The only number that’s important in golf is what you write on the card, not what’s on the bottom of the iron you hit into the green.
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Thinking back on this it does make me wonder, @Tron did the lefty year improve your right hand game in the end?
This may have been covered on one of the platforms but I haven’t heard.
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Believe the recap is: driver and irons were never an issue (generational driver as we all know), helped with pitches/chips and putting, sort of rebalanced himself
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Many are saying they juiced their lofts 
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Yes. And switching back to righty seems to have improved his lefty game as well.
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Is playing wrong-handed the golf version of “The Stranger”?
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Basically, the idea was (and I cannot stress enough that we were just guessing), but trying to have the skill level run consecutively to try to get the most out of good shots.
So to start, Neil’s got a really solid off the tee game, I’ve got solid iron play, which gives randy the first putt at it. If we’re on the green, we’re looking at an unlikely birdie no matter who is putting, that’s just the reality of Pinehurst. So the lowest handicap players hit the highest variance shots on that opening hole.
In the beginning it worked out great. The highest variance shots on the first two holes were all hit by the best, 2nd best, and 3rd best ball strikers.
Cody draining the birdie on 2 flipped it on us, which we knew was going to happen at some point. But again, the theory was that we would try to get the most out of the good ball strikers feeding off each other, and run the lesser ball strikers consecutively to get that “out of the way” instead of giving back some of the value the better ball strikers would have earned you. 3 was a mess but we kinda got right back into it on 4. My gagged 3 footer on 4 triggered the entire sequence that unfolded after that. The playbook worked and your scratch player is just gonna need to make a 3 footer. (Will squeeze in one excuse - a reason why the putting was especially shitty in this video was that there was a sand layer on these greens and very little grass. Putts did not roll true at all and were pretty much polar opposite to this past weekend. Also the ridiculous cup liners at Pinehurst mean you need to pour putts into the center. Ok that’s two excuses.)
In hindsight, I still don’t know if that was the right call? The thinking was, we’ll pay the price on some holes or sure, but we’ll probably get back on a better cycle at some point? And since we’re playing a 2 handicap and 4/5 of the team was higher than a 2 handicap, you kinda gotta run a riskier playbook than spreading out the sequence more evenly.
I don’t know. Who cares.
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I cared, which is why I asked. I really appreciate the response, and that now makes sense. (at least your logic)
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What’s this mean? Never played there, never gave any thought to cup liners at all.
I’ll take the bait.
The situation changed when Cody absolutely stuffed it. There was no “one thing you can’t do.” We’re one down and absolutely have to have a 2. A safe shot to the center of the green does nothing for us, and it was my first full swing since the 1st hole. Wind absolutely nuked a ball I started out wayyyy left. It was clearly not a good shot but it was probably a 1 in 20 shot to begin with.
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Most courses set their cup liners well below the surface of the ground, meaning there’s maybe an inch or so of turf at the top of the hole. When the ball hits that, it usually takes speed off of it and allows balls to fall in.
At Pinehurst, for some reason that makes no sense, they have special cup liners that go all the way to the top of the cup, which reject any putt that isn’t pure. And when they get them dialed, it means you have to have die pace for an even slightly marginal putt to have a chance to fall in.
(My putt on 4 was probably not going in with a normal cup liner anyways.)
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is this to protect the turf from damage? This IS crazy, and for some reason I didn’t notice it when we were there.
super common in the Atlanta area. They suck.
Think it might be a maintenance thing? Maybe prevents the lips of cups getting messed up? Maybe it’s something for Bermuda greens? Totally guessing, but they’re everywhere here and it’s awful.
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Courtesy of our friends at the USGA, all of the above!
https://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/course-care/green-section-record/58/9/why-do-hole-edges-collapse-.html
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Yes, at PH if the pin position stays the same for a couple days or more you end up with a pronounced bald spot on one side of the cup as the grain/growth pattern takes the grass away from that cut edge.
Compounding matters, PH either gets way too much play and/or reuses the cup liners to the extreme, meaning they can tend to have more jagged angles as opposed to the perfect circle it should be (like the above picture).
Now I’ve never seen it impact my game, but a better player like @Soly might feel it.
[DUCKS]
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I would hypothesize that it has to do with the number of flat(ish) locations on the greens that can be used for daily resort play, and would think there’s a possibility that the re-use the exact same 4-6 hole locations on many of the greens. Rather than having a handful of old plugs re-growing inside a 10’x10’ area, they just cut out the hole that they filled 5 days ago.
Yes, I think there’s something to that, although from being out there a fair bit there’s no shortage of old cups / plugs to be found.
I think they could still find a way to ensure the cup liners weren’t so beat up.
Fair enough. I’ve not been there in 10+ years. I get irked playing bermuda grass greens where there are a bunch of old plugs all in the same area, with the grain all pointing in different directions.
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Many people have been saying the C-Suite are afraid of being embarrassed in an NLU vs The Stains ‘n Schwaldos match. Who can say?
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