Golfing News & Blog Articles

The NCGA Mourns the Loss of Past President Frank Brunk

December 21, 2021

The NCGA mourns the loss of Past President Frank Brunk, who passed away yesterday.

Brunk, who served as NCGA president in 1991, was the recipient of the first Hall of Fame Service Award at Cal-Berkeley, an honor that recognizes a former student-athlete, coach, administrator or friend of Cal Athletics who has made an outstanding long-term contribution to ideals of the Athletic Department.

The award is presented to a deserving individual for demonstrating exemplary leadership and setting a standard for excellence in enhancing the Cal student-athlete experience. A three-year letterman for the Golden Bears football team from 1947-49, Brunk once returned a kickoff 102 yards for a touchdown against USC that helped secure Cal’s spot in the 1950 Rose Bowl.

Spirit of the Game—Babe Zaharias

December 21, 2021

Olympic gold medal winner in track and field. All-American basketball player in college. Champion golfer. If there was a Jim Thorpe among women athletes, it was Mildred “Babe” Didrikson Zaharias. As a professional golfer, she won 31 tournaments, including three U.S. Women’s Opens, and helped found the Ladies Professional Golf Association. “Babe changed the game of golf for women,” said Patty Berg.

Didrikson didn’t even take up golf seriously until she was 21. She was introduced to the game by Grantland Rice in Los Angeles during the 1932 Olympics. Somewhere in between winning gold medals in the javelin and hurdles-she might have won the high jump, too, had she not been disqualified-Didrikson joined Rice and three other sportswriters for a round of golf at Brentwood C.C. According to Rice, the Babe shot 91 that day and regularly hit drives measuring 250 yards.

The following year, while she was touring the country with the House of David baseball team, Didrikson traveled back to Los Angeles and took golf lessons from pro Stan Kertes at Brentwood. Two years later, she won the Texas Women’s Amateur Championship with an eagle on the 34th hole. The United States Golf Association ruled the following day that as a professional athlete Didrikson could no longer compete in amateur events.

There is a lot of cool gear in the golf world that doesn’t always fit neatly into Most Wanted Tests or Buyer’s Guides. You still want to know how it performs. In our We Tried It series, we put gear to the test and let you know if it works as advertised.

There were a lot of innovative, impressive and helpful things for golfers on the market in 2021 and we tried as many of them as we could. Some were downright awesome. Others left varying amounts of room for improvement.

Here are the highlights of our 2021 We Tried It tests and golf equipment reviews.

Technology

Foresight Sports GC3

Data-minded golfers anxiously awaited the launch of the Foresight Sports GC3 launch monitor. Its older brother, the GCQuad, is the Holy Grail. So is the next addition to the Foresight family as accurate?

We put it to the test. Check out the results below.

 It was fantastic to see Tiger Woods making birdies again last weekend at the PNC Father Son Championship. Let’s hope it was a sign of things to come and he can make it back to his best again and compete in the majors in 2022. 

It was interesting to hear some insights from Tiger about how he is being a parent to a junior golfer, his son Charlie. He said in a recent interview with Golf Digest that:

“His temper carries over into another shot, another shot, another shot and compounds itself. [I said to him] Son, I don’t care how mad you get, just as long as you’re 100 percent committed to the next shot. That’s all that matters. That next shot should be the most important shot in your life. It should be more important than breathing. Once you understand that concept, then I think you’ll get better.”

At his peak, Tiger had the strongest mental game in golf and it was undoubtedly why he was able to dominate for so long. But what few of us realize is that he worked on it. Hearing nuggets like this give us a look into the work he did, such as how he responded to bad shots and got himself ready to hit the next one. Like Tiger is sharing with his son Charlie, these are great lessons to instill in youngsters if you are a coach or parent to a junior golfer. 

Responding To Feelings

After hitting a shot, any number of different feelings can arise – it could be joy and excitement from hitting a good one, or disappointment or frustration from a poor one. Whatever feelings arise, you don’t have control over them. What you do have control over, is your response to those feelings. If you’re a parent to a junior golfer, helping them manage the feelings that arise in a round is an important part of helping them get the best out of themselves. 

