Will 2008 be remembered as the year of the sample cup?
Golf has long prided itself on being the sport where players are expected to call penalties on themselves and rules officials help players interpret the rules rather than calling fouls on them. This year, golf begins random drug testing. Will it change the game as we know it?
Continue reading “Five Things You May Not Know about Drug Testing in Golf”
2008! Here’s my plan for my golfing year.
It looks like JP and I are starting the new year on the same wavelength. A new calendar always gives us hopes of changes for the better. We all start with a relatively blank slate. How we choose to fill those empty squares on the calendar will have everything to do with how we feel in December when we look back on 2008.
Here are my top five resolutions for my 2008 golf campaign:
Knock, knock. Who’s there? 2008.
2008 is almost here. What will it hold for the world of golf?
I put that question to a few friends and came up with a couple ideas of my own. The farthest fetched prediction: one friend again predicted that this would be the year he scores a hole in one. He was there when I had mine two years ago, so I’m rooting for him. Of course, he’s been predicting the same thing for several years now.
All I want for Christmas (and then some).
I’ve been a pretty good golfer this year. I generally played the ball down, I almost always took my strokes when I hit in hazards, and I hardly ever swore at all on the course. Well, two out of three isn’t bad.
It’s that time of year again, and I know I have nothing to complain about when it comes to golf equipment. But a guy’s got to dream. Right? There’s always room for one more golf doodad.
The 2007 tours have ended. One 2008 tour has begun. I guess it’s time to reflect.
The 2007 golf year is all but over, but what a year it was! With the debut of the FedExCup and the emergence of a new number one on the the LPGA, the world’s top men’s and women’s tours had major stories. They weren’t alone.
Let’s review some of the best, if not necessarily the biggest, stories on each of the top tours.
12 steps aren’t enough to treat this addiction. This one takes 18 holes, at least.
I’ve always had a little touch of Monk to me. But when it comes to golf, I have to admit I’m more than a little touched.
Here’s what I mean. After returning home from a recent golf trip during which I played seven rounds in four days, I went to the range. I currently subscribe to not one but four print golf publications (in my defense, one is a free regional publication). I read several golf sites, listen to podcasts, and, oh yes, write about golf.
Ah, winter, a time to relax by a warm fire? Nah! Time to hit the links!
Even if you are not lucky enough to live in place blessed with a 12-month golf season, you can still get more golf out of your year (as long as you’re willing to make a few concessions to Mother Nature). As JP recently pointed out, many of us in the northern half of the northern hemisphere are facing another winter with less golf than we can enjoy in the summer. Here in Ohio, we are currently enjoying bonus rounds (in shorts!) at the moment, but Old Man Winter will surely rear his ugly head at some point.
You can only use five clubs to play your next round. Quick! What do you pick?
A friend of mine invited me to play in a casual five-club challenge a few weeks ago. By “five-club challenge,” she meant that you could only carry five clubs (not that there were five different clubs competing). As it turned out, I wasn’t able to play because of a little thing called a job (my early retirement plan hasn’t yet come to fruition… come on Super Lotto!), but I did go so far as to start planning out my strategy.
Sometimes a plan comes together and sometimes it doesn’t. The FedExCup actually worked (surprised?), at least for the most part.
The PGA Tour’s first FedExCup (FEC) is in the books, and the Cup is in Tiger’s hands as most of us thought it would be. For the most part, the “playoffs” were a success. They attracted more attention to the Tour, post-PGA Championship, as it was supposed to. The best player from the regular season was also the hottest player going into the FEC, and sure enough, he continued to be the hot player in the playoffs.
Continue reading “The Good, Bad and Plain Old Ugly of the FedExCup”
