Opinion & Analysis

A round to remember? An old man’s story

Published

12 years ago

Apr 25, 2012

GolfWRX Staff

By D.C. Fasciglione

GolfWRX Staff Writer

The old man had been thinking about his luck that day. Rather, he had been thinking about his lack there of.

He was already 4-over and the first nine had yet to be played. The new fangled golf shoes with the so-called high tech soles were burning a hole in his Achilles heel. His daughter wasn’t talking to him on account of the fact he had spent her mom’s birthday money on these damnable shoes and a box of Top-Flite Gamers. And to top things off he got stuck with this guy.

He figured that despite the fact he had to get up twice a night to go pee, he couldn’t find his glasses half the time and he had to sit down to carefully don his socks in the morning, at least he could still count. He also figured his playing partner could, too. Or maybe not. By his recollection good ‘ol Ray should be 6 over.

Ray was a regular at the course. He had played with him once or twice before, but as he was partnered with two others he hadn’t given much thought to the man’s game, let alone his scoring of it. Ray was one of those fellows who thought he might be able to play the Champion’s Tour, with just a bit more practice and some luck. The old man had entertained that thought as well, in between his well-trodden hallway excursions to the head each night he sometimes caught himself drifting into dreamland.

Shiny green fairways and sugar sand bunkers. Tall oaks casting light and shadows in the lush, dewy rough. And there he would find himself, middle of the fairway, 200 yards from the pin, 7- iron in hand…

“Wait a minute. 7-iron my backside.”

New fangled hybrid in his hand.

He imagined, he dreamed, of a supple swing, a towering 200-yard strike to the heart of the green. The tree branch had somehow reached him in the subtle breeze. In his dream he could see the ball, as clear as day, within the leather.

“That’s about right,” he smiled. Damnable tree branch was starting to annoy him. He distractedly fended it off with his free hand, and strode proudly down the fairway, chest out, reaching for his hat. He could just make out the on-course reporters jostling for position to get his interview.

“Honey?”

“What’s that? No, no. I’m taken. My, that’s a nice tan, ahem, ‘hem.?”

“Honey, you’re snoring.”?The old man stared at the ceiling of his bedroom, the shadowy green remnants of his dream scattering into the four corners of his darkened room. The back of his wife’s hand was tapping upon his forehead.

Oh well. Can’t hit that confounded hybrid worth a lick, anyway. The very thought of ever making it to the Tour brought a chuckle to him. As he got up to relieve himself he thought it over.

“Let’s see; Perry, Boom Boom, Calc, Lehman, Haas. The list goes on. Before long we’ll see Vijay, Love…” Back to reality.

Reality that day had the old man sputtering between tee box to green, huffing and puffing up the sharp incline of the third fairway of his favorite public track. By the time he had reached the postage stamp of a green at the top of that incline his patience had just about given out, just like his legs.

“Ray, you aren’t 2-over; you’re 6-over, the old man wheezed. And there’s no way in Sam Hill you’re ever going to make it to the Champion’s Tour so quit plumb bobbing and take your third putt.”

He figured it was a good time to have a seat at the next tee and find the moleskin at the bottom of his golf bag. He was irritable. There were few things these days that didn’t irritate him, but cheating took the cake. Ray would just have to deal with it.

“Who does he think he’s kidding? Me? I just don’t get it,” he thought as he heard Ray’s feet shuffle up the crushed stone cart path.

“Made that putt,” Ray mouthed, almost as if to himself. “Ouch. That looks like it hurts,” looking down at the old man’s sockless foot.

“You should see the other one,” he replied. The old man’s feet appeared older than even he. Their weathered, calloused pads had traversed decades of fairways, rough, and cart paths. As a younger man his pocket couldn’t afford riding in a golf cart. As an older man his heart couldn’t afford it and his pride wouldn’t allow it. He would continue to walk.

Ray fished in his own golf bag a moment and took out a small package containing some adhesive shoe padding. He was wearing an untucked red shirt and white sneaker-like golf shoes. His curly, silver hair was thinning. He needed a shave, his whiskers gray over an olive complexion.

“Here ya go. Give these a try.”

The old man took the pads, managed a “Thanks” under his breath, and worked them into the counter of the offending shoe. Surprisingly, they seemed to help. Maybe Ray wasn’t so bad after all, he thought.

By the twelfth hole things were looking up for the old man. He had managed to birdie the 10th, which was a surprise given the fact that at the turn he had downed a hot dog with the consistency of a bicycle seat. He was still belching as his ball found the bottom of the cup.

