wubskis

Didn't you pretty much just get your Redwood? I may be completely mistaken, but if you got rid of it that fast, why did you buy it in the first place? Why did you buy this Scotty Cameron now? Sounds like you have putting issues and your money would be better spent on a lesson or two than on gas money to get a new premium putter D:

Is this actually serious, or is it just satire? I mean, wow.

That's pretty terrible, I guess they're classing anyone under 18 as juniors? I'd do what sean_miller suggests, take shorter clubs off the tee to leave long irons into greens etc. I'd definitely think about finding another club for next year though, this is a pretty stupid judgement on your current club's part.

Is that you, Clay Davis?

I will end up taking this to the grave, so it would seem.

My quoting of his driving distance was merely an attempt to satirize the typical over-reaction to claims about length around here, guess it didn't come across that way, so I apologise. I'm not saying that an increase in distance will always result in a decrease in accuracy, but if you wanted a generalisation, I'd say for the average golfer, spread increases with length. There will be exceptions, I'm not trying to say this is applicable to absolutely everyone. The theoretical situation at the bottom of my post was just my input of "don't worry about it, it's not the worst situation to be in". I play without a driver because like I said, I haven't found one that I actually feel comfortable using. Thus, I'm playing from more forward tees. The reason I pick those tees is the same reason you feel comfortable playing from the tips, because it's within the limits of our current respective skill levels. I don't spend all day trying to hit greens with a hybrid/4i because of my choice of tees, and you're sufficiently good so that you don't have to either, even from the tips. When I get a driver, I will absolutely move back to a longer set of tees, because I'll have more length off the tee, and avoid having to hit hybrid/4i for every approach shot. I really can't fathom why hackers (I include myself in this group, I suppose :|) would want to play from the tips, it just doesn't make sense. It's demoralising as hell if I get a ridiculous score on any given hole, playing from the tips would just be begging for every hole to go wrong. So I'm absolutely 100% not saying "distance is the devil, don't try to work on it", not even a little. I'd gladly accept more distance in a heartbeat, and I'm definitely striving to get more out of my 3w (as my current "driver") but it's just not the focus of my game, nor does it drag me down to think I'm only getting 200-210 off the tee. I was really just attempting to reassure the OP that there's a set of tees for everyone, and there's no shame in playing from the forward men's tees.

I've been playing without a driver for a while now because I can't find one I agree with, so I'm using my 3w off the tee and hitting it 200-210 with decent contact. I play courses that hover between 6,000-6,300 yards, and I very, very rarely feel overstretched. Usually I'll just play to my handicap, acknowledge that, say, a hole is too long for me to get anywhere near the green in regulation, and plan for a GIR+1. By taking this approach, I rarely feel inadequate in any way regarding distance. Would I like more distance? Sure, why not. Would I go out of my way to get a couple extra yards but end up sacrificing accuracy? Not in a million years.

I like them. A lot.

Well, it's made a lot harder by not having personal transport, because getting parked on campus is absolutely impossible, even with the £200/year parking pass. This means I have to rely on other people, so by the time you combine everyone's schedules, golf becomes a rarity. I'm looking into joining a club of sorts, which seems like it goes to the range once or twice a week, which would be better than nothing. Winter in the UK makes all but the best courses unplayable due to lacklustre maintenance. The only plus side is that I would be working on my ballstriking a lot if I played over winter, then five or six-putting on the absolutely horrific winter greens that are just sections of fairway with a circle drawn using spraypaint and a pit dug in the middle. I hate them so much .

I already take daily meds, which I guess attests to just how nervy I get on the course. I definitely like your idea of spending less time near/over my ball and just loosening up with one armsy-flail type swing. Between that idea, and the recommendation to keep a stern watch over my tempo, I think I've got enough to keep in mind the next time I go out. Which, because of university, won't be for another two weeks or so :/

I'm still waiting until I see your name on my TV. Good luck in Korea.

