NOTICE TO ALL TROGS It is common knowledge that the TROGS enjoy a great deal of banter on the first tee, whether it be shots into the range, mishit shots to left, discussion on whether an iron or driver, how far big hitting Joe reaches down fairway but the biggest talking point is always, will “Bandit 28 Bob” outhit everybody, which I must say happens quite often, bringing with it the major talking point HANDICAPS.
Recently a variation of this theme has arisen, should we have a TROGS society handicap committee to set and monitor all of our handicaps. Having tried to install such a system in the days of the previous professional regime I am no longer in favour of it especially as Kevin Flynn has an approved system of calculating handicaps in operation and I know has a desire to see more members with officially approved handicaps.
I also know that many TROGS do not play in the official Tournerbury 18 hole competitions, which automatically monitor the handicaps and also very few record their scores on a club score card.
The question really is whose handicap is wrong, Bob who submits competition cards on a regular basis or others who do not hand in cards? Remember a handicap becomes invalid if 3 cards are not submitted in any year.
So is there a solution to get all of us with CURRENT and APPROVED handicaps, I believe there is and having spoken with Kevin, who agrees that it would work, put forward the following
1) TROG members record 2 consecutive 9 hole rounds on a single card getting the playing partner to initial the relevant score of the 9 holes, i.e. can be different people for each 9 holes 2) Kevin will create a “weekly competition” on his system and enter all cards handed in to him each Friday as the competitors. 3) Handicaps will be calculated in accordance with CONGU regulations 4) This TROGS competition will not be included in the club Order of Merit tables 5) A regular update of ALL handicaps will need to be published on the notice board.
This will only work if we all try to hand in cards on a regular basis. Please let Joe, Bob or myself know if you have any comments.
Dan Robinson 07 June 2011. From The Average Golfer Web Site "On a regular basis I peruse the site monitoring features I have set up for Average Golfer. Many people that find my site are looking for amateur golfer averages, be it score, handicap, club distances and the like. I compiled and averaged some information from a lot of different sources to boil it down into something useful. Everyone wants to know how their stats compare to the "norm". Keep in mind there is no norm, especially in regard to how far you hit a particular club. The only thing that matters is that YOU know far YOU hit each club. I'll take a hole in one with a 6 iron over a playing partner's errant 9 iron any day. There's too many variables that can't be accounted for between individuals. Age, height, weight, athletic ability, how long you've been playing, all make up your swing and affinity for the game, and as a result, your scores. It's almost worthless to compare your game to anyone's. The shape of your game is determined by how well you score and what course you're playing. It really is you against the course and it's condition when you played it. Nevertheless, here's some "rough" numbers because so many of you have been asking.
Why has the longest golf drive record not been broken?
The record for the longest golf drive has stood unbeaten for 35 years and was achieved with a wooden club, so have three decades of improving golfing technology failed to make an impression? On 25 September 1974, a 64-year-old man called Mike Austin is recorded to have driven a golf ball 515 yards from the tee on a Las Vegas golf course. It was a 450 yard par 4 so he will have ended up more than 50 yards past the green. No-one on record has hit a ball further in a tournament. The record was established a year before Tiger Woods was even born, and prior to the last three decades of equipment innovation. Incredibly this man - alleged to have hit a ball over 200 yards with a can of cola strapped to a club face and who never won a professional title - still holds the claim for the longest drive. It stands somewhere between folklore and reality. The Guinness Book of World Records does not recognise a figure for overall drive, quoting instead distance travelled by the ball in the air. That record stands at 408 yards (373m) by Karl Woodward in 1999. Austin's feat was witnessed by former PGA champion Chandler Harper, course officials and the rest of his four-ball grouping. But how has it not been surpassed? Technology in golf was meant to have changed the game forever. And anyway, golf - at least professionally - is seen as a young man's game. "Nobody's ever done anything like it," Austin told Travel and Leisure magazine shortly before his death in 2005.
"People think they hit a ball 300 yards and it's a goddamned miracle. But I know I did something all the greats couldn't do. That's something to really think about." He drove the ball with a tailwind of up to 35mph (55kmph) and was at an altitude of well above 2,000m above sea level but the thing is that Austin was using a Persimmon driver - the ones actually made from wood. Golf is meant to have moved on since then. Clubs are lighter, more forgiving to mis-hits and are more powerful. They have gone from being made of wood then steel to titanium and this has greatly affected how far the ball is being driven. Tradition and skill Top players' average driving distances on the PGA Tour jumped up by over 20 yards in the 10 years between 1990 and 2000 and nearly another 20 between 2000 and 2003. At that point there were nine players averaging drives of over 300 yards.
