Cory O

I’m just checking purpleair to find areas that aren’t as bad smoke wise and still playing. Wear my mask and sunglasses and it’s been okay. Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

I can wind up with similar issues off the tee. Couple of things I notice is that your feet appear closed to the target line (pointed right). Makes sense, but counterintuitively, this can actually encourage the pull. Try opening up the feet to the target line a bit. Second, when I’m getting pull-hooky, I try to focus on keeping that driver head scraping the turf as long as possible to start my backswing to keep from getting too far inside. Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

Erik Anders Lang posted his Winged Foot round on YouTube for his Break 90 series of playing the championship courses with the pro setup. Recommend it to show what that course does to a good “normal” golfer. Search Random Golf Club if you haven’t watched his stuff before. Sent from my iPhone using MyGolfSpy

Welcome! I just read an article today about Corica Park South and all the remodeling they did (and are doing for the North). Would love to make it up there sometime (I'm in LA).

Hey all, So based on another thread on the forum, I'm getting ready to pull the trigger on a ClubCorp Play Away membership. $60 a month gets you two rounds per month at their courses Sun-Fri after 12pm (plus some other benefits). Catch is that you can only book more than 100 miles from your home. Fortunately, Palm Springs and San Diego have several courses in the program and are just over 100 miles from me in Los Angeles, so very much day-tripable in my opinion. (Honestly strikes me as too good to be true, so if anyone has any experience with Play Away, I'd also love to hear it). I'm curious if anyone else in the area would be interested in also joining and forming a regular game, for example one or two Sunday afternoons a month meet up to play at places like Mission Hills out in Palm Springs or Shadowridge in San Diego. Sound good to anyone?

Just looking into it based on this thread. I'm checking with ClubCorp to see if the Palm Desert and San Diego clubs are playable as complementary rounds for me. If they are, it would seem like a great deal for me as I can always sneak out for a Sunday afternoon round twice a month (even if it is a 1.5 hour drive) and that would wind up only being $30 a round. If my family could use the club facilities while I play (like the pool) that would be even better.

Every club I own now is either new or new-to-me outside of a putter and a Square Strike Wedge. Starting From the top: Drivers: Tommy Armour Atomic, GigaGolf GXz (with a steel shaft. I wanted to try it), Honma TW 747 460 on the way (I thought I lowballed a bid on eBay since it was new, but won it) Woods: GigaGolf GXz 15* (steel shaft), GigaGolf TRX (graphite) on the way Hybrids: 15* F-35 Heater (eBay club caught my curiousity), GigaGolf GXz 17* and 23* (steel shafts), GigaGolf TRX 18* and 22* on the way (graphite, wanted better gaping at the top) Irons: GigaGolf TRX Power Slot 5-PW Wedges: GigaGolf TRX 6.0 50*,55*,60* and Cleveland CG11 46*, 54* and CG15 60* (wanted to try a "scoring wedge" style PW) Putter: Ray Cook M1 mallet Fortunately, I bargain shop and (as you can see) play the non-big brand GigaGolf primarily. All in I'm still well south of $1000 on everything, but still I think I'm done for a bit. Buying clubs gets addictive.

I tried the free version with low expectations and it honestly didn't even meet those. As much as I would love for my phone to be able to be a launch monitor, I think it is simply impossible with current technology. An iPhone camera shoots at 60 frames per second, but a golf ball is going to be moving over 150 feet per second (that's only around 100mph ball speed). The viewing area of the phone camera with how Shot Vision recommends is probably only about five feet, so even that slow ball is passing through in about 1/30th of a second, or at best 2 frames. Shot Vision is trying to base EVERYTHING on the difference captured in those two frames. That is never going to give accurate enough info to be usable IMO. Cheap(ish) launch monitors use doppler radar to collect data. High speed camera based monitors are things like the GC Quad which cost $10k+. I know that my iPhone can't really emulate that.

If I could be in East Tennessee, but still get my Los Angeles salary, I'd be half-tempted (but only half tempted, I do really love living in SoCal. I'm a transplant here, but don't see myself ever going anywhere else).

Wish I could find somewhere with unlimited golf for $245. Heck, I'd be all in on $245 a month and consider it a steal.

Played a normal 18 this morning before work (which was at my office, a rarity in these COVID times) and had time after I left, so I stopped off to play a quick 9 at a track I hadn’t been at for a while. This muni (Altadena, ran by LA county, not the city) is probably the most “unique” course I play. It’s an almost flat nine holes, not particularly well maintained (honestly, it’s a total goat track), but still fun for a few reasons. First, there are a bunch of short par 4’s. With the half dirt packed fairways giving extra roll, my Herculean 260 yard drives can almost get to the green (did it three times today). Unlike most little 9 hole tracks though, this course also has a true par 5, 510 yards from the tips. After that you play essentially the same hole, but in reverse and a little shorter at 460. Oh, but that 460 is a Par 4 (bogey today). Then you get a 190 yard Par 3 with a tall tree literally right between you and the green, 150 out from the tee. Can’t go over it, absolutely have to go around it, draw or fade (I over-drew the ball, caught the tree, another bogey). Then it’s another short 4 and normal 3 until you get to the closing 9th. 440 yard....Par 5 (they REALLY wanted it to be a par 36 course I guess). My drive caught a branch at around 220 and I still almost got home in the 2. So Altadena isn’t going to get into the Golf Digest top 100 any time soon, but still I like it because it’s cheap and unlike anywhere else I play. So how about you all? What “unique” courses have you played?

