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Idea for parallel Starters Virtual Tour

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Wed, Aug 27 2014 12:14 AM

  Your 78 is pretty good Cerino, but I agree, a 74-76 is certainly possible.

  I fell apart on the back 9, leaking shots everywhere to tumble to an 80 (and in my rush to finish just a few minutes ago ahead of the deadline, I forgot my last-green screenshot. Oops!)

  My double on #5 stemmed from an attempt to play to the front tee, just overshooting it by a couple of yards. From there, I still couldn't reach the fairway, lol, although I came awfully close to holding it to a single bogey.

  Missed a good birdie chance on #8, but made nice mid-range par saves on #9 and #10, but blew easier ones on 11 and 12 (the latter extremely frustrating). It was a similar story with near-miss putts on 14, 16, and 18... The double on #13 was just dumb: pushed my 3rd, tried to get too cute and left a flop short, then went all out to hole a chip only to blast way past. Oh dear!

  Here's the card: (and for the record, I used full starter clubs and ball)

  

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Tue, Sep 2 2014 6:35 PM

  I took a shot at the Strike Out for ALS Challenge with the Starter Clubs and Ball. What a kick in the teeth the Champ Speed Greens turned out to be. Had two 4 putts in a very frustrating round. The highlight of the round was a 37 foot putt on the killer 5th hole for a par and the lone birdie on the 8th. Shot 84. Good luck to anyone that takes this challenge on with the starter clubs.

  ~CD~

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Thu, Sep 4 2014 7:03 PM

  Took another shot at the ALS Challenge but clubbed up to the L10 Tour Starter Gold clubs and the WGT GI-S ball. Made a huge difference as well as my own play this run though was much better. I missed 3 birdie putts for what could have been an epic round. I still feel pretty good with a 74. :)))

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

   

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Tue, Sep 9 2014 11:31 AM

  CerinoDevoti:

  Good luck to anyone that takes this challenge on with the starter clubs.

  I tackled it last night CD, and was stunned to come away with a 75 :)

  The Strike Out Als Challenge at Legend level is played from the tips, with Mod winds and Champ greens. With the starter set there are several holes where I couldn't reach the first fairway/green off the tee (e.g #3,#4,#5,#6,#14,#18), but there are enough short holes to give one hope of compensating birdies.

  And, I agree with Cerino, the Champ greens make this a severe test with the starter putter (but I managed to avoid a 3-putt, hooray!)

  On #2 I had a great chance for birdie, but went long with 3H 3rd, and pulled a 12ft downhiller from beyond the hole. Went past hole again on 2nd to par 3 3rd, and missed very tricky 9ft downhill curler. When I went long on a SW for 4th shot to the 4th I thought the round was headed for a train wreck, which seemed certain after being just short of perfect on 3rd into #5 and then failing to get up and down and carding double there.

  From #7 on though was the stretch of holes where you have to take advantage. I made a nice 16ft bird from short of the 7th, missed a great 9ft chance on #8, and missed the green on #9. But on #10 got this highlight of the round: 30ft birdie after missing the fairway left and having to play out to the right. Messed up my approach to #11 (another realistic birdie chance hole), but played the 12th beautifully for par: tee shot just made it to first fairway, hit perfect 3W 2nd to thread the gap and roll up onto high side of green, then caught a perfect lag from 71ft. Was very happy to walk away with par there!

  Another poor tee shot on #13 ruined possible birdie hole, and made bogey on #14 after slight push on 3rd approach. But #15 was another heroic par, sinking 4.5ft save after another good lag from long on the green. My favorite shot of the round was approach to #16, where I figured I could make up for lack of stopping power of the starter 3W by playing long and rolling back: it worked out very nicely and left 6ft bird. Great save on #17 after rolling back off green with tee shot and playing bad flop, took me to #18 looking for single bogey to match Cerino's 74. However, I just missed the attempted 8 iron to the front tee, didn't reach the fairway even from there, and was headed for a sad double to close.

  As usual, the secret to a good score with these challenges is limiting the damage. 

  Here's my card (and closing chip-view club-hover greenshot as proof of Starter clubs):

  

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Wed, Sep 10 2014 11:36 AM

  Just completed another attempt and managed a 73 (+3) this time...

  ... tough as it is, I think par is just possible, especially with a putting round as good as this one.

  This time around, my first 6 holes were about as good as they could be, coming through in +1 -- helped by this 23ft save on #4, and a super scary 11ft downhiller on #5 (which would have gone off the green if it had missed the cup) -- but I didn't make the most of the next 5 easier holes, despite a lot of luck on #8 when my 2nd kicked forward off the fringe but rolled back off the back bank to makeable birdie distance.

