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GOLF Magazines 2016 Wedge Testing and Reviews!

GOLF Magazines 2016 Wedge Testing and Reviews!

GOLF Magazines 2016 Wedge Testing and Reviews!

Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional.  I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website.  The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time!  Please post your comments below.  Keep it clean and tasteful.  We are here to learn from one another!

Many of the testers at this year’s GOLF Magazine Wedge reviews emphasized the increased spin they got on the new wedges compared to their own.  What does that tell you?  That you should probably replace your Sand and Lob wedges once a year if you are a once-a-week or more golfer.  Understanding loft and bounce were also important to the testers, so before you buy yourself new wedges, see your PGA Pro and seek out his advice on the right combination of loft and bounce to suit your game.  I was pleased to read the wedges I have in my bag. The Mizuno S5’s came out as #1.  Thanks so much to Rob Sauerhaft  of GOLF Magazine and his testers Michael Chwasky, Mark Dee, and Alana Johnson for helping us make our wedge purchase so much easier!

The year’s best new short-game gear offers an array of options to help you shave strokes on and around the greens. Our band of 40 ClubTesters evaluated 12 wedges at World Golf Village Resort in St. Augustine, Fla. Hot Stix Golf custom-fit each tester to his best specs. As ClubTest 2016 reaches a grand finale, it’s time to choose your weapons — and go low!

WEDGE REVIEWS

 

 

 

 

 

 

GOLF Magazine's 2016 Wedge Test and Reviews!

Callaway MD3 Milled

GOLF Magazine's 2016 Wedge Test and Reviews!
 

Cleveland 588 RTX 2.0 Wedge

GOLF Magazine's 2016 Wedge Test and Reviews!

Edel Hand Ground Wedge

GOLF Magazine's 2016 Wedge Test and Reviews!

Fourteen RM-22 Wedge

Using the bounce on your wedges is both an art and a science.

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Peter Kostis helps you get rid of the terrible shanks!

Peter Kostis helps you get rid of the terrible shanks!

Peter Kostis helps you get rid of the terrible shanks!

Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional.  I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website.  The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time!  Please post your comments below.  Keep it clean and tasteful.  We are here to learn from one another!

The “terrible shanks” are caused when the hosel of the golf club hits the ball. 

The ball then travels almost at 90 degrees to the intended line of flight.  For the most part, it is because the golf club head travels outside the original backswing path.  Here GOLF Magazine Top 100 Teacher Peter Kostis will help you with a fairly simple drill that will get instant results!

 

Source: GOLF Magazine   Peter Kostis

Picture :

Thanks for watching – Peter Kostis helps you get rid of the terrible shanks!

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What would Peter Kostis do if he was PGA Tour Commissioner?

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5 Ways to be a Better Putter day in and day out by Jordan Spieth!

5 Ways to be a Better Putter day in and day out by Jordan Spieth!

5 Ways to be a Better Putter day in and day out by Jordan Spieth!

Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional.  I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website.  The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time!  Please post your comments below.  Keep it clean and tasteful.  We are here to learn from one another!

After his dramatic win in the US Open at Chambers Bay, Jordan Spieth is the golf hottest property.

His views on the golf swing, how to play under pressure, what clubs to play with, will all be hyped to the 9th degree in the coming months. However, here is an article was written by Jordan even before his Masters win.  Here are the 5 things that made Jordan the champion he is today!

1: PUTT CROSS-HANDED.

5 Ways to be a Better Player by Jordan Spieth!

My grip makes it easy to keep the face square through impact. (Angus Murray)

I switched from a conventional grip to cross-handed six years ago, and it’s made a huge difference in my putting. How huge? I finished first or second in four of the seven most important putting stat categories last year and picked up a third of a stroke on the field in each round, just on the greens. Older guys on Tour tell me that if they could go back and change one thing about their game, it’d be to learn how to putt cross-handed from the beginning. It truly is the best way to roll it. Placing your left hand below your right on the handle makes it easier to set the face square to the line at address and keep it square during your stroke.

