Category: New Product Reviews

Golf News for April 7, 2017

April 15, 2017
Follow the Money-colored Golf Balls!

Why does Bubba Watson use pink golf balls? — He uses green ones, too, so look for those on the weekend — or maybe even on Monday, after everyone’s left you can hunt for the green balls he couldn’t find.

Sorry, it’s not for sale: Meet the homeowners who have resisted Augusta’s advances — Living in a sea of parked cars for one week a year is only a minor hassle, the Thackers say, and it doesn’t prevent them from going about their daily routines. Come Masters week, Herman still fires up the grill while Elizabeth rakes the pine straw in the yard and keeps her landscaping immaculate. The other 51 weeks they enjoy their privacy.

Fantastic Four Lead at Augusta — “I love looking up and seeing the big leaderboards,” Fowler said. “It’s a cool thing about Augusta, very old school with the non-electronic leaderboards out there. It’s a lot of fun to see your name up there, so hopefully I can go ahead and keep it up on the big leaderboards.”

Fought, ASGCA, and Fry, ASGCA, provide their perspectives on Augusta National — As part of a roundtable discussion on Augusta among golf course architects with Epoch Times, John Fought, ASGCA, and Dana Fry, ASGCA, included their viewpoints on the best the course has to offer – and a couple suggestions for improvement.

GCSAA Job Board — Did you know Golf Course Superintendents Association hosts a nationwide Jobs Board?

As we all get out for our first rounds of the season, here is a refresher course on Etiquette Around the Greens:

Golf News for March 25, 2017

April 10, 2017
“I guess the beaver got the short end of the stick.”

Titleist maker teed off over Costco’s cheap golf balls — As golf product makers scramble to avoid new hazards, Costco is not conceding anything. In fact, the dispute raises the question of whether publicity about Costco’s ball will only send more golfers on a long, straight drive to its warehouse stores.

Only serious golf nerds will score 10/10 on this impossible golf course quiz — We scored 7 of 10, plus the bonus round!

WATCH: LPGA launches clever new ad campaign to attract more girls to the game — Currently, fewer girls than boys play golf, but as the new LPGA’s new advertisement points out, girls are now the sport’s fastest growing segment. The biggest factor behind that growth is Girls Golf, which now has more than 400 program sites at golf courses across the U.S. and 60,000 participants between the ages 5-18.

Limited-edition shoe from Adidas Golf is pimento-cheese inspired — A shoe that even Charlie Chaplin could eat.

Trump National Golf Club offers $10,000 reward to find vandals — How many golf courses does Trump Own? We predict this sort of destructive behavior to continue throughout Trump’s four eight years in office.

Under Par: How Golf Courses Are Fighting for Survival — Rounds are down, water’s a wild variable. What can course owners do to cope?

5 Gadgets to Improve Your Golf Game — After spending the $1,500 or more for these five gadgets, we hit our first drive of the season into the pond to the left of the first fairway anyway.

Birmingham golf course beaver kill a dystopian Caddyshack — You thought life served you a raw deal? Think again. The beavers out at Roebuck got it the worst. Consider this life calculus: The beavers naturally create the environment for the watercress darter to live, and then get blamed for also destroying that environment, at which point the beavers have to die so the watercress darter can live. “I guess the beavers caught the short end of the sticks, so to speak,” Howell said. “It’s the beavers that have broken the law, and not man.”

Golf News for March 12, 2017

April 9, 2017

Playbooks for Golf releases “Conditions” — The product is intended for golf course superintendents to communicate with golfers in real-time about the daily status of the golf course.

Servicemembers get chance to watch golf’s elite at 2017 Senior PGA Championship — Military servicemembers will get a rare opportunity this Memorial Day weekend to visit a golf course that could be described as presidential. The 2017 Senior PGA Championships will be played May 25-28 at the Trump National Golf Club in Potomac Falls, Virginia, a scant 20-minute drive from the heart of the nation’s capital.

Nothing glamorous about trying to scrape by on golf’s low-level tours — “Just imagine gambling every day of your life. You gamble on yourself, and you hope to win. You have to spend $3,000, maybe $3,500, in a week just coming out of your pocket before you even tee it up. Then you have to play with that hanging over you.”

Lawbeat: Golf club swing ruled way out of bounds — We always carry a pair of balls in our pocket in case we lose one in the rough.

Adult beverages behind 18-hole golf courses? — “In 1858, the Royal and Ancient Golf Club, golf’s governing body, issued an official decree that a round consisted of 18 holes. Rule 1 stated “one round of the Links or 18 holes is reckoned a match unless otherwise stipulated.” We’ll drink to that!

Bunker mentality; Quitno, ASGCA & Andrew, ASGCA, add insight to “GCI” feature — Golf Course Industry magazine’s cover story features a detailed look at the hazards that consume much of a superintendents’ time. ASGCA members provide perspective on the design – and elimination of – bunkers.

Golf News for March 9, 2017

April 9, 2017
Will the Women’s U.S. Open Join “The Resistance”?

Former owner of Sunday River golf course still selling memberships, lawsuit says — In an ongoing ownership dispute, Harris Golf and Newry Holdings both lay claim to the highly rated golf course, raising the possibility that golfers who have paid for the coming season won’t be able to play.

