Topic: Rules of Golf / Which ball ?

Decision 27/11: ” One could argue that both balls are lost. However, it would be inequitable to require the player to return to the tee, playing 5, when the player has found both balls but does not know which is the original and which the provisional. Accordingly, the player must select one of the balls, treat it as his provisional ball and abandon the other.”

Topic: Rules of Golf / Is this a penalty

You’ve still addressed it.

No you haven’t. Addressing the ball requires taking your stance and grounding your club.

“Addressing the ball” is in the Definitions and is therefore independent of any specific Rule … putting green or no putting green.

Topic: Rules of Golf / White Ball, Corner Pocket

Technically, this is not against the rules

Yes it is. Rule 14-1 says the ball must be fairly struck at with the head of the club.

Topic: Rules of Golf / ON OR OFF THE PUTTING GREEN

I’ve had this happen to me, I ask my marker, the person that signs my card at the end of the day his/her opinion… they are the important member of the group, it has nothing to do with the rest of the group. And I would take their decision every time.

So what if they’re wrong?

The marker is there to record your score. Under the Definitions, he/she is not a referee.

Why do you think that what the marker decides is final, or has any legitimacy at all?

Topic: Rules of Golf / ON OR OFF THE PUTTING GREEN

IMO if there is a doubt that the ball is on the green then play it as if TtG.

Agreed. If I was in any doubt about my own ball I’d play it as if it wasn’t on the green.

Topic: The Lounge / Who has the best and worst Avatar?

publish now your just showing off

more details thanks

Taken on a climbing trip to NZ. View of Hochstetter Dome (left) and Mt Elie de Beaumont (right distance).

Topic: The Lounge / Who has the best and worst Avatar?

Love that shot with the shack.

they reckon it is in cloud for 360 days a year or something similar

Topic: The Lounge / Egyptian "Hulk" Claims God Gave Him Strength of 30,000 Men

So that’s how they built the pyramids!

Topic: The Lounge / Who has the best and worst Avatar?

and i’ll throw this one in as you don’t get many opportunities to photograph it without cloud cover

Like this?

Here’s one a bit further south (Winter 1975)

Topic: Golf Talk / Farewell to Annika

Missed the cut in her final (limited field) event. A great champion.

Topic: Golf Talk / Ambrose - Conditions of Play

Only problem took 6hrs 15 mins to play

Topic: Golf Equipment / rattle in driver

Rattles are caused by a small amount of excess weld material or a blob of hardened epoxy coming loose inside the cavity of the head. It may have found a corner or rough spot to “re-lodge” itself, or it may have broken up.

Clubmakers fix a head rattle by injecting rattle stop (‘rat glue’); or they may use the B component of an epoxy. The sticky material will capture the rattling item and hold it in place. The B component eventually sets and holds the rattling blob in place.

To get access, some clubmakers drill a small hole into the hosel area of the club to insert the glue, in some clubs (like Callaway) there may even be a small plughole (used during the production assembly process).

Topic: Golf Talk / Private or Public ??

Publish, I just looked at the website for Trentham, and there are photo’s of people playing in…[gasp]... DENIM!! Don’t you have standards??

Topic: Golf Talk / Private or Public ??

publish, how does your club balance the books allowing unlimited play for only $330 p.a. ?

We run on the smell of an oily rag. We have no pro, manager or paid staff other than a greenkeeper, an apprentice, a contract caterer, contract cleaner and a casual bookkeeper. Everything else is done by the members as volunteers.

Topic: Golf Talk / Private or Public ??

The prices for RP, Melville and Fremantle are comparable to a lot of Melbourne clubs. All the cheaper clubs we’ve mentioned are in regional areas or on the city fringe … my club is 100km from Melbourne.

$4900 for Royal Perth is a lot for a golf course that is cramped and not particularly outstanding. The social networking would have to be worth it!

Topic: The Lounge / Traffic lights

People thinking, that’s scary. I’m amazed at how many people I see running red lights these days…it appears that at 90% of lights cars are going through as mine turns green, what’s it like in the east?

Red means only five more cars, doesn’t it?

Topic: The Lounge / Traffic lights

What’s a traffic light? :)

Topic: Golf Talk / Handicap Question

Another thing that happened which seemed to be extremely simple was when i had 39 points off a handicap of 3 at one of my local courses, the course rating was 36 meaning i should of lost 0.3 where as they only took 0.1 off my handicap, this happened two weeks in a row. Obviously their clubs handicapper struggled with maths.

I can’t see any 39-point score in your record that hasn’t gone down by the correct amount.

Topic: Golf Talk / Handicap Question

Since we’re whinging about golflink i just want to say a few months back a round of golf showed up on my golflink at North Haven golf club.
I have never played this course or heard of it.

The problem with GolfLink errors is the convoluted method of fixing them. As a club handicapper (I guess for security and integrity reasons) I have no access to correcting any rounds recorded under GolfLink by club members playing at other courses. So I can’t delete or amend a score entered in error.

Therefore an individual golfer’s only redress is to either:

• contact the “error” club stating that they’d never played the round in question. The club could “unprocess” the competition, delete the player and “reprocess” the competition … some clubs couldn’t be bothered and they’ll meet a brick wall; or
• e-mail GolfLink stating that they’d never attended the club in question, and GolfLink will remove it (you’d go in the work queue).

The problem becomes more difficult where the away club does something stupid like erroneously entering a nett score rather than a gross score, and the player finds their handicap half a dozen strokes lower. I had one club that did this, but when contacted they just wiped their hands of the matter and refused to change the competition. I made an ad hoc adjustment to bring the handicap back to the correct level, but it eventually took three days to get GolfLink themselves to properly correct the record.

