Over the Green

Here’s the second installment of my suggestions for gifts to golfers.

Five – the Best?
After all the noise about the roll back of the permissible groove cross sectional area to those of 60 years ago little has been said about the response by ball manufacturers to the lower spin rates that will be generated by short irons. TaylorMade Golf has leaped into that discussion with the first 5-layer golf ball. The Penta TP is aimed at the professional/top amateur end of the market but you and I both know that only means you will see them in play by every weekend hacker you run into. At $45.99 per dozen, they are available in limited quantities.

Expensive But Worth It
Miura Golf is known as maybe the top maker of irons in the world; a bold statement to be sure, however just ask those who have a set. The company just entered the utility/hybrid market with the Precious line of hybrids and they are as good as their irons. Available in lofts of 17, 20 and 23 degrees the ball flight is a mid to high launch angle and there’s lots of weight in the sole so getting the ball air borne is no problem. With the standard graphite shaft you can be Precious for $239.

Perfect Fit
Though not strictly a holiday promotion, Etonic has a footwear and glove promotion that’s a perfect fit for gifting. Buy a pair of Etonic shoes from the recently introduced 2010 line and get a free Perfect Fit golf glove (MSRP $18) at no charge.

Heeeere’s Annika
Annika Sorenstam may be off the competitive links but not out of golf by any stretch. She has launched shopAnnika.com on the Internet so you can “purchase all things Annika.” Some of the online items are ANNIKA Academy-branded Cutter & Buck clothing for women and men, academy headwear, Annika’s Fragrance, her game improvement instructional book Golf Annika’s Way, and other gifts plus some authentic, limited edition autographed Annika memorabilia.

Pro V1s for Everybody
Every golfer or anyone giving to a golfer can take advantage of the Titleist promotion for free personalization on any of their models including Pro V1. In a nut shell order a dozen balls with a week lead time and get 3 lines of copy – up to 17 characters – at no charge.

Eidolon
Eidolon wedges are unique, patented and they work. There’s a surprising amount of technology and design in the humble wedge and Terry Koehler at Eidolon knows how to do it very well. Though there a number of features in his wedges not necessarily found on bigger name clubs, what really separates his from their’s is the patented V-sole. The bounce of the first ¼ inch is very high and the rear of the sole’s bounce is less. The combination allows the user to “dial in” just the amount for bounce he wants for each different type of shot. Eidolon V-Sole wedges come in a variety of loft/bounce combinations such as 48° loft pitching wedge with 18° bounce on the front edge and 3° on the rear or the 60° lob wedge with bounces of 25°/6°. Available at EidolonGolf.com, V-Sole Wedge are $129 each for the 60° Lob (25°/6°), 56° Sand (30°/7°), 52° Gap (18°/3°) and 48° Pitching (15°/3°). Two, three and four wedge sets are offered at a discount.

Putting Around
Indoor putting …a poor substitute for the real thing whether seriously working on your stroke or simply a weather-induced housebound diversion. Chair legs, water glasses and Berber-woven flowers have been used as targets and there are those plastic devices that trap an on-line putt or even ball returning target cups. But let’s face it; indoors putting isn’t much fun, perhaps suitable as a few minutes entertainment for a five year-old but not much more. Enter The Putting Game a high tech device which doubles as a putting training aid and gaming station. Take a look on the web site puttinggame.com and see what I mean. $330 online

Each year around this time I start looking at the news items that have crossed my desk since last Christmas for possible golfer gift ideas, think of this as sort of my ‘wish list.’ They range in price from the very expensive to a few dollars therefore potentially filling any gifter’s need. So, in no particular order:

No Golf but a Lot of Relaxation
Buccament Bay Beach Resort opens in July 2010 on the southwest coast of St. Vincent in the Windward Islands has a great year round vacation location, exclusivity, 12 restaurants, a tennis academy, the Liverpool Football Club’s soccer school, a cricket academy, activities for children, a 24-berth marina and NO GOLF. Since there’s no direct air service you have to fly into St. Lucia and take a launch to St. Vincent…sounds like fun.

