How Augusta National Almost hosted Olympic Golf in 1996!
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!
Here is a fascinating story of how August National almost hosted Golf for the 1996 Olympic Games. But even the might of Payne Stewart and Billy Payne could not overcome one woman’s objection. Find out what that was. Thanks to Sam Weinman of Golf Digest for this breaking story!
Rio Olympics.
If you’ve been at all following golf’s inclusion in the Rio Olympics, you likely know that the sport has returned after a 112-year absence. What you might not know, however, is how golf almost returned two decades ago. Or that the potential course was not some hastily constructed new layout, but the most celebrated venue in golf.
A brief refresher: After succeeding in bringing the 1996 Olympics to Atlanta, Billy Payne, then the head of the Atlanta Games organizing committee, turned his attention to making golf an Olympic sport. Better yet, he got then Augusta National chairman Jackson Stephens (at this point, Payne, now Augusta National’s chairman, was not even a club member) to agree that Augusta National should be the host venue. Payne’s promise of delivering both the best players in the world and the storied venue was enough to persuade International Olympic Committee president Juan Antonio Samaranch to get on board with the idea as well.
Arnold Palmer hitting the opening tee shot at the 2015 Masters.
In October 1992, Payne and Stephens held an outdoor announcement at Augusta National, where, according to a follow-up story in Golf Digest, “Augusta National gave trinkets adorned with the familiar Augusta National logo, but featuring the five Olympic rings inside the Augusta flag.”
13 Things to do for your Golf this Winter – #5 is for me!
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!
What are you going to do about your golf this winter? Are you going to put the clubs in the closet and pull them out in the spring, or will you take a proactive stance and work on your weaknesses and make them your strengths? Things like chipping and putting can be done at home, indoors. Getting your body in shape can be achieved with just a few simple stretches each day or working out in a gym. Whatever it is, make a commitment to follow this through all the way to your first round in 2016. I’m sure you won’t regret it! Thanks to Sam Weinman of Golf Digest for supplying the incentives. Now it is up to us to take action!
1. Putt wherever.
A synthetic mat with an actual hole is your best bet for trying to recreate the pace and feel of a real putting green. Short of that, a coffee mug on your living room carpet will do. It might not make you a better putter, but spending three months hitting dead-straight six footers will at least make you think you’re a better putter. And that, we all know, is half the battle.
2. Book a buddy’s trip.
If only to soothe your golf-deprived psyche, you need to envision a time when you’re wielding a 7-iron instead of a snow shovel. Do it with buddies now and you can all enjoy the entertainment of email trash talk (“I’ve seen your swing. There’s no way you’re a 9!”).
3. Organize your golf photos.
It’s time to make sense of the endless series of golf photos you’ve taken over the years. The beautiful courses. Your playing partner’s follow through. Those artsy shots of a ball resting near a flagstick. Do we smell coffee table book material? Maybe not one that anyone else will buy, but there are a number of online printing sites that will allow you to have something that looks like it was professionally bound.
4. Play golf on a simulator.
So maybe pounding a ball into an oversized screen is not the same thing as feeling a breeze in your face and the grass under your feet. But the competitive exercise of trying to grind out a score is still rewarding, and you can transport yourself—even just temporarily—to some of the game’s most desirable locations in the process.
This is a new (and effective) way to practice on the range!
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!
At the Mel Sole Golf School, I teach something very similar to what this article describes. We call it the 48 ball drill, and it engages both the mechanical and mental skills needed to perform well on the course. I am pleased to see that this is being discussed more and more. The crux of this article is outside the scope of golf instruction but applies nonetheless. Thanks so much to Sam Weinman of Golf Digest for this interesting article.
Have you been to the range recently?
If so, you probably adhered to the typical range pattern, starting with some wedges, working your way through your irons, before moving on to hybrids, fairway woods, and then driver.
If you’re like me, you probably hit a bunch of shots with a selected club and only agree to move on once you feel like you have that swing grooved. That’s how a lot of golfers practice, and it’s no different than musicians trying to master a difficult piece of music. Much like a golfer who will toil away at his 7-iron until he starts hitting it clean, a violinist, for instance, will repeat a certain passage of music until he or she feels they have it down pat.
That’s called a “blocked practice schedule.”
And it’s the way a lot of us have gone about learning a variety of tasks. It’s also woefully ineffective.
Dr. Christine Carter is a clarinetist who wrote her dissertation on “contextual interference effect.” It’s a method that she champions for musicians, and which she expounds upon in a recent post on bulletproofmusicians.com. There is no mention of golf , and yet the thinking directly applies to the way we work on our games.
7 Ways to Introduce Your Kids to this Great Game of Golf!
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!
My father introduced me to the game of golf when I was 16.
I had played a lot of sports at school, and when he joined a local Country Club, I went along to go to the pool. No intentions of playing golf. But this club allowed juniors to play after all the members had teed off. So my cousin and I went out to play. I had no idea how to hold or swing the golf club, but being a fairly good athlete, I did manage to play the first 3 holes in even par! I then made 6’s and 7’s the rest of the 9, but that did not matter. I was going to play this great game of golf!
Teeing off from the correct yardage makes a HUGE difference!
