Category Archives: Equipment

Push Carts on Tee Boxes? On Greens?

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Push carts on putting green, Victoria Golf Club, Melbourne, Australia, June, 2010.

During the women’s member-guest at my club, a couple of weeks ago, a few guys from my Sunday Morning Group played a travel round at our enemy club, on the other side of town. (We have a reciprocal arrangement for tournament days, etc.)  A member strode up at some point and told them to stop rolling their push carts onto the tee boxes—and later he strode up to again and told them not to put their golf bags on the tee boxes, either. (Hey, maybe they should remove their golf shoes, too.)

I took the photos above and below at Victoria Golf Club, near Melbourne, Australia, in 2010. (The Australian Masters was played at Victoria that year and the next.) Players there are asked to roll their push carts and pull carts not just over the tee boxes but across the greens, to keep the fringes from being beaten up by concentrated foot traffic. Other Sandbelt courses have the same policy—including Royal Melbourne and Kingston Heath, which are ranked No. 22 and No. 11, respectively, on Golf Digest’s list of the 100 Best Courses Outside the United States.  Ditto Bandon Dunes (although at Bandon golfers with carts are asked to cross the greens only, and not to park their carts on them).

These practices makes perfect sense, because a push cart weighs much less than a greens mower. Or a tee mower. Or any of the guys that you or I play golf with. So lighten up, enemy club.

 

News From the 2012 Member-Guest

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Amazing member-guest discovery: golf-cart Surround Sound.

My brother, John, and I played in my club’s member-guest tournament this past weekend. One of our five matches was against Fritz and Klinger, whose golf cart you see in the photograph above. That’s Klinger’s iPhone, in the one cup holder that isn’t holding a beer. It’s playing “Send Her My Love,” by Journey, and If you could hear the music you’d be blown away, because Fritz and Klinger have discovered that a golf cart cup holder acts like both an amplifier and a Surround Sound speaker system. Try it with your own iPhone or iPod if you don’t believe me.

Three golfers, nine drivers.

The golf bags in the photo above belong to (from left to right) me, Tim-o, and Tony.  You will notice that the three of us, in addition to apparently being infatuated with obsolete Nike products, carry three drivers each. The lofts are 10.5, 13, and 16 degrees. I’ll have more to say about this club selection in a week or two. (Full disclosure: after the 9-hole stroke-play opener, on Friday—which John and I won, at 7 under—I removed my 13-degree driver, which I’d bought on eBay the week before, to make room for a second 6-hybrid.

Rob and miscellaneous member-guest stuff.

Usually, the so-called gifts you get at a member-guest are pretty crummy, but this year the ones at my club were great: a golf hat, a golf towel with a zipper pocket and a semi-mysterious Velcro strip, and a belt with a buckle that’s also a beer opener. In the photo above, Rob is wearing his belt on the outside, for easier access (although he’s got it upside down). He’s also wearing his give-’em-a-brake safety-yellow golf shirt and carrying a beer, two putters, and a portable cooler.

Jaws, lighting the putting-contest qualifier.

On Friday night, after the stag dinner, so many guys wanted to keep trying to qualify for the putting contest that Jaws drove home and brought back his big workshop lights. That’s him in the photo above, setting up one of the units. My brother and I qualified but were eliminated the next evening, in a four-hole playoff for the last three spots in the final.

Putting-contest qualifier, under the lights.

On Saturday night, after Fritz and Klinger had won the putting contest and a dozen of us had played a five-hole one-club tournament in a race with the setting sun, we held an unofficial supplemental putting contest, using glowing balls and glowing cup inserts—items about which I’ll have more to say in a week or two. The winners were Tim and Chick. Here’s what the putting green looked like in the dark:

Glowing ball, glowing hole.

Also here:

Doc, Jr.

There were thunderstorms in the forecast all weekend, but the rain and lightning held off until halfway through the final shoot-out, on Sunday afternoon. Here’s what the rain looked like when it was coming down:

The gutter in that photo has been clogged for ten or fifteen years, but when it’s raining no one wants to go up on a ladder to unclog it and when it isn’t raining it doesn’t overflow. During most of the rest of the weekend, though, the weather looked like this:

Chick, Rob, putting-contest qualifier.

The overall winners of the member-guest were Ray and Mike. My brother and I beat them, one-up, in our final match of the weekend, but that wasn’t enough to knock them out of first place in our flight. Here’s Ray resting during the lightning delay. (Mike was on the phone apologizing to his wife for already being several hours later than he had said he was going to be.)

Ray, resting in the clubhouse during the lightning delay.

And here’s what the shoot-out field looked like on the first tee. We determined honors by using the Sunday Morning Group’s limited-edition collection of numbered poker chips. Art and Scribby (on the right, with the white hair and the no hair) were the first to be eliminated, when they bogeyed the first hole.

