US Open – Who ya got?

The US Open starts this Thursday at Bethpage Black, which is one of only two municipally owned facilities to host an Open (Torrey Pines is the other).

I’ll keep this one short:  Who ya got, Tiger or The Field?

EDIT:  Below are the current odds running on GamblersPalace.com.  Can you believe the respect the oddsmakers are giving to Tiger?  You would have never thought a guy who was out for almost a year would have that kind of expectations for his 2nd major back from injury.  I guess that’s why they call him the best.

Common Sense

It should be obvious to any golfer that to quickly shave strokes off your game, putting is the first place to look. Hence the saying “drive for show, putt for dough”. Yet I see amateur golfers spending all day every day on the driving range, totally neglecting their short game. This is a fact I will never understand.

Look at the math, in any given round about half of your strokes are placed on the greens. Why not do everything you can here first to improve your game? While amateurs might be hesitant to put forth effort to really improve their fundamentals on the greens, I’ll share with you a quick fix I learned a few years ago that will immediately lower your rounds.

The two biggest challenges in putting for amateur golfers is correctly lining up their putts and not breaking their wrists during a stroke. Having been a scratch golfer in my younger years, these issues were never a problem for me. However, once golf wasn’t my primary focus in life and I began to play less my handicap immediately went up. Guess which area eroded the quickest? You got it, and the aforementioned reasons were exactly why. I tried out a long putter, disregarding the initial heavy abuse from my friends, and was extremely delighted with the results. I chose an Odyssey two ball putter because it provided a heavy weight that made the “pendulum” motion of my stroke easy to achieve. I also took a sharpie to my club and drew a line down the middle of the two white circles to give me an obvious and clear way to line up my putts.

Check out the image and link of what my putter looks like.

Soon after my friends’ behavior turned to anger as I returned the putting of my former years and relinquished them of all their money! One of them has even made the transition now, using the exact same club as me and seeing the same results. I strongly urge any golfer out there to give long putters a shot because, despite their bad rep, the benefits are way too hard to pass up.

Happy putting,

JSticca

http://jsticca.wordpress.com

No Glove, No Love

I was at the range the other day working on my iron play when I noticed that my glove is in worse shape than the famous knife-gripper pictured below.

So I’ve decided it’s probably time that I pick up a new glove.  Now, in the past I probably would have just picked up the cheapest glove I could find at Wal Mart or Sports Authority.  But since I am trying to actually improve my game, rather than use golf as an excuse to drink out-doors, I figured maybe I should do a little research before making a decision on my next accessory.

Through a quick Google search I came upon this helpful, albeit obvious, little guide to golf glove selection. From here it’s off to the pro-shop to see what strikes my fancy.  I’ll keep you posted.

What kind of glove do you play?  Have you ever changed gloves and noticed a difference in your game that you attributed to the glove?

Ping G10 Driver

It seems that everyone I talk to who has hit the new G10 driver from Ping says it’s the best club they’ve ever hit. So, in order to satisfy our many (sic) readers, the team at Golphur.com has decided to take to the driving range and take a few swings with this supposed ball-smashing-beast. I’ll report back with our results later on this week. Stay posted.

A Beauty and a Beast

1st Real Post

Alright boys and girls.  This means game time.  First post.  I’ll tell you all tomorrow what I think about the new Ping drivers

Happy driving,

Steve