Category Archives: Accessories

How to Keep Your Ears Warm on a Cold Golf Course

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For the first time since March, nobody wore shorts on Sunday. From left to right: Doug, Tim, Gary, Mike A., Hacker (real name).

Turnout was low last Sunday. The weather was cold and windy—so much so that everyone wore long pants, even though the Sunday Morning Group gives an extra handicap stroke to anyone who wears shorts after November 1 (and two extra strokes after December 1). Also, probably, some guys were still recovering from overexposure to their in-laws during Thanksgiving week.

Because of the weather, I wore two hats plus a thing I got in Norway back in September. (I was there on a New Yorker assignment unrelated to golf.) I don’t know what the thing is called, but here’s what it looks like:

This is the thing I got in Norway.

It’s a fabric tube. You can wear it around your neck or around your ears or around your whole head, and you can also use it as a do-rag-like hat. The person who gave it to me—a guide in a national park—wore hers just around her ears, like this:

A guide in a Norwegian national park.

Last Sunday, I wore mine like that for a while, and then I wore it just around my neck, and then, when the wind picked up, I wore it like this:

I realize that this looks ridiculous, but it was very warm, and it kept my Enniscrone Golf Club stocking cap from popping off the top of my head.

Is the Norwegian thing a snood? I can’t say, because I don’t really know what a snood is, and the dictionary and Google aren’t entirely helpful. Many years ago, a woman on a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts, asked my wife’s grandmother, “Where do you buy your snoods?” and my wife’s grandmother didn’t know how to answer because, even way back then, she didn’t really know what a snood was. (It turned out that the woman was referring to her headband, which my wife’s grandmother had bought at Woolworth’s.) Anyway, I now keep my Norwegian thing in my golf bag, in the same pocket as my winter gloves. It weighs almost nothing, but in cold weather it’s an emergency head heater.

Black Friday Special: Still More Holiday Gift Ideas for Golfers

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Not many shopping days left. Here are some more gift ideas from the Golf Digest Time Machine.

This ad is from almost exactly fifty-five years ago. Even then, selling these would have been a slow way to get rich. There’s still a Rome Paper Company, although it’s in Georgia, not Indiana. Among its many products: a “germ-shaped stress reliever” (not suitable for children under three).

Golf umbrellas, transparent or otherwise, strike me as more trouble than they’re worth, but some people like them. If you forget to take yours on a golf trip to Scotland or Ireland, you can usually find one or two inside-out ones in the trashcan on the second tee of whatever course you’re playing in the rain.

A golf bag that’s also a chair, from 1958. The ad says it’s lightweight, but to me it looks heavy enough to make itself necessary. Could that be Mr. Moreland himself?

This is similar to Stanley’s eBay club carrier, though probably more useful as a weapon. Is that Sam Snead in the photo on the right?

The Sit-n-Rest, from 1959, combines the best (as well as the worst) features of the previous two items. Note the four-club head cover in the bottom right hand corner. Order now!

18 Good Things About Golf: No. 13

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Maybe try adding a cigar: Fuzz and Les, August, 2010.

13. Golf is continually challenging. I used to play frequently with a low-handicap player and long-time student of the game named Art. During one round, he was having trouble with his driver, and on the second tee he said to me in exasperation, “I can’t remember how I take the club back.” Every golfer knows that situation. One day, your swing is there; the next day (or hole), it’s not. No matter how good your game may seem at any particular moment, there’s always some part in need of tinkering, and you always know that the parts which now seem sound may suddenly disintegrate. This prospect of arbitrary, undeserved disaster causes strange behavior. Nick Faldo doesn’t trim his fingernails once a tournament has begun. Tom Watson carries an odd number of coins.

Because the golf swing is so ephemeral, it requires special treatment. My own theory is that you should always be changing something about your game, even when you’re playing well. Your swing won’t stay still, so you mustn’t either. Your only chance of keeping up is to stay a step ahead. Maybe strengthen your grip slightly, or open your stance a bit, or think a little harder about the position of your chin—anything to distract the game-destroying gremlins that are always standing on your shoulder, waiting for you to become complacent. Once when I was playing especially well, I decided suddenly to stop wearing a glove. I wasn’t unhappy with gloves; I just needed something different to think about. And, if my game suddenly went south the following week, I wanted something dumb to blame it on.

More Holiday Gift Ideas for Golfers

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Every year, my secret Christmas wish is “Please don’t buy me golf balls from the big sale display at Dick’s.” Instead of those, how about something from the pages of Golf Digest fifty years ago:

These glasses are from 1958. They wouldn’t do me any good, because I play better with distractions, but I can think of guys they might help. If you could move the side shields to the top, they would be useful in the rain. (Tip: the best way to dry your glasses is with the fingers of your cotton rain gloves, which work almost as well as a chamois.)

