Category: Trap Five

In the last ten years, the LPGA has lost over a quarter of its events, down to 28 from a high point of 38. Prize money is down over $10 million. What can be done to save the LPGA?

Anna Rawson knows the LPGA is in trouble, and she has a plan for fixing it. If you don’t know the name, maybe you should. Rawson is a golfer who models in her spare time (or maybe it’s the other way around). You may know her as the GoDaddy.com spokeswomen who swings a golf club.

That would be fair since she really hasn’t done much on tour thus far. Aside from being in the top 20 in driving distance, she is outside the top 50 in every meaningful category in her sophomore season on the LPGA. In 11 starts this year, she has made just three cuts. To be fair, she did notch a T13 at the LPGA State Farm Classic. Still, it would be easy to dismiss her as the Anna Kournikova of golf, and that’s not entirely inaccurate at this point. She’s beautiful, and she hasn’t won a thing.

Continue reading “Is Rawson Right?”

Here it is two weeks until the U.S. Open at Bethpage Black. Two weeks ago, the media was reporting on the recent demise of Tiger Woods and speculating that this year’s Open might be the most wide open in years. This week, following Tiger’s 14 of 14 fairways hit performance (and 87.5% for the week) at the Memorial, they are declaring him the winner even before the first tee shot is struck.

If they switched opinions any faster, they’d all be in traction with whiplash. Still, I wouldn’t go betting the farm against Tiger, either… and maybe not even dinner.

I love the U.S. Open. Well, to be honest, I love the Masters and the British Open, too. To be fair, I do like the PGA Championship, but she needs to love herself and stop imitating others before she and I can have a real relationship. Maybe bring back match play… I don’t know.

Continue reading “Five Things that Might Surpise You about the U.S. Open”

Well, my golf game is officially a mess this week. My number one trick this spring is to only play decent golf on one nine and blow up on the other… as in 10 strokes or more over the other side. What the heck?

That is just the start of the questions I have about golf this week. Here are five questions that most people would consider more important than the state of my personal golf game.

Continue reading “Five Questions”

Last week was a pretty good one in golf. With the Players Championship for the PGA Tour and the Michelob Ultra Open at Kingsmill taking place concurrently, there was a lot of good golf to watch. And even if you can’t follow it on TV, the college golf season is building to a climax.

In a way, it was the perfect lead-in to the summer. There are a lot of questions waiting to be answered. Last week may have raised more than it answered and that means some interesting months ahead.

Here are just a few of the topics that came to light last week.

Continue reading “Lessons Learned Last Week”

This week’s Trap Five is a little like the set of clubs I had as a kid. At first, I only had the odd-numbered irons, and some old persimmons that looked like they might come apart on any swing. Eventually, someone gave me some even-numbered irons made by a different company. To complete the set, my dad brought home a women’s 7-iron. (That club was my favorite for years, but that’s another story.) Suffice to say that I had one motley, mismatched, mutt-faced set of clubs.

Like that first set of mine, this Trap Five features mismatched items. Usually a Trap Five follows a theme, but this week we visit the Island of Misfit Trap Five Topics.

Continue reading “Random Musings”

At next week’s Shell Houston Open, the PGA Tour and NBC will experiment with putting microphones on caddies to capture the dialogues between caddies and players. The Tour and the network are interested in learning if the audio quality and, more importantly, the conversation quality are worth putting on the air.

You and I won’t hear any of it, most likely. It is just an experiment, after all. The Tour isn’t very comfortable with trying something in front of an audience. If it is a success, it will probably be a few weeks before we get to listen in. The Masters is not about to allow mics on the caddies. After McCord got banned from Augusta by saying that they used bikini wax on the greens, can you imagine what might happen if the caddies had mics?

Continue reading “What Caddies Might Say”

We’re just coming into the peak golf club purchasing period in the northern half of the United States. A lot you may be trolling the aisles of new clubs in the next few months looking for a few extra yards or a few less strokes per round.

I know… the economy sucks. The TV keeps reminding me every evening. But I also know that I’ll probably still be trying out some new gear this summer. After all, someone has to kick start the economy (maybe a new driver purchase will get the Dow above 8K again). As long as I’m working, I’ll likely be playing golf. And if I’m playing golf, then all those new toys in the golf shop will be kind of tempting. And I bet I’m not alone.

Now I’ve purchased quite a few new clubs in recent years looking for a few more yards or a tighter shot dispersion (I know, I know… it’s not the arrow). Sometimes I’ve found a little more game. Sometimes I haven’t. Here are a few questions that might help you find the right equipment for you, and maybe save a little money along the way, too.

Continue reading “Buying New Sticks”