Tiger Woods Does it Again

Tiger once again angered many uptight golfers with his recent comment at the WGC CA Championship after saying ''The next time a photographer shoots a [bad word!] picture, I'm going to break his [another bad word] neck.''  This was after yet another photographer snapped a shot in the middle of his swing.

I say, good on ya Tiger, it's about time you bought some to those parasites who have no respect for you and the game!  They sign a waiver before the tournament stating they will not do that kind of thing and if they can't adhere to the policies, they should bugger off and take photos at junior golf tournaments.

I'd get Stevie on the job next time.

  

Thanks to all of you who sent me messages and sent me friend requests.  unfortunately I can't accept or reply all of you because I keep getting 404 error messages and whenever I click on the accept friend request i get logged out :-(.    Sometimes I go to read your messages and I get logged out!  Sometimes I can't even log in!

Anyway, thanks to all of you who have tried contacting me!

The Difference Between You And Tiger


Difference Number One – Tiger Doesn’t Wear Long White Socks With Black Shoes and a Purple Floral Golf Shirt.
Sure, Tiger doesn’t have to fork out for his Rico Suave Nike outfits, but you don’t have to break into your piggy bank to look sharp on the course.  If you wear shorts, ankle socks are the game.  It might just be a coincidence, but I’ve never met a golfer that’s broken 100 who pulls there socks up past calf height.

Difference Number Two – Tiger Never Shows Up Late For His Tee Time
Booking a tee time is not like booking a hotel room where you can show up at anytime.  If you show up late for a tee time, don’t expect to get out.  Aim to be on the tee at least 10 minutes before your tee time.

Difference Number Three – Tiger Spins It Because He Uses The Right Equipment
One of the most popular questions I get asked is how you spin the ball.  Well first you gotta understand that your Pinnacle Mega Long Way Distance golf ball isn’t designed to suck it back on any type of green.  You also need some clubhead speed, solid contact and receptive greens.

Difference Number Four – Tiger Talks The Talk
It’s called a golf course, not a golf “field”.  It’s not “who’s turn is it”, it’s “Who’s away”.  Learn the golf lingo and never be laughed at behind a Pro’s back again.

Difference Number Five – Tiger Knows A Good Shot
If you’re playing with a Pro, or low handicapper, their idea of a good shot and your idea of a good shot are different.  Hitting it to 40 feet from 75 yards isn’t a good shot for a single digit handicapper.

Difference Number Six – Tiger Doesn’t Drink 13 Pints The Night Before A Round
Actually there was a survey taken and a lot of PGA Pro’s have teed it up hammered, but the majority are professionals in every sense of the word.  With the possible exception of John Daly, late nights and alcohol rarely make for low scores.

Difference Number Seven – Tiger Remembers Every Shot He Ever Hit
Most amateurs have trouble remembering the last hole.  Pro’s have an uncanny ability to remember and recall every shot they hit. I’m not sure what this means, but at the very least it sounds cool when you’re in the clubhouse and recall your “5-iron into 7 from the right fairway bunker, then made the 15 footer for birdie” rather than “what hole was number 7 again?”

Difference Number Eight – Tiger Knows How To Practice.
You won’t see Tiger hitting five buckets of balls with his driver.  Of course, you read my last article about practice, so I know I don’t need to tell you how to practice properly.

Difference Number Nine – Tiger Can Reach 600 Yard Par 5’s In Two.  
You just swing like you’re trying to reach them in two.

Difference Number Ten – Tiger Gets Paid To Play Golf
You pay to play golf.  By the reaction of some players after they hit a bad shot, you’d think golf is their livelihood.  It shows competitiveness when you’re disappointed in a bad outcome, but there’s a fine line between being competitive and being a 24 handicap and throwing your club after your 3-wood from 260 doesn’t clear the water.

Difference Number Eleven – Tiger Knows Golf Isn’t Fair
And it isn’t.  Hitting the best driver of your life and ending up in a divot, horseshoes and bad bounces are all what makes this game as great as it is frustrating.

