Phil Mickelson's famous backward shot and more

Okay, now we talk about an extra terrestrial golf shots...

Let's watch this video: Phil Mickelson's Famous Backward Shot

See also Phil Mickelson's unbelievable save at Colonial '08

Simply magic!

And to prove that Phil Mickelson is a human like us after all...

Phil Mickelson 13th Hole US Open 2008 Disaster (+4... a lot of golfers would get a mental breakdown for this!)

Keep Golfing!

Are you an environment friendly golfer?

When I play golf, I always find plastic objets on the golf course.

The picture above shows the number of objects I collected after walking 200 m...

Let's take action together to protect our golf environment!

As a benefit, you will have a great feeling and you will play on clean golf courses.

What you can do to protect the environment on a golf course:

1. Put all plastic and wastes in dedicated bins (there are plenty on the course)
2. Collect plastic items you find while walking and put them in the bin
3. Throw your cigarettes in the sand bins
4. If you buy second-hand balls, throw your plastic bag in the bin
5. Put your used and damaged tees in the bin (they still have paint on it that can damage the environment)
6. Respect the animals: birds, squirrels, ants, fishes, etc
7. Respect the young and old trees (even if they grab your balls sometime, they are not your enemy! :) )
8. Do not hesitate to explain other golfer why to respect environment is important

Now let's take action a golf course point of view...

What are golf's potential environmental impacts?

• Pollution of ground water and surface water caused by the use of pesticides, fertilizers, and other contaminants
• Poor stream water quality due to eroding shorelines
• Withdrawal of large quantities of water for irrigation
• Degradation or loss of natural areas
• Health hazards from chemical handling and applications
• Negative impacts of chemical use on "non-target" wildlife
• Unsound turf management driven by increasing and unrealistic golfer expectations and demands

"Environmental researchers can't say for sure how long it takes a golf ball to break down, according to the New York Times. But that hasn't stopped them from guessing about the potentially negative ecological impact that the millions of dimpled spheres rotting in ponds, wetlands, and woodlands might produce." See Tiger Woods' wayward golf game may harm the environment but it's a boon for lost-golf-ball business

What are golf's environmental opportunities?

• Provide needed wildlife sanctuaries
• Preserve natural areas within urban environments
• Support plants and wildlife native to the area
• Protect water resources
• Filter stormwater runoff through golf course wetlands and turfgrass
• Rehabilitate degraded landscapes
• Promote physical and mental well being, reducing stress for more than 25 million U.S. golfers
• Improve air quality and moderate temperature
• Educate golfers and the general public about the nature of the game and promote environmentally-sound management

See what St Andrews Old Course is doing for the environment... it is simply amazing!

What are the benefits of environmental performance?

Image and Reputation

Good environmental performance can help you differentiate your course from others in a crowded market and add value by improving public relations and marketing opportunities that attract new golfers or club members.

 

Customer Satisfaction

The nature of your course can enrich golfers' experience of the game.  Surveys have shown that golfers report that playing quality is maintained or even improved as a result of steps taken to manage a course in harmony with the natural environment.

 

Financial Performance

An effective golf course environmental management program can result in reduced insurance premiums, as well as reduced costs for energy, water, pesticides, or fertilizers.  

 

Worker Safety and Reduced Liability

Best practices for chemical management reduce exposure and liability risks from storing, handling, and applying chemicals.

 

Improved Efficiency

Sound environmental management cuts down on waste and promotes efficient operations.

See some examples of golf courses who took action to protect the environment and got great results: Ways Golf Courses Can Help Protect the Environment

See also the Seven Most Gorgeous Eco Friendly Golf Courses (Yes, Golf Courses Can Be Eco)

And last but not least, you could win a golf date with Bill Clinton, help save the environment

Keep Golfing!

Sources:

Potential Impacts and Opportunities of Golf

What are the benefits of environmental performance?

Rule 26-1. Relief for Ball in Water Hazard

Ok, now let's talk about a point of rule that few golfers actually know: the relief of a ball in water hazard.

We will see in this article specifically the rule 26.1 / 2. (I put the essential part in red)

A normal water hazard is marked by yellow stakes. 

