mess up their assessment of every other type of shot in golf, so I consider such hearsay untrustworthy. :-) I would be open to hearing from a good putter who has conducted extensive side-by-side tests between several ball types and performed some sort of measurements (even if they're just relative to each other). It may not be perfect, but it'd be interesting to hear, and certainly worth more than people comparing balls across different rounds on different days.

When choosing club specs, the goal is to optimize a set of measurements. Your flex, kickpoint, loft, swing-weight, etc, should all work together to produce an optimal combination of launch angle, speed, and spin for the ball. Get on a launch monitor. See what your numbers are. Fitting it can be a bit of an art and I'm certainly no expert, but if you can get some reasonably good measurements you can find some resources (consult a fitter or the Internet) and see how your numbers match up against an optimal set. Generally swing speed is the base constant that others are compared to, so given your swing speed determine if your other measurements are anywhere near where they should be. Less loft on the club is primarily going to lower the launch angle and possibly reduce driver spin. Do your numbers suggest that you get a high enough launch angle? Are you launching it too low? For the record, I think that common wisdom is that players tend to need more loft, and a 9* face is not optimal for most lower swing speeds. I think that the stereotypical golfer who needs a 9* driver is swinging at least 97 MPH with a stiff shaft, but YMMV.

89. I haven't played or practiced much lately, so I was kind of surprised to do decently. Unfortunately, I missed a lot of good GIR opportunities. I think I had three chances to hit the green with a wedge that I just chunked. Driving was decent, though.

You must be new here. Ah, yep. Welcome. We totally think these things are worth 35 pages of meandering conversation. :-)

I thought you could only win the same award once every six months. Did that change?

Whenever different people study the same thing, if they're worth their salt, their results will look similar. One of them has to come first, though, and thus comparisons are inevitable. -- Random thought.

I think that the easiest way for a very high handicapper to improve their score is to improve their bad shots. I remember going from shooting high 90s to low 90s and almost nothing about my game changed except I learned to control my bad shots better. I stopped hitting the chunkers that move a half acre of dirt, I stopped push slicing drives into neighboring states, I stopped blading wedges over the green, etc. (At least, no longer as often.) That itself dropped my score about 4 shots per round plus a penalty stroke or two as well. You can improve a lot, but in golf, the weakest link in the chain is what's the most important. You can work hard for some pars and bogeys only to throw it all away on one hole.

Got mine today. Thanks!

I finally made my mind up. I'm against any anchored putters. My indecision for so long was because of the problem: What is the idea of golf? Is it to hit the ball from the side with a stick, or to hit the ball from the side with a freely-held stick? I now think the latter makes more sense.

I meant for water hazards. Thought I specified that in specific, but I didn't.

45 to 60 minutes early. I have to get at least 10 full swings and 10 practice putts in. Ideally I'll get more like 20 putts, 25 full swings, and a bit of pitching and chipping. Then I like to be early to the teebox so I can get everything situated properly (ball marker, extra balls marked, tees accessible, etc) before I need to stand on the teebox.

Take her swing faults as seriously as she takes them. If she's only casually interested and only hits a couple buckets a month, don't get overly concerned with faults and change things that break her swing for a couple months. That will likely dissuade her interest. But if she's very into it, hits a bucket or two a week, and makes it obvious she wants to improve, that's another story.

I didn't know there was the provision for a local rule to override that. That's convenient for the occasional hole where re-hitting would be a huge waste of time. Alas, I've never seen it used on a course where I wished it was.

Here's one that bugs me, although I definitely won't call it "stupid". There are several reasons why you would re-hit your last shot. If you hit into in a hazard you may want to re-hit, if you lose it you have to re-hit, it you get a really bad lie in some situations you can just take a penalty and re-hit. But you can never use a provisional as your re-hit. Say you hit a ball and think it might be lost outside a hazard, so you hit a provisional. You get up to where the original ball went and realize that it's in a hazard. You decide your best option is to re-hit. You already re-hit your shot, but you can't use [i]that[/i] re-hit, you have to go back and [i]re-[/i]re-hit the shot. The oddest quirk about this, IMO, is that on your first re-hit you knew the exact spot to re-hit from because you were still standing there, whereas for the second re-hit you have to go back to the original spot but you may not know the exact location, so you may end up abandoning a re-hit from the exact right spot for a re-hit from the semi-right spot. But if you had seen your ball go into the hazard in the first place then the first re-hit would be your only re-hit and you could play it. So whether or not a shot can be used in a certain way depends on how you observe the previous one. It seems somewhat obvious that this rule is to prevent people from gaming the system and taking re-hits first and then evaluating which of the two shots they'd rather play. They don't want people to, for example, put a ball in a hazard in a semi-playable lie, take their re-hit, then get to the hazard and judge whether they'd like to prefer to hack out of the hazard or play the re-hit. The spirit (and often (always?) letter) of the rules is that you have to maintain only one shot you're going to play so that your mental game is played linearly without temporary parallel splits where you get to test both paths of a possible decision fork in the road. (If you ever have two balls you are playing, AFAIK the one you use will be decided by something outside your control.) So while I understand the motivation, there is the occasional circumstance where it costs someone time to walk back and re-hit a shot that they've already re-hit. From a high level perspective, I think it does occasionally look kind of silly. Not that it comes up very often.

I'm all for keeping the rules the same. Having the pros play different rules kind of defeats the purpose, as the entire point of the professional level is to exemplify the best and most awesome players of the game. The game itself should be the same for all of us, otherwise we're out there playing one game, the pros are out there playing a different one.

Sure, I do it all the time. Not that many 320 yard holes on my course, but there are a couple and I always tee off when others are on the green. I stand a 0.01% chance of getting anywhere near the green.