Where's the Cart Girl?

Stop hating. Just because you can't pull an outfit off doesn't mean it's the clothing's fault. I'm not a fan of the over/under style of the Sunday belt slack, but beyond that no complaints here. I like the lavender/black combination for Saturday and I'm pretty sure admitting so doesn't automatically make me a homosexual.. but what do I know? I didn't know Jim Tressel was going to be playing practice rounds with the US though. Must've been a late captain's pick.

In the wake of the recent multitude of rules violations, self enforced penalties (particularly the 14 yr. old giving up his win from another thread), etc.. i've grown a newfound respect for the integrity this game prescribes within individuals who play it. I have anything put a clean past, but I haven't played this game for that long and I can honestly say that there is no question in my mind now when a moral decision presents itself how I should act. I'm 23, which makes me "a kid" to many of the people on this forum so I feel obligated to speak out against those who start sentences with; "Kids these days.." and close them with some form of character defamation. And FWIW I live like a 23 year old.. bars, clubs, women, mistakes.. But I got a letter in the mail, addressed generically to my apartment, the other day that was in the size enevelope you would mail a check in. So I held it to the window and clearly read a $200 check inside written out to "Friends of ---" a political official in my area. Obviously I feel like I could've cashed it and thrown some extra money in my pocket, but I couldn't do that. 5 years ago... no doubt. But I can't do that now. When I only played sports where referees decide what you do/don't get away with then maybe things would've been different. But golf is a different game. This post wasn't intended to come off as a vanity plea or defensive commentary for people my age but I can honestly say that this game absolutely carries over into everyday life. And I know I'm not alone with a story like this.

Can't blame her there. That's one of the best swings on tour.

Someone got laid last night...

I was at Liberty National last year for the Barclays and we'll be there again this year for Sunday's round. Last year we watched th practice range for a while (highly recommend this) and then headed to the course around 1:00 and walked it backwards. It worked out pretty well because we got to see the whole course and everyone in the field and then we made it back to 1/18 in time to settle in and watch the contending groups come home. Following Tiger is a wash. But like I mentioned, if you're walkin the course backward you get ahead of the crowd and can wait in a good vanage point for anyone you want to see. I should've mentioned last year we went on Saturday and they went off both sides of the course due to bad weather.. so perhaps walkin backwards wouldn't have worked out as well with everyone going off th front.

Hole 11 at the course our work league played this year is a shortish dogleg right. Probably 220 straight away to th center of the dogleg then. 140 left to the green. What I take issue with is a tree that once guarded the right side of the green but now overhangs 3/4 of the green and forces any second shot that is played from the fairway to be a punch or bail out left and try for an up/down. If the flag is anywhere but the absoute extreme left side of the green its inaccessible from any part of the fairway. You stand on the teebox knowing that driving it through the dogleg is position A. If you hit the correct side of the fairway you shouldn't still be forced to bail or go under a tree because a tree overgrew its bounds. The design may once have been alright but it needs a respin.

This is incredibly ironic to me. All throughout college my friends, particularly one of my roomates, and I played Tiger Woods for the PS2/PS3 to pregame before we went out. Everytime you take a shot in the game you take a shot of beer... simple as it gets, but remarkably fun when you love drinking and golf. For four years of my roommate's life.. he was Jim Furyk. It was his weekend persona. Every single time we played. And as a result, Jim Furyk became synonymous with partying and drinking. This same roommate got a job in Jersey after college and lives about 20 min. from Paramus.. where the Barclay's is this weekend. So of course we got Sunday tickets and he was finally going to get to see the Birdman in action. It would've been like meeting a twin brother, separated from you at birth.. and it was goin down this Sunday. What happens? Jim goes out, tears up North Jersey, and sleeps through a pro-am tee time to get himself bounced from the tournament. Un-f'ing-real.

Only event I ever attended was Saturday of the Barclay's last year. It was raining, and I was very happy I had my golf shoes on. I wanted to give my shoes a taste of what the grass is gonna feel like once I make it to the tour.

I would say I'm on pace to go about threefold over the amount I played last year if I would guess. Sitting at 585 holes recorded for my HC to this point plus a few scrambles. A big part has been a 20 week work league and knowing a kid at the course we play most often who let's us go out for free any night he's there.

Played in the first individual tournament I've ever been in last Friday and coming down the stretch I knew I was somewhere in contention. Hole 15 is a sharp dogleg right. It's about 175 off the tee straight away to the 150 stick, then a hard right over water to an elevated green with a deep bunker guarding the right front. I play the tee shot and I'm sitting at 155, wind in my face, and the flag is tucked back right. First thought is - 6-iron.. bail out left.. try to 2-putt for the par.. don't F with that bunker. There are woods not far off the right side and the bunker is almost a sure bogey. But my inner Tin Cup said - No way. pull the 5 and fire right at it. It's a work tournament.. no money involved. Just a trophy and braggin rights so I man up and absolutely flush my 5-iron. I'm crouched down on one knee watchin it fly sayin - Carry it.. carry it. Landed 15' short of the cup.. one hop and stop. Ended up winning by 2 in the end so that shot really was make/break. Best feeling in golf. Anyone else ever pull one of these in a tournament or otherwise they care to share?

Ask him if the same ruling applies if you shove your umbrella up his ass.

