Author: Michael C. Hepp

This year the Open Championship moves to the site of David Duval’s only major victory – Royal Lytham and St. Annes. I truly enjoy the Open Championship because I can start watching the action as I sit down for breakfast in the morning and by lunch time the majority of play is over. The build up for this years event is great as well. Tiger is really hitting his stride aside from his missed cut at the Greenbrier, Phil cut his vacation short to play in the Scottish Open and played decently, all the big names are hitting their stride. With that lets see what the staff predicts for this year’s tournament.

Continue reading “2012 British Open: Staff Predictions and Five Questions”

For many golfers, the answer to this question is their father. Likely your father was a semi-serious golfer who enjoyed the game and taught you to enjoy it as well. Of course there are many of you who like me had another family member do the introduction. For some, maybe it was a friend even a friend’s dad. Maybe you found the game on your own. Whoever it was, the day you finally beat that person is something that sticks in your memory bank forever.

My father didn’t play golf. My mother sold his clubs a few months after I was born and she told me she did it because he never used them. He came home one day from work and they were gone. To many of you this is an unforgivable sin, but my dad shrugged it off and later said she was right, he never used them. Much later on in my golfing career he joined me a few times for scramble events. He liked to play in scrambles because there was no pressure and he could enjoy himself. He did not swing much past his waist and did not hit it very far. Looking back, though, he was in his sixties and not doing much stretching at the time. He claimed he was a good putter, but I never actually saw that.

Continue reading “Who Introduced You to Golf?”

It always seems that when we hear a golfer talk about playing well they will sometimes say that they were “in the zone.” Sadly for me I can honestly say that when it comes to golf I have never been, “in the zone.” I think if there were a zone, for me to get in over the course of the 4+ hours it takes to play golf, I doubt I could stay in that zone for all 18 holes. This likely explains why I am such a lousy golfer.

We hear this description as sometimes an athlete describing the game slowing down so that they could see each action sometimes before it even happened. Or we often hear it described as the athlete getting out of their own way. I have heard golfers explaining that they could see the line of the putt before they hit it. Whatever your description, the funny thing about golf is that it rarely lasts for long. We may be able to play a few weeks or a few months well but that bad round is out there waiting for us on the horizon. We all know it. I heard it described by a friend of mine as “when you are playing bad you think it is never going to end, and when you are playing well you are just waiting for it to end.”

Continue reading “In the Zone… Whatever that Means”

This year the U.S. Open comes just up the 280 freeway from me to the Olympic Club Lake Course. After the debacle at the 18th hole in 1998, the Olympic Club redid all 18 greens in order to get the USGA to come back and play the U.S. Open on Johnny Miller’s boyhood course. I went out a few months ago and rolled some balls on the 18th green and it is not nearly as bad as it was in 1998. The greens are actually not the typical poa annua found here on the west coast. This means they will be very fast and not as bumpy as everyone will be expecting.

The weather now does not look bad, the traditional San Francisco fog might clear out early and we should have some nice warm days with not a great deal of wind. This type of weather is not traditional for San Francisco this time of year. Let’s see what the rest of the Sand Trap staff expect for this year’s U.S. Open.

Continue reading “2012 U.S. Open at Olympic Club: Staff Predictions and Five Questions”

I was at a dinner party a few weeks ago and the conversation with a friend moved to golf. Inevitably, because I am a fairly serious golfer, new golfers will want to tell me stories of their first par or first birdie. I will listen and think back to when I started playing golf and when it was a big deal to finish the round with the same ball. That was always a big accomplishment when I started!

The friend will then start to tell me about their game and they will ask me, “so, how do I get better at golf?” The traditional answer is be find a local professional and start taking lessons, or go work on your short game. After years of answering friends this way I have stopped, mainly because I think that is wrong answer.

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Slow play is slowly killing golf. Recently LPGA golfer Morgan Pressel was penalized in a match play event for slow play. Just the headline by itself is very refreshing. The LPGA has a clear rule for slow play and enforced it. Well played. Sadly there is a bit more to this story and I am not sure the rule was properly enforced.

To the rest of us, slow play is just a part of golf. The five-plus hour round golf has been played by everyone, some of you have probably even played longer rounds. It is a problem because everyone has responsibility and spending so much time on the golf course makes you wonder if golf is worth it. If you have a family, spending five and a half hours on the course plus driving to and fro and a meal is a lot of time away from your family. Add to that all the waiting, standing around, and it really isn’t all that fun.

Continue reading “Is Slow Play Killing Golf?”