Junior Legacy–Most Improved Junior Golfer

December 20, 2021

Last Friday, Eva Denten was presented the Junior Legacy–Most Improved Junior Golfer Award at Green Hills Country Club in Fairfield.

Denten is a member of The Olympic Club and Green Hills CC. How did she win the award?  Data was taken from a range of scores from 1/1/21 to 10/31/21.
Her starting handicap was 54.0 and her ending handicap was 19.2 Her ending handicap as of 12/17/21 was even lower at 18.1
There were 6,600 golfers in the pool for the determination.

Welcome to another edition of History’s Mysteries. It’s our effort to look back at some of golf’s bygone brands and find out what happened to them and why. Today’s look back should be an adventure.

Do you remember the original Lynx Golf?

Talk about an aptly named company. The lynx, of course, is a feline and we all know cats have their allotted nine lives. By our count, the current iteration of Lynx is its eighth. The company’s journey from disruptive early ‘70s innovator to corporate cog to mothballed store brand to European niche is a fascinating one.

So let’s jump in the time machine, buckle up and take a trip back in time.

History’s Mysteries: The First Life of Lynx Golf

History, it’s said, is written by the victors. Today it’s pretty much accepted in golf canon that Karsten Solheim is the man who made investment-cast irons a thing. But would it surprise you to know that the first truly successful investment-cast club was designed and sold by Lynx?

A full Quadrilateral 2021 PNC Championship recap open to all subscribers and looky-loos in celebration of Tiger Woods’ comeback.

At some point we’ll have to start speculating on a return to majors but for now, enjoy what was a better-than-most weekend of silly season golf.

Tiger Woods showed signs of his old self in three days of golf with son Charlie at the PNC Championship. But he was riding a cart, in a relaxed atmosphere. What does that mean in terms of his return to competitive golf? Only time will tell.

Tiger Woods and son Charlie rattled off 11 consecutive birdies Sunday at \the PNC Championship, ultimately falling one shot short of winners John and John II Daly. "We had just the best time ever," Woods said afterward.

The top 50 from the final world ranking of the year was set on Sunday, increasing the Masters field to 83 players.

Tiger Woods keeps saying he doesn't have speed or distance. On Sunday, with son Charlie at the PNC Championship, it seems he has both.

Tiger Woods showed flashes of the 15-time major champion amid some struggles in his first competitive round of golf in a year.

Tiger Woods back on the course for a competitive round -- even if it is a relaxed one -- for the first time since his February car crash will draw all sorts of attention.

Tiger Woods called his return to the golf course on Friday 'an awesome day' as he played with his 12-year-old son, Charlie, ahead of the PNC Championship at the Ritz-Carlton Golf Club in Orlando, Florida.

Charlie Woods had his wedge game dialed in during Friday's pro-am at the PNC Championship. How dialed in? Well, you just have to watch.

There is a lot of cool gear in the golf equipment world that doesn’t always fit neatly into Most Wanted Tests or Buyer’s Guides. You still want to know how it performs. In our We Tried It series, we put gear to the test and let you know if it works as advertised.

WHAT WE TRIED

The Full Swing KIT.

WHAT’S A FULL SWING KIT?

A Full Swing KIT is a Doppler radar-based personal launch monitor that can be used outside and, soon, indoors as well. The Full Swing KIT offers 16 different data points to help you dial in your game. If that wasn’t enough, the launch monitor has a 4k-resolution camera built into the unit to record every swing.

Personally, I think the camera is a huge plus because you can really see what your swing looks like. If you don’t understand what you’re doing wrong, you can send it to your coach and get instant feedback. Neat, huh?

The Full Swing KIT operates like your smartphone. You can click and drag, remove or add any data points, see your dispersion pattern and more at a touch of a button. It is as easy as that. This is just one reason why Full Swing KIT is unique because of its fully customizable interface.