I have been CUT!

I have been looking forward to this member/member two three months, and now... 18 hours before tee off, I get the bad news. My handicap will be cut by two strokes because I won the member/member last fall.   Further, it will be cut from 18, where my handicap was last year, instead of 21, where it is today. So, this 21 will be playing at a 16. URGH! 

Now, if I can man up it hit a couple of 9 hole rounds under 45, perhaps I can have the privilege of getting cut to at 14 for the fall member/member.  I always wanted to reduce my handicap, I never thought that this is how it would happen. SLICE!

Member Member starts tomorrow... head is spinning, cant keep food down, and I am shaking like Jerry Lee Lewis.

It will be Bill Piccerelli and me!  Or, it might be Bill Piccerelli with me on his back!  One or the other!  He better kick ass, because I want to win whether I play well or not! ;^)

Weekend Update 99,101, 86! David you ignorant Slut!!

Proof that you can't figure this game out....

I am trying so hard to take my recent lesson with Andy Plummer and execute his tips.  There is just soooo much to remember on each and every swing. When I feel like of have all my basics down and forget to aim, forget to turn my upper body, or forget to store my purse on the cart... and that usually doesn't end well.  After fighting through two days of hell, I relaxed on Sunday and threw up an 86.... the second best score at Rhode Island Country Club and the 3rd best score of my life.  So, I am off to range today to practice for the Spring member member...

Dave

Golf is the only sport where the most feared opponent is you.

New tips on RICC par 5 eighteenth!

Sweet!

Everyone seems to love our million dollar bunker reconstruction project at RICC!

This, taken by my son Rob on the eight hole at Rhode Island Country Club. A tough critic chimes in with two thumbs up...

Really, today I tried to think about everything Andy taught me...

I went to a golf outing at Ocean Edge Resort in Brewster, MA... thanks to my good friends at Pella Windows for the invite.

Problem one, we ran a bit tight on time so I never went down to the driving range to review the 5586 things I was supposed to remember when I strike the ball.  A great way to ensure success... smart move ass wipe! So, I get up to the first tee, a 135 yard par three. Clean undies, Big dreams. What a great name for a Rotella book!!!  

Andy said to only think about 5 things, but I am thinking to myself, what about the other 5581 things I always think about, who is going to worry about all of  those! And frankly, sex isn't even in Andy's top five swing thoughts, REALLY? One has to wonder...just saying.

So, I set up, practice all five concepts three times while my new Pella friends in my foursome look at me thinking, lets go Ben Crane! URGH!  I take a deep breath, relax, think about those five fundamentals one more time, lift my arms into a back-swing without rotating my upper-torso (because that wasn't one of fucking things I was supposed to be thinking about) and I proceed to shank a ball directly right into the woods, deep right. Camelia, Bubba Watson, Andreozzi? WTF! I felt like a Volkswagen Van filled clowns dressed in Rory Sabbatini suits stopped behind the tee box and started laughing at me.

Well that's how my round started.  

Let me share my latest golf advice.

Pussy's hit the ball, men strike the ball. So this is the BIG swing change I am working on.

I just got a chance to try some of Andy Plummer's advice...

...so, I tried to drop off my clubs at the Salvation Army but they wouldn't take them.

Before I cry like a baby again I want to share a dream with you.

That am about to not suck quite as badly. I am currently sitting at an 18 index, which is about a 20-21 handicap depending on the course I am playing. Progress has been stagnant for over a year leading to increased drinking, minor self inflicted wounds, and an usual increase in broken equipment. Go Figure!

Last Monday night, no lie, I sat in bed and thinking that I might have put some things together with my swing. I went out before work on Tuesday to the range, and again on Thursday, and actually started to strike the ball much better. Much better!

Add to this a last second opportunity of a lifetime.  I had the chance to run down as Fax's guest to get a mini lesson from the  renowned Andy Plummer of Stack & Tilt .

It always fun to have two Pro's watch your horrific swing on the driving range in front of onlookers while you try and swing, listen to directions, and not trail your tighty-whities. The result, I think, is that I started to figure out (with Andy's help) serious flaws in my eleven year young swing that have prevented me from progressing below the 20 handicap range.  Mostly obvious things, and easy to work on.  The result after 40 minutes or so was that I started to hit the ball a bit more like a man, a truly unfamiliar feeling to me.