My cross-handed putting technique is a three-step process: I settle in, find a trigger, and simply keep my left wrist flat. Here’s how it works.

STEP 1: Break Your Setup in Half.

To set up for a cross-handed stroke, hold the putter in your right hand only, with your palm facing the target. Then place the putterhead behind the ball and aim it straight down your target line (left photo, above). Once you’ve aimed the putterhead properly, set your feet so your weight is evenly balanced and place your left hand on the lower part of the grip. Remember that when you place your left hand on the grip, your left shoulder will want to duck down a bit below your right shoulder—that’s a move you don’t want! Make sure your shoulders are level at setup. If you have someone who can check your shoulder position for you, that’s great, but practicing in front of a mirror is also a good option.

STEP 2: Find a Trigger

A lot of weekend players struggle with putting because they have too much tension in their hands and arms, both at address and during the stroke. Tension can turn a technically perfect motion into a herky-jerky mess, especially on those knee-knockers. Therefore, it’s critical to clear your mind of negative thoughts while also relieving the physical tension you feel at setup. A big key for me was developing a trigger—a small movement to take me from static (at address) to dynamic (swinging smoothly). All I do is hinge, or “press,” the top of the grip slightly toward the target, then begin my backstroke. Find a forward press that works for you—try moving the handle forward just an inch or two. You’ll feel more relaxed, make a smoother stroke and start the ball on your intended line every single time.

STEP 3: Stay Square to Hit Square

Some players think about stroke path, or how much to rotate the putterface through impact. That’s confusing! Instead, keep it simple. My only focus after I start the putter away from the ball is keeping the back of my left wrist as fat as possible from start to finish. This is critical to keeping the putterhead and ball moving straight down the target line after impact. It’s also how Rory Mcllroy squares his putterface, and obviously it works for him.

To get the complete coverage on Jordan’s secrets to being a complete player, read it here.

Source: GOLF Magazine    Jordan Spieth

Pictures: GOLF Magazine   Angus Murray    NorthernTrust Open

Thanks for reading – 5 Ways to be a Better Putter day in and day out by Jordan Spieth!

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10 Very Best 19th Holes in all of Golf - Is yours here?

10 Very Best 19th Holes in all of Golf – Is yours here?

10 Very Best 19th Holes in all of Golf – Is yours here?

Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional.  I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website.  The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time!  Please post your comments below.  Keep it clean and tasteful.  We are here to learn from one another!

After 18 holes on the course, no matter how we’ve played, most of us look forward to refreshment at the clubhouse with friends.

For many of us, it’s a cold beer or a ‘Guinness’ if we’re in the U.K.; for others, it may be scotch or even an iced tea. The atmosphere in some “19th holes,” as the bar or pub is referred to, is unique and fosters more camaraderie than others. Everyone has their favorites that they frequent as often as they can.

10 Best 19th Holes in Golf - Is yours here?

The Jigger Inn is attached to the Old Course Hotel.

My 10 favorite 19th holes are…

1. The Jigger Inn at St. Andrews Old Course Hotel in Scotland, where my son and I would have a wee tasty before retiring while on a golf trip in 2014.

2. The ’19th‘ at the Humewood Golf Club in Port Elizabeth, South Africa, overlooks the 18th green, and whereas the resident golf professional, I spent many a pleasant evening.

3. The Tap Room in Pebble Beach and the Inn at Spanish Bay, where my partners and I go after our round during the Mizuno Pro-Am in February each year.

4. The Dunvegan Hotel is also in St Andrews, our first evening tradition each time I visit St Andrews.

5. The Pinehurst Resort, which is dripping with tradition.

6. The bar at Shooting Star in Jackson Hole, Wy, overlooking the 10th hole (see below)

10 Best 19th Holes in Golf - Is yours here?

Sitting on the veranda overlooking the Par 3 10th hole Of Shooting Star in Jackson, WY.

