Masters Week Weather: WTF!

Posted on April 4, 2016 by David Owen

Oh, relax—I didn’t take that photo in Augusta. I took it here in Connecticut, where we just finished the mildest winter since the dinosaurs went extinct. (The nearest muny was closed for all of eight weeks; my home course re-opened earlier than it ever has before.) But then, early Sunday morning, the world looked like this:

We called off Sunday Morning Group, and I hung around the house and “did chores.” Around lunchtime, though, Addison pointed out, by email, that most of the snow was gone from his yard, so he, Tim D., Mike A., and I met on the first tee at 3:00. It was cold, and the wind was blowing hard, but we had the course to ourselves:

Here’s what the bulletin-board thing near the clubhouse looked like when we finished, a bit less than three hours later:

And here’s what we looked like:

This isn’t an art shot. The image is crooked because I had to prop the camera on the head of my driver.

We’ve had several opportunities recently to make our storm gear seem like a good investment. Here’s Barney on Saturday, when we played in rain:

And, because only three guys showed up on both Friday and Saturday, we invented a new three-man game: three six-hole matches, in each of which one of us played against the better ball of the other two. The bet was two dollars per man per match, with automatic presses. It was fun, and the money came out virtually even, but we won’t be able to try it again for a while, because more snow fell overnight—and it’s still falling right now. I’m doing laundry!

Reader’s Trip Report: 2016 Connecticut Golf Show

Posted on March 31, 2016 by David Owen

Mark Beebe, in “visor wig.”

The forecast for two Sundays ago included “up to” a foot of snow. We got about three quarters of an inch, so I guess the forecast was accurate. The day before the big storm, Mark Beebe, an out-of-town member of the Sunday Morning Group, visited the Connecticut Golf Show, at the convention center in Hartford, with his golf buddy Tom. Mark’s report:

“Tom’s wife is recovering from a serious illness, and he’s also been helping another old golf buddy, ‘Lefty’ Bob, who’s in failing health. So it was good to see him and get him out doing something we both like: wasting time doing golf stuff.”

ctgolfshow16

“Pretty much all the major equipment guys were there. I didn’t try any of the clubs, because my March swing is not of club-fitting quality and if I wait until my July swing shows up the same equipment will be available at a higher price—the same strategy I use for investing in stocks.”

“Nevertheless, I did buy a few things. I broke my No. 1 rule, as always, by buying a club without swinging it, a TaylorMade M1 3-wood. I also bought a ball marker with the insignia of Michigan State, my alma mater—which was nice because the Spartans had just gotten bounced from the NCAA tournament, in the first round, the day before. There were no Middle Tennessee State ball markers, but I did pick up a dozen of last year’s Titleist NXT Tours. I went through racks and tables of remnants and leftovers, and noticed that they had great prices for small and medium golf shirts, but hardly anything in XL. There was also a guy selling coffee tables:”

“Does anyone actually keep score with these things?”

“I picked up lots of brochures from golf resorts, and one from the John Casablanca modeling and talent agency, which had a booth. I asked the Casablanca people why they had come to a golf expo, and they said, ‘Because that’s where the people are.’ I took their brochure to give to my daughter, who is studying theater in college.”

“Tom and I stopped for lunch on our way home and got caught up. That was the best part. We’re hoping to tee it up in the next couple weeks, weather and health issues permitting. And when I got home I found a good place to put my NCAA bracket:”

Use This Stuff to Fix Stuff

Posted on March 15, 2016 by David Owen

I often wonder whether the people who design things ever actually use them — like golf-bag pen holders that aren’t deep enough to engage the pocket clip on a Sharpie:

The radio in my car gradually fades in when I turn it on, and gradually fades out when I turn it off—I guess because somebody thought that simply starting and stopping would seem too low-tech. But the fading screws up audio books, because every fade-in obliterates a couple of sentences, and every fade-out obliterates a couple more. That’s dumb!

Like many cars, mine has a console between the two front seats which contains a 12-volt electrical outlet, a USB port, and an audio jack, among other things. Unlike some such consoles, mine has a little trough in the front, so that when my phone is plugged in I can put the armrest back down without chopping the cable in half:

That’s good. But the designer who added that little trough didn’t think it all the way through. Almost every time I open the console, my phone cable creeps out of the trough, and that means when I put the armrest back down I’m once again in danger of chopping the cable in half.

