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Idea for parallel Starters Virtual Tour

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Mon, Feb 17 2014 10:29 PM

  So there I was... trying and failing to get any kind of worthwhile start over the first half dozen holes of the Transamerica Classic, and hating myself for restarting when...

  ... I decided, forget it, I'm going to play with Starter Clubs instead...

  ... and, since it seemed appropriate, I loaded up the free Transamerica ball for the round.

  Well, I had a really fun time. Playing Starters from the tips at CCC was a real, solid challenge. Some birdies were possible, many holes required good wedges or up'n'downs to save par... in short it was a great test, and one in which par would be an excellent score but where several under is not impossible. Obviously, using a ball with 2.5 distance and 2 spin, and a slower meter (2) than the starter 'rock' ball (0 everything!) makes it a lot more manageable.

  So then I thought how about a Parallel WGT Virtual Tour for Starter clubs using this exact premise...

  The special ball that is given out free with these tournaments is always one of 'middling attributes' -- enough to encourage a newbie to realize what a difference a good ball can make, but not with enough distance, spin, or meter slowness, to be worth anything much to the highest-level players, except as fish food.

  Typically, I suspect, these balls just end up clogging up the bag for most of us… Instead, why not put them a real functional use: make them the required ball for an equipment-restricted parallel event, one in which every player would then be using exactly the same gear (something that so many players have asked for).

  Shoe has been experimenting with Starter-only events in recent months (e.g. As Promised... More Starter Club Tests), and they've been very warmly received.

  This would be a logical extension. Create a tournament, indeed, a whole tour, that puts these balls to good use. 

  The durability attributes appear to be enough to allow for at least 2 full rounds (even with a score somewhat over par). That would be enough to allow a competitor to play both rounds in the parallel tourney without needing to spend credits if they didn't want to. And if a player did buy more of that ball, then there would be some transparency in their Profile (if anyone cared to look) to reveal if they'd purchased more sleeves of said ball in order to grind their way to a good score.

  Some obvious Benefits:

  1. The sponsor gets more exposure, as the balls carrying their name would get more use, and be purchased more. And it would be appropriate: their ball would be used in their tourney (which I'll bet it isn't by anyone currently featuring on the leaderboard of the main event!).

  2. WGT gets more ball sale income, as some players would inevitably buy another sleeve of said balls in order to have another crack at a lower score in the multiple play first round.

  3. The playing community gets a truly level playing field event, that would also give newer or lower level players (without the top club sets) a chance to see how they fare on leaderboards with some of the top names.

  4. Top players get a chance to have some fun with the variety of a starters event.

  I'd be happy to maintain Tour Standings for these events, if WGT couldn't repeat the existing Virtual Tour standings programming for a parallel version.

  … and if WGT really wanted to offer a hard-core version, and really see if anyone could break par, they could throw Uneven Lies into the mix as well!

  Any thoughts... ?

  --------------------------------------------

  And yes, I did finish the round, bogeying the last for a one over 72:

  

  For bragging rights, anyone else want to try and break par playing the multiplay Transamerica Classic with starters and the tranny ball before Friday's deadline? You'd have to post your card and club set/ball/score screenshot on the 18th green as I've done above.

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Tue, Feb 18 2014 6:48 AM

  Corwyn,

  If you wanted to challenge me you should have just sent me a pm. You know damn well I'm gonna do this. ;))))

  I noticed your score in the Trans and was wondering how you could put up a 72 with fancy clubs. Now I know what happened. I'll post up the full set of screen shots post round.

  Great fun idea BTW. I used to play some of the Free Unlimited play weeklies once with fancies and then play again with starters just to see what happens. Hopefully some of our best players who have saturated averages will jump in just for kicks.

