Dr. Strangeclub

He's the embodiment of the sort of people who annoy me. Bubba would make me VERY uncomfortable in person, I'm sure, and he wouldn't like me much, either, most likely. I have little patience with evangelical airheads.

Having little recourse, I finally went with the Dryjoys Tour. Works out, because the guy we bought them from can "juggle the books", where he gets the refund and the credit difference goes to him, and then he gives us the difference, so basically we get a fair trade with no residuals at Footjoy that we have to spend somehow. Next time he orders, he just applies that credit to his own order. Cool.

Wish I'd seen those earlier, but right now I'm stuck with Footjoy. They'll trade them for something else, plus a credit (since I have the most expensive shoe now), but I'm really afraid of the "shelf" being on any shoe in my size, even if it's a running/sport shoe style. That, and the narrow heel seems omnipresent on all their lasts except the street shoes, which still comes in the Stanford last. Their return policy is a non-return policy, basically, since all they will give you is a credit for more Footjoy stuff. Even if there is a defect in workmanship (which this pair incidentally has -- a bunch in the top where it connects to the lace area, which makes it fold weird on the top), they'll just give you another pair, presumably with no apologies. Since these ICONs are clearly not intended for real golfers, I don't like my chances of asking for a pair where the width of the sole doesn't accommodate a size 13 EEE upper. I could have lived with the bad heel, breaking it in eventually, but the "shelf" is a killer. I really don't know what to order, now. Two pair of Greenjoys or something -- but they probably have the "shelf" too. Wearing these ICONs, I think I know how a dog feels with a one of those funnels on his head to keep him away from the stitches. Unluckily, the "stitches" are my golf swing.

I think my real problem is that I'm like the Duke of Windsor and his wide lapel wool suits. I want a golf shoe that looks like an ol' timey golf shoe and Footjoy doesn't make one anymore. (Everybody trying to one-up me with how long they've been wearing Footjoys and that I must have some weird problem, bear in mind that *I* wore Footjoys almost to exclusion for 45 years.) The Dryjoys, my current pair with a split sole, have the same anti-rollover function, so Dryjoys aren't the answer. I think what has happened is that there are some basic size ranges for the sole plates and they fit a range of widths and lengths of uppers onto the same size sole plate, merely changing the attachment point. A 7.5 is probably the smallest upper that fits on a sole plate for shoes size, say, 7-9, so that the small size uppers have a "shelf" left over all the way around. People wearing a size 9 might not face the problem and be able to have a pair of Dryjoys that function properly. Probably 95% or the people who wear the ones with the "shelf" aren't aware that their shoes restrict their swings. So I think I'll have bite the bullet and get an "athletic" pair of some description. Not that that is bad thing, since I've always been something of a jock anyhow, and wear running shoes all the time. I've actually been playing in running/walking shoes lately, so I guess I'll just get the golf version with cleats. Thanks for the help, everybody! My quest continues...

What's with the spikes, though? Doesn't look like they'd work too well around here, where it's pretty wet a lot of the time. And are they replaceable or do you just wear them for a while and buy another pair?

Thanks for the TRUE suggestions! I'll check them out. The Puma does come in 7.5, but there is no indication of width choices. Puzzling. A little jazzy for me, too. "Roll" is exactly what these ICONs do not allow -- at all. Was looking through ebay at the old used shoes like I had in the 70s and 80s, just to make sure I wasn't imagining things through a nostalgic lens, and the sole is cut close to the sides of the uppers, every time. The "roll" is what is missing and confirms my opinion that they are made merely for style points, not to play real golf in.

