re: ". . . you will be matched up against another club with roughly the same participation overall in the game and club. So they may have only a few players playing as well.
- WGTdbloshoe
lol, "So they *may* have , , ,"
Having read all of 224 replies before writing this, I have to admit that it was better use of my time than the time than I spent playing 8 games of Bethpage Back nine. We were matched against a club with 250 members. Our club had 8 members -- 4 of us had time to play. Yet we did prevail, realizing that it was because our eight members could organize and concentrate more efficiently-- not likely because we played better.
The other CC seemed to have mustered only a few players, and it appeared that after they used their superpasses, their 250 players were smart enough to stop playing while we idiots continued to buy passes, motivated by one moment when we saw that we were in 226 place-- thinking that we had a chance to win a little something, lol. At the end of the clash we were down to below 900 place! lol, but heh! we won! ha ha-- not sure what was the benefit of winning?
Personally, if there were a gold putter for sale, I likely would not buy one other than to have it as a novelty, and likely that I would be able to buy a gold putter cheaper than the cost of all the passes I would have to buy to play enough games to get/win one free,
And what of this "gold putter?" lol, does it have programming that excludes misses? I can't imagine any benefit to winning it, or using it in public. I seldom use my Berthas in public, saving them for tournaments with long fairways or games in which I know all the other players are using similar novelty crushers. For just every day playing with friends I prefer to use R11s driver & 3-wood with modest ball (L33 Callaway). I'm not one of those people who gets a kick out of always driving the farthest, but instead prefer to drive to the place that I know I can hit from, which is not usually a target greater than 300 yards away on most courses, anyway.
But back to the CC Clash games, our club tried out one Clash and we did our best, realizing the truth behind much of what has been discussed in the past couple of hundred messages on this forum, thus not likely to bother with it again other than amusing ourselves with the free superpasses available to us.
We first assumed that there was a strategy to be figured out for small clubs to compete equally, and so attempted several times to play more than one player at a time-- but the game gave the second player an error message. Later the second player did not get an error message so around the second hour we had two playing and by the third hour we had a few of us playing at once, realizing the the club we were playing against could have had all 250 players all playing at the same time if they were able to organize that.
If 250 players all used just their regular daily pass at the same time, at their first game of the day, they could have a huge advantage-- but would require a major organizational challenge for the CC-- but still possible.
So after the Clash ended none of us wanted to start another. Our group is small enough for all of us to skype at same time, and so fairly easy to organize and strategize, if it were worth the time and expense. I used a sleeve of balls for the eight games-- Nike L61, $5, -- others used more expensive balls, apparently necessary if greater accuracy is desired. I also used the Berthas, since I was playing alone on a course where driving the farthest mattered for a better approach shot.
Unlike a usual day for me, when hitting better the more I played, my score got progressively worse, repetitively playing BP back 9. I think that is because replaying or restarting, the VEM increases the difficulty ever so slightly. I have noticed this regularly and think twice before restarting a game too often when playing unlimited tournaments. (not complaining about this, btw, just expressing the observation-- and sense that maybe it is a good thing-- the wind is a little greater, or in a more difficult direction to get a good line at the target, after clicking that restart button.) But I don't think that increasing difficulty is useful strategy for the kind of tournament presented here as the Clash, because it gets discourageing and demotivates me from spending balls and another pass on another game, when I know that it will be greater difficulty.
But more bizzarre was that I had to play the eight games on "Very Fast" greens! That made no sense to me. Fortunately, not a problem for me since I got to be legend by posting lots of low scores on v-fast greens. But after eight games of v-fast, I fail to look forward to doing it again in another clash.
As for you folks, players, failing to recognize that WGT knows what is best for us and only doing this for our own good, and that we should trust that they only have our best interest in mind, well -- let's just say that we agree to disagree on that issue.
The staff and designers of WGT are apparently far more intelligent than the total of all of us and certainly we need to learn to yield to their superior insight and understanding of the game, and how we should be spending our money. It should be obvious to everyone that the collective intelligence behind WGT has only goodwill for us as their primary interest and consideration for everything they provide!!!-- evidenced by the fact that their strategies successfully motivate us to spend our money on the best balls and best equipment so that we can play a game and prevail over someone.
And isn't prevailing over another player exactly what everyone wants to do? And so WGT needs to be thanked. They know what we want-- to prevail over others -- to WIN! And they are gracious enough to design and provide all that we need for satisfying our need to be better than the next guy. All we have to do is go out and get better jobs and earn enough money to continue having better equipment that is programmed to give us better scores!
Let's be honest; people who are angry over the Clash are people who are afraid they will fail to prevail. They are afraid that some other CC will get something they will not get, they are afraid that they will not get their fair share of the goodies. Earn more money so that it does not matter how much you spend on the game, then enjoy the game for the little it is worth for a change.
-gs