gbogey

I have to agree. If you really believe that you play poorer when walking then your handicap will reflect it and you will benefit from it during a riding tournament. But I disagree with the assumption - I am very confident that I play better when walking. Sure there are times that you don't have the right energy and the elements are tough on a walker, but walking usually means less waiting IMO and the rhythm of walking beats the heck out of the non-rhythm of riding. It will be interesting if they do roll out a new handicap system that takes into account that day's scoring factors, although I don't think walking versus riding will be one of them. I know someone who thinks green speed should impact the handicapping of scores. Personally the amount of wind is the factor that impacts me the most.

I read when I was a new golfer that amateurs (I think from Butch Harmon or someone like him in a magazine) should never use a wedge above 58 degrees, so when I bought my first wedges around that time I stopped at 58 degrees and have never wavered. I have no reason to hit the ball higher than a 58 allows. My current 58 has 8 degrees of bounce and a grind that allows me to open up the face quite easily. As mentioned earlier, occasionally in the wrong conditions you can slide under the ball, but if you couldn't it would be easy and then it wouldn't be golf.

As a new player if you like the I25, take a look at whatever Ping "G" model is current. Won't look quite as sexy but the GI features will help play tremendously and Ping does GI really well. Better yet, get the previous years or even a used set (G25 or more current) and save money. Then when you become an regular player you can buy the I25 and not feel bad about the dollars.

The pro are going away from hybrids because the ball balloons too much with their swing speed. You will see some pros who use hybrids actually have a steel shaft to slow their swings down. Then you have the draw bias which pros wouldn't want. So hybrids are really made for amateurs (at least those who aren't low handicaps) who don't have the swing speed for long irons (or driving irons) and often tend to slice rather than draw. They are also better out of the rough, unless of course, you have high swing speed. I was told once you should be using hybrids instead of long irons unless you hit a 7i 170 yards. I assume the same would be true for a driving iron.

I think for someone hitting blades not much of a difference, although of course your PW could match your wedges as opposed to matching your irons. Most of the time the "wedge" will be more blade like than a game improvement set wedge so in theory the "wedge" is less forgiving but more accurate when hit well and more versatile, as least IMO. The "wedge" also give more options around the green. I bought a 50 degree wedge a few years back to use instead of my iron gap wedge. Much better out of bunkers and around the green but I eventually went back to the iron gap wedge as I just needed better distance consistency and I had other options around the green.

When I first started playing I was practicing 2-3 times a week, playing once a week, with a lesson every 6-8 weeks. I improved rapidly / steadily for 3 years, then plateaued. After two more years of working to improve, I suddenly got better by another couple of strokes and then plateaued again at a level I can't seem to improve upon. That said, my improvements have tended to be step changes - when I finally broke 100 I moved to low 90's quickly, and when I finally broke 90 I moved to the mid-80's almost immediately. So I don't think it's unusual to feel like you aren't getting better and then to improve by several strokes at a time. If you are practicing 4 hours a week, you are putting in enough practice time IMO. Are you playing regularly? So much of golf is mental / course management that I believe you have to play to get better, if only to recognize what to do in certain lies / situations. I had the time last year to play A LOT of golf and although I don't think I got better in my ability to play, I did get better in course management and in knowing what to do with all sorts of unusual lies.

These are averages. I would assume that the 10 best scores of 20 is 2-3 shots better than average, so the 80th player would probably have an index based upon an average score of 69-69.8. I would assume that the course rating for most LPGA events is in the 71-72 range and that the slope ratings are pretty high. So the 80th rank player is at least a +2-+3 and would easily beat a scratch player, especially when one considers the pressure element. All I know is that every time the LPGA plays a course I've played they kill it. Case in point Brickyard Crossing in Indianapolis. Ladies played it at a distance that would have a course rating around 71/135. It took -4 to make the cut and 66 of the 73 to make the cut shot -4 or better over 4 days.

