NiftyNiblick

Golf didn't burn out for me. I got really super-angry when they banned the steel spikes, but I kept playing. I used to love autumn golf just before the snow, and I loved July golf at 95ºF. I even really enjoyed hanging out at the club even if I wasn't actually playing. But unfortunately, I physically burned out for golf. It happens.

I can't watch four minutes of a Patriots game anymore. I guess that I was the archetypical bandwagon jumper. But how often does a wagon ride last for twenty years? It was really something, but it's completely over now. Watching Brady-less football is like watching paint dry to me. Actually worse. I'd rather watch the subtitled Korean RomComs on Netflix... or even the chipmunks f***ing in the back yard. You're watching the very tail end of the run, but enjoy, Tampa/St. Pate fans.

I walk my dog every day.. I just don't play golf anymore. I used to really love it though... but I rode.

I'm the same age that both of my parents were when they died. It feels as though I've had all of my due at bats and that this is bonus, extra-inning baseball for me. Too bad I have to be spending it in a m-f ing pandemic. Anyway, at this point, I don't worry about being dead. Being dead is a piece of cake...the perfect nap. The processing of dying, on the other hand, can be nasty and undignified. The experience is an inconvenience, and I've spent a now long lifetime prioritizing my convenience over not all but certainly most things. Going out in my sleep after a good meal is a definite go. Going out on a ventilator in an ER, not so much. So for the most part, I've been doing the serious isolation thing like either 50.5 or 49.5--we'll very soon see which--of the country has been doing on purely ideological grounds. And here ends yet another one of my prologues that's longer than the actual text. While isolating in the comforts of my home, I've been trashing my temporarily successful health diet and watching tons of cable and streaming out of profound boredom. Going through the dreadful albeit huge volume of available programming, I've recent landed on Korean Rom-Com movies and TV series. I've always liked foreign films anyway, as long as they're sub-titled and not dubbed, but this is the first time Korea has been a major player. I may be strictly an observer at my age, but the LPGA never really showed me how many gorgeous Korean young women there are on this planet. The jocks (jockettes?) aren't bad, but the young actresses are smoking! Here are recent discoveries of mine to check out.

Am I alone in believing that playing at all this season wasn't a great idea? Several members of the Patriots opted out. Several others caught covid. NFL players, like most pro athletes in general, are genetic biological freaks. Covid is unlikely to kill them as it might kill a more vulnerable person. If it were I, however, I would definitely have taken the year off--not a scintilla of doubt about it.. It's a personal decision, though, and the guys did, I assume, what they thought was right.

Even though I can't play anymore, I TOTALLY agree. The OEMs are all loathe to make high loft clubs that don't correct for slicing by being too upright or closed faced. They don't realize that people with technically sound swings might not all be high swing-speed players. There are seniors and juniors and women with decent, non-slice swings, but they're not apparently worthy of being catered to.

NO 2020; COVID-IMPOSED HIATUS.

I agree with you in a way. I would have been happy to skip this sports season altogether. The Red Sox were abysmal, but I didn't watch a single game. I'm ass-deep in stuff not discussed on this forum. Be well and stay safe, old buddy.

And I wanted to say hi to Silver & Black after Sunday's game.

There's no option offered for NO wedges that match the numbered irons. I've had set configurations like that in the past. Matching wedge sets came out just before the lofts changed. The PW that matched your irons was around 50º back then when the 60º lob wedge was introduced. They'd offer a 50-55-60 set or something like that, and you chose whether to match your PW to your irons or to your other wedges. And even now, you can still do that if you want to because they offer very strong lofted aftermarket wedges for those who might be interested in them. Off topic, I haven't thought about golf for a long time, but remembered the forum and thought I'd check it out.. I played for more than fifty years before I had to give up the game. I'm not sure that I'd even take it up now. It's not that I didn't love the game because I really did. I loved to play golf for a long time, and only physical problems took me away from it. But in today's world, youngsters who are the most like I was back then when I was their age seem to have no interest in golf at all. They don't even seem to like people who do play very much. It's a socio-political thing as much as anything. I wonder if I would have been been lured into it as I was circa 1960-61. No way of ever knowing, I guess, and it doesn't really matter, anyway. I played when I could.

We have interacted a couple of times on the forum. If you get likes for your belligerent posts, perhaps it's time for me to disappear as well.

I referred Retired Boomer to this website. He's a member at our club, and live two blocks from me. He told me that he got in a spat with the mods and stopped posting here. You and I never got along well, jlukes. I don't post here that often. It wouldn't be that hard to ignore my posts, and it would be more pleasant than exchanging snarky remarks. In any case, be careful and stay healthy. .

The Wilson 8802 is like the Acushnet Bullseye, the Spalding Cash In, the Ram Zebra, the Ping Anser, and other putters that have won far too many matches to be considered anything but mainstream, no matter how old that they are.

I enjoy walking my dog, but except for an easily walkable executive course, I prefer to ride playing golf. I played my very best rounds on hot humid days, but walking might have changed that. One gets spoiled. I walked much more than ride before I retired at 55 and joined our club. Once I got accustomed to riding regularly, I confess to getting quickly accustomed to it. There was a beautiful, executive length course in Middleton, Massachusetts that I loved to walk with a classic pencil bag and five or six clubs, even after joining my club, but they sold the land to developers and it closed.

