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Pros playing the course like we do.

MarcW

MarcW

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How do you think touring pros would do on an average course (7000 yards, good conditioned track) without the aid of a caddie, yardage book, practice rounds, GPS, etc.? You know, like how we would play a course for the first time.
 
7000yds is average???
 
I think they'd tear it up.

Rough would be easier, pin placement easier, etc...
 
MarcW said:
How do you think touring pros would do on an average course (7000 yards, good conditioned track) without the aid of a caddie, yardage book, practice rounds, GPS, etc.? You know, like how we would play a course for the first time.
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Having done this experiment with both PGA and LPGA players, I can say "quite well".
 
JNRadio said:
7000yds is average???
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Well I didn't want them playing 6500, that would be too easy. Everything else would be average.
 
JB said:
Having done this experiment with both PGA and LPGA players, I can say "quite well".
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But with GI irons? :D
 
MarcW said:
But with GI irons? :D
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Ask forum member Hawk what the ladies can do on a regular ole course with a couple of THPers.
 
Let's say we usually play from the white tees or blue tees at 6400-6700 yards. I firmly believe that a PGA touring pro could step onto any course we do for the first time, go the farthest tees offered, and usually shoot a new course record, (assuming it didn't used to be the "home course" for another pro). I just don't think we have any idea how good these guys really are. I heard Bubba Watson talking one time about a new club he was trying out, (I think it was a 4 wood), and he said he went out and played a round with just that one club just so he could get used to it and get creative making different shots with the same club. He shot +2. I will probably never shoot +2.
 
If you listened to the discussion on the Morning Drive with the founder of Adams Golf, and what Tom Watson is saying about tee box selection. If the pros played tees that compensated for their distance advantage it would be a 8,000 plus course. Go play the forward tees and see what a difference it makes. Put a pro on a 6,200 yard course and they could drive a good number of the Par 4's.

I know I could reach easily reach a lot of the par 5's in 2 playing the reds.
 
JB said:
Ask forum member Hawk what the ladies can do on a regular ole course with a couple of THPers.
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Where is that thread????
 
I read an article a little while ago where caddies were interviewed about how good the pros really play...They said most pros could come to any club, find the best player. give him/her 5 a side and beat him/her everytime......It's amazing how good the pros really are....
 
I've seen Daly and Overton play BCC which isn't very long or tough. Overton shot -3 or -4. Daly has played there a few times and the time I was watching him he had a hissy fit, tossed his bag in the water and walked off the course. I believe it was Sluman who went something like -8 there, but it was my buddy playing with him so I didn't see it myself. It's not their length that was shocking, it's their wedge game and putting. I know on Bubbas twitter he has posted his scores at regular tracks and they're 62's and stuff. As for him shooting +2 with just a 4 wood, I have a buddy who hustles people really hard by offering to play the whole round with just an 8 iron and he's always around 75. 4 wood is much more impressive though. Bunker shot with a 4 wood would be tough. Haha


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Steve Marino played a muni in Washington, DC back in 2007 that was chronicled by the Washington Post. He shot much higher than the reporter thought he would...he shot 68.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dy...7/01/AR2007070101221.html?sid=ST2009071701245

Steve Marino, a PGA Tour rookie, stepped onto the first tee box at East Potomac Golf Course in Southwest Washington last month and scoured the ground for a place to push in his tee. A flat expanse of crusted dirt made up one corner; patchy grass covered the rest. Marino tried to force his tee into the dirt, but it snapped in half. He pulled another from his pocket and shoved it into a tuft of overgrown grass. When Marino stepped back into his stance, his right foot rested three inches higher than his left.

"Damn," he said. "What's it take to get a few yards of even ground?"

Standing there, with his hands on his hips and his scorecard still blank, Marino almost passed for the average public-course hacker. He was just a tad pudgy and, on this Wednesday morning, just a tad hung over. His brown curly hair spilled from under a Callaway hat, and tan cargo shorts hung to his knees. But already, Marino had distinguished himself from the typical golfer who played this very public course on Hains Point. His shirt was tucked in. He had arrived more than two minutes before his tee time. His golf bag contained a complete set of clubs, made post-1980.

During the first half of his rookie season on the PGA Tour, Marino had solidified his status as one of the world's best golfers. He had three top-10 finishes and more than $700,000 in winnings. Over the past four months, Marino had jet-setted from one luxury hotel to the next, waking up to break par at courses such as Pebble Beach, Bay Hill and Colonial while caddies lugged his clubs and galleries applauded his shotmaking. Then, in the middle of a rare week off, he'd flown here at The Post's expense to play an over-trafficked muni with me.

I had asked Marino, who will be competing in this week's AT&T National at Congressional Country Club, to play with me at East Potomac because I wanted an answer, finally, to the question that so many of us duffers ask as we walk off municipal courses and total up scores we hope will end up in two digits: What would a PGA Tour player shoot here, anyway? On a short course devoid of significant obstacles, could Marino possibly score in the 50s? Or would the annoyances of public golf -- bumpy greens, eroded fairways, chunky sand traps -- throw him wildly off kilter?