26-1. Relief for Ball in Water Hazard

It is a question of fact whether a ball that has not been found after having been struck toward a water hazard is in the hazard. In order to apply this Rule, it must be known or virtually certain that the ball is in the hazard. In the absence of such knowledge or certainty, the player must proceed under Rule 27-1.

If a ball is in a water hazard or if it is known or virtually certain that a ball that has not been found is in a water hazard (whether the ball lies in water or not), the player may under penalty of one stroke:

1. Play a ball as nearly as possible at the spot from which the original ball was last played (see Rule 20-5), or
2. Drop a ball behind the water hazard, keeping the point at which the original ball last crossed the margin of the water hazard directly between the hole and the spot on which the ball is dropped, with no limit to how far behind the water hazard the ball may be dropped; or
3. As additional options available only if the ball last crossed the margin of a lateral water hazard, drop a ball outside the water hazard within two club-lengths of and not nearer the hole than (i) the point where the original ball last crossed the margin of the water hazard or (ii) a point on the opposite margin of the water hazard equidistant from the hole.

When proceeding under this Rule, the player may lift and clean his ball or substitute a ball.

As a summary, If this happens there is a one shot penalty. You take the ball out of the water and you drop it either two club lengths away from the edge of the hazard on the line you entered.

Red stakes are used to mark a lateral water hazard. A lateral water hazards is exactly the same as a normal water hazard - and in some cases may be a different stretch of the same stream. But instead of running across a hole, a lateral water hazard runs towards it.

The rules for playing and dropping the ball are the same as for the normal water hazard except in one regard.

Special case for casual water, GUR and abnormal ground conditions - If your ball is in casual water, ground under repair, a hole or cast made by a burrowing animal (eg rabbit), you may drop without penalty within one club length of the nearest point of relief not nearer the hole.

Keep Golfing!

Sources:

Rules of Golf - Rules 26: Water Hazards

Basic rules of Golf

What happens in golf when you hit your shot into the water?

Tiger Woods plays on Water

Do you play Golf video games?

A glitch in the game "Tiger Woods 2009" (the player could play ON WATER) made EA sport to react to this bug with the real Tiger Woods.

Watch the original video from a gamer: Tiger Woods PGA Tour 08 Jesus Shot

and watch the response from EA sport: Tiger Woods 09 - Walk on Water

In fact, Tiger is REALLY able to play on water!

"It's not a glitch, he's just that good" :)

Keep Golfing!

It is time to calculate your handicap!

One of the most important factor at golf is to track everything you do when you play golf.

Why? Because every parameters are important at golf (success on drive, number of shots to be on the green, number of putts, etc) 

I will post soon an article on which data are essential to be tracked but today let's talk about calculating and tracking your golf handicap.

How to calculate your golf handicap?

1. Take the scores from the last five rounds (18 holes each) that you played.
2. Look up the rating and slope for the course that you played for each of these scores. This information is usually printed on the scorecard, although you can also get the rating and slope by calling the course.
3. Subtract the course rating from the score you earned on that course.
4. Multiply that number by 113.
5. Divide that number by the slope of the course. This number is the differential.
6. Take the lowest of your five differentials and multiply it by 0.96, and you have your handicap.

Online Handicap Calculator

Okay, I know that you do not want to to this manually every time so let's go straight to the easy solution.

You will find on the internet many websites that will help you to calculate your handicap automatically.

Some of them will even help you to track your score which is very convenient.

• Golf Handicap Calculator
• Golf Handicap Calculator
• Online Golf Score Tracker and Golf Handicap Calculator
• Online Golf Stats - Golf Score Tracker
• Golf handicaps, score tracking and community
• If you live in Thailand, you can use Thaigolfer.com

To add your golf handicap online is very simple, you just need to login and input the following:

1. Select Golf Club Name
2. Enter where you started (Blacks, Yellows, Whites, reds)
3. Enter the date
4. Enter your score

The system will calculate your handicap automatically based on a USGA formula.

USGA Handicap Index Formula

The USGA Handicap Index Formula is based on the best handicap differentials in a player's scoring record. If a player's scoring record contains 20 or more scores, then the best 10 handicap differentials of the most recent 20 scores are used to calculate his USGA Handicap Index.