  I was sure I had this putt on #10 but hit it a little too hard, and then I gave away the straightforward birdie on #11 by just going too far left with my 2nd on #12 (almost a beautiful roll round). Pulled the putt to miss a good birdie chance on #13, but made a fist-pumping 17ft downhill curler on #14 to save. Couldn't get close to #15 into the wind, and made mess of attempted flop up; next shot chip was good enough to save single bogey, and was also pleased with saving par on #16 after late click 2nd went way right and missed chance to roll back off the huge ridge; was a little lucky to come out of rough but ended up on high tier facing impossible putt. Made another good save on #17 after dinged tee shot with tail wind went left and came up short. But on #18, despite finding the front tee this time, I made a mess of 3rd approach and flop shot to record double bogey again!

  

  My best-ball over the 2 rounds is -2, so Holy Grail of par from the tips with Starters on a tough course (with Champ greens) seems just about possible... 

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Thu, Nov 6 2014 12:11 PM

  Corwyn reminded me we haven't had a challenge round here for a while. I took a shot at the first round of the November Golf Adviser Tourney on Pinehurst #2 withh Starter Ball and Clubs. As we all know, a great putting round can be all the difference it makes and I putted great this round. Shot 71 and shocked myself. I could easily have shot even par had I not missed the ding by a little too much on the 8th hole from about only 7 feet. I find Pinehurst plays extremely well with starter gear with few fairways that cannot be reached from the tee. Have at it folks, I'm sitting on my score and only played it once with no restarts. Fast and loose . ;)

  ~CD~

  

  

  

  

  

  

  

• thunder6255 369 Posts

  Thu, Nov 6 2014 1:14 PM

  

  

  amazing scrambling, well played Sir.

• Corwyn 2,410 Posts

  Mon, Jan 5 2015 12:12 PM

  Time to get this thread active again!!!

  From the opening post in this thread...

  Corwyn:

  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... ?

  Following a lot of interest in the holiday special Tough-It-Out event: A Bandon Hope which ended this last weekend, and amidst hopes that we'll get some regular starter club tourneys happening each month (hopefully tie-ins to the Virtual Tour), I thought it timely to resurrect this thread from last year.

  A small cadre of players took on these monthly challenges, tackling the UL round of the Virtual Tour event using Starter or low-level gear, either hard-core, with only Starter Clubs and Ball, or with Starters plus the free sponsor ball, or with the Tour Starter Gold Set (for a little bit of extra control). 

  We had a great time, experiencing the challenge of how to shoot par or better, rather than have to birdie practically every hole. 

  If we can generate some more interest this year, I'm willing to run it as a Tour throughout the year, and perhaps we can scare up some prizes too. 

  The only condition is that you have to share a screenshot of card and stats as well as a greenshot on one of the final holes showing the full bag of clubs used.

  Having gotten re-used to starters the past couple of weeks, I tackled the VT Bandon Open this morning and will set the ball rolling with my 49 (-5):

  

  Missed several makeable putts (ironically, struggling to get used to slightly slower greens), and had one moment of extreme good luck. On #18 I made a total hash of my distance calculation, and somehow arrived at a number that caused me to use 60 meter instead of 30. Thankfully the putt was dead centre and the hole stopped it from going off the green (indeed it almost bounced up and in but was traveling way too fast). [It looked real good on the reverse view at the time, sadly that's not available in the replay (one of WGT's many mysteries!)].

  A bizarre finish to a nice round!

• CerinoDevoti 3,232 Posts

  Mon, Jan 5 2015 6:54 PM

  I gave it a shot with the starters but I just can't play anything that matters anymore. I'm having huge amounts of the computer issues I told you about.  Pretty friggin angry about it right now. Shot +3. Won't bother again. :(

  ~CD~

• bhoese 679 Posts

  Mon, Jan 5 2015 7:59 PM

  I tackled the Best of Par 5 course on Saturday night in my first round after A Bandon Hope. There's a monthly unlimited up right now with Champ greens and tees in high wind for TLs.  My goal was an 80.  I was off to a nice start, but faded fast and didn't come close.  I think it can be done.  Scratch that - I'm sure it can be done.

  

  Level par would be a decent challenge in UEL with at least two off-kilter shots required on nearly every hole.  The 6th (RSG14) can be a rare starters-from-the-tips eagle opportunity in a tailwind: you can uncork a 298 yard drive with the right bounce.  Unfortunately, I followed that with a 270 yard 3W.

  The fairway is not reachable on a few holes depending on wind:  7 (BPB13), 8 (KIA 7), 10 (MER4), 14 (RSG7, where I couldn't carry in a tailwind) and 15 (StA 14).  Also the 11th (BPB4) might require a layup 2nd shot that makes the green unreachable in 3, and even if the fairway bunker is cleared the green probably can't be held with the rock except by a trick shot bounced through the rough.

  Some highlights (and proof of kit):  25 footer on 6, awesomely lucky 3W approach on 12 (ccc16), and an 8 iron to 2 feet on 13 (cabo4).