These are the Best Post-golf Beer Glasses, and I’m Not Kidding

Posted on June 11, 2015 by David Owen

Hydro Flask, a company for which I am an unpaid shill, makes my favorite golf beverage bottle, which I own in three versions: one for water (21 ounces), one for coffee (18 ounces), and one for lots of water (32 ounces). There have been golf rounds during which I have carried all three, using various pockets and beverage holders on my golf bag and pushcart. This year, Hydro Flask introduced insulated beverage glasses, called True Pint. They hold 16 ounces, and they have a finish that won’t come off in the dishwasher, and they have a clever ridge inside, down near the bottom, which lets you stack them without getting them stuck together. They work for beer, of course, but they also work for hot stuff, and they are now my go-to container for the gallon or so of coffee I drink in my office during the day while I supposedly work. I took my collection to the course on a recent Sunday, and let the guys test-drive them after our round.

They liked them so much that I worried I’d never see them again if I didn’t keep a close count.

Chic, our chairman, said maybe we ought to get them for everyone, and keep them on a shelf in the men’s locker room. That way, Mike A. could stop going to Costco after work to buy cases of red plastic beer cups. We could have our names printed on them, and maybe some other stuff, too.

Meanwhile, Les—whose wife has spent the past year regretting that she gave him an electric pushcart for his birthday, because he can’t control it—finally ran it into the creek. (The photo below is kind of fuzzy because it was taken from two fairways away.)

Will Les’s cart ever run again? Everyone hopes not, but we won’t know until it has dried out.

Shouldn’t You Change the Way You Mark Your Ball?

Posted on May 30, 2015 by David Owen

Some people, when they’re having trouble with their golf game, take a lesson or even sign up for golf school, but others make a slight change in the way they mark their golf ball while also switching to a different color of Sharpie, the official ball-marking pen of the world of golf. At any rate, that’s what I did recently. And—who knows?—maybe my new ball-identification strategy will add thirty or forty yards to my tee shots. In the photo above, the ball on the left is marked with my old, discredited pattern and color, and the ball on the right is marked with my new. I made the change because Rick had suddenly begun marking his ball almost exactly the way I was accustomed to marking mine. Or maybe he’d always marked his ball that way and I’d only just noticed. Either way, I was ready for a change, and I was happy to have an excuse to order an entire box of red Sharpies:

When most golfers mark their ball, they don’t mark it enough, in my opinion. Whatever technique you use, you should make sure you can identify your ball without touching it, no matter how it’s lying on the ground. I use eight widely spaced dots, and even when my ball is in the rough I can almost always see at least a couple of them. Too many players check their ball by picking it up, then putting it back down in an obviously better lie. Who do they think they are? Tom Brady?

How to Hit a Lob Shot From the Back of a Pickup Truck

Posted on May 25, 2015 by David Owen

Recently, the Sunday Morning Group held a shootout in which the prizes were some stuff sent to us by Famous Smoke Shop, our tobacco sponsor and smoking connection, which sells cigars online, by mail order, and in person (at the company’s headquarters and retail super store, in Easton, Pennsylvania). The format was lob wedge over the patio to the practice green, closest to the pin, from the bed of Fritz’s pickup truck. The prizes were a cutter, a butane lighter, a humidor, and a handful of cigars. The cutter, the lighter, and the humidor had the awesome logo of one of Famous Smoke Shop’s subsidiary websites, CigarMonster, which sells cigar-related gear. The cigars were Infernos.

Fritz backed his truck up to the fence and dropped the tailgate. The truck’s bed has a plastic liner—good for spin. Climbing into the truck while holding a wedge, a ball, and a beer took some doing. Here’s Hacker (real name) using the bumper as a step:

And here’s Nick P., taking a shot:

Nick’s ball didn’t stay on the green, so he didn’t win anything, but he did earn points for bringing lunch, including an SMG semi-first: barbecued chicken.