Difference Number Twelve – Tiger Relishes Having a Fifteen Footer To Win a Million Dollars.  
We crap our pants at just the thought of facing a two-footer for a dollar.  It’s perfectly natural to get nervous on the first tee, or over an important shot, but you have to learn to channel that energy in the right place or you’ll end up with some disastrous results.

Difference Number Thirteen – Tiger Knows He’ll Never Be Perfect.
We hit one good drive and we’ve found the secret and are ready to write a book about it.

Difference Number Fourteen – Tiger Doesn’t Tell Phil To Keep His Head Down or Vijay to Keep His Left Arm Straight
And if he did, they’d probably ask him to step outside the ropes and bring it on, which is exactly what you should do to the next person who gives you unsolicited advice.

Difference Number Fifteen – Tiger Knows His Caddies Name
You should too. I don’t know about down there in Indonesia, but up here in Thailand there aren’t many players who take the second to find out the persons name that they’re about to spend the next five hours with.   
 
Difference Number Sixteen – When Tiger Hits a Bad Shot, He Still Thinks He’s The Best Golfer on The Planet.
When we hit a bad shot, we’re the worst golfer in the world, this is definitely the last round of golf we’re ever playing, and we’re selling our clubs on ebay as soon as we get home.

Difference Number Seventeen - When Tiger Gets A Lesson It Takes Him a Year To Make a Swing Change
When we take a lesson, we expect to fix a 50 yard slice we’ve had for 18 years in less than an hour.

Difference Number Eighteen – When Tiger Goes To The Toilet During A Round, The Whole World Knows
When we go, our playing partners struggle to know we're missing.
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The Lazy Golfers Guide To Better Golf

This month I started to pen a Pulitzer prize piece on health and fitness, but got tired and ordered MacDonald’s instead.  I’ve actually semi-retired as a golf professional, so there are some doubts as to whether or not I should be writing anything about golf.  After my Big Mac settled, I thought enough of this trying-to-be-funny-short-person-syndrome , let’s try to come up with something that readers might find useful.  After hours of self exploration (don’t get any ideas), I thought a guide to lazy golfers’ great golf might come in useful, since you’re probably reading this on the couch, rather than pumping iron in the gym.  Finally, I feel as though I’m fully qualified to be writing this.

The Mental Game
The first step to great golf is admitting you’re lazy.  This doesn’t come easy, but the faster you accept this, the faster your road to slow (let’s not rush things here, speedy progress would burn up too many calories) improvement.  You don’t have to get up and look at yourself in the mirror to say it, in fact don’t even say it, just think it.  That’s enough for now before you wear yourself out.  It’s nothing to be ashamed of, you’re busy and golf isn’t a real sport anyway.

Practicing (The Thing You Do To Supposedly Get Better Away From The Course)
Is for the Pro’s and guys like Vijay Singh.  Stay away from the range as much as possible, unless you go there to drink and socialize between the intermittent odd shot to justify you expending the energy getting your clubs in and out of the car.  The true lazy golfer breaks out in little red spots when just a mention of the range is spoken.  A couple of practice swings before you hit your first shot is quite acceptable, but after that, there’s really no need.  I for one have never seen the need to waste precious energy. Who’s real swing is anything resembling their practice swing anyway?

Optimising Your Performance: Nutrition
The lazy golfer relies on (copious quantities) of food and alcohol to get the most out of their game.  And why not, who wants to play hungry and thirsty?  Asia is, or at least Thailand, quite frankly, a little bit disappointing when it comes to 9th hole replenishments.  Yes there are kiosks sometimes stocked with goodies, but the heat just ruins your appetite.  If you’ve ever played in colder conditions, you’ll know that nothing beats a hot dog, burger and fries at the turn.  Follow this up with a chocolate bar, heck make it two, and you might make a couple of triples after the initial sugar rush, but isn’t that better than starving?