Mine is definitely sticking an 8i from about 145 to within a foot. I remember shaking like crazy thinking I was going to fluff it :[

The area I'd most like to improve in is becoming a consistently better ballstriker with my irons. I feel that if I can get to the stage where I can really rely on my iron game, everything else will just slowly creep up and improve with practice. I don't really want an extra 10 yards off the tee, I could do with narrowing the scope of my misses with my driver/woods, but if I had a solid long iron game I could just put the driver/woods back in the bag until I see a "can't miss" fairway. I can already do 'good enough' around the greens so that I'm not nuking my scorecard in any given situation, and my putting is already at a stage where I feel confident enough to feel that I can rely on getting two putts from crazy areas of the green. I think my plan for winter when I'm home from university for a month will be to look around and try to find an instructor I'd like to work with over summer 2011, and to really work on my ballstriking with them.

As I said, I have pre-existing anxiety issues, so I don't really surprise myself with what I worry about anymore, I just know my brain is capable of latching onto a negative thought and not letting go. My last lesson was a short game lesson, so my last full swing lesson was maybe 4-5 months ago? I kind of lost faith in the guy teaching me, he seemed like he didn't really care at all, and never got round to working out my options to replace him. It's something I definitely need to sort out, especially since the UK's winter basically means it's range only time unless the course is in good keep, which generally means it's out of my price range as a university student. There's a lesson package you can get at a (fairly) local course which comprises two 60 minute lessons, a video analysis lesson and you get to play the 6-hole par 3 course they have there with the pro by your side - this is something I'm very much interested in for next summer, I just think it's a shame this par 3 course is so short, because you'll never need more than a 9-iron. At any rate, getting "caddied" by a tutor sounds like a pretty awesome way to get some insight in real-time, that's immediately applicable and not just stuff for you to think about when you're on the course.

Preview: hate.

With my irons, I worry I'm going to come waaaay out-to-in and hit a big banana shot, which can either result in a big banana slice as predicted or a massive pull-hook as I feebly try to overcompensate on the fly. As I said in my first post, I'd say 60% of shots I hit on the course are "playable advances" (coining buzzwords), i.e. get me the intended distance of the shot up the hole, but with a bunch of weak slices and a few hooks. With my woods, I worry I'm just going to miss-hit the ball completely, never mind hooks or slices. I'm pretty sure both of these things are just causing me to tense up and get way too rigid, and like I said before, pre-existing anxiety + golf anxiety = epinephrine spikes like crazy. When I'm at the range, I'll rarely get really serious and work on one club, or anything like that. Typically, I take up my whole bag, and warm up by hitting 5 balls with my 56*, then hit 5 balls with every other club until I get to my driver. At that point, I think about if there's anything specific I felt I needed to work on, then like you said, make a game of it. If I felt my short irons were lacking, I'll play target golf and aim for the signs or flagsticks (I don't know about ranges in the US, or even good ranges in the UK, but my range has longer grass than most deep rough I've seen and so trying to work out anything other than landing distances is futile). Once I feel more comfortable with those shots, I generally just mess around with the rest of my bag, either picking out targets and going for them or having a friendly "closest to the pin" contest with whoever I'm there with. I definitely like your idea of 'visualization golf', I think it'd definitely give a little more structure to my range sessions without making it feel like work at all. I mean, currently all I can muster up with my woods is "try to hit it straight" -> "you hit it straight, woo", so it'll hopefully make it seem like there's a point to what I'm doing without feeling like a grind. Thanks for the suggestions so far, I'm definitely going to concentrate on maintaining tempo when out on the course, and I'll be trying out this new range routine.

Well, my routine is typically to think of what shot I want to play as I walk up to my ball, only changing my mind if I see something when stood over my ball that I didn't see before. Standing behind my ball, I take a limbering up swing, take a practice swing then address my ball. This is where things creep into my head like indecision, and positive swing thoughts get overwhelmed by "oh god don't do this". I guess I spend a fair amount of time over the ball after I address, but I just don't feel comfortable taking my shot any faster, I feel like I'll just end up flailing and hitting something godawful. Well, if I had access to a grass range I'd use that, but with my handicap I'm still at the stage where I need to hit a ton of balls. Your handicap may allow you luxuries such as not having to practice =P

