i think it is ego............... it feels emasculating to many, including me, to have my longest iron a 7 iron...... tons and tons of LPGA players have 5-6 hybrids/FW in their bag (i think)...........

one thing i do find is hit my 4 iron very straight even if it doesn't go high........ and of course, i can kill the 4 iron off plastic mats. grass not so much.

FW/hybrids/longer/long irons are a bit tricky... i find they each have different strengths/weakness (fairway, rough, tee, high, straight etc... not to mention distances) ...... but if push came to shove, i could probably play irons down 6i and just the 5w amongst FW/hybrids and do ok. there's overthink on all this as well, i find.

ego is funny.. i used to play at a tennis club..... so many decent players (12 handicap equiv. in golf) played federer's old racquet. of course, federer ditched it for larger head because he couldn't hit it consistently enough.

NTN, thx for the insight.

i didn't mean to suggest LPGA women hit up on driver and PGA players and me hit down on driver........

i do hit down on driver but it's more like i'm fighting the driver pounding into the grass

is it easy to hit up on driver and get a consistent hit without hitting alot of practice balls? teeing it relatively low hitting it more like a 3W is good for consistently but not distance.... i played with a mini-tour player who hit 15 buckets day and wants to hit more....... i find it hard to find the contact point. i do think most of us high handicappers aren't patient enough in making changes. can't go back to wrong way so easily.

it is interesting......... LPGA and PGA driver vs. 3 wood AoA difference = 3.9 and 1.6 respectively.. and then LPGA/PGA 3 wood vs. 9 iron differences are 2.2 and 1.8 degree respectively.............. LPGA do not hit driver remotely like their other clubs by that definition

This is completely accurate.

It's insanely difficult to hit up on the ball and also keep the spin off. It's very difficult for me to do as well as I'd like much of the time. When I do it correctly the ball goes stupid far. Otherwise it's 20 yards shorter or more.

So yeah, this is hard.

Eh, it's more math than anything. Except for driver, every club in the bag must be struck with a negative angle of attack because the ball is sitting on the ground. Doesn't matter if you're male, female, or gender neutral. Simple physics. So with driver, if an LPGA pro averages +3 and a PGA pro averages -1, what do you think the differences between driver and fairway wood is going to look like?

Was bored while watching hockey and took a look at my GHIN. Take a guess on how many rounds I have posted so far this year?

115

98

Must've been the Avalanche game.

120

The total currently sits at 141. I know there are about 3 duplicate entries in there so let's go with 138.

On a related totals note:

Birdies: 282
Eagles: 7
Albatross: 1

Nice - and averaging more than 2 birdies/better per round is awesome.

So far for me (slow year with Covid and extended tax deadline) I'm at 16 rounds.

1 Eagle, 17 birdies & 126 pars which I include only as it totals 144 pars/better meaning I've made par/better on exactly 50% of the holes I've played this year.

Are y'all able to find those stats compiled easily on the GHIN site? I can't seem to, just the percentages.

I keep a spreadsheet for my home courses, and then just summarize between par 3s, 4s, and 5s for all other courses.

I keep a database as well - going back to 2012 now which is kind of fun

"Use the bounce." Since I started playing a lot more these last 2 months, I found my short game to be absolutely terrible, except for my bunker play. Practice wasn't showing any results on course, until I watched a basic 5 min video on using bounce properly. Practiced it a good amount and it just felt right

What a breakthrough. I no longer feel like I'm "settling for bogey" if I miss the green. Regularly getting within 6ft, and slight duffed chips not being utter disasters has saved me strokes and my sanity

thanks for sharing the video, it was very insightful and i'm sure the rest of us learned a lot from it that we can apply to our games!

I did say "a video" not "this video", but here's the one I saw

thanks for video. i'll watch later but i fell like i've watched this video 100x and i still can't get better. my misses are chunks and skulls, have been for years.

i played 9 last night. shot 47. on 4 holes i chipped twice.

incredibly frustrating.

Just found out Bryson's fitness coach is located in Denver. Hmmm.....

Anyone got any more decent vids like the one above? My game from 50 yards in is genuinely horrific.

