Mac62

I'm just the opposite - I avoid courses who push online bookings. I'd rather make a quick phone call than have to go online, create an account, give them all my personal information and pay in advance by credit card for the entire group - and then be stuck holding the tab if anybody bails out. If it was as simple as putting my last name into an open spot on an online tee sheet I'd gladly do it, but I don't like giving up all my personal info and e-mail address just to make a tee time, then being added to their spam e-mail list.

Since you're still active and reading the thread, I'll throw my .02 in. My first boat was a 19' open bow runabout with a 350 motor. A few years ago we upgraded to a 25' tri-toon (pontoon boat) with a 225 hp outboard motor. It's no speed demon, it'll do 40-42 mph - but it's plenty enough to get us where we're going, pull tubes/skiers, etc. My wife enjoys just cruising around on the lake and exploring new coves, floating and relaxing on a nice day with the music on, or going to one of the restaurants on the lake and having lunch/dinner. She even enjoys being pulled on a tube once in a while (as long as I don't go too fast or whip her around through boat wakes!). You don't get the performance/handling out of a pontoon that you do out of a v-hull boat (although there are some pretty fast pontoons out now!), but what you do get is comfort - a nice, smooth ride, plenty of room on the boat to stretch out, move around and have friends aboard, lots of storage space, etc. My wife absolutely hated the rough, bumpy ride of our old v-hull runabout, especially on choppy days. The pontoon rides like a Cadillac on all but the nastiest stuff. A very important 'wife' feature for me was shade - ours has double bimini tops, so almost the entire boat is in shade when I have them both open. It gets plenty hot here in the summer and she isn't a fan of being baked in the sun all day. She also hated having to climb over the bow to get on the boat when we were beached - she's short and had a real hard time with it. When we had the runabout, it was a real struggle to get her to come out on the boat, for all the reasons above. Even though she likes being on the lake, she didn't enjoy our boat at all and was usually a reluctant first mate. She enjoys the pontoon much more (as do I), and we spend a lot more (and more enjoyable!) time on the water now. For us, it's the best of all worlds - we can pull skiiers/tubes, fish from it, cruise/relax on it - heck, I've even camped/slept on it for a week out on the lake! As far as which brands are the most problem-free, most recent model boats are fairly trouble-free (the motors and outdrives are basically all the same, made by a handful of manufacturers, and all the newer motors are fuel-injected). With that said, "you get what you pay for" is more true on boats than it is on cars. Cheaper models usually won't be built as well, will use cheaper foam and upholstery in the seats, won't have through-hull bolted fittings, etc., all of which can mean it won't hold up as well over time and/or won't be as comfortable. You won't get any negative comments from me - I've heard all those clichés too, but I love owning a boat and wouldn't give it up for anything!

See post #25. I explained my position on it. Neighbors probably wouldn't mind if it was once a year on Thanksgiving. They may mind if you and your friends are going into their yard 20-30 times a day, every day of the year.

I can go out and have a good time tossing a football around on the beach or in a park with friends. I don't need to strap on full pads and a helmet, have referees, a marked field, goalposts and a scoreboard to enjoy that. I view scramble tournaments much the same way. Charity scrambles are more about making money for whatever cause than a "real" golf tournament. They allow you to buy string, mulligans, etc. because it raises more money for the charity, which is their main goal. If somebody is looking for a "real" golf tournament played (and scored) strictly by the rules, there are plenty of those out there too.

Twisting my words and taking them out of context doesn't add to the discussion either. I stand by what I said, in the context of the rest of my quote .

Pretty well sums it up for me. The guys doing the commercials look like idiots too. Not funny or amusing in the least. It was timely that I just found this thread, as the one with the doofus eating the leaves just came on a couple minutes ago and I was thinking how stupid it was.

Makes sense to me too. I don't care what the Rules say or don't say - if it even looks like my ball is on private property, whether it's marked or not, if there's any doubt I'm not playing it. Rules or no rules, common sense tells me that I don't play a stroke from somebody's back yard.

I hang around because I've won some nice things in the door prize drawings....an R11 driver, a golf bag, a set of Vokey wedges, gift certificates for free foursomes, etc. I couldn't care less about the final results and trophies, we know we're never in the running for those. I still enjoy a day outside on the golf course with friends. Many of the charity scrambles I've played in over the years were put on by my employer and/or related associations, so I knew many of the people there and there were always some who I hadn't seen in some time - so it's always like a reunion combined with a golf tournament. I don't care about winning in an event like that, I'm just there for the fun and the charitable donation going to a good cause.

