I agree, DL3fan. I've been playing this game since June of last year and have had lots of fun doing it, but this has gotten silly. I just played a qualifier round on St. Andy and was -5 at the turn. I ran my score to -6 by the time I finished #12 and thought I was sitting pretty though I had some trepidation about the looming challenge posed by number 17. On the big par 5, I had a 19 mph wind IN MY FACE. I hit my drive perfectly to 260 yards in the fairway. Then I aimed to the left branch of the fairway on the second shot to avoid the fescue, which turned me directly into the wind. I hit 3 wood which then traveled 250 yards and out of bounds INTO an almost gale force wind, mind you.
I hit the next shot with the EXACT SAME club aiming directly across the fescue toward the green with the wind quartering at 19 mph and all I could muster with a dead center shot from a perfect lie was 170 yards or so straight into the bunker. Something's just not right here and frankly, I don't get it.
I can compete on a one to one basis with 99% of the players of this game. However, in the Open qualifiers or other competitive tournaments, every time I build a 4 or 6 shot buffer something very screwy happens ... oddly, just screwy enough to knock me back to even par.
Furthermore, I see guys qualifying for the Opens with 58's and 59's within just a few hours of the opening of the qualifying rounds? I've been playing this game for too long and am too good a player to buy into that line of happy HS. It took two rounds for me to even get a feel for the faster greens, let alone begin to even think about posting under par scores and these guys are posting in the 50's on day one? They're either geniuses or all they do is play this game or they know a secret that the rest of us don't.
My equipment is the same as the top qualifiers and, unlike alot of guys who quit multiplayer rounds when they hit a few bad shots to protect their precious averages, I do not. I play to the last shot and still average in the low to mid 60's. My system's a good one and my DSL is as fast as any.
I completely understand that you only want your best players to qualify for major tourneys and I don't have a problem with that process but the sheer randomness of these occurrences is ridiculous. A shot or two here or there that go screwy I can understand but there just too many to justify lately
I've consistently defended WGT and have literally argued with guys during MP rounds who have claimed that the system is rigged. Quite frankly, I'm beginning to have difficulty formulating arguments to put forth with these guys myself given what's been going on lately.
I don't want the game to be easy. Frankly, I like it difficult and I don't mind losing to a legitimately superior player. And for the record, I'm not saying that I think that all of the players who consistently post scores in the 50's have not legitimately earned those scores. All I ask is that if I hit a shot, be it good or bad, then I should get the results that I deserve from that shot, not some random result that someone or some computer pulls out of their respective butts.