March 2006

My friend Dave alerted me to a post on Texas Golf, the blog that links Lone Star linksters to the best Texas golf news and information. The post linked to an article about a program that teaches golf to seriously injuried veterans returning from Iraq.

The program was developed by the San Antonio Parks & Recreation Department and the Texas Amputee Golf Association. Round Rock resident Roy McCoy - who lost a leg in the Vietnam War - is the president of the TAGA.

I play fairly regularly with a friend who lost his right leg, at the knee, in a coal mine accident. If you’re in this situation, don’t let it beat you. You can still play good golf, as evidenced by my handing over cash to my friend Larry !

Thanks to Texas Golf for the tip and please click thru and read the article.

I’ve been using NetHandicap for several months now and wanted to share my experiences with you. I joined soon after I posted about finding them last December. I joined and became a member of the Louisville club, so as to be able to get my USGA Handicap, which has risen to about 7.20 over the winter. I play poorly on dormant and tight Bermuda grass. I also putt poorly on bumpy, unmowed greens. But, hey, I’m a single-digit guy and that’s about all I can ask at my advanced age of 43, while being slightly too heavy at 6′2″ and 250 lbs.

You’ll notice that I said I’m became a member of the Louisville chapter. The USGA says you have to be withing a certain radius of your local club, so pay attention to their local chapters if you want an OFFICIAL USGA Handicap.

They’ve been easy to work with and have been responsive to my emails, when I’ve wanted to ask a question.

If you’d like, you can get a
by clicking the image.

I don’t know how many of you need to be able to enter your scores online, keep up with your stats and get an official USGA Handicap, but if you do, these people have been good to me so far. If, like me, you travel and play several courses per month, this service makes it easy to keep up with and all you have to do is enter them online that night/day, which means I don’t have to try and keep up with a scorecard for a week or so, til I get back to my local club.

There’s also an that will let you see if their service fits your needs. So click the image above and see what they can do for you at an affordable price.

The Hualalai Resort golf courses are THE place to be for Hawaiian golf vacations.

The Jack Nicklaus Signature Course is the first Nicklaus design in Hawaii and is home to the prestigious MasterCard Championship at Hualalai, a PGA TOUR Champions Tour event. It’s available for play by the Hualalai Club members, their guests, and the guests of the Four Seasons Resort.

In the spiritual and elegant lava fields of Ka‘upulehu, the new Weiskopf Course is open for Hualalai Club Premeir members and their guests. A private clubhouse is currently under construcion and scheduled to open in 2006.

Drop by their site and check out the golf, spa, dining, boating and relaxation opportunities avavilable to you, if you choose to pamper yourself and head to The Hualalai Resort.

It’s a mere 4 and 1/2 hours since my last post. I promised to read The Morris Men and give you a review.

Keeping my promise to read it was easy, giving you a review of such a fine piece of work will be harder.

I started reading and stopped twice before finishing. Once to eat the lunch that my wife fixed for me and the other time was to create the post previous to this one. More or less, I read it in 4 hours, without hardly having put it down. It’s that good.

From the Prologue, that drew me in with it’s details about building golf clubs circa 1874, I learned about the clubmaker that built ” The Trophy “. As a clubmaker myself, having built dozens of irons and woods for friends, I could sympathize with his dedication to his craft and his long days and nights. I have to bow to his skills, as he used tools with which I’m not acquainted and labored with far more physical effort in that day.

I was then transported to 1931 and met a couple of old ” gentlemen ” that were central to this story and had far more depth, which I didn’t find til the last couple of pages, than I could have ever imagined. One of them was even more of a scoundrel that I could have ever guessed.

The twists that took place in the first 3 chapters were so skillfully woven that I would have believed you if you had told me it had been written by one of the old masters of literature. The author, Stephen E. Mitchell, is a wordsmith to be reckoned with and does a great job of keeping the story moving quickly enough to keep you reading, yet always had a twist or turn waiting that you don’t see coming.

Throughout the story, you’ll find yourself quickly identifying with the central characters and wanting some to get their ” just deserts ” and wanting others to come out on top. Once it get’s to some ” good-versus-evil ” periods and I was easily made to choose sides.

The middle chapters are noteworthy for filling out the details, which are craftily woven and never seem to be there just to fill space. The care with which the author moves us from then-to-now-to-then-to-now is evident in how careful he is to never overload our believability detectors.

The ” solicitors ” in this story, Bainbridge & Bainbridge ” are sturdy enough to stand by themselves and I hope the author finds a way to use them more in the future.

The ending was not predictable and leaves me wanting to order the next in the series right now. Don’t all the good one’s do that to you ?

