darthweasel

my primary thought is probably a bit pedantic but the word "grind" is one I have personally come to try to avoid. If it is truly a "grind" that limits the improvement...as books such as The Practice of Practice and others I likely should reference point out, when practice is miserable the ceiling for improvement is low. One famous musician was quoted as saying something along the lines of "I have never practiced a day in my life because I enjoyed the process. Learning the scales..." and so forth, words like that and he went on. His point was he enjoyed practice, he enjoyed the feeling of improvement and that fueled his improvement. When you said "learn to love it" that was the golden ticket to my thinking. The underlying point is turning the practice into something a person enjoys will allow those repetitive drills and movements to matter. If it is a grind, though...much less so. I believe one of your other points ties into the oft-quoted "practice doesn't make perfect, perfect practice makes perfect". 100% true that practicing poor technique will not lead to improvement. It does however lead to a certain cognitive dissonance for me with some of the stuff recommended. Saw a Padraig Harrington video where he was talking about if he wanted to shape the ball a certain direction he would exaggerate it in his practice swings. That is something I have always struggled with. I am not trying to learn how to brush my hip as he was doing on his practice swing. Don't want the brain insulating those neurological pathways as a success. yet that is something shown to do many times by successful people. But that risks being on a tangent so I will tap out here.

John Daly has entered the chat

the problem isn't influencers...it is the people who watch them that support their nonsense. How "influencer" ever became a thing befuddles me no end...the trends they start and perpetuate seem to have one thing in common. Absolute banality.

finally got around to buying the book, look forward to reading a couple times over the winter as off season and ran are upon me...weird question. Don't really plan to be a range rat this winter, but did sign up on a sim house. If I read it and do a "work through", with the understanding and acknowledgement that sim golf is to real golf as internet distances are to actual distances...I presume the strategies found therein, a good place to practice them would be sim courses? Any specific recommendations for melding the reading and sims?

99% of lawyers give the rest of them a bad name. (I'll grab my coat on my way out)

they do not. in fact, this particular course (Meriwether Golf Course, the hole in question is 11) has a monthly pass for unlimited golf and I have literally seen people jump back and forth who had the pass when there was an opening. At this particular location, there are kind of three holes that converge...#8 from the executive and the tee box for 15 from the one I am playing...and the area is pretty wide. Seen people land there from both 11 and 14 (and, in fact, the green for 14 is dangerously close to the tee box for 15...I have sailed the green more than once with an accompanying terrified "fore" scream....never domed anyone but not for lack of incompetence

if I don't find the ball (both courses part of the same property, they used to have 3 rotating nines and at some point converted one to an executive course), I presume cannot treat it as lateral?

narrow creek on left side of fairway., red stakes on both sides and to the left of the second stake is a play area from the executive course next door that is grass. Hit it too far as someone...certainly not me...did last night and you can clear your red stake, the hazard, the second red stake which I presume is the other courses' stake, the grass and go into some deep brush. Fortunately I found...I mean, whoever hit that abomination found...their ball and hit the green but my question is this: the ball crossed two hazard lines but did not land in a hazard: is this a down and distance where it must be replayed from the box or it it considered in the hazard since it crossed the red stakes? Looked around a bit but could not find this specific situation covered which probably means it is highlighted, double underlined and brutally obvious...

used to play callaway supersoft because A) rarely encountered other people playing them and B) costco sold them cheap. Went on trip to Las Vegas, got matched with 3 other singles who also did not know each other. I don't know the odds against this but they seem staggeringly high...we all four were playing the Callaway Supersoft. All got them at Costcos. Prior to that did not really mark my ball but now do something I have never seen anybody else do: circle of one color on one side, circle of another color on the other, and half and half the ball type. My golf balls are incredibly easy to recognize now and i never worry about hitting the wrong one. I get matched up with a lot of randoms and people seldom mention what ball they are playing so I occasionally run into situations where they have to figure out whose is whose...I am a big believer in distinct markings.

