Another Steve

Sid:

I do both of these techniques, and weirdly enough, when i am putting my best my mind literally sees a yellow stripe for the balls path to the hole that i set the line on the ball on to ensure i can send it on down the yellow brick road.

Both. I draw a line and use it if i am serious about my round (align on both the tees and greens), but if it’s a friendly/leisure type round with nothing on the line then I don’t worry about it. i can get putts pretty close without and do practice a bit that way - especially lag putts, but i proved to my self that I have better alignment with than without.

I would have told them that since the CORRECT head cover was included in the price of the putter and was with said putter as it came from the manufacturer (and I am assuming this is the case) they need to either supply the Correct cover or deduct the retail cost of the cover from the price. Otherwise I walk and consider calling the corporate offices - if big chain golf outlet - or the mfg if not, to report that they were trying to sell me the putter without the included cover at full retail and upcharge me for a substandard replacement

The rule with my friends back in college was 45* and dry, or 60* and light rain and we were playing. Now i am more of a fair weather golfer.

Don’t know if they are still out there, but the coolest tee idea i saw was when I played a round at Disney in 2003. The course required that we use a biodegradable tee that they supplied. IIRC it was some sort of compressed corn starch and resembled a hard plastic tee.

Whats even worse is that it was a prize at a golf outing so it didn’t cost me anything…… and it was a 3x so it actually fit.

Love plastic tees, but I am still using wood until I finally use up all of the various big bags of tees my daughters got me for fathers day or my birthday when they were kids.

I had a really nice FJ goreTex jacket that you could remove the sleeves to make it a short sleeve jacket or a sleeveless vest. It was light khaki and got accidentally washed with with a black sharpie and ruined. I have yet to replace it.

This is a primary reason I switched to B-xs. That and I got tired of constantly needing to figure out which current version of ProV plays the same as my goldilocks ProV ball version from ~15 or so years ago. I think I have 4 or 5 dozen of the 2018/2020 B-xs balls sitting there now and may see if I can find a couple more left over dozens. I know where i can grab at least 2 dozen more at ~$35/dz. May stop on the way home and add them to the stack! I may be wrong here, but I believe that the mfg’s are designing balls for specific performances from the newest spec clubs. (Jacked lofts/lower spin/higher flight/steeper descent angle). That’s all fine and good, but i doubt that the majority of golfers - even the low index players- are changing clubs out very often. I definitely believe that you need to innovate or die, but there is a fine line between innovation and change for the sake of change/marketing.

He says tongue in cheek: Can someone please ask titelist to publish some cliff notes on this stuff with details such as - “if the player prefers the characteristics of ball xxxx from year 2xxx the current version best matching that ball is yyyy”? It would save so much angst and wasted time trying to figure out what ball matches the game YOU have. Let the marketing aim at new customers and make it easier on the current users of your product to stay happy. Now I don’t believe that is ever gonna happen, and as I see it, it the reason for the MGS annual ball tests.

I would consider myself more of a “gear geek” than a “club hoe”. I like to look at the designs and tech and know/learn the how and why they work or behave how the do. And if it makes sense for how i want to play the game. Because of this i have had a general disdain for all the hype and marketing claims preferring to see (independent) data. I also do not see the need change equipment other than maybe balls very often. Neg bias : OEM manufacturers in general. I get the marketing and need to come up with new stuff and generate sales but am old enough to realize that new and improved usually is neither PXG, hate the marketing and the clubs are beyond fugly to my eye. They might be the best club i could ever play but will probably never know as i have zero interest in trying them Ping - looks and feel just never appealed to me. Too much offset and always looked like i was swinging a garden hoe. I did try to cozy up to eye, eye2, i3, and zing irons. Tried multiple different ping drivers over the years too, they just never worked for me. I do have a curiosity about the i blades and blue print irons but doubt i will follow up on it. Calloway - tried to cozy up to Bertha and her sisters but never quite got along. Some of the newer driver offerings showed promise but got edged out by a good deal on a TM M1 head Irons always looked too fat/thick to ever get comfortable looking down on them tried the odessy putters when they came out and the were meh….. didn’t give me enough reason to pull the ping from the bag Titelist Drivers never worked for me. 620MB &CB would be a great combo set but are priced beyond my pay grade ProV balls - love hate relationship. Too expensive in general and IMHO have been kept artificially expensive since they first came out to establish and maintain the “tour ball $50/dz price point”. When i figure out the version that works for me we make good music til they change it. I’m tired of the seemingly constant tweaking so they fo in and out of the bag. With a couple years playing the original Strata, the B330 and now B-xs. scotty putters- too expensive, too much hype. Taylor Made Mostly marketing hype. Too many/frequent driver changes over the years. Some gems mixed in with a lot of filler any club labeled as game improvement. Or players distance …. mallet putters no workie for me. Tried and always go back to the ping Anser4. Still in the champion with 35 years in the bag. But I am willing to another one. I would like to try a Sub70 vs my ping. Maybe the added weight and ability to tune the weight will carry the day. positive bias: Blades- i am a dinosaur and went from learning on blades to the perimeter weighted/cavity back/internal cavity weighting GI irons for 10 years thru the 90’s and ended up back at a combo mb/cb forges blade set. Component and DTC. Still playing golfsmith combo forged md/cb set i built in 1999. I would consider maltby and others if I had a way to demo and bend lofts &lies. keep looking at sub70 and trying figure out if I want to try to buy a 7 or 8 iron at my specs to compare. Their demo deal no workie for me as i am 1” long and 2* up from their stock specs. They have a couple modles that pique my interest as I am in the market for a new set of irons. bridgestone - played their balls on n off for years nuff said sirixon - played various qstar and zstar balls off and on. Like looks of some of their irons and may try them out in the future Cleveland- played rtg 588 wedges forever. Need to find replacements and will look at what they offer Nike- never was a tiger fan but demoed a set of TW blades back in the day head to head vs my TM iCW 11 irons and wished i had the cash to buy them at the time. They are a big part of why I built the Golfsmith set Mizuno - have a wedge in bag now. Played a friends MP33’s a while back and got along very nicely with them. A set of blades from them might be a grail set for me. Taylor Made. Have played a TM driver since 1988 seven different drivers earned the place in the bag. Haven’t really given their irons a long look in a few years as they newer really caught my eye. True Temper Dynamic Gold shafts. S300 and x100. They work for me, why change. Golf pride tour wrap or tour velvet grips. Same as DG shafts. Wraps on the irons and velvet on the woods. They work so why change.

