I am absolutely filled up after the PGA Tour offseason. East Lake feels like it was ages ago. I used the time to fight down the number of tabs I have open, which currently stood at 73 open on the various Safari and Chrome windows on my laptop and 488 tabs on my phone. Made some progress last week but we're still not in a great spot on that front. However, I only have 43 total emails in my inbox, which is a win.
GHIN
Randy really stretched the bounds of the “GHIN” category in the last G&T by writing about his dog, Arthur. This week, I’m going to reset us by getting really literal and talking about my actual handicap index and address some of the haters in the process.
Barstool released a video last week in which Riggs (who seemingly plays 10x more golf than I do, yet has an impossibly unathletic move) challenges an internet commenter to a match. While I think a concept stemming from handicap manipulation accusations would’ve been more interesting/applicable in a stroke play format, that they pulled in an internet hater and then put him in the cauldron is something we’ve been talking about for years as a fun “what if” but never had the bandwidth to put it in play.
The Midnight Troubadour
Tough and timeless, this polo is built for the long ride. Featuring a crisp, non-collapsing collar and a rugged, stretchy fabric, it's the perfect shirt for any cowboy's wardrobe.
This comment, from a prolific hater of ours on YouTube, is what got me going on this topic a couple of weeks ago:
People see me play golf on camera and it’s often not pretty, which can be chalked up to a combination of factors: Playing on camera isn’t easy - filming a round is a pain in the ass and often results in various stops and starts. Sometimes good shots get edited out. Sometimes bad shots get edited out. I’m 38 years old, have two kids, and until recently, hadn’t worked out in a decade. I have an ugly over-the-top move, and many of the videos we’ve filmed this year have been the morning after a cross-country flight (and sometimes the day of that flight, or on another continent), and I’m the least flexible person on the planet.
All of this adds up to a potent, high-variance, feel-based combination that can yield drastically different results round-to-round. I rarely warm up at this point — and usually play better when I don’t — and I’ve practiced twice this year and I often go weeks without playing. All of this is deeply self-inflicted and unnecessary, and I’m in the early stages of fixing it (as are Casey, Cody and DJ - if you haven’t seen our latest video, it’s not to be missed.)
I’m a 1-handicap because the GHIN system says I’m a 1-handicap. And there seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding of (or refusal to accept) how the system actually works. To refresh: the system only looks at your last twenty scores, of which it takes the eight best score differentials to par when factoring in slope, rating, and conditions that day. At any given point, despite my volatile and streaky nature, the best eight rounds of my last twenty are usually pretty good. These rounds tend to come in the middle stretch of golf trips, after I’ve gotten a few days of golf under my belt, have found the bottom of my swing, and have mixed in a free afternoon to rest up and stretch.
At various points during NLU, I’ve been called a sandbagger and a vanity cap, sometimes at the same time, which is interesting! I would rather be getting strokes from Soly, Neil, Ben and Cody, and have a far higher floor and a lower ceiling than I currently do. Something in the 3.6 range would be very comfortable. Unfortunately, I can’t pick what my handicap is!