On television each weekend, I watched Marino and his peers play perfectly manicured courses with 500-yard par 4s and wickedly sloped greens. It looked nothing like the game I play regularly at Hains Point, and so I yearned for a level comparison. On the same course, just how good are they? And how bad are we?

Marino walked across the first tee box to his 40-pound PGA Tour bag and pulled out a Callaway driver that had been factory-made to his specifications. He reached into a side pocket and pulled out a $400 range finder, binoculars designed to calculate yardage. At about 10 a.m. on a Wednesday, Marino held the range finder up to his right eye and peered down the mangled fairway of the opening par 4.

"Looks like 350 [yards] dead ahead," Marino said. "It doesn't get much more simple than this."

Marino, 27, grew up 15 minutes from East Potomac in Fairfax, but he had never heard of Washington's most popular golf course. Even before joining the varsity team at W.T. Woodson High School, Marino's ability to consistently break par had earned him entry into some of the area's best golf courses. He belonged to the Country Club of Fairfax. He traveled to junior tournaments hosted by storied private courses.

As Marino continued to improve, so did the courses on which he played. He starred on the golf team for four seasons at the University of Virginia, graduated and moved to a Florida condo nestled between two courses designed by Jack Nicklaus. He played the best layouts in California, Arizona and Florida during four seasons on small professional tours. When he placed eighth at PGA Tour Qualifying School in December and won his Tour card, Marino earned the right to travel the country and play the best courses in their best conditions of the year.

By the time I called Marino in May to propose my idea, he had all but forgotten what it felt like to play an unremarkable course with unremarkable golfers. Would the course have 18 holes? Would our round take more than six hours? What was the likelihood of getting pegged by an errant golf ball?

"Okay, let's try it," Marino said eventually. "I'm taking a week off before the U.S. Open. We can make it like my practice round."

For the next two weeks, my friends and I tried to predict Marino's East Potomac result. His professional playing partners lauded his consistent putting and perfect ball-striking. Almost one-third of his rounds this season had ended with scores in the 60s. He had converted more birdies than all but seven players on the PGA Tour.

When my friends and co-workers projected those stats on East Potomac's wide-open, 6,600-yard layout, they imagined a result usually reserved for video games such as "Golden Tee." Marino would drive the green on many par-4s and eagle most par-5s, friends predicted. He would roll in long putts on flat, uncomplicated greens. He would flirt with a few hole-in-ones, make at least 10 birdies, finish somewhere around 57 or 58 and shatter the East Potomac course record -- if such a record exists.

Not until the morning of our round did Marino offer a prediction of his own. He stepped into the parking lot wearing shiny black golf shoes and a turquoise golf shirt provided by his sponsor. At a course where warming up usually denoted a few mulligans on the first tee, Marino pulled a six-foot stretching pole out of his golf bag and placed it on top of his shoulders. He folded his arms over the pole, bent toward the ground and swung his back violently from side to side.

"Oh, man, I'm feeling pretty stiff," Marino said. "I think I can still go low 60s."

He shot a 68. Make that an ugly 68.

The par-4 first hole was emblematic of Marino's round. He crushed a drive 320 yards down the right side of the fairway, almost all the way to the green, only to find the ball settled in a pile of twigs. Marino wasted his next shot chopping the ball out into the grass, and then he pitched his third shot to within 12 feet of the pin. He struck what felt like a pure putt, but the ball ran over sand and stopped a few inches short of the hole. Marino stood on the green and shook his head. "Ridiculous. Just ridiculous," he said. Then he tapped in for bogey.

Marino's patches of excellence continued to be interrupted by bad luck and unseemly playing conditions. He birded Nos. 3 and 4 to get under par. As playing partners, we started to fall into a rhythm: I hit my drives first, after the twosome in front of us had moved at least 250 yards ahead. Then we waited -- sometimes for two minutes, sometimes for five -- until that group cleared the hole and Marino could safely bomb one of his 300-yard drives.

On the sixth tee, Marino stood behind me and watched my tee shot slice over the trees on the right side of the fairway . . . over the course fence . . . over a road . . . over a jogging trail . . . and splash into the Potomac, 150 yards out of bounds.

"I thought you said there were no water hazards on this course," Marino said.

I stepped back, too ashamed to respond, and watched Marino hammer an intentional fade that arched left to right. It soared down the middle of the fairway, cutting a path that mirrored the hole's shape, and dropped to the ground 350 yards away. One of my co-workers from the paper, out on a golf course for the first time in her life to watch this round, offered her evaluation.

"Wow," she said, "his shots even sound different than yours."

The more I watched Marino play, the more convinced I became that golf, for us, involved little common ground. When I asked Marino about the obstacles I considered daunting on PGA Tour courses -- long holes, imposing water hazards, gigantic bunkers -- Marino said they never bothered him. Similarly, at East Potomac, Marino obsessed over details I had never noticed. Overgrown fairways made it impossible, he said, to generate substantial spin on iron shots. Stiff sand traps caused the ball to release on a flat trajectory, negating the importance of touch.

