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?

Have you ever been out golfing and the game is getting a bit stale. Sooner or later your golfing buddies (mostly happens if they’re male) will try to do something goofy with the pencil or a tee.

More often than not the golf pencil or tee is tried to be shot from the nose. I’ve tried it, and once had a bad experience with it so I don’t suggest you try it at home.

However, sometimes one of your buddies will try and show you how he can get the golf ball to balance on non-writing end of the golf pencil and proceed to try and use the golf pencil as a tee on the next hole. Now if you’re just playing a friendly round this might be amusing enough to watch him try it out and hope that the ball rolls off at the last second and he (or she) completely whiffs at the ball.

But if you’re keep score diligently and enforcing any penalties that might happen, you can let him know that using any “unnatural” object other than a regulated tee to tee-off from is against the rules and he will be disqualified from competition. That may be a bit harsh and you might have to work out a stroke penalty for the rules violation, but if you’re up there for big bucks, it might be what has to be done.

Ever wonder what the term “Dormie” means? You’ve probably heard it when people are talking about match play between two players.

The term dormie is used to describe the player that is so many holes up with that same amount of holes left to play. For instance, if Jack were playing Jill in an 18 hole match play and Jill were 2 holes up on Jack and there was only 17 and 18 left to play, Jill would be called Dormie.

Impress your friends and try to get them to play match play next time out just so you can use the word. Then spill the knowledge you just learned on them. They’ll either think you’re a nerd and not want to play with you again, or think it’s interesting and ask you more about golf terminology and golf rules, so you better read up and be prepared to answer.

The USGA website has created animated rules to better help you visualize many of them. They show you etiquette, scoring, and more, with animation.

This is a welcomed change to what most of the time seems like gibberish coming from the rule books of the USGA. Not many people can make heads or tails to all the rules and the proper golf etiquette. Now people will be able to learn visually rather than having to stumble through the USGA rules book not knowing whats going on.

Head over the animated rules section and see great animations on:

Putting Green Etiquette
Scoring in Match Play
Unfit Golf Balls
Delay
Order of Play
Hazards
Penalties
and tons more