We’ve all the seen the long accurate drives of Tiger Woods. The ball flies through the air and lands in the middle of the fairway, 300 yards away.

The green-eyed monster of envy consumes us as we wonder if we could ever hope to drive like that. Fortunately, long drives are not the be-all-end-all game of golf.

Enter the short game. Without good short game skills, all the long drives are for naught.

The short game is those shots that get us onto the green from about one hundred feet out, be it from the fairway, a bunker, the rough or a drop zone and includes chips, sand shots and pitches.

This is where your higher numbered clubs would be used, as well as your pitching iron, sand wedge or lob wedge.

Most golf courses have practice areas as well as a driving range. Spend some time working on hitting your ball onto the green from different distances. Aim for a ten-foot circle in the center of the green at first. Experiment using your wedges; what works for someone else, might not work for you and your particular swing.

After you get accustomed to doing this drill consistently, it’s time to spend some time in a sand trap. Knowing how to get the ball out of a trap will cut your score.

Plant your feet firmly into the sand, with your left foot turned toward the hole. Imagine a 4-inch circle around the ball and try to hit the edge of the circle that is away from the ball.

Take lots of sand with your ball and swing completely. Don’t decelerate at all when or after you hit the ball. It should pop up onto the green and stop. This doesn’t work unless the sand is very soft and powdery. On hard surfaces, you might need to avoid actually hitting the sand.

As in all aspects of the game, only practice will help you to improve.

Pirates-Of-The-Green

The long game refers to your drives (shots off the tee) and fairway shots; everything short of the shots
you make to get onto the green.

Each hole has a different difficulty level, different par and distinctive hazards, so instructing you to use
your Driver on every tee would be blatantly wrong.

This is something you will learn over time as you learn the various shots you make according to the club, the placement of the ball and your personal swing.

Generally speaking, the lower the club number, the longer and lower your ball will go. A 4-iron shot will
travel long and low and will most likely roll, whereas a 9-iron shot will have much more loft and go less
distance both in the air and on the ground.

The professionals on television make it look so easy, they consistently hit the ball long and straight and never miss-hit the ball making it dribble ten feet, or completely miss the ball.

Driving is very important to the game, and many hours spent at the driving range will help improve your
distance. Experiment with the same club to see what works for you if you move the ball forward or backward in your stance. Take a lesson, if possible, and learn
the proper swing from the beginning.

Mastering the long game helps you get to the green in fewer strokes, keeping your score and frustration
level down. Remember that it takes a long time to learn consistency and remember to have fun!

Pirates Of The Green

Proper stance and posture in golf is extremely important, not only in the mechanics of the game but to protect you from injury. Posture is defined in the Golf Biodynamics Manual, (Check 1999) as “the position from which movement begins and ends”. Correct posture also reduces golfing injuries, promotes the ability to actually strike the ball, and enhances your power and stability. Anyone can work on achieving a correct posture; you don’t need to be a top athlete, or even a top golfer, but your golfing game will improve a great deal if you start with the correct posture and stance.

Good posture is where your shoulders are directly above your feet, and your head and spine are aligned. Your arms should be rotated outwards to keep shoulders and head back. You should not be standing with your back hunched over because this is what allows your head and shoulders to come too far forward. You can check that your spine is correctly straight by touching your golf club to it. Both butt and upper back should be touching the club.

The correct stance is one in which your heels are about the same width apart as your shoulders. Keeping your back straight, bend from the hips and let your hands hang down. Keep the ball in the bottom half of your vision to stop your chin from tucking in too far. Your knees should be slightly bent. Try and keep your body free from tension. If your muscles are tense, you could well suffer an injury that may take weeks to recover from. Many back and shoulder injuries come from poor posture and stance.

If you are right-handed, your right side should tilt slightly further down than your left, but your weight should be evenly distributed on, and more to the front of your feet. Your left foot should be flared about 20 degrees if you are a right-handed player. If you have good flexibility, you may also want to flare your right foot. You should practice all this in front of the mirror until it becomes automatic. Once you have achieved the correct posture and stance, the accuracy of your actual golf swing will be greatly enhanced.

When using a driver your feet should be slightly wider, with the inside of them in line with the outside of your shoulders. A good rule to remember is that the shorter the club you use, the less width there should be in your stance.

Pirates Of The Green

Playing golf should be an enjoyable experience, so if you find yourself losing your temper when you make a bad shot, what can you do about it? One thing that might help is to practice acceptance.