When I'm doing it just right, I get the feeling that I'm catching it just slightly heavy/fat, but the ball still ends up near the same as if I'm picking it clean. The club just sort of comes through the hitting area on its own, and leaves a ~3 inch long strip of lightly disturbed grass, but no divot. The slight heavy feeling & 3 inch "glide path" the club takes also show me that I likely didn't get too handsy with the chip.

I actually do little practice chip swings on carpet. I try to do the same thing as the video suggests, contacting the ground 0.5-1 inches behind where my address point is. Carpet & rugs give a pretty good visual response

Thanks Scott. Booker, I agree with you about a Country Club maybe being a better deal and also playing some FSGA events a few times a month like Scott suggests. I have a spreadsheet going and have costs for most of the country clubs in the Clearwater area (maybe all of them), one in Bradenton and a few in Tampa. It looks like there is more golf near Clearwater, than Bradenton and definitely more private country clubs. That's kind of a shame because we like the Bradenton area a little more.

Next week I'll look at senior rates in the area at various clubs and will have a better idea of how things really compare. I can send you a message with the numbers I found or email you the spreadsheet to look at. I also have the list of fees for just about everything for all the country clubs in the area if you would like to see that.

I'm pretty sold on the Country Club, however, even if it is a little cheaper to play à la carte, especially when you consider ClubCorp where you can play hundreds of courses throughout the country for just a cart fee if you are a member of a ClubCorp club.

NTN, thank you. my driving was much better last time i was on the course. partially due to you........ i think it was mostly having confidence with the ball way up in the stance and sometimes teed high.

it's funny you mentioned keeping spin off the ball when people roll 40-50 yards up to my ball that doesn't roll much (probably assumes a bit of moisture in ground)..... i hit a complete wormburner and it went really really far. that can't be "keeping spin off the ball". is that shot replicatable?

i usually track my rounds analytically.... wasted strokes last time looked like this:

driver 2 shots
fw to mid-iron 1 shot
shorter irons 1.5
wedges 11 shots
putting 2 shots
course management 1 shots....

so i see a huge problem with wedges (chunking wedges).. i will be working on this...

follow-on questions/comments:

1) what is a good mat for hitting pitches/chips/short irons? i have a good net... i want to replicate chunked wedges to some degree. they won't be chunked with a mat but i want feedback that it wouldn't be a good shot.

2) with this question, bear in mind i live in very expensive land-locked city..... would there be a feasible business model for a commericial short game practice area with nets meaning shots don't go more than 10 yards?.. i don't need to see how my shorter irons/wedges fly. definitely i need to see how my driver flies.... if it's not clear, the whole idea is access to grass tees. in a normal year, i think there'd be 2 options for grass tees for me within 30 miles (both over 15 miles) and i'd only be certain days/hours

a rich friend of mine mentioned this to me. i know some people who have done social memberships for $2k or more per year just for practice facilities. they would pay $5-6k for golf membership per year and $80k initiation (vs. $2k initiation for social)

one of the big local country clubs is tearing up 3 of its 18 holes, doing 2 years of renovation just to get a bigger full shot practice area. they could maybe build a 2nd and 3rd level but my sense is it's grass tees....... this country club is doing this already having a putting green, nice chip/pitch green and a full driving range (not many spots though. and maybe they can't build multi-decker or it'd be eyesore........

to some degree, my idea simply consists of short grass, some rough and some nets... and some very small greens....... i'm 3 for 3 on people that would pay $150/mo for this........ maybe it's just covid though as i'd have close, marginally ok prospects for chip/pitch IF covid hadn't happened.

Starting to have what could be considered a good problem lately. My Sunday game is almost always a net team game, something like low 2 net of 4. Handicap is currently a 1.5 so I get 1 shot. I have beaten my handicap by 1 shot (72) a total of 6 times this year. I have beaten it by 2 shots (71) twice and 3 shots (70) once.

In my lifetime I have beaten my current handicap by at least 2 a grand total of 4 times (2 70s, 2 71s). Consistent, yet. Net money games, no good.

tl/dr - I need to find a better Sunday game, or start playing side games within my current group.

how do you guys play that low 2 net of 4 game?

I think it means 4 man teams, and the score for each hole is the 2 best net scores. Sort of like 2 man best ball but double everything. So if 2 guys make net par on a par 4 and nobody makes better, the team gets an 8