Darkfrog

100%. I have a friend who tees off with a 5-iron because he "can't hit his driver". So he ends up having to hit a fairway wood or hybrid in to most greens after a 160-170 yard tee shot, and never even has a chance to go for a par 5 in two. And any mishit off the tee and he's toast. But he swears that it's good strategy because putting and short game "save him". That said, from personal experience, sometimes I have days when I cannot for the life of me get comfortable standing over a tee shot with my driver, and this leads to all sorts of bad things. I admit this is a mental issue rather than physical but I haven't completely shaken it yet. On those days I take a 5-wood or hybrid off the tee because I don't get in my head with these clubs.

I tried flighting my wedges and a few approach shots with short/mid irons for the first time yesterday because the Bay Area was extremely windy and my normal ball flight is quite high. The lower/boring flight worked out well, but I did notice a stronger right to left trajectory than normal which caused some left misses. Definitely something I plan to start practicing as I can see the usefulness of this shot, windy or not.

I believe that a golfer should play from whichever tee box will give them the greatest enjoyment of the game. My friend's fiancee who is new to the game will often tee off in the fairway in front of the most forward tees because this makes the game more fun for her. I play the middle tees at my home course which has three tee boxes; blue (back), white (middle), red (forward). When playing a new, or different course, I usually pick a tee box somewhere in the middle as well. I often golf as a single, and if I'm paired with a group playing from tees further back than I normally play, sometimes I'll join them depending on my mood. I select a tee box based on the rated difficulty rather than distance (exception being extremely long layouts). At my home course, on certain holes the back tees add an additional challenge to the hole aside from being longer, like a different angle or elevation, which can add some interest to the round.

A bit late for 2019...but my goals this year were: 1) Play a round without losing a ball (zero penalty strokes from OB/penalty area)...still working on it. 2) Break 90...DONE! To accomplish these goals, I started full swing lessons at the end of last year (average about 1 lesson per month), and I try to practice at least a little bit every day. Biggest issue with my game is the full swing, so this is my primary focus when practicing. I work on what my instructor tells me to focus on. I have a net and mat in my yard so I can do full swing practice, but I don't have the ball flight visual which makes it hard to tell if I'm progressing (I can gauge my progress on the course though). So far this year has been the most rewarding year of golf for me in 20 years playing.

I've strongly considered, but there don't seem to be many options between the handheld monitors like Mevo and SwingCaddie and the big boys like Trackman and GC2/GC4. I have an energized, free standing garage which I am in process of straightening out, and I would like to eventually get a simulator set up inside.

BAD: I've got way too many of these, but the most recent memorable unlucky bad shot (maybe more just bad) was about a month ago at TPC Harding Park. Hole #3, 400 yard par 4, I topped my drive so bad that I completely missed the club face and struck the ball on the sole of the club. The sharp-ish edge of the Titleist "active recoil channel" sheared off a tack-head sized piece of the ball's cover, and the ball traveled about 2 yards, leaving my second shot 398 yards from the tee box. GOOD: After a 330 yard drive (longest of my life - downhill, very firm fairways, at ~7000 ft but I'll take it) at the Incline Championship Course par 5 hole #13, I was about 180 yards from the green, but a tree was in my direct line because my drive rolled for so long that it rolled right off the right side fairway into some short rough. I needed to slice a shot around the tree to reach the green. I cannot intentionally shape a shot, so I momentarily considered a layup punch shot under the offending tree. But I don't get many chances to go for a par 5 in 2 with an iron, so I visualized the ball flight, pulled out my 7 iron and perfectly executed the shot. Ball ended up on the back fringe of the green, and the hole was cut in the front, so I ended up with a par.

I wish! I take lessons with an instructor who uses one. Usually we just work with just the 7 iron so I've never bothered to go through the entire bag on the launch monitor. Eventually I'll get around to doing that, but on course I usually just take 5-10 yards off those averages as a best guess for carry.

These are my averages from shot tracking app. Total distance, not carry. Carry for my 7i on GC Quad is around 160, but not sure how this translates through the bag. Driver: 270 5W: 224 23 deg H: 211 4i: 140 🤮 5i: 189 6i: 181 7i: 176 (realistically more like 165, but I hit 7i on two downhill tee balls per round) 8i: 150 9i: 143 PW: 129 GW: 109 SW: 94 LW: 72

I will occasionally improve my lie when there is potential for wrist/hand injury or to damage a club from the lie as found. For example, my home course has quite a few redwoods which have shallow roots, sometimes just below the surface of the soil. I'm not remotely interested in slamming my club into a buried root and breaking my wrist, so if I find my ball in an area near one of these trees, I'll tap the ground around the ball and see if I can feel a root, and move my ball away from it as needed. Outside of that type of very rare scenario, I am a golf masochist and will play every ball as it lies.

I've only played 4 competitive rounds (two, 2-round tournaments). I was incredibly nervous being a newb to golf competition, and I had so many swing thoughts pin-balling around in my head that I was almost physically paralyzed over the ball. I played some of the worst-golf of my life, carding >10 on several holes. During a normal round, I try to have a completely non-technical/mechanical swing thought.

