I recently took a quick road trip out to the Atlantic Coast of New Hampshire and Maine. We went at just the right time as the colours of the leaves were perfect. I played golf at Cape Neddick Country Club and Prouts Neck Country Club, the following video has some footage of both courses, as well as my commentary provided as I was playing. This video was shot with my Nokia e70 camera phone provided by Harmony Mobile.
This was my first short golf film, made after a fun day playing with three friends of mine who are CPGA pros. It was filmed at Weston, in mid-August 2006.
I recently went for my semi-annual appointment with my eye care professional, Dr. Mike Rotholz. I asked him about the new Nike MaxSight contact lenses by Bausch and Lomb. He gave me a free trial pair, and I’ve been using them for my golf rounds the last two weeks.
They’re awesome! The golf version enhances the green and red portions of the visual spectrum to make it easier to read the putting surface and see the ball. They also reduce glare from the sun and contrast between shade and non-shade.
Obviously they don’t actually make the shot on your behalf, but being able to easily read the green definitely helps with visualizing the putt so that it will actually go in! Since wearing these I’ve made some long putts that seemed easy because I could actually see the path to take. Given that I play a lot of golf these lenses are cheaper than good sunglasses and worth the investment in terms of being able to see better and shoot lower scores!
The new tools of the game: $50,000 simulators and $4,500 sensor vests. How technology is driving a wedge between haves and have-nots… by Reed Albergotti, Wall Street Journal
On the fairway of the 17th hole, S. Hubert Humphrey swings his five-iron and hits a straight shot to the green with the help of a 20-mph tailwind. He’s not actually at the fabled Plantation Course at the Kapalua Resort in Hawaii — he’s in his house, practicing for an upcoming match with colleagues on his $50,000 simulator. “It certainly gives me an advantage,” says the 64-year-old entrepreneur.
Golf already has an elitist reputation, but a new generation of expensive high-tech tools is stoking a costly arms race among players looking for an edge. Pricey golf simulators can now be rigged to play matches over the Internet, while an increasing number of weekend duffers are investing in $3,000 “launch monitors” that use infrared beams to measure a ball’s angle, speed and backspin. At the renowned David Leadbetter Golf Academy near Orlando, two-day courses in a new biometrics lab, where sensors attached to various muscles detect swing flaws, will cost $7,500 — compared with the $3,000 tab for three days of old-fashioned instruction. And gearing up for tournaments from this weekend’s Masters in Augusta, Ga., to the U.S. Amateur Championship, players are turning to laptop computers and digital video cameras to help hone their swings.
The result is a widening digital divide that’s drawing new lines in the golf world. Traditional equipment makers are squaring off against upstart high-tech companies that hail from the world of Hollywood special effects. Courses are split on whether to take the high-tech route to woo new golfers or hew to more time-honored ways. And golfers who say the sport is founded on basics like practice and focus worry that turning golf into a kind of rocket science could ruin it. (more…)
My friend batz recently informed me about Che Guevara’s passion for golf! A little work on google and I found an interesting book:
Barranca - Fidel Castro’s caddy
In addition to some funky pictures, check out this quote from David Feherty:
Four Stars — “There’s a trinity of temptations that afflict the Irish: liquor, literature and the links. All three abound in the new Eddie Caminetti golf hustler novel from Troon McAllister. After his three previous novels, McAllister was clearly going to have to pull a rabbit out of his porthole to avoid a senior slump.
And somehow he pulls it off, combining the Cuban revolution, coffee speculation, the inanity of beltway politics and the purity of flushing a one-iron into a hilarious literary conga line — proving that nobody writes better about golf in all of its glorious stupidity.”
— CBS golf analysts David Feherty, in The New York Post
Lots of interest about the announcement that a Russian cosmonaut will hit a golf shot off of the International Space Station. Here’s a more critical view. Quoting from the article:
But, as experienced golfers will tell you, driving that little white ball with the right force and in the right direction is a lot harder than it seems, even on a terrestrial course.
The task is that much harder in a thick spacesuit, which leaves little room for a decent swing or flexing the joints.
The ball thus could quite easily be mis-hit and travel only a couple of metres, or be hooked or sliced and sent in entirely the wrong direction.