Sam Weinman of Golf Digest brings you 7 ways to introduce your kids to the game in a way that they will be asking, “When can we go and play golf again?” We need to grow this game through our kids. Get them to participate in a group lesson program. Enter them in some fun three-hole tournaments. They will not only learn to love the game but learn some life lessons along the way!
Introduce your kids to the game without losing your mind (or your club membership)
If you’re like me, you probably found yourself playing less golf when you got married and even less golf when you had kids. But I’m here to offer hope. Playing golf with your kids is like our version of the Champions Tour — a second chance right around the time you thought your best golf was behind you. No doubt, golf with your kids can be complicated (my last round involved a frustrated 7-year-old heaving his 8-iron into a dense patch of poison ivy) but I’ve also found it has led to some of my most rewarding times on the course. What follows is one father’s personal and highly subjective guide.
1. Pick the right hours
I probably don’t need to tell you this, but this is not a Sunday morning at 8 a.m. activity. Or at least not if you plan to go to a golf course that includes other humans. (If you happen to have your own private golf course at your disposal, I encourage you to do what you want. I also have reason to believe you and I can become best friends. I’ll follow up). Restricting family golf time to evening hours is not only advised out of consideration for your fellow golfers, but also for your own sanity. Trust me, there’s nothing fun about watching your kid hit eight consecutive shots in the bunker while some crankasaurus stands with his hands on his hips in the fairway. I’m a firm believer that kids need to have a general respect for pace of play even at a young age, but you’re setting yourself up for disaster if you don’t allow for the occasional delay.
2. Let them get excited about new stuff
Look, I spend as much time as any parent trying to push against my kids’ fixation with material possessions. It’s a problem, particularly on an editor’s salary. But face it, part of the fun of golf for kids is all the stuff that comes with it. I’m not advocating you buy them a brand new set of Callaways. But even the littlest things make a difference — ball markers, tees, the occasional sleeve of balls. This should get you through the first month or so of their golf careers. Then they’ll see their first Nike commercial and you’re screwed.
3. Embrace the golf cart
This is another one of those philosophical compromises you need to make when it comes to golf with kids. As a golfer, you may be a devout walker because you feel like that’s the way the game should be played and because you welcome the exercise. But a golf cart to kids is like an amusement ride. It’s fun, it’s conducive for some meaningful exchanges every now and then, and it cuts into the fatigue factor that is inevitable when you’re hoofing it carrying your own bag. I’m not saying you should take a cart every time you play with your kids. But this is one area where your inner golf snob needs to keep his trap shut.
Surprise Celebrities who play Golf – #8 in my Favorite!
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!
There are certain celebrities who we regularly see in Celebrity Pro-Ams, like the AT&T at Pebble Beach.
But here is a list of Celebrities who have been keeping their games under wraps! Until today. Sam Weinman of Golf Digest has just uncovered 23 celebrities who absolutely love golf. Check it out!
MICHAEL PHELPS
The Olympic star’s golf career has been fruitful enough to land a Golf Digest cover, a Golf Channel show, and an endorsement contract with Ping. “This is a passion that I have and I’m going to do everything I can to improve and get to where I want to be. I have friends that are single-digit and scratch golfers that I would love to be able to compete with,” Phelps told Golf World’s E. Michael Johnson. “I know it is a very challenging sport. It’s the most humbling sport I’ve ever played in my life.”
MINKA KELLY
The former “Friday Night Lights” star was one of several celebrities to play in the Mission Hills World Celebrity Pro-Am in Haikou, China in October of 2012. Did she play well? “I’m learning,” Kelly told reporters. “It’s not easy.” At the time Kelly said Ian Woosnam is her favorite golfer — presumably not because she watched endless footage of the 1991 Masters as a little girl, but because Woosnam gave her swing tips during their pairing together in the pro-am.
I probably don’t need to tell you this, but this is not a Sunday morning at 8 a.m. activity. Or at least not if you plan to go to a golf course that includes other humans. (If you happen to have your own private golf course at your disposal, I encourage you to do what you want. I also have reason to believe you and I can become best friends. I’ll follow up). Restricting family golf time to evening hours is not only advised out of consideration for your fellow golfers, but also for your own sanity. Trust me, there’s nothing fun about watching your kid hit eight consecutive shots in the bunker while some crankasaurus stands with his hands on his hips in the fairway. I’m a firm believer that kids need to have a general respect for pace of play even at a young age, but you’re setting yourself up for disaster if you don’t allow for the occasional delay.
Look, I spend as much time as any parent trying to push against my kids’ fixation with material possessions. It’s a problem, particularly on an editor’s salary. But face it, part of the fun of golf for kids is all the stuff that comes with it. I’m not advocating you buy them a brand new set of Callaways. But even the littlest things make a difference — ball markers, tees, the occasional sleeve of balls. This should get you through the first month or so of their golf careers. Then they’ll see their first Nike commercial and you’re screwed.
This is another one of those philosophical compromises you need to make when it comes to golf with kids. As a golfer, you may be a devout walker because you feel like that’s the way the game should be played and because you welcome the exercise. But a golf cart to kids is like an amusement ride. It’s fun, it’s conducive for some meaningful exchanges every now and then, and it cuts into the fatigue factor that is inevitable when you’re hoofing it carrying your own bag. I’m not saying you should take a cart every time you play with your kids. But this is one area where your inner golf snob needs to keep his trap shut.
