This will probably be the death of me but I'm FINALLY good with how the driver is performing. Which is really good considering my upcoming golf schedule.

9/7 - FSGA fourball one-day event. Very casual so nothing too bad.

9/11-12 - FSGA Min-Am fourball. VERY competitive event. Considering my and my partner are in the 3 handicap range just having fun is the most important thing. Goal is to finish under par for the 36 holes.

9/17-18 - Two day Ryder-Cup style event against a sister club. We are defending our title this year. It's 9 holes shamble, 9 holes scramble, 18 holes fourball (if format is the same as last year).

9/29 - 10/2 - Guest at a member-guest event up in North Carolina.

10/9-10 - Club championship

Eh, handicap manipulation comes in many forms, but sometimes people just play better in competition. There's a guy at my club who absolutely kills any tournament with a net equivalent. He catches a lot of **** for it, but I play with him every week; his handicap is legit, but for whatever reason he just plays quite a bit better in competition.

I would put this in the "highly rare" occurrence, but it does happen. I would have fallen into this when I was a junior golfer.

Some people are just so blatant about it. A perfect example is one guy at the club whenever he doesn't make birdie (so no skin will be won) he picks up and says give me a double. He could be putting from 3 feet for par and will do it. I absolutely refuse to play golf with him.

It’s crazy to me that people try and manipulate their handicap,

For me and a lot of the people I play with they are trying to get as low as possible basically trying to get the best they can be. When I first started many years ago I got my handicap and I was a 28. I don’t know the exact amount of time but it was fairly quickly I was playing off 13 or 14 irrc. I actually hated playing in comps at my club the 1st season I played a full year, I won a lot of comps and ended up winning the order of merit at my club, I say I hated not because I didn’t like playing them I actually really enjoy that pressure and think I deal with it well, but I hated it because I felt like I was being a bandit and taking other people’s money even if it was small amounts, I’d rather they’d give the money to like 2nd place.

But it works both ways I tied 1st in the club champs to a guy off 28 and lost due to count back. 2nd round was of scratch so I had no chance.

Honestly though I’ve never played with a guy who was trying to tamper with his handicap, If I did I would flat out refuse to play with them again. If anything it’s more the other way, A lot of the times people wouldn’t even put in their card because they played bad.

Only 2 people I’ve flat out refused to play. 1 guy kept on missing putts and decided to put his putter into the greens multiple times and the other guy hit a bad tee shot on a hole and decided to throw his club backwards and it hit me in the shin, I ended up kicking the club into small lake, he wasn’t happy.

Some years ago several of us discovered that a particular member was blatantly filling out a new scorecard at a table in the bar before turning it in to the pro shop. It was before an annual club event and he was altering only his scores. It may have been going on for several years.

Confrontation went nowhere, so a few guys took it upon themselves to fish the cards out of the pro shop after the guy left for the day. The corrections of his scores may or may not have been completely accurate when the card was turned in again, but it did have his signature on it. Rinsed and repeated following each of his rounds until after the club event.

There are plenty of guys who are both subtle and skilled when it comes to sandbagging. At the club I belonged to for a long time one of the members was always a 12 handicap. Oh, if there weren't any events he might slide down to a 10, but when the lights went on he was a 12. And he never shot worse than 80 in an event. He never did anything you could call him on - nothing obvious. He might shoot 77 or 82 or 86 in a casual round but there was no blatant bagging.

That's crazy, can't say I've ever seen anything that bad.

Sandbagging is certainly easy to do in a lot of scenarios, mainly when you don't play in big groups and just play "casually." Almost every time I play I'm playing in "competitive" groups with a bit of money on the line for net scores; you wouldn't get away with sandbagging (some in this group go so far as to call you out if you slightly realign your ball on the green without re-marking it.....during a casual Sunday game).

My biggest pet peeve is people who are absolutely clueless about handicaps. They dont adjust handicaps for different sets of tees so the “seniors” always win.

FIGJAMs "****" talking on SM is so uncomfortably and cringe-ly forced and contrived that any luster I had for him winning at Kiawah is gone.

He's just such an awww-shucks tool.

He's been a tool since he was a kid running around in popped collars.

There is a guy at my course who is a notorious sandbagger. It's obvious, everyone hates him for it, and yet he has continued to do it for several years. Tonight after our 9 hole league my neighbor decided to confront him. It got heated with the sandbagger denying sandbagging and the other guy calling him a re-tard. Then they took it inside where people were eating and having beers and they got very close to throwing down. It added some excitement to the evening. I hate sandbaggers as much as anyone, but I'm never in a million years going to actually wage battle with them.

I've never actually seen a fight at a golf course, although I've seen some close calls like tonight. Does anyone have some good stories?