The problem is the reality that I have about five more swing thoughts to added to the absolute mess of garbage that rattles around my brain on every address of the ball. I will describe in coming posts the myriad of garbage that I need to translate into my swing and more about my experience at the range trying not to throw up on my shoes in front of Andy & Fax.  I am convinced that I now have the fundamentals in place to progress a bit in my game. I am so excited, I suppose until reality punches me in the nose again!

Peace!

Nike announces new Tiger line "Caboose"

...because he is starting to get really comfortable moving to the back of the line.  Me for one, enjoys this immensely.

Just Saying

Golf, a creul fucking game!

I shot 97, 97 this weekend.... but this tells you nothing. My Saturday 97 was the worst golf experience in a long while, and felt much worse (believe it or not) than the 107 I carded last week, and that was only time I shot over 100 in the last year. That is just how badly it felt.  I lost my composure... a total meltdown.  Thank god there are no pictures. I actually considered walking off the course on multiple occasions crying in my car, digging my sailing equipment out of the closet, and donating my clubs to a local charity.

My Sunday 97 (same fucking score) felt fantastic.  I struck the ball well all day.  A couple of bad shots, a couple of poor course management decisions, and got a couple a very bad breaks. Here is the funny part, and here is the true beauty of golf.  Both rounds with friends were enjoyable, and both days, somehow, I contributed to team winning scores. I just doesn't make sense.

Golf, dont look for an explanation... there is none.  Just enjoy it.

Saturday

Sunday

YOU THOUGHT YOU HIT IT LONGER | From Kyle Phelps

The table right (figure 1) shows a pretty frightening development I think. Fifteen years ago the funny quote from Lee Trevino alleged that “no-one could hit a 1 Iron”. Well look at the loft on today’s #3 Iron and you can see it is well on its way to being a 1 Iron that Lee Trevino could NOT hit. 

Free Personalization Of Your Golf Balls

This month Titleist is offering a great opportunity for all golfers who play or would like to play the Pro V1 or Pro V1x. Golfers who purchase 3 dozen Titleist Pro V1 or Pro V1x golf balls will receive 1 dozen of the same ball type at No Charge. All of these dozens will come with FREE personalization. Put your name, initials or a creative slogan on each ball! 

My top 10 slogans!

10. You suck!

9. Straighten yer Skirt!

8. Hit me... I dare you! Pussy!

7. Lets try the fairway!

6. Pro V1, You are not worthy.

5. Did you bring my snorkel?

4. This way to muscle beach.

3. Just call me Mulligan!

2. LOSER

1. Relax your sphincter and swing!

Golf's Biggest Delusions

Nine Things People Say About the Game That Aren't True—and One That Is

• By JOHN PAUL NEWPORT

Golf is only for rich people. Only 10% of the 26 million golfers in the U.S. belong to private clubs, according to the National Golf Foundation. The rest play primarily at public courses, where the average rack-rate cost per round, on weekends with cart (not including resorts), is $43.
 
Business people play golf so they can make deals on the course. That's the stereotype: secret handshakes behind the hedges. Some of that goes on, no doubt, but the main point of business golf is building relationships. Where else do you get four or five relaxed hours with a potential partner or client and learn a few things about his or her character in the process? The golf itself is too distracting to actually talk much business.

Bruce Macpherson

Keep your head down: 'That's probably the biggest piece of misinformation new golfers hear,' said instructor Hank Haney.

In Scotland, golfers never take longer than three hours to play a round. Whenever the grillroom conversation turns to slow play, American golf's most vexing problem, someone invariably pipes up with this chestnut. In fact, a foursome of Scots in a four-ball match average about four hours a round, according to Hamish Gray, chief executive of the Scottish Golf Union. That's the recommended pace of play posted at many U.S. golf courses. The difference is the Scots really do play in four
hours, whereas at most U.S. courses it's the impossible dream.
 