As a result, it could accidentally land in the same orbital plane as the space station. Station and ball would both whizz around the planet on the same track, one after the other.
And what that means is a remote risk of a collision, capable of damaging or even destroying the space station, depending on the angle, velocity and site of impact.
Source: News in Science
Here’s an interesting article on the progress of professional golf in China. I’d assume given the size of the population that sooner rather than later some truly incredible golfers will emerge from the middle kingdom. To quote the article:
Meanwhile, the country has seen the number of golf fans swell from a mere 1,000 a decade ago to more than one million enthusiasts today. A home-grown pro tournament has risen to become the fastest-developing event in Asia.
A group of Chinese caddies were even catapulted to star status, highlighted by the 2003 Open champion Zhang Lianwei and Liang Wenchong who became pro tour competitors and title contenders in world-class events.
Pyatt has witnessed the development of the tournament and also the increasing popularity of sports in China over the past twelve years and now has his eyes set on the coming decade.
“In the next 10 years, we will raise the prize money significantly to make the event one of the world’s major golf events,’ said Pyatt, adding that Volvo has put forward a request to the CGA to extend the sponsorship contract, which ends in 2009, to 2015.
Source: China Daily
A spacewalking Russian cosmonaut plans to hit a golf shot outside the International Space Station this summer as part of a publicity campaign that already has raised safety concerns.
Clad in a cumbersome spacesuit and anchored to a specially designed tee box, Pavel Vinogradov will hit a six-iron drive along side the station’s Russian segment, taking great care not to hook the ball into the outpost.
Nataliya Hearn, president and chief executive officer of Element 21 Golf Co., said Russian Federal Space Agency officials initially were concerned that fragile solar panels jutting from the station’s Russian crew quarters might be struck.
But an extensive Russian test program — one involving veteran cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev — subsequently showed the golf shot in space would be safe, Hearn said.
Source: SPACE.com
This is a totally crazy story. Makes you think social unrest in the UK is rampant. To quote the article:
A HISTORIC golf course has hired private security guards to patrol its greens after coming under siege from young vandals.
Malicious incidents, including one in which a young player’s golf clubs were stolen by youths, have forced club officials to spend £2000 every month on security.
Duddingston Golf Club has also hired a watchman to spend the night at the club after three break-ins in the last six weeks.
General manager John Elvin said: “We now have to pay guarded security around £2000 every month just to protect ourselves from these vandals.
“The flags are stolen from the golf course, the tee markers are destroyed or thrown in the burn, they ride bicycles and motorcycles across the greens and cars have even been left burned out.
Source: Scotsman.com
Discrimination of any kind will only serve to hinder and hurt the potential growth of the game of golf, and it’s related industries. With that in mind it’s great to read an article such as this, which makes the case that golf is indeed becoming far more inclusive than it has been. To quote:
Slowly but inevitably, the barriers of race and gender with which golf has long been associated are coming down.
Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh, the game’s two leading players, are non-white, and their achievements have done much to spread golf to an audience far beyond its traditional image of male, white and middle-class.
Last week’s landmark decision by the male-only Royal and Ancient Golf Club to allow women to enter the 2006 British Open brings the tournament in line with the other three majors, which have no policy barring women.
Source: MSNBC.com
China is a nation that is alive with economic growth as well as the resulting social change. Golf offers an interesting insight into this transformation, and certainly it’s quite neat to see such enthusiasm for the great game. Here’s an article that’s framed around the Johnnie Walker Classic being played in China. To quote:
IMG is close to announcing details of a tournament this November in Shanghai that will be the richest in Asia and will be limited only to tournament winners outside the PGA Tour. The field will include Tiger Woods, who won the Dunlop Phoenix in Japan late last year.
Along with being Woods’ agent, Mark Steinberg is co-president of IMG’s golf division. He has taken several trips to the Far East, and he can’t help but notice a market that is ripe with opportunity.
“I see major, major multinational conglomerates that want to establish a business presence now in hopes of what could happen, especially in anticipation of the Olympics,” Steinberg said Tuesday. “Golf has been a pretty strong ticket so far. It is really booming there. It’s really remarkable.”
Jack Nicklaus has designed 12 golf courses that have opened since 1993 in China, and he has eight more being built. He recalls meeting with a group of businessmen some eight years ago who wanted to put together a professional tour.
