Want to play that private course down the road but don’t know a member? Now there’s a way to test drive private courses across the country without risking the trespassing charge.
A new online service called Boxgroove.com provides access to tee times at private clubs. Boxgroove currently has 70 participating courses and over 650 members, some of whom hold memberships at private clubs and may be willing to host other Boxgroove.com members (more on that later). The company plans to be in 30 states by summer 2010 and eventually to take the service international.
If you’re like me, you love those occasions when you get to play a course in excellent condition with great greens. The problem is that I don’t belong to a private club, so I play public courses where the maintenance is generally not quite as well applied. While it’s less expensive (unless you are really racking up the rounds) to play public courses, being able to play the occasional round on a truly well kept course is a nice change of pace, one I’ve found to be more and more alluring lately.
Enter Boxgroove.com. I’d been hearing about the service on the radio here in Columbus, my home and Boxgroove’s, as it turns out. When Boxgroove.com offered a membership to let me try out the service and write about my experience, I jumped at the opportunity.

Hello and welcome again to Hittin’ the Links. It’s almost time for a long winter nap, but HTL has one last hurrah before vacation time.
When you are setting up to a “classic” iron, what kinds of thoughts run through your mind? For me, I imagine the silky smooth feel of the sweet spot. I visualize the ball curving through the air at will. I can almost see the ball falling to the green with just enough spin to bounce twice and then stop. However, put a blade in another player’s hands and the reaction could be entirely different. They might look down desperately searching for that microscopic sweet spot, trembling at the thought of the painful reverberations of a mis-hit.
Late 2009 seems like an odd time to release your most aggressively grooved wedges to date, but that’s just what Mizuno is doing with the MP T-10 wedges. The wedges are similar to the company’s MP-T wedges (
This week, we come to you with more clubs designed to help out your game from 80 yards and in, this time from
The holidays are just around the corner and if you’re like me, you might be starting to put together a list to give your love ones on the golf-related items you want to receive (otherwise know as “Dropping a Big Hint”). While not everyone can afford to get you the latest driver, putter, or shoes there are many items that are quite a bit more economical and might in the long run make you a better golfer than the latest and greatest in club technology.
I admit that I held out on the hybrid craze longer than made sense. I carried a two-iron in place of a 5-wood or hybrid and would use it from the tee, the fairway, and the rough when the lie was good enough to goad me into going for it.
We catch up on Tiger, Phil, Michelle Wie, the PGA Tour (and its first drug test failee), and everything we’ve missed in the past month, and a whole lot more in this episode of Golf Talk.