Well, I’ve now eliminated that design flaw, with a cool product my wife told me about, called Sugru. The people who manufacture Sugru describe it as “mouldable glue.” It’s a little bit sticky, and it has a consistency that’s somewhere between that of chewed chewing gum and Silly Putty.

You shape Sugru with your fingers, and stick it to whatever you’re trying to fix, then leave it alone for 24 hours. It turns into something that feels like hard rubber, and it stays stuck. I used black Sugru to make a little roof for the cable trough under the armrest in my car. The armrest still latches when I close it, but now my phone’s USB cord can’t wander into trouble:

Sugru has lots of other uses. You can use it to repair frayed cables:

And to keep your table saw from electrocuting you:

You can also use it to repair all kinds of golf stuff, including leaky shoes, cracked range-finder cases, broken GPS holders, and that little loose thing down near the hosel that’s just about driving you crazy. Incidentally, when I bought my table saw, I asked the salesman what the round opening in the deck was for:

He said, “That’s to hold your beer.”

Field Test: True Linkswear Elements and Pants-in-a-Jar

Posted on March 5, 2016 by David Owen

We had a huge rainstorm the other day—a good thing, for two reasons. First, the storm gave me an opportunity to pursue what I now realize would be my No. 1 choice of occupation if for some reason I could no longer work as a writer: vacuuming up water. (Our basement was flooded, and I spent a fulfilling evening emptying it with my wet/dry Shop-Vac, my portable sump pump, and a hundred feet of garden hose.) Second, the storm washed away all the remaining snow in this part of the country, making several area golf courses fully playable again. On Sunday, my friends and I traveled to the Woodbridge Country Club, which we first visited in early December:

Ice-free pond at Woodbridge Country Club, Woodbridge, Connecticut.

The course was wet and muddy in lots of places, and I was able to test my latest golf-related purchase: a pair of True Linkswear Elements golf shoes. I’ve been an enthusiastic unpaid shill for True Linkswear for several years, but we had a falling out a few months ago over an earlier model, called True Motion, which apparently are not supposed to be worn outdoors. (Mine fell apart.) The company assured me that it was on the case, and that Elements (which are new this year) would address all my issues. I wore mine around town for several days, then subjected them to Woodbridge.

true elements

As far as I can tell, they fully live up to their billing. They’re insanely comfortable, like all my dozen other pairs of True golf shoes, and, even though I purposely stood in puddles, they never leaked. I’m going to order a second pair and take both to Ireland in early May. (You can find them online for a hundred bucks.) My only wish is that True would make a high-top version. Their shoes are so low-slung that your socks, which probably aren’t waterproof, are vulnerable in tall grass. Rickie Fowler has made the world safe for high-top golf shoes. Let’s go!

Doug and Keith.

The group on Sunday included Keith, a new member. Doug, who’s a teacher, asked him if he and his wife have kids; he said they don’t yet, but that they have “pulled the goalie.” Keith looked like a veteran, because he had dressed to take advantage of our winter shorts rule (two extra handicap strokes for shorts after December 1). I wore shorts, too, and I supplemented them with a concoction that I’m thinking of marketing, as Pants-in-a-Jar. It’s a mixture of Warm Skin (“a soothing balm that moisturizes and insulates against weather extremes”) and capsaicin creme (an arthritis ointment that generates heat). Warm Skin is what many NFL players use to protect themselves when they play in Green Bay in December. I rubbed a ton on my bare legs before we teed off, and I never felt cold.

I’m hoping that I won’t need to use Pants-in-a-Jar many more times this winter. Three of us ran into our club’s greens committee at a local breakfast place on Saturday, and although we couldn’t overhear what they were talking about we decided that maybe they were discussing an opening date. Fingers crossed.

