Hypothetical bet on the golf course involving throwing a football...

[Danastasio1]

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There are some NFL QB's that can't throw it 60 yards in the air. I'm not sure why you think you can, but I'd certainly bet against it.

BO

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What? You don't think either Detmer brother could throw a football 60 yards?

[tuq]

This is a minor departure, but does anyone ever translate feet to yards when they see them on street or highway signs and think that the number is off? E.g. there is a freeway sign here in town that says "Cactus Rd., 1500 feet". It's kinda weird because on the whole length of the freeway there isn't another sign that isn't in miles. It's like they felt like being super accurate because if they put "1/4 mile" or whatever and it was just a little bit off people would get in accidents or something.

Anyway...1500 feet = 500 yards. I find myself looking at that sign every time and thinking there's no damned way that's a par-5 in distance. More like a reachable par-4. Either signs like this are off a lot of the time, or I'm not scaling distances properly when I'm looking at them.

Weird rant, sorry. Carry on.

[Ineedaride2]

[ QUOTE ]
This is a minor departure, but does anyone ever translate feet to yards when they see them on street or highway signs and think that the number is off? E.g. there is a freeway sign here in town that says "Cactus Rd., 1500 feet". It's kinda weird because on the whole length of the freeway there isn't another sign that isn't in miles. It's like they felt like being super accurate because if they put "1/4 mile" or whatever and it was just a little bit off people would get in accidents or something.

Anyway...1500 feet = 500 yards. I find myself looking at that sign every time and thinking there's no damned way that's a par-5 in distance. More like a reachable par-4. Either signs like this are off a lot of the time, or I'm not scaling distances properly when I'm looking at them.

Weird rant, sorry. Carry on.

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I do this all the time. In my line of work, there's always one reason or another to estimate distances of 50 to a few hundred yards. I usually decide what club I'd need to get there, or if I could hit driver that far and then translate that into a yardage guess.

I'm usually within 20-30 yards from 200 to 300 yards.

From 100 yards and in I'm pretty pissed when I'm off by 10 yards.

[Yoshi63]

Me and a couple friends were debating about how far we could throw a golf ball from the tee on a 120ish par 3. One of my friends was certain he could nail the green, and I argued none of us would even reach the "fairway". We all chucked a ball as hard as we could, and they ended up somewhere in between. More importantly, we all complained of aching shoulders for the rest of the hole.

It's not good to throw light objects as hard as you can, for obvious reasons. :-/

But anyways, golf courses can be somewhat deceptive because you're used to bombing the ball in comparision to other sports. Stand at home-plate in a major league baseball field, and try taking a few swings with a bat/baseball to hit a home run. After watching the ball roll to halfway down the outfield, I bet that fence will look pretty far. Now pull out your 8-iron and put a ball down... I bet the fence still looks a ways off. Guarentee you'll surprise yourself when you lob it easily into the upper deck.

Also with the football example, there's a big difference between hitting the green and making to the pin. So 60 out might not look as far because the front of the green is prob only like 45-48 out. And the pin and green can kinda seem like the same thing.