lol this is awesome on one hand, and a little obnoxious on the other. I hope you yelled at them about the fact the bunkers were filled with sand rather than gold dust.

Oddly enough, I play a course that does the same thing (has the 1st tee be a corner of the practice green). Except the tees are never, ever there. Maybe during the club championship and that's it. Otherwise they're moved up with the blue tees on a regular tee box.

On an unrelated note, so pumped up about tomorrow, great sporting day with day 1 of the Open, British and the first epic stage of this year's Tour de France.

Just had a lesson. My hands were too low and I was too bent at the waist. The annoying thing is the lesson before that my hands were too high and I was standing too tall. The results of the first lesson lasted eight holes before i took the instruction too far.

Need your input golfers...

So I was supposed to play last weekend with my friend and a group on his wedding day. He picked up my sticks for me from my golf club.

I ended up not playing with them. I attend his wedding later in the day and he tells me that he let one of his friends (who shoots like 120+) use my clubs when they played.

I haven't checked the clubs for any sky-marks or damage, but I'm still pretty angry that he did this without my consent.

Am I out of line?

Yes and no.

Not really.. especially with the probability that your sticks cost a ton, etc etc.. i'd say something about it, but wouldn't go too far with it.

Yeah I plan to just tell him that I'd really appreciate it if he asked me in the future.

My attitude would be different if:

a.) I was friends with the guy who used my clubs
b.) The guy who borrowed them didn't shoot horribly and was a good player

I was pretty impressed with the tee boxes at Craig Ranch.

This. Well said.

I'd be disappointed. It sounds like your friend knows enough about golf to know that is a faux pas. Wouldn't let it ruin our friendship or whatever (esp. on his wedding day) but definitely let him know you were disappointed. Couldn't this other guy rent a set?

Assuming you have good, repeatable rhythm on your putting stroke, is it fair to say that putting distance (assume flat green) is extremely related to length of backstroke?

Obv. it's not proportionally related since I assume the lengthier your backstroke, the quicker your downstroke speed, and thus the further distance.

But is this understanding more or less correct?

My lag putting is atrocious so today I've been doing some putting drills in my house and literally laid a 36" ruler down on the carpet and have concentrated on 4", 6", 8", 12" backstrokes and have noticed my distances are extremely consistent. Way moreso than before. For each 1" of backstroke, the ball is rolling about 1'. This is on carpet with a blade putter. Obviously I'll have to re-gauge my distances on an actual green but for now I'm trying to see if the experiment works.

Thoughts?

**** no you aren't out of line.

1. Check clubs for damage.
2. If no damage, tell friend you're not happy about his decision & don't do it again.
3. Continue friendship.

In your shoes yeah I would be annoyed but I don't think it would reach friendship-wrecking levels.

The rhythm should be the same. Not sure if this is exactly right, but...on a metronome set at 85 beats per second you start and have impact on beat for all length putts. So a longer putt will have a longer stroke but a slightly faster pace so it stay on beat.
it was stupid of him to do and heckle him about it, but if no damage no biggie. If there is damage I would wear his ass out.

Yeah, I wasn't taking into account the fact that a longer backstroke fights "more" gravity with the pendulum swing so the period should be the same.. I guess.

But is my basic understanding that putting distance on a flat green, and with all else the same (grip sturdiness, stance, wind, rhythm etc.) is related to backstroke? If so, awesome. I keep trying this in my house and the results are incredibly accurate. This will make putting so much easier for me. Before I was lag putting based entirely on "feel" and wasn't getting mathematical with it at all. I happen to have a portable metronome I got for music. I'll set it to 85bpm and see how that feels.

I hate the question "what is your lowest score?"

My lowest score where? What qualifies as a full course? You have to draw the line somewhere? Does a 5500yd course with a rating of 68 count? I mean wtf man.

I say if it's par 70 or above, it counts.

To the club lending: **** I'd kill the guy. There are certain things that are sacred, and golf clubs are one of them. It used to tilt the **** out of me when people at the PGM school I went to would always want to hit everyone's clubs and would do so without asking a fair percentage of the time.


To the 1st tee on the putting green, Atlantic City Country Club is like that too. It was soooooooo weird, but it somehow instilled confidence in me.

Just use index. I'd just say "18.53 index, bro." At least he'd probably stop asking dumb questions.

I've been paired up with a lot of 50-65 year old dudes lately who think they are amazing golf teachers and want to tell you every little ****ing thing you are doing wrong. These guys have been playing 35 years and shoot 85-90, which is better than me but I'm relatively new. Leave me the **** alone. One day I was just crushing my driver and straight and this guy said twice to me "boy if my club face was that turned over at impact I'd have a huge hook out of bounds. I don't know how you do it." I'm thinking wtf... I don't know if what I am doing is wrong or not but I just don't want such thoughts to creep into my head. It's bad enough they want to teach you about the stuff you are still learning and working on but it's worse when you are puring a club and they still tell you something looks odd. Other than that I do enjoy shooting the **** with the older retired dudes. They are nice guys in general I just don't want the non-solicited advice. Logging 35 years of rounds doesn't make you some golf wizard.

/rant

you don't lend your girl to anyone
you don't lend your clubs to strangers

I would be mad if it happens to me

Yeah, don't let other people borrow my stuff without asking me first.

Especially not my golf clubs, and especially not if the guy borrowing them is a complete hack.

I agree with the others in this thread, don't ruin your friendship over this but definitely let him know that this is not ok. If your clubs have been damaged in any way I'd politely ask him to replace what he's broken.

Agreed.

How would you handle this situation?

Played a reasonably nice course this afternoon, (where I'd expect people to have some decency); at 8th hole while we're on the fairway about to play our approaches, group behind us on the elevated tee with a clear view of the fairway tees off with driver. I hear a crack, turn around to look, and the offender is calmly following his ball's flight which lands about 25 feet to my left. No fore or anything. Then on the green, another one in their group disturbingly shouts 'hurry up!' as I'm lining up for a money putt. We play hole 9, then wait for them tomake the turn. Guy asks, 'can we play through'? I say yes, but all you had to do was indicate a few holes back that you wanted to play through, you didn't have to try to hit me with your drive. He says, 'I didn't see you'. Obvious BS.

I was going to forgive him and let him play through, but after this blatant arrogance and snickering I start getting upset. This group is a disgrace to all golfers and to the sacred game of Golf itself. I pointed out that even if we were playing slowly, what they were doing was an infinitely greater breach of golf etiquette.

I'm probably going to join a private club next season...

It's your duty to let faster groups play through if there's open holes ahead of you. The group behind isn't supposed to "ask". If you were holding them up for numerous holes without showing any signs of letting them through, it's reasonable to have a target on your back.

We were not playing unreasonably slow. We let groups play through whenever necessary. And even if we were playing extremely slowly, what they did was infinitely worse. How can you justify their hideous behavior?