Reader’s Fashion Tip: Insulated Shorts for Winter Golf

Posted on February 23, 2016 by David Owen

The golf courses within driving distance of my hometown have been closed for so much of this winter that I haven’t had many opportunities to take advantage of Sunday Morning Group’s shorts rule: one extra handicap stroke if you wear shorts after November 1, two extra strokes after December 1. If we do get to play again, I’m going to try some shorts I learned about from Tim Kresse, a reader in Oxford, Ohio. They’re called Alpha Shorts, and they’re filled with Polartec insulation. They’re made by a company called Qor, which is practically giving them away.

The company’s website describes them like this:

“They’re super stretchy, don’t look insulated, and are styled like trousers: structured waist with front zip/button fly closure, slash hand pockets on the side, two back pockets (one with a zipper), and belt loops.”

Kresse himself says:

“I’m an administrator at Miami University, the alma mater of Ben Roethlisberger and the place Robert Frost called ‘the most beautiful campus that ever there was.’ I have to agree that it is quite a pretty campus and a good school. The Qor catalog just showed up, but I have to say that the insulated shorts seemed the perfect thing for the winter golf game. I do wonder, though, would that be cheating or does the open air nature of the leg sufficiently offset any insulation value?”

The rules, so far, allow insulated shorts. What they don’t allow is tall socks. Back to Kresse:

“The picture above is of me during a practice round at the Memorial Tournament last year. I bought my daughter (no, really) a tournament flag and got some autographs. Once I realized I had the autograph of the winner of the Memorial, the Masters, the US Open, the (British) Open, and PGA championship, I decided it could stay in my office for a while. She’ll get it one day. I play golf at Hueston Woods State Park Golf Course, just north of town, and Indian Ridge Golf Club, just south of town. Here’s a summer moon over Hueston Woods:”

“During the winter, though, golf is mostly in hibernation, with the occasional trip to the driving range or a trip south. I last played at Great Dunes on Jekyll Island, Georgia, just before Thanksgiving. Here’s a picture of the fifth green and sixth tee, which overlook the Atlantic. It’s a nice nine-hole course, perfect for walking:”

“To keep ourselves busy in the winter, we move to indoor sports, including broomball, and I have found that winter golf gloves are great for for broomball. They are just enough to keep hands warm on ice, improve the grip on the broomball stick, and work great as a goalie gloves (the position I usually play).”

I’d never heard of broomball before, but here’s what it looks like. That’s not Kresse in the net. At least, I don’t think it is. (I found the photo online.)

Broomball players don’t wear skates, but they do get to buy broomball shoes, among other things. You can read all about the game here. Back to Kresse:

“I first played broomball at Ohio University (another very attractive campus) in the early 1990s. Games were almost always late at night, when the ice was free, and we played with a deflated volleyball, our own tennis shoes, and cut-down brooms (both ends) for ‘sticks’. Now games are still often played late at night, but there are specific broomballs, sticks, and shoes, which make it easier to get around the ice (I call them clown shoes). I’ve also bought hockey shin guards to protect from sticks and falls. And, thankfully, we play half-ice (half-rink) and not full-ice games.”

I Perform Reconstructive Surgery on my Laser Rangefinder

Posted on January 22, 2016 by David Owen

A year and a half ago, I bought a Bushnell Tour Z6 laser rangefinder. It’s not as good at picking up distant targets as its predecessor in my golf bag—an ancient Bushnell PinSeeker 1500—but it’s small enough to fit in a pants pocket, and the battery lasts forever, and I like it. My only beef about the Z6 (as I wrote here) is that the eyepiece, which keeps sunlight off the lens while you’re using it and is the thing you turn to adjust the focus, looks solid but is actually a cheap, floppy rubber tube that’s held in place by not-very-strong glue.

The eyepiece on mine came almost all the way off one of the first times I used it, but I pushed it back on and tried to be careful with it. At some point during a round last spring, though, it disappeared. A reader named Matty wrote to say that he’d had a similar experience:

“I have this problem with my Z6 as well. Only difference is I didn’t lose my eye piece — it just came off. Called Bushnell, and apparently it’s a common problem. He says to just clean the inside and the eyepiece part of the rangefinder with alcohol and use ‘Zap Glue,’ like they use, at the 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock positions so it doesn’t interfere with the focusing part of the rangefinder. There’s a dot on top of the eyepiece where you can make an alignment so that, when you glue the rubber eyepiece back, you can align the red line with it. As for the rubber eyepiece going missing, I’m sure Bushnell would be happy to send you a new one.”

