I've never been to Augusta and always wanted to go but its never worked out, so I decided this year I'm just going to make it happen. Have any of you ever bought tickets on Stubhub? If so, do you know if they get cheaper or more expensive as you get closer to April? I'm planning to do the Monday / Tuesday practice rounds.

I'm going to get tickets for my first Open this year - Royal Birkdale is pretty close to where I live, so I'm planning to visit on Wednesday.

That sounds pretty awesome. Unfortunately I live really far from Augusta....

I won tickets in the lottery both times I went, so no experience with StubHub. Just went and looked, holy ****. I knew that tournament badges are ridiculously expensive, had no idea that practice round tickets would be that much.

Yeah, that's why I'm wondering whether the price is going to drop in half or double

You would be doing extremely good to get Monday tix under $400 or so, most are asking $500. For the Tuesday practice round, if you can get them for below $800, that's a good number. The tix won't move too much up or down until 2-3 days before each practice or tournament and it's all weather dependent.

You'll get a paper ticket with a bar code on it, buy a $5 clear plastic lanyard outside the gates and keep it in there all day around your neck. When you leave for the day, the security guards will ask if you'll be coming back in, ALWAYS say yes! They will then scan your ticket for re-entry. Once you're outside the gates, you'll be bombarded with people looking to buy your ticket for the rest of the day, even if your leaving very late, like 5:30 or so.

You can get a minimum of $100 for each ticket after you leave every day, no matter how late. I've sold two Tuesday tix at 2:30 in the afternoon for $450 each (paid $950 each the day before). There's a very strict policy of no ticket selling within a half mile of the grounds, some do it right across the street but it's just as easy to go down a few blocks where all the ticket sellers are and get rid of them to regular buyers, not the resellers.

Had a demo day for the new Callaway GBB Epic at the course today. Results:



That swing was by far the best of the bunch. I was honestly not all that impressed with the club. My original plan was to swing the Sub-Zero (lower spinning) version of the club but they don't have them available until April at the earliest according to the rep.

Guess I will stick with Titleist.

Thanks for the info!

You'll be sick to hear what that tickets are priced at for at Royal Birkdale - although they won't be selling food and drinks quite as cheap lol!

Wednesday practice day is £25, competition days are £55 to just enter and walk - 18th green seat tickets are/were from £205 but are sold out already!

I was a bit worried that all of the tickets for the main day 18th hole tickets had already gone, and I know that the Wednesday practice day is very popular, so I made sure I got my tickets right now. My mate will be told about his purchase when we play winter league on Saturday lol!

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Dear Sir,

We are delighted to confirm receipt of your payment for the booking xxxxxx on 19 January 2017. You can review the details of your purchase in your personal account.

Your tickets will be sent out closer to the event to the following address :

xxxxxxxx

If you have not received your tickets two weeks before the event, please contact us at tickets@theopen.com immediately.

.....

To keep up to date with our latest news, download The Open App, follow us on Twitter @TheOpen and like The Open on Facebook.

Thank you for your purchase and we look forward to welcoming you to Royal Birkdale from 16th – 23rd July 2017 for The 146th Open.

The Open Ticket Office

The R&A

St Andrews

Fife

KY16 9JD

tickets@theopen.com

+44 (0)1334 460 010

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Anyone have any advice on methods or timing to buy tickets for Monday practice round for the Masters?

I plan to just buy them on stubhub closer to the event but wasn't sure if that was best.

scottc25, nice club speed!

That's some sick ball speed. My goal this year is to get mine above 160.

TYTY

The old hockey player in me can still swing the club. At 43yo it's only going to get slower though.

Looking at that pic I had to go back and see what my numbers were (in particular the ball speed) with the Titleist 917 but damn if I didn't save it. I am guessing the Callaway was about 2 mph higher though, and that wasn't even a center hit as the smash factor shows.

For those of you who've been lucky enough to go to the Masters, I'd like your advice on travel and getting the most out of our 1 lottery ticket day.

We only won tickets for the Monday practice round day.

We're staying at an awesome airbnb that's only a 5 minute walk from the course, staying Sunday/Monday night, so no real need for a rental car while we're in town (can uber if need be).

So the options are fly into Atlanta or savannah and drive in, or pay extra to fly into Augusta, thoughts? I figure foregoing the rental car cost would balance out the extra flight cost of getting to Augusta. Thoughts if you've done the trip? Flying out of PDX if that changes anything.

For the day of, a lot of people recommend buying a collapsible chair when you get there and just plop it down, but I don't know that there will be enough on course action on Monday to make that worth it or not. What should our game plan be? I'm assuming Monday will be a lot of range/short game work and less course work, but I'm not sure.

