Mac62

5 years? You don't think somebody could be 100% natural and still make very substantial gains in their physique in 5 years??? Give any reasonably healthy young male 5 years and the proper training/nutrition and he could make Rory look like a 99-pound weakling by comparison. They could make very impressive changes even in one year without PEDs. Let's be real here - Rory has built a solid physique, but he's no 'roided out monster. He looks a bit less muscular than the average 20-something gym rat. To say he had to use PEDs to achieve that physique is a pretty ridiculous statement. If he's been juicing for five years and that's all he could accomplish, then I'd have to say his training and nutrition is crap. Let's be real again - Bubba Watson's 402 yard drive didn't "fly the green" - not by any stretch of a tall tale. It landed 30-40 yards short of the green and rolled through:

290 yards, you say??? Lookie here fellas, we got us a jin-u-wine PED user right smack here in the middle of us!!! Sumbody git a rope!

Genuinely curious here and not trying to be snarky or derisive - do you consider it odd for people who live in Denver to not root for/support the Broncos/Avalanche/Rockies/Nuggets? I ask just because I know people who live in, say, San Diego, who are rabid Chargers fans and consider you about one stop short of a full-on commie pinko if you don't paint your face blue and gold and cheer for the Bolts.

Funniest line in the whole thread so far. LOL.

I don't know where the "30% faster clubhead speed" that he's repeatedly thrown out there comes from, nor do I know if it's a valid stat or not - but I don't find it hard to believe that modern day golfers could generate considerably more speed and power. "Supplements" for golf in the olden days were whiskey, beer and cigarettes - nowadays it's creatine, protein drinks and energy bars. I think as a whole, golfers today are considerably more athletic than they were 50 years ago. They have structured, rigorous workout programs tailored to the sport, eat right and are generally more health/fitness conscious. Their clubs are far more technologically advanced and custom fit to them using launch monitors, etc. And I don't ever recall seeing Rory carry a drive 400 yards. According to the PGA stats, Dustin Johnson was the leading driver at the PGA Championship, with an average of 311.3 yds. That's a far cry from 400.

One of our local courses is in such terrible condition that I purposely aim for the bunkers because they're the best lie on the course!

It's fair because everybody on the course you're playing, or in your tournament field (if that's the case) are playing by the same rules and are affected the exact same way by them. How much more fair can it be? Sure there's a difference at professional tournaments with galleries and video cameras - and if you were playing in that field with those competitors, you'd have the same "advantage" they do. On the local muni when you're playing with other weekend warriors, you're also all on a level playing field. It's not like some of them have galleries, forecaddies and TV cameras and you don't. If the guy five holes ahead of you hits his ball into a pile of leaves and can't find it, he has to take stroke and distance just like you do. Same with the guy five holes behind you. All of your scores will be impacted the exact same way. How is that unfair? As you have admitted, you don't like the rule because you don't like how it affects your score. It affects everybody else's score the exact same way. You can argue that a better player isn't affected by it as much because he won't hit balls into those situations as often, but that's part of the game - and that's why they're better players with lower handicaps. It seems that a couple of the posters in this thread want to define "fairness" as "making sure that everybody can shoot as low a score as possible". To me, "fairness" means that everybody is playing by the same rules, which is exactly the case under the current rules.

So we've finally drilled down to the crux of the issue?

The more compelling question is, could every kid* who started playing golf as a youth and practiced/played for hours every day end up as a PGA Tour Pro? Or even a scratch golfer? My own theory is that the majority of them could at least become competent, maybe even pretty darn good, but there's that intangible "talent" that makes the difference between "pretty darn good" and "elite". I just don't believe that every person has unlimited potential in whatever field of athletic endeavor they dedicate themselves to, no matter how motivated or dedicated they are. I think that if you took 100 kids of the same age and put them all through the same coaching/practice/playing regimen, there would be many different levels of success. Maybe there would be one who reached PGA Tour Pro status (although I consider 1% as much too high an estimate), maybe a few would be Web.com/mini-tour material, there would definitely be some scratch golfers in there, but there would probably also be some who would never even reach single digits. It's my (unqualified) opinion that everybody has a different "ceiling" and that's where the talent (or lack thereof) manifests itself. (* when I say "every kid", of course I'm excluding those with ailments or physical/mental disabilities which would preclude them from learning/playing golf)

