MD/DC/VA Golfers - Twelve Monkeys Mental Divergence

[Mizzy45]

I finally bit the bullet and replaced my personal phone with an iPhone (XR). That was my last non-Apple device, minus an older desktop windows/linux PC I keep as a server and in case I need to boot a Windows-only program (increasingly rare). 10 years ago I thought you had to be a moron to overpay for Apple stuff. I built my own PCs that had the same power for half the price. Now between work and my own stuff I have 6 Apple devices within my reach right now and thinking about a 7th (new iPad Pro).

 

Google has been driving me up the wall lately. And now I just logged in to gmail on my computer and saw they sent me a notification reminding me to install all their apps on my new phone. Again, 10 years ago I was all in on everything they did. Now the depth of their tracking is an annoyance at best and scary at worst. I just want to pay money and not have everything I do tracked, aggregated, and sold so I can get "free" services. I'm ditching Android. I'm ditching Chrome. I'm ditching Drive. GMail, Maps, and Search are the only things remaining. And I'm starting to use Search in Private mode (not "incognito mode" since I'm not in Chrome) for more than just things I want to hide from my wife.

we use iPhone and PCs. I just can’t justify the costs of a Mac. Since I’m a fed, all we use are PCs as well, so all work can be integrated. Never used gmail (use Comcast). Kids and wife use google docs cause wife a teacher and all schools in MD stopped using Office. Use google maps and chrome, IE just sucks. Haven’t bother with Linux in a decade or so.

[Ogre41]

Can anyone recommend some good insoles for walking rounds? I clicced yesterday with Mizzy, and while the cart was great, my dogs were barking. Especially over the soft spikes.

[TheCityGame]

Can anyone recommend some good insoles for walking rounds? I clicced yesterday with Mizzy, and while the cart was great, my dogs were barking. Especially over the soft spikes.

well, my rec would be to let your feet get stronger through more walking rounds and don't wear shoes that have separate spikes, Like an Ecco or true linkswear or something. Trues might not be good if you're not used to a zero drop heel. Your achilles might stretch too much.

 

Sounds silly, but feet need to be strengthened and gain flexibility and stamina like anything else.

 

I've been using Garmin odometer on my rounds recently and I'm getting 7.5 miles walking on pretty much every course. Takes some getting used to.

[Ogre41]

Can anyone recommend some good insoles for walking rounds? I clicced yesterday with Mizzy, and while the cart was great, my dogs were barking. Especially over the soft spikes.

well, my rec would be to let your feet get stronger through more walking rounds and don't wear shoes that have separate spikes, Like an Ecco or true linkswear or something. Trues might not be good if you're not used to a zero drop heel. Your achilles might stretch too much.

 

Sounds silly, but feet need to be strengthened and gain flexibility and stamina like anything else.

 

I've been using Garmin odometer on my rounds recently and I'm getting 7.5 miles walking on pretty much every course. Takes some getting used to.

 

Gracias Sir

[jmill]

has anyone played at laurel hill in recent weeks? looking like some good weather and thinking of going over, but curious about course conditions. thanks!

[dcmidnight]

Got out for a couple hours of practice today, man it was nice out. When the sun is out and the wind isnt blowing, low 40s is very doable for some good practice time - dri-fit t shirt and the Windlite sweater was more than enough. Yesterday was in the 50s but that wind was just blasting at times. Today was great.

 

Really starting to improve the constancy of the shorter wedge shots, amazing what a few days of work in a row can do. If I can take nothing else into next season, that will be a huge win. With the range balls and the cold weather, having trouble judging the distances exactly but the constancy is miles better. A good Trackman session can give me a better idea of the yardages so I'm not worried about that.

 

Course made a good decision to open up on the 1st with the weather looking good on Tuesday. With more rain tomorrow though, not sure how playable it will be.

 

has anyone played at laurel hill in recent weeks? looking like some good weather and thinking of going over, but curious about course conditions. thanks!

 

Have not played LH but most of the nearby area has been soaked and probably will still be pretty wet out there. Definitely will be CPO there given their history too.

[jmill]

Thanks, midnight. Also got out to hit some balls at Burke Lake today. Good call on CPO @ LH. Will opt for pushcart mafia @ twin lakes to ring in the new year!

[Obee]

I got a lululemon gift card that has already been spent.

 

Just kidding.

 

The lululemon pants I bought at 11:45pm on Christmas Eve, drunk, in the bathroom, I bought without the gift card.

 

Ummmmm....

 

Where the hell is that sign from in your avatar???