  ~CD~

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Tue, Feb 18 2014 9:26 AM

  I ended up playing this pretty much right away from sheer curiosity. What a fun challenge. CCC plays so well with short clubs. I used the Heart Ball not the Trans Ball BTW. It has the same attributes and I clicked on it by accident when I loaded the clubs. I think the annoyance of the Heart bubbles on every shot was worth a good 2 strokes anyway. lol

  I got through the front pretty clean except for a major hiccup on the Par 3 7th hole. Stupid 3 putt put me 1 over for the front. Still felt like I was in the thing against your posted score but I had knowing you were on level Par at the turn playing in the back of my mind. Should have made Birdie on 10 and was really lucky to save Par on 13 after pulling my tee shot into the left rough. Super knee-knocker down-hill bender just caught the cup edge and dropped. The Pars I made on 11,12 and 14 were the kind of course management play Legends are made of. Stunning putts dropped to save Pars. By now I'm thinking I've got a birdie in me and you're mine at least to tie you. Then 15 happened. I actually played it exactly as I wanted but missed a 5 foot, 3 inch downhill putt for Par. At this point I'm thinking I might not be able to pull level. Off the back of the green on the Par 5 16th with my 3rd shot. Hit a perfect flop that rolled over the hole but didn't drop in. Par save and the last real scoring opportunity gone. 17 I decided to play super safe as not to throw anything away and took my 2 putt Par. On 18 with 3 mph headwind I still reached the fairway all the way to the right. Usually with starter ball never reaches with any wind. Second shot left to exactly 70 yards. Right on the number of the Sand wedge full power. I hit it maybe 95% power knowing it's a downhill landing and the ball ends up where you see it in my 18th green screen shot. When I looked at the replay the ball had run just inside the cup as it was slowed down. So damn close to ending with a lucky birdie and tying your score but not today. Shot 73.

  Great Challenge, Great Fun and as I've said before, this is the way I wish the game played all the time. We both know if we had played Perfectly, we could have shot under Par. It's the Perfect Part that's the difference. :)

  Bring it folks if you've got any and GL if you do.;)

  ~CD~

  

   

  

  

  

  

• bhoese 679 Posts

  Wed, Feb 19 2014 10:16 PM

  I gave it a shot and struggled to a 74 yesterday, followed by a 72 tonight in which I made the turn at -3.  I didn't hit a single green on the back, including a wet one on the 10th.  TLs have high wind.  Cards and replays to follow...just not tonight.

   

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Thu, Feb 20 2014 12:22 AM

  CerinoDevoti:

  I think the annoyance of the Heart bubbles on every shot was worth a good 2 strokes anyway. lol

  +1 to that CD! I tried that ball for a few shots, and had a headache almost instantly...

  bhoese:

  TLs have high wind.

  Ouch! I'd forgotten that conditions would be different for each tier... And presumably, you're dealing with champ greens too? Which, with starter putter here, is just terrifying. 

  That makes a 72 highly impressive, Ben!

  ----------------------

  I just finished another attempt (and my Tranny ball is just about used up, so that will be it for me!) on the far easier Low wind version that we Legends get (with Tourney greens).

  I got great luck on the 1st with this chip-in, and on the 3rd with a hole-out LW approach. I was very pleased with my approach to #5 which used the contours as you have to with starters, but I missed that putt, and my birdie try on #6 by a hair (although I had played very safe after leaving myself the wrong distance for my 3rd).

  I pulled the tee shot and thus made a mess of #8, the only other strong birdie opportunity on the front, and then pulled again off the tee on #9, barely making the fairway as a result... which meant no chance to reach the green in three, lol! A misjudged 4th meant an ugly bogey. 

  Another poor putt (this time from 15ft) on #10 and one of the few other birdie chances had gone, and facing the remaining holes, where so few even offer GIR possibilities, I did not fancy my chances of staying under par.

  But I then hit a great rhythm of par saves, getting 3rd shots to, and making saves from, 6ft, 4ft, 7ft, 3ft, 6.5ft on all the tricky holes (which even included #17 because of a headwind meaning I couldn't reach the green in two). But on the two reachable holes, I had another chip from the back of #16 almost go in, and made a very fortuitous birdie on #13 after a dinged tee shot that I thought was perfect veer dangerously close to the left bunker (a good example of the lack of precision of these starter sticks). 

  Finally, coming down #18, I had one of those perfect last-hole approaches where, when the stakes are high (lol!), you are so relieved to have a simple putt to close. Still 56 yards out after two, I hit LW with 4/5 bs full pwr to land with a little check on the downslope and curl down and round to 1.4 ft. 