Funny thing is, Justin Rose was actually born in Johannesburg, South Africa, didn't move to England until he was 5 years old (yes, I had to Google it). My guess would be that, at least for US telecasts, they assume that Americans have an idea where Dallas, TX is - but they'd have no idea whatsoever where places like Hitchin, England or Silkeborg, Denmark or Lautoka, Fiji are. I doubt that many American viewers would even be able to point out Fiji or Denmark on a world map - but I'll bet they could point out Texas.

Every one of those photos have undergone extensive post-processing. Some of them also look like HDR images, which are multiple photos at different exposure values merged into one. The processing on several of them looks similar to the "Dave Hill technique", which renders a surreal, almost cartoonish image. No camera, no matter how much you spend or how good a photographer you are, will give you images like those straight out of the camera. Of course you have to start out with a very high-quality image to achieve such a finished product, but none of those photos would look nearly as spectacular without all the post-processing.

I generally don't quote Wikipedia as a source since people on the other side of the argument immediately jump to the claim that it can be edited by anybody. But since Wikipedia was brought up: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Slam_%28golf%29 There's also an article about the Grand Slam on Golfsmith's web site, in which they say: And once again, I'd fall back on the PGA's definition of Grand Slam in the glossary on their official website: http://www.pga.com/golf-instruction/instruction-feature/fundamentals/golf-glossary-and-golf-terms#g The revisionists who want to claim that Woods completed the Grand Slam will never be convinced otherwise, of course - but in my opinion there's ample evidence to show that, at least in the modern era, the Grand Slam is winning all four majors in a calendar year. Again, I don't feel that it diminishes his accomplishment - call it a "career Grand Slam" or a "Tiger Slam" or whatever else you want to call it, it's an impressive accomplishment. But it's not a "Grand Slam".

I'm going with Spieth just because he's shown a lot of consistency lately, but I wouldn't wager any money on it. Any of those three are perfectly capable of lighting it up on any given day.

Two thieves recently carjacked a truckload of Cialis. The police said they were searching for two hardened criminals.

The Cialis ads make me laugh because they're so ridiculous. They show couples painting benches, taking photographs in flower fields, going to the amusement park, jogging together, looking through his telescope, watching movies in the park - all things that have nothing to do with ED or what Cialis is for. Every time one of the commercials comes on I immediately start laughing and my wife rolls her eyes and leaves the room because she knows what's coming next...I start yelling "Hey honey, I've got a big ol' four-hour boner - let's go to the amusement park!" "Hey honey, I've got a woodie that a dog couldn't chew - let's go paint a bench in the front yard!" "Hey honey, I've got a soldier in my pants, his name is Major Wood - come out here and look at this spiral galaxy through my telescope!". Even their company logo is doing it wrong - it shows a man and a woman sitting in separate bathtubs holding hands. Now, what exactly are we going to accomplish in separate bathtubs??? Viagra is finally getting it right. Instead of showing dudes working alone in the print shop late at night, or a guy all alone on his sailboat out in the ocean, now they have good-looking women lying on beds in nighties purring at you about your erection and how Viagra could help. That makes a lot more sense than a cowboy with his truck and horse trailer stuck in the mud out in the middle of nowhere, lol!

Maybe the new one won't be as pedophile-y as Darrell Hammond's Colonel persona. He creeped me out big time. I just read a news article about the changeover. KFC basically said that they didn't care whether people saw the character negatively or positively - either way it was creating talk about the brand and that was what they were really after.