Mike A. and Peter A. came in first and second in the cigar shootout, and took the cutter and the lighter, respectively. Chic came in third and took the Cigar Monster humidor:

Chic is our golf chairman. One Sunday, he came close to shooting his pants: waist size on the front, inseam on the back.

After the shootout, we held a quick meeting to decide whether to play a second eighteen or go home and do chores (i.e., take a nap).

The Best Sunscreen for Golfers is Now Available as a Spray

Posted on May 16, 2015 by David Owen

New Zealanders didn’t invent skin cancer, but they’ve come close to perfecting it: their country is stuck under one of the skimpier parts of the ozone layer. The only time the tops of my ears have ever peeled was during a golf trip Kauri Cliffs and Cape Kidnappers, in 2007 (photo above). So it isn’t surprising that New Zealanders have also created the best sunscreen for golfers: GolfersSkin, which is used by a large and growing number of tour pros and caddies. It’s sweat-proof, and it isn’t greasy, and it doesn’t stain golf shirts, and it comes in several forms—among them, now, a spray, which is especially easy to apply to bare arms and legs. My wife says the non-spray versions smell like “fine coconut cologne”; the spray is coconut-free, and if you use it in combination with insect repellent you can turn your legs into a La Brea-Tar-Pits-style mausoleum for flying and crawling bugs.

Has Anyone Else Had This Problem With Their Rangefinder?

Posted on April 28, 2015 by David Owen

Last June, I bought a Bushnell Tour Z6 laser rangefinder. It’s not as good at picking up distant targets as my ancient Bushnell PinSeeker 1500 was, but it’s small enough to fit in a pocket, and the battery lasts a long time, and I like it. (I had made myself believe that the PinSeeker was broken, but as soon as the Z6 arrived I discovered that it still worked fine. So I sold it to Kevin for $48 and a ball-marker.)

My only beef about the Z6 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 nothing but some kind of not-very-strong glue. Here’s the eyepiece:

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 today, though, it disappeared. Here’s what my Z6 looks like now. You can see a tiny, booger-like remnant of the old glue, over on the lower right:

Has this happened to anyone else? I didn’t handle it roughly, a lesson I learned with my first rangefinder. I just used it while playing golf. And — Hey, Bushnell! — what am I supposed to do now? Is my rangefinder still waterproof? Can the eyepiece be replaced? Should I try to trick Kevin into selling me back my PinSeeker?

Have a Cigar! Hey, Have Two!

Posted on April 20, 2015 by David Owen

There are two approaches to turning yourself into a human billboard: the single-logo, less-is-more approach, typified by Tiger Woods (Nike) and Jordan Spieth (Under Armour), and the how-much-personal-surface-area-do-I-control approach, typified by Jim Furyk and NASCAR. My friends and I fall into the second category, and, even though by now we have virtually covered ourselves with umlauts (thanks to Jägermeister, the official all-weather intoxicant of the Sunday Morning Group), we haven’t finished selling out.

Recently, we added another major sponsor: Famous Smoke Shop, which sells cigars online, by mail order, and in person (at the company’s headquarters and retail super store, in Easton, Pennsylvania). Famous Smoke is what is known in the business world as a “good fit” with a lot of the guys I play golf with.

Famous Smoke was founded in New York City in 1939 by David and Rose Zaretsky, and it’s owned today by their son Arthur, who, whether he plays golf or not, is now an honorary member of the Sunday Morning Group. The company operates several cigar-oriented websites—not just Famous-Smoke but also CigarAuctioneer (which sells lighters and other accessories) and CigarMonster (which has the coolest golf hats):

When we played at Richter Park two weekends ago, we handed out a bunch of goodies that Famous Smoke had sent us during the courtship phase of our relationship: cigars, hats, shirts, towels, and other stuff. We gave those things to ourselves and also to random strangers, including this guy:

It was like Man Halloween.