7. The Atlantic Room Bar at the Ocean Course at Kiawah, just looking over such a historic place, is a thrill.

8. The pub at Durban Country Club, which overlooks the 18th green.

9/10. And finally, the pubs at Lahinch and Ballybunion because any pub in Ireland will be fun!

What are your top 10?  See this video for Travelin’ Joe’s 10 picks and find out why he chooses them.

Thanks to GOLF Magazine and “Travelin’ Joe” Passov for this fun story.

To see all 10 of Joe Passov’s top 19th holes, click here.

Source: GOLF Magazine   Joe Passov

Pictures: Shooting Star    WorldGolf

Thanks for reading – 10 Very Best 19th Holes in all of Golf – Is yours here?

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The man they called Mister - An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

The man they called Mister – An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

The man they called Mister – An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional.  I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website.  The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time!  Please post your comments below.  Keep it clean and tasteful.  We are here to learn from one another!

Along with Gary Player, Ben Hogan was my childhood idol. 

I learned my golf through Ben Hogan’s book “The 5 Modern Fundamentals.”  I read that book so many times I could almost recite it in its entirety!  Both Hogan and Player were two of the hardest workers in the game, and this interview done by GOLF Magazine in 1987, gives some interesting insights and dispels one myth about the man they called Mr. Hogan.

The man they called Mister - An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

Ben Hogan on the tee during the 1965 “Shell’s Wonderful World of Golf Match” against Sam Snead. Hogan hit every fairway and every green.

This interview originally appeared in the September 1987 issue of Golf Magazine.

The man they called Mister – An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

GOLF Magazine:

Next year we’ll be celebrating the 100th anniversary of golf in America. You’ve been around for 75 of those years. What’s your first golf-related memory?

BEN HOGAN:

I guess it goes back to about 1920. I was nine years old and selling newspapers in Forth Worth to make some money when one of my friends told me I could earn more by caddieing. The word was you could make 65 cents just by packing a bag around 18 holes. So one day I walked the seven miles from my home to Glen Garden Country Club to see what it was all about. The established caddies at Glen Garden ran sort of a kangaroo court. For a new caddie to break in, he had to win a fist-fight with one of the older, bigger caddies. So they threw me against one of those fellas and I got the better of him. It was through the caddie experience that I got the golf bug.

GOLF:

You were a natural left-hander who took up the game right-handed, weren’t you?

HOGAN:

No, that’s one of those things that’s always been written, but it’s an absolute myth. The truth is, the first golf club I owned was an old left-handed, wooden-shafted, rib-faced mashie that a fellow gave me, and that’s the club I was weaned on. During the mornings we caddies would bang the ball up and down the practice field until the members arrived and it was time to go to work. So I did all that formative practice left-handed. But I’m a natural right-hander.

GOLF:

So many top golfers say they’ve learned the game by studying your swing. From whom did you learn?

HOGAN:

I used to caddie for a fellow named Ed Stewart. He was 21 or 22. He wasn’t the best tipper at Glen Garden, but he was the best player. I’d wait around to caddie for him even though some days he didn’t have the money to pay me. I got more than money from him—I learned the elements of the game and started to mimic him. But he was only the first in a long line of people. Throughout my career, I watched the best players and tried to emulate them.

GOLF:

You were on the Tour for a decade before you started to blossom. Do you still think that’s still possible on today’s Tour, with 150 players going at it and more young talent coming out of college every year?

HOGAN:

I think so, yes. There’s no set time or schedule for developing one’s skills as a professional golfer, and it certainly doesn’t come overnight. It’s a muscle-memory exercise that comes over time.

GOLF:

You’re saying it’s possible for a player to be on the Tour for 10 years before breaking through for, say, two dozen victories in the next decade?

The man they called Mister - An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!
 
