Huh?

John,
I was just going to call and have the bartender cut you off from any more rice wine. Two should be your limit.

Clearly this has become the game of kings and ding a lings.  

John, you ask, "Is this a new development or has golf always attracted the low side of high society?"

Aren't you the answer to your own question?  

JK,

This thread reminds me of a Far Side cartoon called "Cow Tools."  No one really got it and in response to questions about its meaning, Gary Larsen replied, "Sometimes, there is a gap between concept and execution."

On this thread, I think you have experienced the "gap".

Sleep it off!

Odors of magnitude?

I was trying to figure out if that was a typo or an intentional pun, then I realized that if it was a typo it was still correct, and if that was the intended spelling it was still correct and also funny

"Well, in my opinion, that post of yours was one of the best examples of the occasional well-intended, yet overarching East Coast paternalism that requires the contrarian view in the first place!      "

Shivas:

That sure is the truth. You two have what I'd call that  massive midwest chip on your shoulder and it's showing more and more as time goes by. It's sort of like a latter day version of William Jennings Bryan's "Cross of Gold" tyriad at the Eastern banking establishment! You should try to be more like Chicago's Clarence Darrow and less like the ridiculously puritancial and politically self-serving Bryan.

"Let's try to stay on Barney's topic, albeit a highly bizarre topic and question:  I think what he was getting at was that everybody has an inflated version of their golf games and are therefore poseurs who ought to just accept reality.

Well, I sure as hell can't disagree with that.  You've officiated enough amateur events to know that's the case.  3/4 of the fields doesn't break 80.  Even among better players, most guys basically stink.  Do you disagree?"

Shivas:

No, I don't disagree with that.

Most on here have no real idea what competitive pros, tour pros and even good amateurs are thinking about out there.

Some on here tend to totally over-analyze what not only goes through their minds but what should go through the minds of even semi-hackers.

One thing really good players know how to do a thousand times better than hackers who over-analyze everything is to manage their expectations. Hackers who over-analyze their own games and strategies have no idea at all what really good players are thinking about strategically. Some semi-hacker ultra strategic over-analyzers like a David Moriarty are imagining strategies and expectations that even a good tour pro wouldn't bother with. If you sit down and talk to really good players about what they're trying to do you'd find out most all the time they're just trying to keep things pretty simple. That really is a concept most all semi-hacker over analyzers seem to fail to understand.  

A good example of that is something from Peter Jacobsen to an old hacker at my club some years ago.

This guy asked Jacobsen breathlessly in a clinic;

"Peter, Peter, when you're coming down the stretch on Sunday in a championship I just can't imagine all the strategic things that are going through your mind. Would you explain some of them to us?"

(this guy had a hearing aid on, by the way). Jacobsen looked at that and said to the guy:

"What are you connected to, the tower at the Philadelphia airport? I think about putting the ball somewhere in the fairway, somewhere on the green and hopefully making a decent putt."  

"So here's the paradox about you, Tom.  You can write up a blue streak and talk to the N-th degree about the nuances of strategy and options and angles and maintenence melds and all that stuff, but at the end of the day, you basically agree that it's a simple game about ballstriking execution and making putts.

I totally agree that way too many people overanalyze the game.

So what are you, some sort of closet contrarian or something?   "


Shivas:

Not at all. But I do feel I know better than most what this thing is, as well as the value of it, that some call the mystery of the game.    

In my experiences, I've always felt that the most obtuse people tend to complicate things and the most clear thinking people tend to simplify things.  


Oh, and Shivas, I also happen to believe in Henry Gondorff's all-time quote (in The Sting) that the idea is not only to pull off the sting but also to "keep the con" for the rest of time. Do you think the big Irish numbers king from New York ever realized what REALLY happened to his money?  

"I've got to leave and go machete a couple hundred swamp tupelo on a swamp trail........

Say WHAT??

You have to do WHAT??

Is a tupelo something that hails from Elvis's hometown?  
 
 

Is it posing or is it delusion?

Playing on the Monterey Peninsula where there are probably more real golfers, per capita, than posers, in all the Americas (and I'd say the world except for that pesky Scotland.) there was a guy who openly stated that he was going to go for the brass ring and try to make the PGA Tour. Well up until that point, I had never played with him. Then one day he was our captain at a 5 O'clock match. This guy couldn't hit the broadside of a beachball let alone the golf ball.

" I posted the entire thing from a seat of a bar stool well after midnight......"

Barney:

Yep, I think your initial couple of posts on this thread makes that pretty obvious. How would you like to be an after midnight bartender and have to listen to babble like that night after night?