Any advice appreciated!

No help on the flying part since I've always driven.

As for day of, my personal opinion is that there really isn't any need to stake out a chair spot on Monday -- though I've only gone on Tuesday and Wednesday -- since it will not be that crowded. There should be plenty of groups to follow, though obviously not everyone will be in town and wanting to play a full round. Our game plan for the first visit was to be sure to see the whole course and along the way pick out a couple of spots that offer great views, preferably of multiple holes, for when we wanted to chill for a bit.

It's hard to have a bad time unless you overthink/overplan/overexpect. Go with the flow and you'll have a blast. We still talk about the most random **** -- Stewart Cink hitting an awful shot and having a back and forth with a guy in the gallery, the greenkeeper blowing off a green in between groups because a few bits of pine straw were coming down, the incredible short game of a random Scandi hitting shots over a bunker, etc etc

a buddy that's part of my annual January Bandon group hit me up a few days ago looking for an 8th to fill out his trip the second week of March. I'm really excited because typically i have to wait a year between trips and this one is just a month away. 6 rounds in 4 days. obviously i had no say in the scheduling of courses, but it looks like we'll be playing:

Bandon
Trails/Old Mac
Pacific/Bandon
Bandon

i'd prefer to sub Pacific for Bandon at least twice (or play the Preserve as a reroute), but i can't complain. Going to be something like $1,200 for 6 rounds and 3 nights at the lodge ($135/70 for first round/reroute and $160/night for a dune single at the lodge). The January rates i'm used to paying are $85/round and $100 a night splitting a chrome lake double. i can't imagine paying $1k more peak season over the cost of this 4 day March trip.

streaming again. makes me concentrate more thinking someone is watching

https://www.twitch.tv/thinman2112

Very nice. A little over a month away for me. I will be there starting the 21st of March.

I will be in Salinas the week before but still can't justify the $500 for Pebble Beach. I'm in Orange county after that and will be playing Coto de Caza again. Also think I'm going to take a day and drive down to Carlsbad and check out the Scotty Cameron studio.

Anyone ever play La Costa? I have a free greens fee offer there if I want to stop and play.

Oh yeah, and to top all of that, I have a friend that knows the pro at Shadow Creek so I might be playing that one gratis in April.

how funny....i was born in Salinas and that's the last place i lived before moving to Oregon.
you might consider bayonet and/or black horse in the monterey bay area.
http://www.bayonetblackhorse.com/clu....asp?NS=PUBLIC
i have not played them (mainly because when i last lived in Salinas the Ft. Ord military base was still in operation and these two courses were for the officers), but i've heard really good things.

you may also consider Pasatiempo up in Santa Cruz, an Alister MacKenzie design. i believe it is currently semi-private and they have some tee times available to the public each day.

Very nice. I did the Monday practice round in '07 and it was one of my favorite trips, ever. From what I can recall flying into Augusta was cost prohibitive by quite a bit, so we just flew into Atlanta and rented a car (part of that is it's so cheap to get to Atlanta). I preferred that anyway since I just like having a car around, just in case.

The plop-down vs. follow can be a heated debate; for golf tournaments generally I like to split the middle and follow a group or two in the morning and plop down in the afternoon. At Augusta we followed Tiger for a while, then the Spanish contingent (the Mechanic was a blast to watch), then hung out at 16 and 15 for most of the afternoon (16 is fun for the skipping across the pond).

Mileage varies on this one, but I had a blast at Tbonz Steakhouse, which is kind of the 19th hole for non-players associated with the tournament, e.g., caddies, media, celebs. It was packed, even on the Sunday night we went. Great atmosphere. More sperry topsiders in one place than you'll see in your lifetime.

Aside: I'm out at Riverside at the end of this month, so we should tee it up.

I can't blame you, but for what it's worth this was my thought before actually playing Pebble. I didn't pay for it when I played, but after doing so I would 100% pay the $500 again. Probably helps that I had essentially the most perfect weather imaginable the day I played.

Good advice, thanks.

Yea, let's play sometime

As luck would have it I just put in a bid for a freelance writing gig that would net me $4k over the next 3 weeks. If I get the job I will FOR SURE try and play Pebble when I am out there.

Probably a stupid question but here goes

Going on a golfing holiday with some friends in the summer and want to take my own bag and clubs rather than hire out there. Whats the best way to get clubs there without taking major damage or losses?

http://i.imgur.com/Daj6i8M.jpg

^ this is my bag, is it possible to buy attachable hoods for these sort of bags? or am i better off buying something like this?

http://www.americangolf.co.uk/gps-ba...antimage=black