The man they called Mister – An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

HOGAN:

Absolutely, if that player is willing to work hard. Otherwise, he’s likely to be out there frustrating himself for another 25 years.

GOLF:

What was it that drove you so hard?

HOGAN:

Three things. One, I didn’t want to be a burden to my mother. Two, I needed to put food on the table. Three, I needed a place to sleep.

GOLF:

Once you and your family were eating well and sleeping comfortably, then what drove you?

HOGAN:

Pride. Determination. I saw an opportunity. And when you see an opportunity, you practice and work, at least from sunup to sundown.

GOLF:

In your own words, you “dug it out of the ground.”

HOGAN:

That’s right.

GOLF:

Did you compete against yourself, against the golf course or against the rest of the field?

HOGAN:

All three. First I went after the golf course. Generally, I figured that if I could beat the course I could stay ahead of the competition. Ultimately, however, I guess I played against my own standards. It was a constant struggle of one kind or another—but always a pleasant one.

GOLF:

Your fight to play top-quality golf wasn’t as onerous as it’s often made out to be?

HOGAN:

You hear stories about me beating my brains out practicing, but the truth is, I was enjoying myself. I couldn’t wait to get up in the morning so I could hit balls. I’d be at the practice tee at the crack of dawn, hit balls for a few hours, then take a break and get right back to it. And I still thoroughly enjoy it. When I’m hitting the ball where I want, hard and crisply—when anyone is—it’s a joy that very few people experience.

The man they called Mister – An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

To read the rest of this interesting interview with one of the greatest players ever, click here.

Source: GOLF Magazine

Pictures: Al Panzera  Augusta National Collection  Mel Sole.

Thanks for reading – The man they called Mister – An interview with Ben Hogan in 1987!

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Babe Ruth - And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

Golf Chats is a website to encourage discussions on various subjects relating to the game of golf. I am Mel Sole, Director of Instruction of the Mel Sole Golf School and SAPGA Master Professional.  I invite you to enter into a discussion on this or any article on the golfchats.com website.  The input is for the entire subscriber base to learn something new each time!  Please post your comments below.  Keep it clean and tasteful.  We are here to learn from one another!

Of course, you all know about the legendary baseball career of Babe Ruth. But how much do you know of his golfing life?

Ruth was 20 when he began to golf in 1915, during his rookie year with the Boston Red Sox. By the 1930s, Ruth played and practiced as often as he could and became a single-digit handicapper. After his last full season in baseball in 1934, the Babe spent most of his golfing in New Jersey or in Florida. He told a New York reporter in the late 1930s, “I played 365 rounds last year. Thank God for whoever invented golf.”

In 1941, Ruth staged his first headline-grabbing charity event with another baseball legend, Ty Cobb. He also created another charity match with himself and Masters champion Jimmy Demaret against Gene Sarazen and former heavyweight champ Gene Tunney. This event drew a boisterous crowd that loved the banter between Ruth and Sarazen, and it even included a live swing band that blasted tunes as the golfers swung.

But the wildest tournament Ruth hosted consisted of a hustler and trick-shot artist Laverne Moore, playing with top amateur Sylvia Annenberg, and legendary golfer Babe Didrikson partnering with Babe Ruth. Promoters hoped to sell 6,000 tickets. . . . 12,000 people showed up.

Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

Babe Ruth - And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

Trick-shot artist Laverne Moore, playing with top amateur Sylvia Annenberg, and legendary golfer Babe Didrikson partnering with Babe Ruth.

Ruth ignited the crowd by arriving in his Stutz Bearcat car with the carcasses of his recent Canadian hunting trip strapped to his fenders and also slumped in the passenger seat. (a 250lb. Bear in that seat!)

Spectators danced on the greens, they pocketed approach shots, they knocked Ruth off his feet, and they stole the tartan right off of a kilt-wearing referee.

