Author: Jamieson Weiss

Butch Harmon About Golf DVD Review

Golf Digest’s top ranked instructor is back with a highly-anticipated DVD.

Butch Harmon About Golf CoverButch Harmon is one of the biggest names in golf. He has been Golf Digest’s top-ranked golf coach every year since 2003, and he is the mastermind behind Tiger’s early career swing. He has coached some of the biggest names in golf, including Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Adam Scott, and Natalie Gulbis.

You may know Butch from his many media appearances, his 2006 book, The Pro, his PGA Tour win (the Broome County Open in 1971), or his monthly column for Golf Digest. The son of 1948 Masters winner Claude Harmon, Butch teaches amateurs and professionals primarily out of Las Vegas, Nevada, and has been in golf for over 40 years.

Butch is back, and this time with an all-inclusive DVD, Butch Harmon About Golf. The two-disc set of instruction contain about four hours of golf, with 57 chapters including the full swing, the mental game, and fitness. It even includes interviews and conversations with some of Butch’s most famous pupils. Is it worth the $80 USD plus $10 shipping and handling? Read on to find out.

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Why Bubba Won’t Win Another Major

Trying to predict Bubba Watson’s future.

Trap Five LogoFor the seventh major championship in a row, the victor of this year’s Masters was a first-time major winner. Not since Phil Mickelson in 2010 has someone won their second major, and by my count that is the longest such streak ever. With Tiger Woods perpetually on the mend and endlessly ineffective, and Phil Mickelson often too headstrong for his own good, Bubba Watson is another in the line of new entries to the major winner’s circle.

Bubba, as a sold player but not of Hall-of-Fame caliber, faces stiff competition. Never before has there been so many players that match his level of play.

In addition to the state-of-the-sport challenges Bubba faces, his game has some glaring holes. While it would be a disservice to say Bubba was handed the Masters, he didn’t exactly steal it away until that famed shot from the tress (and even that was only a par). Bubba has missed the cut in about a third of the events he has played over his career, and while his relatively homegrown swing might make him a nice poster-child for the anti-instructor movement, it could prove to be his ultimate undoing.

I have nothing against Bubba personally (he seems like a good guy and I did a ProFiles article about him last year), and watching his go-for-broke play is very entertaining, but I don’t see him winning another major championship.

Read on to find out why.

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Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13 Review

Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13: where it excels and where it falls short.

tiger_woods_13_cover.jpgAs I do nearly every year, I was quick to pony up a good deal of cash for the new Tiger Woods PGA Tour video game. Like with most good video games I’ve been engrossed with it since the day I bought it, but that doesn’t mean I love the game.

There are good things. For instance, the online country club feature is awesome, and we here at The Sand Trap have set up country clubs for Xbox 360 and PS3 to take advantage of that. But there is a plethora of shortcomings, not only in this game but in the series overall, and there simply has not been enough of an effort to overcome those. Numerous decisions clearly illustrate that EA Sports values the form over function when it comes to this game, and that comes at a detriment to the gameplay.

This year’s edition is available for $60 for PS3 and Xbox 360, and there is a Collector’s Edition for $70 also sold for both systems. We’ve already arrived to the first downside of Tiger 13, which is that last year’s game was also available for Wii, Windows, Mac OS X, and iOS. Kinect and Move are supported, but I have neither so I won’t be commenting on them. Read on to see if the price was worth it.

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The Five Most Important Stories Going into Augusta

We preview the biggest stories going into The Masters.

Trap Five LogoAs the first major of the year, The Masters is the year’s earliest test of the state of golf. A birdie-fest win at the tournament-formerly-known-as-the Bob Hope is one thing, but playing well at Augusta is another story entirely, and this year has been loaded full of weighty stories. Luke Donald began the year at the top spot in the world, but a resurgent Rory McIlroy quickly stole that away. Despite the young Ulsterman’s finishes of second, first, and third on the PGA Tour early on, Donald was able to take back the number one ranking with a victory at Innisbrook.

Equally impressive has been the play of numerous Americans, veterans and young-guns. Steve Stricker started off the year with a win at Kapalua, and he was followed by a crop of young players including Brandt Snedeker, Kyle Stanley, John Huh, and Hunter Mahan.

Phil Mickelson also picked up an early-season win at Pebble, and most recently Tiger Woods returned to the winner’s circle, triumphing at Bay Hill for the seventh time. He’ll have to put aside all of he talk about hank Haney’s tell-all is he wants to win his fifth green jacket.

