DarkPrince

I had that discussion with my boss today. I told him 50 games is nothing, most wprldwide sports would ban you for 2 years even, 3 months is nothing. So his retort was that if the NFL doesn't do it or give a crap (cuz to him its the only real sport that counts since its the most watched in the US) then everyone else should follow suit. I told him cycling, golf, soccer, olympics...etc all require a ban from all levels of professional competition if you get caught, 50 days is crap. Manny Ramirez would be banned for life likely after 2 positive tests.

According to a radio interview with someone "familiar" with the case, Braun and his team proved and replicated results that showed that the time period spent at the collectors house caused the sample to be contaminated and/or skewed. Take it with a grain of salt, but technically if they proved that it was contaminated or altered before the lab tested it, then the lab shouldn't have tested it in the first place as a true sample and should have required a new sample be taken. Its kind of the most...compelling case I've read so far, but still don't know how much is heresay since nothing has technically been officially released.

I think one thing that people did make a good point of was that his numbers haven't really gotten out of control. He's stayed pretty consistent. He isn't exactly going insane on the home runs or breaking crazy records, but who knows.

A friend of mine has connections with the team and a few players. She said that his sample actually was tampered with, but I still don't see how or why. I'm skeptical of these situations since my dad is a cyclist and follows the pro events and whatnot. Everyone who gets busted over there always claims some excuse but ends up fessing up eventually (except contador and his tainted beef). He also apparently never had herpes so that excuse with the medicine is out.

I use a mix between a Kennedy half dollar or a few US $1 president coins I got from work. The half dollars work well since it's big enough that I can see it from a good distance...and it's worth enough that I don't forget it laying around lol. I also have a few Odyssey poker chips that I snagged from some overstock Tri-ball putter covers...that had no putters to go with them :P

Yeah he/they just got back to me saying that they do so much reshafting and reselling that they often buy bulk overstock from the major manufacturers. I may just have to look into getting a different shaft put in eventually after I hit it and see where I want to go from there. I think he may have thought I actually wanted all the graphics on it lol. I'm just so used to everyone trying to make them stand out and pop....so a plain black shaft looks nice, but just made me skeptical. I'm also waiting on a reply from Adams golf inquiring about the 9031DF part, but it could be next week before I hear back if I do at all :P

I'm tempted to say it might be fake after a little searching. The seller I bought it from is the only person I've found who sells it with this shaft. Also on the head it says 9031DF whereas on Golfsmith it just says 9031. The DF supposedly means Deep Face and the tour prototype that came out before these went retail was called the 9031DF...but they were silver, not black and said prototype on them. I remember the adams rep telling me something about them being a prototype when I hit it at a demo day last summer, but still I'm getting weird vibes about this.

Hey all, I just picked up an Adams Idea Pro Black hybrid online and it arrived today. I know stock in only came with a Matrix Ozik or Aldilla Voodoo shaft, but this one has a Graffaloy shaft in it. I've got a concern though because I have never seen one like this. 1: There are literally no fancy snazzy or ugly graphics on it, it's literally plain black and says "Grafalloy S-Flex" on the shaft in silver script. 2: I have searched the listing, and Grafalloys website to no avail on any information on the shaft and a cursory google search turned back nothing except more listings or people talking about prolaunch blue/red/platinum...etc. The head was still wrapped and had the stickers on it and all, but the other weird thing is that I'm pretty sure it's got a Golf Pride Tour Velvet on it, but I've never found one that had no label on it anywhere. Even the adams hybrids I sell at work say adams golf up the grip, or on the butt of the club, or it says golfpride somewhere. Does anyone have any ideas? I'll put a few pics up. Just trying to figure out if its like a high/mid/low launch and high/mid/low spin?

+1 He's one of my fav's but he just fell off the face of the planet. I'll see him on the leaderboard day one, and then saturday its MC or WD :(

My dad uses www.BikeJournal.com to track his and just mess around on the forums and whatnot.

Well I know enough yahoos down here near the IL border who are out golfing this week on courses that allow it this winter. I still swear we are going to get hit hard one of these weeks but no one believes me, just makes me worry that it will happen in march and courses wont open until late april/early may :(

We continue to invade the plains of TST from the frozen tundra of Wisconsin >:] Welcome sir!

Anyone tried Luke Donald's wines?

As a short back story, I myself have never been much of a drinker or even interested in it even at 23, I'm limited to having tried a couple swigs of Miller Lite (yuck) really lol. But anyone I've met who doesn't know that about me always says they pictured me as the guy at the bar who would be drinking wine (seriously...wine at a bar?) or drinking a glass of expensive whiskey or scotch. So I figured I'd try some for the heck of it. Kind of a stupid leap from pi$$ water to scotch but you only live once. Aside from that I just bought my brother in law a bottle of 12 year reserve Jameson (he's Irish) for christmas that I might try with him, and I actually am sitting on a bottle of JW Blue until a good friend comes down for possibly new years. The last part is semi an inside joke because we both love Burn Notice and the main character in one of the earlier seasons mentions that he only drinks Blue. But he also let me stay at his place last year when I volunteered at the PGA at Whistling Straits, so its a bit of repayment as well :P For now I'll stick to my Goose Island root beer and some pizza and a book :P

I just picked up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Double Black, haven't tried scotch before though so kind of timid about trying it :P

