We were in contention but fell off from moving to Master II. We seem to be stuck at 30 active players, a lot of recruiting but no one is jumping on, which is a bit surprising to me.
The last part of this week has been interesting, all of a sudden, I'm playing better. I'm up around mid 850's and holding and if I really put the time in today, I could probably make the jump to Expert as I'm only about 100k outside of current qualifying. I'll take the late boost of confidence into next weeks contention and see if I can't get a better start out of the gate. Last weeks start was abysmal.
My method on upgrading clubs from the start was to focus primarily on the ones that were most accurate. I've got several clubs that I've never upgraded once as I cannot see a possibility of them ever becoming better than what I already have. I could be wrong on that, but based on what you wrote up stream about what clubs you primarily used, I'm pretty close to what you laid out as the most important clubs. Except for the down in one, which I was surprised by considering the number of times I've been holed out by that damn thing. Endbringer is the poon though, had been using it for quite a while.
The wind challenges are definitely becoming more influential to the shots on tour 6 which is where I'm primarily playing now, mixed in with some tour 5 since they've uploaded new holes onto it for the tournament. For now, I've been bending the shots at the tee to counteract the wind and so far it's been working. We'll see how it plays out, wouldn't be the worst education to have and could become an advantage who knows.
It seems like most players are only using the free ball as opposed to the gem purchased. If they're not buying balls with gems, what are they using the gems for? To me it seems worth the extra directional control, especially in a shootout, and potential distance from using them. Perhaps someone could enlighten me if that's not the case, or to what exactly gems are being used for?
I'll see how the first week of the new season goes in this clan and if it doesn't start off well, I'll probably make the jump. I'm probably good for 750k-1k / month if you're ok with that.