I’m really looking forward to the second Major of the year but I’m not looking forward to hearing the inane shouts of “Geddin Da Hole” or “You Da Man” when one of the players actually avoids having a fresh air on the tee.
I just cannot understand why the marshalls put up with it or the rest of the gallery tolerate these idiots.
So, I’m proposing a zero tolerance policy of ejecting the clowns from the Championship as soon as these utterances spout forth.
To be named “Hoik the Oik” let’s hope the policy can be extended to all golf tournaments and the real golf fans can enjoy the action in peace.
If you are on twitter please “Tweet This” and RT Hoik the Oik
Have you seen our Free customisable (is that a word? guide to all the Major winners and golf courses that have held Majors? Further details here!
In true golfer style we even got a claim for The Players Championship to be counted as the fifth Major! Nice one Sergio I mean @mchamberlin
http://twitter.com/mchamberlin - “Does TPC at Sawgrass count? They sometimes call it the fifth major, right?”
and I wonder if @davechen has qualified for the US Open this year?
http://twitter.com/davechen - “haven’t played any major course yet, but I should be playing Congressional some time soon.”
My twitter profile is http://twitter.com/greenfee look me up and twit some golf with me, if you haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about this link should help you out.
* I don’t think these courses have held a Major but they may go under a different name. Did you know that 114 different golf courses have held “Majors” for the full list on the free download go here.
It would be great to hear comments, courses played and twitter username below and I’ll be happy to include them.
Undertaking some research I was doing into golf courses that have held golf’s Major championships I was amazed at the number and variety of different courses that have held The United States Open Championship, The Open Championship and the PGA Championship, though, obviously The Masters has only ever been held at Augusta National GC.
As I got more into the research I decided to put together a document with links to all the websites of the different golf courses and links to the players that won there. It is fully searchable by year, winner, course and championship and I’ve had great fun playing around and learning more about the history of our game and the golfers who have a “Major” to their name, many of whom I was unfamiliar with.
The document is available free for you to download just click here or on the cover of the book. I hope you find the data as fascinating as I have.
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* Updated to include Angel Cabrera’s 2009 Masters win.
I was recently alerted to a concept that I haven’t come across before Free Birthday Golf, courses offering you a free round of golf on your birthday!
Researching this further I found over 40 clubs offering Free Birthday Golf
(all in the US & Canada I’m afraid, UK wake up!!) and I’ve put them together in a report.
Check it out and claim your free rounds. Click here or on the book cover.
The idea requires you to register with the course online and you get a day pass or voucher to be used on or around your birthday or in the case of winter birthdays a more suitable time when the weather is improved.
Now, I appreciate that club will send you follow up emails etc but lets face it we get so much spam and rubbish anyway we might as well get some information about something we are actually interested in for once!
A criticism I have of golf clubs, particularly in the UK, is that in general they are pretty poor and unimaginative in their marketing but this innovative approach creates a win win situation for all concerned. The club gets to showcase it’s course, clubhouse, facilities and atmosphere and the golfer gets to enjoy a memorable free day out and may well come back again in the future. Loss leaders have been used successfully by business for many years to tempt customers into trying their products for many years and I’m sure golf clubs would make up any reduction in revenue very quickly as word got round.
As all golf clubs are facing a very difficult and uncertain financial future it’s great to see something different being tried.
I’m afraid This post has been coming for some time but when the article “As PGA season opens, Tiger is the elephant in room” appeared in my Google Reader it was The Straw That Broke The Camel’s Back to continue the animal theme.
I thought that phrase meant that everyone in the room knew that the elephant was there but avoided talking about it but in Tiger’s case no-one bloody shuts up talking, writing or broadcasting about him even when he’s not around, with endless articles speculating about what he would or wouldn’t have done last season and what he’ll do this season when he comes back etc etc ad nauseum.
Don’t get me wrong I love watching Tiger Woods play golf but heretical as this may seem only when he’s in contention and when he’s actually playing. Unbelievably during the weather interrupted 2008 PGA Championship SKY TV in the UK showed a re-run of Tiger and Rocco Mediate in the US Open. Even when Tiger isn’t in the tournament the media find a way of squeezing him in somewhere!
Similarly, we had endless speculation as to whether the US Ryder Cup team would miss him. When the team played magnificently and won the cup we even had analysis into whether Tiger would have enhanced the victory.
I accept Tiger Woods is a magnificent golfer and if he ever wins 19 majors I’ll concede he’s the best ever but in the meantime I wish the media would give a more balanced coverage to the game and remember golf has been played for centuries and will continue to be played long after the Tiger Woods era.
Have You Claimed Your Free Birthday Golf Yet? - subscribe here.
I’ve mentioned Seaton Carew GC before in a blog post but it wasn’t until recently that I’d actually played the course and I’ve got to say
WHAT A MAGNIFICENT GOLF COURSE!!!
At that time I referred to it in a context of urban golf due to the industrial skyline but I can honestly say that doesn’t detract from the golfing experience one bit.
So let me explain the deal and then I’ll wax lyrical about the course:
Monday – Friday October 27th – March 27th between 09:30 and 10:30. £20.00 for coffee and bacon butties and 18 holes on the 10th oldest golf course in England, a genuine championship links that will test your golf, stamina and character.
The course itself has 22 holes that are configured into the “Old Course” 1-18 holes and then a possible 4 other layouts. As you would imagine of a traditional links the wind is a massive factor out on the links and as the Old Course is a straight out and back layout you are fighting the wind for at least half of your round. It is true to say that you never quite get back any luck playing with the wind that you lost playing into!