I was thinking about going with Puma this time, since somebody said they were really comfortable, but haven't been able to find a size 7.5 -- apparently they start at 8.. No doubt the more athletic Footjoy styles would suit me fine, but I'm done with Footjoy after this disaster. After wearing them for nine holes, I had a bad blister, first blister ever in maybe 25 pair of Footjoys over the years. (I did wear Dexter for a few years and they were nice too, but I wasn't fond of the one pair of Etonic I had.) But like I said, that isn't what bothers me. If that was it, if it was merely a matter of breaking in the shoes around the yard for a while, carrying some bandaids, I've lived through that before. It was the "non golfer" aspect of these shoes. The non walker, swing-encumbering aspect. "We don't know anything about golf shoes, but here ya go! We bought the Footjoy logo and you'll love 'em just because they have a good rep." They've missed the point, and it's almost insulting. These ICONs are made for somebody who really doesn't play golf and won't notice that the shoes are not designed to assist in making a good swing. When they made parkas in the US, they were suitable for winter weather here in upstate New York. Pretty much impossible to find a real parka for under $1000 now, because I don't think people from Malaysia fully grok what cold weather is all about, and the designs are sent in by people from Florida and California or something. These golf shoes are like that. The sole is simply too wide to allow good footwork -- it's like wearing snowshoes. I think Footjoy depends on only 10% of dissatisfied customers returning the product and only 10% of the customers knowing enough about golf to realize that these are not really golf shoes at all, they're just stiff, Payless quality shoes with golf spikes in them. In my opinion, the Footjoy ICON only LOOKS like a golf shoe, but was meant for people who ride carts and wouldn't know that the shoes actually interfere with their swing. I also doubt seriously that the pros wearing ICONs have to suffer with this sole, in other words, the pros are not wearing the same shoe that they sell to the masses, sort of like golf clubs. I'll bet Steve Stricker's (I think he might wear ICON, not sure) sole doesn't stick out from the sides like he's wearing ping pong paddles strapped to his feet.

The MSRP for the Dryjoy is $180, for the ICON, $289. One would expect a better shoe than the Dryjoy, but it's likely worse. In any case, the Dryjoy is not the top end according to Footjoy's pricing. Dryjoy might be their best, but not their most expensive at least.

When I started playing, my parents were not about to buy me a pair of Footjoy golf shoes to go out there and shoot a hundred. Even when I got a lot better, they still only sprung for a pair a Bass, which required weeks of blood-soaked breaking in. Footjoy advertised something like, "Never a blister." They were made in Phoenix, or Delaware or somewhere stateside, back when American products were the class of the world. We made great socks and shirt and gloves and golf shoes. Really nice, ya know? Footjoy golf shoes were especially "nice". I think making golf shoes may be a forgotten art, now, and somebody like Bill Gates would have to hire an 80 year old shoemaker now out of work to make him a pair of Footjoys. And if there isn't one, Footjoy is no longer, like an extinct language. It was not until I was a lieutenant in USAF did I have the coin to spring for a pair of Footjoys, and they were all they were cracked up to be. No blisters. Fit like a glove. Great stability. Perfect. I played a lot back then and practiced a lot, too, so I wore them out pretty fast -- there WERE no carts! I went through quite a few pair. Always perfect, no blisters. You really felt like you were going first class with a pair of Footjoys, and you were. I never wore anything else. Things started heading south about 20 years ago. They continued to make the good ones, at hefty prices, somewhere here in the states, and farmed out the rest to Indonesia or the Philippines or someplace "else". They began to make them from synthetic materials, with ever-cheaper construction, and the quality deteriorated year after year. My previous pair of Footjoys caught me unawares, and I instinctively ordered a "Wide", since I wear a 7.5 D in the old Footjoys. For as long as I can remember, a "Medium" shoe does not normally fit me, but a wide does. They were too wide, since the "Medium" now encompasses everything from C through E, but I wore them out out anyhow. And I know why: They are constructed on an assembly line with interchangeable parts. Cheap. No cutting the sole to fit the uppers, just a flat deck that will accommodate being attached to any upper, from size 7-10, no wasted time trimming the sole to fit. I think they quit making regular Footjoys here maybe 15 years ago, pricing me out of the "real" ones still made here. Now they don't make the top line at all any more. Gone. The problem with the new shoes is that the base is too large, so that one cannot roll smoothly onto the outside of the left foot through the hitting area, forcing you to either finish flatfooted or lurch on the side of your foot as you flip over the edge of the too-wide sole. Horrible. I thought the "Medium" would fix that, but it's really the same problem I had with the wide. Horrible. The old Footjoys rolled smoothly over and allowed a graceful finish. Not these, and they are ICONs! I wore a Stafford last, as I recall. Maybe Stanford? Whatever, it fit my foot. They do not make that last anymore, instead giving choices of algorithmically derived, computer generated lasts from scans of thousands of feet. Gotta fit! They do not fit. The lasts are all wrong for me, possibly because the old Footjoys were made for rich white guys, but the new compound fitting database includes Asian, African, and Native Americans in the mix. And that they don't fit (I stained the heel with blood walking only 9 holes in their most expensive shoe), isn't my biggest complaint. Even my previous pair was not what I would call a comfortable walking shoe; in days of yore, they were great shoes to walk in, but everybody rides around in a cart these days, so who cares? Pity. Footjoy's gone the way of Sedgefield jeans. All that's left is the name.