“Pardon, Ray.” Belch. “That would be a three, by the way.” Belch. “I believe I have the honors.” Belch.

Ray chuckled. “I had 3, too!”

The old man’s smile turned to frown. He was just about to say, “Yeah, three putts,” when the thought occurred to him that maybe something wasn’t quite right. It didn’t make sense. In fact, as he thought back over the last several holes the old man recalled more than one occurrence in which Ray had seemed confused. Between the sixth green and the seventh tee box, Ray had seemed unsure as to which direction he was to walk. A couple holes back the old man became impatient when Ray had apparently become confused with his scorecard. He recalled Ray’s furrowed brow, the tip of his tongue showing, and the short golf pencil poised above the tiny boxes.

“Trying to shave strokes,” the old man had thought. But now he wasn’t so sure anymore. Finally, there was no way anyone would believe he had scored a three on that last hole.

The old man felt a sudden chill.

As the day progressed the early autumn air cooled and the shadows grew longer and darker. The leaves had already begun to fall, and the old man thought about how easy it was to lose one’s ball this time of year, even in the middle of the fairway. Before long it would be cold and he would feel his age in each and every swing.

“Is it getting chilly out here, Ray, or is it just me?” the old man asked of his playing partner. Ray smiled as he pushed his tee into the turf.

“You can’t be a fair weather golfer,” he replied. The old man nodded. Ray was right, of course. You take the good with the bad and move on. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but he figured maybe Ray hadn’t been cheating. Maybe he was confused. The old man decided he would keep an eye out.

By the eighteenth tee it was clear to him that Ray had a problem with his memory. The old man had seen it before: confusion with simple tasks, such as when Ray had struggled to get his Titleist out of the ball washer; difficulty in remembering new names, Ray must have asked him his name at least five times that day; a sudden lost sensation, as when Ray was confused on the cart path between holes.

Dementia. Maybe Alzheimer’s, the old man thought. If so, this was early onset. Ray was maybe late fifties.

After the final approach and putts had been made the old man extended his hand to Ray.

“Clubhouse for a cold beer?”?”That sounds great,” he replied. Upon reaching the 1960s era facade of the clubhouse the old man and Ray brushed their shoes free from the course’s turf. They entered through the diner side and walked down a short hall to the bar.

“Hey guys.” The greeting came in stereo from the assistant pro and a woman with dark green eyes and hair dyed a shade too dark for her age. She smiled, held out her hand to the old man and said, “Hi. I’m Sarah, Ray’s wife.”

The assistant pro filled in the details after Ray and Sarah had left. Ray was stage four Alzheimer’s, early onset as the old man had guessed. A couple of the starters knew, as did the pros, and had discussed with Sarah and Ray safety concerns and possible accommodations. It was unclear how the disease would progress; each person reacts differently. Ray would continue to golf and dream about making it to the Champion’s tour, of course.

The old man thought he might, too.

Click here for more discussion in the “General Golf Talk” forum.

The following links are to the National Institute on Aging- Alzheimer’s, the Alzheimer’s Association, and the Alzheimer’s Foundation.

http://www.nia.nih.gov/alzheimers

http://www.alz.org/ http://www.alzfdn.org

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans betting preview

Published

3 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.

TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.

Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.

However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.

Past Winners at TPC Louisiana

2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)

2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks

Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)

Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.

This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.

McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.

Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)

Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.

Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.

Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)

Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.

NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.

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19th Hole

Vincenzi’s 2024 LIV Adelaide betting preview: Cam Smith ready for big week down under

Published

3 days ago

Apr 22, 2024

Matt Vincenzi

After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.

For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.

The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.

The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.

*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*

Past Winners at LIV Adelaide

2023: Talor Gooch (-19)

Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami

Green in Regulation

Richard Bland
Jon Rahm
Paul Casey

Fairways Hit

Abraham Ancer
Graeme McDowell
Henrik Stenson

Driving Distance

Bryson DeChambeau
Joaquin Niemann
Dean Burmester

Putting

Cameron Smith
Louis Oosthuizen
Matt Jones

2024 LIV Adelaide Picks

Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)

When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.

At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.

The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.

Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)

Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.

In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.

For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.

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Opinion & Analysis

The Wedge Guy: What really makes a wedge work? Part 1

Published

7 days ago

Apr 18, 2024

Terry Koehler

Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.

Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.

But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.

To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.

Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.

If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.

In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.

Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.

While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.

So, what about grooves and face texture?

Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.

Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.

But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?

The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.

So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.

And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.

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