Calling all charity golf events.

 

With the demise of two publications that used to list charity golf events in the region, MyPhillyGolf is trying to do what we can to fill that void.  If you look down the left rail of our home page, you will see a link called Charity Event Calendar.

 

Nothing would make us feel more valuable and useful than to fill that page with a long list events from around the region.  All you need is a charity event and a webpage we can link to.   It’s free, no charge.

 

If you are running a charity golf event, or you know a friend or a colleague with a charity event to promote, please alert to our Charity Event Calendar.

I am sick of rain.

 

I am sick of calling up the weekly forecast on my computer and seeing this:

 

Monday: Thunderstorms

Tuesday: Worse thunderstorms

Wednesday: Intermittent showers

Thursdays: Rain

Friday: Cloudy with afternoon showers likely

Saturday: Ha! Don’t even think about it

Sunday:  You might get in nine holes before it rains

 

No kidding, this is the rainiest spring I can remember in years.  I don’t know that to be an absolute prove-able fact because none of the eight superintendents (they keep charts and graphs) I’ve called in the past 30 minutes answered their cell phones.  My guess is, they couldn’t hear their cell phones over the pumps they were running to try to get their courses in playable for the weekend.

 

I suppose I shouldn’t be complaining when half the South got flattened by tornadoes in the past few days.  And, hey, the forecast for tomorrow (Saturday) looks good.  I’ll believe it when I see it.  Heck, at this point, I’d take Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs.

 

Even if I don’t have the actual rain stats at my fingertips, I know I am not imaging this.  Last week I played a round at the GC at Glen Mills with the general manager, Paul Stuhlmiller.  (Naturally, it was spritzing).  At one point, I asked Paul if this spring had been as bad weather-wise as I thought.  He winced like I had touched a nerve and said, "Yes, awful."

 

Thing is, a tee time is a perishable commodity, like fruit or an airplane that takes off full of empty seats.  Courses will never get that revenue back.  Golf courses are used to getting iffy weather in March but not so much in mid- to late April.  We are getting into the meat of their seasons.

 

Of course, most golf course owners, managers and superintendents are as optimistic (na•ve?) as farmers.  It doesn’t matter if rain or drought or a swarm of locusts killed last year’s crop, they are farmers to the bone and they are going to plant again next year.

 

Me, I’ve got tee times Saturday and Sunday.

Now that we are finally getting some decent golf weather, it seems like a good time to once again draw your attention to one of the most valuable assets this website has to offer – The Bausch Collection.

 

The Bausch Collection, if you haven’t checked it out before, is a remarkable assemblage of photos of golf courses in the region, both public and private.   There is a link to The Bausch Collection on the green left rail of the MyPhillyGolf home page, under Photos.  Want to check out a golf course before you make a tee time?  Take a tour via The Bausch Collection.  If it’s not there, it might be coming soon.

 

The Bausch Collection isn’t the official name of the galleries.  I dubbed the photos that a year ago, when the golf addict who shoots them, Villanova chemistry profession Joe Bausch, offered to left us house them on MyPhillyGolf.  I jumped at the chance, recognizing a good thing when I see one.

 

I wrote a blog introducing The Bausch Collection last September, when we had only uploaded a fraction of the courses Joe has photographed.  Now, we’ve uploaded them all, except that Joe keeps adding to the collection.

 

It is hard to believe that he shoots these photos with a small point-and-shoot camera, not some $4,000 single lens reflex number like a professional photographer would use.  I’ve also played with Joe as he is shooting a course.  He does it quickly and discreetly, without holding up the group.

 

Anyway, if you haven’t looked over The Bausch Collection, I recommend you do so.  And if you know of a course that would be a good addition to the collection, send me an email and I’ll pass it along to Joe.

 

Enjoy.

I have officially joined the R11 Nation.

 

If you haven’t heard and seen all the fuss and commotion over the TaylorMade R11 driver, with its distinctive white head and adjustable settings, you’ve either been in a cave or on a six-month bender.  The R11 is quite the talk on the PGA Tour and, therefore, a seriously hot item with amateurs who buy every advantage they can afford.

 

If you follow this space with any regularity, you might also recall that last year, I plunked down some serious change for a new, fitted driver, a Titleist 909D Comp.  It had a head on it about the size of a small pumpkin, plus all the bells and whistles of the golf technology at that moment.  I liked it; I l still like it a lot, mainly because I could really hit it.  We made beautiful music together.

 

Then the TaylorMade R11 caught my eye. 

 

My pal at TaylorMade said he would send me one, if I would play it and write what I thought about it.  I said I would, but that I would write what I really thought.  He said he and the boys in the lab at TaylorMade were willing to take that risk.  He advised me to get myself fitted in Philadelphia and send him the specs.

 

I knew right away who I would call: Just a few weeks earlier I had gotten a PR release noting that the Golf Galaxy in Devon had been picked by Golf Digest as one of the Top 100 fitting facilities in the country, thanks to their fitting guy, Leigh Taylor, a PGA Master Professional and Life Member.    As it happens, I know Leigh.  He fits and sells all makes and models of drivers and irons, and he takes this stuff as seriously as a heart surgeon takes a triple bypass.

 

A few mornings later, I was in Leigh’s fitting bay.  "I’ve never seen a driver sell like the R11," Leigh told me as I loosened up.  "Never seen anything like it."

 

Although Leigh has high praise for several manufacturers, he offered a particular nod to TaylorMade, which invented the metal-headed wood and, later, what he called MWT, or "moveable weight technology."   For the weekend chop who doesn’t have the time, money or inclination for a series of lessons, he can fight a slice with MWT by shifting the weights in the toe and heel of the club.