Been a while since I updated this. I completely overhauls my swing starting in November. Took a couple sessions to get used to how the mevo works. It has been a tremendous assistant. Also found a swing recording app that I could draw on. (Swing Profile) Completely unsurprised to realize I was over the top but was surprised how badly. Did some research on that, figured out drill to help me drop the hands and work on sequencing. That is the step that became somewhat time consuming. Made significant change that resulted in move from often having spin axis 15-20r to something like 2-5L. Not always of course but more and more frequent and ball flight has moved much more towards draw. Hitting range 3-5 times a week was helpful for sure. Winter months were mild so I was able to get on course fairly regularly and certainly felt like I was playing better. Scores had some improvement and then there would be some regression which I chalked up to natural variance. It was not as if I felt like I was hitting the ball poorly..a weird bounce here or there, an atypical bunker adventure, etc. The one downside was I was working so much on my iron and wedge swing that, ignoring the 65-25-10 advice, I lost my driver swing to the point I did not bother taking it out of the bag. Fortunately my improved swing was giving me better distance with even my 3h than I had been getting with my driver anyway. That drove me nuts as I am a firm believer in the ideas that getting off the tee is vastly more important for scoring than bumping my 10' putt percentage by a point. Not being willing to take it out was definitely an inhibitor to my improvement despite not having lost distance. Once I was confident in my irons went back to practicing all clubs, got my driver back in shape and now better than ever. Maintaining my iron, wedge and driver practice, did some extra chipping work and started noticing more and more frequent rounds that were low to mid 80s rather than low to mid 90s. Because a large number of them were out of season and a further grouping of rounds was not reportable due to being played as a single, it was not moving my handicap, but I was growing more and more confident and expecting to hit good shots but not getting off kilter when I did not. Recently had a run of, for me, pretty special golf including setting my PR by three strokes with a 76, having a second chance to break 80 but by my own admission having a rare choke (3-putting from I think 4'...I almost never do that, but let the "don't leave it short" horrific advice get in my head, shipped it 5' past like a munchkin), then have broken 80 twice more since, seeing my cap drop from 16.5 to 11.4 today since July 4th...that feels pretty good., Last night started bit rough and was 8 over through 8...but went one under over the last 10 holes, my first time breaking par for 9 holes at a non-executive course (done it twice at executive or sub-par courses). But my favorite part of it was...it wasn't a night where I felt like I was playing lights out. Starting hole 9, had a decent but below average drive, good but nothing special 3w, decent chip and nice putt for the birdie. 10, my 4i was in the shop so I took 3h off the tee, overdrove the fairway, rough, treeline, and was in the 18th fairway with tall trees in between but no low shot available. Went over them with a pulled wedge, good bunker shot to 3', nice par. And so forth...no "amazing" shots, just average drives, couple decent chips, couple putts made but nothing that was like "oh wow, I can't believe I did that"...just hitting shots that I have been working on, having average shots and suddenly I have scored better than ever before on that nine and broken 80 on a day I didn't feel like I had it... Overall I am quite pleased. I had to do the work in my practice style...I have done a ton of thinking about it and a lot comes back to when Matt was teaching me, one of the things he would often say is "don't worry about where the shot is going, just worry about doing x" and my brain just does not work that way. Brain science has shown that when the brain succeeds it adds insulation around that pathway, allowing it to transmit information faster and making you more likely to do that again...I didn't, don't, and won't train myself that a bad shot is good. But working where I could see what worked, groove that, figure out what I was doing, why, and now I understand my swing and, when it is not working, i know how to adjust it on course as I go, it makes so much more sense to me. I am now doing a lot of the things he tried to get me to do, but I had to get there in a way that made sense to me, I have seen demonstrable improvement on all but putting on the strokes gained. Overall, back when this started it was -1.3 v. pro (which I left as pro because...well, don't know how to change it and don't care enough to look) and now it stands at -.93. I am quite pleased with that improvement. Hilariously, when I shot the 76 I was randomly matched up with one of his new students, they old him about it. Had a good laugh about having my PR with a mutual student. And in conclusion, as I was walking off last night knowing I had broken par for 9 I realized...i am satisfied. I am past my physical prime, I enjoy playing okay but not great golf and I am happy if I can maintain where I am. I have no other goals. Now I can just enjoy the game and playing new courses, I have not set a new goal. But I did enjoy the journey...watching myself change ball flight, knowing how to change it, becoming much, much more consistent in striking and a narrower score window that is typically 10ish shots lower than a few months ago... I know very well that I could be better if I did a couple things slightly different but I don't have the mental drive to "grind". Golf is recreation for me and if it ain't fun...and I don't find "grind" fun in anything...I have no interest in doing that. This is where I was trying to get here. A modest goal to be sure, but good enough for me. With all the time I spend on racquetball, tennis, guitar, and some card games with my friends, I don't really want to take the time to dial in tiny little details. Took a little longer than I thought it would but was worth it. I will spend a few years as a pedestrian golfer playing around 6300 and be happy. So this is a happy golf story for me.