Did the pros really heat their balls in 1961, when this advertisement ran? Whether they did or not, is it legal today? If so, Zippo makes a gizmo that looks a lot like the Jon-E Warmer. (You can buy one here.) Gary, our superintendent, usually brings hand-warmers for everyone when we play in the winter. I don’t really care for them, although I did once play while wearing a back warmer. Note the handy “odd” and “even” designations, to prevent confusion on the tee.

This Creature-form-the-Black-Lagoon glove is also from 1961, and also possibly illegal. The digital cluster on the right looks as though it’s about to divide into separate fingers—including, possibly, a sixth one.

Is this the sort of thing Lance Armstrong was doing? Also: why the emphasis on the twelfth hole?

This device, from 1961, might actually be a partial solution to the dirty-pocket-rim problem, which I complained about over the summer. Maybe add a tee bandoleer and some magnetic ball markers?

Still baffled about what to give (or ask for)? More soon.

Five Holiday Gift Ideas for Golfers

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It’s never too early to start shopping for the golfer in your family. These gift ideas are from the pages of Golf Digest in the late 1950s and early 1960s:

This item is from 1957, when golf, cocktail-drinking, and home refrigeration were all ascendant in the United States. U.S. Royal was a trade name of the United States Rubber Company, which renamed itself Uniroyal in 1961. It no longer makes golf balls, although it may still make ice trays.

The reflective metallic golf hat, also from 1957, is an idea that never caught on, for unknown reasons. The hat was probably most useful in match play, since by standing in the right place and tilting your head you could temporarily blind your opponent. The logo notwithstanding, I don’t think anyone ever wore one in the Masters.

Wehrmacht surplus? Somebody must have bought a load of these, because they were advertised all over, and not just in golf publications. This ad is from 1960. Hats like this are still available, although they’re of interest mainly to Third Reich fetishists.

Also from 1960. Golf ball repair is a concept that doesn’t really exist anymore.

This ad is from 1958, but versions of it ran for several years. The price is per week, not per night, and it includes room, golf, meals, tips, and just about everything else. (Dove hunting may have been extra.) Today, you’d pay almost as much at Pinehurst for a dozen Pro V1s.

Don’t see anything you want? More gift ideas soon.

More About My Awesome Golf Shoes

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In recognition of my services as an unpaid shill for their products, True Linkswear sent me a pair of their newest golf shoes, which are shown in the photo above and will be available to the world at large on November 4. I subjected them to the severest shoe test I know: wearing them in front of my wife. She said, “Those are nice.” (Her No. 1 golf-related footwear rule is “no saddle shoes on overweight middle-aged men.” Her No. 2 rule is “no red laces.”) I then took them for a test walk with the dog. They passed.

I now own five pairs of True golf shoes. I also still own three or four pairs of non-True golf shoes, which I wear occasionally so that I can use them up and get rid of them without feeling guilty about throwing them away. On Wednesday, the course was so muddy that I wore an old pair of Nike shoes, which I used to love, and halfway through the round I noticed that the sole of one of them was starting to come loose: Out they went as soon as I got home.

Six or seven members of my club now own True shoes—including our superintendent. Over the summer, I got to play a round at Quaker Ridge, in Scarsdale, New York, as the guest of the father of the husband of a friend. One of our caddies, a young woman from Germany, was wearing Trues. She said she was worried they looked dorky—and they do, generally, although they didn’t on her—but that she was going to keep wearing them anyway, because they were so comfortable.

Angela the caddie, Quaker Ridge, summer, 2012.

Comfortable shoes are going to take over the game the way spikeless shoes did. There are more choices all the time, from FootJoy, Ecco, Nike, and others. There is no reason, anymore, to own golf shoes that don’t feel good the moment you put them on, or to walk for miles over uneven ground in what are essentially wingtips. My friend Hacker (real name) has a pair of golf shoes that he says he’s been breaking in for four years. Enough!

Beer-Related Golf Infrastructure

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You can’t drink beer at the golf course if you can’t open the bottle. The Sunday Morning Group has two built-in bottle openers right on the beer-drinking patio, next to the clubhouse. One opener is attached to a fence post (see above—and note the flower pot, for catching caps); the other is attached to the Superintendent’s Chair (see below). The Superintendent’s Chair is where the superintendent always sits, unless he doesn’t feel like it or someone else is sitting there already.

