Golfing News & Blog Articles

Welcome to the Neighborhood!

May 6, 2021

By Dianna Stein 

Longtime NCGA/WGANC Rules official KC Cote assumed she was always going to live in her town of Novato, although she does have an adventurous streak, having served our country during the Vietnam War as an Air Force Nurse and becoming a Lieutenant Colonel.

On a less adventurous note, but as a revered volunteer, KC became a passionate golfer and helped found the WGANC Rules Committee in 1997, and has long served as a Rules official for NCGA, USGA and other countless tournaments.

Rickie Fowler, who watched the first round of the Masters with Tiger Woods, says the former world No. 1 is "not lacking any fire" in his recovery from injuries suffered in a February car crash.

The Fujikura MC Putter is the second generation of the company’s putter shaft line.It’s available in three distinct flex profiles to fit a variety of putting strokes.Retail price is $250.

The graphite/composite/multi-material—whatever you want to call it—putter shaft is far from ubiquitous but things are changing. Callaway nearly made it mainstream with Stroke Lab. Bryson has 14 graphite shafts in the bag, including an LA Golf Partners putter shaft. Yours Truly is playing the BGT Tour in my putter. Mitsubishi has a couple of options, too, and the more recent addition to the growing cadre of alternatives to steel for your putter is the second generation of MC Putter shaft from Fujikura.

While it may not come with a side of fries or a plastic toy, the MC Putter is yet another option that suggests that maybe, just maybe, the future of shafts is graphite.

Why Graphite?

Before we dig into specifics, we should probably rewind a bit to talk about why you might want a graphite putter shaft.

Too many golfers destroy their swing by starting their downswing with their arms and wrist release from the top of the swing. If you are one of these golfers you need to “FEEL” A NEW approach to your swing. You will never improve the consistency of your swing unless you commit to learning the correct way to swing. START YOUR DOWNSWING WITH YOUR LEADING KNEE AND YOUR LOWER BODY ROTATION.

As shocking as it may seem, your downswing STARTS WITH YOUR WEIGHT SHIFT TO YOUR LEADING LEG as your backswing reaches the transition from swinging up to down.

Because this is a new approach for your swing, you should learn this move at half the speed of you normal backswing. Remember that the change in direction from up to down is ZERO MILES PER HOUR. The transition of your club reaches a dead stopped at the top BUT YOUR LOWER BODY IS IN CONSTANT MOTION as you start your down swing with an EARLY LEADING KNEE BEND for a weight shift to your leading leg.

Your backswing and downswing must include:
1/ a rotation of your hips and shoulders to coil up your body for POWER and wrist cocking for lag at the top of your swing.
2/ a BEND IN YOUR LEADING KNEE for weight transfer to your leading leg during the transition at the top of your swing.
3/ a straight leading arm (and flat wrist) or a leading arm that will straighten out before the impact with your ball to keep a consistent distance to the ball for your setup and your point of impact.

How to Create Your Weight Transfer
1/ Weight transfer happens as your swing approaches the top of your backswing. YES, your body weight is shifting forward with the momentum of your backswing. It happens as you reach the transition point where you change club direction from up to down. Give yourself more time in your backswing to make this weight shift. Instead of using the UP and DOWN cadence of “1, 2”, mentally think the words “1 and 2”. Adding the word “and” to give you a little more time to bend your leading knee to shift your weight to your leading foot and cock your wrist to create lag at the top of your swing.

Course Records Shot at Blue Rock Springs

May 5, 2021

Vallejo resident Jared Stone closed out 2020 with a couple of bangs. Within a time frame of six weeks, the St. Patrick High alum, who’s now a junior at University of Redlands, set the scoring record for both courses at Blue Rock Springs GC in Vallejo.

On Nov. 13,, 2020 Stone, who once worked at Blue Rock Springs, posted an 11-under 60 on the 5,987-yard, par-71 West Course. The previous record had been a 67, shot by former University of Oregon standout Kathleen Scavo.

 

Phil Mickelson sees some advantages to a golf super league, but he -- like many other players -- isn't committing to the idea.

MyGolfSpy Ball Lab is where we quantify the quality and consistency of the golf balls on the market to help you find the best ball for your money. Today, we’re taking a look at the 2021 Srixon Z-Star XV. An overview of the equipment we use can be found here. To learn more about our test process, how we define “bad” balls and our True Price metric, check out our About MyGolfSpy Ball Lab page.

With two models reviewed previously (and two others fully measured), Srixon is proving to be hit or miss in our Ball Lab tests. It’s fair to say the Q-Star Tour failed to live up to expectations while the prior-generation of Z-Star proved to be more in line with what golfers expect from Srixon. As we continue to measure Srixon golf balls, we’ve noticed some patterns across multiple models (detailed within).

Suffice it to say that while many of you love Srixon, we’re not entirely without some concerns.

About the Srixon Z-Star XV

The Srixon Z-Star XV is a four-piece golf with a urethane cover. It’s the firmer of Srixon’s two Tour offerings and, with the release of the new models, the compression gap between the two has grown.

