Blog Babble: Sometimes You Just Need A Weekend Off

Unless you fall in to the category of independently wealthy or you live alone, every so often, you need to take a break from the game and head out for a weekend with the family. If you haven’t experienced “golf overload” yet, it’s a rather special feeling of spending entirely too much time looking at, talking about and trying to play golf. When your social media feeds have more photos of courses than your kids (or things you are doing with your kids) then you are probably due for a weekend away with them – even if you are independently wealthy. That doesn’t mean you can’t make that stay-cation into a golf excursion as well, but make sure you take some time to get away from the game every once in a while, even if it’s just a weekend.

Being a player in the Pacific Northwest, we get a forced vacation from the game a few times a year, usually in the winter and spring, but even our fall season can get a bit wet during October and November. Our season actually sets up quite nicely here in Washington, as we normally have good enough conditions to play all year around, but not conditions that would make you want to go out and play all year around. January is usually cold and clear, as is February. March rains a bit more and April is a bit nicer. May is usually wet and in June the courses really start to become playable. July and August are usually the best months to play here, then September and October usually round out the season before the colder weather of November and December roll around. If it’s a dry winter though, you may have a few frost delays with your round, but our lack of lowland snow usually keeps courses playable. This is why it’s so easy to take a weekend away here, but it may not prove so easily where you are.

Even so, taking that weekend off will do a number of things for your game, most of them positive. First off, most athletes are used to the old, “When I miss a shot, I want the ball back as quick as I can get it to make the next one.” With basketball, that’s great, but with golf, sometimes you need a bit of a break to reset mentally and get your head game back together. When you have that bad round, you start to get so many different thoughts racing through your head that you forget your basics and start tinkering with things that don’t need to be tinkered with. After a month of tinkering, your game is in worse shape than ever. Instead of just taking a weekend away to relax and unwind, you end up trashing your next 10 rounds by overthinking things. Mental note: take time off…

Overthinking your round, or even the shot you have in front of you can be deadly to your game. If you just relax and trust your swing it will usually be there. That includes after a week away from the game to take the family to some crazy place they’ve always wanted to go. The bottom line is a weekend away won’t harm your game, in fact, it may help it immensely. Sometimes the one thing you need to get out of a swing or scoring funk is to just step away for a few minutes before you step back in and try to fix something. Most of the time, it’s our brains getting in the way. We tend to get caught up in thinking about what we should be doing, instead of just doing it.

Stroke Saver: Improve Your Game With The PGA YouTube Channel

Golf lessons used to be expensive. If you needed a pro to fix you up, it meant a trip to the local driving range where a golf professional would take a look at your swing for 15 minutes, tell you that your swing plane was messed up, that your path was moving from outside to inside and that your aim was off. They would toss a broom handle or shaft down by your toes and point it at a target. They’d then use a few tees to make sure your path stayed straight and you would leave that $50-100 lesson feeling better about your game. Come Saturday morning though, your slice was back and you were hacking your way to a 97 from the trees. You’d then go back to your pro the next week saying that you felt how good your swing was last week and that your round went pretty well.
Well, that was yester-year. Today, there’s no expensive trips to the range or hundreds of dollars of gear to purchase to get your swing in shape. Thanks to the PGA Digital Golf Academy, you can cover anything from putting tips to playing that draw right from the palm of your hand. Heck, there’s even videos on rulings and situations on the course that you may never encounter. After donating the time of a few morning workouts to the channel, I believe that the selection of honest PGA Professionals that are giving advice on this channel are spot on.

The topics cover everything from putting techniques to understanding how bounce works on a wedge, there’s a video for almost every topic on the planet and more are being added all the time. Even better, many of the videos or segments are around 5-10 minutes, which doesn’t mean you stand around for an hour getting a theory explained to you. If you’re struggling with something, simply open the channel, search the videos and find what you need.
Now this isn’t supposed to replace your swing doctor for major issues, but when you have a glitch in your swing, it’s a great place to start. The PGA Digital Golf Academy does carry a $4.99 a month subscription rate to access their entire library, but for all the content that is available for free (you can tell by looking for a $ symbol on the video listing) it’s easy to find the help you’ll need to fix that part of your game that needs some attention.

