Author: Erik J. Barzeski

Adidas Tour 360 4.0 and Tour 360 Sport Shoe Review

The most comfortable shoes on the market? Perhaps. The lowest? Adidas says so.

Tour 360 4.0 SportThe Adidas Tour 360 is entering its fifth year and fourth version and the Tour 360 Sport its third year and second version with the new “Tour 360 4.0” and “Tour 360 4.0 Sport” models. Though the styling has remained fairly similar due to the common technology of wrapping the Adidas-style triple bands around the undersole, the shoe has come a long way in five years and has claimed its spot among the leaders in the golf footwear arena.

I’m a long-time FootJoy guy – shoes with “FJ” on them have always fit me well – and I gave a pair of the 360 4.0’s and the Sport models a try. Let’s see how the shoes fared.

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PURE Grips Review

Golf grips with a one-year guarantee and no tape or solvent required? Sound like hocum? It’s not.

PURE GripsTake a moment to consider the grips on your golf club. Odds are they’re the most unappreciated piece of equipment in your bag. I know guys who care more about their ball markers, their divot repair tools, and their towels than they care about their grips.

What sense does that make? The only way you can control the golf club is through your hands, and your hands touch the golf club via the grip only. In some ways, the grip is more important than whether you’ve got a game-improvement cavity back iron on the end of the shaft or a 1970s style muscleback blade – if you can’t grip the club properly you’ve got little chance of success with either.

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Filming Your Golf Swing

Technology is a wonderful thing, and with all due respect to Vijay Singh, it can help you quite a bit.

Casio FH25Vijay Singh was once famously quoted for saying that he doesn’t look at his swing on video because he’d be tempted to make it look pretty rather than focusing on building a swing that works. This quote is often used by people trying to justify why they won’t record their swing or buy a camera.

Unfortunately, Vijay’s quote was taken out of context, misunderstood, or was simply untrue. Singh has used high-speed cameras to record his swing for years and maintains a large library of his videos. While practicing, he often has his caddie or others record his swing, and will stop to look at things and make adjustments.

I think that what Vijay Singh was trying to say is that he values function over form. That’s fine – and something virtually every good golfer has in common. And while it’s true that form follows function in the golf swing, the opposite is also true: function follows form. A high-speed video camera is a useful, valid tool in improving both the form and function of your swing.

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2010 U.S. Open Final Round Live Chat

Sign up now or join us later for a live chat starting at 3pm eastern time when final-round coverage of the 2010 U.S. Open from Pebble Beach begins.

2010 Masters Final Round Live Chat

Join us at 2pm eastern time when CBS coverage starts for a live blog.

We’re going to try a live “chat” this time around rather than a live blog as we’ve done in the past. We’ll have a few invited guests (primarily from the forum) who will join us, and you can pop in from time to time to add your commentary to the live feed.

The event kicks off with coverage at 2pm eastern time, so check back a bit before then.

Also, anyone who (in their first comment, prior to 2pm eastern time) predicts the winner and the final score will win a free license to Scorecard, an awesome statistics app that helps you analyze and improve your golf game. Post the final score (relative to par) and the winner’s name. Your first entry’s all that counts, and if you post multiple times, you’re DQed.

Taly MIND Set Review

The #1 imperative to playing good golf may very well be a flat left wrist at impact. The Taly helps you to achieve that position.

Taly HeroThe world of golf training aids is vast. Sometimes it seems as though every serious instructor has his name on some gadget or another. Some work. Some work really well. Others do not.

Then there are the guys who don’t teach golf for a living. Sonic Golf comes from a scientist. And the item pictured just above/to the right, the “Taly MIND Set,” comes from a slightly better than average golfer named Taly Williams. He’s also not an instructor.

Does that make the “Taly” (even the inventor prefers to call it the “Taly” instead of the official “MIND Set” name) better or worse than the others? Let’s find out.

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Pros on the Range

Pros use alignment sticks on the range more than half the time. Chops don’t. Go figger.

Head to any range in the country and you’ll see one thing. Well, okay, you’ll see a lot of things, like 90% of people hitting off their right foot, slicing, and firing balls one after the other as if they go bad when exposed to sunlight.

But the thing I’m talking about is actually something you won’t see: alignment sticks. Station after station, golfer after golfer, and not a single alignment stick to be found.

Walk around the range at a PGA Tour event and you can’t get away from the darn things.

Everyone wants to be like a PGA Tour pro, but very few people practice like one. Here are a couple of photos from The Memorial and the Bridgestone Invitational showing pros – and their training aids – on the range.

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Tigerless Torrey Tidbits

Boring? The PGA Tour season has been anything but. Well, except for the actual tournaments…

And they said that the golf season would be boring without Tiger Woods. Why, just this week, at Tiger’s first tournament, we have controversy and quitting with two of the bigger names on Tour.

First Up, John Daly
John Daly retires in the parking lot after shooting 79-71 to miss the cut by a mile.

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Ball Flight Laws

For decades golfers have employed an incorrect understanding of why the ball flies the way it does. Science has set things straight, but many golfers remain unaware.

For decades, golf instructors have been teaching the ball flight laws incorrectly. Many blame the PGA Teaching Manual, and have said that it has contained some incorrect or incomplete information pertaining to a golf ball’s flight. These pros – from Butch Harmon to Nick Faldo – often state the ball flight laws as follows: “The golf ball starts on the direction of the swing path and curves back to where the clubface was aimed at impact.”

Put another way, many instructors and famous golfers have stated that the swing path is the primary determinant of the golf ball’s starting direction. This information is wrong, and it’s slowly coming to be understood as such in recent years. Unfortunately, many golfers – famous or otherwise – and instructors – famous or otherwise – still believe these outdated and incorrect ball flight laws.

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