[baddomes]

The people's country club. East Potomac Park

[SullGolf]

When he visits DC, OB probably plays dumps like Burning Tree instead of the People’s Club.

[ceejay81]

Thanks, midnight. Also got out to hit some balls at Burke Lake today. Good call on CPO @ LH. Will opt for pushcart mafia @ twin lakes to ring in the new year!

 

Interested in hearing the condition of Twin Lakes. It got pretty bad this summer. It’s kind of swampy in that general area and it just could never dry out. Same with Westfields. Are you playing the Oaks or Lakes course? The Oaks is by far my favorite of the two.

[jmill]

Plan to play the Lakes. Agree...Oaks is my favorite, also. Just checked and my last round out there was 11/4, and I played the Lakes on the recommendation of the starter who said the Oaks was still pretty banged up from this summer. Both courses had some pretty bad damage on tees and fairways, so hoping for fair course conditions Tuesday and can’t really complain since I’m planning to play golf on New Year’s Day. Will report back on conditions after playing.

[dcmidnight]

Love the idea of getting out on NYD but a lot of spots out there are still barely playable and the rain tomorrow sure isnt going to help.

[RobYakes]

Our 4th had to bail last minute for the Herndon NYE Day Scramble Monday (today) morning @ 8:30am. If anybody is interested let me know and bring your rain gear. $60 and includes prizes.

[TheCityGame]

Here's some analysis no one asked for, but whatever. it's New Years Eve. I got my Garmin G10 recently and it has "odometer" on it. I figure it just pings GPS every few seconds. So, I've tried to measure how far walking a course really is using google maps, but it's kind of tricky. You don't know how close you actually get.

 

Anyway, the odometer for Waverly, Turf and UMD has now come out between 7.5 and 7.8 miles for any of those courses. This is keeping it in my pocket, not on the pushcart. Also, keep in mind, I'm measuring how much I'm actually walking, so I'm turning it on when I get out of my car (if I remember, which I don't always), and turning it off when I get back to my car.

 

Given that a 7000 yard course is roughly 4 miles, I was kind of incredulous that you'd get an incidental 3.5 miles just out of transfers and meandering around. It can't be that much, right. Almost double??

 

But, then, I went into google maps and really clicked around like I was playing a hole. I walked 8 yards from push cart to the tee, couple yards around the ball, 8 yards back to cart, had to walk to the side of a drainage ditch, walk to the rough. When I got to the green, I walked my bag around the green (green radius = 30 yards, 40 if you count outside the bunker, C=2*pi*40 = 80 yards, divide by 2 since you only went halfway = 40 yards). Now. walk back to ball (20 yards), play a chip, walk to the ball (20 yards). walk to the pin to read the putt (10 yards), back to the ball. putt, walk to the pin, get the stick, exit the green. And when I do that, I've clicked my way up to almost 700 yards walking on a 400 yard hole. Sure, sometimes you play a hole just as straight as the yardage (possibly less on a dog leg, but just as likely MORE on a dogleg), but also sometimes you need to walk back to a tee, walk around a hazard, help someone look for a ball, etc etc. And, you're always walking around the green, which really adds up.

 

So, that right there gives you that 7/4 ratio per hole that gets you from 4 miles (course length) to 7 miles walking. But, that's just playing a hole. If you average 50 yards per transfer (plus time spent practice green, walking back and forth to car, etc), you're looking at another 18*50 = 900 yards = .51 miles.

 

Anyway, I figured the gps was way off when I was seeing 7.5 miles. 7.5 is what I figured I walk when I played Bandon or Bethpage, but I've seen it 3 times now, dug into it a little deeper and I'm starting to think that number is accurate. I think Hoop didn't have mileage on Saturday, but he said maybe 12,000 steps, or something, which, at a yard per step, would work out to 7 miles.

[SullGolf]

Did you account for when you walk 80 yards past your ball? That adds up fast.

[TheCityGame]

John Updike on December golf, from the archives of Golf Digest. . .

 

A lovely leniency, in short, prevails in December golf, as a reward for our being out there at all. The course itself—its ice-edged water hazards, its newly erected snow fences—seems grateful to be visited, to have golfers tickling with their cleats and divots the shapely slopes and expanses that in another month will be useful only to cross-country skiers and snowmobiles, scrawling their tracks idiotically across the logic of the layout. There is a misty wood-smoke feeling to the round, the savor of last things.

[aiyyer]

John Updike on December golf, from the archives of Golf Digest. . .