I tend to agree as the ladies tend to hit the similar distances as most male players, except for driver and woods where they tend to be longer. I had a short conversation with an LPGA player a few years back and she explained that the ladies are more efficient in their swings with longer clubs and therefore get better distances. If you look at LPGA tour stats vs. PGA tour, the ladies are amazing at their percentages of GIR and fairways hit vs. the guys. That said, they have much fewer birdies as they typically are hitting much longer clubs on approach shots whereas the guys are pretty much short iron and wedges on every approach except par 5's. The ladies tend to play boring but impressive golf - hit the fairway, hit the green, 2 putt. Not sure this is true or not, but my observation from watching the ladies is that because they are shorter in height, their swings are more vertical and men have flatter swings. My guess is that this really adds to their consistency but I'm not enough of a swing expert to know.

There are others that understand trackman data much better than me, but to some extent lower spin (I think) should lead to less curve. That said, slicing is caused by an open club face so unless your slice has turned into a fade, I would think something else is going on that allowed you to better square the club face.

Under the following assumptions: 1) Course setup / length similar to LPGA tour events - 6400 yards and similar green speeds; 2) Men selected, even scratch players. are golfers who drive the ball similar distances as the ladies, say 250 yards (this might be hard to do, my guess is that most scratch players are longer than this these days): Then the LPGA players would kick butt. One reason is the choke factor - I don't think amateurs, unless they are elite amateurs, are anywhere used to the kinds of pressure that LPGA players are. The 2nd is that the ladies are really good - they don't miss fairways and greens. In other words, given the right distance courses, they are much better than scratch IMO.

Agree with this thought. I couldn't consistently get a 3W up in the air off the deck. Read something about how today's maybe shouldn't play 3W's because length has become longer and went to a 5W (which I have set to the lowest loft so it might be more of a traditional 4W). Now I hit the ball consistently off the deck and really no loss in yardage versus a 3W although I'm likely 5-10 shorter when I use it to tee off. But overall it's been a great swap for me.

A friend was playing one day when his partner gets hit by a ball, knocks him out cold. He looks around and can't figure out where the ball came from - they appear to be totally alone on the course. So he takes off with the cart (this was pre cell phones) to find help. While he's gone, his buddy wakes up, lying on the ground totally alone in the middle of the golf course without a sole or golf cart in sight! He said once it turned out his buddy wasn't seriously hurt, it was a funny incident.

Totally agree. If a golf ball hits you anywhere other than your head it might hurt but unlikely to do any real damage. Concussion, lose eye or teeth, or even death is a possibility if a ball hits your head in the wrong spot. Not sure medically, but I believe that all or the wrong spots are on the face side of the head, but I could be wrong.

There's a couple of good things here: 1) it is hard to get better in golf, probably more so than most sports, to get better without either playing or practicing at least twice a week IMO; 2) For many people lessons are an important part of the process, at least for me it was important in getting basic fundamentals right such as grip and posture and in terms of understanding my tendencies and what to do about them.

It took me about 1.5 years to break 90, but when I did so I did it with a bang. I shot 90 on the nose 7 times which was remarkable given that at the time I was only getting to play about once a week. A few were real choke jobs but some weren't. I went out one day and shot an 84. More surprisingly, I started the round triple bogey / double bogey and then a double bogey on 18. So I was +6 (par 71) on the 15 holes in between despite never having been better than +18 for a full round. Similar story when I broke 80 for the first time - the 84 was still tied for my best round ever when a 76 came out of nowhere.

I personally find that Ping consistently has among the best irons for game improvement players, although I would push for one of the "G" lines. They may seem big when you pick them up but I find "the shovel" is more hidden at address than one would think. I know that I was concerned that they were too big when I was looking, but I tried out something like 15 irons and Ping was by far the best for me. The Ping "I" line looks fabulous, but IMO they aren't game improvement, or they are game improvement only for better mid-handicaps. Titleist also look incredible for game improvement irons. From my experience they are more forgiving than Ping "I" but less than Ping "G", but man do they look good - probably what I would consider with Ping if I were buying new irons today. My rule of thumb is that most players need more forgiveness, not less.

No but I use an F7 and have F7 FW and hybrids as well. I don't think they changed much except the weighting system.