  Here's the card and stats (plus proof of clubs)... I was also very amused to see that this -2 round, without doubt one of my most satisfying ever on WGT, earned me a current placing of 1546th on the leaderboard. Woo hoo!!!

  

  ------------

  So, Shoe, what about the idea... ? Any thoughts?

• eggiesworld 296 Posts

  Thu, Feb 20 2014 1:38 AM

  Gave it a shot was -2 thru 5 and lost the transamerica ball in the water on 6 so quit not wanting to play with a starter ball for the rest. Like the idea though sounds like fun.

  Maybe I should putt with the starter putter all the time made a couple bombs.

  http://www.wgt.com/replay.aspx?ID=f8b0738b-45a2-4509-907e-a2d8009ae909

• Jerm65 1,413 Posts

  Thu, Feb 20 2014 12:50 PM

  Corwyn:

  and my Tranny ball

  Corwyn.....you`ve gotta give some advance warning if you`re dropping a gem like that into the conversation.  Coffee`s rather difficult to clean off a monitor....and the keyboard went straight to the tip.   ;-)

  I like the idea of a starter club tourney parallelling the regular ones though, even with the possibility of different winds for different tiers.  And if nothing else, it`ll give a guy a chance to use up all those sponsor balls that do a great job of collecting dust-bunnies in the bottom of the bag.

  If I`m feeling masochistic enough tonight...I`ll give it a whirl and see if I can get anywhere close to the scores you folks are putting up.  :-)

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Thu, Feb 20 2014 2:01 PM

  Jerm65:

  Corwyn:

  and my Tranny ball

  Corwyn.....you`ve gotta give some advance warning if you`re dropping a gem like that into the conversation.  Coffee`s rather difficult to clean off a monitor....and the keyboard went straight to the tip.   ;-)

  I like the idea of a starter club tourney parallelling the regular ones though, even with the possibility of different winds for different tiers.  And if nothing else, it`ll give a guy a chance to use up all those sponsor balls that do a great job of collecting dust-bunnies in the bottom of the bag.

  If I`m feeling masochistic enough tonight...I`ll give it a whirl and see if I can get anywhere close to the scores you folks are putting up.  :-)

  Hey Jerm,

  Please give it a spin but don't think about the scores already put up. Play it for the shots it creates. What I enjoy the most about playing the junk clubs from the tips is it's the best way to play a round where you don't know what shots you're gonna have ahead of hitting them. When we play our best clubs we pretty much know what to expect on a hole from the tee box. With the starters from the tips it's a whole new golf course. You never think about expectations or re-creating some great shot you hit in the past. You have to create the great shots on the fly playing with intuition alone.

  I tend to bore very easily so playing the same courses with the same Good clubs from the same tees tends to make me lose concentration and interest after a while. Once I load the starters I'm Game On from the first hole through the final putt. CCC plays absolutely beautifully with the starters from the tips.

  GL and have a ton of fun. :)))

  ~CD~

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Thu, Feb 20 2014 2:05 PM

  Great playing AGAIN Corwyn and nice stuff Ben. :)))

• bhoese 679 Posts

  Thu, Feb 20 2014 9:18 PM

  The 74:

  

  

  

  

  I restarted a few times trying to get back to the par-par start that I blew by forgetting the triple-powered starter scale on a tap-in on 2.  On my 4th or 5th try I sank an 18-footer, and immediately followed that with one of the luckiest pitch-ins I've ever had.  I felt like I was getting away with murder with the -2 start, but a quick bogey thanks to a wildly errant result from a small miss on #3 approach into 40-50 rough balanced the karma, more or less.

  I squandered my best and 2nd best approaches of the round by failing to respect the nasty break enough on 8, then overplaying a subtle downhiller on  10.  The bogey on 9 was a result of a headwind that made the fairway unreachable and forced a layup of my 3rd.  Bogeyed 11 with much more roll than expected from the 59 punch and 12 after getting snookered behind a tree on the dogleg (the kind of thing you don't have to worry about with fancies), laying up and blowing the up-and-down from 8 feet.  The bogey on the unreachable 18th came after I hit this with the 150 and neutral spin.  Gotta say I didn't expect it to stick like that.