The Clicgear Push Cart

What’s unique about the Clicgear Cart is, in fact, how easily it can be folded up into a small, portable, and storable unit.  On Saturday, I saw ample testimony to Clicgear’s popularity when I was hanging out at Pumpkin Ridge’s Ghost Creek course in the wake of a long frost delay.   There were more than a dozen Clicgear Carts arrayed in front of the clubhouse and around the putting green.

A couple of dozen accessories are available for the cart, too, so every owner can customize his unit.  You can add a shoe brush (very useful in the Northwest), an adjustable umbrella stand, a cup holder and even a seat.  A couple of GPS holders are available, and one of them can be adapted for an IPhone, which makes it the perfect complement to Grow the Game Golf’s  scoring app.  Followers of the Golf Road Warriors’ Palm Springs and Reynolds Plantation trips are familiar with Grow the Game Golf—“GTGG”.   The GTGG app is especially suited to corporate outings and events.   With it, multiple foursomes can not only keep track of their own scores but see how all the other groups are doing in real time.   The Clicgear “View™ 3.0 Push Cart GPS Holder™” makes the GTGG app even easier to use by mounting the smart phone right onto the cart handle.

iPhone holder for Clicgear Cart. Great for GTGG App

Clicgear is manufactured and distributed by the ProActive Sports Group, a golf products company based in Canby, Oregon, a small town near Portland.   Clicgear is the company’s best-known product, but it also makes and sells hundreds of other items, many of which are created in Canby.   A new ProActive product about to hit the market is a towel called The Looper, which I happened to notice at this year’s PGA Merchandise Show when I walked by ProActive’s stand.   It caught my attention because I have a friend whose nickname is “Looper,” and I wanted to get one for him.  Greg Freuler, Proactive’s Director of Product Development, told me In Orlando that the towel wasn’t in stores yet, but should be by spring.   We made arrangements to meet in Canby so I could tour ProActive’s facilities.

I finally managed to get to Canby last week, where Greg introduced me to company President Steve Skinner.  In a small conference room, Greg had set out samples of some of the prototypes they’d worked on  for new products, including the Looper.  Getting the hole that fits over the club just right was part of the challenge.  Same thing with the mittens that attach to the handle of the Clicgear in inclement weather.  Several generations of proto-mittens chronicled the process of invention.   The mittens needed thumbs, it turned out—the first versions were more like fat socks, while the final product not only lets your hands slip in easily, it has a pouch for a hand-warmer.

Steve and Greg told me the Looper, which like most golf gear is made in China, was just arriving via cargo container in Los Angeles, and would be in stores soon.  I talked them into giving me a prototype for my friend, Larry Colton, whose kit needs an upgrade to offset the decay in his swing.

ProActive also has a product line called Origins of Golf™, which offers a variety of trophies and commemorative gifts.  There’s a shop above the administrative offices where the bespoke products are customized for member-guests and club championships and even professional events.  A laser machine can create a three-dimensional image on a crystal trophy using digital instructions—almost as simple as using a printer.I discovered that ProActive also carries a couple of other of my favorite gadgets.   4YardsMore is my favorite tee.  Lasts forever, always set the ball at the perfect height, and seems to produce on its promise.  (Although my Callaway RAZR Fit driver has added so many yards to my tee ball that I can’t distinguish the tee’s effect so readily anymore.)

And then there’s Ka-Ching!™, a set of coins that add to the pleasure of any competitive match.   Last year at Chambers Bay, a caddy gave us a Ka-Ching!™ Birdie coin, which is a “+2,” telling us that whoever made the last birdie of a round would collect $2 from everyone else.  We’ve been playing that game now for almost a year, not realizing that the Birdie coin was an orphan from a ten coin set.  And there are good coins and bad coins—three pars in a row, for example, earns three points, while a triple bogey costs three points.   The beauty of the game is that coins can and do change hands, right up until the last green.  The coins also double as ball-markers.  I recommend Ka-Ching!™ to any regular foursome.

Ka Ching Coins

Classic Club

Indian Wells.

Indian Wells Golf Resort

Anthony Holder is the Head Golf Professional at the Indian Wells Golf Resort, where the Golf Road Warriors played on Saturday, February 25, the penultimate day of the Warriors’ 2012 Palm Springs swing.  Anthony joined the Warriors for our round at Indian Wells’ Players Course, and it was my good fortune to share a cart with him.   Not only did I get to witness some exceptionally fine golf, with booming tee shots and tap-in birdies, I also got a tip on putting after I missed a four foot birdie putt with a flinched, shoulders-flailing, head-waving bunt of a failed stroke that was so unnerving to Anthony’s sense of professional pride that he could not have in good conscience declined to give me some help.  It would have been like a physician refusing to perform the Heimlich on a choking diner in a restaurant. 

