I am very blessed to be able to live in the California Bay Area which has a plethora of awesome live sporting events. We have 2 football teams, 2 baseball teams, a basketball team, a hockey team, a number of college football teams, and even a soccer team. The PGA Tour comes to our parts regularly for the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and now the Fry’s.com event. Every few years we get a US Open, at Olympic and Pebble.
This past weekend I went out to watch the Fry.com event a few miles from my house. What is nice about the Fry’s tournament versus the US Open is the total number of people who attend is far less and you can get closer to the action. Even when I spent some time following the leaders on Saturday I could easily find a good spot for viewing. While at the US Open there were so many people there that even with the players not in contention it was hard to get a view where you were not having to look over someone. Then if it were the disaster of the Tiger and Phil grouping then you had a mob on your hands.
Back in 2010, The Sand Trap started covering a small golf shoe company by the name of TRUE Linkswear and the release of their original shoe the TRUE tour. This shoe was unique in the sense that it was spikeless (there were very few at the time), and even more so because it promoted the foot to work naturally. The shoe was also lighter than pretty much anything else available. Since that time, a few things have happened; TRUE has grown and has released a few more models including the TRUE stealth (and then updates to the tour and stealth) and the TRUE phx as well as a women’s shoe, the TRUE isis. In addition to that, the market for lightweight, natural motion golf shoes has boomed with nearly every major manufacturer having a shoe in this catagory. At the beginning of the month, TRUE released the next shoe in their lineup, the TRUE sensei, which in addition to being a great golf shoe also doubles as a running shoe. In fact, Ryan Moore won last month in Las Vegas wearing these on the same day that the TRUE Linkswear president, Robert Rigg, ran the Portland Marathon in them.
Bizarre as it was to watch on Friday, I have to give props to Charlie Beljan for getting it together over the weekend and winning at Disney. I saw him play a couple times in college as he and I both attended the same University. Good for him, from second stage of Q-School to two-year exemption in two tournaments.
It’s political season, and if you thought you could get away from it even in the golf world, think again. There’s a long history, stemming back to the early days of golf in this country, of U.S. Presidents spending their down time on the links.
Nothing brings about a heated discussion in the world of golf today quite like the long putter debate. Although the long putter made its debut on the PGA Tour way back in 1980; the controversy really did not heat up until the last few years when the belly putter started becoming more prevalent, and started winning big golf tournaments. I, myself, have been using a belly putter for two years now. Because of this I was the lucky enough to be chosen to try out the Metal X #7 Belly Putter by Odyssey. Lets see how it went.