What's the slope percentage (negative or positive) between your ball and the green? Is the range finder a slope or non-slope version?

For me it is. 99% of my rounds are played with friends, and probably 90% of those are played with some combination of the same 5-6 guys. We enjoy the camaraderie as much as we enjoy the golf itself.

The above two quotes by people who are fanatical Eldrick followers literally made me LOL (and snort). Please. We've had Woods jammed down our throats for what, 15 years now? People slobbering all over him, telling us over and over and over again how great he is....even now when he's a complete non-factor, we still have to endure a media deluge every time he picks up a golf club, see him injected into every thread about anything having to do with golf, hear people gleefully proclaiming "He's back! He's BAAACK!!1!!!!" every time he hits a halfway decent shot. To say that you can't root for Spieth because of people di*k sucking him and going goo goo gah gah over him is so ironic that it's hilarious.

Strongly agree. I'm so sick of seeing that stupid commercial that I'd buy another brand of watch just to spite them. Thank goodness for DVRs, I watched most of it on delay just so I could fast forward through the stupid Omega ads over and over and over and.....

Some people take sporting events far too seriously. Others are rational enough not to attach such "importance" to grown men playing games. I get a chuckle out of people who fanatically root for their home NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL/etc. team. For the most part, these men don't come from your city - hell, many of them aren't even from your country . They're getting paid a lot of money to play a game and that team signed them, so that's where they are until the next best offer comes around. They're essentially mercenaries, going wherever the money takes them. The owner of that team gives a crap about your city to the extent that he can make lots and lots of money from marketing his team there...beyond that, he couldn't care less. If he thinks he can make more money elsewhere, you can bet he'll leave your city behind in a heartbeat and not lose a wink of sleep over it. As far as I'm concerned, root for whoever you please in the Ryder Cup, I'll not call you un-patriotic. It's just golf. It's just a game. This isn't a matter of national security or supremacy or anything so important. It's grown men in funny clothes hitting a little white ball around a field with oddly shaped sticks. The outcome means nothing to anybody except those who have attached far too much importance to it in their own minds. If Team Europe beats Team USA, it means nothing about the respective countries. It just means that a few men from a few countries in Europe played golf a little better than a few men in the USA for a few days. 99% of the people in the involved countries will have no idea that the event even took place.

It's been 114-115F here every day for about the past week. We teed off the other day at 11:00 am, it was already 107F and got to 115F by the time we were done. Nice thing about hot weather is that the courses are pretty much empty if you tee off any time after 7:30 am! Drink lots of water, keep an ice cold towel handy and wet your hat as often as you can. I'll take the summer heat over cold/snowy winters any time. We can still play golf during our "bad" weather, and I've never had to shovel sunshine!

Then why is it that when I do a Google search for "The Open", the first result is theopen.com, and the meta tags for the site read "The official site of the British Open "?

Unlike some, I can't (or rather maybe I should say 'won't') distinguish between the person on the field and the person off the field. If they're a general douchebag/thug/criminal off the field, I refuse to give them a pass and root for them on the field. Being talented and famous isn't an excuse to treat people like crap or behave as if you're above the law. I don't care if they're the greatest golfer/football player/whatever in the world, I'll cheer against them and have a big, satisfied smile on my face every time karma bites them in the ass. I'm impressed with what I've seen of Jordan Spieth so far. He seems like a humble, respectful guy who is also an enormously talented golfer. Sure, he has occasional outbursts on the course when he hits a bad shot - but about the worst I've heard from him is an "Are you kidding me?" or "That was stupid!". He's not dropping f-bombs. chewing his caddy out, throwing clubs, etc. It doesn't appear to me that he's "cultivating an image", it just looks like that's who he really is. We (meaning society in general) have become so accustomed to poor/anti-social behavior by athletes and celebrities that when we see one who appears to be a genuine, good person we're immediately skeptical and think they're putting up a phony front.