Facing me on the green, Anthony told me to set up as if to putt, then reached out with both hands to hold my head still.   As I initiated the stroke, I could feel my head pushing against his right hand like a frisky puppy on a short leash.  “Keep your head still,” he said, kindly.  “Just pick out a dimple on the ball and keep all your attention there while the putter head strokes the ball.” 

It worked, of course.   Every putting tip works the first time you try it, just like a new putter, but this was an order of magnitude level of improvement over my previous “technique.”  Deep down I think I knew that if you swayed and jabbed at the ball with the blade open while looking at the tree tops you were probably not going to make a lot of putts, but Anthony’s tip confirmed that there was in fact an alternative approach.   Feeling confident on the greens provided a perfect complement to what turned out to be another ideal day for golf in the Coachella Valley.    

We checked out of the Hyatt Grand Champions at Indian Wells around 8:00, and then managed to make the thirty second drive to the IW Club in our rental van without incident or recourse to the GPS.    

The IW Club is the same impressive facility where I was filmed getting fitted for Callaway clubs earlier in the week, but this morning was all about actually playing golf on what the resort’s website describes as “the only facility in California with two courses ranked in the Top 20 ‘Best Courses You Can Play’ in California by Golfweek Magazine.”    The Players Course is a re-design by John Fought that opened in 2007.

Joe Williams, Indian Wells’ Director of Golf, greeted us when we arrived, and made sure all eight players in our group—the four Warriors, three staff members from the organizers of our Palm Springs escapades, the Palm Springs Convention and Visitors Authority, and Holder—had everything we needed to enjoy a round of golf.  Joe set the tone that would prevail throughout the day.   Every employee we met—the starters, the rangers, the beverage folks, the cart staff—was friendly, eager to assist and expressed the hope that we were having a good time.  We were.

Anthony and I had time between shots to discuss the state of the golf industry, which he, as a 29 year old professional, sees from a vantage point quite unlike my own.   Throughout most of my career in golf, the game was growing, but for nearly half of Anthony’s career, dating from the late fall of 2007, the industry has been contracting.    Indian Wells does very well—82,000 rounds per year on 36 holes—but it has consistently invested in its facilities and thought long and hard about how to provide its customers with an experience that will make them want to come back for more.

The course itself was terrific, and had at times almost a Northwest feel, which should not come as a surprise given that course architect John Fought grew up in Portland and cut his designer’s teeth on two clubs, Pumpkin Ridge and The Reserve, which emphasize a strategic approach.  There are optional ways to play most holes at the Players, and great variety in the length and difficulty overall.  Of the Resort’s two courses, the Players is considered a bit more challenging that the Celebrity.

Anthony and I agreed that golf is expensive and time-consuming, which inhibits the growth of the game.   Indian Wells has come up with a splendid program to address these challenges, which I hope the industry will adopt, called “Walk the Wells.”   After 3:30 every day, Anthony told me, the course is open to anyone who wants to walk and play as many holes as he or she can get in before dark for $25.00.   It’s especially attractive to kids and to older golfers, who can get in a bit of exercise, too, as they work on their games.  There’s a smart phone pedometer app as well.  This is also a great program for working people, who can get in at least some holes after clocking out from the shop or office.   Finding a way to keep the courses full later in the day takes real imagination.

We also discussed my pet peeve, slow play.   How can we find ways to incentivize players to keep up the pace of play?   Again, Anthony had a great idea: for every minute players finish faster than the course’s stated ideal time, they can get a 1% discount off of their next green fee, or on merchandise in the pro shop.  The real problem with any golf incentive system, of course, is that you can only control your own pace of play, and not that of those slow knuckleheads in front of you.   But if we build strong enough incentives into the system, the other members of the foursome should be able to persuade their tardy members to pick it up.   If you’re going to keep me from getting my 20% discount, I am going to say something.