In a work league that used a league handicap (IIRC 85% of the best 10 of the most recent 20 scores) back in the 90’s we had a guy like that. He played multiple leagues with different caps in each plus an official USGA (lower) cap. Our league rules were written such that only scores shot in league play counted. Mid season and end season scores did not count, nor did any other cap. league caps were used for flighting and low net awards at the outings. In League matches he shot just good enough to win his head to head matches (cash payout at end if season for top 3 winners) and conveniently birdied the hardest holes to cash in on skins which were a side bet and not officially league sanctioned. Every so often he would shoot well enough to win a weekly low net or low gross payout if it didn't move his cap. Then come to the outings and he would clean up on low net, low gross, and skins. Those that participated in skins didn’t care as the skins were actual gross score, not net score (we had a range of 9 hole caps from 2 to 25). He once told me that he knew the exact number he needed to shoot each week to manage his number. Couple of us talked to some players in the other leagues and he did the same stuff there, but there wasn’t much we could do with the way the league rules were written so the team captains got together and had a special league award made up just for him. A wooden plaque with an engraved brass plate with “his name”, “xxxxxgolf league 19xx, sandbagger of the year” and a baggie of sand from one of the bunkers on the course was stapled to it. Heard that he hung the plaque in his office and freely admitted that he “managed his handicap and utilized the rules as-written to his advantage”. At the league meeting after the awards were handed out we almost unanimously changed the rules to specify that if a player had multiple handicaps the league was to use the lowest regardless of where it came from and if a player was later found to not report another handicap they were ejected from the league. This was later changed when the courses got networked and scores were entered online in the clubhouse. Don’t recall if this was the start of Or predecessor to GHIN but it was a USGA cap that used every round that “you reported“ probably was early 2000’s.

Ball found in cart after the fact…. Easy enough for him to deny it. If it was a ball you saw him play and physically place in the cart it’s a different story. Depending on which of these two scenarios is accurate would determine how i “mention it to the committee” - as in “i found this in the cart after the tournament and i think it was my partner’s ball but didn’t see him handling it” or “this IS my partner’s ball and i saw him playing it.” One case is just “hey this player may be cheating. I found this ball on his side of the cart, you may want to watch him closer” and the other is obviously “this player is cheating, i saw him playing THIS grease ball.” either way i probably mention it. Yes it will catch up to him sometime. Better sooner than later.

Thanks for the advice…. I’ll take a closer at some of the milled face options. I am aware that the polymer inserts would probably degrade over time and have to admit that was a consideration in my not trying them beyond rolling a few balls at Dicks or the odd golf shop over the years. By fad/technology, i was mainly referring to wading through the latest/greatest never miss widow dressing to figure out what technical changes really help, not so much calling inserts a fad. There’s only so much you can do with weight location and the putter shape will dictate how and where the weight goes to a great extent. That leaves face texture, hardness, and clubhead composition (both face and head). I am really surprised that they haven’t come out with a carbon fiber putter head with interchangeable face plates and weight ports. Probably too light and require too much or too large of weight modules. anyway thanks for the insight.