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Gopokes14

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Everything posted by Gopokes14

  1. I use a Garmin S70 watch. It tracks all of my shots and builds a database of results that I can go look at in the app. It shows me every shot on every hole, if that's what I want to see. It also has stat sheets for me to see where my game is lacking. How many fairways, GIR etc... But it also shows me percentage of left, middle, right tees shots I had. On approach shots, it gives me percentages of hit vs right, left, front back. It also will tell me which portions of my game are declining or staying the same etc.. The best part of using this combination of tech is that I can use the virtual caddy system to give me advice on club selection and what the likelihood of me making par if I hit that club in that scenario. If I choose a different club it reduces that percentage. Of course, I am getting data on "plays like" yardages as well. It is adding in elevation, wind, humidity, etc.. The one down side is I am in Oklahoma and last week is a good example of this issue, but it uses the airport for weather info like wind. The wind was blowing about 25 mph and the airport is about 20 miles away. It was adding 30+ yards for shots into the wind. That was pretty accurate. However, when the wind would let up, I would have to toggle that off and use my own estimate with the raw yardages. It's fine, but it's not always able to give accurate wind calculations.
  2. I have original boas on some FJs that the sole of the shoe wore out and never have had a single issue with the boa system. I have other newer Puma and FJs with BOA and even have one with the arch top boa and rear boa for 2 different tightening points. The problem with them is the boa dial is very thin and not very prominently sticking up. I mean to say that it's a low profile dial and hard to get a good grip on to tighten. So it has never been an issue of durability (never had a failure on any boa) but rather, the functionality of it from day one. I have had issues kicking the rear ones lose by accidentally hitting the side of the dial and popping it loose. So maybe they were trying to avoid that issue with the new version. If it would just pop out a little further to get better grip, I would like the new version.
  3. Well I think people who write unsolicited reviews and contribute to the forum regularly show a certain desire to help others know the real life truth about products they are using. I write reviews on golf courses on Golf Advisor/Golf Pass every time I travel and I try to give a first hand (up to date) review on what each course was like and how the people treated us, etc... I have had many reviews show up in Golf and Golf Digest magazines reviews for courses in my state or even in states I've traveled to. I definitely review products I purchase and tell the prospective buyer what to expect when they get it. I am kind of made fun of for having the latest of every new gadget. If you have Golf Pass, go to the state by state best golf courses for 2024 and my review of best courses in Oklahoma is the first one you will see for Shangri La. If you look up best lighted courses to play on the US, my review of La Fortune here in Tulsa is there. There's others as well but my point is the review is how I pick where to play myself, so I feel like writing honest reviews helps the next guy.
  4. I thought I was going to come here and listen to a bunch of complaints about music etc.... But I was surprised to see that my pet peeve of slow play is the prevalent complaint. Watching people stand and talk as they stop on the green while we are all ready to hit in the fairway, is the most inconsiderate thing imaginable. Add in the guy who parks his cart 50 yards from the green and walks up and plays out, only to walk all the way aback to the cart when he could have simply hit his pitch shot and drove to the back of the green and played out, kills me. However, the guy who does not rake the trap after hacking his shot out and then walking up the highest face in the trap infuriates me. I will invariably be in that deep foot hole in the face with no shot. That is not the way the course was designed to be played. Divots on the green or the fairway are one thing and I can fix a lazy players divot, but I am not going to be able to repair the trap and then place my ball back on a steep sand face. It just ruins a scoring round either way.
  5. I work 3 miles from club. So, for me I could theoretically go anytime the day dies off, but I try to only go once a week during the week. Afternoons here in Oklahoma means no later than 1 pm in the winter and no later than 4 pm in the summer. Weekend is usually one or the other between Saturday and Sunday. Those are also noonish times. I hate playing when it's dew everywhere and drying out as you go when greens start changing speeds.
