jgreen85

Except MJ building his own golf course has ZERO impact on anyone else at that club. They should be happy; now they don't have MJ running up their butts every round.

actually they do. My greens fee is higher b/c the course has to maintain that extra grass and pay taxes on the extra land.

not to mention the $500m or so he has stashed in munis and other govt bonds. As I said, $5mil is nothing. If I was in his position, I'd get my own course too. For those who say "just be the first one off" lol. One, he's most likely trying to play multiple rounds per day. 2, why worry about getting to the course first, when the change in your cupholder gets you your own course? Stop thinking about this in your terms; you've got unlimited money, what would you do? I'm shocked he doesn't already have his own course.

$5million per is nothing to Jordan. Absolutely pocket change. Like Chris Rock said, if poor people actually knew how rich rich people are, there would be a massive revolution. $5million is interest on his interest. One thing money can't buy: More time in the day.

I assume the course in San Antonio has an established local rule. I don't know, just reporting what I was told. "Local rule to treat 'desert' as lateral hazard." No course I've been to in AZ has desert marked as OB. They don't allow/want you to drive cart through the desert areas, but no rule against playing out of them and I've done so quite often. Our club is a part of the Arizona Golf Association, which I assume is an overseeing authority. Not sure if they've gotten this rule approved or not. Either way, from early comments, it seems that this "local rule" should not be allowed.

my club has a local rule for tournaments called "desert rule." We classify all desert areas as lateral hazards and the grass as the position of the stakes, so have the option to drop +1 stroke in the area where the ball last crossed the grass. I also played in San Antonio and the starter informed me of their local rule treating their "desert" area as lateral hazards as well. Safe to say, I don't have an official handicap?

another question: when replacing my ball, must I ensure it no longer moves after setting it down before picking up the mark? sometimes there's an indentation or something that prevents the ball from staying precisely where I set it down and it'll roll over slightly.

I REALLY like the classic. Gotta wait until 2016 tho as $199 is too rich for my blood.

one interesting consideration is Tiger is the first "athlete" golfer. Golf pundits raved about Tiger's athleticism and how it changed the game. I'd imagine then his game is more dependent on athleticism than most, if not all, golfers. In comparing golf to basketball, Kareem and Duncan's games were built on fundamentals and basketball IQ, whereas Barkley/Shaq on raw athleticism. We saw a quick decline in the skills/abilities of barkley/shaq while Kareem and Duncan were able to be top tier players for much longer due to their lack of an emphasis on raw athletic ability. Now we see Tiger, too old to be the athlete he was. Can he find the golf equivalent of the Jordan fade-away jumper? I know some will mention gary player as well, and I'll defer to you on him as I know little about him.

So how many majors does Rory need to get to be considered GOAT? Is the field now stronger or weaker than Tiger's? Has to be stronger, right? I think tour wins needs to carry more weight as well. I get that Snead won a bunch of nonsense tournaments, but Tiger and Rory will have played roughly the same quality of tournaments. In other threads, I didn't think Rory had a shot of catching Tiger's level of dominance. I'm starting to think I was wrong.

but we need to "grow" the game. whether it's normal or not, it's an attempt at robbery. Good for you to go somewhere else. I've played with my dad, who doesn't golf, twice and wasn't charged. Good for The Republic Golf Course in San Antonio, TX. You should go there. Going to Pebble Beach this spring, they don't charge for a guest to ride either. Sounds like a bunch of two bit golf courses if you ask me.

thanks picture is very helpful.

Is there a noticeable difference in ball flight between "hitting up" and "hitting down"? Or is the delta noticed primarily once one measures how far the ball traveled?

I'm not seeing the issue. The problem is the PGA Tour can't go to some of the "classic" courses? I don't care. More weeks of the year I can play them. In case you missed the commercials "[Those] guys are good." Changing "par" would have a limited, if any, effect, but I have no issue with a tour stop using it as a gimmick and/or a course designer designing based upon them. I don't think it would matter though. We all try to get the ball in the hole in as few strokes as possible already. I played a couple of 430 yard par 4s in my most recent tournament, but my goal was to get the ball in the hole in 5.

Tiger Woods; I didn't know what golf was prior to '97 Masters.