The golf industry is lucky to have people such as Anthony Holder ready to take leadership roles in creating the golf experience for the 21^st century.   Golf is a delightful game, with intrinsic rewards: friendship, exercise, the pleasure of accomplishing something difficult, like sinking an eight foot putt to win your match.   Anthony seems to have some good luck riding with him, too.   Last April, playing in a fund-raiser for Cal State San Bernardino at Tom Doak’s Stone Eagle Golf Club in Palm Desert, Anthony made a hole-in-one on the 7^th hole, a 218 yard downhill par three—and won a Mercedes-Benz C300.    

If we’re going to keep golf relevant in the recreational lives of future generations, we’re going to need the creative thinking of people such as Anthony Holder and Joe Williams at Indian Wells, of Brady Wilson at the Classic Club, and of Brett Meabon and Colin Gooch at Marriott’s Shadow Ridge.  The talented array of golf professionals leading the industry in the Coachella Valley, one of the most influential and important golf destinations in the world, instinctively understand that the game will not survive and grow on its own.   Ideas incubated in the heat of the desert may show the way forward to an industry that is struggling to find its future.

A twenty-five inch Travelpro MaxLite 2 Expandable Spinner

Willie Nelson’s anthem keeps cycling through my brain as I wrap up my preparations for the Golf Road Warriors’ trip to Palm Springs next week, February 21-27.  “I just can’t wait to get on the road again!”  

I’m not unaccustomed to traveling, but most of my journeys over the last twenty years have been strictly for business.  I’ve flown a couple of million miles, but  I haven’t felt so excited and eager about anything since I was getting ready to play in my first youth league basketball game when I was ten.   I wore my uniform to bed for a week, and dreamed of how high I would jump in my new Converse Chuck Taylor All Star kicks.  

I haven’t actually slept in my AUR shirts, fashioned from EcoSmart fabrics made from recycled plastic bottles, but I thought about it.  I did show the shirts to my next door neighbor, the Happiest Man on Earth, who is a nationally recognized expert in recycling, and he fondled the fabric a bit and pronounced it good.  The shirts are incredibly light, which should allow the old muscles to swing with that graceful tempo that characterizes all–most, some, a few, both–of my best shots.

The golf bag Callaway sent has been loaded with my RAZR irons and hybrids, which I got last summer in Portland after a fitting session with my friend and teacher, Don Otto, and they’re joined now by my new RAZR Fit driver, which Callaway also kindly provided, and which I discovered in two practice outings that I hit almost as well as Phil Mickelson hits his.  The driver looms over the rest of my clubs, which is only fair as it covers the most ground on almost every hole.   It’s the big dog in my bag, and I expect it to do some serious hunting next week.

I'm Packing....

Since I will be checking my own clubs on the flight down, so I will be able to play at my splendid best in Palm Springs, I am also going to be traveling with the wonderful new Travelpro suitcase that is the official luggage of the Golf Road Warriors.   (Most of the rounds I have played on the road over the last couple of decades I’ve used rental clubs, since I never check bags on business trips.   If you’re flying almost every day and the bag gets lost on the first leg, it never catches up.  I once had a bag follow me from Spain to Norway to Ireland and then finally to San Francisco, and I wish I had given it a dairy so it could have told me whether or not it had a good trip.)

The Travelpro bag is a deep, almost iridescent blue, a really classy color that will stand out amidst all the tedious generic black bags coursing around the luggage kiosk.   I am going to be on the road for almost another full week after the Road Warriors wrap up their Palm Springs trip, so I will need to pack for six full days of golf plus another six days of a conference and meetings, which means I have to pack business attire as well as the golf duds.   There’s plenty of room in that A twenty-five inch Travelpro MaxLite 2 Expandable Spinner.

The world’s leading authority on getting ready for a golf road trip is, of course, my colleague, Jeff Wallach, so I have been studying his compendium of golf travel packing tips to make sure I have everything I need.  (Or, alternatively, knowing that Jeff has all the necessary first aid gear and legal drugs for aches and pains, I can plan on mooching off Jeff.)   Jeff has also been getting in my pocket over the last couple of years, somehow breaking 80 with that lunging slap shot he’s perfected while my smooth-as-silk swings are for some mysterious reason sending balls into oblivion.   This is the mystery I expect to solve in Palm Springs.

I have proof the new technology works.    I started using a Callaway RAZR Fit driver the week after the PGA Show.   “The OptiFit Hosel allows players to adjust the face angle for improved accuracy and trajectory,” as Callaway’s website explains, “while the OptiFit Weights can be adjusted to promote either Draw or Neutral ball flights. Golfers can dial in their ideal settings and hit drives like never before with simple adjustability that matters.”