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Dan Simmons takes a sideways glance at golfing GPS tech At that time, when titanium technology was first being utilised, drivers twice the current limit - 460 cubic centimetres (28 cubic inches) in size - were being created and driving averages were at an all-time high. And that is when golf's governing bodies stepped in to keep what they saw as tradition and a high level of skill in the game. The efficiency of club faces was capped at 83% and further - even more technical - regulations were placed on the balls. At the start of the 2010 season, even the amount of grooves on a club face was limited. With these regulations, Bubba Watson , the biggest driver on the PGA Tour for three of the last four years, has actually seen his average drive distance drop. At the end of the 2009 season, it stood at 312 yards per drive. While not exactly a chip shot, it represents a fall of seven yards in three years. In fact, the PGA Tour average currently stands at 287 yards - a figure quite easily out of the reach of most amateurs, but one that has remained the same since 2003. 400-yard drives "Maybe we made drivers too big, too quickly," says Doug Wright, business director for Wilson Golf in Europe. "If you look at other industries, they tend to limit their technologies, but we pretty much went up to the limit straight away." In the 2009 season, 47 drives of 400 yards or more were recorded on the PGA Tour . The longest was 467 yards by Charley Hoffman, and while huge, it was still 50 yards short of what Mike Austin achieved with inferior technology and an age disadvantage.
"If you were a strong player you could still get some decent distance [with an old-style driver]," says Wright. "For the normal player you would struggle to get consistency from the tee because the sweet spot was so small and, secondly, the club was quite heavy." So are the rules getting in the way of new tech coming out to help golfers? "I'm always guarded about people who want to stifle innovation," says Steve Burnett, coaching department manager at the English Golf Union. "The normal golfer on the street wants to hit the ball further, he wants the latest gadgets because golf's a hard game to play. It requires a lot of time and a lot of practice so the easier we can make it the better, for the health of the game as a whole." 'Redundant courses' And he is not the only one who thinks that technology is of great use to the more casual player: "If regulations allowed us to do whatever we wanted to the golf ball and the club, then I don't think it would affect the game to the detriment of the average player," says Wright. "I think the professional game - which a lot of the concern is around - and the risk of courses becoming redundant, is a different argument all together. I can see both sides." There is increasing debate about whether there should be two sets of rules, one set for amateurs and one for professionals. The argument is that purity should be kept for elite players but amateurs should be offered all the help they can get.
It is a similar idea to Formula 1 in which drivers are forced to prove their skill by driving without navigation and braking devices available to regular drivers . Despite the advances in technology, there is one fact you cannot escape - the faster you swing the club, all things being equal, the further the ball will go. Austin is rumoured to have a swing that approached 150mph. A number of top pros are now swinging the club at upwards of 120mph. But the simple answer could be that golfers are not always trying to hit it as hard as they can as position is often more important than yardage - a prime position on the fairway is far better than careering off another 100 yards into the woods. The manufacturers however, with annual product cycles, are trying to eke out every inch of extra distance. "It's something we always ask them," says Jonathan Greathead, equipment editor at Today's Golfer magazine. "A year ago, manufacturers said their driver was the greatest, longest, best ever and now, 12 months later, they're launching something even more impressive - so how does this technology work?" The real innovations are not actually in enhancing distance but in accuracy, consistency and personalised clubs. "Customisation is a massive part of the game now," says Greathead. "Even a guy playing off a 20 or 21 handicap can drop maybe five or six shots in just a few weeks, which obviously is a massive difference, whereas the pros need every edge they can get." Accuracy, or at least consistency, of modern golf equipment is still seen by many as the key to low scoring, with regulations making it more difficult to play from the rough . But even in Mike Austin's day, distance was not everything. After hitting his record-breaking drive, he pitched back onto the green and three-putted for a bogey.
---NO MORE BANDITS---PERHAPS!
|  From A Varied Collection Of Web SItes "A handicap is calculated with a specific arithmetic formula that approximates how many strokes above or below par a player should be able to play. The R&A (now a separate organization from the Royal and Ancient Golf Club), based in St Andrews, Scotland, is responsible for the authorization of handicap systems in all golf playing countries except the United States and Mexico (where United States Golf Association rules apply) and Canada, where the Royal Canadian Golf Association rules apply. The administration of handicapping systems in countries affiliated to the R&A is the responsibility of the national golf associations, which are affiliated to the R&A. The two governing bodies specify slightly different ways to perform this calculation for players. The details of these calculations are presented below. |
"If regulations allowed us to do
whatever we wanted I don't think it would affect the game to the detriment of
the average player 