If you’re looking for a one-of-a-kind golf mystery novel, look no further. I’ve never read a book like this before, but now I’m wanting more to read. I love to read about golf have a desire to be transported somewhere else while watching a story unfold that I would never be able to witness in real life.

The mental pictures created by the author while one of my favorite characters was touring France were worth the cost of admission, so to speak.

Click the link above to be transported to the authors site. He’s looking for an American litery agent and/or publisher. Right now you can only get the book from Amazon.uk, but if you need a copy and can’t find it, shoot me an email and I’ll do my best to see to it that you get a copy.

If you’re a literary agent or publisher with offices in America, get in touch with Stephen before someone else does.

Thanks, Stephen, for an afternoon of sheer enjoyment and a reason to do some ” research “, while lying on my couch.

I just got hold of a copy of The Morris Men and am starting to read it and will be doing a review as soon as I can finish it.

I’ve read about 37 pages so far, in the few minutes I’ve had it and am going to have trouble putting it down before finishing it.

I just had to do a post to let you know and then I’m heading back to my reading.

My first thoughts are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle ( he wrote the ‘Sherlock Holmes’ series, among other things ), Ed McBain, Sue Grafton and John Grisham are all being channeled by Steven, as I feel as drawn in to the story, already, as I usually am when I read the authors I mentioned.

Right now you can only get a copy from Amazon.uk. And, YES, that is a different version than the one I usually use and more than likely, you’ve never seen it either, as most of my readers are from the US of A.

Stephen Mitchell, the author, would love to speak with you, if you’re in the American publishing industry, as he’s looking for a publisher over here.

You can contact him thru his website, which you can visit by clicking HERE or email me here at this domain and I’ll forward the email to him.

This is gonna be a fine read and if you don’t want to go thru Amazon.uk, email me and I’ll have Stephen sell them to me and I’ll send them to you.

It’s gonna be that good. I can already tell. And how many other golf mystery novels do you get the chance to read ?

Coming soon to a golf course probably not near to you….THE PLAYERS Championship. March Madness, links style !

March 23rd thru march 26th, at TPC @ Sawgrass, Stadium Course. 7,093 yards and Par 72.

I’m gonna go out on a large limb and predict that Fred Funk will not repeat as Champion. Tiger won’t win, either. Well, he might, but I’d take the field over him. He will finish ahead of Steady Freddy Funk, though. No doubt.

My pick…..hmmm, how about Luke Donald for another good week. He was right there last year, he’s on a roll, he’s hits it straight and he’s a great iron player. He’d win more if he could putt. Kinda like me.

As a boxer, I’d have won more, if I’d had a defense that didn’t start with my face.

Annually, this event features one of the top 5 or 6 fields. Everybody who is anybody goes to Ponte Vedra Beach and tees it up for honor, prestige and big money. Some people refer to this as the fifth major, but I’m not one of those. This ain’t major championship golf and the criteria for entry doesn’t fit either. It is, however, big time golf and some of the world’s best golfers will be there.

I like The Western Open and a couple of others as well as this one for the honor of being thought of as well as the majors.

I’d like to see The Canadian and Austrailian Opens get their due respect, as well.

Kinda funny, to have had a little pea-shooter like Fred Funk beat the best of the best, the bombers and the long dawgs. Maybe they need to employ some of Fred’s methods and lay back in the fairway and hit into those greens from nice lies and then make a few putts. I’ll bet I hit more 3-woods and 18 degree hybrids off the tee than they do and I could play that course well….if I could putt….and I can’t.

Here’s a quick tip for Bubba Watson, Vijay, Adam Scott, Sergio, and a few other long knockers - they total up how many, not how far. Hit a few more hybrids, 3-woods and whatever else it takes to set yourself up for an easier shot into those greens.

Click HERE to visit the official tournament site.

Click HERE to visit the TPC @ Sawgrass.

While looking thru my server stats, I happened to notice that just over 25% of the search traffic that comes to my blog is looking for Nike SasQuatch driver info.

Seeing that, I’m gonna try to find some more facts and figures about the SasQuatch and post it here. About 2 weeks ago, I had the chance to hit the beast, but it was from beside the clubhouse and I had to hit it toward the lake at dusk. When they think a driver is long, the boys at my home club bring it to me and 3 other guys who bang the ball a long way. 2 of us are right handed and 2 of ‘em are lefties, so we can test anything that’s brought to us.

I hit it well out into the lake and I liked the trajectory, but the shaft was a little too flexible for me and was lagging behind the head a bit. I hope to get a chance to play one soon and when I do, you guys will be the first few hundered to know.