Sharpiegate: An Update

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A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about two beefs I have with my golf bag, here and here. Yesterday, I received a response from Steve Snyders, who handles public relations for Sun Mountain. (I’m delighted to learn that the Sharpie problem I complained about was solved not just quickly but, apparently, retroactively.) Here’s what Snyders wrote:

With regards to your concern about the depth of the pen holder pocket on Sun Mountain golf bags, I think you will be pleased to learn that as of 2012 all pen holder pockets on all of our bags are at a standard depth that will allow a full size Sharpie marker to be inserted and for the clip on the lid to be clipped to the bag. For bags older than 2012, depending upon the exact model of the bag, some of the pockets may be deep enough for the clip to reach and some may not. In all instances, the pocket is deep enough that the majority of the pen fits within the pocket while allowing enough of the pen to stick out so can be easily grabbed for removal. If owners of a bag that is older than 2012 are having issues with their pens falling out of the pockets when their bag is inverted, some of the comments on your post offer good suggestions to include: using a mini-Sharpie or inserting the pen upside down so the fit is tighter and the pen will not slide out.

Sun Mountain does not make public, information about other brands for whom it manufacturers products, but as of 2012, any bag designed and manufactured by Sun Mountain that incorporates a pen holder pocket has this standardized depth pocket.

Also, as some of your astute readers pointed out, the 2012 Three 5 stand bag has two pockets, one for a scorecard pencil and one for permanent marker. And, Sun Mountain carts bags have two pen holder pockets, one of each side of the bag, so easily accessible regardless of which side of the cart your bag is placed.

Regarding the legs on Sun Mountain stand bags, all decisions with regards to materials used on Sun Mountain products are strongly scrutinized within the company. All parts used are judged first for function and durability and then for weight with a goal of finding the perfect balance. A number of years ago the decision was made to switch from a harder, more brittle, heavier plastic on the stand bag leg joints, to a softer, more flexible, lighter material.

The older, harder plastic kept its shape forever but it was prone to breakage due to its rigidity. And, it was heavier. The newer plastic parts are more flexible so less prone to breaking and are significantly lighter. The company made the determination that the benefits of the lighter more flexible leg joints outweighed the benefits of the harder, more rigid, heavier joints.

If you were to call Sun Mountain customer service with the issue you describe in your blog, the representative would suggest a replacement leg set and talk you through the simple process of replacement. If within the one year warranty, the leg set would be no charge. Outside of the warranty period, a replacement leg set is $9 plus shipping.

For any issues with Sun Mountain products – legs, zippers, etc —  please call Sun Mountain customer service at 800-227-9224.

Thanks again for using Sun Mountain products and for caring enough to try to help us continually improve to meet your needs.

 

A More Effective Way to Talk to Your Golf Ball

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Cristie Kerr talks to her ball the way dysfunctional moms talk to their kids in grocery stores.

I had to mute the TV during parts of the U.S. Women’s Open this past weekend, because Cristie Kerr was filling me with nervous agitation. As my colleague Ron Sirak reported on Saturday, she “yelled at her ball to ‘sit’ on No. 8 with so much anger in her voice that 300 people in the gallery sat down.” If you have a short fuse, it’s better for the victims of your fury to be inanimate objects, but I still find her yelling hard to take.

When my driver misbehaved recently, I didn’t scream at it; I put it in time-out. I didn’t make it sit on the stairs, the way I used to do with my kids, but I moved it to the back of my bag and pulled the head cover down tight. “I know you don’t like holes with out-of-bounds on the right,” I said in the calmest voice I could manage, “but you and I both need to think about what just happened.” The Cristie Kerr approach doesn’t work with golf equipment any better than it does with children. You can’t straighten a slice with violence and fear.

My time-out bag, in my “golf room,” on the third floor.

When my ball is hooking into a hazard, I don’t shout, “Get right!” or “Hit a frog!” I just stand quietly on the tee with a shattered look on my face, to show that I’m disappointed. If I find my ball in the water, I lift it out silently and dry it off. There is nothing I could say that would change the fact that I am now hitting three from the drop zone, so why speak? Throwing a tantrum would make things worse.

Rather than screaming at my equipment when it lets me down, I try to praise it when it does something right. Most golfers will curse a shank yet stand smugly silent when their seven-iron stripes a ball straight at the pin. How would you like it if your boss took credit for all your best efforts and never spoke to you except to pick on your mistakes? Even when a shot of mine goes wrong, I try to find something encouraging to say. “Wasn’t that a little draw I noticed just before you bounced into the parking lot?” “I don’t believe you’ve ever driven it farther into the pond.”

The most sensitive issue is probably the addition of a new club to the bag. I bought a 60-degree wedge a few years ago and was excited to try it, but I left it parked next to my driver for a couple of rounds, to reassure my old wedges that they were still important to me. Intra-bag rivalry can play havoc with a short game. You need to break in a new club slowly and with unglamorous assignments, such as retrieving balls from creeks or measuring the distance for free drops. By the time I used my new wedge for a real shot, my other irons had ceased to feel threatened. As a matter of fact, I think my sand wedge was relieved. The soft lob over trouble has never been its favorite shot.