The Art of Making Excuses
Serious lazy golfers only play courses where riding is compulsory.  In the unlucky event that you should be invited to play on a course with no golf carts, do whatever you have to in order to get out of it.  Excuses in the past that seem to be accepted well include sudden injuries including back spasms and lower back pain, urgent meetings with very important clients and deaths to distance relatives.  You’ve already admitted to yourself you’re lazy, but there’s absolutely no reason why you have to admit to others you’d have a stroke if you had to walk 18 holes.  


Optimising Your Performance: Equipment
USD$800 drivers won’t make a difference.  Those little fold up chairs can come in real handy when carts are restricted to cart paths and the great thing about Asia is you can usually hire as many caddies as you want to do this mundane tasks that make golf more tiring than it has to be.  There are some great lazy golfer icons here in Thailand, particularly in the armed forces.  Visit one of the many army courses here, and it’s not unusual to find three to four caddies catering to their every whim.  One for the general duties such as taking the clubs out of your bag, cleaning your balls (you got to keep them clean), picking the ball out of the hole and other strenuous tasks that would otherwise make you exhausted.  Another for carrying the umbrella - you don’t want to sweat too much or you might have to start buying new clothes.  Another for carrying the chair so you can sit down while waiting for the group ahead.  And new to Bangkok, one just for show (you have to have to have something to show).

Motivation: The Will To Win and Other Tips

- The crème de la crème of lazy golfers are easily motivated and driven to succeed on the golf course by food and alcohol.  Any bets should be food and alcohol based, the more the better.  
- Lazy golfers also tend to play at their peak on Sunday afternoons, avoiding early morning tee times at all costs.  
- Avoid mountain courses and clubs with ridiculous policies like restricting carts to cart paths
- Think twice about playing in tournaments and at clubs where pace of play is strictly enforced
- Subscribe to the Golf Channel and never make plans to play when there’s an important golf tournament on, especially when Tim Herron and Graig Stadler are playing

I've only played twice in the last 6 months, the first round I shot 68 with 5 birdies and an eagle. It was on an easy course admittingly but a 68 is a 68 and I hadn't picked up a club for a while.  I just played my 2nd round a few days ago, shot 73 with 4 birdies (3 consecutive) and an eagle.  Made two double bogeys, one from 60 yards out - that's what you get for only playing twice in 6 months and never practicing!  Golf is a funny game - try my new theory - less is more!  Just think about Tiger!

If you’re anything like me, practicing is somewhere near the bottom of my To Do list.  Sure it’s important, but the vast majority of amateur golfers aren’t actually doing much at the range except wearing out their golf glove, and they’d probably be better off spending a night out trying to bust a few moves on Harmony Thomas look-a-likes.  Am I telling you not to practice?  Err…well, despite the fact that most great players say something along the lines of, “the more I practice the better I get”, I actually got better the less I practiced and the more I just played.  (Perhaps that’s why they call me the “The White Tee Wonder” these days). So yeah, I’m telling you (I’m a control freak) there’s not much use practicing unless you know how to use the time effectively.

Why Are You There?
Next time you’re at the range, look down the long line of golfers and count how many players have got the dog bowl out and are letting the big dog eat.  Now count how many players have got their wedge out (not counting those warming up) hitting shots inside 100 yards.  And I know I don’t need to tell you how many shots are played with your driver in a round, and how many shots are played from within 100 yards.  Hitting five buckets of balls with your driver isn’t practicing, that’s just having fun.  If you really want to practice, you’ve got to have some kind of goal in mind, and/or be working on something to improve your game.