So far, the Nike SasQuatch 460 driver with its distinctive head and yellow sole has been spotted on the range and practice fairways in the hands of Tiger woods, Stewart Cink, K J Choi, Rory Sabbatini and Swede Carl Petterssen.

With it’s superior geometry and Max Back Center of Gravity (CG) technology, Nike Golf has been able to achieve a lower, deeper CG without the use of weights. With its CG set back, low and deep, the SasQuatch is a highly engineered, streamlined instrument of size, power and forgiveness.

Along with it’s Max Back CG and Nike voodoo geometry, they have used physics to create three advantages:

• Forgiveness – increases the club head’s Moment of Inertia (MOI) or resistance to twisting during off-center hits.

• Distance - Wider, taller sweet spot.

• Accuracy – moving the CG farther back makes the clubface easier to square for straighter drives.

All of the benefits from the Max Back add up to a higher launch angle, low spin and longer distance.

Nike has also used the nickname of ” Sasquatch ” for its latest driver, which has already left traces of it big yellow footprint on the PGA Tour and is now heading for your local clubs.

Nike also has Powerbow technology, which provides the visual cue of the Max Back CG’s radical geometry. Placed on the back of the driver, the Powerbow technology expands the perimeter of performance making it easier to get the ball up and hit it straight.

The Powerbow adds a trailing volume of mass to apply more power and control to the ball without overstepping the 460 cc legal limit. The radical design of the Powerbow, makes the SasQuatch Driver look unlike any driver on the market because there is no driver like it on the market.

To get a hotter response and greater consistency, the SasQuatch has a face of layered, yet highly compressed titanium called NexTi, developed exclusively for Nike.

Available only in Nike drivers, NexTi brings a revolution of control to the chaotic world of titanium structure. The NexTi titanium face is thinner, stronger and lighter than conventional titanium.

So there you have some more info on the Nike SasQuatch driver. Now go get it and hit it hard !

Luke Donald just won the Honda Classic by 2 shots over Geoff Ogilvy. It was his second win and has to be much sweeter than his first, which was a rain-shortened win while he was in the locker room. 2002 Farm Bureau classic, if my memory serves me well.

Back about October of ‘05, I remember reading about Luke’s mastery in hitting greens from over 200 yards. Seems like I remember him hitting about 60-65% of them and was about 5% ahead of his nearest competitior.

When asked about his keys to those shots, Luke brought up several keys that will help you and I hit more greens and score better.

1) Keep your lower body still

2) Let your arms do the swinging

3) Posture is critical

4) Right shoulder a little lower than left

5) Ball slightly forward in stance

6) Butt of club points at left armpit

7) Wide swing arc

Hybrid clubs are better than traditional long irons

If a 5′9″, 160 lb. Englishman who paints can beat the bombers out there on tour today from 200 yards out, we all need to listen to his advice.

I just added a new golf blog to my Blog Roll. It’s the first of it’s kind for me, it’s a golf photo blog.

It’s called One Day - One Shot.

Today’s photo ( 11 March, 2006 ) was one of the 7th hole at Pebble Beach. It’s one of the most spectacular pictures I’ve ever seen. I captured the shot with my SnagIt ! screencapture software and am going to turn it into my background image on my personal computer.

I’m looking forward to seeing what my new blog friend, Patrick Micheletti, who lives in Vincennes, near Paris, France, has in store for us each and every day.

I suggest going over and Bookmarking or subscribing to Patrick’s feed.

Does anybody remember seeing Phil Mickelson and Vince Gill at the same time ?

Me neither.

Seriously, is Phil getting even heavier and can his hair get any shaggier ?

Remember how clean cut he was coming out of ASU ? Not anymore.

There’s no way he’s working out like the upper eschelon of golfers. His raw talent, pure and simple is what’s getting him near the top most of the time, but his conditioning is what’s holding him back.

72 - 73 on the weekend at the Big Blue Easy ain’t gonna get it done. And when you can’t hardly pack it all around for four rounds, you ain’t gonna win.

Why do you shoot 72 - 73 on the weekend, when everybody else is 64 - 66 ?

‘Cause you’re tired from packing all those bags. Nobody will ever confuse him and Bones, his caddie.

Here’s a prediction to write down, right now. No Top 5’s for Big Phil in the Majors in ‘06. The round mound of bat it around has lost his desire to work out, if he ever had one, he can’t find a barber and he’s slowly losing his place among the Top 10 in the world.

Unless he uses this break to go on a crash diet and workout regimen, he’s done for the year.

All that talent and no mind to go with it. What a shame. Oh well, he can always host celebrity golf events with Vinny, his alster ego.

At least Vinny could always lose the pounds before the CMA’s !