LinksLifeGolf

We have all seen Freddy Couples sporting the low profile ecco’s this season, and it seems like the golf show will be taking on a much different look in the near future. Almost-Sponsor-Free Ryan Moore just signed an endorsement contract with TRUE linkswear golf shoes, and we are now seeing new brands like kikkor and even veteran brands like NIKE are introducing this “new look” to the golf shoe. 

For those of you who were hoping to get some of these modern kicks, it seems that most of these shoes won’t be available to the public until end of this season. Ecco has just released “Golf Street Premiere” and NIKE has the “Air Anthem” incorporating the young, almost skater shoe. Ryan Moore has been seen wearing vans and puma c-hoopers, both similar to the new-to-golf brand kikkor, which has taken the skater/golf shoe to another level.

Over the next few years the golf shoe looks to be headed for significant changes, very far away from the two-tone saddles that most of us seem to enjoy.

by Jeff Skinner

Check out Golf World’s Senior Editor Mike Johnson as he breaks down his top ten golf innovations of the past twenty years.  In my opinion the most obvious is the big 460cc driver.  Everyone plays the biggest of the Big Dogs now.  But the innovation with the most impact has probably been the ball.  300 yard drives are the norm even for double digit hackers.  If Nicklaus played with these balls he would have never lost.

As Phil Mickelson demonstrated at the end of the season, the putter can be a “weapon of score reduction.” After a few hours with putting guru Dave Stockton, Phil went on to win two tournaments and The Presidents Cup, putting lights out the whole time. The putter is the club that can reduce your score the quickest but at the same time it can be the club that causes us the most aggravation.

It’s critical to have a putter that fits you right, that allows you to make solid, centered contact with the ball and most importantly feels right. Feel is a critical aspect of putting and even golfers with the most mechanical of putting strokes recognize the importance of feel.

I have experimented with some putters over the years and determined that I like a little more weight in my putter. I have added a few lead strips to my putter head and have been sold on a heavier putter for years.

I recently tested a few of the “Mid-Weights” from Heavy Putter and found them to be quite suitable to my more weighty expectations. When Heavy Putter made its debut with the original Heavy Putters I tried those but found them to be too weighty and unsightly to look at. They looked like a piece of the Flux Capacitor that was left on the floor. No such issues with the Mid-Weights.

After listening to players and consumers feedback they have reduced the weight and made the Mid-Weights in the shape of many traditional and classic putters. I tried out the CX2, J2 (both Blades) and the H3 a Mallet. All three felt great. They had just enough weight to feel very comfortable and had that “swing by itself” feel. All you had to do was bring it back and the putter comes through the hitting area with a good follow through all by itself. That’s part of the thinking behind the Heavy Putter philosophy: heavier mass engages the body’s larger stable muscles, resulting in a more consistent pendulum stroke.

Each putter has a weighted shaft to better distribute the weight so it doesn’t feel like a sledge hammer and a thicker, mid-size grip that feels perfect in your hands.

The putter face is scored and the ball comes off the face with little skid and rolls true. The classic designs of the Mid-Weights make them easy on the eyes as you stand over your putt. Most importantly to me the putter feels right. It swings easy and gives plenty of feedback and feel. With a few practice putts you’ll adjust to the weight and before long it could be your “weapon of score reduction.”

by Jeff Skinner

Each week we watch the pros on The PGA Tour play at beautiful locations throughout the season.  They play for million dollar checks on a weekly basis. The PGA Tour is a walking millionaires club.  Ninety one tour members earned over a million dollars on The PGA Tour last year and the top fourteen earned well over three million each, led by Tiger Woods with $10,508,163.  One win usually gets you a million bucks and a bunch of perks, like exemptions and endorsements.  But there are many tour players that toil all year and never get a sniff of a first place check.  There are lunch pail guys out there on tour that are grinding each week trying to make the cut and cash a check.  You can still earn a good living by just making the cut.  Let’s see what making the cut and finishing last in each tournament can do for your bank account.  That’s right, make the cut but finish last.

Let’s say for example there’s a golfer who’s been out on tour for awhile and he has some status on tour.  He can get in to most of the weekly tournaments and will play as much as he can. We’ll call him Slappy Magee.  Now Slappy has been around and has some connections and the crowd loves him and the tournament directors do too.  So he can get into most any tournament he wants on a sponsor’s exemption but he really has enough game to pull his own weight.  Slappy has a strong constitution and being on the road doesn’t bother him so he plays all he can.

Slappy starts playing at The Sony in January and pauses at the start of The Fed Ex Cup.  That’s twenty seven weeks of weekly PGA Tour events and five other weeks where the majors and The Players take place.  If Slappy makes the cut and takes last in all twenty seven starts he’ll have pocketed $278,821, not bad for a journeyman.

