MD/DC/VA Golfers - Twelve Monkeys Mental Divergence

[thechief16]

Full agreeance on dislike for your typical Florida course. PGAN looks like your typical Florida course on steroids. I watched a lot this weekend in my convalescence, and repeatedly found myself saying, "Jesus, where could I afford to miss it on this hole?" The answer was usually, "nowhere" or "back bunker with a sand shot off thin sand downhill towards the water."

But it made for a great PGA tour event.

 

[dcmidnight]

Two sleeves? Could easily loose a 4-6 balls on the last four holes alone - esp with any sort of wind.

 

[FAbb]

It definitely made for an enjoyable event to watch on TV. And I only caught about an hour of it yesterday.

One thing I really enjoyed is the course provided an honest test, without gnarly rough. While it's definitely a proven method to keep scores high, I get zero joy out of watching guys hack it out of the rough all day when the miss the fairway.

[dcmidnight]

Having water on 16 of 18 holes is probably a proven method to keeping scores high too.

I will say I'm definitely not a fan of the Honda trying to turn a couple of those bear trap tee boxes into a 16th/Waste Management atmosphere. On the early Saturday coverage there seemed to be more than a few backoffs due to people yelling.

[FAbb]

At least the water there seems to be a risk-reward element. Like you see balls going in the water on the front-left pin at 17, or the way-right pin on 18, when there's a very clear safe shot that could be played. It didn't seem like there were really times where guys of that caliber had to take on undue risk to get into acceptable position.

[2moreTerpz]

the rough was appropriate for the rest of the setup. You're already dealing with winds, water, and firm greens. You could play the ball out of the rough but controlling it was way harder. Sometimes the ball stopped, sometimes it didn't. It appropriately augmented the test vs. just being another massive penalty. I was watching wondering how the USGA would have set it up. I think the US Open setup complaints are wildly overblown but I did find the contrast between "hard" and "stupid hard" really interesting.

[aiyyer]

 

Sucks coming back to work after Pinehurst

 

[FAbb]

Hard seems to bunch the field, and protect against one player running away with it (Peak Tiger being an exception). There are still birdies to be had, so you have the potential for chasers to run down the leader. But it's still tough enough to keep everybody honest. They can't lose grip of the wheel at any point. Stupid hard takes away a lot of the intrigue, I think. It's basically 72 holes of attrition. More and more players are out of it as the event goes on. It fits the USGA's "new" tagline they probably paid way too much money for some consultant to pitch them - From Many, One.

[2moreTerpz]

i LOVE "from many, one". it fits the US Open so perfectly and does get at what makes the US Open so amazing. I love following the results of local qualifiers. I put the sectional qualifier on my work calendar to go and follow this year. it allows a LOT of people to dream. You have 100s of 1000s of guys like me dreaming of having a handicap that would let me play in a qualifier. You have guys who sign up for locals who lay in their beds thinking about that first tee shot because they're probably 2000-1 to make it through to sections. You have 15-20 guys who DO have a legit shot at making it out of locals. You have the mega stud 17 year old ams dreaming of playing in a US Open. And on and on. Until you get to the top-10 players in the world who dream about winning.

[eagle1997]

Well, that was fun. 1000x drier than last year. That's not an exaggeration. Was like playing completely different courses, and the trip was much more "golfy." Great group again, laughs for days, zero group drama. Manor House worked perfect. We had a downstairs common room that only our guys could access, and we could BYOBB (that last B is for Bbourbon, of which I indulged quite a bit of... except Siegel's crap).

Had a blast, would bang again. More pics, memes and potentially controversial observations to come as I unpack the trip.

 

[Sterling_247]

Work did not happen for me today. My brain is still playing #2

[ceejay81]

 

I was sad to not have the Carolina Hotel breakfast buffet this morning.

I'm going through the motions today. No real work has been or will be accomplished.

[OCCantChip]

Pinehurst was a blast. Enjoyed playing with you guys and getting to know those there. Special thanks to Ben for videoing my pitch shank on the Cradle #8 so I can relive it over and over again......

Rick, Danny and I finally got to take our time and eat at the buffet yesterday morning and gave it a proper farewell.

[Ocgolfrick]

I have good news this morning for the Trip guys and Hive history in Pinehurst. Kevin (let's not go there) tells me upon checkout that there is no need to clean up the Library, he has already done it for me, and hands me the trifold scoreboards, 2 Blue Moon, 1 White Claw, and 5 photos. Kevin asks if he got everything and I nod silently, not wanting to give anything away.

For you see, we brought the photos to try to leave them as part of Pinehurst golf lore. We brought 6 photos.

So if you were wondering...

It appears you can find Golfer827 on the top shelf on the left hand side of the bar sink, in perpetuity. May he watch over other drunken golf groups forever. I hope that many a puzzled golfer will look over his photo with the likes of Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, and Donald Ross, and think "Huh, maybe that's Billy Casper..."

