ncates00

That's interesting. I have been powerlifting for years and, like you expressed, it has only benefitted my strength and my golf game. I will do a full blown Wendler 531 before I go play. I guess my forearms don't tire out because I've done it for so long that my body is used to it. I'd have to be on my "max-out week" and deadlift around my max, going to failure on pull-ups, or going for broke on barbell curls before my forearms are toast. For a normal session, I don't get sore; that's not the point with powerlifting. For me, other than getting a good warm up through powerlifting and hitting some balls, really warming up the hips is key. My trail hip can get tight and it makes it easy to stall and flip.

Perhaps, but you're assuming the players care. You're only addressing the part about the elite sitting out and skipping over the fact that many players, elite or bench, don't care at that point. It can be frustrating for a person trying to impress their coaches at year's end, but that's how it goes. Whether right or wrong, that is very much a reality for many teams.

Because, unless you're in the championship game, bowls are pointless exhibition games. The top players don't want to risk getting injured in some meaningless game and screwing their professional prospects. It's not quite on the NBA All-Star game level, but it's not far off in terms of importance or meaning in the grand scheme of things. Perhaps you could argue some "resiliency of the program" or something, but at the end of the day, the bowls don't matter. It would be different if the athletes were paid; then, the players would be akin to pro golfers just wanting to make the cut or finish as high as they can (even though they won't win) to get a paycheck.

A guy with whom I played high school golf played barefoot most rounds. That is, until coach made him wear shoes in tournaments haha.

Very few outside of the SEC play anybody.

If you know any scratch or plus golfers at your home course, experiment and open your eyes to what is very apparent to most of us: for one round, you hit all the drives and approaches, let the better golfer chip and putt. The next round, let the better golfer do the long game, and you chip and putt. Compare scores. We don't even need to report back your findings; we already know what will result. You should too if you really think about it. Very bad choice. Putting is important, but it's like the closing of a business deal; the deal is essentially done. We just need some signatures. All of the hard work of negotiating, drafting, negotiating some more, and all the due diligence is what gets the deal done. Obviously, we need to close the deal or it doesn't count. Similarly, in golf, the hard work and what creates the most value for your game is the long game. Tiger is still relevant because he hits the ball so well, not because he putts well. He's 43 with a fused back and still hits the ball with 170+ ball speed and sticks his irons. That creates opportunities to allow for putts to drop. Even in his prime, Tiger won so much because of his ballstriking. He had wedges into Augusta's par 5's and obliterated fields with his power and superior iron play. You only see the classic walk-ins and putts dropping because of the opportunities he gave himself through his long game. Name me a guy with superior short game and under 160 ball speed on the PGA Tour that is still winning big tournaments. I'll wait.

Sure, but you're conflating the issue here. Driving and iron play are distinct parts of the game, and no one says you have to have one over the other. Players can get on a good launch monitor and do a gap test on their irons to come up with a good reasonable carry distance for every club in the bag. You're working the wrong way, in my opinion, in regards to player development. It's much better to take a kid who is raw and get them flushing the daylight out of the ball and then work on accuracy. Developing those fast twitch muscles and letting them become athletic early on is so important. Getting kids to dink it down the fairway destroys that. You can always reign in the distance. Why else do pros gear down to a 2i off the tee sometimes? A Ferrari can go 20 mph, but a Prius cannot go 200 mph...

Love the wedges. But I also played a Cleveland 410 Sport driver back in the day.

I really like my Country Club Elite. It feels pretty good. Words of advice: 1) work out and get stronger. My problem pain area was tendonitis in my elbows, not my shoulders, but still, powerlifting has done wonders for me. 2) hit less down with your irons. I still think you should hit the ball and then take the turf with a lot of speed; no question. Just don't go DOWN excessively.

No argument here, man. We're good. One other thing that you might have glossed over is the fact that distance lengthens your career. Tiger is relevant as a 43 year-old with a bad back because he can still hit the ball at a good clip. The shorter hitters are being pushed out of contention, and soon, will be gone from the Tour altogether eventually. Why else do you see new members of the Champion's Tour tear it up when they first arrive? Length. Get them hitting the ball better and they will score better. I'll take a long ball hitter over an "accurate" short knocker any day to start with as a raw talent. The long hitter can get what the shorter guy has, but the opposite is not always true. Hitting the ball better results in both distance and accuracy. If you have speed, that means you are swinging efficiently. Speed is hard to come by. A person can always learn to straighten it out with today's launch monitors and video and etc. I would teach people to hit the ball out of the middle of the face and hit it as far as possible. You can work on face to path and all that later. Better to have a fluid, powerful athletic move than a short-hitting mechanical one. I'd very much like to see any statistics you may have to support your claim, but I'm not very optimistic. I will concede that distance is more important with driver than the irons, as the irons are more about hitting your carry number and flight windows, but that's about as far as I'll go. Countless studies have been done on the subject, see e.g., "Lowest Score Wins," Mark Broadie's work, PGA Tour stats, and many more.

Doesn't matter. My reasoning still applies, even more so with an amateur because he/she hits it shorter anyway. Distance helps all. A person can't hit it far enough. Did you read what I said? I never said that only focusing on driving would do that. Driving is a very important piece of the game, but no one has ever said it is the only. That would be long drive competitions. Nonetheless, distance is the most important piece of driving in the standard golf context for the reasons I've already said.

With respect to only a career in golf and not a "backup plan" in another career, what about going to college and having to take classes and spend so much time away from the course would be better for him? I know he would likely take fluff classes, but still. What about playing in college would help him more? We say all the time to play with better players than yourself so that you can learn and watch how a better player does it. Why, with his talent, waste time doing the college thing? I don't understand what a college coach/fellow teammates is going to impart on him that he can't get going right in. I'd say if he does these things, he'd be better off than going to college: - get a good swing coach he believes in. - get a launch monitor to maintain/develop his numbers and feel. - get a good "manager" to deal with sponsorships and the like. - workout and train/recover like an athlete. - treat this like a job and put in the long hours required.*** - probably other things I've not thought of. *** in this respect, he has a huge upside over college golfer. If he gets up at 5m and goes to work all day, he could really develop and do so possibly more quickly than he would have as a college golfer.

Only spoken by those who can't hit the golf ball. They say it to discourage young folks who want to bomb it, to "one-up" them in some attempt to portray some fake sense of wisdom.

Driving the ball as long as possible, while keeping it in play, does just that. Tiger won his green jackets largely in part because he was hitting wedges into par 5's. DiMarco marveled at how Tiger had wedges and he had long irons into greens. DiMarco had to play the best of his life to even come close to Tiger's C game. Length is preferred over accuracy, with driver; just go look at strokes gained off the tee, precisely because of what it does for hitting greens and having a closer proximity to the hole. All you need with driver, unless it's a US Open setup course, is to hit driver as far as you can, resulting in a clear shot at the green afterwards. That's it. From there, you'll have shorter clubs in. It's better to have a wedge or 9i in out of the rough, with a clear shot, than it is to hit a 7i or more from the fairway. When's the last time you saw a PGA tour player with under 160 ball speed win? I'll wait. No, the best players hit the ball long and straight, given how far they hit it. A longer shot can off line more than a shorter shot. Just look at Molinari at the British Open when Tiger was chasing. Tiger, probably the best iron player in the world, couldn't keep up with Molinari. Besides Molinari's grit, Tiger couldn't keep up because he hit irons off most tees, giving yards up to Molinari (the slightly shorter hitter) and his driver. Tiger had long irons into greens that Molinari had shorter clubs; and, Tiger is the best iron player ever! Again, driver is a weapon that sets up the rest of the game, if you hit it long and in play.