At the height of the madness, Babe Didrikson lofted a fairway wood over the 6′ deep crowd encircling the 9th green, and the ball stopped one inch from the cup. Fearing a melee, the promoters declared the match over after 9 holes, with the Babes being the winners.

In this time period, Bobby Jones was the BEST golfer in America, but golf was a minor sport, and the galleries were small. Babe changed that when he became the most famous golfer and made it look fun for the average person with his hijinks.

Why isn’t he in the World Golf Hall of Fame?

Share your thoughts with me.

Thanks to Kevin Cook for this terrific article in GOLF Magazine, April 2015.

Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

Babe Ruth - And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

The Sultan of Swat, they called him. The Big Bam, the Jovial Giant, the Colossus of Clout, the Behemoth of Bust, the Wizard of Whack. During the Roaring Twenties, when he restored America’s faith in baseball after the 1919 Black Sox scandal, Babe Ruth reached a level of fame that redefined fame. He slugged more home runs than most teams hit. He hobnobbed with war heroes and movie stars who were dazzled to meet him. Crowds thronged railroad crossings just to watch his train go by. In 1923, when the New York Yankees spent a shocking $2.4 million on a new stadium, sportswriters dubbed it “the House that Ruth Built.” In 1930, a reporter asked how a ballplayer could get paid more than the president of the United States. Ruth said, “I had a better year.” The Babe also played some golf.

In fact, Ruth was once the most famous golfer in America.

Bobby Jones was the best golfer in Ruth’s day — the game’s superstar — but it was a minor sport then, far behind baseball, boxing, horse racing and college football in popularity. It’s true that Jones drew crowds of thousands while chasing his 1930 Grand Slam, but far more often he played for galleries that would disappoint Briny Baird.

“Jones was a celebrity to golf fans, but there weren’t that many of them,” says Doug Vogel, a member of the Society for American Baseball Research who has spent nearly ten years researching a book about Ruth’s golf game. “In contrast, Babe Ruth was the most famous athlete in the world. He played a big role in making golf a spectator sport in America — arguably, bigger than Jones.”

We’ve grown accustomed to the sight of robust galleries at PGA Tour events. It’s estimated that 50,000 spectators per day attended the men’s 2014 U.S. Open at Pinehurst. A few months earlier, a record 563,008 fans turned the Phoenix Open into golf’s biggest party. In the 1930s, it was Ruth who made the game look like fun, and whose passion for golf not only generated large crowds but motivated millions of average Americans who had never pictured themselves playing the rich man’s sport.

Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

Ruth was 20 when he took up the game in 1915, during his rookie year with the Boston Red Sox.

The Sox trained in Hot Springs, Arkansas, a gambling-and-golf mecca where baseball players rubbed shoulders with crime lords like Al Capone and hustlers like Titanic Thompson. The six-foot-two jock whaled at the ball, sometimes snapping the shaft of his driver. He launched 300-yard drives (using wound-rubber Haskell balls, no less) as well as hooks and slices that were still rising as they sailed out of bounds. “With broken clubs and lost balls taken into account, golf is a pretty expensive pastime for Babe Ruth,” quipped one news account. To his credit, he always took his penalty strokes and putted out. No gimmes for the Babe. And he improved in a hurry. Despite his image as a roly-poly powerhouse, he was a terrific athlete and light on his feet.

On January 5, 1920, Ruth was in Los Angeles, playing a round at Griffith Park, when news arrived that after five years with the Red Sox, the team had sold him to the Yankees for $100,000.

Three months later he reported to the Yankees’ training camp in Florida but skipped his first practice to play 18. He was falling under the game’s spell, improving from a scattershot hundred-shooter to someone who could occasionally break 80, and discovering that this country-club diversion suited his appetites and talents. A golfer could drain a flask of whisky while playing and eat a hot dog or three between holes — what a game!

