double_j

Don't know what made me think about this but it may end up ruining games all over this board. On the backswing do you inhale, exhale, or hold your breath? How about when putting? :-\

I'll play either the Penta or ProV1X. Both play similarly for me although I do think the titleist feels a touch better off the driver. Honestly though, it depends on the day...since I tend to have both in my bag I'll play whichever one feels luckiest. Generally, two or three bad holes and I'll change over to satisfy my superstitious side. All else equal, I'll default to the penta. Fewer people play tm balls and it reduces the chance that some schmuck will mistake mine for his.

If there's anything that 16 years of Catholic schooling has instilled in me, it's that left handers are the tool of the devil.

Nice. I also assume my clubs have been the root cause and just invested in a 15 degree 910F and a 19 degree 910H. Those should get me back on the right track!

Your swing needs to be good enough to consistently hit the ball (or more importantly, to consistently result in the same errors) before custom fitted clubs will make a difference - they're not going to create miracles. That said, it's true that custom clubs won't necessarily encourage someone to get rid of their 'bad' habits but it doesn't really matter if they can still make the ball go where they want it to go. I'd take the ugliest flying elbow, chicken winging, reverse pivoting swing ever if it could still get me around the course at even par.

It's always good to set high goals and to work your butt off to acheive them, but prepare for the reality that getting to the tour requires immense talent, mental fortitude and more than a bit of luck. Keep at it and you might get there but understand that somethings are just impossible to control. Take it one step at a time...find a pro you trust, devote all of your time to good practice, get yourself to right around scratch over the next year or so, and get yourself used to playing in serious tournament situations. Show well enough and you might attract the attention of some colleges. If a scholarship doesn't materialize, make sure your grades are good enough to get you admission somewhere. You can always trust your game and try out for the golf team as a walk on. Once you've got the college hurdle down, then you can start thinking about a career in golf, whatever that might be. I'd never say never but I tend to agree with JoePro on this one...even the non-touring pros that I know were at scratch before they started high school so you're already at a slight disadvantage to the competition. That said, this doesn't mean that golf won't play a big role in your future no matter what happens.

I think it's been mentioned already, but don't forget that modern clubs (especially GI) are made to be more forgiving and to give the ball a higher ball flight, all else equal. Stronger lofts are just an offset to more optimal weighting and overall club & ball technology. But still, the standard rule hasn't changed - the lower the loft and the longer the club, the more difficult it will be to hit the club. It's pointless to try and compare your iron legnth to someone else's. The important thing is that you know what you need to hit to achieve a certain yardage. I have no use for a mid handicapper who brags about hitting a PW from 150 yards since they're usually about as accurate with that club as I am with an 8 iron from that distance. When asked on a par 3, I'll just mention the yardage I was trying to hit.

More of a rant than a question. Finally getting to play again after a long winter. I didn't touch a club from October through March and have just been able to spend some quality time on the course in the past six weeks or so. I've played probably 8 or 9 rounds this season. I got my handicap down to a 7.8 last year but have been struggling to break 90 thus far. My best round so far was +15 but even that was pretty schizophrenic with a 47 front (+11) and 40 back (+4). Needless to say, the back half of that round was probably more luck than skill as the rest of my rounds so far have been slightly worse than bogey golf. It's just so frustrating not being able to execute shots that used to be so easy, especially when it comes to getting up and down from an easy position or sitting on top of a ball from 140 and in. Double bogeys used to be a once per round exception but lately I've been racking up 5 or 6 per round without doing anything majorly wrong (no penalty strokes, etc). It's like I've totally forgotten how to score. I know that practice makes perfect that that I just need to put in the time but still, why can't golf be easier? More importantly, why do I keep coming back to a game that tortures me so much? Anybody else hate early season golf as much as I do?

2/10. Haven't played since late October. It's a bit surprsing, I thought I'd be jonesing a bit more but I've really been enjoying the break. I'm sure I would love a trip somewhere warm to play a couple of rounds but it's been so cold at home lately that thoughts of golf are nowhere to be found. It also helps that I hate practicing just for practicing's sake so I don't really think about golf unless there's the possibility of playing. Kind of like smoking during a long flight - it's much easier (for me) to ignore the craving to smoke when I know that there's absolutely zero chance that I'll be able to have one.

I played for a while in normal sneakers while waiting for some blisters to heal and didn't notice a ton of difference provided the ground was dry. No comparison in the wet though, if for nothing else than the fact that golf shoes are usually treated to be waterproof. Heck, most of us probably let our softspikes wear down so much before replacing that we might as well be wearing sneakers. Similar to how most people treat the tires on their cars...

Not knowing a course (including how the greens break) is probably worth between 5 and 10 strokes for me, all else equal.

