Lord of the Links, The Fellowship of the Putter.

Yao could you Gary as a 9 iron and I wouldn't even be pissed.

I wonder what kind of distance a guy that size could produce if he had a solid game. He'd need an illegal length driver just to reach the ball.

Gary could give him a blow job standing up.

Because maybe it hasn't made it's way around to you yet:

Just tried that in my back yard. Couldn't even get close to catching the club.

not trying that without a med alert bracelet ^_^

Watching the Champions Tour in CA. If Colin Montgomerie gets any bigger, he's going to need a bra.

i start typing 'fat professional...' into google and it immediately auto-completes 'golfers'.

On the other hand, how many other sports have 50+ year olds still competing in a professional league?

Golf isn't as physically demanding as most other sports, but that's not a bad thing - golfers are extremely valued by companies selling life insurance because we all live longer and better than most. Fat isn't that bad if you're staying active while being fat. (At least that's what I tell myself...)

Made a penalty birdie today. ~500yd straight par5 with water on both sides if you're long enough. Slightly pull/draw my drive into left trees/hardpan, rolls all the way into the water 250yds out. Drop. Push my hybrid 2ft from right water but in hazard line. 95yds out, I hit 56* that's tracking the flag, but I have no view of green. I look up and down my line of shot while my playing partners are putting out and they find it nicely in the hole. Aww yeah

Thamel

the group i play with uses laterals for all OOB shots instead of going back to the previous spot and re-hitting for the sake of pace of play. i don't make many birdies, but i've lost count of the number of pars i've made while taking a penalty stroke using this method.

I wish this was the actual rule, cept for maybe pro events. Just make it a mandatory drop so you don't hit it out of someone's yard like you could do with a lateral.

That's pretty much how we play it unless the drive is so blatantly bad/OB that we want them to hit another one just for the comedy value.

and this time of year we envoke a 'leaf rule' for courses that don't have the horsepower to clean up leaves along the fairways or first cut. if it's deemed reasonable that you would have been able to find your ball during the 'normal' season but couldn't because you hit it into an area that is full of leaves, then you get a free drop w/out penalty in an appropriate spot.

Absolutely agree. Any 'go back and replay the shot'-rule should be thrown out for anyone but pro events and replaced with a rule that penalise you sufficiently, but doesn't make you walk back to the group behind you to play a shot, pissing off both them and your playing partners if you want to follow the rules.

Or maybe just make it a 2 stroke penalty with a drop.

That would fix the pace of play problem, but would be awfully harsh.

A couple years ago I was playing a tournament on a course I wasn't that familiar with. Our group hit a few balls offline during the day and one of the guys I was with knew the course really well and would be like, that's fine, no need to hit a provisional. And he was right every time. On 16 I hit a drive right and it goes over a hill. The guy just takes off down the fairway and says its fine. I'm like ok, he obviously knows.... Sure enough we get down there and there's a bunch of tall native grass over the hill and we couldn't find my ball. I had to go back to the tee where the group behind was waiting. That really sucked.....

I agree it's harsh, but you shouldn't hit it there. On the plus side it would take the issue of reteeing and hitting another one OB out of the question, but I have never done that

Long overdue since I play so much (103 rounds posted to GHIN this year so far, more including tournaments), I went to Edwin Watts to check the lofts and lies of my irons.

All of my lies from Titleist were still spot on (at 2* up). The lofts were off a bit.

4 iron - good
5 iron - good
6 iron - 1.5* strong
7 iron - good
8 iron - good
9 iron 1* strong
PW - 1* strong

Onto the Vokeys (which I had bent by the store).

50* - Lie was 0.5* too much upright, loft 1* strong
54* - Lie was 1* too flat, loft good
58* - Lie was good, loft was 1* too weak

I knew my 58* was too weak. used to be able to hit the club 95 yards and had lost some distance.

The biggest shock was the 6 iron. Wondering if it happened when I used it accidentaly in the desert this summer.

Everyone should get this done at some point. Since I buy so much stuff from there they are happy to do it for me for free.

Very impressive! I play a bunch and doubt that I have more than 50 or so.

I would bet that 50+ of my rounds are teeing off at 7:30a and being done before 10a. Also helps when I bring my clubs on the road with me too

I did the same a while ago scott. Definitely very important to get loft/lie double checked. My iron set was all over the place lie wise. My recent wedge set was very flat and the 52* was a 54*, something I could sense after one round on the course. Since the changes, my strike has improved so greatly

I don't know what today's standard allowances are, but I think I recall industry standard allowance was +/- 2 degrees which always seemed insane to me. You'd almost never see a club that far off but just the fact that a company could say "yeah, close enough" seemed weird.

This makes me want to either keep a GHIN next year or just keep better track of rounds because I am very curious how many rounds I play in a year. Also, on the loft/lie issue, yeah I'm going to check mine asap. I have my own vice that will allow me to check them so I can't believe I never have. Guess I just trusted them to be what the company says they are.