Dewdman42

Yea seems to me when you aren't playing a tournament, then dropping the lost ball in the general vicinity where you think it went should be fine enough for most duffers. Probably, that shot out of the deep rough will be hard enough to be more challenging then playing a provisional, for duffers anyway. In my opinion that is more likely to line up your score to your handicap. If you take all the provisionals with stroke+distance, your handicap will quickly be higher than it should really be. Take that high handicap to a tournament where there are spotters to find your ball for you and you'd easily hit under your handicap, which really wouldn't be fair either. That's assuming you are playing in tournaments where there are spotters. if there are no spotters, then you would rather have the higher handicap I would guess. I think when I'm playing alone from now on, when i think I have lost a ball, what i will do is first watch carefully where the ball goes to have a reasonably good idea of the general vicinity, then I will hit the provisional just in case. Then I will head down and look for it. If I can't find it then I will probably drop the ball around where its lost, make sure not to go out of my way to get a line of sight through the trees or whatever. In fact with a lost ball I would say the only sorta fair thing for me to do in that case will be to try to punch it back out to the fairway without gaining any/much yards to the hole. That way I'm getting the stroke, not the distance, but at least I attempted the challenging shot out of the scrub brush or from under some trees or whatever as if someone found it for me. The extra price I'm paying is not being able to hit it further down the fairway towards the target, as opposed to if I had found it, then maybe I could have. or if I really have no clue where it went and can't make a good guess, then I will play the provisional with stroke+distance. I realize this is not the official rule, but I feel that will keep my handicap at a more realistic level for my potential level of play. when playing in any kind of competition, then the stroke+distance rule should always apply for lost balls since that is the only way to avoid cheating and everyone must follow the same rule.

After thinking about this today I think i understand the logic behind the rule. stroke + distance for OB I have no problem with. The one that SEEMS unfair is stroke+distance for a lost ball. You hit it into the lake and suffer less penalty than 2 yards off the fairway into some scrub brush, that is usually much more prevalent then hazards on many courses. but the problem is this. Let's imagine the rule was for just distance. The player would hit their provisional from the idealistic tee box and theoretically land it in the middle of the fairway, laying two. Hmm. If their ball went into some scrub brush, shouldn't they be challenged to hit it OUT of the scrub into the middle of the fairway in order to lay two? That seems fair. If they claimed their ball is lost in this hypothetical situation, then they would get an unfair advantage to try a second ball and avoid the scrub brush shot and still get to the fairway laying two. ideally there would be a way to make them play the shot out of the forest, from under the tree or whatever, but nobody really knows for sure where it is. In fact if you can't find it, its highly likely to be a difficult lay at the very least. So actually, it is harsh, but stroke + distance makes sense for a lost ball. Just keep in mind that in competitive play, everyone is playing with the same rules. If they lose a ball, they will have stroke + distance too, which is what makes it fair. Just don't lose a ball. I know, easier said then done for some. I think on certain courses with a lot of deep rough, its much harder for a duffer like me to hit my handicap, because a few lost balls will destroy my score for the round. So yea, its harsh, but if you really think about it, there is no other way around this rule because otherwise people would cheat and use provisionals to their advantage, which is what this rule prevents.

Ok, here's what I want to understand that is still not clear to me. If I hit a ball that is lost, then I must go back and hit another one from the same place and there is one stroke penalty. So does that mean that after going back and playing the new ball and hitting it straight down the fairway, will I be laying 2 or 3? 3 seems harsh punishment to me.

statistically speaking, even the pros don't make those long putts as often as you might think. I am reading one of Pelz's books right now and he has a graph showing pro results (at the time ). At 25 feet the success rate for Pros is only 4-10%. 15 feet is only 8-20%. Even at 10 feet out, the best pros only hit 30% of the time. My suggestion, keep working on it of course, but if you are getting those long putts to within centimeters of the hole and your short putts are sinking 80%, then you're putting very well. A certain amount of it after a point is luck. the greens have all kinds of inconsistencies, as do the balls, which can attribute to a certain miss rate. That is just all there is to it. You still have to try as hard as humanly possible to putt correctly, but especially on the longer putts....a lot of it is up to the golf gods. If you hit 1 in 3 of your 10 foot putts then believe it or not, you're doing very well. 1 in 5 of your longer putts. Also consider you might be able to drop your putting score a bit by eliminating your 3 putts, not be eliminating 2 putts. Consider 2 putt to be a solid green play. A 1 putt is either a bit of luck that does occur regularly, or else you had a great approach or chip onto the green that left you inside 6 feet for a 1 putt. The 3 putts however, are inexcusable. With skill you can absolutely put all those lag puts and longer putts to within 6 feet of the whole or even within 3 feet. In my view, get your 3 feet puts to 99.99% and get all your longer puts to be within 3 feet 99% of the time. Then you will usually 2 putt and occasionally you'll luck out with some 1 putts. Eliminate the 3 putts, don't stress about 2 putts when the first putt is a long one.