The first thing you need to accept is your own limitations. All players vary in their playing ability and this is not always due to experience. Physical ability has a lot to do with it. If you suffer from arthritis it will affect your game, no matter if you have the best teachers. If your body is simply not flexible enough for a good swing, it will affect your game. Find out what you can do about this – if anything - and do it. For instance, if you are simply not very limber, take off-course lessons in exercises and stretches to make you more fit. Your golf game will improve and your temper will have less reason to spark up.

Accept the game. A perfect game of golf is rarely if ever played by anyone. Even the pros have bad golf days. Why should yours be any different? Accept that bad shot as a challenge and concentrate on what you will do about recovering instead of wasting energy jumping up and down and shouting. It’s much smarter to get that ball back into play as quickly as possible. Once you’ve done that congratulate yourself on meeting the challenge.

Work out a game plan before you arrive at the course and stick to it. Decide you will choose a safer shot and use an easier club to manage it. This may take a bit of discipline, but you’ll thank yourself in the long run. Remember high blood pressure is a killer!

Accept the bad, but focus on the good. When you make a bad shot, immediately tell yourself what you liked about that good shot you played just before it. Say it out loud to trick your subconscious mind into feeling pleased. In your mind’s eye, see your ball rolling straight down the center of the green and into the hole. If it doesn’t happen, shrug and tell yourself it will next time.

Forget about being embarrassed at bad play. Heck, who’s perfect? Not you and certainly not your golfing friends. Remember that negative emotions make you tense and tension is likely to spoil your game and could even cause injury, so do yourself a favour and lighten up.

Breathe deeply and enjoy the day apart from the golf. Feel the wind in your hair, the sun on your face, listen to the birdsong, and breathe in the aroma of the green. It’s all great - enjoy it.

When you go for a game of golf you are expecting to enjoy yourself, right? But you know that since you are in reality ‘playing the course’ and hitting a still object (okay, trying to!) rather than one lobbed at you by an opponent, the blame for any mistakes you make sit squarely on your own shoulders. But don’t attach blame - to yourself or anyone else. Blaming is a pointless pursuit, and not only in golf. It simply happened, so deal with it and get on with the game.

So what happens when you end up in the rough or that water hazard? Sure it’s frustrating when every ball you hit goes bad, but don’t spit the dummy and pump up your blood pressure! For a start, if you become tense and angry you are more likely to suffer some kind of injury like a muscle strain or tear. Hey, you use up lots less energy when you remain calm. This means you’ll have more energy to use on improving your golf. Everyone suffers from frustration during a bad golf day, but it’s how you control it that is the key to winning out in the end.

Practice acceptance – you’ll probably have lots of chances to practice. One good way to remain positive when you hit a shot into that bunker is to immediately think of something great about the last shot you played. You have to speak this positive comment out loud. Listening to positive self–talk will cheer you up more than you thought possible.

If your ball is in an unfavorable lie, accept it as a challenge, not a threat. Don’t worry about past mistakes or future problems. The game you are playing is in the immediate present. That is all that matters.

Only count up the number of strokes for each hole. Leave the total calculation until you’ve finished the course. This saves a lot of stress. Remember that life wasn’t meant to be easy and the game of golf has no perfect players. Breathe deep and slowly. Be kind to yourself.

If you truly and totally suck at the game, go take professional lessons for a while. You’ll be amazed at the difference it makes. It will be worth every dime.

So you’ve thrown all your balls into the water and jumped on your golf clubs until they are bent. What should you do? Either give up golf or go take an anger management course. You choose.

Talk about eagles, birdies pars may make beginners scratch their heads, but keeping score in golf is really quite simple. It’s a matter of counting your whacks – whether they actually connect with the ball or not. Every time you strike at the ball it’s called a stroke, so you have to count the number of strokes it takes you to sink that little ball into the hole. You do this for each section (hole) and at the end you add up the number of strokes. Unlike many other games, you are aiming to get around the course with the fewest strokes possible.

Each hole is given a number called ‘par’ that represents the number of strokes you should need to get the ball into it. If the par is 4 and you have to hit the ball 5 times to get it in, then your score is one-over par. If by some miracle you only took 3 strokes to get it there your score is called 1-under.

Just to make things interesting, there are differing circumstances where things called penalty strokes apply. For instance, if you hit a ball out of the grounds or into an area like a water hazard where you cannot get at it, then that is considered a penalty shot and you must play a new ball from a specified location - with the first stroke for it being classed as your 2nd stroke for the hole.

