Orlando Golf Blogger

A local golf pro/instructor/blogger, etc… Brendon Elliot asked me to spread the word on this!  Take a look and support a good cause!  Also check out the little linksters link on the bottom of the post.  It looks pretty cool and I might be signing Orlando Golf Blogger Jr. up for it

“The Children’s Miracle Network® Golf Classic presented by Wal-Mart® at the WALT DISNEY WORLD® Resort tees off at Disney’s Palm and Magnolia Golf Courses November 6-9, 2008.

For more info click here

Support Brendon Elliott Golf and the development of our “Little Linksters” Junior Program by purchasing a Good Any One Day ticket. Proceeds from the ticket sales will go to Brendon Elliott Golf and the development of our “Little Linksters” Junior Program and local Children’s Miracle Network® hospitals including Arnold and Winnie Palmer Hospitals for Children in Orlando and Shands Children’s Hospital in Gainesville.

Good Any One Day tickets are $20 each and kids 17 and under get in free with a paid adult. New for 2008, complimentary parking is available.

To purchase tickets, call us at 386-532-9639 or visit us at www.BrendonElliottGolf.com

- Dave

I dunno about you guys, but I love killing time watching videos on youtube, well, atleast I did until it was firewalled at the office…. :)  Here’s a few you might enjoy.  For the first round of videos, click here.

Sorry I’ve been so aloof recently, been busy working on a couple other projects….  If only there were more hours in the day…

This is for all you Tiger haters…. eat it.

This one is just crazy, I have no idea how this is even possible….

Little Ben Hogan action for you.

Enjoy!

- Dave

There’s been a lot of buzz surrounding this golf ball recently and I was unable to resist being swept up in the hype.

Here’s the link

I went to the old Special-T Golf up the street to inquire about this ball and the salesman had never heard of it… don’t ya hate that? So we walked to the golf ball area and I was filling him in on all I had read about it, giving him the rundown so that he could have an educated response for the next customer who asked for it and we found the balls, right next to the other various D2 balls made by Top-Flite.

One of the reviews I read somewhere said it “hit like a Pro-V and cost 1/2 as much.” My first response was “OOOooooOOOOOoooo….” I had a corporate charity scramble coming up so I figured I’d give them a shot. By the way, we played Black Bear Golf Club out in Eustis and let me tell you, it was an awesome course. Everything about it seemed perfect, well, everything but the drive to get there, especially at 6am on a Saturday…

Those guys really know how to take care of a course. I was surprised at the course rating, I think from the whites it was 68.1, but it was a fairly challenging course, too challenging for a 68.1 in my opinion…

Hopefully I can get out there to do an un-official “official” review.

but, I digress..

So the Gamer ball, here’s a rundown of the specs.

Building upon the success of the Top-Flite D2® Golf Balls, Top-Flite has taken the benefits of proprietary Dimple in Dimple Aerodynamics and put it into a 3-piece performance golf ball that’s long, soft and generates more short-game spin for total control tee to green.

The thin cover is made of a soft ionomer, and when combined with a firm ionomer boundary layer and a highly resilient rubber core, it gives golfers a ball that performs like no other in the Top-Flite lineup. It’s your secret weapon, your “go-to” ball. It’s your Gamer.

Seamless Dimple in Dimple™ Aerodynamics - Unique aerodynamic surface maintains spin longer throughout flight, allowing the ball to hold its line and maintain lift longer without ballooning. It also increases aerodynamic efficiency by reducing drag, maximizing distance for a wide range of swing speeds.
Soft, Thin Ionomer Cover - Provides enhanced feel and better control around the greens with increased short-game spin.

Large, High-Resiliency Core - Provides outstanding distance while maintaining soft feel.

Firm Boundary Layer - Works with the core to increase ball speed and helps minimize spin off the driver for long distance.

I agree with everything above! The guy who played in the tournament looked like me, acted like me, but didn’t golf like me… This ball was phenomenal, I was in contention for the longest drive contest (on the 14th) and that’s never happened to me before. I didn’t win, sadly, was beat by 5 yards… that jerk… Coincidentally, he was hitting a pro-v… Out of 18 holes, didn’t lose a single ball.

The ball felt great off the tee, putting, chipping, well, everywhere…

Not to mention it looks cool and has an awesome name. Wonder if the developers own an Xbox?

The only thing I didn’t really like about it is after a few hits, the balls outer skin starts to scar and feather out. eh, bad explanation. Ok, imagine the balls external ionomer getting caught in the grooves of the club face and start to peel away upon impact. This was happening to me about every three holes. I would change out the ball when I saw that but I read that it didn’t appear to negatively affect the ball flight.

So all things considered, I’ve officially made the switch and am now a Gamer ball user.

If you’d like to pick some up at a 20% discount, check out GlobalGolf.com

Let me know your thoughts!

Dave

My thanks to Sara over at SkyGolf/SkyCaddie, who was kind enough to send me one of these to try out.

So far I’ve used this baby on two golf courses, Ridgewood Lakes and Black Bear Golf Club and I’ve found it to be very useful and a much needed accessory to any golfers arsenal.

Here’s a link to their website: SkyCaddie SG5

You can read the full list of features, specs, etc.. at their website, I’m going to highlight what I’ve found most useful here.

