The flip side to that 2 cent coin, Snaike, is that I can buy crap at Wal Mart and expect to get what I pay for. The big difference is that Wal Mart doesn't claim to be the best or most realistic at anything (other than low prices), while the folks here at WGT do.
As far as it being a free game...well, it's free to try. If you want to excel at it, you'll have to spend money, quite a bit more than a console game actually. If you add up the cost a Rapture set one might get as a Hack/Amateur/Pro, then add in the cost of a Ping Master set once MAster tier is reached, plus the cost of all those GI-D balls necessary to make that Ping Master set work, plus the cost of the Redwood putter, you'll find you're over the $50.00 mark, even with the buyback feature. The great foil of the micro-purchasing marketing model is that it can say it's "Free", when in reality the little costs that accumulate over time to compete add up to more than what a subscription fee would be with everyone having quality stock items.
I guess my point here is, sure this is Beta, and if the folks at WGT want us to test stuff out on their "Free" game, sure I'll do it. It's when they start charging money for items to test that people start demanding a better quality product to operate with. I'm playing over at Tiger Woods Online and they haven't charged me a dime for all the Beta testing I'm doing over there. Sure, I'm not winning any "real" money yet, but the point is this: If there is real money involved, then the quality of product needs to be elevated to justify it. Otherwise it's paying for quality items and instead getting something off the Wal Mart shelf that doesn't work right.
They aren't giving away these club sets for us to try, we have to pay for them, only to find they don;t work correctly in some instances. They offer some tournaments that you have to pay to enter, only to find that the meter stutters prevent any good score from being achieved on that particular day. Therein lies the crux of the issue for me, and for so many others. If it really were "free", I'd have no issue with the bugs.