Also, as backup, every member who played in this year’s member-guest has a belt with a beer-opener buckle (see below). Word to the wise: stand up before opening a beer with your belt. (If you’d like your own beer-opener belt—and what normal golfer wouldn’t?—you can order it here.)

Tap-Cap belt, by Bison Designs, proud sponsor of the Sunday Morning Group (or vice versa).

Critical Golf Accessory: Pocket Handkerchief

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There are several New Yorker writers and at least one award-winning novelist in this group. Lido Golf Club, Lido Beach, New York, September 21, 2012.

On Friday, at Lido Golf Club, three members of my foursome had an odd thing in common: we were carrying little packs of Kleenex, in response to a tenacious cold that’s been burning its way through the Northeast. Kleenex isn’t an ideal golf accessory, because it goes airborne in a breeze and doesn’t hold up to rain or even dew. On Saturday, back at home, I remembered to carry a handkerchief. As a result, I never did what I have often done when my nose was running on a golf course: find the least disgusting square inch of my golf towel and blow my nose into it.

Handkerchiefs have fallen out of use in the general population, but they’re good for golfers, especially in high winds, or during cold or allergy season. I paid fourteen dollars for a thirteen-pack of Van Heusen cotton handkerchiefs—just right for a week-long golf trip to Scotland or Ireland. If I had any sense, I’d keep at least one clean handkerchief in my golf bag all the time.

Incidentally, Kleenex facial tissues were introduced in 1924 as a “sanitary cold cream remover,” but sales remained modest until six years later, when Kimberly-Clark re-positioned them as disposable handkerchiefs. Times change.  In 2003, one of my nieces, who was eleven, saw her grandfather using a handkerchief and asked, with astonishment, “Is that a cloth Kleenex?” I had handkerchiefs when I was a kid—some with monograms—but I would bet that neither of my children, who are in their twenties, has ever used one.

Daniel Wexler, in his terrific book The Missing Links, devotes a chapter to the original Lido, which was designed by Charles Blair Macdonald and Seth Raynor. Bernard Darwin called it “the finest course in the world,” and Claude Harmon called it “the greatest golf course ever.” Part of the current course—which was designed by Robert Trent Jones in 1965—occupies part of the original property, but suburban tract houses cover much of the old layout, and Jones’s course is nothing special. Anyone interested in golf history should own a copy of The Missing Links—and not only because Wexler was a college roommate of my brother’s.

The modern Lido, with smoke stacks and a landfill on the far shore. JFK International Airport is about nine miles to the left.

Beef Box: Hotel & Motel Electrical Outlets

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Power drain hidden behind motel-room refrigerator/minibar/microwave console.

Traveling golfers have stuff they need to plug in overnight: phones, cameras, GPS devices, laptops, tablets, CPAP machines, whatever. Yet many hotel and motel rooms make power extremely hard to access. Often, the only electrical outlets are hidden behind huge pieces of furniture and are already fully in use. The photo above is of a six-outlet adapter plugged into a standard duplex receptacle—the motel’s work-around solution to its own power shortage. All six outlets were in use already, so I had to unplug both the refrigerator and the alarm clock to plug in my Kindle cord, which also works on my phone. (Amazon pointlessly made its adapter too wide to fit side by side with even a normal-size plug.) To get at this mess, I had to move the fridge, which had a microwave on top of it. And the only place I could find to plug in my laptop was behind the bed:

Behind the bed: a duplex with a quad adapter.

I couldn’t plug in my laptop in the bathroom, because my camera battery was already charging in there. A friend of mine travels with a power strip and an extension cord—although in this room he still would have needed to move either the fridge or the bed.

Alien or Shooting Star? Mystery Golf Photo

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I took the photo above the other night and shared it with Graham Stevens, the reader who was kind enough to write about his recent experience at a carts-only course in North Carolina. He used his iPhone to show the picture to his daughter, who is seven, and asked her to guess what it was. Her responses, in order:

  1.  A skinny alien.
  2.  Saturn and a shooting star.
  3. A spooky person staring through the crack of a door with a glow stick on their ankle.

Stevens, in an email, told me: “She then used her fingers to zoom in on the bottom of the picture and said, ‘It looks like a green golf hole.’  I said, ‘Correct!  It is a golf hole.’ She said, ‘Tell your friend he needs a new camera.’ I said, ‘He was playing at night.’ She said, ‘Is he crazy?'”

My crazy friends and I did play golf at night last week, and I’ll be writing about our experience in a future issue of Golf Digest. If you’ve never played golf in the dark, or if you haven’t done it recently, you should watch for the story. As with every other aspect of the game, the technology has improved.

My glowing red ball.