I'm definitely getting a set. Soft spikes are one of the worst things that have befallen golf since I started playing almost 60 years ago. I'm with Charlie Rhymer, that the soft spikes do more damage than the nails on the greens, you just can't see it very clearly -- a waffling effect. And I'm going to wear them until somebody stops me. Golfers didn't wear their golf shoes into the clubhouse when they had real spikes on their shoes,, except in those places that had the rubber mats, like the bar area perhaps. I didn't care to walk around in spikes after a round, personally, so I took them off like everybody else did. I'd do the same now, but I might try to stay off the concrete in the vicinity of the pro shop!

Looking back on almost 60 years of watching golf on TV and reading the golf magazines, it's tough to pick just one. I certainly was a big Arnie fan (like who wasn't!?), but looking back I might have to go with Tony Lema. Something very cool about buying champagne for the press when he won, and Dom Perignon at that! Nice looking swing, well-spoken, intelligent, thoroughly pleasant fellow.

One can only hope that the guy at Carnoustie told him to see if he could find another course to have to himself. I suspect that if somebody came up to me and told me I had to stop playing so I wouldn't bother Mikey, I'd wind up in jail, and with any luck Wier would miss the next tournament due to injuries.

When you start shooting 60s on the 7600 yard courses, with the 500 yard par 4s, it means a lot more, but for most courses, anything over 110 slope makes things "respectable". There are courses with low slopes around here that I just can't play, because of the course conditions and holes that simply take the strength of my game out of play -- tees where you have to lay up with a 5 iron because of water in front of the green will still get the miserable 310 yard hole smack down from the raters. A difficult, well-maintained course is far easier to score on, if you can hit the ball. than a short goat lot with spotty greens where any putt outside 3 feet is an adventure and the rough around the greens rivals the Open Championship. Things like unmowed fairways and unraked sandtraps don't come into the equation with slope/course ratings, because they always have it spick and span and ready to go when the raters show up. Just because there are a bunch of traps and water hazards doesn't necessarily make a course much more difficult at all for a good ball striker, whereas it might make things very dicey for a person who relies more on a good short game. Even yardages don't tell the tell. A 410 yard hole around here plays like a 460 yard hole in Dallas, for example, but it doesn't matter when the universal slope equations are rolled out for plugging in and calculating. Some of the highest slopes around here are the easiest courses for me to play, simply because they tend to have better course conditions. I'll take a five iron off a nice fairway over an eight iron on one where the ball sits down like it's in the rough any day.

Nice numbers!

I started when I was eleven and really got fired up about the game when I was 14 or 15. Living in Savannah, I could play all year, so once I got hooked at was at it almost every day. I broke 80 for the first time when I was 16, but it took me another 4 years to shoot that 69. And I practiced a LOT during that time. I think the main trick to low scores is not to miss a day of practice/play. I don't think it takes a lot of practice per day, just some, just enough to keep the forward momentum going. If you're not learning, you're forgetting.

Wow, that's really a low index for not breaking 70! But they seem to start coming once you get that first one. I kept hammering at the door with a couple of bogies or a double bogie that would ruin it at the end, sometimes my fault, sometimes not, then I holed a 9 iron on the 17th hole one day for an eagle, right after a double that I thought had taken me out of it. I gagged in for a par on the last hole for a 69, three under. Then I started doing it pretty often! I think I stopped freezing on the back side after a good front, or maybe didn't give up after a bad one. I've had more than one score in the 60s starting out with a double! It's all in your head, is all I can figure.

Not as a single, no. If a single joined US, as in the scenario being discussed, I can easily see asking if he wants to join the three of us in a team game, though, if he looks like he can play at all. If not, it wouldn't matter. (And the beer's a bit of an exaggeration...unless it's a scramble, when pounding down a few is pretty much de rigueur. Can't say I really drink beer on the course much. Too heavy, for one thing, and makes it difficult to deal with the bag even if I'm pushing. Beer drinking on the course is a hassle without a cart, and I don't like carts at all -- like not even playing.)