In his first year with the Yankees, the 25-year-old Ruth (who pitched for the Sox but was moved to the outfield by the Bombers) batted .376 with 54 home runs. His feats on the links were somewhat less Ruthian. “Everyone saw him as this big, jolly character, but he cared about the game, and it frustrated him,” Vogel says. Once, during a radio interview, the Bambino was talking about his passion for golf.

His wife, Claire, chimed in: “And I’ve often heard you come off the golf course saying, ‘Baseball really is a great game!'”

Ruth took lessons from Alex Morrison, a golf guru to the stars who pioneered swing-sequence photos by hanging a lantern from a club swung in a dark-room. “He got better,” says Vogel, “and he could play under pressure. Whenever the Babe teed it up, the papers covered it. He became a single-digit handicapper, but his putting held him back. I discovered one scorecard with a 69 — I think it’s the only time he broke 70.”

By the 1930s, the late years of his baseball career, he played almost daily with Sammy Byrd, a substitute outfielder known as “Babe Ruth’s legs.” Ruth was heavy and gouty by then; Byrd would pinch-run for him. More important to the Babe, Byrd was probably the best golfer ever to play major league baseball. After eight years with the Yankees and Reds, Byrd joined the PGA Tour and won six times.

He finished third in the 1941 Masters, fourth in the 1942 Masters, and lost the 1945 PGA Championship in a match-play final against Byron Nelson. During his baseball days he tutored Ruth on the golf course, but it was the Babe who gave Byrd a practice tip golfers still use. During batting practice one day, Ruth tucked a hand towel in his armpit to keep his front elbow close to his chest. Byrd tried the trick, passed it on, and golfers have tucked towels on the driving range ever since.

Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

In 1934, the year of his last full season as a ballplayer, Ruth announced his desire to manage the Yankees.

Owner Jacob Ruppert promised the aging icon the job but was just stringing him along, hoping to keep the greatest Yankee loyal to the franchise. In private, Ruppert asked cronies, “How could Ruth manage a team when he can’t manage himself?” The Babe’s reputation as baseball’s Falstaff stuck, despite the fact that he was now a family man, happily ensconced in an Upper West Side apartment with Claire and their two daughters. “I don’t think Mr. Ruppert realizes I have matured,” he fumed to reporters. “I’m a grown man, not the playboy I was in 1919.” Still, he was snubbed again and again. After his retirement in 1935, he’d play 36 holes in New Jersey, then hurry home and ask, “Did the phone ring?” His wife knew what he meant: Did anyone call about a baseball job? She hated telling him no.

“It’s hell to get older,” the Babe said.

Seventy-nine years later, in 2014, I found Julia Ruth Stevens sitting in a quiet, comfortable house in Henderson, Nevada. “Daddy was dying to manage a ball team,” she said. Now 98 and legally blind, Ruth’s surviving daughter can still see “how his face fell when Mother gave him bad news. He was so hurt not to be managing. But he still had his golf. When it got too cold to play in New York and New Jersey, we’d pick up and go to Florida.”

As Ruth told a New York reporter in the late 1930s, “I played 365 rounds last year. Thank God for whoever invented golf.”

In 1939, the 44-year-old Ruth represented Long Island against teams from New Jersey and Westchester County in the annual Stoddard Cup. “This was serious golf,” Vogel says. “The club champions on his side usually carried him because they were good sticks and he was, well, Babe Ruth.” With nine holes to play, Ruth’s squad looked beaten. “Then he reeled off the best nine holes of his life,” Vogel says. “At his best, if his putter was working, he was a scratch player. That day, when it counted, he was better.” The next morning’s New York Times carried a six-column headline: Babe Ruth’s Double Victory Helps Long Island Capture Golf Trophy.

Babe’s golf exploits sometimes drew more attention than he wanted.

A year after his Stoddard Cup heroics, Ruth played New Jersey’s Pine Valley for the first time. New York newsmen flocked to the course, and Ruth bet them five dollars apiece that he’d break 90. He shot 85. That evening, celebrating his victory, he called Pine Valley “a pushover” and offered the writers double or nothing. “I’ll break 85 tomorrow,” he said. “Who wants some of that?”