Cigars have sort of been in the news recently, because the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba will presumably lead eventually to the normalization of relations between American cigar smokers and Cuban cigars. I asked our new friends at Famous Smoke about that, and learned that Arthur Zaretsky believes that an end to the cigar embargo would be good good for Cubans and for his company (and therefore, by extension, for the Sunday Morning Group), but that, for a variety of mostly legal reasons, he doesn’t believe it will happen soon. Even so, he’s optimistic, long-term; he told a local reporter, “I’ve been waiting 45 years to sell Cuban cigars.”

Recently, someone told me that when the pros sell out they do it for money, not just for hats and shirts with awesome logos on them. Whoa! Maybe we’ll work on that next.

Best New Shoes, Plus Good News for Sober Golfers

Posted on April 15, 2015 by David Owen

True Linkswear, the golf-shoe company for which I am an unpaid shill, recently sent me what must be my tenth or twelfth pair, called True Motion:

They are now not only my favorite golf shoes but also just about the only shoes I ever wear—although if I had to go to a funeral or a wedding I’d wear an older (and, sadly, recently discontinued) model, my black-and-dark-gray True Lyt Drys:

This latest pair was accompanied by a moral quandary: a $50 gift card, which I was instructed, by the company’s publicists, to spend on “some range buckets or a round of 9 on us.” Somehow, accepting a free pair of golf shoes from a golf-shoe company didn’t strike me as an ethical problem but accepting a (less valuable) gift card did. So I decided to square things up with my conscience by donating the value of the gift card to a golf-related charitable organization. The one I picked is SoberGolf:

I learned about SoberGolf from Peter Fox, who was a founding executive producer at ESPN and the producer of Golf Digest’s video Moe Norman & Natural Golf (see photo at the bottom of this post). He told me, “This May 21 will mark 28 years since my last drink, enabling me over time to shoot my age, become the senior club champion at Hillandale Golf Course (in Durham, North Carolina), and create SoberGolf, a manifestation of the realization that for some of us golf is a place where our sobriety is enhanced.” Here he is with the trophy he received for winning that club championship:

And here’s more of Peter’s story:

There’s little doubt in my mind that golf helped me get sober. There’s no doubt golf helps me stay sober. My hands used to tremble on the first tee and when I faced short putts. The quivers would stop with three or four fingers of fermented potatoes. I read and researched all I could find on the yips—the dreaded affliction that shortened the careers of Hogan and Miller. I watched Watson overcome them and determined that I could, too. Then I saw the tremors spread to marking my scorecard and golf ball.

The awakening came early one Saturday morning on the fifth tee at my club during a pretty healthy money match. I bent to tee my ball, fumbled it, chased it, lost my balance, and body-surfed over the grass embankment.

That incident ignited another search—this time a soul search. It took a while, but I came to know and believe I am powerless over alcohol. And by that time my off-course life was in a shambles. As I write this, nearing the end of my third decade of sobriety, I am grateful to golf for triggering an arduous yet rewarding trek toward sanity. And I am grateful to golf for introducing me to my wife, the only significant woman in my life to never have seen me drink.

There’s much more on the website—including a mailing list that circulates information about alcohol-free golf trips and other events. And if you want to contact Peter directly you can do that by emailing peter@sobergolf.org.

Are These the Best Socks for Golf?

Posted on March 16, 2015 by David Owen

First, a weather update. Here’s what the my patio looked like on March 2:

And here’s what it looked like two weeks later:

Note that the enormous tabletop “snow loaf” in the first photo has virtually disappeared, revealing the handle of a barbecue utensil I forgot to bring indoors before the weather went to hell. You can also make out almost all of my charcoal grill, which, somewhat surprisingly, I remembered to cover up the last time I used it. Meanwhile, Pelham Bay Golf Course, in the Bronx, has announced that it will reopen on Thursday, and, if it really does, the Sunday Morning Group’s winter competition, the Jagermeister Kup, will resume there this weekend. (I’ll be traveling, alas.)