As an aside, if a member dies I also can’t delete them from GolfLink if they have a handicap record. I can only e-mail GolfLink requesting they be removed!

Topic: Golf Talk / Private or Public ??

My club is semi-private, annual membership is only $330, plus $4 per competition. For this very reasonable cost I have a nice 18-hole course I can play without ever worrying if I have enough in my pocket on a given day. I have the advantage of regular Thursday and Saturday competitions with friends, and the chance to play in pennant and club tournaments.

The course is a ten-minute drive from my house, so if I want to nick down there late in the day to play a few holes or use the practice bunker or putting green, it’s easy. I sometimes slip out for a quick nine holes on a long lunch, leave my home office at noon and I’m back by 2.30. As you might surmise, it’s often the case that there is no wait.

It’s worth a great deal to me to have relatively unfettered access to a course of an acceptable standard, with competition opportunities as well as friendly rounds, with the ability to golf at my convenience rather than some schedule’s convenience, so I can’t imagine going back to pay for play. Besides I can still “pay for play” at some courses when I want to.

I also find being in a club can tend to teach you a bit more about the intricacies and formalities of golf than just casual rounds with friends. Being a member might make you a little comfortable, as you can tend to play one course a lot, however everything is a progression, and the next step from basic membership is obtaining a handicap and competition (which does wonders for your game), then things like pennant. This gets you out onto other courses, and rather than being a restriction, being a club member can actually be a window to greater opportunities, such as other club’s tournaments and regional and state amateur events.

As a club member, I can join a daily competition at other clubs if I want to, like when I’m on holidays. I’ve done this quite a few times, and it’s a great way to get out, play other courses and meet other golfers. Clubs often charge lower green fees plus a competition fee for this, the sum of which is usually lower than the full green fee.

IMHO, whether you join a club depends on what you want to get from the game.

Topic: Golf Equipment / Wishon on golf industry future.

As an aside, I just think the title of this thread is an inadvertant misnomer. The golf club industry is not the whole golf industry, although I’m sure people like Wishon and the major companies may like to think otherwise.

What’s been the real effect of the technology, apart from vast sales for the OEMs and copious amounts of re-cycling through e-bay? The real skills of golfers have stayed the same, the scoring has hardly improved, and the average handicap has hardly reduced. Golfers have just been driven by the promise of length and accuracy, and seduced by “latest model” glamour.

It can only be good that the ruling bodies’ limitations on technology work to stop an idiotic short product cycle. If the real product cycle was a few years instead of months, more golfers might concentrate (and spend money) on what really affects their golf game, like crappy swings and poor course management, rather than a “cargo-cult” techno-fix. It might mean less sales for the OEMs, but maybe a marginal improvement in our balance of payments if imports are driven down.

I think the overly-consumerised golf equipment industry is, in a way, a window into the whole problem of the global economy … too much emphasis on credit card-driven consumerism and not enough on the real value in the game. I also hope the courses that have been forced to expend vast sums of money on keeping the technology at bay can finally breathe a sigh of relief.

Topic: Golf Equipment / Vision Golf Ball Test

Just to relay my one experience with Rebel. Yesterday I went into Rebel Sports Ballarat and had a look at their golf ball pricing … I was specifically interested in the X-pert2 after all the discussion here.

They had $39.99 on the UV and Arctic, $49.99 on the X-pert2 and $23.99 on the Sampler. They also had $79.99 on a box of ProV1s … when I went to Drummond Ballarat later their price was $72.95. Also, the golf knowledge of the staff in these mega-sports stores is often dreadful. (I also priced some Asics running shoes, which I later bought $9 cheaper at A-Mart Sports in Wendouree.)

My impression was therefore that Rebel, at least in their regional stores, was not the cheapest and most helpful around … they were totally non-competitive with the ProV1s. Is this usual?

Also, have you investigated supply to smaller “non-pro shop” golf clubs for ball competition purposes? Is this viable? We give out 3-4 dozen golf balls a week and are always looking for competitive wholesale suppliers.

Topic: Golf Talk / Handicap Question

By a bit of persistent trial and error, I found a Muirfield GolfLink number that had played in the competition on Monday 10th November, so the competition has definitely been processed.

So the problem will be with Muirfield … if the round isn’t appearing in your record, then they have either entered another golfer’s number in error, or they put you in as a non-GolfLink player, or they didn’t put you in at all.

You can either persist with trying to get them to amend their competition, which I know from experience with some clubs is very difficult because they can’t be bothered or don’t know how, or you can give the details of your round (Par 69, ACR 69, CCR 68, 34 points) to your own handicapper who can enter an ad hoc score into your record.

Topic: The Lounge / Anyone seen or tried one of these?

Just get a Wacom tablet. I’ve been using one for years and worth the extra expense. My current model is the Intuous 3 (6×8), but the Bamboo 4×5 is fine for general computing if you want to spend less.

It’s a different way of operating after using a mouse, but for graphics a mouse is like drawing with a brick.

Topic: Golf Talk / IGF presents 2016 Olympic Games case

As long as the four golf majors are more prestigious than an Olympic gold medal, golf in the Olympics, at least for professionals, will be compromised.

An Olympic gold medal in golf will be about as well recognised as an Olympic gold medal in tennis. No one will remember who won the 2016 golf gold medal, just as few remember who won the various tennis gold medals in Athens or Beijing.

Idiotic idea that just devalues Olympic medals.