Equipment Deals: Balls, Blips And Berthas

If you are in the mood to try a new ball or are already in love the Srixon Q Star, there is a deal to be had at $19.99 a dozen on these bad boys right now. The Q Star features a proprietary surface coating that encourages more spin and greater control, but handles the worst punishment that your swing can dole out. The E.G.G. core enhances feel and control while stabilizing ball speeds. The Q Star s available for $!9.99 a dozen right now. That’s a 20% savings over regular pricing.

Training aids are always a gamble in my book, but if you really need that feedback on your swing, there’s no need to spend $100 a pop on a swing analysis. You can simply put the Zepp 3D Swing Analyzer on your glove and download the App for your phone and swing away. The 3-D tracking module allows you to compare your swing to tour pros, your friends and even yourself. The Zepp Sensor works with Android and iOS devices and is on sale for 33% off it’s regular price. The $99.99 price tag is about what you will spend for once good session on a swing machine, so give it a chance if you are a numbers freak. At least you can play games with it as well.

I’m not sure how killer this deal is since I am not a fairway wood fan, but Dick’s still has these listed at almost $250 a piece. Depending on the loft and if you play righty or lefty, there are some great sub $100 prices on the Callaway Big Bertha Fairway Woods. Visit the link in the sentence before this one to see if the style you want is there and if the price is good enough for you to jump on. For example, currently the stiff shaft, 15 degree 3 wood is only $98.58. The $150 you save could make this club a must have for your bag.

Remember, these deals are subject to change at any time and are while supplies last!

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Equipment Deals: Save On Select Callaway Golf Products

Amazon has quite a special going on Callaway golf products today. From the Big Bertha Alpha 815 driver for $149,99 to the 300 series rangefinder for 32% off the original price. There are also a number of great apparel specials and some great practice equipment deals as well. With prices like these from Amazon, you owe it to yourself to swing by online and check out the specials before they are gone.

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Budget Beater: Save On Low Compression Balls That Really Perform

In my golfing comeback, the one area that I haven’t tinkered with up until now was the ball that I have been playing. I took a stab at one hole with a Titleist Pro V1x, but it wasn’t the feel that I was looking for. My trusty Nike One Gold (2005) were still finding a home in my bag and will probably stay there until I run out of them. Of course, now that I am down to a dozen or so, that won’t take too long since the covers don’t seem to last quite as long as they should when you spin them off a bladed iron like I do. So, that left me starting the process of looking for a replacement to them in my last round. I managed to pick up a few of the low compression offerings from Wilson golf and take them for a spin on my last round.
I started off the front nine with the Wilson Zip, which carries a sub $20 price tag for 24 balls. The “zero” compression core and 302 dimple pattern created a very nice ball flight, even in the breezy conditions that I faced on Sunday. What struck me on my first 3 iron from the tee is how soft the ball felt off the club head. For a feel player, sometimes soft is bad, but these had a feel reminiscent of the old balata balls that I played back in the early 90’s. The only way I can describe it is that they have a click on contact, followed by a soft, squish feel to them. After an opening par, I was feeling that the Zip was a ball to be reckoned with.
The back nine I switched things up to the Wilson Duo, and it’s larger 29 compression core. This two piece ball also had an amazing flight, though it felt like it went higher on my 7-PW than my older balls. I lost a few shots to the wind with the Duo, but it still performed very well for me. The $19.99 a dozen price tag puts them at twice the cost of the Zip, but the higher trajectory may be more beneficial for calm days on the course. I was able to spin the regular version of the Duo extremely well, in fact, so well that I doubt I would try upgrading to the Duo Spin model. The slightly higher cost Duo Spin offers a higher spin rate due to a three piece construction and it’s ionomer outer cover. Still, at $26.99 a dozen, the Duo Spin is about half the price of other premium balls on the market.
Overall, I have to give the nod to the Wilson Duo and the Wilson Zip, but for different reasons. The Wilson Zip gets my vote for performance vs. cost. At $.83 a ball, the Zip is a steal in modern day deals. The lower ball flight and soft click feel was a pleasure to chase around the front side of the course. The Wilson Duo is for the more competitive player that wants that extra bit of stick on the green. At $1.66 a ball, they are about 58% less than a Titleist Pro V1x, yet they played about the same distance and had similar spin characteristics heading into the green. I did see more height from the Wilson Duo, which in windy conditions could create some havoc, but for days like that, I would recommend keeping a sleeve of Zips in the bag. Both of these value balls play more similar to a high end ball than the value balls that I have played in the past. Either way, the Wilson Duo or the Wilson Zip will provide you with a great ball striking experience for very little out of pocket.