Now if Slappy can qualify for some majors he’ll pocket some more cash.  Playing in the four majors and The Players Championship and still bringing up the rear in all five will get The Slapster $79,496 (we deducted the cash from The Reno-Tahoe Open, played opposite The Open Championship).  So far Slappy has a total of $358,316 in earnings and he’s feeling pretty good about earning ten times the average income in the United States.

Since Slappy didn’t qualify for any World Golf Championship events and didn’t earn enough FedEx Cup points to play in the Playoffs he is feeling fresh and plays in the Fall Series.  As usual he takes his familiar spot at the bottom of the list but still cashes three checks and adds another $26,801 to his stash.  Slappy can be proud of his effort and the $385,118 he earned from the thirty five tournaments he played.

Yes, I know thirty five tournaments is a lot.  The iron man of the tour last year was Brian Davis ($1,874,318) and he played in thirty two.  So if Slappy needed a break during the year let’s say he only played in twenty five weekly tournaments and earned an average of $10,187 each week.  He only qualified for two majors for an average $17,088 (they pay well) and he still plays in The Fall Series.  That’s thirty events and a grand total of $315,631.  The Slapster played in no FedEx Cup or WGC events and still earned a pretty good buck.

Slappy can rest up during the off season and work on his game. He’ll have to if he wants to play again next year.  In all of the scenarios that we just examined Slappy falls short of the magic number, 150.  The top 150 in earnings get to play next year but for all of Slappy’s hard work, even in his best thirty five tournament season he misses last year’s cutoff of $454,510 by a pile of money.  Slappy will have to try and do it all over again next year.  It’s not as easy as it looks out there on tour.

by Jeff Skinner

So the 2010 Season has opened and the winners of 2009 are basking in the warm Hawaiian sunshine. While the rest of us try to stay warm, dig out and count the days to our Florida trip, Tim Finchem is still mapping out his strategy to keep faces watching golf while the tour adjusts to the “Tiger AD” era. That’s “After he Did it” in case you were unaware. The Tour could use a new, fresh face to capture some of those rating points that will disappear as long as Tiger does the same. Rich Lerner has an interview in Golf Digest with the one of the best solutions for Tim Finchems’ problem.

Rickie Fowler could be one of the most attractive players on tour, for many reasons. He’s young, good looking and has a “Zac Efron” look. If I have to explain who Efron is my point is already made. He wears his hair a little longer and that makes him discernable from the dozens of rail thin golfers out there. He is a crossover from Motocross. His first love is Motocross and he appears to be a kid that could show up at the course one day and jump his bike over the water on the eighteenth hole. He has an appeal to a much younger demographic that normally follows golf.

Oh yea, he can play like hell. He may be a hip, youngster, but he plays “old school.” He’s a very aggressive player, shoots at pins, drives it a mile and plays fast! He sounds almost too good to believe when he quotes Bobby Jones when he says he’s playing against “old man par.” As Fowler and Lerner say his past on the dirt bike trails have made him “fearless.” He’s just the player golf could use right now.

by Jeff Skinner

The Deutsche Bank Championship provided us with an exciting ending and a great Labor Day weekend of golf. Even without Mr. Woods in the mix there were many interesting stories. Mr. Nice Guy, Steve Stricker’s victory has added another twist to the FedEx Cup playoffs as he has supplanted Tiger from the number one spot in FedEx Cup points. One of the lingering problems that continues to plague the PGA Tour went unnoticed by television, the media and most of the fans on Sunday. The dreaded ailment that hounds golf on all levels reared its ugly head on Sunday; slow play was back at The Deutsche Bank.

I was standing at the fifteenth green when the tidal wave of fans that follow Tiger swamped the entire hole. I was able to watch Tiger register a birdie that put him to eight under for the day. I was walking the course backwards and moved over to the fourteenth fairway to catch a glimpse of Vijay Singh and Steve Marino who had teed off twenty minutes after Woods. However they were nowhere to be found. I watched Kevin Streelman and Troy Matteson hit their approach on fifteen and still, there was no sign of another group on fifteen or fourteen. A roving volunteer that was walking with Singh/Marino was now on the fifteenth fairway and I asked him what the delay was. Maybe they had to wait for rulings, lost balls, whatever. He said no, there were none of those, only that they were not playing well together. I asked if there was a problem between the two of them but that’s all he would say. About this time a PGA Tour rules official arrived in a cart and sat to the side of the fourteenth fairway and finally Marino and Singh appeared on the fourteenth tee. There was no one on the entire fourteenth hole and there was no one on the entire fifteenth hole either. Two entire par fours stood empty ahead of them. That is unbelievable and unacceptable. If that was to happen at some of the courses I play at I would have been moved into position by the ranger, or asked to let other groups play through, or kicked off the course, or most likely been hit by half a dozen golf balls from the frustrated group behind me.