Because I had lazily waited to complain until after my warranty had expired, Bushnell’s happiness about sending me a new eyepiece depended on my sending them $6.00 for a replacement part and $3.10 for shipping, plus a stamp for the order form (which can be downloaded from the company’s website but not submitted there). Worse, the new eyepiece they sent me wasn’t new. It was clearly a cadaver part from somebody else’s busted Z6, because there was lots of old glue stuck to the inner surface of the rubber (which is turned inside-out in the photo below, to make the old glue easier to see):

There was also residual finger crud, presumably from the previous owner, in the indentations on the other side:

Oh, well, forgive and forget.

Since the kind of glue Bushnell uses at the factory clearly doesn’t work very well, I used epoxy glue instead—after first setting the focus at a distance I figured I could live with, since I assumed (correctly) that the eyepiece would no longer turn once I had finished cementing it in place.

Bushnell apparently isn’t the only company whose rangefinders don’t stay together. Here’s my golf buddy Rick’s Callaway LR550, which was made by Nikon and probably ought to have come with a roll of Scotch tape:

Shoe Repair for Lazy Golf Moochers

Posted on January 19, 2016 by David Owen

I work at home, and when I’m not working I hang out mainly with lowlifes, so I don’t have many opportunities to wear what my daughter, when she was little, called my Out Shoes. I do need Out Shoes when I’m invited to play golf at rich-guy clubs, and on those occasions (sadly infrequent) I always wear my sorriest-looking pair, because I know that, while I’m playing, the locker-room shoe guy will miraculously turn them back into something I wouldn’t be ashamed to be seen wearing in a clubhouse. On a weekend-trip to Pine Valley many years ago, I packed three pairs, and set them out for resuscitation one pair at a time.

My oldest surviving pair of Out Shoes are some black loafers, which various locker-room guys kept respectable-looking for almost a quarter-century. Those guys couldn’t do anything about the soles, however. The leather got thinner and thinner, until, finally, five or ten years ago, one sole wore all the way through. The hole grew to the size of a quarter, and when I sat down for drinks after golf I had to be careful to keep that foot flat on the ground. I also had to stay away from puddles.

I’m too cheap to buy a new pair—the last time I splurged on Out Shoes was four and a half years ago, for my daughter’s wedding—but shoe-repair shops in my area, as in much of the rest of the country, are just about extinct. Last month, I finally sent my worn-out loafers to a mail-in repair place, called Resole America, and the result is so awesome that I wish I’d done it a decade sooner.

New leather soles, combination heels, and a complete refinishing of the uppers cost $65, plus shipping—way less than new shoes. The entire round trip took a month, but the wait was worth it. And I didn’t miss out on anything, because, as usual, I had no reason to go Out.

If You Use a Pushcart (and You Should), You Need This Brilliant Accessory

Posted on December 26, 2015 by David Owen

Most of my friends now play with pushcarts—a great relief for shoulders, backs, and knees. The only challenge comes at the end of the round, when you have to put the thing back in your car:

Richard Hunt—a reader and honorary member of the Sunday Morning Group—has the solution. He writes:

“I was in the parking lot after a fall round at Van Cortlandt, in the Bronx — our nation’s oldest public golf course, founded in 1895 — and I was scraping goose turds from the grooves in my cart tires with a tee, and cursing, when a guy across the lot opened his trunk and pulled out a gargantuan laundry bag. It took me a minute to realize the genius: the bag contained his Sun Mountain Speed Cart.”

Richard immediately bought a gargantuan laundry bag of his own, from Amazon, for less than the price of a sleeve of balls. They come in lots of colors:

As a result, the trunk of his car looks like something you wouldn’t be ashamed to open for an agent from the Department of Homeland Security:

My current pushcart—a Big Max Blade+—actually came with a bag. And it’s padded!

Rick, an S.M.G. regular, saw my bag and devised a solution of his own, an enormous Williams-Sonoma shopping bag. (They give you one free if you order 100 pounds of peppermint bark.)

