Butch Harmon is one of the biggest names in golf. He has been Golf Digest’s top-ranked golf coach every year since 2003, and he is the mastermind behind Tiger’s early career swing. He has coached some of the biggest names in golf, including Greg Norman, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els, Adam Scott, and Natalie Gulbis.
You may know Butch from his many media appearances, his 2006 book, The Pro, his PGA Tour win (the Broome County Open in 1971), or his monthly column for Golf Digest. The son of 1948 Masters winner Claude Harmon, Butch teaches amateurs and professionals primarily out of Las Vegas, Nevada, and has been in golf for over 40 years.
Butch is back, and this time with an all-inclusive DVD, Butch Harmon About Golf. The two-disc set of instruction contain about four hours of golf, with 57 chapters including the full swing, the mental game, and fitness. It even includes interviews and conversations with some of Butch’s most famous pupils. Is it worth the $80 USD plus $10 shipping and handling? Read on to find out.
PING’s successful line of G-series irons has focused on maximum forgiveness for all players, but it’s i-series has been geared specifically to players who are looking for a middle ground between the G-series and the blade-like S-series. The i20 irons attempts to satisfy that audience by utilizing a series of designs that make the long irons forgiving and high-launching while blending in more-penetrating mid and short irons offering control for precise shot making. PGA Tour player Mark Wilson won the 2012 Bob Hope Humana Classic the first week he had the new PING i20 irons in the bag. Not a bad introduction for PING’s latest i-series offering. The i20 is for players as good as Mark Wilson all the way to your average mid-handicapper. Following in the tradition of previous models the i20 is a cast golf club with a progressive set design that delivers for a lot of forgiveness with a ton of playability.
PING’s 2009 i15 driver was aimed at players ranging from low single digit handicaps to players at the tour level and ran into some design issues. The CoG (center of gravity) was fade biased, and the bulge was too pronounced making it too hard to control even for most tour players. There was a small following of players that loved it because it was lower spinning and since the CoG was closer to the face, the ball came off hot. PING learned from this endeavor when engineering the new PING i20 driver. PING has also been able to broaden the handicap range for the i20 making the i20 a forgiving “players” driver. The newest i-series driver is still targeting players looking for a lower launching, lower spinning driver but with the needed forgiveness that the i15 was lacking.
When the wife and I fight, which really isn’t that often, it is almost inevitably about golf and how much time I am spending on it. After spending quite a bit of time on golf forums I know that I am not alone. I often see guys hiding their new golf purchases by shipping their new clubs to the office, or rushing home at the end of the day to get the UPS box that has Callaway written on it before the wife sees it. Sadly even if the logo was not on the box, the shape and size of box holding a golf club is unmistakeable, especially to the eagle eyes of wives. My wife, when reaching her point of most upset, will without fail say “Why didn’t you just marry golf?”
Earlier this week, 
Hello there golf fanatics, and welcome to the three hundred and thirteenth volume of Hittin’ the Links. I can’t help thinking that the Sponsors of the Wells Fargo Championship were a little disappointed with the play of some of the elite players in the field at Quail Hollow. With Tiger, Keegan Bradley, and Bill Haas missing the cut and Lefty and Lee Westwood making it on the number it was looking like possibly a rather dull weekend. Good thing for everyone that was certainly not the case as Quail Hollow ended up hosting what I think was some of the best weekend golf of the year. Congratulations to Rickie Fowler on his first PGA Tour win.
I must admit, when I was first asked to review this driver, I was very excited. I had heard about the new 
For the seventh major championship in a row, the victor of this year’s Masters was a first-time major winner. Not since Phil Mickelson in 2010 has someone won their second major, and by my count that is the longest such streak ever. With Tiger Woods perpetually on the mend and endlessly ineffective, and Phil Mickelson often too headstrong for his own good, Bubba Watson is another in the line of new entries to the major winner’s circle.