Don't let that fitter put you into anything but Beres 5 star

Interesting concept and if I happen to find one out on the course, I'll certainly give it a try to see what it's like. That said, I very much doubt the performance claims because if there was any sort of competitive advantage to a larger-sized, still conforming ball, then every manufacturer would be making and heavily marketing them.

Got out for a pre-work round this morning. Was tight on the front nine and not a lot of good shots. Mood was really killed by one of the players I got paired with, poor shots followed by streams of curses and club tosses. By the back 9 though, I loosened up physically and he loosened up mentally, playing the entire back side with his 5 iron and performing a lot better for it! I went 42-37 for a respectable 79 total.

The only conceivable thing I can think of is if the super cheap ball doesn’t have good quality control, you could wind up with a not perfectly round ball or one where the size/weight is different and that could have an impact on putt performance (probably a very rare situation). Outside of that, since putting has such a low impact force, the ball variables like compression and cover friction really wouldn’t come into play, just the subjective “sound and feel”. Of course those subjective things being super important to a lot of players.

Agreed that practice and improving technique is always point one, but outside of that, were you fit into your current fairway woods or buy them off the rack? I'd say if you are looking to purchase something else, a professional fitting will really be key as a good one can find the right club for your swing profile. Won't make it so you don't need to put a good swing on the ball, but at least you won't wind up with a wood that expects you to hit down on it when that's not your game.

The system itself doesn't really know about the weather. It just assumes that enough scores are coming in "too high" or "too low" then SOMETHING is up (weather being an easy example) and will adjust accordingly. I still would like for the USGA (once it has a couple of years worth of play in the new system) to look at courses that are consistently playing one direction or the other and use that as data for possible rating adjustments (for example, if my course that triggered me to post this thread almost always has a -1 PCC adjustment, then they should probably just take a stroke off the rating). That way we're not relying just on the PCC to "fix" things, but possibly getting stuck if not enough scores are posted.

That's one of the big features of the new WHS - the Playing Conditions Calculation (PCC). As long as there are enough scores submitted that day for the course to qualify, the PCC will make adjustments for assumed difficult conditions if scores were well above expected. I thinking stretching out this data over a longer period (maybe a year or two to get a strong sample?) to examine the overall rating is a great concept. Quick addition - Just popped into my GHIN app and it turned out Woodley Lakes had a -1 PCC applied yesterday (basically meaning it was playing a stroke easier, probably because the tees were up a bit), so the round didn't wind up lowering my handicap. I guess the system works, sorry for wasting everyone's time on the thread!

With the mountains of scoring data, I think there could be algorithms going through it going through it to find outliers, courses that are playing significantly higher or lower than they "should" based on their current rating and slope (not for an individual, but on the whole). This could signal that they should send a ratings team out there to conduct a reassessment instead of waiting 10 years or a course request like Kenny mentioned above. With (hopefully) more players reporting scores per hole instead of just front and back, this could also be applied to the handicap order of the holes. Maybe this is already being done and I just don't see it publicized anywhere. That brings me to what I'd love to see most, make that course data open and public. Being a data nerd, I'd love to be able to dive into a data base and see how a course plays on average at different handicap levels, how many strokes difference the different tee boxes are really making, etc. It seems like the WHS is trying to collect more data (hole by hole scoring as mentioned, but also the option to add in statistics like penalty shots, bunkers, etc.), so even if this doesn't turn into (or show a need for) a more dynamic course ratings system, just putting the data out there for paying association members would be a huge plus for me. Is there anything you think could be improved in the system? Honest question, just to make conversation.

Played Saturday and Sunday and (despite the smokey conditions around LA) had no issues whatsoever. Haven't used the numbing drops since the day of the surgery, only the steroid and antibiotic ones, and the eyes only have mild occasional dryness. After wearing contact lenses for over 20 years, I think my brain just doesn't get it yet that I'm not wearing contacts, there's nothing to take out, and these are just my eyes now. In the follow-up tests the day after the surgery, I was seeing pretty much 20/20 and the doctor says things can continue to improve a bit over the next couple of weeks. That's good, because if I don't start magically seeing the perfect putting line on each green, I'm going to ask for a refund . Side note: I am wearing wrap-around sunglasses out on the course now. Picked up these guys on Amazon for less than $20 https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B018RZNQ3M/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o04_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1 Some type of coating on the lens that really makes the matte orange ball I play pop, so no problems at all tracking the ball in the air or finding it after. Came with a nice hard clip case too. I'd recommend them if anyone just wants a cheap pair to keep on the golf bag.

Well that was a surprise. Like many of you, I'll hop on eBay and see what sort of sticks are ending soon and seem a bit under-priced. This one seemed to fit that bill: Never hit a Honma before. To be fair, I did do like a minute of research before bidding and it seems like it might be a good fit with my less than overpowering driver swing. Will be super interested to see what it does compared to what I have in the bag now (Tommy Armour Atomic) and if I hate it, I guess that'll teach me to bid on stuff I don't necessarily want/need!

Completely agree and I want the SOLD sign to pop up on them that way I can stop looking. If I hadn't just spent a bunch on eyeball lasers...

Thanks for sharing! I'm curious if you feel like your swing speed was consistent with both heads. Maybe just the comfort level with the M1 giving that extra gear on a couple of the swing?

Completely agree and I believe that the handicap system as a whole is one of the most special things about golf. I don't think any other sport can claim a system that allows anyone to compete on a fair level with everyone else. It really is incredible. I also really like the push to the WHS and the evolution of the handicap system. I would love to see the USGA utilize their massive amounts of play data to evolve the course ratings process as well.

That's about the same situation for me. How it went this weekend is pretty indicative, shot 8 over on the "easier" rated course and 4 over on the "harder" rated course that better suites my game I guess. All evens out in the end though.