I figured you wouldn't mind, since it doesn't sound like you would really enjoy a friendly $5 Nassau with dots, automatics two down, a few beers, a few laughs. You'd rather listen to music over there by yourself than be sociable, which is fine with me. I'd just rather head back to the first tee (there's a cutover from three, so it isn't too far a walk), start over and see if I could find somebody that actually wanted to play with me, rather than watch you moving around the course, there in body but not mind, golfing along in your alternate reality like I wasn't even there. It would be stupid of me not to have the good sense (like you) to tune out the other people in the group. Maybe if everybody could wise up, plug in and follow your example, we could all play in absolute silence and nobody would have anything to complain about whatsoever and our games would blossom! Plus, as I implied (but perhaps too subtly), if you were to deign to speak with me, then I wouldn't have to listen to you just like you don't have to listen to me! Sorry. I guess these 58 years of playing the game have taken their toll on my -- uh -- security issue. It's a cruel game, golf. The victims are everywhere. Perhaps your strategy will make you strong and confidence, seraphically smiling down the fairway listening to the music of the spheroids.

Stupid people like me without the good sense to wear earplugs still have to suffer listening to you when the spirit moves you to communicate with your inferiors, though, right? I might be tempted to walk off the course after a few holes if you joined up with us on the first tee. I'm not a confrontational guy, so I probably wouldn't say anything, not even goodbye. You'd just wind up without me on the next tee and probably not even notice I was missing.

Actually, I hate it. Speaking as a musician, I don't see how anybody can listen to music all day, but that's beside the point. I can see PLAYING music all day, but I don't want to see people carrying guitars with them out there, either. One of the attractions of golf is escaping noise pollution for a while. If I want to listen to bad music, all I have to do is go to the grocery store. Hearing a radio on the course lowers to whole tone of the experience, even if it's somebody keeping up with a ballgame. And unless you're on call for work, I don't want to hear anybody talking on a cellphone, either. But then, I also hate golf carts, so I'm just an old curmudgeon. Feel free to ignore my grumbling.

I'd definitely settle for a regular scramble. I love scrambles. Meeting new people and playing with better players is something that seems to have gone missing these days. Seems people have their regular groups and don't show up looking to fit into a threesome or twosome like they once did. I see a lot of twosomes out there now, something that just wasn't permitted when I was younger, which more or less forced a situation where different skill levels would wind up playing together. And believe it or not, it was tough to get a foursome of hackers off the tee together. They'd actually split you up and put a decent player who was waiting for a tee slot in each group. They'd even split up groups who were playing too slow, especially if one could drop out and join a threesome a group or two behind. Better than just sending one player back to the clubhouse for sure. They were STRICT!

When I was in high school in the late 50s, in Savannah, GA, the municipal course Bacon Park had a Saturday Blitz. Tee times were set aside each Saturday from 11 until 1, with people just showing up to play and signing up. There were no reservations for the Blitz. Total free-for-all. It was either $1 or $2, can't remember which, and teams were pulled out of four hats. You signed up as an A,B,C or D player and names were put in the B,C, and D hats. The A players picked numbers out of one hat to determine tee time, then picked one name each out of the B-C-D hats and we were set to go! One side benefit was that there would be a wait for your turn to tee off if you weren't first, during which there was a 25c putting game on the practice green among the people waiting. A mini-tournament every Saturday! The putting games were as much fun as playing almost. Another benefit was that you got to play with real players. Somebody close to scratch would be the A player, there'd be a good high 70s-low 80s shooter, a middling high 80s-90s guy and a duffer. One of the regular A players in The Blitz was Kenny "The Hawk" Harrelson and I was on his team a few times. He played with the Savannah minor league baseball team, before he was called up to the majors and going on to be the RBI leader one year. HAMMERED the ball, as you might expect. He also wore a golf glove when he was at bat. There were basically two kinds of Blitzes and you didn't know which one would be on for the day until they made up their minds. It was always like a Nassau, with a front side, back side and 18 hole winner, dividing whatever money there was in the pot three ways. One was like a better-ball with four players, straight up medal play, but the other was more fun -- most birdies, an eagle counting for 2 birdies. You could get 4 birdies on a single hole! Very fun. If the D player could toss in a birdie it was definitely cool. You were also expected to pick up when you could no longer contribute, so play went very fast. We always left the regular play field teeing off behind us in the dust after the regular players teeing off earlier got done with their rounds. You could really haul if you were one of the last groups in The Blitz. Playing in The Blitz every Saturday was the most fun I ever had playing golf.