Honestly it's really just about finding good deals on the stuff. And they do exist. I buy a lot of my apparel through a place called GPPGolf.com since they do apparel sales that TGW or Golfsmith don't do. For instance their Puma apparel can be on sale as low as 30% off and TGW/Golfsmith are charging full price, but the reverse can also be true. Check sale racks at the local golf shops or end of season ones if you live in the midwest or any other place that has more than 2 seasons :P

So they finally did ship the balls after I emailed them a month after they said they originally sent them. I hate doing that, but when it's a month later and something still hasn't showed up....eh I'll just politely ask them what's up. So they overnighted them....I got the box. Next monday I ended up getting a 2nd box due to a delay in the warehouse... I emailed them about the extra ones asking if they would like them back, they say keep them...so I ended up getting 6 boxes of Penta's....dear god I'm starting next season with 6 free boxes, another box of penta's I bought the day before I won for $10 cuz of pro-shop money, and a box of One Tour D's I bought before the season ended.... I'll probably lose all 96 by May....but most of them were free :D

With Skullcandy it REALLY depends on how much you want to pay. I get a deal with them through work so I've tried cheap/mid/most expensive lines to see the difference. The cheapest ones (Ink'd $20/SmokinBuds $30) don't do bad but they don't hold a candle to the FMJ's which are $70. Iacas, if you want to try a skullcandy one designed for running, pick up a pair of ones called "The FIX" I think they are around $40, my footwear manager swears by them now....and he is the biggest audio snob/footwear snob I know :P I also managed to pick up a pair of the SKDY Rocnation Aviator's and I have to admit they are the most comfortable completely over ear headphones I've owned with insane quality. I think skullcandy gets too obsessed with bass though. The cheaper ones tend to have bland highs, ok mids, and too much bass compared to the rest. Mid level ones have a good amount of each, but still too much bass sometimes. and the really nice ones they even put in line subwoofers....yaaaaaaay. I don't know...it really just comes down to you get what you pay for, but sometimes you get some good steals at lower prices. Good companies I would say are Sony and Senheiser. I used to have some Sennheiser earbuds that had some kind of bar thing that stuck out and braced itself against a ridge in your ear so they would always stay in place when you were running, and they did, they just got kind of uncomfortable quickly even with the 3 difference sized tips they gave you.

I can't remember where I heard this from, but someone told me stepless just means the steps are inside the shaft instead of outside...makes no sense to me but could be plausible. I've got PX's in my old TM RAC MB TP's, and whatever the stock shaft is in the Wilson Ci9 which is stepless I think. I prefer the look, but like others I don't really know if it makes a difference except in flex maybe.

This is my frist year with a HCI ever, for the longest time I would average maybe 42-45 on 9, so roughly an 85-90 without trying too hard back when I was in HS on the golf team (I sucked and didn't care :P it was free golf). I stopped playing for a few years while in college, started playing again I think 2 years ago spring of my junior year, and only started seriously trying to improve the 2nd half of last year. When I started the year I was a 14 based on my scores. Which was pretty correct. I only broke 80 once last year with a 79 and just couldn't go lower than 82 until I think May, then I started hitting some 79's, 78's, I got a bunch of 76's throughout the summer with 3 74's tossed it during tournament play, then everything went completely out of whack. I partially blame it on working too hard and getting burned the f*ck out with golf for a bit and then trying too hard to get it back :P

It for some reason only bounced up to a 7.7 I think, but I just had enough good scores in that they kept it down lower than it should be :P I have to laugh though, I was in a match play tournament and thanks to the HC strokes I got due to my index being 6 or 7 strokes higher than the 2 guys i had to play (2 of the best at the course) I managed to beat them with 74's (before strokes)...so they thought I was' bagging, then 2 weeks after I end up losing in the semi-final (against a guy I had to give 10 to), I go 88/86 in the club championship haha, quite the turnaround :P I think some of us just hit our stride at different times or something. For a month or so everything was clicking, I was firing on all cylinders, I dropped from like a 14 to a 7, then I got burned out from how often I'm out there. I make a conscious effort to get out and at least practice an hour or so a day and play maybe 3 or 4 times a week.

Anyone else have issues with trying to or just naturally peaking at different times during the year? Normally I don't start getting everything to click until say September at the end of the season, but this year I randomly hit the afterburners in mid June early July, and then it randomly just fell completely apart. I got myself down to a 7.2 HC and was really playing like a 4 but the next month my swing just fell apart and scores started skyrocketing into the upper 80s/low 90's. Anyone have this problem in like the spring and have to spend the rest of the year scrambling to find it again?

That was one heck of a finish to game six... down to 2 outs, 2 strikes 2 innings in a row managing to tie it...and then walk off homer for the win? what the freakin heck does texas have to do to win!? lol

1: Get my consistency back 2: Get into better shape 3: Get to below a 5 HCI/as close to scratch as possible. 4: Play other courses more often to test whether its home course knowledge or my game improving. 5: Hit at least half my fairways and at least 1/3 of my GIR 6: Work on my putting stroke to make it a consistent smooth stroke. I guess I have more, but I think it's probably not good to have too many goals to distract myself lol.

The only thing I would correct is that mizuno is in no way a dedicated golf company. They are a large scale sports corporation invested in running shoes, apparel, golf, baseball, softball...etc (like Wilson, Wilson Staff is merely a very minuscule part of a very large company).