Or if you're not a complete math slouch, you can just take the yard length and subtract 10% for meters (or add 10% if converting meters to yards). The meter/yard conversion doesn't bother me too much (provided that you know which one the course is using), what kills me more are differences in measurement methods (e.g., middle of the green vs. front of the green). I played a course in France that used meter measurements to the front of the green but didn't know about the front of the green part until my second round there. I was having a heck of a time figuring out why my shots kept coming up short! Figured it was heavy French air or something.

I find Wu Tang to be overrated. They always seemed more about their image than actual talent. Dollar for dollar, I gotta go with Jay-Z as the greatest (who believes that Drake is the real deal, by the way).

In this reply, I will suck all of the fun out of the original post. In the 20 years that have passed since most of these jokes have been 'written', great scientific minds were able to find the answers to these conundrums.

I would guess the answer to be a big no. You might get more distance vs. one that's more than 3 or 4 generations old, or see a bit more forgiveness on marginal shots but it won't be straighter on the whole (no matter what the manufacturers tell you). I would say that the widespread availability of club fitting facilities has and will provide a much greater overall benefit than any advancement in clubhead technology to the average player. A 4 year old club that compensates and allows for your individual swing characteristics will do much more to 'fix' your drives than a brand new stick with the latest technology off the rack.

It's too cold for me when I can't keep my hands warm without putting them in my pockets. Golf stops being fun when it ends up being more about staying warm between shots than about playing the shots themselves. Guess I'm getting old. I used to be able to play in the coldest of weather. Frozen water hazard lucky break shots are officially out of my repertoire.

If you're worried about your boss' impression of the phone call, you can innocently go back to him for more details. Just say something like "Hey, XXX. When you spoke to Sovereign bank about me, what specifically did they ask? I don't have any accounts, etc. with them and when I called them back they said there was no record but asked for my SS#."

After playing some of my worst rounds of the season in the past 4 or 5 outings and seeing rounds stretch to close to 5 hours due to the normal fall wind, leaves, and especially long rough, I actually put myself on early break this year. As much as I enjoy playing, it is quite refreshing to have 6 hours back on my weekends now that the days are getting short. I might play a spare round here or there before winter if friends are going out or we get a very warm spell but otherwise my 2010 season is over. Surprisingly, I've been very content with that thus far.

Royce Brook is OK but nothing memorable. The public courses you mentioned are all very well-thought of. I recommend Architects - it'll be about 40 minutes Northwest from Raritan et al but is well worth the time to get there. If you're coming directly from NY it should be about the same distance/time.

I pretty much derailed my plans of getting below 7 this year with the past couple of months. My schedule has only allowed me to play 4 rounds or so since the middle of August and all of them were extremely poor (scores over 90). To rub salt into the wound, I had been playing some of my best golf ever in the weeks leading up to that, with cards consistently in the low 80's and high 70's. The change in play was drastic and dissapointing to say the least and golf stopped being fun. I even canceled a tee time for the first time all year a couple of weeks ago, for no reason other than I didn't feel like playing that day. Anyway, I made myself play twice this weekend. Saturday started off the same. I didn't do anything particularly well or poorly and ended up in the low 90's. Blech. I didn't think I'd want to play Sunday but decided to do it after a friend said he had an early morning tee time available. Thank God that I did. I wasn't really 'on' with my ball striking but somehow managed to grind out an 83. While far from my career best, it just feels so good to shoot a 'normal' score again after the past 7 or 8 weeks of horribleness. Oh golf, why do you hate me so? And why do I get the feeling you're going to bless me with some of my best rounds in the last few weeks of the season so I have to come back to this again next year?

Didn't get a chance to post my plays last week but I'll put this up for the sake of consistency. I had plays on Minnesota and Dallas (lines of -12.5 and +2.5, respectively). This puts me to 5-6-1 for the year! Almost back to even! Jets last night. Wow - one of the best games I've watched in while. Giants looked horrid and the Iggles delivered big.

Here's my 9 words: Low tire. Late for meeting. Woman at air pump.

The most important thing is to make sure that you have the desire to quit or else you'll just be fighting a losing battle from the start. Most of the people I know who quit did so because of a tangible development (usually having kids, etc.) that made quitting a non-negotiable issue. As I mentioned above, I only smoke a couple of cigarettes a day and yet I can't quit simply because I don't yet have the determination to get it out of my life completely.

D*mn, dude. I'll trade you a couple of sleeves of ProV1s for some of that pork!

Ouch! 0-3-1 for the week, bringing my year to 3-6-1. Down 3.6 units. And that, my friends, is why I have a day job. At least now I have some data to work with. Bring on week 3!