Add into the mix sand dunes, heavy rough, gorse, slick undulating greens and deep links bunkers and you get a stern examination of your game.
Here is an extract from the club’s website to give you a flavour of what to expect:
Don’t be put off by the industrial surroundings of chimneys and chemical works; this excellent golf course is one of the best in the East of England, a real MacKenzie treat. There are a few ridges of sand dunes and the fairways undulate gently, but otherwise this is a relatively flat links course, always at the mercy of the wind.
The 17th hole, called “Snag”, is one of the Club’s many great holes. The late Derek Hornby, a historian and author of the History of Seaton Carew, poetically described the 17th. “The seventeenth’s dangers are countless, beginning with whin, gorse and dune, the rough and gathering bunkers, and the green’s undulating tune. To veer even slightly is fatal, the cost distressingly high, many the cards that’s been torn up, just here with home, oh so nigh”.
So that’s the course but a mention ought to go to the welcome you will get at Seaton Carew. This is a most friendly golf club with members always willing to have a drink and chat. Whilst I was there last a gentleman told me a fascinating story of how the club had relaid the seventeenth green because generations of golfers playing out of the greenside bunker had gradually built up a ridge on the green with countless layers of sand. Obviously, that wasn’t in the original design and careful renovation using traditional methods was needed to restore the green to it’s original state.
I do urge you to look up Seaton Carew it’s a memorable experience.
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As you know I have written a number of posts related to different aspects of the mental game of golf. This is an area of golf that is of particular interest to me so I have started a new blog dedicated to mental golf.
Imaginatively entitled the Mental Golf Blog it gives news, views and reviews of this growing aspect of golf.
Recently a couple of things happened to that really encapsulates to me the game of golf.
I played in an unofficial competition organised by a group of golfers from an online forum at which guys had travelled up to 300 miles to play golf with complete strangers. What other sport or game can you think of in which that would happen?
But that’s golf isn’t it? A game in which people from all walks of life can meet up and enjoy their pursuit, I didn’t ask what these guys did for a living, their politics etc and they didn’t ask mine it just wasn’t relevant. All that mattered was that we played fairly to the rules of golf and enjoyed our game and company together.
During the round we had a that’s golf moment on the Nearest the Pin hole. One of our group duffed his tee shot into a water hazard and elected to play 3 from the tee. Inevitably, this time he hit a great shot six feet from the hole. “That’s Golf” we agreed it’s a universal law, all golfers know that a provisional ball always, always goes on the green or straight down the fairway.
Sir Winston Churchill had this to say about our game, “Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into a even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose.” Yup! That’s golf.
I’m undertaking an experiment to try to boost the readers to this blog. Chuck Westbrook a respected and well read blogger came up with an idea to increase traffic to “under appreciated” blogs by gathering together a group of people to help each other out. A “Self Help Group” for bloggers if you wish. Not that I’m feeling particularly under appreciated by my regular visitors ‘d just like more of you You can read more here.
A few weeks ago I was alerted to an incredible new innovation in golf practice from Jay Flemma’s blog A Walk In The Park in which he describes Tempo in Motion (T.i.M).
From the T.i.M press release: “Tempo in Motion (T.i.M.) enables golfers to refine their swing tempo using rock/pop music tracks containing rhythmic patterns attuned to their proper tempo. The tracks can be loaded onto an MP3 player and used on the driving range to help find, maintain and ingrain proper swing tempo in muscle memory.
“A consistent and smooth tempo is the foundation of every great golf swing,” said T.i.M. founder and president Mike Boyko, a former professional rock drummer, who also sports a 2-handicap on the golf course. “With Tempo in Motion, swinging at the right tempo will become second nature. Not only will it make you a better golfer, but it will make practice fun and add some energy to your game.”
Each T.i.M. track has a series of beats called click patterns, which serve as cues for when users should start the backswing, start their downswing and contact the ball. The click patterns are paired with original, high-energy music to help users stay in rhythm.”
I had to have a bash at this and headed off to the website www.tempoinmotion.com. I’ve got to say this is where I got a little confused. The instructions are to follow a graphic of a little golfer swinging. This can be speeded up or down and the idea is to match your swing with the rhythm of the graphic. The problem I had was that the graphic looks like a hacker swing and to me just wasn’t a smooth swing I wanted to emulate.
However I persisted, found my tempo, headed off to the download page, chose my music, paid my $4.99 and downloaded the track.
The music was something of an eyeopener too and whilst the press release alludes to “high-energy musc” I wasn’t prepared for how upbeat it actually was. I often play classical music in my car heading for the course trying to get in a relaxed mood and this seemed so contradictory to that idea
Still, the proof of the pudding is in the eating as they say and I headed off to the range with iPod in hand.
Again I was a little confused. I didn’t understand whether I was supposed to start my swing in tune with the “click pattern” and to try to synchronise my downswing with it. As I warmed up I played the 2 minute track over and over attempting without success to fit in with the clicks so in the end I just decided to stop trying too hard and simply hit golf balls.
The results were fantastic, I hit the ball great, flushing ball after ball! and only missing one shot which was a 3 iron from a v.dry bare lie ( I was getting cocky by this time!), the rest I was very happy with. Presumably, the body “tunes” into the tempo and synchronises subconciously but it doesn’t really matter to me how it works just that it does and I’ll definitely be continuing with it.
Another added bonus to using T.i.M was that it drowned out the mad-axeman hacker in the next bay giving his mate a “lesson”.
guide to all the Major winners and golf courses that have held Majors? Further details here! 