You and download up to 10 different golf courses to the unit at any given time. It comes with software that installs the drivers needed to connect the unit to your computer and I believe that it also has the 17,000 golf courses you can choose from on it. I guess it’s not that important, what is important is that they have over 17,000 courses for you to choose from. If for some reason your course is not available for download, the unit also has the ability to map out the course that you play so that it can be reused later. Now, I never had the opportunity to try that out, so I can’t speak to its accuracy or simplicity, but the capability is there.

The unit is real simple to use, once the course is loaded on to the unit, just go to your course, turn the unit on, select the course and your off.

I’ve got to say that the most valuable feature for me is the ball marking. Once your on the course, stand next to your ball, push the ball marking button, hit your ball, and when you get to your ball again, it will give you the distance of your shot.

This has been really helpful to me because I now realize that I’ve been over estimating my shots by 10-15 yards. My drives I’ve been over estimating by about 25 yards… And obviously, if you don’t have a solid, accurate understanding of your distances, it’s going to add a couple strokes per hole. Perfect example, I’m a big fan of hitting my sand wedge 50-100 yards out from the green, I love how the ball soars straight up into the air and lands with very little roll on the green. After using the GPS, I’ve worked out that the max distance I should use that club is 72 yards and once I realized that, I cut at least 4 strokes off my last score.

The unit also has a target feature, so you can see the distances to the various hazards on the course, like distance to the front, middle, and back of the left fairway bunker. This is a good feature of the unit, but in my experience, its not 100% reliable. The first course I played with it (Ridgewood) was very accurate and it included about 90% of the courses hazards, on the second course (Black Bear), it probably included more like 70% of the hazards. But, to their credit, they’re supporting over 17,000 courses, so given that load, anyone could overlook a thing or two.

Using the IntelliGreen feature allows you to see the distance to the front, middle, and back of the green as well as show you what the green looks like from your angle of approach. It’s pretty useful.

Overall, I really enjoy this unit, it boasts a 14 hours battery life with a rechargeable Lithium Ion battery so you can get a couple rounds in off a single charge.

This beast will run you $429.95 and you have to choose from three different membership plans.

Birdie - $29.95/yr, gives you unlimited courses in your state.

Eagle - $49.95/yr, gives you unlimited courses in your country

Double Eagle - $59.95/yr gives you unlimited courses world wide.

Enjoy!

Dave

The cool folks over at the Caesar Golf Company sent me some of these Caesar Featherie golf balls to review.

Played a round yesterday at Hunter’s Creek and tried them out. I know your probably asking why I went back there and my answer is a universal truth that we all can appreciate, “It was free!” Remember, when I reviewed the course the first time, they were aerating the greens so they gave a free round if you played, I cashed it in yesterday.

I won’t go into too much detail, but the course is looking better but still needs a lot of work and they REALLY need to adjust their sprinklers because it was about 9am and they were still going and the freaking 16th green was waterlogged and i could’ve gone swimming in bunkers surrounding the green! Bleh, needless to say I was a bit peeved because I happened to strategically hit my ball into one of these lake traps…

Back to the ball!

Here’s their website. The Caesar Golf Company

To summarize the selling points… This ball eliminates slices and hooks, improves accuracy, better roll on the greens due to the lack of dimples, great for short par 3 & par 4 courses, made for the golfer who needs better accuracy.

Hitting this ball was a very interesting experience. Pretty cool and strange at the same time. I’ve been trying to figure out the best way to explain the flight of this ball and I don’t think I’ve found it yet, but hopefully I’ll get the point across. Try to visualize what your ball flight would look like if every bit of spin you put on the ball was all converted to a forward spin. The ball takes off, reaches the pinnacle of its flight and then dive bombs down to the turf. It’s really pretty cool to watch.

I took a buddy of mine with me, he’s a beginner who has a pretty nasty slice and has a very open stance with his lead foot about 7 inches back and away from his rear foot. I let him try the ball out and it completely removed his slice! I mean, I was pretty stunned at the results, and so was he.. He was still however, susceptible to shanks and duffs…. But the ball improved his tee shots and he kept most of them in the fairway.

The trade-off is straighter shots but with a substantial loss of distance. I hit this ball with my driver on a couple holes and traveled about 180-200 yards. Typically my drives carry the ball between 260-300 yards.

Putting with the ball was pretty awesome though, the ball wasn’t really affected by any breaks it encountered, it plowed through them.

The ball would be a good fit for the golfer who has a lot of variations to his/her swing, who doesn’t necessarily want to kill the ball, and who wants to play a round without having to spend 1/2 the hole looking for their ball.

I can see how it would be useful to have some of these handy for those really tight holes with very little forgiveness for errant shots or if your playing a short par 4 course or an exec par 3, these would be a good fit as well.

I read on their site they’re developing a ball called the Caesar Millie which will be for the better players. I guess we’ll stay tuned for that.

Leave me your comments!

Dave

The fine folks over at Fore Score Golf Stats were kind enough to let me sample their golf stats tracker free-o-charge. Thanks guys! Here’s the rundown.

Pay $20 bucks, get a lifetime membership. Play a round, record your performance, go home, enter it in. Pretty self explanatory..

What I thought was pretty cool aside from the usual tracking (Yards, Par, HCP, Strokes) they also track putts, stableford (see link if your like me and didn’t know what that was), fairway drives, duffs, hazards. It has a database of golf courses and if you can’t find the one you played, you can add it <I think thats how they build their database, via user input>. It also graphs your progress for those who like visuals of how bad their games have been.

It’s a cool tool, I don’t know if I would pay for it though.. There are plenty of free ones out there that are almost as good..

Here’s a link to their demo page.

As always, comment as needed!

Dave