Really. I've never understood why baseball caps took over the golf game. NOBODY wore a baseball cap on the golf course when I started playing the game -- nobody. (Oh -- Bob Rosburg.) A baseball cap will keep the sun out of your eyes, but that's all. A nice straw or hemp hat or a light pith helmet make for perfect hats on the course, also keeping rain from running down the back of your neck. I much prefer Sabbatini's hat to Rickie Fowler's cartoon-like chapeau or Ricky Barnes' house painter imitation. (On a side note, I think the tour needs to have a rule that every player has to spend 10 minutes of his time on the range with no hat at all, to even out the players' tans. They don't let them wear shorts, they don't let them wear tank tops, why in the world do they permit those guys to take off their hats in public and scare people with their leprosy-like foreheads. Creepy.) Sabbatini has always seemed fairly okay in interviews. I haven't seen him throw any real fits out there, EXCEPT when his playing partners piss him off, but I'm not saying he hasn't. I've never seen the Pat Perez level of smoldering resentment and violent burning fury against the Golf Gods, at least.m He seems like a fairly nice, if edgy guy, that doesn't "suffer fools gladly", as they say. I'm not defending his treatment of his fellow competitors, but in every instance of which I'm aware, I was sort of on his side and could see how he could lose it. Slow play seems to be the thing that sets him off, or his fellow competitors' failure to observe some piece of etiquette or another. He sort of won me over in one tournament a few years back, playing with Jim Furyk. Furyk was doing that putting practice thing, off to the side of the green that drives me crazy just seeing it on TV. I've always wondered why nobody complains about that -- I know I could see him doing it out of my peripheral vision and would find it distracting, which is the point, ie, Furyk gives every indication that he does it on purpose. (I know that he doesn't, it just LOOKS that way to me.) Sabbatini backed off his putt and asked Furyk to go where he couldn't see him or stop practicing his stroke. It wasn't angry or anything, just a factual request, but you can always tell when Sabbatini is annoyed about something, can't you? Nothing else came of it.

I've been reading golf instruction books, listening to instructors, and teaching the game myself for over 50 years, starting with the old Snead and Tommy Armour books and Hogan's series in Sports Illustrated (what is now Five Lessons). The lexicon of golf was and is fine without the pseudo-scientific gibberish. With a masters in Radio Engineering, I probably find his diagrams and jargon less impressive than people who haven't been exposed to a bucketload of math, physics and chemistry. I don't care how many people vouch for it, I can find just as many to vouch for Power Pyramids and homeopathic remedies for cancer. True, a lot of people have built careers around it, but then people also believe in chiropractors to chiropractors' great delight and profit. I have followed this thread from the top and am still undissuaded. It looks like a hoax and I find nothing new in it except a blizzard of pointless, unproductive neologism, almost as if Kelly didn't know what the normal golf words were for the things he attempts to describe. Indeed, it's new "lexicon" that is the book's most egregious failure.

My game went seriously south during late July and early August. I started hitting the ball just horrible. I admit that I don't practice at all any more, just beat it around 9 holes at a time or play in scrambles, so it isn't surprising things would slip away, but I thought I'd pass on a few things that I had to "repair" to get my ball striking back in order. A. My plane had become to high. As Hogan suggests, the club should idealy be beneath the plane at the top. When I started at the ball, the club shaft would be out of alignment with the force of the turn back to the ball and I had to "flop" it back under to correct it back into the hitting area. Admittedly, people like Jim Furyk and Fred Couples have this under control, but it was a killer for me. B. I had started closing the clubface at the top. The automatic reaction to this was to open the clubface at the bottom -- unpredictably. I started hitting a lot of thin, weak fades. It's important (at least in my world) to keep the face aligned with the plane, so that the downswing has the heel leading and the toe trailing on plane. This also eliminates torque on the clubface/shaft, so that the clubface meets the ball square at impact. Fixing just these two things has completely restored my ball striking! I admit, desperation was setting in! I think these are fairly common errors (if you can really call them that), even among the lower handicappers. Everything is much more efficient on plane -- and easier!