I've played in a lot of charity scrambles over the last 28 years, and it's my observation that the winners are usually not the best golfers, they're the biggest liars. It's whoever has the biggest balls to come in and turn in a scorecard saying they shot something like -22 with a straight face. Yes, of course it's collusion between all four players - they're just outright lying on their scorecard. Why do they do it? Who knows? Ego, I guess - there's usually no money involved (or very little, anyway). Most of the charity scramble tournaments I've played in are drunkfests, and many of the groups play real loose with the rules (if they even know the rules in the first place). I play with the same group of guys almost every time - we usually come in somewhere between E and -5, and we know there's no chance of winning with that kind of score.

I'm not so crotchety that I'd be standing out front yelling "Get off my lawn!" when a kid occasionally came over to retrieve a football or whatever. The only difference I can see is that if you live in a non-golf neighborhood, it will probably only be an occasional occurrence; for some people who live on golf courses, it happens multiple times a day, every day. I can see where somebody would get tired of having people traipsing all over their property, digging in their shrubs/flowerbeds, etc. all the time. And although some (even most) may tread lightly, there are the self-centered jerks who have zero regard for anybody but themselves and will take it to the extreme. Believe it or not, I've seen guys climb fences with a ball retriever and pull their ball out of somebody's swimming pool! The other problem is the civil liability you can potentially face when somebody is on your property, whether they're there legally or not. Some drunk falls off your fence into your pool and drowns while trying to retrieve his precious 70-cent Top-Flite ball, you can be sued and possibly found liable (at least in some states). There have been cases where crooks have been bitten by homeowners' dogs while in the act of committing burglaries, sued the homeowners and won (true story!).

Guys like that are fun. We were playing a two-man scramble against a couple friends and they had a straight 2-footer left for par. Normally we'd give it to them, but my partner and I were so occupied looking at our next shot that neither of us ever said anything to them. By the time I looked up, they were lining up to putt it, so I figured "Let them putt it out". They both missed and took a bogey on the hole. One of the guys is very competitive and absolutely hates to lose, and he was so pissed he couldn't see straight. His game came completely unraveled after that because he was so twisted up and seething about it. They wouldn't even give us a two-inch putt for the rest of the round and he left immediately afterward without going up to the 19th hole for our traditional post-round beer. We still tease him about it and everybody knows that if you're playing against him, all it takes is something little to get him spun up and his game will go in the crapper.

Check page xiii in the Preface.

No, he wasn't correct unless there's some kind of local/course rule about it (which should be written on the score card). I've played some courses which have overhead power lines which potentially come into play, and have local rules stating that you play another ball without penalty if you hit them, but immovable/movable obstructions are usually considered part of the course. No freebies if you hit them.

Never. Won't even reach across the property line with a ball retriever, whether it's fenced or not. Maybe it comes from being an off-roader/dirt bike rider almost my entire life, where I'm an absolute stickler for staying off private property and out of closed areas. I've seen people climb fences into back yards to get their balls, or stroll onto peoples' property and dig their ball out of the flower bed or whatever. I've also seen some homeowners get mightily pissed about it, and it's hard for me to blame them. Just because they live next to a golf course doesn't mean their yard is part of the course and fair game for people to be tromping through, any more than living next to a park would give people the right to use their yard as part of the playground.

They pay taxes too, so technically they're self-employed.

My "major" is an annual two-day invitational tournament with a bunch of longtime friends/co-workers that we've played for 16 consecutive years and running. I never expect to win because we play straight up (gross scores) and there are a few single-digit HI's in the field, but it's my goal every year to shoot better than I did the year before.

The problem is, at least from the situation in the OP, it doesn't seem like the course (or the residents) have clearly defined what is back yard and what is part of the course. If it's just a 50-yard deep, wide open green belt with no OB markings and no obvious signs of it being a yard (signs, fences, swingsets, patio furniture, gazebos, etc.), I can see where there could be room for confusion. I would always err on the side of caution when it comes to possibly intruding on somebody's private property, but it seems to me that the course and/or homeowners should make the effort to clearly mark the boundary line to remove any doubt. I've only ever played one (very shoddy) course which had a similar issue. Every other course I've played, it was very clear where the course ended and adjoining back yards began. Not that there aren't still idiots who will climb fences and go into yards to retrieve their balls, but clearly marking it will keep most people out.

One more comment on Trump's Wall: Does he think the entire U.S. / Mexican border is flat and smooth like the lots he builds his hotels and casinos on? Has he ever seen the topography of the Sonoran Desert? The gullies, canyons, arroyos, jagged hills. mountains and rivers? Has he ever seen flash floods racing through washes in the desert, and the destruction they can wreak? That wall would be as porous as Swiss cheese before it was even completely built. Mister City Slicker needs to get out of his fine Italian leather chair behind his polished marble desk and go spend some time with the Border Patrol to actually see what the border looks like. Get those thousand-dollar loafers dirty in some garbage-strewn border canyons and maybe then he'd realize how silly his wall sounds to people who've been there and done that.

