I'm Proruff,
Been through hell and back again with this game.
At first, I played all by my lonesome. All the courses. I didn't even know that I was playing ranked games.......for months......
Then got invited to play a match play game and for the first time I was actually playing against someone else........I lost, but I saw potential in what kind of fun this could be.
I made Pro, and when the chance to win a prize via a forum post came up, I made my first post and was awarded an upgraded driver to the starter ( i might have been about level 60 or so). When my average dropped drastically as a result of the new equipment, I figured out how to join games and do surveys and watch videos to see just how good I could get at this game. I've actually aced a hole (Kiawah #14....in my replays if you're interested.....I'm pretty proud of it). My heart didn't stop racing for a week.
Now I've got (IMHO) decent gear, and try to get games in when I can (usually from hotel rooms......lousy wifi and all). I've never had to deal with different browsers or Flash versions, it just plays on my laptop just fine (Lenovo T410 WinXP using Firefox 20.0.1 with Flash version whatever, don't flush caches or worry about what's running in the background. I got my first meter stutter in, um, February(?), and had about 4 since.
With the talk of VEM and how if you REALLY know the game then you know when the shot you just made results in something that doesn't make sense, I just shrug my shoulders and remember the time my cousin (a decent golfer) teed off on the first and shanked one off his shin and he rolled around the box screaming "AGONY, AGONY.....". Was that VEM in real life?
In short, I can conclude by saying that when all is said and done with me:
THIS GAME IS A HOOT!!!!