Bushnell Promos
The Bushnell Tour V2 laser range finder has a permanent spot in my bag and until the end of 2009 they are offering a number of promotions for their various models. The one that caught my eye, since I like the V2, is called the ‘Tour V2 Limited Edition Holiday Pack.’ Included besides a Tour V2 laser rangefinder are a premium carrying case, two 3-volt batteries and two SKINZ™, silicone protective covers, at $100 off the usual retail price of $400.

House of Carrington
“Call me old fashioned but I think the clothes you wear are important, including on the golf course. They speak volumes about you and your attitude and many of the modern “youth-orientated” styles just don’t cut it. Cargo shorts, enormous basketball shorts, tank tops, etc. may look fine on a six-year old but on middle aged weekend warrior they look ridiculous.” That was the lead paragraph of my story about the House of Carrington clothing from two brothers named Bell, classic in design, quality construction using the best of fabrics at middle of the road prices. To locate a retail or green grass shop visit houseofcarrington.com.

Let’s Face It
The TaylorMade Golf TP wedge with xFT (Exchangeable Face Technology) gives players the option of changing out a worn wedge clubface; definitely a neat idea certainly worth consideration given the banning of box grooves by the USGA. Street price is $129 per and comes with a Z groove face (i.e., one conforming to the pre-2010 USGA rule). Other xFT wedge faces with either the Z groove or ZTP groove (conforming to the new 2010 USGA rule) are $39.

Sink More Putts
Dr. Craig Farnsworth’s book, The Putting Prescription, is a great reference on how to putt or at least how to understand what’s going on during the stroke. Farnsworth really does understand putting and has coached everyone from Azinger to Yang how to make more putts. John Wiley & Sons, $24.95

Another Golf Book, But Different
Frank Thomas is a very interesting guy, opinionated to be sure but as knowledgeable person as you can find regarding golf equipment and the game in general. Each week he answers questions sent in by readers of his web site and now has compiled the Q&A into a book, Dear Frank… which is available on his at franklygolf.com for $17.99

More suggestions in a couple of days.

Since virtually every golfer suffers sooner or later with a short game that ranges from barely adequate to having no redeeming value, the information found on TheWedgeGuy.com from wedge-maker Eidolon Golf and president Terry Koehler is “good stuff.” In a three-part series Koehler supplies his six rules for “The Basic Chip Shot.”

The second part of the series, “The Basic Pitch Shot” was posted Oct. 9. These three articles add further to Eidolon’s “short-game solution” library and are maybe the largest collection of information regarding the short game on the web. Best of all there’s no charge.

“From what I hear daily, golfers want more basic and simple information on the short game,” says Koehler. “More importantly, they want simple techniques they can digest and implement without hours and hours of grueling practice. What we’re creating with TheWedgeGuy.com blog is a library of simple and clear short game solutions.”

In “The Basic Chip Shot,” Koehler explains why he’s a believer that golf should be learned from the hole backward. Or if you’ve been playing a while, consider working to improve your scoring from the hole backwards. Koehler breaks down chipping into six basic elements of good chipping technique.

Among those rules:

Choose a club that will just loft the ball safely over the fringe, so that it lands on the green where bounce and roll-out are predictable.

“I marvel at those who will chip the ball to the fringe or collar, then become exasperated when the first bounce is not what they anticipated, so that shot ends up very long or short,” Koehler says. “For consistency, figure out where the ball needs to land on the green, and then how much roll to allow for after that, to get it all the way to the hole. If you want to carry it only 10-20 percent of the way, a 6-8 iron is usually good. At the other end, if you want to carry it more than half way to the hole, you might opt for a pitching or gap wedge. It only takes a little experimentation to learn this basic piece of the puzzle.”

Heath Slocum’s win at the Barclay’s, first of the FedEx Cup events last weekend, may have been a surprise to some but to at least one knowledgeable person it wasn’t.

Dr. Gio Valiante, well known sports psychologist has been working with Slocum for some time, improving his mental approach and opening the door for him to win for the third time on Tour.