So if you are hitting 7 fairways and playing 5900 yards, providing you are getting at least 200+ on your drives, needing to move up tees wouldn't seem to be your solution. From what you've said, 3 GIR's and 3 pars, 36 putts, 21 over par - you had at least 5 or 6 DB+. It's about your short game. I'd suggest that you start measuring GIR's +1 and work on your pitching / chipping to insure that you get on the green +1. I don't know all of the stats, but in general, to break 90 most players are going to have to have 2-3 scramble pars. It's also going to be hard to break 90 with that many DB's but improving your GIR+1 should help that.

How many GIR's did you have and more importantly, how many GIRs +1 did you have?

I can only relate to my own experience, but when I was trying to break 90 I read a stat, I hope I remember correctly, that players who shoot 90 average 4 GIRs and 2 scramble pars. I had the GIRs but not the scrambles. As fate would have it, I had a month where work was very busy and I didn't have time for a 4 hour round. But I was able to squeeze in a large bucket at the range 2 times a week. I did nothing for those sessions except chip and hit wedge shots, everything was less than a full swing (110 yards at the time), never tried to hit the same yardage or target more than twice in a row. Did wonders for my game. Extra benefit was that this also improved my full swing/long game. When you have confidence that if you miss the green, you will hit the green with the next shot, you swing better knowing a miss isn't deadly. Same thing with bad drives - having confidence that I can punch out to a wedge distance and then hit the green for a bogey or potential scramble takes a lot of pressure off approach shots.

I'm probably weak on advice but I can offer encouragement that it can happen. After I had been playing a few years I went through a long period where I was stuck between a 10 and 11 handicap. I really wanted to be a "9" so I could say I was single digits. So matter how much I practiced or improved I was always between 10 and 11. I distinctly remember one day leaving the course totally pissed off and saying to my wife, "I know I'm better in every phase of the game but my scores don't change." My next round was a very good one and I mysteriously went from a 10-11 to an "8" in about 10 rounds. What changed, don't really know other than confidence and experience. Not to sound trite but my standard advice is if you are trying to break 100 work on your swing and if you are trying to break 90 work on your short game (somewhere IMO in the mid-80's it becomes more complicated). But I highly recommend keeping stats on your rounds to see where you are losing strokes and what to work on most. Really just something simple like: 3 putts from closer than 35 feet, greens missed chipping, greens missed pitching (50 yards and in), greens missed with wedges, greens missed with short irons, long iron errors (penalties or failure to advance ball to chip or pitch), and driving errors (drives that prevent a GIR due to penalties or pitch outs). I still do a form of this today.

One trick I used to use - I often played a par 71 course where, IMO, 5 of the toughest holes were in the first 7. So I used a handicap system to keep track of how I was doing versus my goal of 79. The real point was that this kept me from being discouraged if I was +3 after 4 or +4 after 5, because based upon the toughest holes I might be only 1 stroke behind what I needed to shoot 79. Worked for me.

You certainly can break 80 this way but if you want to do it consistently you are going to need more GIRs, probably more than 8 and a 25-35% scrambling percentage is more realistic over a longer term unless you develop an elite short game. Of course anything is possible - I once shot 81 with 2 DBs and only 1 GIR but that clearly was an unusual round. You may want to google "How to break 80 in 6 weeks." Okay, really dumb title - when I first read the article I was in the mid-upper 80's and thought "how stupid." But as my game improved I learned that while 6 weeks is pretty unrealistic, I think the 6 steps to break 80 are pretty valid for most players.

I didn't replay shots but I used to keep statistics for every round which showed my score and the big mistakes - these could be mishits, miss clubs, or mental errors - and I recorded them by type of shot be it chip, putt, drive, etc. What I was looking for was insight into what errors I could eliminate in order to improve. So I might shoot 80 but have 6 "opportunities." I figured my potential was to cut the big misses in half. I stopped doing this when I started using Shot by Shot - basically does it for me. Peter Kostis wrote an article a few years back about doing some mid-year tests for your game. One test was to basically play a 2 ball scramble with yourself - playing the better shot helps you understand your potential and build confidence. Another test he had was to play two shots for any short game shot - if the 2nd ball is consistently better, then your short game needs work. The third was to play the scramble but worst shot - I've heard that pros do this - it helps you to work on recovery shots. I've really only done the short game version and then only for a few holes.