  6. I think golf has been a good way for me to do a lot of things that I enjoy. getting better was definite focus for a long time. But at 59 years old now, I realize that the amount of time I put into getting better is not really netting the improvements I used to see. I'm a 6 handicap and getting lower than that might be possible with a commitment to more practice but it's not going to happen. I focus now on seeing wildlife, beer and friendly games among friends. Vacations include playing new courses and taking a few pics of interesting features like waterfalls, creeks, elevated tees or anything weird I can spot. Where else are you going to see a bald eagle swoop down and grab a duck or a squirrel? A few buffalo laying in a field next to a fairway? Last week I was in Scottsdale and a coyote was just laying out in the fairway in the sun while we played 35-40 yards away. Saw a bobcat last year stalking rabbits while we played 50 yards away. I even started keeping a small fishing rod in my bag with a little tackle box and if we get held up near water I have casted out and caught a bass, which was hilarious. Heck, I even found a cool bridge we stopped to take a break on. Golf will get you into some places you would otherwise never see. I haven't seen bigfoot yet, here's a pic that came close. Have fun out there guys because you never know when it's your last.
  7. Thanks for this. I just did it and it was easy. I already had the Connect IQ app on my phone. Went to watch faces and selected + and chose a file from my pictures on my phone, selected a watch display to apply and boom!
  8. I have it also (3-4 weeks) and I don't know for sure but I assume yes. One issue I have had is I will attempt to select the club I hit and accidentally hit the club below or above it. I don't know how to correct that once its done? I also am noticing really strange PLays Like suggestions on windy days. I researched it and Garmin uses your local airports as the wind speed and direction etc... It will suggest 4 clubs more for shots that really only need 1 or 2 clubs more to get there? But on calmer days where the winds at the airport or more like 5-15 mph, it seems very accurate.
  9. This is debate I have with myself at my own club. Just one golf course to contend with and I will sometimes switch in and out different wedges. I have 4 wedges I guess. PW(47), GW(52), SW(56), LW(62). The bounce on my SW and LW is 8 degrees. But I guess my logic of whether or not to use the LW is predicated on whether there is much grass to hit off of. In Oklahoma during the winter, there is pretty hard ground with very little grass and it is just too touchy for me to try and hit that wedge. So, I generally will throw a driving iron into the mix when it's taken out during the winter. I will say that I have learned to hit a toe down chip shot that the 62 degree club works great for. It can be made to run a little and stop etc... It also is really good out of packed sand after a rain or if the greens are just hard and not fluffy. I toe it shut and cut th elegs out from under the ball in hard packed sand and it works really well. So, maybe I am getting to where I will stick to the summer 4 wedge setup?
  10. Anyone have the Ernest Sports Es Tour unit? I see that they are a veteran owned US based company as well. $1795 for the new unit comes with 5 courses and seems pretty good for indoors setup with limited space. The Mevo and other low price units require at least 20 feet of space for the radar to work properly.
  11. I was going to say always drink at least 4 beers or 2 shots of Patron before you tee off, but that's not always so easy at 8:30 in the morning. so, I will say that an old high school golf coach, I caught up with and played with once, told me to start focusing on GIRs. He said if I could 2 putt most of the holes, 16 or more. Take the number of GIRs and double it and subtract it from 95 and it would be within a stroke or 2 of my final score. It has worked out for the last 20 years or more almost every round I have kept up with it. Example: Hit 10 greens in reg x 2=20 subtracted from 95 is 75. I told him I thought it would be hard to hit more than about 5 a round for me. I was hitting the ball about 250 off the tee, but they weren't always in play. We were both walking the course and he said "there are 4 par 3s, hit 2 of those. There 4 par 5s hit 2 of those. There is 4. You got 10 holes left, how many of those can you hit? 4-5? Lets say you hit 4, that's 8 total x 2 is 16 minus 95, you just broke 80!" That's gold Jerry, pure gold I tell ya. - Banya from Seinfeld
  12. I am like many of the people here saying they draw the line at about 90-95 depending on the humidity. I am in Oklahoma and we have 100 plus right now. But spring and fall we all walk and I have really nice remote controlled Cart Tek electric cart that I love. Made in Oregon by a family business and it works excellently for the price. My club has walkers, mostly older folks trying to stay in shape. I was one of the first ones to use an remote controlled electric cart. I added the Alphard E-wheels v1 to my model 8 (4 wheel) Clicgear cart. Still have it and my wife uses it. Walking is as fast as riding since everyone is going to their ball independently rather than everyone riding together all over the place hitting shots and getting yardages etc... When it's cart path only, it's actually faster. Mine has almost every accessory you can hang on one. Cooler, phone mount, GPS mount, Sand bottle, speaker etc... and it's got a nice 27-36 hole lithium battery. Picture was on a pretty crappy day that was spitting rain for a few holes. But umbrella kept me dry and all was good.