Since our course opened in 1906, it's completely playable with hickory shafts, never mind real wooden club heads. I had no trouble adjusting to the first metalwoods like the original TaylorMade series, the Hogan Series 56 model, and the venerable Titlest PTs. Veteran players will remember that these were essentially copies of the persimmon / laminated maple woods except that they were made of hollow stainless steel. When metalwoods began to take on their own personalities, they changed in more ways than just adding a lot of tech. They became longer, more upright, had larger heads, and the higher lofts tended to have closed faces. That's when I started to struggle with them. Louisville Golf no longer works in laminated maple, but they still offer a nice selection of persimmon woods. They come with graphite shafts, hickory shafts, and while they last, steel shafts. Steel shafts for woods were discontinued by True Temper in 2017, but some remain in Louisville's stock. If you play at 7000+ yards, persimmon probably won't cut it. Otherwise it does have things to offer. The clubs are shorter with flatter lie angles and more open faces if that suits you. The available lofts are wider spaced. You might not want a 16.5º metal four wood and an 18º metal five wood. However, an 18º persimmon 4-wood and a 21º persimmon 5-wood could very well be found in the same bag. Another thing is that wooden clubheads are more easily customizable for fit metrics. For fifty extra bucks, you get any loft, lie angle, and face angle that you want. They're merely lathing wood. Choices in finishes and inserts are available too. If I could still play, I'd be very tempted to go with a Louisville 2, 4, 5 set. It would be perfectly functional at our old club. I'm more than old enough for it not to be something radically new to which I'd have to adapt. PS: My first set of woods were MacGregor 945s handed down to me by my uncle. They're not in playable condition, but I still have them.

Still closed. It's a 1906 Donald Ross course. In the early 2000s , it closed for two seasons to mitigate drainage issues and for complete historical restoration. Let's hope it's not as long this time. I can't play anymore, but I still enjoy the club...you know, lunch or drinks with the guys, playing cards, dinner with my wife and friends, stuff like that.

That they have, my friend.

Still, Rickp, I'm not sure how much fun golf would be with "social distancing." The camaraderie was my favorite aspect of the game. That needn't necessarily be the case with everybody, I suppose.

My most sincere condolences, CG2. I lost my mom and dad twenty-eight days apart about 26 years ago. I was 47 at the time, but you're never ready to lose your parents. In time, we learn to live with our losses, but the loss remains nonetheless. You'll find that it's better than forgetting.

How is everybody doing with this pandemic thing? I'm only allowed out of the house to walk the dog. The humans maintain "social distancing," but the dogs still sniff noses to say hello to one another. Being in the center of the high risk group, I'm playing it safe, but so far, so good. Our supermarket opens three days a week, 5AM to 7AM, just for seniors to reduce our exposure. A cop is actually at the door to enforce that, my wife says. She won't even let me do that. I've been dieting and lifting weights, to whatever extent a man my age can lift weights, so while I may be on the precipice of finding peace in a brass urn, I'm actually looking better than I have in a while. The club is closed...can't even go there for breakfast or lunch, even if my wife let me out...so I'm not missing golf quite as much. Hope everybody is ok, and my best wishes for those under the weather.

Done. Your comment could have been made on a PM as well.

I would think that knowing which style of club that you more enjoy playing should take precedence over any data accumulated.

This is my personal experience with the "jacked lofts." There's nothing wrong with the lofts of the clubs. There's plenty wrong with the numbers stamped on them, specifically the club number-loft correlation. The engineers and designers will justify the vanity lofts talking about moving weight distribution and establishing launch windows. But here's the deal. When you actually have that 20º 4-iron in your hands and you hit it, low and behold, it goes 2-iron distance! There was no need NOT to continue calling the 20º iron a 2-iron. The weight distribution, the launch angle, and all the other excuses turn out to be nonsense. It's vanity stamping. It started in the late seventies and early eighties and it just kept getting more and more ridiculous. Now many recreational players begin their numbered irons with the number six, and their PW and TWO gap wedges are what used to be 8, 9, and PW. Is this an efficient use of the numbers--having more than half of them that many players no longer use? As long as you know how far you hit each club blah blah blah. Intellectual laziness in my view. And disrespect for tradition. I had the clubs in my hands. I hit them. So I know that I'm right. A 20º 4-iron is absolutely a 2-iron with the wrong number stamped on it. Constantly changing the numbering system is a cheap marketing ploy and nothing else.

A union-card holding fire fighter. Thank you for your service. Rochester, home of a great music school and a once-great photography company (freakin' digital!). Chuck Mangione, of course. When I was a kid, they even had an NBA team before it went to Cincinnati, Kansas City-Omaha, and Sacramento. Jack Twyman and Arnie Risen--actually saw those guys play. I stopped playing blades, bens197, as soon as perimeter weighted hit the pro shops! And I was an eight or nine in my prime, almost but not quite as good as you. But never with pure blades, I'll tell you that.

Maltby made excellent persimmon and laminated maple woods back in the 70s. The customer could choose not only shaft and grip but finish color (many available) and face insert as well. More importantly, loft, lie, and face angle were all customizable as well. They didn't have the high tech of today's modern metalwoods, of course, but the fit metrics were an open book. I discovered Maltby in the 70s through a magazine article about the then "new concept" lob wedge. Maltby was among the very first to have one and they called it simply, Third Wedge. It was a "third wedge" rather than fourth because iron lofts hadn't quite forced the necessity of the "gap wedge" yet. I ordered a catalog to look at the "Third Wedge" that I had just heard about, but was most taken with their offerings for real wooden woods--which were still the norm at the time. They were beautiful and the options were almost endless.