This is a bit of a hypothetical, but one of the criticisms falling on the PGA over this has been - where was the rules official? Why did he not tell him? PGA said he should've been walking with DJ because Nick Watney was out of contention and preventing him from making a mistake.. I don't buy that because there are a myriad of rules officials watching the same coverage we are and the first person who noticed could've radioed the guy walkin with the group to get on that. So, "We don't want the rules officials to hover over the player all the time." is garbage. My question though is this - Someone in the clubhouse notices, radios the walking official, who then goes and tells Dustin, "Heads-up, that's a bunker, don't ground your club." Is he then deemed to have received outside advice and would he be penalized anyway? I heard no mention of this being a motive for why he wasn't informed ahead of time, but with enough golf-educated people NOT trying to save a par to win a major championship watching this I'm sure that people noticed before he even got near his golf ball.

McCord on commentary = TV on mute

Penn State. It's not th NYC area that you mentioned but the courses there are very nice. They played the Big Ten Championships on the Blue Course when I was there. But the White Course is good too.

I was playing with a kid I didn't know that well in college once and I chunked the life out of a full swing 60 degree wedge from th middle of the fairway. He proceeded to walk ahead, grab th divot (which was the size of a small child) study it momentarily and say,"Hey, does this look like Jesus to anyone else?" Tough to concentrate after that one.

That is certainly a rarity IMO. I'm pretty sure I haven't swung my 3 iron in about a month; not sure why I still carry it to be honest. If I'm that far out I play the 5W for consistency. I've also strayed away from using my 52* wedge for anything but a full shot because there's essentially nothing I can do with it that I can't do with my 58* from 100 yd. in. I think club usage depends on two things.. the course and your driver. And they're tied together. If the course is taking driver out of your hands on a bunch of tee shots then you're likely to exercise more of your bag. If the course lets you swing away (and you can hit it well) then you can probably leave half of your clubs in the car.

I've been pretty drunk during some "outings" but I can honestly say I've never flipped a cart. That's pretty epic. In my experience proficiency of the golf game when coupled with drinking is not that dissimilar from a well struck iron shot. It starts out low, with a piercing trajectory and gently climbs until it eventually apexes; this is where you're relaxed enough to be swinging freely and not over thinking anything and yet you've lost no touch around the greens. This is, ehh, a few beers deep.. maybe a six pack if you're a professional. But then it drops from the sky like an anchor, much more sharply than it rose, hits the ground, stops, and in some cases even begins to spin backward. I would say Crash had a few too many too quick and his ass was spinnin' off the green when he hit that bunker. Some people just go too far I guess. Hopefully the bunker wasn't injured.

If I'm just off the green and not in the rough then my club shaft is leaned forward and my wrists are set at address and never change. These are the shots where I'm playing an 8, 9 or PW depending on the distance I want to cover before the ball starts rolling and it's a sweeping stroke. When I'm in the rough or more than 2 or 3 steps off the green however I always hinge my wrists and I use a more lofted wedge. I find it too hard to make an aggressive enough stroke in these situations to create the contact needed without hinging my wrists and driving down into the ball. Shots around the green are so contingent on the situation at hand though that committing exclusively one way or the other for all shots is impossible.

Touche. If I play this course again I'll ask someone at the clubhouse what this area is/was intended to be and then ill know. and ill try not to hook my tee shot on that hole next time.. this is the underlying issue that no rulebook can govern.

Guess I should've known that one. or done a quick google search. My bad.

Well this has all been quite disheartening. I suppose I should have stuck with my first instinct; moved the bridge and played from there. I actually grabbed the structure by one of the 2x6 boards that was serving as a"floorboard" but when I lifted, expecting to lift the entire bridge, I ripped th 2x6 off. So I abandoned that campaign in favor of what I incorrectly interpretted as a free drop. A follow up though.. Can I not treat this as an unplayable lie? I dropped within two club lengths of where the ball had come to rest, potentially still within the margins of this "hazard" actually, considering it was completely unmarked. I was still on a muddy piece of ground and just punched out, hardly advantageous. I'm guessing it was because I didn't declare the ball unplayable at the time so I can't simply go back after a rules interogation and say - well ill just call it an unplayable now that I know what my options were and take one stroke instead of 3... but again I don't know all the rules regarding legal/illegal drops. I'm honestly more pissed off after learning that basically anywhere on the course that looks like it might, at one time or another, have contained water is considered a water hazard. And correct designation of these areas has no impact whatsoever. That's like being cited for parking in a lot thats in front of an aparment complex that was torn down 6 months before you parked there.

I'm throwing it out there anyway for those who are more fluent in th Rules of Golf than I am. Playing this morning I pulled a tee shot left into what I believe is typically a creek, or water runoff. I'd never played this course but one kid I was with confirmed that there typically is water in this ditch. Walkin up to my ball I see that it is directly under a small, makeshift wooden bridge that's spannin the, now dry, gap. There are no stakes marking this as a hazard (this is what I took as the critical factor in this situation). I think my options are move the bridge (its just sitting on the grass on both sides of the gap) and swing away or take a free drop within a club length and treat th bridge as a manmade object, not embedded or integral to the course, and play my second shot. Similar to the way they treat TV towers. I did the latter.. so please let me know what I'm right/wrong about so I know what I actually shot today. Thanks.

I'm at work and my computer doesn't like when I try to reply and quote messages from posts here, but DFB.. What the hell is his problem?... bwahahahah Well played, sir. Well played.

I heard that Peter Aliss called John Daly's putt from off one of the greens on Thurs. a ''pittenweem scuttler'' doing commentary either online or maybe for a British network... You don't get that in any other championship. I have no qualms with watching the pros play shots they're not used to and seeing someone with a gorgeous swing put on a clinic of how to eat a golf course alive. I wasn't that bored. And don't mind watching the guys struggle as hard as I do make par, as we see in the US Open.

Yes. This. I followed up enough good practice swings with terrible shots early on to phase that out of my routine. Now I only rehearse feel shots or punches. I practice swing with the putter though.