Lol, the typo police are always fun. I do apologize for that comment though. I was trying to make a point about people's expectations of "government" as if it's some 3rd party entity and not just a bunch of people doing their best. Many in this country mythologize the private sector as some bastion of efficiency and best practices, when it really isn't. For every private company that "succeeds" there are 10x that fail, and those that "succeed" often fail down the line. Difference is the failures are quickly forgotten and the successful remain in our consciousness (since they still exist). The government on the other-hand can't fail and the failures are all the media chooses to keep in our consciousness through their reporting. I remember a Daily Show segment where they compared the media's coverage of the ACA website's difficulties and WalMart's website during Black Friday. Both sites crashed, yet one site was bashed as a tragedy on scale with Hurricane Katrina and the other heralded as a triumph of the private sector to generate demand. Point being you've pretty much the same types of people working in both sectors being equally successful, but one is held in contempt, as you say, and the other placed on a pedestal.

really? in other words, you were allocated company resources, resources which could have gone elsewhere to fund worthwhile projects, and were rewarded for requesting more money than your group needed? Being "under budget" is not necessarily a good thing, and being consistently under budget is a bad thing. Consistently beating your numbers isn't a good thing either; in fact, it just means you're a sandbagger (see golf ). I know it feels fun to think running large organizations is easy and straightforward, but yall's comments show that you've not run a large organization. It's hard and more art than science, and to expect government bureaucrats, who are usually you're C and D students (no offense govt workers), to be best of class is just silly.

Happens every quarter in the private sector too.

Ok, so "American Leadership" has to do with America being the best in important categories. Thanks for the clarification. Do you think your definition of "American Leadership" is consistent with those who use the phrase? Is this something new or has it been a decline over time? What would you say is the one constant(s) that led to this decline? I appreciate you listing areas that are actually quantifiable. [quote name="iacas" url="/t/77579/greg-norman-on-fox-business-talking-about-americas-failure-to-lead-high-taxes-over-regulation/36#post_1064914"] It's not like that, but whatever man. Was too long ago for me to remember the specifics, but I'm absolutely certain it made sense then. I don't care anywhere near enough to look into it more now, but I definitely wasn't saying or implying that the econ prof said anything like the bold. [/quote] Yea, you really want to look at debt as a percent of GDP. $500k in debt is a lot to the vast majority of people, but it'd be nothing to Rush Limbaugh. Also what's with the "Government should be run as a business" or "When my income is down, I make hard choices" crowd? Government shouldn't be run as one run's his/her household budget. When the economy is poor, Government debt should rise (spender of last resort). When the economy is good, Government coffers should grow (to recover from previous decline). Unfortunately, during the last boom, the powers that be spent all of the money in tax breaks (I was

I don't get this "failure to lead" comment. I hear it a lot as criticism. How can someone tell if "America is leading"? I see a lot of business people on the thread, so I assume there are metrics out there to grade the lack of leadership from America from those who agree with Norman's comments.

is your picture of the glove a pic of how your glove should wear?

I wasn't in the first group out; the course was busy as this was a Sunday morning. Only way for course to be at 4.5hr pace is if a group is playing at that pace and thinks it is appropriate. It looks like a lot of you do feel it is appropriate, and that is a problem imo. Again, what is causing people to play at that pace? I'd like to see starters coach players on proper pace of play: take no more than 8/9 strokes a hole; driver should go to passenger's ball first, drop him off, and then drive to driver's ball while passenger hits. These two items would eliminate the 4.5hr round. Get the pros to quit the b/s on/around the greens and now we're looking at 3:45/round.

I really don't like how some serious SandTrap golfers believe 4.5hrs is good. I guess as long as you let faster players through when there's room, but geez....what are yall doing that takes so long? I played in a 3-some and I walked, and we had to wait on a few holes, yet I was in my truck at the 4hr mark.

4hrs is the upper-end and for courses where walking is encouraged. If all four players are in a cart, it shouldn't take more than 10-12min per hole (obviously an average) imo, which is 3-3.5hrs round. Problem is a lot of golfers think they need to wait for their cart-mate to hit before they go to their ball.

I mean to edit my post earlier to include "tour pros shouldn't be the model." They're all really slow players. Part of it is the rules, but a lot of it is just intertia. There's no reason for one person to play fast if all it takes is one slow player/group to hold up the course. This is a classic Nash Equilibrium. Everyone would benefit from faster play, but it takes everyone to make it happen. This is where the government/rules making body should get involved to force movement the more desirable state. I can see here that a lot of SandTrappers are a big part of the problem. If even, what i would describe as dedicated golfers, can't agree on appropriate pace of play. I can't see any chance we adjust the behaviors of the masses. Also, no way walking is faster than the same player in a cart (assuming 90 degree rule and common sense, ie bring more than one club with you to your ball).