 

A lovely leniency, in short, prevails in December golf, as a reward for our being out there at all. The course itself—its ice-edged water hazards, its newly erected snow fences—seems grateful to be visited, to have golfers tickling with their cleats and divots the shapely slopes and expanses that in another month will be useful only to cross-country skiers and snowmobiles, scrawling their tracks idiotically across the logic of the layout. There is a misty wood-smoke feeling to the round, the savor of last things.

 

Thanks - Airport delays and this made for good reading - https://www.golfdigest.com/story/updike.

“Somehow, it is hard to dislike a man once you have played a round of golf with him” - not true.

Golf also brings out the worst in people!!

 

[Ogre41]

Agree about it not being hard to dislike someone after playing a round of golf with them. Plenty of folks have probably not enjoyed me as much I I didn’t enjoy them. I think if you like them after playing, you’d have probably liked them anyway.

[dcmidnight]

Poking through the VSGA magazine and there was an interesting blurb about the Mid Am getting postponed a couple of times this year. As of whenever the article was written, Winchester CC was closed more than 50 days this year because of course flooding. Woof. I thought a day here and there was frustrating, cant imagine 50+ days being closed due to the rivers flooding. Really wanted to play in that but couldn't make the new dates.

 

Tomorrow should be a decent day to get out, forecast for today isn't as strong as it was a few days ago.

[TheCityGame]

Poking through the VSGA magazine and there was an interesting blurb about the Mid Am getting postponed a couple of times this year. As of whenever the article was written, Winchester CC was closed more than 50 days this year because of course flooding. Woof. I thought a day here and there was frustrating, cant imagine 50+ days being closed due to the rivers flooding. Really wanted to play in that but couldn't make the new dates.

 

Tomorrow should be a decent day to get out, forecast for today isn't as strong as it was a few days ago.

So, I just tried to figure out how much we were closed this year. I copied all of our tweets into an editor and searched for the word "closed".

 

It showed up 180 times.

 

Many times only ONE course was closed.

 

Many times there were closures due to outings.

 

Some closures were due to aeration.

 

Sometimes, the message was just that the driving range was closed or the grill was closed.

 

That got me down to about 145 times that were were closed because of weather. Maybe 30 of these were due to snow and cold last winter.

 

So, in this half-baked analysis, we seem to have about 100 closures. A LOT of time that was one course. There was no pattern I could really search on that would be when both courses were closed because of weather.

 

Here's a sample page that I was searching on. . .time flows up, so like when you see "Due to 4 inches of rain....", the two lines above that that show closures are probably from that rain, not the lines below it.

 

 

[TheCityGame]

(also, not blaming the course. This was a HISTORICALLY bad year, and we're low lying. It was just a crap year. Good thing it's raining today. Wouldn't be 2018 without it.)

[baddomes]

What goes on at the Italian Invitational? Do you have to prove your Italian lineage to be invited?

[TheCityGame]

What goes on at the Italian Invitational? Do you have to prove your Italian lineage to be invited?

Actually, I think that's a pretty tough event to get into. It's a really big outing. They do a lot of food. They paint Italian flags on the fairways.

 

I'm not sure what it raises money for. Maybe the church. The guy who originally bought all the land there and built the courses grew up very modestly in Little Italy and was either a bricklayer, or son of a brick layer and created a large construction business from humble beginnings. He has ties to the local diocese because apparently the church did a lot to help his family when they moved here. He was first or second generation Italian-American.

[FAbb]

City's two deep dives in, and it's not even 2pm. If he stays up until midnight (or later), we've got at least three more to look forward to.

 

GTNYE : Post suggestions for City's next golf investigative report

[TheCityGame]

Just got the last tweet of the year : Due to the current weather conditions the courses at Turf Valley are closed.

 

[2moreTerps]

i went out and walked nine this AM. i figured i'd rather go out and play in colder and rainy weather than tomorrow when it'll either be closed or more sloppy than this AM. i'm ready to just sit on the couch for a day and a half but have to go out to dinner tonight. dreading it even though the food will be amazing

[Obee]

It's currently an absurdly cold 51 degrees with a gusty 2 mph breeze here in SoCal. And we almost, ALMOST(!!!) had our third consecutive frost delay today.

 

I have to sometimes wear PANTS this time of year if I tee off before 9:00 a.m.!

 

I hate SoCal winters....

 

 

 

 

[dcmidnight]

I hate SoCal winters....

 

 

 

 

 

[Boogs2]

Anyone looking for a cheap caddytek 4-wheel cart? PM me, trying to get rid of it.