  13. I like PM but have been buying Dunning and they are well made shirts. They last. The other one is Bad Birdie if you want some cool fabrics and colors. Go one size larger on Bad Birdie though. Unless of course you like the "baby gap shirt" Brooks Koepka look. https://badbirdiegolf.com/collections/polos https://www.dunninggolf.com/golf/shirts/
  14. I have had the Ping DLX bag since 2019. It's the best cart bag I have ever had. Its getting pretty beat up form travel and constant play but the pouches and storage room si the most user friendly I have had. My wife ahs teh Sun Mountain C130 and if I had not gotten the Ping, that would be my choice. She got camo and she loves it.
  15. I think 3 rounds is about the most I can get out of a ball before it just gets too beat up looking and I donate it to the First Tee barrel we have a the club. It's either that or I lose it before that point. I primarily use Bridgestone B XRS or Vice Pro Balls. The Vice seem to be a bit more durable and last little longer but 3 rounds is about it on average for me.
  16. Well fishing is a weak competitor for me against golf. It rarely wins out when I have to decide whether to play golf or go take the boat out and fish. So, it runs a close second for me. I find that mixing things I like together works best. My wife and I will generally try to bring our boat when we drive to go out of town on a trip. We will play golf in the morning and take a nice boat ride and fish a little in the afternoon. But I will say that getting and then fixing up old cars has become a little bit of a good mix for us as well. We drive them to car shows and also the golf course. I will admit that we have started a bit of a trend at our club where old cars are being driven up there on weekends now. We have 2, a sweet copper and white '55 Chevy and a weird pink '63 Ford Econoline truck. The '34 Chevy Ratrod I had before, was sold to get the pink truck but it was fun project. My gas cap was a blown piston carved into a skull with a bullet cigar! Yes, that's a keg for a gas tank and a buffalo skull on the front.
  17. This whole subject looks like a solution in search of a problem. Saying that the best players in the world are dominating golf courses with distance increases is not solid thinking. The data shows that while some guys have gained distance that they can use to get to some par 5s in 2 and some can hit certain par 4s in 1, it's rare to see anyone shooting record rounds in the 50s or anything like that. So, what's the real problem that they are seeking to fix? The long guys will still be longer than the short guys. So, when you pull them back with a muted distance ball, you pull them all back. The longer guys will still have an advantage. I really don't see this happening in any other sports. NBA raising the rim because there's too much dunking going on? Guys are too tall today? 3 point lines being moved back because guys have gotten too good at hitting 3s? Baseball using softer baseballs to limit homeruns, etc...? If a guy gains an advantage by improving their distance, he has gained an advantage, period. The real issues, hidden in most discussions I hear, revolve around golf course architecture complaints. "Guys are dominating our course and we have to lengthen it, at a big expense, to make it attractive to play a PGA tour event here". This seems like the only "problem" to fit this solution. So, in baseball parks with reachable homerun distances, will they use softer baseballs so we don't have to move the warning track and homerun fence back? Of course not. This issue does not affect me as a player, but I don't want to watch a tournament where the longest hitters are handicapped because they have become too good at hitting long drives. No more than I want to watch a basketball game where the 3 point line or freethrow line has been moved in certain "high profile games" or "certain arenas". Sounds goofy when you talk about doing in this in other sports doesn't it?
  18. At the risk of inviting a bunch of backlash, when in reality I really don't care, this subject is usually driven, in my view, by the desire of the media to make golf sound like a rich white person's game. The "entitled" or the "elites". I see it every year pedalled by the Golf channel and the PGA tour has jumped right in there to help drive this mentality. The golf we watch every weekend shows a bunch of millionaires playing golf with Pros in Pro-AMs and with celebrities and then pro golfers at exclusive golf venues, that most humans can't afford to play, vying for millions of dollars and sponsored by huge corporations. This is not the world that 99.9% of golfers live in. You might be of average or modest means and had been exposed to golf by someone and became hooked, like me. I didn't have much money and had a young family to support when I started. However, when I could get used clubs and play modestly priced courses in my area I would go. I have lived all over the country in my career and there were always plenty to choose from. So, it always irritates me when this "giving back" campaign focuses exclusively on "people of color" as somehow being excluded from golf because of "economic disadvantages" and golf being "a rich man's sport". I would remind them that there are people from every walk of life that play golf and they do it regardless of their disadvantages or challenges. I have never been to any golf course, public or private that only allows certain people of one skin color or background. This is 2023 and I hate the perpetuation of this myth. Both of the exclusivity of golf as well as the impossibility of affording it. I live in Oklahoma and I know guys that have $50-70k bass boats that they park in the golf course parking lot after having fished that morning. They live in a small modest house and they have miraculously found a way to afford both? If you really want to do something, it amazing how "affordable" stuff can be. Bring on the left wing "keyboard moral mafia" to hate on this view of reality as not woke enough to find victims at every turn.