This was The PGA Tour, The FedEx Cup, The Playoffs, this was ridiculous. It gets better. Marino and Singh are now standing over at their shots Marino in the fairway, Singh in the rough. Marino is 184 yards from the green with a little downhill. There is barely twenty fans lining the fairway as they all grew bored watching the rough grow and left to see some real golf. At the green there are a handful of people behind the green, mostly volunteers working the hole. Now Marino stands behind his ball and stares at the green for a minute or two or three. He then raises his left hand over his head and stares intently at the green. He does this for awhile and it hits me what he is doing. He is telling, demanding in terms of his body language, that they stop moving up at the green. I was stunned, this was unbelievable. He is 184 yards away, taking forever over his ball and demanding that there be no movement up at the green. Are you kidding me? I could understand if he was close to the green and hitting a chip or a putt, but 184 yards away! That’s over kill. I wonder if he has super human peripheral vision and he can see out the side of his head 184 yards away as he addresses his ball. Last I knew you are looking down at the general vicinity of the ball when you are swinging, not at the green. It’s no wonder there were two holes open ahead of them if he was expecting people in a 200 yard radius to stand still when he was ready to hit. Something is wrong here. I could not find any mention of a warning for slow play anywhere in the accounts of Sunday’s play. If there ever was a time for a penalty for slow play it was here. There were way out of position and making no attempt to catch up. The PGA Rules official took no action, thereby enabling Marino to continue his snail like habits. It made for lousy golf and it is easy to see how players can get frustrated by delays and backups caused by such actions. It was the perfect spot to enforce the rules but The PGA Tour stood by and watched. I put Marino on my list of players to avoid watching.

by Jeff Skinner

Every now and then a new gadget or innovation comes along in golf that really makes a difference in golf. The Big Bertha Driver changed the face of drivers, both figuratively and literally. The Pro V1 changed the entire golf ball market. Hybrid clubs started an entire new market for club companies. I usually take awhile to change to something new in the market. I’m an old dog and new tricks don’t come so easy. However, that doesn’t mean I can’t realize when something is good or may have real value.
I was given a new hat the other day that may be worth a try. It is from the people at Ahead Inc. and it is called the Dri-Look Cap. It’s advertised as “…the first breathable, cotton cap to hide sweat.” It is endorsed by PGA Tour pro Jason Gore and designed to “…block perspiration so you don’t have that unsightly sweat patch on your cap!” If Jason Gore and I have anything in common it’s that we both give our hats and shirts a real test when it comes to sweating. Two things I am guaranteed to do on a golf course: shoot over par and sweat like Secretariat running the Kentucky Derby. That’s the way it is, bogeys and sweat soaked hats. I tried the new Dri-Look Cap and it worked very well. After eighteen holes on a warm day and a few really good sweats, the outside of the hat showed no signs of sweat. The inside of the hat was soaked but the outside looked dry as can be. This hat works as advertised. Any of my other hats would have been soaked through and stained. I was very impressed and have made this hat my regular golfing hat. Now if the guys at Ahead could make a hat that guarantees some birdies, I’d be all set.

Hat after 18 holes

Inside is soaked after 18 holes

by Jeff Skinner

The name “Woods” carries a lot of weight in the world of golf. It is said that Tiger Woods is the most recognized athlete in the world and that he is the driving force on the PGA Tour. That may be the case but the name Woods seems to be helping out another golfer named Woods, Tiger’s niece, Cheyenne Woods. Ms. Woods was offered and accepted a sponsor’s exemption into the Wegmans LPGA. Cheyenne is an up and coming freshman at Wake Forest University. She is a very good player, but not a great player, yet. She may grow and mature into the next Annika, but for now she is a freshman in college and not even the best golfer on her team. The Wake Forest team has at least three or four players on the team with better records this year. There are dozens and dozens of female college golfers that have had more distinguished seasons than her, but her last name is a calling card that few can match.