I have been looking at the hole when I putt for years and most of the time it works very well for me. People always comment how great my putting is. You think less and you just roll the ball towards the hole as if you were bowling it there. Your mind figures it out. On the other hand, when you aren't looking down at the putter, its inconsistent in terms of making sure the putter face is square, the putter path appropriate, etc. You usually get the distance perfect if the putter manages to hit square. I have been using a Nubbins putter, which has the tendency to kind of stick to the ball longer, so you can can of push your ball towards the hole, regardless of the face angle. Using that kind of putter while looking at the hole works well. But if you change to a more conventional putter, than I believe looking down is better idea in general. But some practice rounds while you stare at the hole can help you get a feel for how hard to swing the putter.

Just trying to decide whether to get Scorecard. Seems like a nice app. Question, can the iphone app sync with the windows version of the app? If so, how is it done? I have a desktop mac and a PC laptop. would it be possible to have it installed in both places and data syncronized between them somehow? Is there any kind of online data storage available for this app? There are numerous online stat packages, none seem as nice as this software, but on the other hand, I don't have to worry about the above questions.

I'm looking for the same information and some clarification about how "official" handicaps are handled by clubs. Basically I can see there are tons of free and commercial online sites for tracking stats. Some of the commercial ones claim to provide official USGA handicap handling, including they can print a card. But some in this thread seem to say that the only credible online service that would track your handicap would be the GHIN site. So do pretty much all golf clubs use GHIN to track handicaps for their members, thus interconnecting them all with the GHIN network? If so, that would make sense then that the only service which can credibly track your official handicap would either be the GHIN itself, or perhaps an online service of some kind which in turn actually uses GHIN to track the handicaps...or something like that... Anyway, I don't belong to a golf club at this time, I'm on the move too much. But I do occasionally have the opportunity to play in a tourney and I'd love to have an official handicap tracked. Without joining a local club, is the only other alternative to join GHIN or are there other alternatives? Some of the golf stat sites provide a lot of nice stat tracking, which somehow I doubt GHIN does. Would prefer to pay one of the stat tracking sites *IF* the handicap they are tracking is entered into the GHIN network by them or somehow made completely and absolutely official for use in various club tourneys... any help?

