Archive for December, 2006

Quick news on the Michelle Wie front.

It looks as though Michelle Wie will be headed to stanford come fall where she will attend school. She won’t be able to play golf because she’s already turned pro so she won’t really be following in Tiger Woods’ footsteps.

She seems excited but I’m not sure how long she’ll last over there.

What do you think?

technorati tags:Michelle, Wie, Stanford, Golf

Now-a-days it seems like there’s a club for every single situation you might find yourself in on the golf course. There’s a club for those tough long bunker shots, there’s new hybrid clubs to add to or replace your fairway woods, there’s new green side wedges, loft wedges, mid-wedges, approach wedges, and a whole slew of putters out there to choose from.

But how many clubs are you really allowed to play with?

Well USGA rules state that you are only allowed to play a round with 14 clubs. And if you are caught playing a round with more than 14 clubs there are penalties you must incur depending on the type of play and when the mistake was discovered.

For instance if you are playing in match play and you discover that you are playing with more than 14 clubs, you must deduct one hole for each hole in played with more than 14 clubs with a maximum of 2 holes per round penalty. So if you are on the 5th hole and you are up by 4 holes, you must deduct 2 holes from your score making you only up by 2 holes.

If in stroke play and you discover that you are playing with more than 14 clubs you must add 2 strokes to each hole that you played with more than 14 clubs with a maximum of 2 holes or 4 strokes penalty. So if you’re on the 5th hole here and you’ve parred every hole up to that point, you now must mark down that you have two bogeys, one of the first hole and one on the second hole.

Once you discover you have too many clubs you must designate the specific clubs in your bag that you are not going to use for the remainder of the round that bring your total playable clubs to 14. You can’t switch after you designate the clubs, which club will be unplayable. Once designated, that golf club cannot be played even if it is in your bag.

You may also add a club after the start of play as long as it doesn’t delay play. So if on the 12th hole you noticed that you forgot your magic wedge and you need it for a sand shot. If you can run to the car or your locker, get the club, and be back ready to hit your shot, it’s OK.

But remember, according to the rules of golf you cannot borrow clubs from any player who is playing with you during the course of play.

If you’re ever playing a round of golf and you find that your ball lies on or against an obstruction you are allowed to move the obstruction out of your way. But what if the ball moves when you move the obstruction?

If you move the obstruction and doing so causes the ball to move you can replace the ball back in it’s original spot without incurring any penalty strokes.

This can be common near bunkers where you land your ball up against a rake. Possibly the rake stopped your ball from going into the bunker which is great but your playing partners see it as a lucky break and can’t wait for you to move the rake so your ball goes where it rightfully should have. In the bunker.

However, you are allowed to move the rake and if the ball rolls down into the bunker, or moves at all, you can, without penalty, replace the ball where it was originally before moving the rake.

Then you can turn to your playing partners and tell them you meant to do that, although this isn’t suggested.

It’s winter and you’re driving past your favorite golf course wishing the snow on the ground would disappear. You pass by hole number eight, the long par 5 where you were blew an eagle attempt with a 4 foot whiff of a putt. You think about heading to the nearest indoor putt putt to perfect your game, jokingly.

But should that be such a joke? Why do you have to be on real grass to perfect your putting game? Chance are you missed that 4 foot eagle putt, not because of a bad read, but because of a breakdown in your putting stroke. Sometimes getting back to the fundamentals of your stroke is all you need.

Putting doesn’t have to be done one real grass to perfect it. You need to be able to reproduce your swing stroke over and over again. The greens change speeds from day to day and from course to course, why not use your carpet at home. Your living room carpet can be the perfect place to work on your putting game and you can do it even if there’s 30 inches of snow outside.

You just have to think reproducible. Setup a cup at varying distances and try to putt the golf ball into it. Sure you’ll wear a line in the carpet that the ball will eventually follow but you’re not worried about reading putts. Just the speed and form of your putting stroke.

Try and hit that same line 100 times a night and you’ll be ready to attack any par 5 eagle putt, from 4 feet or 40.

Ever wonder what the most expensive golf ball was. I haven’t, I don’t need to cause I’ll never want to buy it.

I once had to pay $45 for a dozen golf balls at Koolau Golf Course Because I forgot to get balls before hand. If you’ve ever had to play the course you’ll know that you can’t go on the course without at least a dozen balls. It’s literally cut out of a rain forest and the fairway meets the jungle, no rough to save you.