If you actually sink your ball with just one stroke, it’s called an ace, while a birdie is when you score one stroke under par for a hole. That illusive eagle is two strokes under par and a bogey is the score a fairly good golfer would be expected to make on a hole, allowing two putts.

Another complication is the handicap. But this is not really hard to figure out. It is simply a number of strokes a player receives to adjust his score to a common level. The better the player, the smaller his handicap, while the best players have a handicap of zero. They are called ‘scratch’ players. A handicap allows a fair game of golf to be enjoyed by players of varying skill levels. Of course if you break the rules of play, you are likely to be hit with a penalty of two strokes.

It’s important to know the difference between ‘stroke play’ and match play, because different penalties apply, depending on which you are playing. Stroke play is when you are competing against the course; match play is when you compete against one or more people. For instance, in stroke play, if you tee off from outside the teeing ground you’ll incur a 2-stroke penalty. On the other hand, in ‘match’ play there will be no stroke penalty, but your opponent can cancel your shot and then you must replay it.

Can you imagine that any country’s fighting forces would be so enamored of the game of golf that they downed weapons to play? This is what happened in Scotland in the 1500’s. But not only did they play golf for recreation, they continued on to the detriment of their weapons skills usage. Archery was the prime weapon relied on by countries in those days to drive off marauders and enemies, but it seems that the archers of the day put so much effort into their golf games that they began to lose their skill at archery.

This problem was so widespread that King James II and his parliament had to pass laws in 1542 prohibiting the game from being played. Luckily for golfers, gunpowder was invented near the end of that century and so archery gradually became obsolete. But the game of golf did not. Even though it was illegal, the game continued to be played and even King James the IV, whose parliament had passed the last decree banning the game, became an avid golfer. He influenced his daughter Mary, later Queen of Scots, to love the game and her son, later to be James the 1st of England, played at Blackheath Common in London.

The game of golf finally filtered through to the US in the late 1700’s. Here it was considered ‘a pleasing and genteel amusement’ and it was not until much later that it was taken more seriously. The first permanent golf club did not spring up until nearly a century later. Both the Royal Montreal golf Club and The Foxburg Golf Club vie for the honor of being the first permanent club in the western hemisphere, with the strongest evidence belonging to the latter, who claimed the oldest permanent existence and the oldest golf course.

No matter who was the first, the game of golf continued to grow in popularity down through the centuries from its first humble beginnings played in a field by a group of friends to the formation of the United States Golf Association. By 1894 there were two US golf championships and it was then that uniform rules and conduct were established.

In the 20th century Horace L Hotchkiss organized the first seniors tournament at Apawamis Club, Rye, NY to prove that it was not just a game for younger people. Now golf is popular in over 30 countries, but has the largest following in the US where there are well over 5,000 courses played on by in excess of 4 million people. The value of the land, buildings and equipment used in the game is well into the billions. Not bad for a game that was once considered a nuisance by kings.

Debra McDonough
Pirates Of The Green

For the elite people in the business industry, who have probably tasted the finer things in life, personalization is the key for the perfect retirement gift. It must be something that lets them remember their legacy in the corporation, where they had grinded it out for decades to get into the position of their dreams.

It must be related to their interests, where after successful deals and spot-on investments, where they relish in those activities that make them happy and fully human again. These two things are basic and necessary to help the former executives remember how they lived their lives, and of course, the one who thoughtfully gave it.

For the golfer

Nothing says leisure and passion more than the sport, golf. The demand of golf clubs, gloves and the like has soared over the years due to the advent of new industries like hedge fund investing and business solutions. More businesspeople simply mean more golfers since golf is the sport where most of them bond and get to know more about each other. Another evidence of which is that golf courses are becoming more commonplace in rising economies like China, where Mission Hills and many others are frequently advertised in sporting channels.

All it takes is some creativity. One can put their company logo, family seal or monogram in golf balls, markers, tees and golf bags to exude that certain kind of privilege only they can taste. A personalized photo golf towel is another unique idea! And for those who love to bring along friends in the golf course, nothing says camaraderie more than personalized golf vests for the group of friends!

Also, in memorable tournaments with other golfers, a miniature personalized scoreboard print will also help bring out memories as much as photos do. With podium finishes and ranks immortalized, it will conjure up the spirit of competition and help the golfer (and other participants) again as if they’re playing and enjoying the sport right now.