RAZR Fit Driver. Discovering My Factory Setting Swing.

I discovered with the RAZR Fit that I have a factory setting swing.  I didn’t have to adjust anything—the first drive I hit on the range with the RAZR Fit was long and straight, and that was good enough for me.   I have played two rounds since then and the driver was the best club in my bag.

STREET READY GOLF SHOES

Another product category that really impressed me at the PGA Show was the comfortable, street-legal style of golf shoes that ECCO pioneered with the “Street Premier,” made instantly famous when seen ambling along the fairways on the feet of Fred Couples.   Now Callaway has the “Del Mar,”  Ashworth has the “Cardiff” (which most closely resembles the ECCO original) and Footjoy both the “Contour Casual” and the “FJ Street,” which looks a lot like the original 1950s basketball low top.   Crocs, which started as a boat shoe company in Colorado, has created the “CrocsGolf with Hank Haney” line, which will be available this spring.   Crocs could be strong competitors in this category, because the emphasis of their shoes has always been comfort rather than style.

Callaway's Del Mar Street Ready Golf Shoe.

Footjoy also has had a line of spikeless shoes for years, sold as “teaching shoes” but perfectly fine for playing in, especially in the summer.  But those styles echoed the standard spiked golf shoe of years gone by, rather than the sport-shoe look of this latest wave of comfortable spikeless shoes.

I well remember seeing a small booth at the GCSAA Show (now the GIS) back in the 90s where a new company called Softspikes was introducing its product, pitching it to superintendents because  it was much kinder to the green surface than what David Faherty calls “nails”—that is, the old-time spikes.  Softspikes was offering samples from a fishbowl, and I remember examining that odd looking cleat and hoping it would catch on.   Now, of course, not only is the notion of a softer cleat ubiquitous, the next step has been taken  toward the ultimate spikeless shoe, the hybrid golf/street shoe.

INNOVATIONS

Because they’re looking for ways to promote their products and let consumers know about their new offerings, most vendors at the PGA Show welcome the press (although I discovered one notable exception—see below).    The new product area especially features enthusiastic representatives, often the product’s inventor or developer, who may have dipped into his 401K to launch his new company.

There were two vendors of slip-on spikes—that is, a product that slips over your regular shoe to turn it into a “golf shoe.”   Quick Spikes, was very simple, a kind of rubber trellis with spikes attached to the bottom that will retail for $25.00.   The other product does the same thing but is a little grander, with a heel and toe, so it looks more like a galosh, and it costs twice as much.   I think the slip-on is a great idea, but it has to compete with the street-ready spikeless shoes, which can accomplish the same thing that the slipover offers—a shoe that works both on and off the course.

Steve Bolt is a product developer from California who has put together a package of ball markers with faces resembling a compass that can be used to help practice your alignment on the putting green.   I heard Nick Faldo say on a recent broadcast that the single biggest problem for high handicappers is getting aligned properly, so the Birdie Marker system has a large potential market.   Steve has the markers made by a colleague in China, Terry Lu, whose Hold Tight Development Company has been making a variety of promotional items in its Guangdong province  factory for the last fifteen years, including prints and posters to decorate clubhouses.

Greg Freuler is another product developer who lives in Oregon.   He had prototypes of a towel with what looks like a large button hole on top so it can slip over a club.   Great idea–simple and efficient.  It’s called the Looper (a name that caught my eye because it’s also my best friend’s nickname.)   Look for it later this spring.

“The Little One” is a clever training aid—sorry, “game improvement club”—introduced at last year’s show that its developers say will “improve your tempo, concentration, ball striking and overall confidence.”   That should do!

The Little One Compared to a Standard Six Iron

The Little One has a standard shaft, but the club head looks as if it went through the dryer on hot when it was supposed to be on tumble.    The idea, of course, is that if you can groove your swing to hit flawless shots on this tiny face, when you grab that big boy club the  ball is going to look like a pellet.  Makes sense to me.  Brothers and Little One developers Jim and Dan Bonomo told me to start with chips and pitches and slowly work my way up to full swings.   At the rate I practice it may be 2014 before the results are in, but I am confident that the Little One will work.   When I was kid growing up in the Midwest  and dreaming of the major leagues, we spent endless hours playing cork ball—wielding a broomstick sized bat trying to hit a ping-pong ball sized baseball that zipped and curved like an offering from Bobby Schantz.   When you looked at a real baseball, it seemed to drift toward you like a balloon.