The percentage of scores used in a scoring record decreases from the maximum of the best 50 percent as the number of scores in the scoring record decreases. If the scoring record contains 9 or 10 scores, then only the best three scores (30 to 33 percent) in the scoring record will be used. Thus, the accuracy of a player's Handicap Index is directly proportional to the number of acceptable scores he has posted.

A USGA Handicap Index shall not be issued to a player who has returned fewer than five acceptable scores. The following procedure illustrates how authorized golf associations and golf clubs calculate a player's Handicap Index if the number of acceptable scores in the player's

record is less than 20.

Apply the handicap on your score

Once you know how they calculate the handicap, you can apply the following rule on your score once you finished playing.

Golfer Handicap   |   Maximum Number On Any Hole

9 or less                |   Double Bogey*

10 through 19         |   7

20 through 29         |   8

30 through 39         |   9

40 or more             |   10

Source: USGA Handicap Formula and Thaigolfer.com

Keep Golfing!

How to swing a golf club like Tiger Woods

I discovered this video on Youtube that summarize how to make the perfect golf swing in 7 steps.

How to swing a golf club like Tiger Woods

Keep Golfing!

P.S. Watch also Tiger Woods at the driving range (funny advertising)

Golf Course Slope & Rating Explained

One of my friend played in a new golf course this week and did not know what was the slope & rating of this course. I think it is time to give a little summary of what is slope and rating for a golf course.

History

Slope was tested at six extreme courses in Northern California in 1981 and state-wide in Colorado in 1983. The USGA trained more than 4,000 volunteers from all 50 states to rate courses. Since then, Slope has been implemented nationwide in America and is in use at 10,000 golf courses by more than four million golfers. The portability error has been reduced to a level within the noise of sampling errors.

Quick Answer

The quick answer is that it's a single number indicating the difficulty of a golf course to an expert golfer, a "par golfer". The figure is used when calculating handicaps. 

The Course Rating is a number, close to par for the course, and is expressed with a single decimal digit. For example: If par for a course is 72, it's Course Rating might be 71.4. 

Rating values go up with difficulty. 

Actually, for any given golf course, you can expect to see three (or even more) values for the Course Rating. Each value corresponds to a different tee. 

For example: On this same course, the Course Rating for golfers who play from the men's blue tees might be 72.8. From the men's white tees, the Course Rating might be 71.0. The ladies' red tees may be rated at 73.3. 

These figures are almost always printed on the score card.

Why are there two numbers to describe the difficulty of a golf course?

The Course Rating is simply the average score compiled by the par golfers. In most cases, it's 72.

Most course ratings will range from the upper 60s to the mid 70s.

The Slope is a measure of how much difference a course's difficulty is for the average bogey golfer compared to the scratch golfer.

The minimum slope is 55 and the maximum is 155 (slope does not relate specifically to strokes played as course rating does). The slope rating for a course of average difficulty is 113.

Did you say yardage rating?

Following are the obstacles factors considered by rating teams in determining the amount of adjustment of the Yardage Rating in arriving at the USGA Course and Bogey Rating along with the weighting factor applied to each obstacle value rated on a scale of 0 to 10.

	Weight
Obstacle		Scratch		Bogey
Topography		.10		.12
Fairway		.11		.09
Recoverability and Rough		.14		.15
Out of bounds		.10		.09
Water Hazards		.14		.14
Trees		.09		.14
Bunkers		.07		.10
Green Target		.09		.06
Green Surface		.11		.08
Psychological		.05		.03

If you wish to know more about how slope and rating are calculated, see the references below: 

Slope & rating explained

Golf FAQ: What is Slope Rating?

A two parameter golf course rating system

Keep Golfing!

Check the hole handicap before you play!

This seems obvious but do you really do it every time you are about to play a new hole?

It is very important to always check the hole handicap before you play.

• Did you notice this naughty bunker on the right? the water on the left?
• Did you notice that if you go to on the left you will be out of bound?
• Did you check the number of shots you need to do to achieve PAR?
• Did you check the distance?

Avoid any catastrophe and make sure to do this check before you tee off

These are really simple questions to ask yourself before you start to play.

Analyze the best options to "attack" the green and THINK before you play!

Keep Golfing!