Ok, I have a few days to decided on a shaft dilema. I bought n R9 460 recently after going to a demo day and having Taylor made measure my swing. On that day I swung as fast as 105mph, but I don't usually swing quite that fast. Probably I should be swinging closer to 90mph, which is right on the border between a Regular and Stiff shaft, by the specs. I've never used stiff before. The Taylor Made guy seemed to think I would like that Matrix Xcon 5 stiff shaft, which he affectionately called "soft stiff". Supposedly it has a very low kick point which kind of compensates for the stiffness a bit. I hit it a few times and they liked what they saw. I liked how light it was. So I bought one. Stiff Xcon5 with 9.5 face. Played a few rounds. My shots were not any more accurate than normal and I easily lost 30-40 yards from what I was doing with my old R5 10.5. I talked to the shop, they loaned me a Regular flex shaft to swap back and forth, since this head has the fancy adjustability stuff. So I've been at the range going back and forth between the two shafts and trying to decide which one to keep and I'm having one heck of a hard time deciding. I'm going through a of changes in my swing right now too, which is making matters more difficult. Its hard to tell for sure when the good shots are good because I did proper technique or the bad shots are bad from poor technique or whether its one shaft or the other. I will say, at first I thought the stiff shaft just had a harder strike feel to it that I didn't like at all. But now I think both shafts are rather strong that way compared to the R5. The R might be slightly softer. I think in general, I hit further with the R shaft than the Stiff xcon. I can't really say either is any more accurate than the other because of my swing flaws. Every once in a while if I hit the stiff Xcon perfectly it sails perfectly, but the rest of the time it tends to be way short. The R flex can go pretty perfectly too when I hit it perfectly, but when I'm off, it seems like its still hitting further than the stiff. What I notice though is I get a bit more balooning with the R shaft then with the stiff. Is a little bit of ballooning a good thing or bad thing? I wanna make sure I get enough roll to get 250-260 yards on most drives. I tend to carry about 220-230 on my good shots, but not as often with the stiffer shaft. It doesn't balloon a "lot". It floats with a pretty low to medium trajectory and then right near the end of the flight it seems to float up a a bit and then drop like a rock, which I think probably means its not gonna roll good. Maybe I can fix that with technique too, but I wanna make sure its not the shaft. It should be noted that my old R5 had a R flex shaft that seems even softer, with 10.5 and I never had ballooning at all with that one. So maybe I just need to hit around instead of down more, I'm not sure. Anyway, I'm leaning towards the R flex at this point and just toning down my swing to stay within the 90mph range instead of trying to swing over 100. Funny thing is, when I swing right, without trying to swing fast, it goes over 100 anyway and probably I want the stiffer flex on those. But I swing wrongly often enough and those tend to be 90 or less no matter how hard I think I'm swinging. I have until Monday to decide which shaft to keep. I'm really torn on the issue. The Xcon shaft does feel tighter and more accurate in some way. The R flex just feels looser goosier. But overall, I think I'm hitting further with just as much accuracy/inaccuracy as I am with the stiff one...so.... What what you guys do? By the way, I am not consistently hooking or slicing. I'm doing both and many straight shots too. When I execute proper technique, I'm getting a nice slight draw with either shaft. All I can really say is that the mishits on the stiff one lose a lot more yards than the Regular.

iphones don't use cell towers to triangulate, they use the same satellite chips that are used in real GPS units like in your car and in your golf GPS handheld....and to my knowledge there is nothing about golf GPS units that are any more accurate than anything else. They are accurate down to a few yards and for most of us that is perfectly good enough. Car GPS units probably do not DISPLAY as much accuracy because we don't need it and its actually more confusing to have it changing all over the place in a car.

I got a GPS program for my iphone that totally rocks for $9.99. "AirVue". Besides the fact that its only 10 bucks, the graphics are way better than any dedicated GPS unit and it has better features too. No subscription cost either. You can also keep your score on it. The best feature on it is that you can point your finger to any spot on the course and move it around and it will show you how many yards from your current location to where your finger is pointing, along with how far it will be from that spot to the hole. It can measure drive distances too. Some downsides, in order to save iphone battery I click it into sleep mode when putting the phone back in my pocket. Every time I pull it out I have to wait 10-15 seconds for the GPS to turn back on and reacquire satelites. If you plan ahead and prepare the phone as you approach your ball that is no problem, but I often don't realize I'm gonna need to use the GPS until I'm already standing there. So that is a downfall for sure, but I can't think of a work around that doesn't involve draining the battery. On the other hand, using it the way I do, has not drained the båttery at all. Another downside is that the course data has to be downloaded from the internet directly to the phone. If you do that at the course, it will take a while, and if you don't have 3G coverage there it will take a LONG while. The good news is that it does seem to cache the data for next time you go there. Anyway, it has a lot of other features, check it out. I'm quite impressed and it was only 10 bucks. The authors are still open to feature suggestions and have new updates coming out soon with more stat tracking, etc. If I didn't get this, I probably woulda got a laser before spending hundreds on a dedicated GPS with subscription model. That's just me. I almost NEVER need to know how many yards to bunkers. I need to know how many yards to the 150, but more often I need to know how many yards to 125 and 100. or to some spot that is well away from bunkers. Also, if I can't see the green from where I am because of trees or whatever, then the laser is no good either. But if I were gonna spend hundreds on something I'd probably get the laser and I'd probably use it a lot less then I do the iphone. The iphone fits in my pocket easily, works great from any spot on the course and the software only cost $10.

I read something last night that said that if upon swing completion(where you are finished and facing the target, your right knee is ahead of your left knee, then your stance is too narrow. On the other hand if you finish with your right knee behind your left knee then you're wide. (shrug). I'm finding that a wider stance makes it much more difficult to make the weight transfers required without a lot of lateral shifting. Might be more stable for certain situations, but I think standing too wide can cause problems too. Find the happy medium where you feel stable AND are able to promote all the healthy aspects of a golf swing without having to sway too much.