THE UGLY

Bugatchi is a men’s clothing line with a name that sounds like a cross between a vintage Italian race car and a wine bottle wrapped in a straw basket.  I’d like to tell you more about what they actually sell, but I was denied entry into their rather elaborate stand by a little grey man with a sour expression, who asked me if I was a buyer and if I had an account.  I told him in a friendly way that, no, I was there as a writer, just looking to see what new products were being introduced at the show.   He said I would need to leave as they were busy.

I looked around and saw only a couple of “buyers” eyeing the goods.   Didn’t look as if it was a real popular brand to me—lots of brown and grey wool sweaters as far as I could tell.  Maybe they’re shooting for the elderly country club demographic. Bugatchi claims its clothing is “Italian inspired,” as opposed to actually being designed by someone who knows what Italian style is—like, say, someone from Italy.  There was nothing there I could take in with such a quick glance that I would have any interest in wearing, and the styles didn’t so much say “Italy” to me as they whispered “New Jersey.”

So as an American journalist with an interest in free expression, I am urging a boycott of Bugatchi apparel.  I don’t think any of my crowd frequents the sort of shop that would carry Bugatchi “goods,” but if you ever see a dull brown or grey sweater on a remaindered rack somewhere, let the next guy buy it.   Claiming clothes designed in Boca Raton are “Italian inspired” takes some chutzpah, but if we’re good at anything in America, it’s mythmaking.

The Italian director Sergio Leone helped Clint Eastwood perfect the persona that established him as a great star in the series of movies known as “spaghetti westerns.”  The Eastwood persona was used to perfection by Chrysler in a Super Bowl ad celebrating the resurrection of Detroit.

How the West was Done.

The NY Times reported that when Fiat boss Sergio Marchionne gave 700 Chrysler dealers a preview of the ad in Las Vegas on Super Bowl weekend, they gave it a standing ovation while Marchionne wept on stage.   Like the dealers—and apparently unlike Karl Rove—we believe in that Eastwood persona, because it has shown us repeatedly how righteous virtue can triumph over evil.   We like the good guys to win, especially when they’re tough.

The irony, of course, is that Leone filmed his “westerns” in Spain, and the “west” they evoked was the Hollywood myth rather than America’s authentic, historical western experience.   Most cowboys in the heyday of the cattle drives were in fact Mexican or black.  A cowboy was a proletarian on horseback, working from sunup to sundown every day and then not guaranteed to collect his wages.   Justice was elusive, and the law less in the hands of upright sheriffs than bigoted lynch mobs.

The golf industry too often relies on its own myths rather than facing the reality that the game is stagnating, and the crisis is not attributable solely to the lousy economy.   We have unbelievably great courses in America that we can play at accessible prices, and we have access to the best equipment and teachers, too.   But we have not found ways to halt the game’s popular decline, and faux Italian clothing lines don’t point to the path forward.

"This ain't a funeral, you know."

Anyone who’s witnessed Tour players discharging their obligatory pro-am duties with disdain, contempt for their hapless playing partners etched on their mugs, knows how rare Watson’s empathy is.  It’s almost as unlikely as a 59 year old golfer competing in a four-hole playoff for supremacy at the 138^th Open Championship.

Thirty-two years after having won his legendary final round “duel in the sun” with Jack Nicklaus in 1977 and lifting the Claret Jug, along the way breaking the Open scoring record by eight shots with a four-round total of 268, Watson was tied with Stewart Cink after four rounds at 278, on an Ailsa course lengthened and stiffened with the hope that it would withstand the power of the fit and athletic new generation of touring pros.  Watson survived the test with an astonishing display of ball-striking until the 18th on Sunday, when he hit two of the best shots on a final hole in Open history, only to have the rub of the green chase his perfectly struck 8-iron all the way across the green and into the rough.  A chip too far, and a difficult finishing putt led to a bogey… and the deflating playoff.  (“I made a lousy putt,” he said of 18, as always spurning any excuses.)

The ghost of majors past departed Watson’s body on his trek to the fifth tee to start the playoff.  “I don’t think Tom was tired,” Nicklaus said in sympathy after his friend’s disappointing finish. “But emotionally, he was spent.”   Still, the man left standing when the spirit of past glory departed handled his disappointment with the grace and modesty of a classic hero. “This ain’t a funeral, you know,” he observed,surveying the gloomy faces in the Open press center at Turnberry—the old admonition against cheering in the press box had been discarded as Watson advanced toward his improbable and ultimately elusive victory.