Source: MSNBC.com
This is unfortunately not that surprising. While I would be the first to recognize that a lot of work is going into properly educating children about the game of golf, saftey and ettiquete is something that really cannot be neglected. This article depicts a sad trend, that hopefully will be reversed, as people realize how potentially dangerous the situation can be without the proper education and care. To quote:
Children’s increasing interest in golf is resulting in an unfortunate upswing in golf-related head injuries, according to a review of sports injuries treated over six years at an academic medical center in Georgia.
A review of 2,546 patients under age 19 seen by pediatric neurosurgeons at the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta between 1996 and 2002 revealed 64 sports-related injuries, 15 of which were golf-related, says Dr. Scott Y. Rahimi, neurosurgery resident and lead author on the study published in the March issue of Journal of Neurosurgery. Seventeen bicycle-related head injuries during that period barely beat out golf as the major cause of sports-related head injuries in these children.
Seven of the golf injuries were caused by golf cart accidents, seven by golf clubs and one by a golf ball, Dr. Rahimi says. Uncontrollable brain swelling resulted in the death of one child in a golf-cart accident and six of the 15 children needed surgery. Five of the six children who needed surgery did well and the remaining nine had excellent outcomes, he says. The youngest patient with a golf-related head injury was 10 months old.
Source: Medical News Today
This is a rather absurd article. Has to do with the class conflict that exists in the UK. Golf club officials worried about people camping on their course with their caravans. Ever see the movie Snatch? In that movie Brad Pitt lives and belongs to a caravan community. To quote from the article:
Golf club officials have dug a trench to prevent an influx of travellers on to their championship links course.
The measure was taken after scores of travellers set up camp in a council car park next to the practice ground at Conwy Golf Club on the north Wales coast.
The action was similar to that taken in August at Poundbury, the Prince of Wales’s village in Dorset.
Then, contractors employed by the Duchy of Cornwall dug a 400-yard ditch to prevent travellers gaining access to land.
(more…)
As the heat turns up on the race to be the World’s number one ranked golfer, comparisons are being drawn between the guys at the top today, and the three greats of Palmer, Nicklaus, and Player who used to battle head-to-head-to-head a few decades ago.
There’s an interesting article published by Newsday that gets into this comparison and analysis. To quote:
Any given Sunday can turn out like the one four weeks ago, one that was four decades in the making. Tiger Woods beat Phil Mickelson in an eardrum-rattling final pairing at the Ford Championship, with Vijay Singh right behind them, tied for third because of a balky putter. Only a few hours earlier, Ernie Els sank a 23-foot eagle putt on the 18th hole to win a European Tour event in Dubai.
That foreshadowed the Masters and the entire season: This is a big year because of the Big Four.
Woods, Mickelson, Singh and Els — in whatever order they happen to fall on a particular week — are giving golf the old what-for.
Publicly, their attitude is, “Big Four? Big deal.” They say no one should overlook Retief Goosen, an elite (yet bland) player who won the U.S. Open last June at Shinnecock Hills. Or they imply they don’t want anything to do with the whole thing. And aside from the friendship between Els and Singh, they really don’t want anything to do with each other.
Read more on Newsday.com
Here’s a great story about a young woman in Japan who is inspiring others to become interested in the game of golf. To quote from the article:
TOKYO, March 30 (Reuters) - With commentators calling her a new Tiger Woods, teenager Ai Miyazato is starting to have a similar revolutionary effect on golf’s image in Japan.
After turning professional and earning more than a million dollars last year, 19-year-old Miyazato led her teammate Rui Kitada to victory in the inaugural Women’s World Cup of Golf in South Africa in February.
The 154 cm (five foot) golfer from Japan’s southernmost island of Okinawa is not short on talent, but her popularity is not based on the speed of her swing.
Miyazato has succeeded in making golf look like fun again.
“I think the best part of my game is that I am really enjoying my golf,” she told journalists in Tokyo on Wednesday, when asked about her strengths. “That’s very important and I don’t want to forget it.”
Though she finished last year as number two in Japan, the teen sensation already outflanks the much-loved Woods in terms of popularity on her home turf and pulls in higher ratings for her televised games.