 

[FAbb]

Did you leave the upgraded version of that pic?

 

https://forums.golfwrx.com/discussion/comment/16207238/#Comment_16207238

[ceejay81]

I am going to start a Go Fund Me for OCGolfRick so he can upgrade his potatocamera.

[dsc123]

Supposedly, Sterling eagled the 17th hole on #8. Despite having a gallery, nobody saw it. So it remains unconfirmed. Count me among the skeptics.

[Ocgolfrick]

Unfortuately, it is not the Smoking827, but regular unfiltered 827. Might have helped our cause. I would have said the Fabb/Kent handshake would have made it through easier. There may be a case to be made that Golfer827 is more photogenic.

[ceejay81]

 

Sneek and I were about 50 yards out in the fairway getting ready to drive up to the green as I looked up and saw Sterling's ball skip a couple times and into the jar. I went nuts like he just won the Masters. The 4-6 or so people in the gallery right behind the green were oblivious that anything cool had just happened.

Here's a photo I snapped of the patrons in question.

[2moreTerpz]

am i the only one who listens to pgatour radio?

 

[aiyyer]

Obviously I cannot post the video of Sterling going postal at the gallery.

[Golfer827]

 

No, there's no case, for it was already known. OG 827 is a lot more photogenic than Smokin' 827 despite what the rest of the peanut gallery believes.

[dsc123]

A couple things I noticed about the new handicap system during our trip.

1. I think scores I enter in the grint sync to my Msga, but I'm not certain. I say that because I entered scores in both, and ended up with duplicates in the msga account (but not in the grint). However, even though I did not delete the dups, they're gone now. So perhaps there's some mechanism to catch that? Or maybe they dont sync and the msga account just doubke posted in error and then got fixed. But I would think they should sync, since i have the same uSGA number in both. Anyway, the hole by hole and stats did not come over from the grint to the msga.

2. Msga updated my handicap each day, but not in the middle of the night as I would have expected. Each morning I checked and it hadnt changed, but then did change when I looked later in the day. It seemed like the grint did update before I woke up.

3. There were no daily difficulty adjustments or whatever they are called to any of the 5 rounds I carded.

4. My hc is currently the same in my msga and my grint account. That was not the case before--including while I was in NC. In fact, we played a match a few weeks ago and the difference between the two cost me a stoke on my CH. But the two HCs do natch right now. The difference before, I think, was that the grint did not count 9 hole scores, and maybe some winter scores on the grint that I didnt mark as practice.

 

And that's all I have to say about that.

[TheCityGame]

Wow.

Let's say you're attending, for whatever reason, a charity event on the Wednesday before Bay Hill in a big ball room. They're going to have an auction that definitely includes an "artist" doing a "speed painting" that has Jack and Arnie in it, but not Tiger, and it's going to wind up with a lot of green, and somehow the sun will be behind the golfers giving them a halo effect. The bidding will definitely exceed 10,000 for something you wouldn't hang up in your garage and you tell your grandkids that will be theirs someday and it's worth 10 thousand dollars.

Anyway, as you walk into this room and the staff is bringing around canapes and champagne, there's a nondescript band noodling in the corner. Really, they're just there to create some inoffensive noise. It's the Mike Stone band. You notice a solemn expression come over the singer/guitar player after his very low key cover of Margaritaville. There's a lull in the din as Mike Stone leans into the mic and quietly says, "this one's for the king".

And you're going, "Cool, an Elvis song."

Except you're not because you're 76 years old, pasty pink, wearing a tuxedo and you're the type of person who never thinks about Jack without also thinking about Barbara and you know they're about to play a song about Arnold Palmer. And it's great. Meanwhile the person serving you canapes with a covered-up tribal sleeve and a huge hole in her ear where they made her take out the piercing for THIS party just threw up in her mouth and had to swallow it. Thanks. Mike. Stone.

[TheCityGame]

 

[Ocgolfrick]

Anyone hear the Anthony Kim song?

goes well with a awesome T-shirt that EndlessWinterCo had at one of our Pinehurst Library hangs, which was a NLU/Citygame design.

[TheCityGame]

There's this.

And then there's all other golf songs.

[dcmidnight]

Snuck in a couple holes last night. Realized when I got there I hadn't repacked my bag after taking stuff out when I went to the simulator - namely the cleatbox I keep with tees and other stuff in it. So I ended up using the plastic tees I had bought for the simulator. I actually really like the ones for irons. Other than looking stupid, if you turn it one side up its perfect for fairway woods and the other side for irons.

I dont know what the package means as seen on the golf channel but they strike me as something that was on an informercial once.

 

[eagle1997]

The cutout head twist: THERE WAS NO CUTOUT HEAD!

OCGolfricky's frames more than made up for it imho.

[eagle1997]

I don't know why I like taking pics of Domes' face with money. It just makes sense to me. Straight gangsta.