Golfing News & Blog Articles

The news isn’t too encouraging these days but for golf the signs are positive. And while we’re all sleeping better knowing the never-happy manufacturers are selling clubs and balls, it’s the course operators and lower-level clubs that form the backbone of golf. It seems, based on National Golf Foundation data, that the pandemic has freed people up for more afternoon and evening golf, a surefire way to hook and retain participants.

From the NGF report:

Golf course operators report that afternoon and evening tee times have been popular, which seems right given that Covid-19 has changed the contours of the work day for many. Sorting through recent NGF golf participation and engagement research, the number of short loops (as a percentage of total loops) is up over 15% in 2020.

Core golfers report that 33% of their rounds this year have been of the nine-hole variety, while occasional golfers tell us that nearly half (48%) of the rounds they’re playing are nine holes. This will be seen as good news by many, especially the USGA given their PLAY9 initiative, and would indicate that the “time barrier” to golf is being overcome by more golfers.

And I loved this perfect summation from the NGF:

We’ve talked about the increase in beginners and youth golfers, so clearly the late-day tee times aren’t just for the work-at-home crowd.

With late summer days, those nine-hole twilight rounds present the perfect opportunity for families to get to the course after an early dinner, or newcomers to get more comfortable with the game.

We all love watching Phil Mickelson Bomb It! He loves to do it too, especially when he wants an extra 25 yards. Phil normally plays conservatively with a soft fade to ensure that he can hit the fairway. But when he knows that he needs some extra distance he plans for a lower spin rate and a nice looping draw. Should we be trying to copy Phil?

It was interesting to follow Phil’s drives on his bogey holes in the first 2 days of the WGC FedEx St Jude Invitational. He had 6 bogeys. 4 out of those 6 drives were in the left rough but all 6 were short drives of about 270 yards. His most amazing shot was a bomb where he hit a perfect draw around a dog-leg 338 yards to the right. Yes that was his perfect BOMB!

Phil Mickelson Bombing his driver, but this one was a soft fade.

Narrow, tree lined fairways don’t always give you the chance to create BOMBS but judging by the success that Bryson DeChambeau is having we should all put more effort into creating long bombs that land in the fairway. Bryson gained 40 pounds to put more muscle (or weight) behind his drives. On the other hand Phil has lost weight and worked on building up his strength.
Phil’s Fade is his Go-to-Shot
He sets up for a fade when he needs to land it in the fairway (even though it knocked him out of contention at the FedEx St Jude Invitational). He tees his ball lower to cut his ball to create a higher spin rate for more control and a soft landing.

Phil’s BOMB is a Draw
He tees it up higher and a little further forward in his stance so that he can hit up on the ball at about a 5.5 degree angle. He even uses his taller black tees to commit to this shot. His spin rate drops from his fade shots but he picks up well over 25 yards.

If it is difficult for a seasoned pro like Phil to hit every drive the way it was planned, how can we expect the same out of our games? As a recreational players you need to work on a consistent draw or fade so that you know where to aim for each drive. Consistency is so much more important than powering it into Never Never Land.

Phil Mickelson’s eye-opening—if you could see behind the aviators—22-under-par PGA Tour Champions debut outside Branson was impressive. That’s even if the competitive setting more closely resembled afternoon cart games at The Bridges than big boy golf, but Mickelson proved he’s still got something special during a four-stroke win over Tim Petrovic.

Jay Busbee with this on the win and Tiger’s assessment…or was it a dig?

Look, it’s easy to laugh off Mickelson’s achievement as an unfair matchup, the golf equivalent of LeBron James rolling over a neighborhood pickup basketball game. Mickelson’s odds to win the tournament were as low as +220 (bet $100 to win $220); that’s getting in the neighborhood of prime Tiger right there.

Woods himself knows just how much of an advantage Mickelson currently owns. “He was already one of the longest hitters out here [on the PGA Tour],” Woods said Wednesday at the BMW Championship, “and now he goes to where he’s going to pick up a huge advantage off the tee ... There’s no reason why he can’t win every event he plays out there. He’s got such a big advantage over the rest of the field just with sheer length.”

That’s right, he could win every week “out there”!

More importantly, buried lede here: Phil is putting with a blade and making putts. I feel the Golf Gods at work here. The entire bag of Callaways for Mickelson including a nice shot of his old school putter.

An unbylined AP story sent to me by reader Steve details legendary broadcaster Vin Scully’s plans to sell off much of his memorabilia, including golf items right down to his clubs.

Vin Scully sat outside watching two sets of his golf clubs being loaded into a truck. He thought of afternoons teeing off at Bel-Air Country Club or with President George H.W. Bush.

Those left-handed clubs had produced a lot of shots over many rounds, some good, some bad. Traipsing the fairways was a way to relax and swap stories away from the ballpark through the years. Seeing them go stirred emotion that surprised the 92-year-old Hall of Fame announcer.