During the lousy weather, I’ve been testing (during dog walks) some socks I learned about from guys who hang out with PGA Tour players. They’re made by a company called Kentwool, which is the official game-day sock provider of Bubba Watson and Matt Kuchar, among others. Charles Barkley—whose feet are so big (size 16) that he may need to wear two on each foot—says, “Even though my golf game is terrible, my feet always feel great in my Kentwool socks.” Here’s what the quarter-height golf socks look like:

And here’s what the tall golf socks look like:

Both kinds are seventy-five percent wool, and they’re padded and hinged in all the right places, and they really do feel great, with shoes or without. A word of caution: the short socks are twenty bucks a pair, and the tall ones are twenty-five, so you probably shouldn’t place an order without first talking to your financial adviser. Another word of caution: a person who works in the clothing industry told me recently that two of the next big trends in golf socks are going to be “big” and “colorful.” On one of my first reporting assignments, more than thirty years ago, I traveled to England with a large group of American Beatles fanatics, among them Charles F. Rosenay!!!, who had had three exclamation points legally added to his last name. Here’s a picture of Rosenay!!! at a rest stop near the birthplace of William Shakespeare:

He was ahead of the curve on both the Converse All Stars and the man purse, so don’t automatically assume that he was wrong about the socks.

You Need This Flashlight for Your Golf Bag (or Your Police Car)

Posted on March 14, 2015 by David Owen

My Golf Digest colleague Guy Yocom recently told me about a super-powerful flashlight he’d bought after learning about it about from a policeman he knows in Ohio:

When the cop used one on the job, virtually everyone in his department fell in love with it. Out of curiosity, I bought the outfit, too. He was right—the light is so bright that it illuminates my entire backyard. And when you shine it on a white ceiling inside you can easily read a book, vacuum, or make the bed. What you cannot do is stare at the bulb for longer than one second. It definitely would blind anyone not named Clark Kent.

The flashlight is called the Fenix PD35. It has four beam settings and a maximum output of 960 lumens—which is bright. Yocom continued:

Of course, I thought about whether it could be used for golf. The answer is yes, especially if all four guys in a group carried one. The Fenix is small and fits in a little hip holster. With two of these things popping at full brightness, you could easily illuminate a guy’s entire shot, from start to finish, and read a green as well at night as in daytime.

I bought one immediately. In tests of my own, I have also proven—and this could be important—that the beam is powerful enough to melt snow. The outfit Yocom recommends consists of the light, a pair of rechargeable batteries, and a charger. I also bought a detachable red filter, because red light doesn’t kill your eyes’ adaptation to dark. Or so I’ve read.

Yocom, incidentally, is Golf Digest’s master interviewer. He’s done some great ones over the years. Why don’t you cut the power in your house, shine your Fenix on the ceiling, and re-read a few of them—maybe starting with this one, with Payne Stewart in 1999.

Making Awesome Golf Stuff Even Awesomer

Posted on March 6, 2015 by David Owen

A group of professional caddies is suing the PGA Tour for requiring them to wear bibs bearing the logos of companies that pay fees to the tour but not to the caddies—and I hope they win, because it’s true, as one sportswriter said, that the tour is forcing the caddies to serve as “unpaid human billboards.” It’s a good thing they didn’t ask me to represent them in their lawsuit, though, because my own first reaction would have been “Wow! Free caddie bibs!” My friends and I not only happily wear logo-covered golf stuff that nobody pays us to wear; we even spend money of our own to add additional logos to our already-logo-covered stuff, the better to emulate Jim “5-Hour Energy-and-Web.com-plus-SunGard-Financial-among-many-other-companies” Furyk and his fellow tour members. You can read more at this blog’s official home, on the Golf Digest website. And if you “subscribe” to myusualgame.com, by filling in your email address in the blank on the right side of this page, you’ll be notified every time I post something new. And, if you’re willing to wait a month or so, you can find complete versions of all my old posts on this site, too, by paging down until you reach them.

My Usual Game: David Owen

ADVENTURES IN GOLF

Category Archives: Accessories