  19. Oh wow! A lot of improvements. Thanks for that info.
  20. I didn't know that. I wonder what it does to improve it?
  21. I charge both of these right after we play. They take about 3 hrs to charge back to full. Both of them are lithium and will run about 27 holes even with all of that stuff on them. I have never had one die, but you can disengage both of them from the motor and go to free wheel mode if you need to push them. I do this when heading to the driving range from the parking lot. Our course is a little hilly also.
  22. I have a 1 year old Cart tek electric remote walking cart. Before that I had the original Alphard add on wheels (ewheels) to my clicgear model 8 four wheel cart. My wife took the clicgear over and I use the Cart tek. We walk about once a week, usually on Saturday because its already slow and most of our group walks as well. I will tell you 2 things, 1.) We are not slower than any riding group that has to go to each players' ball and get yardages etc.. 2.) Walking with a remote cart is much easier than pushing a cart. By 13-14, most of the people that are pushing carts are showing signs of fatigue. We have everything you typically see on a riding cart. Garmin yardage watches for distances and keeping score makes it easy. Music on a bluetooth speaker (UE-Boom) mounted (bushwacker strap) to the neck of the cart. Phone is on a mount in the center of my cart handle. Cooler underneath for drinks etc... Cart folds up and fits on a trunk or in our case back of my truck. 5 miles of walking is good for my health since I had bypass surgery a few years ago. If it's too cold or windy (Oklahoma) or even if it's 100 degrees (Oklahoma), we won't walk. I am responsible for our club now having at least 10 walkers that have gotten remote carts for themselves. Friggin' copy cats!
  23. I played in a corporate event (conference) where they paired everyone up to make scramble teams that were somewhat fair based on handicaps etc... at the time I was an 8 or 10 index and I was paired with a guy named Dick who was also an 8 or less and was a lefty. Then we had 2 guys who were high handicappers 20+. One guy had the loudest colored outfit I had seen in awhile. Loudmouth pants and matching shirt and glove etc... As we made our way around, it was mainly myself an Dick carrying the team with a couple of putts being made by the high handicappers. Typical scramble until we reached a short par 4 and the 2 lesser skilled players had severely missed the green on either side. I had hit it right of the pin about 8 feet away and Dick had done the same thing on the left side of the pin. The green tilted back to front and my right to left breaking putt was the one I was suggesting we take since 3 of us were right handed and would prefer that putt. Dick wanted the left to right and said it was slightly closer but I protested that it was only inches closer and we would have 3 good chances with mine rather than only 1 or 2 with his. He suggested we ask the other 2 players their opinions. They were roughly 20-30 yards off the green looking for their balls, so I shouted which one of these do you guys want to take? The loudmouth pants guy yells back "which one is which?" I said that mine was right to left but Dick was slightly closer. He yells back "Personally I like Dicks!!" Just then the other guy standing near him yells "Yeah we all can see that, but lets just try to focus and pick a putt!". To which people from 4 different greens and tee boxes all started roaring with laughter. Thankfully, he was a good sport because after it was over, people came up to him and he just laughed along with everyone when they told him how funny it was.
  24. 10 greens in regulation per round. My iron game is suspect when the grass gets short (brown) and the ground gets hard. But normally, if I can hit 10 I can break 80. (10x2-95= 75) That's my formula.
  25. If I was looking at averages, I would say I can get about 2-3 rounds out of a ball. If I scuff one or it starts looking like crap, I will switch it out and donate it to the 1st tee shag bag we have at my club. Obviously, there are days when I can lose a couple in a round, but usually a ball will last me about 2-3 rounds. I play a pretty heavily treed course here in Tulsa, Okla. and we have water, OB, etc... but it's generally the wind or trees that get you in trouble here. I recently played out in Vegas and brought 9 balls with me and played the same ball for all 3 rounds.
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