The PGA Tour heads to Quail Hollow in Charlotte for this week's tournament. Here are our best bets for the event.

The Korn Ferry Tour, the circuit right below the PGA Tour, informed players on Tuesday that prize money will be a minimum of $1 million for tournaments starting in 2023.

Brendon Todd has pulled out of the Wells Fargo tournament after testing positive for COVID.

The Premier Golf League is again attempting to force top stars to choose between the PGA Tour and the circuit that is backed by Saudi Arabia money interests, sources confirmed to ESPN.

Over 9000 golfers responded to our Golfer’s Choice Survey to tell us what new clubs you’ve bought this past year and from which manufacturers.

0:19 – Would you buy Tag Heuer’s Golf Timepiece?9:41 – Results from our 2021 Golfer’s Choice Survey11:43 – Drivers13:31 – Fairway Woods & Hybrids21:44 – Irons27:13 – Wedges31:07 – Putters37:23 – How closely do our results reflect the average golfer?

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You signed up for an iron fitting. Smart.

Getting fitted is something we preach relentlessly at MyGolfSpy. When it comes to finding the best-performing gear for your game, it’s an absolute necessity.

Now what?

We’ve compiled our best tips, based on experience, to help you get the most out of your fitting.

Like anything else, it helps to have a game plan.

There is always a bit of a letdown after the Masters in April. But that is gone. With just two weeks before the year's next major, we reset things and figure out who's ready, who has work to do and more.

All you need to know about the 2021 PGA Championship, including day-by-day results and analysis from Kiawah Island's Ocean Course.

Amy Bockerstette is set to become the first person with Down syndrome to compete for a collegiate title when she joins her Paradise Valley Community College teammates at the NJCAA national championships May 10-13.

NCGA Mourns the Loss of Past President Russ Bigelow

May 3, 2021

Nancy Lopez: Overcoming Obstacles

May 3, 2021

Nancy Lopez, who grew up in Roswell, New Mexico, began playing golf at the age of eight, with her father, Domingo Lopez, an avid golfer, as her coach.

Four years later, when she was 12, she won the New Mexico Women’s Amateur tournament. Lopez later told Richard Lemon in People Weekly, “I was so scared I always threw up. I carried a trash can with me. My dad told me, ‘If you’re going to play golf, you’ve got to get over being sick.’ I didn’t want to quit, so I decided to get over it.”

Lopez also faced other obstacles to her progress. Because her family was of Mexican descent, her parents were not allowed to join the Roswell Country Club and she had to play in Albuquerque, 200 miles away. A writer for Latino Sports Legends commented that her intense competitive drive and “the fact that she was a Mexican-American winning so many tournaments did not sit well with others, but that didn’t discourage her.”

Bettinardi partners again with Big League Chew to release co-branded accessories and a limited-run putter.Only 12 of the Water Hazard Watermelon putters were produced.Available May 4 at 10 a.m. CST in The Hive at Bettinardi.com.

In what now looks to be an ongoing partnership, Bettinardi is once again releasing a Big League Chew-branded limited-run putter and line of accessories. The timing is pretty good as the 2021 Major League Baseball season is just underway. Big and Little Leaguers both agree that nothing says baseball like a dangerously large wad of Big League Chew in your cheek as you play.

Top of the Second

As I mentioned, this is the second year of the Bettinardi/Big League Chew partnership. For those of you who missed the previous explanation as to how this came to be, here’s a recap.

Founder and inventor of Big League Chew, Rob Nelson, and Founder and President of Bettinardi Golf, Robert J. Bettinardi, teamed up for a limited-edition release combining their two iconic brands. Brought to life by the team at Bettinardi Golf, the co-branded headcovers and golf products bring together our passion for golf and our love for the game of baseball, all the while paying tribute to the only gum ever to be featured at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Museum as well as being part of our childhood memories at the ballpark. Produced in the U.S.A., just like Big League Chew gum, this headcover serves as an inspiration to play well and have fun on the golf course.

This release knocks nostalgia right out of the park. Many of us played baseball as kids with our cheeks chipmunked with Big League Chew. I’m kind of itching for a pouch and a red rope right now.

A few weeks ago, we asked you about the clubs in your bag. We called it the Golfer’s Choice Survey because we wanted to know which brands you chose to add to your bag most recently. The idea was to give us a sense of how brands are performing with our readers and to gauge what impact COVID has had on equipment replacement cycles.

It’s well-accepted that the typical replacement cycle (how frequently golfers replace their clubs) is three to six years, depending on the club category and how avid the golfer is. We’d expect the average MyGolfSpy reader falls on the shorter end of that range but, nevertheless, what that means is that in any given one-year period, approximately 15 to 30 percent of you will replace some of your clubs.

Drivers are replaced most often while fairway woods tend to linger more than five years. Data for hybrid replacement is sketchy as many golfers are still playing the first hybrid they bought. Even for avid golfers, the typical replacement cycle for wedges is just under four years. (That’s not good.)

Did you buck the trend over the last year?

More than 9,500 (9,640) of you completed our survey. Some of the numbers are eye-popping.