I've definitely heard of similar thoughts from Joe Rogan, as well as his endorsement of DMT and other psychoactive substances, although I don't follow Joe Rogan so I don't know his full opinions and sources. I believe that marijuana has been shown to be effective for pain management, which I suppose could help athlete training/recovery. But it has also been shown to decrease motor skills (under the influence). I think because marijuana is a schedule 1 narcotic, there is not a large body of research yet on benefits/harms. In my opinion, MMA fighters who's job is to beat the crap out of each other for our entertainment (or really any pro athlete; NFL, NBA, golf, etc.) should be free to use substances that aid in their recovery, especially pain management. However, the line between aiding recovery and gaining a performance advantage over one's peers is hard to define. I'll be curious to see how marijuana fits into the anti-doping picture in the future once our knowledge base on it's impact increase.

I conned myself for years into believing I was a good iron player. I usually was hitting 2 clubs less than my friends at the same distance on iron shots, so this impressed them. We looked at each others games with rose tinted glasses which reinforced our cons. "Darkfrog is a great iron player" "X has a great short short game" "Y is a fantastic putter" "Z can crushes his drives" Truth is we all sucked, and our best rounds often included breakfast balls, second breakfast balls, and n breakfast balls. My con didn't end until I had a horrible case of shanks, and committed to lessons. That's when I learned how bad I really was.

I'd be curious to know what the performance enhancing benefits of marijuana are. I am absolutely stupid, anxious, and 100% athletically uncoordinated under the influence of marijuana, so I can't imagine playing golf in this state. Of course, this varies from person to person. Aside from coffee, I don't enjoy the effect of any mind altering substance, so I rarely partake. However I don't have anything against those who choose to use legally or illegally, and at my home course I see plenty of people puffing on joints, taking whiskey shots, and then some. I also don't have any confidence in the anti-doping agencies to regulate use of PED in any sports, but I believe professional athletes are responsible for understanding the rules of their organization and adhering to them, even if the rules are dumb.

My handicap is accurate as it applies to my current potential, but I wish it was higher because I don't realize that potential as frequently as I would like, or expect to, and I end up losing to my golf buddies when we account for our handicaps.

I lose 3-6 balls per round. Usually I lose 2-3 balls into OB/penalty areas from wayward shots, and the others really have no business being lost but seem to disappear into thin air. I'm great at finding other player's balls, but for some reason I struggle to find my own, even when I watch it land and follow the bounces to the area where it settles. A goal of mine since starting lessons is to play a round without a lost ball, and I made it through 16 holes two weeks ago and then suddenly became crippled by the anxiety of achieving my goal and promptly launched a drive OB.

Four for me: PW (47*), GW (51*) from my iron set. I'd guess 90% of the time I use these just like an iron, full swing at a specific distance, 125 and 115 yds respectively. Edel 55* and 60*. These are typically for short shots around the green normally 75 yds or less, and rarely with a full swing.

Looks like a great training aid (for me). From my lessons my teacher constantly corrects me bringing the club too far inside during backswing, and I also have a habit of flipping at impact, which it seems that this device is designed to help. Tried some of the basic drills in the 7-day protocols without device and it definitely helped me gain some awareness of club position.

Yes, due to almost a year of full swing lessons and commitment to improving. 2017: Scores typically >100 2018: Learned to play my misses and averaged around 95, started lessons at the end of the year after a bout of shanks and extreme slices that no amount of YouTube instruction could fix (actually probably made it worse as I was self diagnosing my swing issues rather than seeking the input of an expert teacher) 2019: After starting lessons I went through a score regression and improvement cycle due to how awkward the new swing mechanics felt. Finally got comfortable summer 2019 and scores are now consistently around 90, and often dipping into 80s and even a personal best 81 at my peak. Handicap is at my all time low (hovering just below 18), but I expect this to increase in the next few revision cycles as I've recently been hitting the ball poorly, and have more lessons booked to see what might be going wrong.

First post, my $0.02 I've recently started breaking 90 kind of regularly (about every other round) after almost a year of lessons. Previously I would score 95-115 depending on how lucky I was with ball striking on any given day, and occasionally when the stars aligned I would flirt with sub-90. My home course is not long so I only need to hit driver 6-7 holes, but it has pretty tight forest-lined fairways with lots of OB/lost ball potential, some sharp doglegs, lots of elevation changes and uneven lies, some intimidating (for me) forced carries, as well as a creek running through the property that is in play on multiple holes to increase the difficulty. My only course management strategy is to avoid trouble off the tee (lost ball /OB penalties used to kill me) and try to leave myself a full swing into the green from 115-155 yds (GW-8i). Anything shorter than that is a major weak point in my game because I struggle with distance control on full swing SW and LW, and just about any shot that requires a partial swing outside of 30 yards or so (working on it). But the main things that helped me start breaking 90 (in order of importance) were not related to course management: Full swing lessons for about a year now, and frequent practice, including on course. Still have a lot to work on, but I can confidently advance the ball now. A single short game lesson and lots of practice. I did not understand fundamental short game techniques and often would take 5-6 strokes to hole out from inside 10 yards (duffed/bladed chips, etc.). I could certainly stand to improve this area, but I'm not a total train wreck now. Learning to eliminate mental errors. About 3 months ago my coach told me that I should be capable of sub-90 scores based on her assessment of my abilities, and that some of my trouble could be mental mistakes that were costing me. I used to make a lot of mental errors like getting sloppy/rushed with setup, mentally checking out on a hole after a bad shot, etc. I still do make some, but I manage the mental elements of the game better now. The main mental mistake that I have learned to correct: If I feel uncomfortable over the ball, I used to just swing and hope for the best. Now I step away and restart my routine until I feel good about the shot I'm going to hit.