Anyway, I thought club balls were expensive but then I found the forbes list of expensive golf gear and found a regular priced dozen golf balls for $50, and they aren’t the NIke One. It’s the Maxfli BlackMax.

Will it help your game, probably if you didn’t know it existed it won’t help you out. But at least it gives you bragging rights to say that you have the most expensive balls out of everyone in the group.

In an article at golfonline.com Peter Kostis explains how the X-Factor can give you distance in your shots.

It’s a great article that takes you through the basic fundamentals of a good down-swing. What every great golfer and every aspiring golfer that follows proper swing mechanics knows is that you need to start the downswing with your hips to give yourself the best possible chance of hitting it far. A lot of players try and muscle the ball with their arms and shoulders, but this isn’t how to maximize distance.

This helpful golf swing article takes you through both the hows and whys of the downswing and how initiating it with your hips can build enough momentum to keep you driving with those younger muscle heads. The article calls this the “New X-Factor” because it looks at a different point in your swing relating it to the letter X.

The old X-factor thought was at the top of your back swing look at the difference between your hips and your shoulder planes and the more of a stretched X you have the more power and torque you’re creating for great swing speed. If you create a cross that’s even better!

The new X factor looks at the X you created throughout the downswing and shows you that you need to keep your hips turning before your shoulders to keep the X formed in the two planes. The longer and more you can keep the X formed, meaning the less parallel your shoulders and hips are throughout the downswing the more torque you have, the more power you have for swinging and the further your ball will go.

Check out the article, there’s lots of great pictures on the New X-Factor to help you better visualize what they’re talking about.

When you watch match play in golf or hear about scores while watching highlights on Sportscenter you usually hear scores like “4 & 3″ or “2 & 1.” To those not familiar with match play golf this shorthand golf talk can be confusing.

What those types of shorthand score reports mean is that the player won the round by 4 holes with three to play, so they didn’t need to play the last 3 holes because there was no way for the opponent to win the match.

So if Tiger Woods is playing Phil Mickelson in match play and going into the 15th hole Tiger Woods is leading by 3 holes Phil Mickelson would need to win the remaining 4 holes to win or win the next three and tie on to send the match play into extra holes. If Tiger Woods wins the 15th hole there is no way Phil Mickelson can win and therefor they would not play the remaining holes.

Tiger Woods would have won the match play round by 4 holes even though there were three remaining to be played. He would have won “4 & 3.”

Tiger Woods has done it again. And once again it was pretty much undisputed. In his short 10 years as a professional golfer Tiger Woods has one the PGA tour Player of the Year award for the eighth time!

His stats this year are amazing and he’s still going.

Earnings          $9.9 Million
Wins               8
Scoring Avg.    68.1
GIR                 74.2%

We recently asked the question “Will Tiger Woods Dominate on 2007?” Well, what do you think, will he?

If you are ever playing golf and you find that your golf ball made a perfect hole in one in the wrong hole, the garbage can at the next tee box, you don’t have to worry about a penalty. Unless of course you are out of bounds.

If you do find that you made perfect aim at the wrong hole and your golf ball is sitting amongst the trash you can remove the ball from the trash and drop it on the ground next to the trash, no closer to the hole. If you are able to move the trash can you must place the ball directly below where your ball lay in the can prior to moving the trash can.

Doing this during a regular golf round is completely legal and you won’t incur any penalty strokes.

Tiger Woods had an up and down 2006. It started with some bumpy tournaments, his father passed away midway through the year, and then he proceeded to win darn near every golf tournament he entered.

He started the year with a couple of wins, a couple of out of the top tens and even a missing of the cut. But in the second half of the year Tiger has been nearly unbeatable. It started with the British Open and hasn’t stopped.

Tiger Woods has won 7 of his last 10 golf tournaments and finished second in two of those. He has been on an amazingly consistent and dominant streak and there’s no sign that he is going to slow down in the near future. After changing his swing over the past couple of years, a swing that was already dominant, it seems as though Tiger Woods is finding his groove.

I predict that 2007 will be even more dominant than last year for Tiger Woods. He always has the chance of winning the grand slam in one single year, and he will be looking to better his winning streak from this year and go after the record books some more.

Do you think Tiger Woods will dominate in 2007 or do you think the other players on tour will finally catch up?