Well, I'm an anxious wreck when off the course, so my brain going into overdrive when in a pressure situation (no matter how seemingly minimal) wouldn't surprise me one bit. I'm not really a distance guy at all. I'm the "take an extra club" guy, I don't try to outdrive anyone or anything. If I'm left with a certain yardage, I'll take the club I feel most comfortable taking, not try to prove to myself how manly I am by demolishing a lower club. I think I may be subconsciously swinging harder though, because I tend to thin a lot of shots on the course, which I'm guessing would be caused by trying to over-do it? I really don't tend to hit shots fat on the course (not that I'm saying I make perfect contact at the range). I think my anxiety really doesn't help, and that I just need to calm down. I think it directly affects my tempo. Anxiety -> Adrenaline -> Speedy Gonzalez meets The Hulk. My dad refuses to hit his woods on the course right now, because he can't seem to do anything with them. I tell him he needs to try to use them, because once he's over the threshold and has hit a couple good shots, he'll realise there's nothing to it. I think I need to apply the same ideology to my tempo when I get nervous.

A definite possibility, and something I'll look into, but this wouldn't account for being horrific off the tee as well. At the range if I'm hitting irons I'll mostly hit from the mats, but will hit some off the stock rubber ~1/8" tees they have. At the range (to my uneducated eye) it looks like it has pretty super-imposable ballflight with the shots I hit off the mats. Meanwhile on the course, I hit some absolutely shocking tee shots, using roughly the same tee height, so the ground wouldn't really come into play without me being very aware of taking a lot of turf. With woods, I have grown so out of favour with hitting my woods off the deck (I thin them a ridiculous amount, can't find the bottom of my swing at all) that I only really use them for tee shots now, and again can't seem to find any semblance of consistency. For now I'll look into the book you recommended, thanks for the suggestion. It's getting real cold over here now, so I'll have a lot of reading time~ If I had the option to, believe me, I would. Public grass ranges are not as prevalent in the UK as they are in the US, so we typically have to make do with mats. I was aware of the fact that if you hit it fat, the club would skid into the back of the ball, but my bad shots on the course aren't really fat at all, I'd say on the course I actually top or shank the ball more than anything on a complete mis-hit. If I was hitting it that fat on the range, surely I'd be tearing up a lot of turf on the course and losing enough distance on my shots to make me stop and think about why it's happening, whereas it seems I'm just all over the place. It's like I forget how to play golf when I'm on the course, and I just can't get it back together.

I've been told by a friend that I can't seem to play golf with grass under my feet, and I'm starting to think there's a lot of truth to that statement. When I'm at the range, if you give me a bucket of 100 balls, I can say with confidence that I'd be able to make decent enough contact with all 100 to at least set them well on their way to their intended distances, with my wedges up to my woods. I'm not saying there won't be slices and hooks, but it has been a fair while since I've seen a real banana ball at the range, or a dribbler. Meanwhile, on the course, if you gave me 100 shots to play, I would probably completely mis-hit around 15, banana slice/hook 25, make decent enough contact with 50-55 ("get the job done" contact), and hit about 5-10 shots I'd feel real nice about. When I say mis-hits on the course, this can be anything from completely shanking something, topping something 25 yards in front of me off the tee, catching it so thin it never gets above 5 yards off the ground, etc. I am (as I'm sure most people are) a better golfer on the range than on the course, but it's the sheer disparity between my game at the range and on the course that gets me. It seems that there's no marked improvement on the course regardless of how well I'm getting on at the range. It seems I take one step forward on the range just to take ten back on the course. I've been playing a fair bit over summer, anywhere from 36 holes a week at the peak, to 9-18 of late, so it's not like I'm only out playing once in a blue moon. So uh, my question after that wall of text is: how in the world do I sort my game out on the course, and make it more like my game on the range? It's getting pretty depressing.

Just install a 50" shaft on your driver, I hear it's what TM will be doing next year =P

Curse you, Ryan Moore :C

Sir, are you questioning the integrity of Great Britain's most highly revered paper?

Those people are absolutely atrocious. I think I would actually celebrate this more than a 'regular' hole-in-one because where regular HIO's are just a good shot that got a little lucky, this is absolutely "run-out-and-buy-every-lottery-ticket" levels of luck. Awesome.

I wonder if I'll ever get to the stage where I'm disappointed with a 39 =P Congratulations on the round score, I guess it's bad timing with the end of the season and all, I imagine your enthusiasm has skyrocketed. ...or does OK get the southern perma-season? I'd have thought you guys will get pretty crappy winters, or does being immediately north of TX let you play all year round?