bubbadork:You can't buy skill.
In WGT you can. As YankeeAirPilote said, the only physical part of WGT is the twitch of the finger. I can accept that various clubs have different meter speed, that is something that in some ways simulates real life compromises. such as club weight and sweet spot and so on (there is so many parameters that affects the ball flight that is not simulated in WGT).
But the balls... I have never tried the MAX balls, but if I compare the Nike to the default ball, I think the meter moves twice as fast with the default. The MAX ball gives you maybe a 4x chance to hit the mark compared to the default one. Meter stay 4 times (estimated) longer on each pixel. A Nike doubles your (only) physical precision and a MAX quadruples it. Is the physical element in WGT not a skill? Well, it is the only thing that simulates the most difficult part in golf - the swing.
I like the ideas of more forgiving clubs, they exist in real life and by using them you accept the drawbacks - shorter distance and less spin and precision. I miss ding a lot, so I have always avoided the clubs with high meter speed. That is a compromise I have done to match my physical ability and my ability to read the situation on the course, the distance, the wind, the breaks and so on. Now i could skip that, just buy the best equipment available and then compensate it with a ball that makes the R11 feel like Raptures but play like... R11's.
Only compromise we make in WGT is how much we pay, not in how we play. The result of that is also upsetting the whole balance of the game - the good players earn a lot of credits, credits that can only be used to buy stuff in the shop, and they buy the best stuff, the best balls and win even more credits. Once upon a time I used to manage to win enough in tournaments to keep me with balls. At that time, we all played WGT balls where the difference was quite small. Then came the Callaways and it changed a lot. You needed them to be competitive. Price for balls doubled. Then the Nike - same thing - price to play WGT increased massively again. Now with the MAX balls it will cost three times more to play WGT than for just over a year ago. If you are not good in tournaments.
It is not just the balls, the mathematics of WGT has been cracked as well, there is instructions in this forums on how to calculate the breaks in putts, the wind from various angles and so on. If you have time and that kind of interest, you can can put the data on your screen into a spreadsheet and you know exactly what distance you should hit and where you should aim.
Looking at the tournament results, I think many people are doing that. At least there is a whole lot more people that plays 56-60 now than two years ago. So many that if you do not manage to play below 60 on a regular basis, tournaments is a waste of time.
I think WGT is on a bad path. I also think it is a, for them, economically a bad path because most of the players that buy the expensive stuff do it for credits they have earned, not credits they have bought. We who want to play for fun a few times a week we have to surrender to the fact that paying over $2 for a virtual ball is simply madness. Specially considering that ball can be lost at any time.
In the beginning, I enjoyed visiting the shop. Looking around at clubs, balls and stuff and maybe buy something. Nowadays, entering the shop you feel the stench of greed already at the entrance. Putting Pal, Speed Up Boos, MAX slow balls and all that. You just quickly grabs a couple of Srixons and hope that it will be a long time before you need to go back.