The swing that carried Watson to the edge of triumph at Turnberry closely resembled the one that won for him there in ’77.  Now he and Seitz have summarized Watson’s insights into his swing, and the golf swing in general, in a brilliantly conceived and executed new book, The Timeless Swing.  Not only does it explain the fundamentals—grip, setup, alignment and so on—it has a high-tech feature that allows Watson to elaborate on his explanations with short videos.  I thought the videos were a great addition.

The Timeless Swing uses a technology from Microsoft called TAG to take readers to the video add-ons.

A "TAG" code--Tom Watson may be Old School, but his instructional book is avant-guarde

You go to a website for a free mobile app, then aim your smart phone at these little icons scattered throughout the book that look like barcodes on acid, and that starts the download of a YouTube video.

Golf instructional books typically distribute their advice over two broad categories: the basics, which every beginning needs and accomplished players must never forget; and the advanced skills required to actually play the game, advice which covers scoring tips, how to “read” a course, how to make sensible choices, like taking your punishment when you’ve hit a bad shot and not compound your troubles by assaying an heroic recovery which would require you to execute the best shot you’ve ever hit.

How does a 12 handicap (full disclosure: index 12.8 at Ghost Creek at Pumpkin Ridge in Portland, my “home course”) critique a book about playing golf by one of the greatest players ever to push a tee in the ground?    I read the book first—slowly, because you need to let the expertise percolate into your consciousness—and then tried to make some adjustments in my mediocre swing on the practice range with Watson’s advice in mind before testing in on the course.

My version of the timeless swing may not endure through eternity, but for one bright shining afternoon, it worked great—mostly, I think, because the explanations in The Timeless Swing are extremely clear.  The writing is pure crystal, while the videos provide all of the illustration about what you should be doing that the imagination may not muster.    I worked on setting up with proper balance and spine angle, holding the club in the correct grip with appropriate pressure, and swinging in rhythm.   I didn’t spend a lot of time grinding to try to put these modifications in place—I just hit enough balls to feel as if I had made an adjustment I felt comfortable with, then off to the first tee at Heron Lakes’ Great Blue Course, a Portland muni designed by Robert Trent Jones II that is among America’s very best publicly-owned golf courses.

Much to my amazement, I played very well.  Sure, I hit some loose shots—I am a double-digit handicap, remember?—but I also hit some shots I will dream about.   I always promised that I would never write about playing golf, because I know it’s as boring to read about someone’s round as it is to listen to a blow-by-blow, but I am making an exception here because it illustrates the larger point of what I am discussing: how reading Tom Watson’s brilliant analysis of the golf swing, and watching videos showing how he puts his views into practice can help any golfer improve.

On the tenth hole at the Great Blue, I pulled my drive a bit and it landed in a fairway bunker  about 160 yards from the green.  There’s a mound in front of the bunker, so the shot was blind.  Greenside bunkers to the left eliminated a direct route to the pin.   I aimed to the open front of the green, imagined a slight draw, set up with a strong image of swinging easily so the arc of my swing would hit the ball slightly before the clubhead reached its nadir.   As the ball came off the club, I felt instantly contented.  A couple of quick steps to my left to see the line of flight and there it was, the ball taking exactly the trajectory I had imagined and running up onto the green, about 40 feet short of the hole.   I missed the putt but had a tap-in par.

Is this just a variation of the new putter placebo effect?  You know, when you buy a new putter and make everything you see for a round or two, before the default deficiencies in your swing re-assert themselves?  Certainly possible.

I prefer to believe, however, that it’s because Tom Watson knows what he’s talking about, and with the help of Nick Seitz is able to explain what he knows in simple, accessible, visually memorable detail.   (The book also has great photos by Dom Furore.)

I have never been a fan of instructional books of any kind.  (I’m not big on following directions generally.)  But The Timeless Swing is a gigantic exception to my skepticism about the whole notion of learning a physical skill by reading about it.   I think anyone who plays golf will benefit in some measure, big or small, from studying and digesting the wisdom of a great master, a true golfing sensei, Tom Watson.  Before you think about buying new clubs or investing in a new putter, stop by the bookstore first and do yourself a favor: buy a copy of The Timeless Swing.

If you want to get better, buy this book!