The greens bothered Marino most. After six months spent on greens that ran as fast as tiled kitchen floors, Marino now felt like he was putting along the bottom of a filled swimming pool. No matter how hard he hit it, the ball almost always slid through sand or water and grinded to a halt short of the hole. After Marino left two consecutive putts short on No. 11, he dropped his putter on the green.

"I'm killing it, and it doesn't go anywhere," he said. "I might just start putting with my driver."

We walked to the 16th hole with Marino three shots under par and me 22 over. I hit, and then Marino pushed in his tee and took his stance. He stepped back, made two practice swings, waggled over his ball, pulled back his club . . . and then stopped.

"What are those guys doing?" Marino said.

He pointed out to the fairway, where two course workers overturned soil 260 yards away. They were facing away from us, sitting in the middle of Marino's likely landing area. Oblivious to our presence, they tilled the ground and planted fresh grass. Marino waited 10 seconds, thinking they would move. Thirty seconds. One minute. Miffed, he tossed out his right arm and shook his head.

Where Marino usually plays, dozens of groundskeepers work 12-hour days to create glistening panoramas of trees and grass. They work until midnight and start working again at 4 a.m., bending their schedules to make sure playing conditions are perfect long before the first golfer arrived. East Potomac operates by the opposite maxim: Here, I told Marino, golfers play around the course workers.

"So you mean I just hit?" Marino said.

Not entirely convinced, he made his worst swing of the day and knocked the ball five yards right of the fairway. Marino cleaned up for a par, and he picked up a birdie on No. 17 to reach his final total of 4 under par. As he walked back toward the clubhouse, Marino studied his scorecard. I asked what he thought.

"It's just kind of like you hit it and guess where it goes on this course," Marino said. "I don't think I'd ever shoot over par on a course like this, but I'm not sure I could ever go really low. On nice courses, you know when you hit a good shot that you're going to get rewarded for it. So if you're playing great, you score great. Here, you just never know."

A few days later, Marino would leave for Pennsylvania to play in the U.S. Open. He would miss the cut after shooting 17 over for his two rounds. Along with almost every other PGA Tour golfer in the field, he would walk away from Oakmont Country Club and call it perhaps the most difficult golf set-up in professional tournament history.

But as he headed for the parking lot in Southwest Washington, Marino looked back at the East Potomac clubhouse and felt a sudden surge of optimism.

"This actually kind of makes me look forward to Oakmont," he said. "That course might be a better fit for me."
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I used to tee it up at a local course here in FLA with a good friend of mine that has played both the PGA and Nationwide (currently on NAtionwide) He never shot higher than -3 and I saw him take deep at -9. He hits it great but he puts unreal. They all hit great, it's unreal
 
I think the only struggle they might have is with the condition of some greens, or actually spotting their own ball!
 
jdjanda said:
If you listened to the discussion on the Morning Drive with the founder of Adams Golf, and what Tom Watson is saying about tee box selection. If the pros played tees that compensated for their distance advantage it would be a 8,000 plus course. Go play the forward tees and see what a difference it makes. Put a pro on a 6,200 yard course and they could drive a good number of the Par 4's.

I know I could reach easily reach a lot of the par 5's in 2 playing the reds.
Click to expand...

Maybe I didn't word my op correctly. I know any pro will tear up a short course, my point was how they would do without all the knowledge they have going into a tournament: practice rounds, yardages from caddies, pin placements. The stuff us mortals have to deal with when playing a course for the first or second time.
 
Thanks for posting that article, ary. I've been trying to find that for a long time.
 
MarcW said:
Maybe I didn't word my op correctly. I know any pro will tear up a short course, my point was how they would do without all the knowledge they have going into a tournament: practice rounds, yardages from caddies, pin placements. The stuff us mortals have to deal with when playing a course for the first or second time.
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I don't think it would really matter much, maybe just 1 or 2 strokes by not knowing about a certain hump in the green or something like that.
 
MarcW said:
Maybe I didn't word my op correctly. I know any pro will tear up a short course, my point was how they would do without all the knowledge they have going into a tournament: practice rounds, yardages from caddies, pin placements. The stuff us mortals have to deal with when playing a course for the first or second time.
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They would still tear it up. They would never need more than a wedge for a second shot on par 4's, and that is if they didn't drive the green, and all of the pros are ridiculous with a wedge in their hands.
 
If you are asking how much benefit they get from a caddy, it's probably not much. They do get a big benefit from knowing the course and having notes in a yardage book about the course and greens. But they can still go out on a course they have never played and shoot lights out.
 
I agree with you guys. They would tear the course up. As JB found out, the LPGA women are great as well. They just play a different game than 99% of us. It's really the same with other pro sports. They are soooo good. You just can't appreciate it unless you're up close or playing with them. At them local Class A baseball stadium, there is a place to see how fast you can pitch a baseball. I got up to 58 mph, yea. So, when they say the so and so threw that last pitch at 94 mph, I can just only admire their ability.
 
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