Yesterday I was playing and I picked up an old ball in the rough and threw it in my cart. On one hole, I wanted to hit another wedge shot, as I’m trying to hone in on my wedge yardages. So shot the pin with my Rangefinder at 97 yards, tossed down the ball I found, and hit my 56 degree wedge. I hit it about 6 feet pass the hole, but the ball sounded and felt really good when it came off the clubface. It was a solid shot but the ball felt really soft. I knew it was a Titleist, but I couldn’t wait to find out what it was – I wanted to see if it was another ball in the line that I wasn’t playing (I play the Prov1x). So I got to the green and looked at it – it was a Titleist Tour Balata! No wonder it felt so good. I used to love that golf ball. I wasn’t playing very well, so I decided to play the last few holes with it, just to see the difference. The ball felt great when chipping and putting and the guys I was playing with commented on how you can hear the difference when I was putting. But with the driver is where I really saw the difference. I only hit it three times off the tee, but I would say on average that I hit it about 20-25 yards shorter than the Prov1x and the ball wouldn’t stay in the air – it was it solid would look like a good drive and then kind of fall to the ground. There’s no doubt that the ball has made the difference and is the primary reason that golf courses are now becoming too short for the top players in the world. And the ball also goes straighter as they are more difficult to curve than the old wound balls. If the USGA really wants to pull back the reins on the game, the focus needs to be on the ball. But there are very complex issues, with all the patents and different physical characteristics of a golf ball, that I believe it would be very difficult if not impossible to put limits and parameters on the ball the way that they did with COR on drivers. So I think the ball is here to stay, which is really not a bad thing for those of us that don’t make a living playing golf. But I do miss the feel and sound of that balata.

So you had to love the finish at the Ryder Cup. Yeah, I know it’s a lot of commercial hype, but if you love golf, it was hard not to enjoy watching this year’s tournament, especially with the US being such huge underdogs. I could go on and on about the play of many of the players, especially the rookies — Kim, Holmes, and Weekley who just played some great golf. But what was most impressive for me to watch was the play of Anthony Kim. Here’s a guy who is starting to play some really good golf, makes the team, and as a rookie on Sunday is the first match out and his opponent is Sergio Garcia who has a good Ryder Cup record. That’s pressure. But boy did Kim respond. I know some may have not liked how much he engaged the crowd, but you can’t take anything from the way he played. He came out and was just knocking down pin after pin. People now say what happened to Garcia? What happened was he ran into a buzzsaw! But what was really impressive is when Kim made that putt to win the match and he marched off the green to play the next hole! He had no idea he won the match! I can’t tell you how big that is. Everyone knew where the match stood; the fans, the commentators, and I’m sure even Garcia. But Kim had no clue, he was just taking it one shot at a time, staying in the present, unaware of how many holes he was up and how many were left to play. And that’s what the greatest players that have ever played the game can do. Watch out for Anthony Kim — I believe he’s got what it takes and is going to be a force to reckon with.

You gotta love the Ryder Cup. It’s so different from watching the weekly televised golf tournaments. Watching guys who have multi-million endorsement deals, before even teeing up the ball, in an individual event is very different from wathcing a golf tournament that is a team event, where the only thing the players get are free travel expenses and clothes that they’ll never where again after this week. All they are playing for is pride and for their country. And what a differance in the emotional reactions of the players, both after they hit a bad shot and after they make a great one. The level of dissapointment and elation are emotions that we very rare to see from most of these players.
And through day one we are winning. We haven’t had the cup since 1999 — could this be the year we get it back? This is great stuff!

I recently had the opportunity to experience a one-on-one yoga class with Sarah Tacy at Institute 3E in Huntington. Let me start by saying if you are looking for a one hour or so experience that is totally relaxing and feels good – go get a massage! Yoga is not that. What I found yoga to be is a relatively intense physical and mental experience that will help to improve your flexibility, focus, balance, and coordination. And for golfers that can only mean good things. I struggled to get through the yoga poses and I found them to be very challenging, although Sarah was very helpful and negotiated me into modified positions to accommodate my limited flexibility. I must say that after the session I was a little sore but I felt pretty good. I played the following day and for some reason actually felt a little more flexible (if that’s possible).
I’m looking to take my golf swing to another level, but in order to do that I need to work on my body and I believe that yoga can be part of a training program to help me do that. If you are looking for a physical/mental challenge and want to improve your body to help you to be able to swing the club more effortlessly, give yoga a try. And if you live in the Huntington, New York area, give Sarah a call; I’m sure you’ll enjoy working with her.