Recreational Sports

Some executives spend their free time in casinos, where they flaunt their wealth and win more on the way. So to speak, such people live life on the fast lane, gaining and losing a lot as they go. For the perfect gift for these kinds of people, there should be items that represent his/her lifestyle, like a cigar personally blended or a cigar case and cutter with monograms. A customized card deck with logos that represent the retiree’s trade/industry can also be done for them.

One can also go for the classic expensive wine or champagne, where the taste of which reminds one, with its incomparable sparkle, of the good life. A 1787 Chateau Lafite, Cristal Brut and Clos du Mensil are on this list.

Letting these types of people taste privilege is integral to the perfect retirement gift for them. And cigar cases with monograms and expensive alcohol go a long way.

Conclusion

Nothing else reminds them of themselves and their lifestyles more than personalized items and things that represent their way of life. Giving these kinds of gifts to retiring executives hits it right on the spot; they should live their golden years the way they want it to be. And luxury and personalization will help you find the best retirement gift for them.

Debra McDonough
Pirates Of The Green

There are literally hundreds and hundreds of different golf training aids on the market these days. Golfers will spend hundreds of dollars on the latest golf gadgets in hopes for a better golf game. Do these golf training aids work the way they are advertised? Perhaps.

* The Medicus Golf Club is a swing trainer that is specific to many swing faults and can give you immediate feedback. It has been around for a very long time and has been endorsed by Davis Love III for many years.

* Golf swing plane training aids can specifically help you get a feel for the proper swing plane for your body size. These also have stood the test of time and are used on many driving ranges as a teaching tool.

Putting is no doubt one of the most important parts of the golf game. That’s why another essential golf training aid that will benefit your golf game is some type of putting trainer. There certainly many to choose from, but pick one that specifically addresses your putting flaws.

* A putting track is a great golf training aid. This contraption helps keep your putter in a straight motion and really can improve your putting skills by giving stability to your putting stroke.

* Many people have seen golf putting mats, and they can be good training aids for your putting game. These are just mats – usually made of astro turf with holes or cups at the end that simulate a putting green. The golf putting mat is a great way to work on your putting game in the cold months when you can’t get on the course!

Finally, you may want to use a golf training aid to improve your golf swing speed. There are also many of these out on the market, but keep in mind that swing speed isn’t everything. A good, effective golf stroke is smooth and calculated and doesn’t necessarily depend wholly on the speed of your stroke so much as your form and strength.

There are many, many golf training aids available to help what’s ailing in your golf game. Some of them really do help, but others prove ultimately to be a waste of money as well as time when using them. Do some research on golf training aids and choose wisely. Then, hopefully, watch your golf game improve!

We live in a stressful world, so it’s only natural that we look for new venues of entertainment to ease our minds. You can get a lot of entertainment when you play the game of golf. Especially if you’re willing to have a little fun with it!

Some people get plenty of entertainment when they simply play the game of golf. But it can be made so much more fun when you put twists on regular games. You can modify the way you play and get a lot more enjoyment from the game.

For example, why not play a game of “monkey golf”. For this game, you put slips of paper in a hat that bears the name of each club in a normal bag. Players pick out a slip of paper and they have to use only that club for the entire round. The entertainment possibilities here are endless as you can imagine a person driving off the tee with a putter or chipping with a driver!

You can find great entertainment in the golf game when you play a little night golf. Golf courses aren’t lighted, but you can get glow in the dark balls and have grease pots on the greens so you can see where you’re going – well, sort of. It’s great fun to drive your ball and then have to navigate in the dark to see where it went! Let’s hope you didn’t slice into the woods!

A friendly game of Wolf is hilarious entertainment. With this game, you have the option of picking players to be on your team based on how they hit the ball. Teams can change often. But the most fun of this game is when a player is putting to win the hole. The other players are allowed to do anything they want as long as they don’t touch the ball. That leaves the field wide open. You can cover the player’s eyes, place obstacles in front of the hole – the possibilities are endless – and great fun!

Some friendly side bets can also increase the entertainment value of the golf game. Try making these bets with dares instead of money. Wouldn’t it be funny to make your opponent play with his or clothes turned inside out if they don’t make that putt? Use your imagination and be creative – however, keep it G-rated. The golf course is, after all, a public place!

Finding entertainment on the golf course is actually quite easy when you think outside of the proverbial box. Just remember that the whole point of a friendly game is to have fun. So go out and do it!