Tom Watson, with Nick Seitz, The Timeless Swing.  Atria Books, $29.99.    You can also buy the book from Watson’s website, which also offers additional free video playing tips.    http://www.tomwatson.com/

Happiest Man's Bag: Orderly and Composed.

My brother-in-law, Lee, the Happiest Man in America, is self-described as “mildly OCD.”   Although he’s not as obsessed about it now as he used to be, he’s never liked to accept conceded putts.  He likes to follow the rules, and in golf that means holing out.  Except in a match, of course, where putts can be conceded.  But Lee’s take is that if you intend to post the score, which he always likes to do, you should hole out to make sure your handicap is legit.

So I used to knock short putts away in a gesture of concession, especially if he was leading in our match.  We always play a three dollar Nassau, and I would enjoy watching Lee retrieve his ball, putting it back down on the green more or less where it had ended up and then making the putt.  But over the last few years he’s gotten into the spirit of conceding putts, although once in a while he still will pick up the ball and backtrack to putt out.

The other day we were finishing a round at a local muni in Portland (where Lee shot 79, his first round ever under 80—he was doing an awesome Fred Funk impression off the tee and his worst drive barely missed the fairway), when Lee raised an interesting philosophical question.  “What do you think should happen,” he asked, “if an OCD guy who likes his clubs organized in a particular way gets a caddie who has his own style with the bag?”

“Would I know this guy?”

“It came up in Oakmont.  My caddie had his own way.  And while we’re discussing this, I want you to know I let him put things the way he wanted.”

“Of course,” I said.  “Golf is hard enough.  You don’t want an unhappy caddy, right?”

“That’s true, “ he said.

“And besides, you’re not pulling the clubs.  He’s handing them to you.”

“But I was afraid I might look in there and see they’re not where they’re supposed to be.”

“So don’t look.  You want your caddie not just hauling the clubs around, but doing what  a good caddie does, like our buddies Dave and Danny at Bandon.  The club schlepping is the easy part: it’s the psychological support you really need.”

“Yeah,” Lee said, “you’re right.  Like, you’ve just shanked your approach shot on the forth at Bandon Trails.  It’s the first round of five you’re playing over the next two days.  You break out in a cold sweat.  That’s when you want Dave to pat you on the back and say, ‘Lee, don’t worry, that happens to everybody.  We know what you’ve got.’ And then you stiff your third from 60 yards and off you go.”

“Correct.  The caddies at most clubs who loop for guests, at places like Cypress Point or San Francisco Golf Club, take ownership of your bag before they’re finished shaking your hand.  If you have one of those faux-tour behemoths, they grab a little carry bag, toss your clubs in there, make a calculated guess from watching your practice swing at how many balls you’re going to lose, and load the little bag with ammunition accordingly.  And off you go.  As Steve Williams supposedly told Tiger during their audition, ‘I’m a caddie, not a mule.’”

So Lee and I believe that when the caddie is on your bag he owns it.  You can put it back the way you like when he surrenders control.  And if his approach to organization makes you uncomfortable, avert your eyes.   It’s always good advice to worry only about what you control.  That’s the zen of golf: acceptance, toleration, surrender.

Brice Secord's Convenient Way to Carry a Tee

On the first tee I met Brice Secord, whose creativity in a game renowned for its traditional allegiances and conservative attitudes, was immediately obvious.  His play was so-so (as was mine, let’s be honest), but his fashion sense was clearly perfectly in tune with the Portland zeitgeist.  

Brice, who’s an apprentice lineman for PGE (one letter away from being in the PGA, as close as any of us can aspire to), carries a tee in each ear.  Before he found his calling climbing utility poles, he worked as a piercer in a Portland tattoo parlor, establishing his creative chops in a revered Portland creative arena.  Once his ear holes were wide enough for thick plugs, but several years working at PGE, where dangling baubles are not encouraged, has reduced them to the perfect dimension to hold a golf tee.

On the day we played, Brice went with the navy blue pegs, but has experimented with other colors, depending on his mood.   The ear tee adds a new phrase to the vocabulary of the links.  Someday Brice’s innovation may rank with Gene Sarazen’s discovery of “bounce” in the sand wedge, or Dick Halmstetter’s experiments for Callaway with giant metal drivers, saving forests of persimmon.  I expect the Secord approach to tee management to have a lasting influence among Portland’s creative golfers.