I'll bite on this one. I think the root cause is the angry victim mentality perpetuated by hatemongers like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan, and the inability to let go of something that ended over 150 years ago which no currently living person was ever directly affected by. It's the glorification of "Thug Life" and having criminals/gangsters as role models. It's the derision of being called an "Uncle Tom" or "house n***a" if one attempts to rise beyond the ghetto lifestyle. Limited opportunities or racial wage gaps? I don't see that in today's world of "Equal Employment Opportunity", where employers can be harshly sanctioned/fined for such actions. As far as Trump's comments on immigration - I don't believe that Mexico is "sending" anybody here (and all illegal immigrants aren't Mexican, either - many of them come from Central American countries such as Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua, etc.). The illegals come of their own accord, with hopes of making a better life here in the "land of opportunity". I don't agree that they're all gangbangers, rapists and crooks, but there are certainly those among them. Do a little research on Mara Salvatrucha/ MS-13. It's a viciously violent gang which has permeated the U.S. and is comprised mostly of Central Americans - Salvadorans in particular. Trump's proposed solution of "building a wall" is so childishly simplistic that it makes me wonder if he's ever even seen the Mexican border or done any research on illegal immigration/smuggling. Firstly, it would cost billions of dollars to build a wall which would have any appreciable effect on slowing the ingress of illegals; secondly, it would cost billions of dollars in constant upkeep. Thirdly, illegals/smugglers would tunnel under it, blast through it, fly over it, boat around it...he hasn't the slightest clue how sophisticated and resourceful they are. You don't just build a multi-billion dollar monstrosity of a wall, call it good and think you've solved the illegal immigration problem. I'd expect that kind of suggestion if we asked a bunch of third graders how we should stop illegal immigration, but it's disappointing coming from a grown man who has ambitions of being the President of our country. The way to make the biggest dent in the illegal immigration problem is to slap huge fines on any employer who employs them, and imprison the employers for repeated violations. Take away the jobs and you take away a large part of their reason for being here. But the truth is, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats want to do that, despite their empty rhetoric. Illegals are cheap labor and I don't believe for one second that only liberals/Democrats have illegals as nannies, landscapers, construction workers, housecleaners, cooks, dishwashers, field laborers, etc. Like it or not, they comprise a significant portion of the American workforce, and until that changes you're not going to stop them from coming here.

If you're looking for year or two old models that get a lot of positive reviews and are very forgiving, the Ping G20 or G25 are definitely worth looking at. If you go to Ping's website you can even do a quick online fitting for him and get an idea of which "color" you should look for (Ping irons are coded by color dots for different lie angles). For a driver, look for a Ping K15 - it's a very forgiving, easy to hit driver. If you Google these, you'll find many very positive reviews.

Hard to say without actually seeing it, but if it even remotely looks like it's somebody's back yard, I'm not even going in to get my ball - let alone playing a shot from there. But in a technical sense, your friend is correct - if there are no markings and no local rule, then he could play from there - now, whether he should or not is another (probably more important) matter. Goes back to the old saying, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should". Sounds to me like it should be marked better. If the whole thing isn't actually back yards, there should at least be OB stakes delineating the property lines and something on the score card about it. As to the last question, if the homeowners have "Private Property" or "No Trespassing" signs posted, then it's definitely verboten .

If given a choice between the two extremes, I'd rather watch a full-on birdie/eagle fest rather than see them getting their asses kicked all day on some tricked-up Disneyland course that punishes anything but an absolutely perfect shot. It's frustrating to me to watch 95% of the shots funneled off into hazards or ridiculous lies and them having to hack their way out of shin-high rough all weekend. I'd find it more enjoyable to watch them throwing darts at the pins and maybe see somebody shoot 25 under than to have the leader at 2 over by the end of the weekend. As long as it's a tight field and the leader isn't out front by 10 strokes on Sunday, it's still interesting golf.

1) 10-yard bump/chuck zone for DBs. 2) Field goal points: 10-25 yds. = 1 point. 25-40 yds = 2 points. 40-55 yds = 3 points. 55+ yds = 4 points. This rewards the increased skill of longer FGs and also introduces a strategic element into when you're going to attempt the kick.

I'm still waiting for you to explain how that's a 400-plus yard drive that "flew the green". You've made that assertion numerous times in this thread. The video is posted above for everybody to see. Or maybe it was on another hole?