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Nine Holes With the Back Nine at Augusta National

We take a walk through one of the best back nines in golf.

ProfilesAugusta National has a solid front nine, but it’s the back nine where the course really shines. Every hole can easily lead to a bogey but each one is also birdie-able, as Charl Schwartzel and others showed us last year. Because of this, going into the back nine on Sunday everyone within shouting distance of the lead is still in the tournament.

Last year we saw Tiger destroy the front nine, then shoot a disappointing 36 on the back nine. Conversely, Charl was just two under on the front nine but he laid siege to the last four holes of the back nine, and pulled out the tournament.

A complete about-face from their earlier deadlines, Augusta National has opened up recently. No, they haven’t changed their membership policy, but Augusta National now offers the most comprehensive online streaming infrastructure in golf. Augusta has also added more early-round coverage, and the addition of the course to the Tiger Woods PGA Tour video game has given us unprecedented access to one of the most interesting courses in golf.

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Five New Features from Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13

Tiger Woods PGA Tour is back, and it’s packed full of new features.

Trap Five LogoFor the past few months, EA Sports has been slowly rolling out its list of new features for this year’s edition of Tiger Woods PGA Tour. Starting with the fan voting that put Ricky Fowler on the cover of the U.S. version and Rory McIlroy on the international version, it has been a busy year for the developers.

After adapting the game to the Nintendo Wii and, more recently, the Playstation Move, this year EA is bringing the game to the Xbox 360 Kinect, which requires no controller at all and relies on cameras to track your body’s movement. Also new this year are Tiger Legacy, which lets you play as Tiger Woods as a kid, online country clubs, Total Swing Control, as well as a crop of new players and courses.

With EA Sports’ recent release of the newest edition of Tiger Woods PGA Tour, here are five of the most important new features you can expect to see in Tiger Woods PGA Tour Tour 13.

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My “Other” Favorite Golfers

They’re not Tiger and they’re not Phil, who are your other favorites?

Trap Five LogoEverybody has a few golfers out there that they just like for seemingly no reason. It could be because they won in your hometown, they are sponsored by your favorite brand, or because even the dress in a strange way. Much like picking favorite sports team, picking a favorite golfer doesn’t have to be rational. In fact, a friend of mine from northern New Jersey is a die-hard Miami Dolphins fan. Why? Because as a kid he liked their team colors.

With parity becoming more and more prevalent in sports, stories like that (or at least the golf version, say, Ian Poulter’s love of pink) are becoming more popular. Tiger and Phil haven’t done as much as we were accustomed to over last few years, and their poor play has paved the way for many new faces to get time on T.V. Thanks to the PGA Tour’s lenient rules that allow past greats to hang around, older guys have been able to stay on the radar.

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Nine Holes With the History of Golf Part Two: The King, The Bear, and The Tiger

We round out the sport’s history with a review of the last half-century in golf.

ProfilesOne of the best things about the game of golf is the vast history. Golf has had transcendent athletes almost constantly over the last 150 years, and as I attempted to categorize them all I found myself writing, and writing, and writing. (I tried to do this with baseball, and all I got down was “Yankees, then… more Yankees, and a little more Yankees. And then the Red Sox won. And then the Yankees…”) In classifying the history of golf, these last 50 years are where it got tough, as I had to figure out what do do with Jack Nickluas. Jack had legitimate rivals in Arnold Palmer and Tom Watson at completely different ends of his own expansive career. I ultimately decided to combine Nicklaus and Watson, and give Palmer his own era. I’m sure they won’t mind.

Anyway, without further ado, we are back again this week with the most recent eras in golf, starting with The King and ending with El Tigre.

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Nine Holes With the History of Golf Part One: Pre-Palmer

We take a look at the last 150 years in golf.

ProfilesUnlike sports like baseball or football, golf’s eras have been primarily defined and dominated by a key one or two players. While baseball is divided into eras based on the differences of the game (Dead and Lively Ball Eras, Integration Era, Free Agency Era, Steroid Era) and football and basketball are mostly defined by mergers, golf’s era are most easily divided by the dominant player, and these great players actually cut up the history of golf up quite well. Because 150 years of golf is tough to cut down, today we’ll look at everything before Arnold Palmer, right up to and including the Nelson/Hogan/Snead Era.

From the ancient history of the early Open Championship days, to the relative parity of the 1980s and early 1990s, to the modern Tiger Woods era, golf is just begging to be split up and defined. So let’s do it.

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