The Tee Ring

It means a lot if you’re Tim Webb of Tacit Golf, and you created these flagsticks and cups.  You’ve watched with pride as they’ve been embraced not just at the Old Course and Celtic Manor, but by almost every great course in the UK, a success driven not by marketing hype but through word-of-mouth, one satisfied greenkeeper passing on his discovery to another.  Gleneagles, Carnoustie, Wentworth, Royal St Georges, Walton Heath, Queenwood and Royal Country Down – the crème de la crème use Tacit cups and flagsticks.   “We’re now in 60% of the courses in the British Isles,” says Webb.

Gordon Moir is the Director of Greenkeeping for the St Andrews Links Trust.  In that role Moir is responsible for safeguarding a legacy that extends from the Old Course, the granddaddy of golf courses everywhere, to the Castle Course, a brilliant example of modern golf design executed by a son of Scotland, David McLay Kidd.    “At St Andrews Links,” Moir says,  “we have found the Tacit hole cups to be long lasting– especially the liners, which are excellent. They stand up well to windy conditions,” he confirms, “and help the hole keep its shape”

So what makes a better cup, anyway, and who needs it?

One of the great challenges in any business is figuring out how to create a premium product in a commodity space.  And the golf cup is about as basic as it gets—who thinks much about the quality of the cup, unless something goes wrong, like the flagstick getting stuck?  (And why do caddies make sure to pull the flagstick before their players putt, resting it gently in the hole?  Partly to avoid shadows, but mainly to make sure they don’t leave it in the cup and cost their player strokes.)

The golf cup is younger than the game—the requirement for a cup is just over one hundred years old, while the game is five times that age.  The original cups were installed simply to keep the hole from growing unsportingly large.  It was long the custom for players to grab a handful of sand out of the hole when they retrieved their balls and use it to build a little cone-shaped tee on the driving ground.   The first recorded hole was used at Musselburgh, near Edinburgh, in 1829, adapted from a drain tile and measuring 4 ½ inches in diameter.  In 1891, the R & A standardized that as the legal cup size in its official rules.  And while hole-cutters and other devices made holes more precise as the years went by, a cup was a cup was a cup….until Tim Webb’s TACIT hole cup came on the market nearly two decades ago.

The perfection of the cup came not from a moment of inspiration, Webb says, but “through years of trial and error.  The first problem was figuring out how to keep top dressing from jamming up the flagstick.  When the flagstick’s too tight it makes the hole wobble in the wind, which can affect the hole’s shape.  Then we had to figure out how to keep the cup from sinking into the greensmix, a problem when people jam the hole back into the cup.  And we wanted to minimize wear if we could.  Tacit is the only cup/ferrule system that actively sheds the top dressing away from the central bore and also effectively seals the central bore top and bottom.”

Mating the Flagstick with the Cup

The European PGA Tour staff responsible for setting up its courses travels with a set of TACIT cups, Webb says.  “At the WGC – HSBC Championship last November at the Sheshan International Golf Course in Shanghai,” he notes, “they used our cups and flagsticks.”   But unlike most golf industry products these days, TACIT’s products are made not in China, but in the UK.  “We employ around 30 people,” Webb says.  “We’ve sold almost exclusively in the UK, but we have developed an American model—it has a larger bore than the UK model— and are just setting up our sales and distribution in the US.  Our advertising inserts have attracted a lot of interest, especially from daily fee courses looking for ways to boost revenues.”

The TACIT cup is milled aluminum, so the insert—which can be blank for televised events or feature a club’s crest or printed with a logo for corporate outings—fits smoothly against the margins, seamless to the touch.   The blanks sell for about $1.50, and it costs another $5.00 or so to add a decal.   “For annual events, the inserts can be re-used for many years,”  Webb says.  “A course can easily sell that advertising for $450 per event, so it can be a simple, on-going revenue stream.”

The flagstick was the final element in TACIT’s solution to perfecting the cup and pin.  “It has a high fiberglass content,” Webb says, “so it doesn’t bend so much in the wind.  The PVC coating then keeps it from chipping or scratching—the colors last longer and look brighter.”  Mated with its ferrule, the flagstick will rotate within its gromit rather than twisting the cup itself.   This, too, extends the life of the cups and flags.   “The coating,” Webb says, “also assures that no fiberglass splinters will pierce the hand of any potential litigious golfer—surely a selling point in the USA.”

For more information on TACIT: www.tacitgolf.co.uk/

In the US, contact RS Carlson and Associates, 503 788-7865