Slocum is full of praise for Valiante, “Dr. Valiante has helped my transition on to the PGA Tour. My game improved almost immediately after meeting him.”

Valiante is a professor of psychology at Rollins College in Orlando, Fla. and has worked with many of the world’s best professionals. He is well respected among touring pros and with five Fed Ex Cup tournament winners having been trained in the mental conditioning program he calls Fearless Golf.

Slocum, when asked about his mindset when his name showed up on the leaderboard among the best players in the world said, “In all honesty, it’s funny because I’ve worked with Gio Valiante quite a bit on this. I don’t worry about who is ahead of me, who is behind me. I’m focused right on the golf course and the task at hand.”

Combining research from several fields of performance psychology, Valiante’s Fearless Golf has had measurable results with golfers at all levels. Fearless Golf is based on the idea golf is as much a mental game as a skills game.

“My program teaches golfers to get rid of the extra baggage that clutters their minds, which allows them to remain clear and focused on their way to playing fearless golf,” said Valiante. The list of his students who have won on the PGA Tour includes Chad Campbell, Will Mackenzie, Vijay Singh, Justin Leonard, Davis Love III, Bryce Molder, and Matt Kuchar.

There’s even a Fearless Golf Academy DVD specifically produced for amateurs. The 3-disk set sells for $99.95 and is available at fearlessgolf.com.

A big problem (some would say the biggest) of less-skilled golfers is their swing tempo. They make ungainly looking, inefficient swings and may not even know they are doing something wrong and certainly not know what to do to correct it. Rather than a swing with an athletic take away which merges into a smooth transition at the top and then accelerates through the hitting area to a balanced finish something else happens. More…

A big part of building an efficient, repeatable golf swing is learning the proper tempo and to measure tempo requires the measurement of swing speed so along the way swing speed measurement becomes a yardstick for an efficient and repeatable swinging.

And by the way, in case it slipped your mind, the higher one’s swing speed the farther the ball will go.More…

Bushnell Outdoor Products knows the business of distance measurement on the golf course. After all, for years they’ve made the most popular models of laser range finders.

But as GPS technology-based devices became available Bushnell stayed on the side lines and didn’t enter the melee between new companies vying for market share with often less than well thought out business plans. I had wondered why Bushnell hadn’t jumped into the GPS device market but the opportunity never came up to ask the powers-that-be and now it doesn’t make any difference.

Bushnell has brought to market the Yardage Pro and it’s not just another GPS range finder. In fact it has two distinct advantages to recommend it. More…

There are plenty of golf psychology books on the market and I’m sure each in its own way has a place for those golfers who want to score better through better self-management.

“How Great Golfers Think” by Bob Skura has a refreshing approach. Skura uses a narrative about four average players and though very different, in handicap and ability, sharing the desire to improve at game they love. Along with the four golfers in his tale he uses the device of a mentor to do the teaching or maybe more properly the “enlightening” and to communicate the psychology and principles of improvement.

Most interesting to me was the recognizing of emotions you are feeling in different circumstances, say in the club championship versus playing a casual round, plus how those emotions may potentially impact your shot selection, swing and overall performance.

Four principles (complimenting the four players in the story) are addressed starting with the requirement a player have a positive view of himself and his abilities, i.e. positive self-image. Then Skura moves to how you should train yourself to actually swing like your practice sessions on to course. Thirdly the technique most every good players uses of visualizing the shot and then allowing your body to execute the swing required without over analyzing and over thinking.

Lastly Skura addresses the famous (or infamous depending on your experience) zone. That fabled “see it – hit it – watch it” time when your physical, intellectual and emotional factors all come together. He relates the mental skills needed to find and keep your performance at the maximum level…in the zone.

“How Great Golfers Think” is available online for $21.95

Generally I am dubious of so-called ‘golf training aids.’ To me they are either too complicated, useless or both and some seemed to have been designed by Torquemada or the Marquis de Sade. With that all in mind I took the David Leadbetter SwingSetter Pro out to the range. More…