lamebums

I do have some knowledge of East Asian languages (mostly Chinese) but I can't tell what your avatar means.

I regrip if they get chewed up, lose their grippiness, or get extremely dirty and don't wash out. It varies from club to club, but whenever two or three become like that I'll have them redone. (I used to make a trip every time, but with gas prices and the nearest Golfworks being 25 miles away, I need to combine when possible.)

There's a lot of hard holes. But one that particularly stands out is #10 of The Willows. The course I'm a member of is actually three courses, 54 holes in all. It's 430 yards from the blues, straight as an arrow, about 150 to a fairway that slopes right to left almost the whole way. There's a line of trees high and on the right that discourage you from hanging the shot too far out to the right, however miss left and you've got nothing because you're down at the bottom of a 40 foot ravine. The wind can come from any direction, but you need a good drive to get within range of the green in two--it's across a valley and then up the next hill to the green, which is about level with the tee box (although probably higher than where you hit your second shot from). There's a large sand trap behind the green, but I can only recall ever being in there once. The green is the real killer--it's borderline unfair (I take that back. It is unfair.) Anything on the front right side of the green will roll off the front, even if you placed a ball there odds are it would roll off and halfway down the hill. The last place you want to be with a front right pin location is back right, because it's all downhill and if you either sink it or pull out your wedge again. The front left is almost as bad if the pin's up there. Anything left is bad, too--it slopes down towards a patch of cabbage. More often than not I double this hole, taking three or four shots to get down from 20 yards. And it happens to everybody I've played with. I only birdied this hole once, and that's when I chipped it in. It's rated as the #2 handicap hole. Edit: From the whites it's 420 yards, and from the red, 402. That is probably offset because the back tees are further up the hill than the others, so older guys and women don't get much of a break, either.

I don't get what people have against long irons. I have no problem getting my 3 iron up in the air (and I'm now looking for a matching 2 iron to replace my otherwise unused 52). If you can't swing fast enough to get the ball up in the air, I can understand a hybrid--but if and only if you're actually more confident standing over the ball with it, and can produce good results. Me, I always hook it, or hit a weak push that travels about 150. And I've topped them on numerous occasions--basically, I've lost all confidence with them. The day that clubmakers don't make the 3 iron anymore will be a sad day in the history of golf.

I find myself liking about half the people on this one. I'd like to see how far Cirbie makes it. But I'd like to see either Kim or Susan win it. (The former, as she'd have a good chance of making it on tour because of being able to hit a long ball, and the latter, if only because I'm a fan. ) I hate Lori. I think we all do.

I'm having a really hard time picturing everything in your bag.

I hacked and scaffled my way to a lousy 50 on the back nine today. Not a single penalty stroke, and not even bad contact with any of my shots--they were just all hacked off line. 3/7 fairways, 1/9 greens (does that help?). 23 putts didn't exactly help, either.

I'd be in the 5-10 in some categories, and 10-20 in others (Such as putting). But there's no column for blowup holes.

This, friends, is why I need to get my butt down to Land, Air, and Sea (army surplus store) and pick up a helmet for when I'm on the course during crowded times. But really, close call, there must have been some extraordinary luck out there. The strangest things do happen on the golf course...

That avatar is instantly recognizable. If I'd ever see it again, I'd probably think it was that guy.

Pretty much everything in my bag's going to stay the same. With gas prices and inflation of food at the store I'm going to be lucky just to be out on the course this year. Money permitting, I'm going to get a new putter. I can't play fast greens with the one I have--I can make everything inside of five feet, but take me out to eight or ten feet, and I'll miss 9 out of 10--and when I do, I blow it six feet past. That and I'm going to switch my 52 with a 2 iron if there's such a thing. I don't use the 52 (and it doesn't agree with me, anyway) and I just back off the PW for a 100 yard shot.

Unless it'll damage a club, I'll play it as it lies usually. Lift and clean if the ball's in some really nasty stuff, since it's still pretty muddy out there. Every so often I'll improve my lie--there's no point in playing a round if you're not going to have fun. And I don't care if other people do it as long as there isn't money on the line, and that they know they won't be able to do it in a real round.

That shouldn't be a problem, especially if you set it to lower difficulties. I created a guy on Easy and all I had to do was max out the power stat, and I was absolutely killing the field in tournaments by 20+ shots.

I'm not entirely sure. Pretty much regardless where the hosel is in relation to the rest of the clubface, if you push the club too far to the outside, it's going to hit the hosel anyway. However most offset clubs, when I do try them, are hook machines.

You could do that by having a personal house rule that you're only going to put as many points into each stat as seems comparable to your actual self. For example instead of maxing out power, leave it at 70, 80, or however far you hit the ball. Dent: Turn up the difficulty. The ball starts going sideways.

Scrambled my ass off for a 40 for nine holes. Everything worked except my driving (I found myself in the wrong fairway twice, in the trees three times...) and I couldn't sink a putt. Could have been under par, easily, the more I think about it. Would have, could have, should have.

I'm tempted to let Cirbie off for the bad chip. We've all done it a million times.

I'm debating whether having a lot of posts on a forum is a good or bad thing (I don't think anyone else, besides EB, who has more posts than I do.). After all, it means I'm on the computer and not actually on the golf course.

Walk up to the ball and make sure I'm aligned properly. (That involves pointing the club down the line) Set up and take a practice swing. I take however many practice swings until I get a good one. Then I fire away. Usually no more than 2 or 3 though, many times just one.

Tell me about slow play...I get out to the course at 3:00, fully expecting to have plenty of time to make a 6:00 interview with a reporter. (He was doing a piece on hypermiling, and I helped start the first ever Northern Kentucky hypermiler's group). Well what do you know but I get stuck behind eight hacks. At least they had the decency to hit from the men's tees, but all of their balls ended up in the ditch anyway. I'm on #5, these guys are on #6 which parallels and goes the other way (on the other side of a grove of trees). I pull-hook mine into the mush, and when I get up there, sure enough, at least two of them are in the same crap. I ended up waiting for them to hit, which meant hiding near the cart as they'd hit a dribbler, it'd ricochet off a tree, and go God knows where... This isn't a rant against bad golfers--it's against slow golfers. I've seen plenty of bad golfers who are fast (as well as slow), same with good golfers. I don't even consider myself good, but I hate slow play and I try to keep up the pace as courtesy to the guy behind me. As to that interview, I missed it by a long shot. I had to call another guy from the group (while on the course) to see if he could fill in for me (He did). I didn't even get home until 6:30.

I heard that back in the 1500's, Mary, Queen of Scots was stoned to death, executed. She was seen as not properly grieving for her husband's death because she was seen playing gowf shortly thereafter.

45 for nine holes of Fox Run today. Everything was clicking on all cylinders except for the driver (but I hit the 3 wood so far today it didn't matter) and the putter. But then again the greens had just been aerated so, yeah.

Here's what I posted in another thread--does this help?

I never buy them from a store at full price. I get mine from a guy who collects logo balls. (He has people hunt for lost balls at courses, he collects the logos and catalogues them all in his computer, and then lines his wall with them. He then sells the rest of them for $10 a bucket, and there's ~25 dozen in each bucket.) It's mostly crappy balls such as Top Flite, Pinnacle, and such. The good balls - Titleist, mostly - he sells for $2/dozen.

I find when there's a bunch of women on there it's more interesting, because some of them are cute. In fact that's why I quickly lost interest in the previous one, because it was all guys.