the hint is in his screen name.

Pope of slope is a great site. Very informative for sure. I suspect, and there is zero data to back this up, a huge difference comes in that there are many golfers for whom betting is a huge part of the game. They have to play "for something". In a tournament setting like the NW Golf guys tournaments, having everything as equal as possible has value in maintaining the integrity of the field so to speak. By contrast, in a betting setting, and again, this is conjecture...i cannot back this up with studies or data, just anecdotal observation which has the value of a plugged nickel...being a better player is often perceived as something that should provide advantage in a bet. I am reminded of a time a group of us were at Black butte. Because some of them are the "have to have something on it" crowd, it was with handicaps and pops. One of the guys who happens to be a plus handicap twice had birdies canceled by a mid capper (read "me") parring the hole...getting a pop...and thus tying for the hole. To the surprise of..well...nobody, this was frustrating to him that a birdie could not win a hole and since he was giving pops to everyone it made it really tough for him to win a hole. I get it. In a foursome with a +2, 6.8, 11 something and I think I was like a 14 at that point, someone is parring pretty much every hole at worst. So if you are giving pops to everyone and it takes a birdie to win but your birdie gets canceled...hard to win. if I were him or had that skill level, I would likely feel the same. By contrast though, my skill level...a par is a relative birdie. I have little to no interest in competing in something where, honestly, my best is not good enough to be competitive. Full disclosure, I am not one of those people who has to have something on it. in fact, i actively dislike doing so and have reached the point where when in one of those groups I take zero part in the negotiations. I just tell them after the round tell me who to pay and how much to a maximum...then I go golf and enjoy the round. But to me it has to do with the idea of there being a desire for an advantage for the better player. Note I am making no value judgement...i don't really care one way or the other. I just find the exercise of looking into it intellectually stimulating and actually learned a couple things in this thread. That is always a win.

I agree it does a great job. Apart from sand and vanity cappers, people who have and maintain legitimate handicaps will, over time, have very reasonable competitions. Curious where you get your idea of the point? To amuse myself (and also I was genuinely curious as I never went down this specific rabbit hole before) I went to the USGA website and looked up "Purpose of the World Handicap System" where bullet point three is "Compete, or play a casual round, with anyone else on a fair and equal basis", So from whence do you draw the idea it is to give one player an advantage?

playing a tournament this saturday that will have couple hundred people at most. I got the afternoon flight which, considering the reputed 100+ degree day we expect, i think will be an advantage. I would suspect the most likely winner of the flight I am in will be a mid to high handicapper benefiting from the extra yardage to shoot an abnormally low round. As is generally mentioned in any thread like this (and lets be honest, we have seen this thread before and will see it again), it is easier for a higher cap to shoot lower than normal than a low cap...and the larger the field, the more odds there are one will. Conversely, there will also be a few that shoot much, much higher than expected... concur wholeheartedly with the idea that one to one it makes it fairly level, but in a large group the percentages will shift perceptions.

if the point of the handicap system is to make a level playing field, then he is correct. If that is not the point then you would be correct. So it becomes a genuine question: is the handicap system designed to give a level playing field that allows differently skilled players to compete or is it...well...pretty much any other answer?