I've only seen 1 fight, Just outside the club house people were chilling and then 2 guys started to fight, 1 was probably around my age like 10 years ago so he'd had to be like 20 odd and the older guy had to be 55+ years old. Didn't last long and not sure what it was over.

Both full members and both got instantly banned.

I have just one story that I can think of in the past several years. It is a guy that lives on the course Bigger guy from what I was told. His unaccompanied kinds (I think they were teens) were taking full swings off of the practice green, not sure if they took a divot or not. So one of the guys from the cart barn goes to his house to let him know. Dude takes a run at the cart barn guy and tries to forearm shiver him to the ground. Of course cart barn guy can do nothing otherwise he is insta-fired.

Fast forward and he was in the bar being an ******* to the bartender and the waitress. Once of the guys I know (he is 60, great shape, ex-military) goes up to him and tells him to cut it out. Of course dude immediately wants to fight him. They step outside ready to rumble and the general manager was there and broke it up before fists flew.

AFAIK dude is still a member.

Increasing their opponents score artificially and potentially giving them more shots in the future??!!

Not saying they shouldn’t play by the rules if that’s what the group does but if they call what I would consider ticky tack rules they could never complain that someone’s handicap is then too high… also not saying you’re saying these guys complain about sandbagging.

I've witnessed a few--most originated in the bar though--including the pro beating the crap out of a member who insulted the bartender that the married pro was nailing at the time. Pro kept his job. Member apologized to the bartender who moved onto greener pastures several months later.

Saw one happen just outside the bar and pro shop that was over a poorly worded prop bet between two members. Didn't happen immediately on the course but only after one of the members was overserved in the bar after the round.

I've been in gin games in the bar/locker room at a couple of different clubs where things got so heated that I thought a fight was inevitable--including one where I was belittling my partner to no end over a terrible play. I deserved to get my ass whipped, but we both calmed down. None of those ever led to a fight, but the arguments were much more fierce than I ever witnessed on a course.

Witnessed one four-man fight long distance years ago at a member-guest IIRC on the 18th green. One guy hit his approach into the deep stuff left and steeply downhill from the green. Opponents abandoned the search after a reasonable time and as they were walking away, the player announced he had found his ball and pitched it up onto the green. When all four players were on the green, one of the opponents asked the guy what had happened to the second ball he had been carrying in his pocket all day. All hell broke loose!

there's an annual scramble in my area for the local chapter of the United Association of Plumbers and Steamfitters (Porter, it's held at Ghost Creek).
i've never been, but since i'm associated with the construction industry i hear stories every year about the absolute knock-down fistfights that happen in the parking lot after dinner.

Apparently the near fight last night was nothing. Today police shot and killed a murder suspect on a different golf course, but one that is very close to where I live.

https://www.newsbreak.com/news/23446...ek-golf-course

It seems like the problem is that the guy owns property on the course, so it's a tough task to ban him. I mean, if it went to court, the crime of swinging a golf club on a golf course would probably have a jury of random people pretty confused.

Eh, that's a good point. But with both that ticky tack rule and sandbagging, it's a call out, not actually doing something about it....i.e., they'll tell you to remark the ball, but won't call a penalty.

One of the old dudes DID try to give an opponent a penalty when he didn't take full relief from a cart path...the back of his heel was still on the path, lol. No one let him do it.

I might take it back about this guy....he shot net 61 in yesterday's stag. How often does a true 22 shoot an 83?

Is this coming up? I was invited to play in a scramble at Ghost next week.

I am sure the 22 will forget to enter that 83 which would probably knock 5-6 strokes off his handicap.

Holy ****! That would require me to shoot a 64 gross to tie him, or in other words 6 shots better than I ever have in my life.

11 shots under your handicap is almost impossible.

Why am I debating with morons on GolfWRX message boards?

link?

https://forums.golfwrx.com/topic/182...mment-23758389


Response I got after a guy told me (in a thread about Drive for Show Putt for Dough) that if a guy sprays his Driver he should just hit 4I off the tee:



the data you are talking about are just dots on a graph/spreadsheet. what i'm trying to explain to you is that despite the 'data' of most PROS...for the amateur you can throw a lot of it out the window.

talking about amateurs -- even if their driver is i dunno, 50-90y more than their 4i...it's safe to assume that if they are better with their irons, they'd be better off hitting the 4i off the tee instead of worrying/losing confidence of putting their driver or woods into trouble.

I love when people who spray their driver use a 4i off the tee and then either shank/top it 20yds or slice it into the woods anyway. Happens all the time.

Driver is the easiest club to hit so I'd think high-HC amateurs would be even better served by just using Driver.