 

The R11 has gone one further -- two, really.  Not only does it have 1-gram and 10-gram weights that can be moved from heel to toe, as needed, it has an adjustable shaft, enabling you to increase or decrease the loft of the clubface by as much as a full degree.  Finally, it has a bumper plate on the bottom of the club that gives you another tool in the battle against hooks and slices: an adjustable clubface, with settings of open, neutral or closed.

 

After an hour of hitting balls with a series of shafts with different flexes and kick points, Leigh printed out a long sheet that measured the results: club speed, ball speed, launch angle, ball spin, carry, deviation, even something called PTR, which stands for "power transfer ratio," tech-speak for was I catching it on the "sweet spot?"

 

I have hit a low ball all my life, so the biggest puzzle for Leigh was the elusive combination of ball speed/launch angle/ball spin.  Finally, he had it: A Fubuki (stiff) shaft, 10.5 degrees of loft, set ½ degree up, to 11 degrees; the heavier 10-gram weight in the heel, to fight my inclination to hit it right; and the bumper plate set to neutral.

 

A week or so later, my new R11 arrived.

 

I have now hit about a dozen buckets of balls and played four rounds with it.  My assessment: I like it more each time out.

 

In our maiden round together, I wasn’t sold. I couldn’t hit a fairway.  Everything was going right because...well, because I occasionally battle a case of driver yips, and because sometimes golf hates me and mocks me and loves to see me suffer.  I could not lay the blame for those terrible drives at the feet of the R11 or any other club.

 

With each round since, as my confidence in my swing has returned, my driving has improved .  I played on Friday and only missed one fairway.   On the three or four tee shots when I truly connected, I strutted off the tee box hugging my new driver.  The R11 felt as good as any driver I’ve ever hit.

 

The adjustability is, of course, one of its biggest selling points of the R11.  Now that I have it set to my liking, it is hard to know whether I will make further adjustments from time to time.  I’m keeping my little TaylorMade wrench in the back of my car, just in case.

 

I’m enough of a traditionalist that initially, I wasn’t crazy about the R11’s white head.  But it is growing on me, and I’m starting to find it oddly soothing, although I have no idea why.

 

And one benefit I had not considered: the face of the R11 is a dull black that tends to show where on the club face you connected.  If it feels like you caught one on the toe, the proof is in the mark on the face of the club.  

 

Bottom line: the R11 is staying in my bag.

If you missed it in Sunday’s Philadelphia Inquirer, here’s a travel story I wrote for them on the emergence of Ocean City, Md., as a golf destination.

 

As the story notes, OCMD is sort of a mini-Myrtle Beach trip.  The city now has 17 courses within a 40 minute drive.  It’s also a very family-oriented resort town.

Just when it looked like the final round of the Masters was as good as it could possibly get, it got better.

 

Could you believe that final round?

 

Thrills, spills, birdies galore, careers being made and, sadly, the heartbreak that was Rory McIlroy’s humiliating moment in the global spotlight.  To his credit, when it was over, young Rory, who is still younger than half the golf shirts in my closet, stood there and faced the media like a man.  He had wilted under the suffocating pressure and there was no denying it.  He didn’t try to.  The good news is, what doesn’t kill him will make him stronger.   Rory will be back, and I am willing to bet, he will win the Masters within the next three years.

 

It was also good to see Tiger Woods hitting on all cylinders for most of the final round.  Only a couple of weeks ago, he looked totally lost.  Now, suddenly, we see glimmers of the Tiger of old.  That bodes well for the U.S. Open.

 

Charl Schwartzel has a gorgeous golf swing and, obviously, and poise under pressure.  But his name looks misspelled and before today I couldn’t pick him out in a police lineup. Personally, I was rooting for, in this order: (1) Rory McIlroy (2) Tiger (3) Adam Scott (4) Luke Donald (5) Jason Day.

 

Still, it’s hard to be disappointed when the Masters set the tone for a great season of majors.

After Tiger Woods shot 66 on Friday and moved to 7-under par and three shots off the lead in the Masters, several people have been kind enough to call or email to point out that I wrote in this space a week ago that he is lost and has "no chance" to win a fifth green jacket this week.

 

Oh, how I hope me makes me eat my words.  If golf needs anything right now, it is Tiger back on his game. Remember, I didn’t say I wasn’t rooting for him; I just said I didn’t think his game looked sharp enough to win. 

 

It is looking more and more like we will ever see him dominate the way he did at the peak of Tiger-mania.  He’s 35 and not the same player anymore, and the guys he’s competing against these days are young and fearless and crazy-long off the tee.  If fact, if the sudden rejuvenation of Tiger is a major storyline this week, so is what is increasingly looking like a changing of the guard at the top of golf.

 

How can we not be impressed by the crop of young players who are muscling their way onto the leaderboard and into the limelight?  Rory  McIlroy, Jason Day, Alvaro Quiros, Ricky Fowler, not to mention Dustin Johnson, Gary Woodland and a couple of others.  These guys are the next generation of stars.   We should not be surprised at all of young McIlroy finds the poise to hold it together and win his first major.

 

Meanwhile, Saturday’s third round is crucial for Tiger.  So far this year in the reconstruction of his game, weekends have not been overly kind to him.  At the Farmers Insurance Open at Torrey Pines, he shot 74-75 in the third and fourth rounds and fell off the leaderboard.  At the Dubai Desert Classic, he shot 72-75.  At the Arnold Palmer Invitational, he went 74-72.

 

Saturday is an even bigger test.