"Wow, there is a chapter of my life that really hurts," Scully told The Associated Press, "but at my age and after some physical problems, I knew I'd never be able to hold them again. I heard a door close in my life."
Scully took a bad fall in April at the end of his driveway while retrieving the mail, breaking his nose and ribs and suffering a concussion.

"It was a learning experience," he said. "I hold on to my walker."

Scully is spreading the proceeds between family members to pay for home schooling and to UCLA for neuromuscular research.

Jason Day has been talking with Tiger Woods for help on ways to deal with the back issues both players face.

Phil Mickelson closed the Charles Schwab Series at Ozarks National with a 66 to win his PGA Tour Champions debut by four strokes and tie the tour's record for lowest 54-hole score.

Looking ahead to his 2020 Masters defense this November, Tiger Woods noted a couple of key elements that will be different.

Beyond the roars giving you an idea where another player stands, he also referenced the loss of basic distractions (backing off a shot due to a noise) and the lack of confinement. Presumably, as he said at the PGA, this favors players not used to everything that comes with playing on the biggest of stages. He’s not wrong.

From Ryan Lavner’s GolfChannel.com report:

“When you put 40,000 people on such a small piece of property – I know there’s no rough, but it gets confined,” he said. “But this will be very different. This will be a fun Masters, and I’m looking forward to defending.”

Some players have mentioned difficulties focusing without fans and plenty more are enjoying it. Pace of play has improved but the idea of being less confined is fascinating. For some players, having fairways lined by players might be a positive in helping to focus on the job at hand, and perhaps, for others not having the fan presence makes things trickier.

Anyway, it’s an oddity of 2020 that cannot be quantified.

Tiger Woods said Wednesday he knows he'll have to earn his way to the next round of the FedEx Cup playoffs with a strong performance at the BMW Championship.

Your ability to focus on what you choose – when you want to – is the single most important factor in your performance and your progress. Improving focus for golf is something that you take seriously if you plan to become as good as you can be.

Too many of us are under-performing, losing time, productivity and dealing with more stress and anxiety because we are losing the ability to focus every day. Buddhists call it not being able to control the wandering “monkey mind”.

Recent studies suggest that our reliance on digital technology is the main reason the monkey is wandering more today than it ever has. In today’s world, we are rarely in the present moment – focused on just one task for long enough to get the best out of ourselves. Instead, we are constantly distracted by our phones, messages and social media feeds.

Scientists are hired by companies such as Facebook specifically to develop algorithms to keep us clicking, watching and swiping for as long as possible. How many times do you start a task, see a notification, and then spend 5 minutes away from the task before you realize it?

We are spending more and more time being impulsive and less time being intentional. The effect of it is weakening our ability to focus with every minute we spend doing so, and it’s even worse for our kids’ developing brains.

Coming off Dustin Johnson's runaway win, the FedEx Cup playoff field is down to 70 as play shifts to Olympia Fields in Illinois. Here are our experts' best bets.

Daniel Berger might win the FedEx Cup. That won't get him a spot in the Masters. He could win next month's U.S. Open. Still won't get him into the Masters. How is that possible? Blame a revised schedule and a global pandemic.

It comes as no news flash: COVID-19 sucks. Anyone planning a trip to Pebble, St Andrews or other bucket list destinations is feeling the pain. Quarantines, visitor guidelines and capacity restrictions are doing a number on all travel, not just golf. For this edition of MyGolfSpy Experiences, we decided to profile what amounts to a drivable par-4: a COVID-19 golf trip to a nearby destination.

This piece is not meant to be any sort of political statement on the pandemic nor will politically focused comments be tolerated. That’s not what we or this piece are about. We simply want to share some of the things you may need to know when planning a COVID-19 golf trip as well as identify some of the challenges faced by golf courses and resorts.

We learned plenty during the process. Some of it was quite surprising.

Where To Go?

While air travel is most certainly doable, we chose to stay within driving distance for our COVID-19 golf trip. I live near the New Hampshire seacoast and Mike, my partner for this trip, is from New York City. We chose Stowe, Vt., in the heart of the Green Mountains: a five-hour drive for Mike, 3 1/2 for me.

“People are still very wary of traveling,” says Scott McIntosh, Director of Sales and Marketing at Stowe’s Topnotch Resort. “Vermont is one of the lowest states for COVID so we’ve had restrictions placed on travelers coming in from out of state.”

With the U.S. Open’s surprise return to NBC there will be ups, downs, perks and a few remote-control headaches that might include multiple phone calls with older relatives. Be ready to explain Peacock.

Good news?

The new Peacock app has a free option and if you’re only casually into the U.S. Open, probably not necessary since it’s largely handling field outlier broadcast windows. Maybe.

The bad news? If you’re a cord cutter and willing to pay to stay in one place despite Peacock, Golf Channel and NBC Sports existing under the same Comcast umbrella, you’ll be doing some app switching, updating, password entering, yada, yada. But you’ll survive, I promise.