When Less is More
You’d think some players think hitting 18 buckets within a one-hour session will somehow increase their chances of winning the lottery.  The only thing that does is makes the driving range owner really happy and makes you smell bad.  Part of the reason why practicing is not much use to most players is that there is no consequence of hitting a bad shot.  There are no hazards, no Out of Bounds, and more importantly, if you throw the club after a bad shot, you have to wait until the next day to go get it.  If you hit fewer balls, you’ll be much more conscious of making every shot count, which leads to my next piece of advice…

Recreate Course Conditions
One of the keys to practicing is to try to simulate what happens out on the golf course.  Laying down a bucket of balls and hitting them all at one target isn’t the way to do that.  Presuming you’re Nigel no-friends and are practicing by yourself, you’ve got to get serious and set yourself some targets.  When I was competing as an amateur, I used to play games with myself and I don’t mean Solitaire.  I’d set myself a goal of making 100 consecutive three-footers and promised I’d never leave the putting green until I’d achieved that goal.  Apart from making your back really sore, this does two things. Firstly, it makes you nervous.  When you get up to about 90, and it’s your 3rd attempt, you’d be surprised at the tension that creeps into your stroke.  The other thing this type of drill does is install confidence.  When you go out on the course and are faced with a 3 footer, you almost feel like you can’t miss. 

Know When To Practice
Part of the reason why our handicap hasn’t gone down in 30 years is that players haven’t discovered that the range is for practice and the golf course is for playing.  I take that back.  The range isn’t for practice when you’re using it to warm up for the round either.  You won’t fix any 30-yard slices 30 minutes before your tee time, and you definitely won’t fix it on the golf course.  Once you learn to play with what the Golf Gods gave you that day and play within your abilities, you’ll become a much better player and shoot lower scores.

On your next visit to the range, put some thought into the above and hopefully you’ll get a whole lot more out of your practice sessions and a lot more enjoyment from playing the game better!

The Solheim Cup is on, but who knows where it's being played? Who can name more than 5 players on each team? Congratulations if you do.  The LPGA has tried to market sex or rather sexiness but is Natalie Gulbis really in the same league as the hotties on the WTA?  Perhaps it's just the fact that seeing sweaty women run around a tennis court is more sexy than watching a 3 footer?  In order for the LPGA to gain popularity, there needs to be a huge influx of hotties, not just a handful of players that are 7 on the hottie scale at best.

The great one shot a course record 63 to win the BMW and take the lead in the FedEx Cup.  Hopefully that will shut up those people who were critical of Tiger for skipping the Barclays.  Can any of the top players really perform at their very best at this time of year and while playing four weeks in a row?  I think not and Tim Finchem and the tour need to find a work-around...

Golfweek reported Tiger Woods has signed a five year deal with Sport drink Gatorade.  Apparently Tiger was having dizzy spells after ending his American Express contract earlier in the year and found Gatorade to be a good source of replenishment for his bank account shrinkage.  Full report when it's all out in the open!

Not me, and not the players.  Last time I posted a link to an outside link my account was disabled but hopefully that was a mistake - Here's the link to support my opinion http://www.thegolfchannel.com/core.aspx? page=15101&select=23790 which has been the subject of some abuse in other golf forums!  Tiger and the boys can play whenever they want, they've done enough for golf. It's a good idea in theory (the FedEx Cup) but the worlds best players, (and this is why they are the best players), the season is over after the PGA Championship. 

Tag: golf videos
As of today, golflink.com has the best collection of golf videos on the Internet in the instruction category.  If you're looking for clips of shots and players from the PGA Tour pgatour.com has some pretty nice videos but nothing too long.  Check out all the social networking/video-sharing sites for some funny and not-so-funny golf videos of people doing stupid things on and off the golf course.  E.g Watch a guy take a full swing with his driver off his mates mouth while wasted, see a guy fall into a swimming pool while trying to let the big dog eat of his balcony, look at some clowns driving golf carts like its a smash-up-derby etc etc...  Break.com and off course youtube seem to have some classics. Golfuncut.com has a golf video blog that lists all the video-sharing sites with golf movies on them although the site itself is in BETA and there's not much on there.  There seems to be a few golf sites trying to encourage user-generated content and get golfers to upload their videos although none of them seem to be very popular.  It's a keen golfer who's prepared to go out, video themselves, then upload it to a website.  Stay tuned for more golf video sites, although www.golflink.com acquisition of golfspan makes it the premier site at present!