Miyazato comes from a golfing family — her two brothers are also golfers — and she pays tribute to her coach father for years of advice on positive thinking as well as to Japan’s number one player, Yuri Fudo, for showing her the value of practice.
Read More: Reuters.co.uk
I caught an announcement about a new golf-centric search engine. It’s rather wordy, almost an overdose of jargon, but the concept is not so bad, and given time could be a really cool resource. Mind you, I’m not sure I believe what they generalize about search engines. Personally I still find google does the job when I need to find something. Anyhow, to quote from the press release:
EDMONDS, Wash., March 29 /PRNewswire/ — Cybergolf, the golf industry leader in online marketing tools, has launched Cybergolf Search (http://www.cybergolfsearch.com). This new search engine has been designed and developed to fill the missing need for relevant web search results for the golf industry and consumer.
Cybergolf Search is built using Vertical Search Technology (VST), developed by Cybergolf. VST enables refined searching coupled with embedded e-commerce tools. The creation of Cybergolf Search was prompted by golf courses’ growing frustration of not being found in mainstream search engines and golfers inability to quickly find relevant results such as golf courses.
The challenge with mainstream search engines is the broad application of search criteria. An example of this is when searching for “Seattle golf courses,” a mainstream search engine comes up with over 400,000 results. The first page includes an assortment of news stories, real estate brokers, and third-party tee-time sites but lacks the information requested - not one official website for a Seattle-area golf course appears.
For more info: CybergolfSearch.com: Golf Search Engine
Ubisoft, one of the world’s largest videogame publishers, has signed an exclusive license with Vijay Singh to produce a video golf game titled after him.
Vijay Singh, Fiji-born of Indian descent and considered one of the most consistent and focused golfers on the tour, will now lend his name to one of the titles inspired by his powerful and aggressive style, the company said.
True to the significance of his first name (”Vijay” means “victory” in Hindi), the title published by Ubisoft will enable players to truly compete and challenge themselves the way Singh has done, the company said.
Source: HindustanTimes.com
quoting from an article vis ScoreGolf by Rick Young:
Five months after his passing Moe Norman’s life story is being reissued with three new chapters chronicling the Canadian Hall of Famer’s final nine years.
The Feeling of Greatness: The Moe Norman Story by Tim O’Connor documents the bittersweet life of Norman, one of golf’s most engaging and often misunderstood characters, from his working class roots in Kitchener, Ont., to his recognition as one of golf’s greatest ball-strikers.
“We have re-issued The Feeling of Greatness to celebrate a Canadian legend and to bring his fans and interested readers up to date on his last nine years, during which the golf world came to recognize his genius as one of the greatest ball-strikers in the history of the game,” said Gail Robbins, president of Eyelevel Products Inc.
More information and ordering details can be obtained from Eyelevel Products at 800-387-7638.
Always happy to read more news about Arnold Palmer returning to the Weston Golf and Country Club, to commemorate his win at the 1955 Canadian Open, which was his first professional victory.
Today the Globe ran an article confirming that Palmer will be playing in the Return of the King pro-am to be held at Weston in September. To quote the article:
“Palmer, whose charisma helped take the PGA Tour into the sporting big leagues, will play on Sept. 12 in a pro-am dubbed the Return of the King along with Canada’s first member of the World Golf Hall of Fame, Marlene Stewart Streit.
Then the next two days, the Kings & Queens Senior Amateur Championship will be held at the Weston. The new event on the golf calendar is being inaugurated by the Greater Toronto Area Golf Association to benefit the Hospital for Sick Children as well as junior golf and underprivileged kids.”
For more info, keep an eye on the Weston GCC Website.
“Paul Slater established a new world record for the longest drive with an effort of 720 yards down the runway at London City Airport. The 34-year-old defied torrential rain and strong winds at the event, hosted by the London Golf Show. He beat a recent 696-yard drive from Australian tour pro Stuart Appleby. “I knew it was right as soon as I hit it,” Slater said. “You know when you’ve hit a good shot, you get the surge going right up through your body.” Slater revealed that the club he used had a remarkable 2½ degree loft and 50″ shaft, far different from the conventional professional tour drivers of 10-12 degrees.”
— BBC Sports
SI.com - Golf - Golf Truth & Rumors: Feb. 17, 2005