Here is the schedule retaining the same 45 U.S. Open hours as last year on Fox. However, with the need to incorporate Peacock, the U.S. Open is losing 90 minutes of cable coverage each weekday round compared to Fox Sports 1. This year’s event—a one-off played in September at Winged Foot—is down four hours of broadcast television coverage Saturday and Sunday compared to Fox’s 10 hours and 8 hours respectively.

I kept waiting to hear that record equipment sales tracked by Golf Datatech were fueled by a major distance-gaining breakthrough.

Turns out, it’s just social distancing.

GolfDigest.com’s Mike Stachura offers an extensive breakdown of the surge in sales and reaches out to all of the CEO’s who rarely advertise in print any longer because, they’re (kind of) happy campers! Until they hear the anti-capitalist governing bodies will blow this pandemic-fueled resurgence of golf.

Each of the club and ball categories were up more than 25 percent in both units and dollars compared to a year ago. Specifically:

Balls: Up 27 percent in units, 28 percent in dollars

Putters: Up 32 percent in units, 36 percent in dollars

Wedges: Up 64 percent in units, 74 percent in dollars

Woods: Up 74 percent in units, 68 percent in dollars

Irons: Up 83 percent in units, 93 percent in dollars

As calculated by Golf Datatech, iron sales set an all-time high for any month the research firm has tracked in its more than two decades of looking at industry numbers.

What record did it beat? The one set just last month.

Now, for the CEO’s who were all contacted so Stachura didn’t get any angry calls. The wisdom gleaned is life changing.

Phil Mickelson, who decided to make his PGA Tour Champions debut to continue his U.S. Open preparations, fired a 7-under 64 on Tuesday in Missouri.

Webb Simpson, who is ranked third in the FedEx Cup standings, has withdrawn from this week's BMW Championship.

With a rain-delayed, Dustin Johnson 11-stroke runaway and loads of competition, CBS should not have drawn any audience for the 2020 Northern Trust Open. Instead, Sunday’s respectable 1.52 and 2.279 million average viewership is miraculous given competition with the NBA and NHL playoffs, the Indy 500, NASCAR and regional MLB action.

As always, the full listing and context can be found at ShowBuzzDaily.

A few other observations:

—The AIG Women’s British drew poor numbers on Golf Channel, particularly given the recent spike in morning golf viewing. The miniscule 245,000 average for the Sunday morning final round makes the one-hour handoff numbers on NBC (.64/886,000) that much more impressive.

—One hour shows on NBC gave the women network exposure and a tighter broadcast window that led to the decent .62/897,000 average.

Callaway’s been very b-b-busy dropping the new Callaway Big Bertha B21 and REVA lines. Also, will electric carts take over the U.S.?

2:09 – Will Callaway’s Big Bertha B21 Driver cure your slice?6:06 –  Is the FlightPath Tee the most revolutionary tee in golf?13:00 –  Are ball retrievers really worth it?19:29 – Are REVA clubs the best clubs for women?28:23 – Is the term “Ladies Clubs” detrimental for fitting?37:11 – HOTSEAT: Will electric carts take over the U.S?

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The post Can This Driver Cure Your Slice? | NPG 54 appeared first on MyGolfSpy.

Par 3 Scoring – Key Takeaways

Longer holes result in higher average scores.Roughly 1 out of every 7 golfers can’t reach a 200+ yard par 3 hole off the tee.1 out of 3 golfers needs to hit a driver to reach a 200-224 yard par 3.

Improved Performance Through Data

Big data is a powerful tool. Not only does it allow golfers to assess individual parts of the game, but it provides an opportunity to examine performance from a variety of perspectives.

Golf stat-tracking and performance management companies like ShotScope help golfers better understand individual on-course performance. However, by aggregating data from golfers across the world, we get a more complete picture of the realities of amateur performance.

So, as we dive into a relatively straightforward topic, take a moment and think about the par 3 holes on your home course. What is the typical yardage? What strategy do you use to produce the highest probability of success?

As you look through the Shot Scope Par 3 performance data, keep in mind that the PGA Tour scoring average is 3.06 on all par 3 holes. Manage your expectations accordingly

Par 3 Scoring Average by Handicap (150-200 Yards)

 

Agronomy—aka fast, hard running fairways—is the go-to faux argument for preserving distance standards should a Harry Higgs or Craig Stadler come along and blow the notion that “athletes fuel distance spikes”.

Certainly today’s generally more fit and better fit players generate increased clubhead speed, and, therefore more distance.

On the surface, agronomy as a distance booster should be a tougher sell since courses have never been greener. One very famous annual major stop, Augusta National, unapologetically presents fairways mown toward tees to slow down drives.

For now, don’t do a deep dive on 2020 yet because the numbers are not all in and the sample size differs from year’s past now that all PGA Tour tees have a Trackman. Look instead to the previous 13 years when the PGA Tour’s amazing ShotLink started measuring carry and distance on the two measuring holes per round.

Those fancy launch monitors peskily track carry while ShotLink documented the final distance of the drive.