Since I’m not very flexible it takes me a while to warm up before I play. I like to stretch for a few minutes, hit some balls, and do some chipping and putting. So it’s no surprise that if I run right to the tee that it takes me several holes before I feel somewhat comfortable swinging the club. And when I do the math there’s a very good reason for that. I figure I usually like to hit about 45-50 balls before I play and that would include some short wedge shots. If I play an entire round of golf, I’ll only hit that many full shots, actually less than that. So if it takes me 40-50 somewhere around the last couple of holes I’ll have swung the club as many times as if I had warmed up. If you want to play well, I believe you need to give yourself ample time to get to the course to prepare yourself to play. Too many times I see golfers, literally running to the range, hitting balls in rapid succession trying to get loose and then run to the tee. And of course they expect to play well. Budget the time to get to the course a little early so you can prepare. If you have only a few minutes, spend it chipping and putting, and getting some feel for distance and the speed of the greens.
Plus, getting to the course and having some extra time will allow you to warm up and relax. Rushing to the tee to make your tee time only causes unnecessary anxiety and stress, and I don’t know too many golfers that state-of-mind works well for.

We live in a politically correct world, where being P.C. is much more important than doing what appears to be practical, sensible, and reasonable. And so the LPGA makes the move to require players to be able to speak English, in an effort to help with marketing and sponsorship. And what happens? The sponsors turn on the LPGA. State Farm and now Samsung (no suprise a Korean company) have not threatened to pull their sponsorships. Why? Because they are afraid that their customers will start to boycott their products when they realize that they sponsor events for an organization, like the LPGA, who are prejudice and politcally incorrect. So we’ll proabably see that English requirement pulled soon, of course along with an apology of why they should never have done it and they didn’t mean to offend anyone and blah, blah, blah. This country is heading in a direction, I’m just not sure its a better one.

So now the LPGA has laid down some requirements for their members to somewhat proficient in the English language. A lot of people are jumping up and down and screaming “foul”. I can understand why this would upset those that think that clubs should do the talking and what language a player speaks should be irrelevant. And in a perfect world that idea works well. But the fact of the matter is the LPGA has been struggling for years with sponsorship and the pro-am days are very important to sponsors. I’ve even seen this on the club-pro level. The Met PGA section lost Northfolk Bank, who had been the $100,000 sponsor of the New York State Open. Now that’s a fairly large piece of change considering that our event gets no television coverage and very few spectators. Fortunately for us, Lenox Advisors was picked up as a sponsor. So why would someone want to sponsor our event? Because the NY State Open pro-am is played at Bethpage Black (home of the event) with the top players in the section. Lenox is paying for the pro-am experience for their clients. And that pro-am experience, like it or not, has a great value to sponsors. When sponsors send invite their clients to play in pro-ams, the experience is certainly diminished when the pro they are playing with can’t even speak to them. And vice versa it can be very much enhanced by a player who chats with the amateurs, gives them a couple of tips, and so on. When I’m asked to play in pro-ams, I do everything I can to help enhance the experience for the individuals I’m playing with. They’re excited to be playing and want to talk to you and I believe it’s every pro’s job to his or her best to make that experience exceptional for the amateurs playing in the event. And speaking the English language is necessary to that. Right or wrong, the LPGA needs to take measures to ensure the future of the tour. No other sports require the athletes to interact so closely with the sponsors. Bold move by the LPGA – let’s see if it helps.

Like many golfers, I sometimes struggle with hitting my driver straight. I really struggled, and paid the price, several weeks ago when I competed in the New york State Open at the Black Course at Bethpage. The course was setup similar to how it will be in the next US Open — very long, with the first cut of rough being very penal. I’m not a long ball hitter – normal dry conditions I drive the ball about 270 – which at the Black course is really not long enough – but it can work, if it’s in the fariway. I didn’t drive the ball really bad or offline, but I kept finding the first cut of rough and I found myself advancing the ball from 200 yards, on the long par fours, with no more than a pitching wedge. Of course this made it virtually impossible for me to score well.
After the tournament, I thought about why I drove the ball poorly, and of course the main reason was that I was trying to hit it really far so that I could have a reasonable scoring iron in my hand for my second shot. And this is a challenge for many golfers. But this made me think about it even more. With every other club in our bag, we hit it a certain distance. If I’m 170 from the green, I’ll hit a smooth 6 iron, from 190 a 4-iron. With a driver? The sky is the limit! In other words, I don’t have a boundary distance for my driver. I found too frequently that I’m swing for the fences. So in the past few weeks, every time I have the driver in my hand, I take my 270 swing and guess what? With the dea that I only trying to hit it 270, I’m driving the ball much more accurately.