Ben Hogan's "secret" went to the grave with him. This fond legend is wrong on two counts. First, he did reveal it. In two Life magazine articles in 1954 and 1955, titled "Ben Hogan's Secret" and "This is My Secret," Hogan explained the trick—a cupped left wrist through impact—that cured his hook. Second, there wasn't just one secret, there were many. Even back in the '50s, rivals like Gene Sarazen and Sam Snead claimed there was more to Hogan's secret than he was letting on, and a cottage industry was born. Hogan himself doled out tidbits about his technique until his death in 1997, including how to anchor the right knee and to roll the left elbow. Several books have compiled these morsels into analyses of Hogan's greatness. "There was definitely not one secret," said instructor Jim McLean, who wrote one such book. "Hogan was so special and so great, everyone wanted there to be a secret. I think he just played along." The final word is Hogan's: "The secret is in the dirt," he famously said. Translation: You've got to dig to find your own best swing.
 
A 10-handicapper should shoot 10 over par. That's the standard view among the uninitiated. In fact, a golfer's handicap reflects his potential to score well, not his usual scores. The handicap index is a tweaked average based on only the 10 best of a player's 20 most recent rounds. It is then adjusted for the course to be played according to that course's difficulty ratings, to create a course handicap. On average golfers with official handicaps (only about 20% of all golfers) will tie or beat their course handicap only once in every five rounds.
 
Keep your head down. "That's probably the biggest piece of misinformation new golfers hear," said instructor Hank Haney. "Keep your eye on the ball, yes, and watch it after you hit it, because you need to let your head move and your body pivot after impact. A lot of them end up staring at the ground after they hit." A related bad tip: Keep your head still. "That's probably created more reverse pivots than any piece of golf advice in history," said Steve Atherton, vice president for research at the Golftec teaching network. Most golfers know they need to shift their weight to the right (for right-handers) on the backswing. To keep the head still during this shift is to move right only with the lower body, effectively leaning the upper body toward the target. That facilitates a deadly, slice-producing, over-the-top swing.
"I hit my drives 270 yards." Hah! Maybe once, with the wind behind you, on a rock-hard fairway, when the ball bounced off a cart path and a squirrel advanced it an extra 10 yards. On no subject are golfers, especially male golfers, more deluded than on the distance they hit their drives, with the possible exception of their attractiveness to beverage-cart personnel. Here are the brutal facts, accumulated by Dave Pelz over several years of monitoring thousands of players at amateur tournaments. He used the same ShotLink equipment used by the PGA Tour to determine that, in 2011, the world's best players averaged 291 yards off the tee. Male amateurs who play to a 30 handicap average drives of 166 yards; 20-handicappers average 183 yards; 10-handicappers average 214 yards; scratch amateurs average 235 yards. So dream on.
 
The biggest difference between Tour pros and amateurs is how far the pros hit. Despite the pros' prodigious length, their most compelling advantage compared with amateurs is their prowess in getting up and down from 30 yards. The pros manage to do so 46% of the time, while 10-handicap amateurs succeed only 11% and 30-handicappers less than 3%. "The short, partial-swing wedge is the high-handicap amateur's worst shot," Pelz said. Part of the problem is a poor feel for distance due to lack of practice. Even worse is hitting the ball fat or thin. Given the delicacy of the half swing, a fat hit might advance the ball only a few feet while a scull could shoot the ball 30 yards over the green. Even once they reach the green, amateurs could face their second-worst shot: long lag putting.
 
Put a wedge in a Tour pro's hands, and he'll stick it to 5 feet. One can get that impression from watching the final groups play on Sunday. Those are the best pros at their best. But over a full season, even last year's top-ranked wedge player from 100 to 125 yards, Luke Donald, averaged hitting his approaches about 16 feet from the hole, according to data from ShotLink. The Tour median was 20 feet.
 
Drive for show, putt for dough. Finally, a widely held assumption that holds up. An analysis of ShotLink data by the PGA Tour reveals that, from 2004 through last season, only 11 of the 323 Tour winners led the field in driving distance, compared with 47 winners who led the field in strokes gained putting (the Tour's new putting stat). Putting beat driving accuracy by an even bigger margin, and it was also more predictive of winners in the negative. A third of Tour winners finished outside the top 30 in driving distance, but only 13% of the winners finished outside the top 30 in putting.

Just Saying.

Tiger's last major win was the US Open in June 2008.  PGA started drug testing in July 2008. Again, just saying.