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Blog Babble: Why I Hate NBC And The Golf Channel

I don’t normally like to vent on stupid things that I find online, but this is one of those things that continues to frustrate me to no end. There I am clicking through my social media feeds and I run across an ad for the LPGA Volvik Championship streaming online coverage. I’m thinking that it would be a great way to spend the afternoon and click the supplied link, only to find this above screen shot on the landing page. Yes, the Tweet says click here to watch our live coverage that begins now, but doesn’t make any reference to needing a subscription from your cable company to watch.

So, annoying as this is, it’s even worse to think that it is something that they couldn’t support with advertising. How many more viewers would they get to watching those Titleist ads, or Ping popups or even those FootJoy footer. I remember a time before the multi-billion dollar TV deals existed and you could watch a few hours of golf on a Thursday afternoon without having to spend $100 a month on a special channel.

Maybe that’s just the whiner in me coming out, but seriously, this game is expensive enough to play all by itself. Can’t you good folks at the TV networks just show a darn feed on the internet that is loaded with ads for all the stuff we want to put in our bag for free? Now, I’m going to go search out a free stream of the feed online or watch an older tournament on YouTube to get my fix for the day.

Stroke Saver: Putt To The Cup On Long Putts

Too often I see players that can hit their tee shots dead perfect every time to the center of the fairway. They play target golf to the green, usually hitting that high fade that just snuggles into the green when it hits the putting surface. Then they get up and 3 putt for a bogey and move along. Even after they work so hard on their game, they score no better than the guy that rifles his drive into the trees, punches out, blades a 7 iron right of the green, dribbles his chip to the edge of the green and makes a brilliant put to save bogey. It makes me sad for them, and for me when it happens. It doesn’t have to be this way.

Mastering the mid-to-long range putt isn’t a difficult task, in fact, it can be pretty easy if you know what your goal is. The first issue is most people look at long puts as a “lag putt” or a putt to just “get it close” so they don’t three put the green. Unfortunately, this usually doesn’t work out so well for them and they end up three putting the green anyways. It seems to me that the people that have the best luck with those 40 foot putts are the ones that are trying to make them, not get them close. Think of it as a drive or a fairway approach. If you have a spot in the fairway without trouble, you get aggressive and go for the shot. On a green that has nothing to challenge your approach, you shoot at the stick. On a putt with nothing between you and the hole, you need to go for the hole.

Going after a 30 or 40 foot put does not mean you have to be aggressive. A slower paced, methodical stroke is often the best way to putt a ball, period. Whether you are standing over a 2 footer or a 20 footer. the center of the cup needs to be your target. Stop putting yourself in the mental trap of “getting it close” or just get it inside 3 feet on those longer putts. If you try to make everything, you may end up with a three putt here or there, but you’ll probably find your putting numbers improve quickly and you have far fewer three puts from longer distances.