Or you could try this:

Our Awesome New Waterproof Scorecards Are Here!

Posted on December 6, 2015 by David Owen

In February 2007, Ray, Tony, and I played golf in the rain for five days at Bandon Dunes. We had the same caddies for all ten rounds, and during an especially troublesome downpour they switched us to waterproof scorecards, which another Bandon caddie, Todd Petrey, had invented. Here are Ray, Tony, two of our caddies, and some other guy during a relatively dry moment on that trip:

Petrey graduated from the University of Florida 1992 with a degree in sports therapy, and tried to play golf professionally for a while. He began caddying when he was short of cash, and one of the places he worked was East Lake, in Atlanta, where the weather is so disgustingly hot and humid that scorecards sometimes dissolve in perspiration. To deal with that problem, and also with rain, he invented Drycards. (“Like a normal scorecard, only better because you can use it as a coaster.”) Petrey’s company didn’t stay in business for long—apparently, the average golfer doesn’t play in bad weather as often as the Sunday Morning Group does—but he told me how to make the cards, and my friends and I now make our own. You can make them, too. Here’s how they work (my wife lent me a baking pan for this demonstration):

You can write on them with a regular pencil, even underwater, and you can erase what you’ve written with a regular eraser. The secret is synthetic paper, which Petrey first noticed in New Zealand, while caddying at Cape Kidnappers. New Zealand prints its banknotes on polypropylene, which has many advantages over paper made from cotton fibers: it lasts longer, stays cleaner, and is easier to make secure. It’s also waterproof and tear-proof. For our first batch, we used polypropylene card stock manufactured by a company called Yupo.

Those cards worked great, but they were expensive, so when we ran out we switched to thinner stock, manufactured by Xerox, and had the scorecard part printed on both sides, so that each card can be used twice. The relative thinness of the new stock isn’t a problem, because the stuff is indestructible:

As always, we had the printing done at PrintWorks, the official provider of graphic services to the Sunday Morning Group. The paper was still expensive — a buck a sheet — but because we got four usable sides out of each sheet our total unit cost was a little less than 30 cents.

Doug, who runs PrintWorks with his mother, is an old hand at this stuff now. He’ll print waterproof scorecards for you, too, if you ask him nicely. Here he is consulting with Hacker (real name):

I Wish My Favorite Golf Shoes Didn’t Leak

Posted on October 29, 2015 by David Owen

I learned about True Linkswear golf shoes at the PGA Golf Merchandise Show in 2011. The pair I tried on at the show was too small—the company’s reps had sold out of my size—but they were still the most comfortable golf shoes I’d ever worn. I now have a dozen pairs, and I wear them even when I’m not playing golf, and many of my friends have switched to them, too. Tim even bought a True golf bag:

My only beef, until now, has been that the pairs I own that are supposed to be waterproof aren’t really—and other golfers who wear and love Trues have told me the same thing. My favorite model ever is one they don’t sell anymore, called “lyt/dry,” which I wear in preference to other shoes even when I’m not playing golf. They are definitely lyt but they’ve never been truly dry, even though the word “waterproof” is printed right on the side:

I’ve dealt with that issue by wearing wool socks when I play in the rain or when the grass is wet, and I’ve dried wet pairs between rounds by using the hairdryer in my hotel room, and I’ve persevered because even when my Trues were leaking they were way more comfortable than any other golf shoes I’ve ever worn. But during the Sunday Morning Group’s recent golf trip to Atlantic City my latest pair, called True motion, didn’t just leak — they basically came apart:

Now, True doesn’t claim that motions are waterproof, and this particular pair had been in my golf-shoe rotation for more than a year. Still, we were playing in dew, not rain, and I had subjected them, cumulatively, to less wear and tear than I have to my very first pair of Trues, which is four and a half years old and which I still walk the dog in. Yet they didn’t hold up:

I complained to the company, and a representative assured me that a new model coming in early 2016, called True elements, will really and truly be “breathable & waterproof.” And I hope he’s right, because even when they’re wet I really, really love these shoes.

My Usual Game: David Owen

ADVENTURES IN GOLF

Category Archives: Accessories