I understand the need for tournaments to sell tickets and to get publicity for the tournament in order for it to be a success. We see it with John Daly on the PGA Tour (before his suspension) and the European tour. We have seen it for years with Michelle Wie, who not only was getting exemptions into LPGA events, but she was getting them for men’s PGA events. It was not until this year that Michelle earned her tour card through Q-School. She had been in so many tournaments the past years it appeared that she was a full member of the tour. Tournaments are about making money: money for the players, money for the charities and money for the tour. However, is someone going to buy a ticket to see Cheyenne Woods at this stage? I’m not so sure. What I am sure of is this. Someone in the “Woods” camp should take some time to consider where and when Cheyenne plays outside of college. Michelle Wie started playing in tournaments way above her skill level at a young age. She has struggled on the LPGA Tour and has suffered in the men’s tournament she played in. She has yet to recover from a career that has more ups and downs than Augusta National.

Cheyenne has said that Earl Woods was an influence in her life and that Tiger has helped her out on her game. Take a lesson from the master, and I don’t mean Tiger. I mean Earl. He had Tiger compete at all levels of golf. He stayed at that level until he dominated it and then he moved up to play with older and more experienced golfers. Earl never let him get in over his head where he would be overwhelmed and therefore discouraged. Michelle Wie was not so lucky. She moved into tougher levels of golf so quickly that she was never given the chance to be a dominating champion and it has hindered her career. She may very well overcome it this year but it has been a struggle. That happens when huge expectations are placed upon a person.

Cheyenne Woods seems like a mature, composed, polite young lady. Watch the video. Her golf career is all ahead of her now. She is at a great school and has a strong support system I am sure. She should take great care in deciding which tournaments outside of college to compete in. It may seem like the fun thing to do now, but beware. Whose path would you rather follow: Michelle Wie or Uncle Tiger?

The news that Amy Mickelson has been diagnosed with breast cancer brought an out pouring of concern and best wishes for Amy and Phil. It hits many of the touring professionals and their wives hard. Amy is one of the more visible and involved wives on the tour. The news also puts into perspective how delicate life really is. Phil and Amy have been living a golden life. Phil’s success has made their life a dream come true. They have three healthy children and a strong, vibrant marriage. This next phase of their life will certainly be a test but both Phil and Amy are strong, positive people and that will help them through this.

Many of us get caught up in the daily business of life and sometimes we take “living” for granted. It’s easy to lose sight of what actually matters as we focus on careers and houses, etc, and all that distracts us from what is truly important. It took years and plenty of life lessons to learn what is really important in my life. I tell my kids each day, they laugh when I do, but they’ll get it one day: “If it doesn’t concern your health or the health of your children, it’s really not that important.”

by Jeff Skinner

One of the nicest guys in golf finally got what he deserved. Nick Price had an up and down final round on the TPC Tampa course, but he rallied to win his first Champions Tour title. His Outback Pro-Am final round of 71 included three double bogeys, one bogey and seven birdies. Price had gone thirty-eight Champion Tour starts without a win. It certainly was too long a streak for a player of Price’s ability. The fact that it took Price this long to win proves that the Champions tour is no walk in the park and shows that this game can be quite fickle. Price definitely has the talent to be a multiple winner but sometimes the breaks don’t fall your way.

Nick Price is one of the good guys on tour. He is one of the really good guys. Price is a three time major winner. He won the 1992 PGA Championship and in 1994 won consecutive majors, the Open Championship and then the PGA. Price worked his way up to the number one player in the word in 1994 and had that ranking for 44 weeks. Price was voted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2003 and has received many prestigious awards.

Price’s skill on the course is well recognized, but it is his demeanor off the course that sets him apart from most golfers. His contemporaries acknowledge that Price is one of the most likable and respected players in the game. He was voted inaugural ASAP Sports/Jim Murray Award, given to the player that cooperates and accommodates the media the most. Once a reporter that Price did not know too well asked him if he had time for a short interview. Priced asked him what he was doing for dinner and gave him the interview during the meal. He received the Payne Stewart Award that honors the player that displays respect for the traditions of the game and he is one of the most liked players on any tour.

Price attributes his accommodating nature to his family. “More of it comes from your family and your parents. That’s probably the biggest thing. My mom used to always say to me ‘Treat other people the way you want to be treated.’ It’s not that easy to do, but if you can adopt that attitude it certainly makes life a lot more pleasant.”

When Price was elected into the Hall of Fame, Davis Love III said,” I think players recognize what a great guy he is. People always ask who the nicest guy in golf is and Nick’s name always comes up in the top two or three.” He goes on to say,” Nick Price is the same every day. He says hello to everyone, he speaks to the locker room attendant, and he speaks to every marshal on every tee. He’s just a genuinely nice friendly guy who goes out of his way. It’s natural for him to be nice to them.”

Now that Nick has broken through for his first Champions win, let’s hope that more will follow. He’s too good a golfer for him not to win again, and it’s always good to see a nice guy finish first.