When did it first hit you...

[John Kavanaugh]

that everyone who can not play golf at the level of a US Open qualifier are posers.  Today when I heard Peter (I wish I was on the golf channel instead of XM 146) ask a 14 yr old if GO had a STRONG chance of repeating as Open champion I knew all was lost.  I had just made it to work and had meds to take and candy dishes to raid so I skipped the answer.  My only true thought was please God...not another 14 year old who has given up ball striking for sniffing...Hit the range lad and forget about history until you have made some.  Why is a sport that traditionally required a modecum of success to afford now has a tractor beam focused on losers?  Is this a new development or has golf always attracted the low side of high society?

[Matt_Cohn]

Huh?

[John Kavanaugh]

The bartender just cut me off.  He is a golfer too...I hope he doesn't ask me to go home with him.  At least we are both wearing long pants.  I think we can make it past security without harming the image of this fine game.

[Tommy_Naccarato]

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

[John Kavanaugh]

The bartender just said he hits it about 280...I think I felt it move.  I can't believe I've been playing this game 39 yrs now and the stories never change.  You should see his bud and the look on the face of the clueless waitress who just wants to get home to her latch key bastard son.  First tee, last chance.

[John Kavanaugh]

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

[Michael Robin]

Uh oh, I'm having Shamoo deja vu.  

[Phil_the_Author]

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?  

[John_Cullum]

Sounds like the bar at NH is the place to be on a Thursday night.

How's the head this morning?

[Jeff_Brauer]

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!

[tlavin]

The bartender just cut me off.  He is a golfer too...I hope he doesn't ask me to go home with him.  At least we are both wearing long pants.  I think we can make it past security without harming the image of this fine game.

And I thought Hunter S. Thompson was dead...

[Doug Siebert]

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

[TEPaul]

In my opinion, this thread is one of the best examples of Kavanaugh/Schmidt trying to be clever contrarians just for the sake of being clever contrarians. Overdone that wears pretty thin after a while.

But what the hell---it's a "Big World" and it really does take all kinds.  

[TEPaul]

"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.

[TEPaul]

"And BTW, what the hell are you coming at me for?  All I did was answer the man's question!  What's so contrarian about that?"

I'm coming at you for defending that transparent contrarian pot-stirer Kavanaugh and also for your ridiculously didactic "cheater-line" rationale.  

Have I actually left any doubt about that? I had hoped not.  

[TEPaul]

"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."  

[TEPaul]

"Gee, I wonder whose questions you've answered.  I sure hope you've never answered any of Barney's before, lest you be told you're a didactic contrarian defender...."

No, I must say, I don't recall even trying to answer any of Barney's questions. Most all the time I can only recall trying to humor him.  

[TEPaul]

"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?  

[paul cowley]

....this thread sure beats watching tennis [well, mens tennis anyway].
I've got to leave and go machete a couple hundred swamp tupelo on a swamp trail, but at least I don't have to Tivo this match.....I love you guys!

[TEPaul]

"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?  
 
 

[paul cowley]

Tom.....in my spare time I seem to be the point person to manage 3,000 acres of mixed river swamp and upland down here on the freshwater Satilla river....which includes hacking new trails through the sloughs and swamps. The river is at an all time low so its much easier to access and clear stuff.

So....me and my six year old, Cierra, who BTW has had her own ATV since she was four, are going to spend the afternoon cutting and marking a new river trail from Limerock to Middle Rd......snakes and gators notwithstanding.
[actually ticks, chiggers, spiders are what bite the most down here].

Now that I have taken this OT thread even further OT, I think I will be venturing off......tah tah.

PS....get your butt down here, we could use the help .

[Adam Clayman]

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.

[John Kavanaugh]

I was't stirring a damn thing with this thread.  I posted the entire thing from a seat of a bar stool well after midnight in the shadows of Abraham Lincoln's home.  I won't go so far to blame the ghost of Lincoln for the homoerotic tone of some of my comments but I don't discount it either.  This topic was more shaken then stirred.  I don't even see the controvesy in observing that two guys talking golf alone after last call is hot...if not anything but gay.

[TEPaul]

" 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?  

[paul cowley]

Hey guys I'm back......what did I miss?