Eleven writers anted up, along with a pair of Pine Valley waiters. The next day Ruth was whistling while he swung, looking like a million bucks, when he hooked a shot into the trees on the long, uphill 15th. Several swats sent his ball in several directions. When a playing partner asked if he needed a line to the green, he said, “Hell, I don’t need to know where the green is. Where’s the golf course?” Ten minutes later, putting out for a 12, he had no chance to break 90. He paid off his bets and bought drinks for the house.

Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

“Daddy thought it was funny — the way one bad hole ruined his day,” his daughter Julia recalls.

“In baseball, he could strike out and still win the game his next time up.” Ruth liked to say that the main thing in golf was to hit the ball to center field.

In 1941 Ruth staged a headline-grabbing charity event with fellow baseball legend Ty Cobb. Rather than flip a tee for first-tee honors, the old rivals grabbed a driver and played hand-over-hand like sandlot players. Ruth gave the fiery-eyed Cobb a pat on his bald head and got a slightly bemused look for it. Cobb, a fierce competitor and a better putter than the Babe, won two rounds out of three in what he called “the Ruth Cup,” and the victory meant so much to him that he put the trophy over his fireplace.

Babe Ruth - And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!

In 1941, Ruth staged a golf exhibition with fellow baseball legend Ty Cobb. The Babe drew a bemused look for this pat on Cobb’s head.

Another charity match from around that time pitted Ruth and Masters champion Jimmy Demaret against Gene Sarazen and former heavyweight champ Gene Tunney. Sarazen, who mocked the decorous hush that hung over the game, had a kindred spirit in the boisterous Babe. That day, with a festive gallery shouting huzzahs at Connecticut’s Shorehaven Golf Club, Fred Waring and his band blasted swing tunes while the golfers swung. At one point Ruth backed off a putt. He turned to the crowd, cupped his hand around his ear and said, “C’mon, let’s hear it!”

Ruth razzes Demaret at a 1940 charity match as Tunney, Sarazen and Fred Waring’s swing band look on.

 

Source: GOLF    Kevin Cook

Pictures: Bettman/Corbis     AP Photo  Cliff
Thanks for reading – Babe Ruth – And the Sultan of Swings Golfing Life!
 

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The 9 Holes That changed Colin Montgomerie's Life!

The 9 Holes That changed Colin Montgomerie’s Life!

The 9 Holes That changed Colin Montgomerie’s Life!

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Colin Montgomerie won 31 European Tour events and was the Number 1 player on the European Tour for several years in the 1990s.

His career was so stellar he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013.

BUT, he had never won a stroke-play event in America, let alone a major tournament. In 2014, the Champions Tour rookie won the Senior PGA Championship and the Senior U.S. Open in the space of seven weeks.

None of this would have happened if Colin didn’t have a career reversal in 1986 while playing with IMG executives at Turnberry in Scotland. The British Open had just been won at Turnberry by Greg Norman, and on Monday, Montgomerie got an invite to join IMG’s group for a round of golf. Instead of aiming to play Professional golf, Colin thought he’d take a safer route and use his business management degree to hopefully work for IMG as representative of several of the top European Tour players.

After shooting 29 on the back nine, the IMG execs said, “….. you’re not going to work for us, we’re going to work for you!”

The 9 Holes That changed Colin Montgomerie's Life!

Monty was not a fan favorite in the USA while he was on the PGA Tour. He has changed all that!

For the rest of Colin Montgomerie’s great interview by GOLF Magazine, including the story of how he has won American fans over,

Read More . . . . .

Source: colinmontgomerie.com

Pictures: Tour Pro Golf Clubs   Steven Newton

Thanks for reading – The 9 Holes That changed Colin Montgomerie’s Life!

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