We asked for your reactions to the new rules of golf. Here are the results — We anticipate sharing many stories and opinion pieces on the new rules for the foreseeable future. We also invite your own comments in the comment box below.

Niall Horan Gets Golf Digest Arnie Award And Helps Guide The Game’s Talent — “I wanted to get into supporting the next generation of golfers, and obviously I feel myself and my management company, who have a long history of looking after clients and all their needs from schedule planning to corporate deals, are very well placed to do this,” he says.

Yahoo! founder says golf innovation will one day let everybody swing like Dustin Johnson — and cure the yips — He suggested that the kind of “haptic suits” designed to help the disabled walk could “be the same suit that can make you become a super person where you can literally swing like Dustin Johnson if you wanted to.” So, we’ve all got THAT to look forward to, right?

As golf struggles, clubs turn to sport, drive-in theaters and fitness for members — Golf has seen a drop in participation numbered from about 30 million players to around 23 million players in the last decade, according to National Golf Foundation numbers. A drop in rounds got revenues down? Creative, outside the tee box thinking brings them to the club for other activities.

A petition to boycott Trump’s golf course for the U.S. Women’s Open is gaining steam — The 2017 U.S. Women’s Open is due to be held at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. A group of Democrat Senators issued a joint statement last year calling for the event to boycott the course. This year, they’ve stepped up their effort as part of The Resistance.

And now, the number one pastime of golfers when not golfing — Fishing:

Welcome!

March 23, 2017

The latest news links and posts follow below…

If you’ve found your way here, you either love golf, or Maine, or, as we do, you love playing golf in Maine.

We Take Dead Aim, providing an informative site for golfers who play, plan to play, or dream of playing golf, and especially in Maine. We also provide timely news and opinion for those who work in the golf industry. Whether you’re an owner, marketing director, pro shop manager, teaching pro, architect, vendor, player, or the all-important Golf Course Superintendent (whom we believe to be the most important component of the entire industry), The Golf of Maine combs the internet daily, sharing information that will make your golf experience more enjoyable.

Please add to the conversation by commenting, sharing your own course reviews and experiences, videos and photos, stories, or brags about holes-in-one. Send us news tips, and if you represent a golf course in Maine, please add The Golf of Maine to your circulation list, we will share your latest news with our readers in a timely manner.

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Golf News for February 22, 2017

February 22, 2017
Easy Game, Hard to Play
Easy Game, Hard to Play

Samoset Seeks Assistant Golf Pro — Seeking an ambitious, highly motivated, customer service driven, and team oriented individual to join our golf staff. Duties include but aren’t limited to the following: customer check in, outside operations, tournament operations, merchandising and Club repair.

Who’s the best in golf? It’s not so easy to say these day — The answer is a lot more difficult now, and it could take years to sort out. It’s not an issue this week. The top six players in the world — all of them can reach No. 1 by the end of the month — are not playing the Honda Classic. All of them will be in Mexico City next week for the first World Golf Championships event, a tournament that was scheduled to be played at Trump Doral, as it was in the past.

The history of the Official World Golf Ranking’s No. 1 spot in 13 eye-popping numbers — Most of the names are obvious, but some (Lee Westwood?) might surprise you. In any event, GolfDigest dug deeper into this elite club and found 13 numbers that stood out.

PGA of America chief Pete Bevacqua has a new role: golf sidekick to President Trump — The PGA of America has two of its events scheduled for Trump courses, the Senior PGA Championship in May and the PGA Championship in 2022. Trump and the Trump Organization would gladly welcome more PGA of America events.

Setting the Proper Course For a Two-Tee Match — Just one extra calculation is needed to correctly allocate handicap strokes for players competing against each other from different sets of tees.

“We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Hole” — And after the round, everyone gets a participation trophy!

Anna Reviews Golf Slang —

Golf News for February 18, 2017

February 18, 2017
October Golf Gear
Semper Fore! Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment

October Golf Gear Bags Show Military-inspired Compartmentalization, Customization – A former Marine, October Golf Gear founder and CEO Romeo Filip says the idea is based on the military’s compartmentalized carrying system known as MOLLE, or Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment.

USGA and Royal & Ancient Say Distance in Golf is Not an Issue – The USGA and R&A recently released a study which showed that distance is totally not an issue in the sport of golf these days. (In other news, size also doesn’t matter…)

PGA Tour Taps Intel Technology to Drive Golf into Virtual Reality – The PGA Tour and Intel Sports Group’s Voke virtual reality unit tested the technology on the famous 10th hole at storied Riviera Country Club in Los Angeles ahead of the Genesis Open that teed off Thursday.

Saunders Opens 2-shot Lead at Riviera – This is how Sam Saunders prefers to be in a starring role — on a golf course making birdies, not as the composed grandson of Arnold Palmer giving a rock-solid eulogy for the King at his memorial service last October.

Cut Line: What’s next? It’s all up in the air – With the West Coast swing of the season nearing an end, Golf Channel’s Rex Hoggard asks what’s next.

Golf Games That Don’t Require a Handicap? – Planning a round of golf around a wedding, or an outing with a large group of varying levels of skill? Here are some golf games that will fit the occasion. [Video]

Architects team with U.S. Kids Golf to make game more fun – After decades of making golf courses longer, designers have lined up to reverse the trend. The effort comes in the form of a working alliance between the American Society of Golf Course Architects and the U.S. Kids Golf Foundation.