The Golfchick

That chick blabbing about anything golf related.

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Get a Grip, Woman. A Golf Grip!

May 27, 2011 / / 9 Comments

My game needs some fixing and I’m working on that, as you will read more about if you keep coming back.

However, I think I figured something out that may be correctable with equipment which excites me more than it probably should. A couple weeks ago I shared the following picture of myself on facebook and twitter from a round I played that day which showed an embarrassing look at my swing and grip. (Side note: I also realized how enlightening it is to look at my swing! Video is the logical next step to this analytical process, but that’s for another post and another time.)

My question at the time of posting this totally ignored the chicken wing, which I addressed with another pic and instead focused on my insane hands. What the hell are they doing?

Last week I lost my 56 degree wedge and was trying to figure out whether I should replace it with my old, dinged up wedge or the brand new off-brand wedge I had sitting around. I took both to the range to decide. The brand new club’s brand new grip was sharp and it made me realize how worn all the grips are on the rest of my clubs. Then I started realizing how my hands were slipping when I used them, especially the hand without the glove! Then I remembered this pic and took a closer look:

My left hand seems to have slipped a bit, but my right hand has totally lost its hold. No, that is not how I grip the club! After I realized how slick my grips were I started paying more attention to where my hands ended up in the finish pose and it was not pretty. My driver is relatively new and has a sharper, tackier grip and the same does not happen with it, nor with the new wedge.  Conclusion: I need new grips.

Now, my next competitive event is next week in Mesquite as you may know. Obviously I’m running out of time to get things done before I leave for that trip. I’d like to shop around for awhile and re-grip my clubs myself and blog all about it for you but I’d rather have them done in time for the event just in case it makes a difference. So I may just take the recommendations I got and have my local shop do it for me all lickety-split like.  **Mitochondrial DNA. No, there is no good reason for me to type “mitochondrial DNA” right now but the phrase popped into my head and out of my mouth and if you were here right now you would have heard me say it so I thought I’d share.  Gary Busey moment. Now where was I?**

You can definitely see the difference in wear in the photos of the two grips below. If I end up not being able to get this done in time, maybe I’ll have to try the Tommy “Two-Glove” Gainey technique for the interim!  Don’t worry, you know I’ll let you know. (c: Have a great weekend everyone!

Update!: I went down to the local club shack and cashed in a gift certificate and got all my irons and my hybrid re-gripped with Golf Pride Tour Velvet grips (pics on Facebook). They look and feel awesome and I hope to test them out tomorrow morning.  My 5-wood and 3-wood grips had to be ordered in so they’re going to Mesquite as they are. The clubs are so old nobody stocks the grips around here. Really wish I could have at least gotten my 3 wood done since we play the forward tees in the women’s division at the Am, but I’ll just have to hold on tighter!

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All Set for the Mesquite Amateur!

May 23, 2011 / / 8 Comments

Registration is closed and the numbers are in for the Mesquite Amateur golf tournament! Less than a week from today, 550 golfers and their guests will descend upon Mesquite Nevada for the 9th annual Mesquite Am!

Mesquite Am tent event

I’m told that’s more than we had last year (picture above from one of the nightly dinner event parties from the 2010 Mesquite Am).

So how many are participating in The Golf Chick tournament-within-the-tournament? Lucky number 69. Yes, 69 golfers (plus their guests) are going to have just a BIT more fun than the other 481 players. Haha.  Monday night in the tent, we will have reserved seating for our group (82 people) so we can meet, greet and mingle. We will also be selecting the lucky winner from the golfers to receive a Golf range finder! All the golf chick players will be receiving some bonus swag as well. Plus, we have some fabulous gifts to give away as prizes for certain accomplishments throughout the week as well as actual golf score results for just our group. (Follow along with me on Facebook and Twitter to participate in – and help decide – who wins and what for! You can also chime in to me in person in Mesquite but I’ll probably ask you to make it official on FB to make it easier to track.)

There are plenty of things going on for non-golfing guests to do as well, which you can see here.

It’s going to be a fabulously fun week and I can’t wait to see you all there! Luckily, I don’t have to wait long. Are you ready??? Some of you may know about how I came in DFL last year (in fabulous fashion, I might add). How mad will everyone be when I win it all this go around? I hope to find out!

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More Kikkor Golf Kicks in My Shoe Collection

May 21, 2011 / / 5 Comments

Back in February, I wrote this post about my first pair of Kikkor Golf shoes. Since then, I got another box of awesomeness – this time, the “Tenny Clayburn.” They were my first choice but I went with the white ones first thinking they would go with more outfits. I’m finding I actually wear the gray Clayburns more. When you like a shoe this much, you can work your outfits around it!

Kikkor Tenny Clayburn

These shoes feel even cooler than they look. They are amazingly comfortable! If I could stop looking at them I might forget I was wearing shoes at all. However, they’re also quite stabilizing. They make me feel secure when addressing the ball and give me confidence in my golf shots. I wasn’t sure that would be the case when I first saw the spikes, but they do their job well!

Here is another close-up of the rockin style I love.

Kikkor Tenny Clayburn

And here they are in action on the course:

kikkor golf tenny clayburn

If you like their styles, I highly recommend picking up some awesome Kikkor golf kicks for yourself!

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A Renewed Golf Mission and Goals

May 18, 2011 / / 7 Comments

When I first started this blog back in June 2005, about 10 months after I first picked up a golf club, Bush was in the first year of his second term, it had been two years since he declared “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, I was blissfully immersed in my new golf obsession, and I already had my two holes-in-one under my belt. I was working as a sales trainer, traveling the country delivering lessons in between golf rounds wherever I could squeeze them in. I took my clubs everywhere and played whenever, wherever I could. I didn’t really practice because I just wouldn’t make the time.

I had already joined my club – I’m still a member – which calls itself coed  (we finally added our second female member this year) and plays a different golf course one Saturday a month. In between work trips, there wasn’t time to do much besides laundry, re-pack and spend some time with my then dog and then boyfriend before heading back to the airport. Somehow I managed to improve my golf game at a rate sufficient to keep ahead of my handicap index and keep winning our club events. Much to the chagrin of all the seasoned male players, I even won our club championship my first year out and went on to represent our club at the SCGA Tournament of Club Champions and – much to their delight – won that, too.  My handicap improved a bit more but the lowest it ever got was 14.2.

While all that was going on, I managed to get more blogging done in a week than I do in a month now… sometimes longer. Six years later, I’m back up over 20 and can’t win anything but a gambling match between friends.  Life has a way of getting in the way. I’ve poured my bi-polar heart out on here in more than one inappropriate and off-topic post so my excuses are available if you care to dig them up. But now… I’m going to declare myself officially BACK -on track and on golf topics primarily.

I’m so amazed and humbled by the readers who have stuck around all this time and I’d love for you all to be involved in holding me to this. So I’m going to state some goals so that you can follow along and keep me accountable if you’d be so kind.

Golf Performance Goal

First, my record round is 82, and I have only had a few rounds in the 80s at all, but, like so many golfers, my next score-related goal is to break 80. Along the way I’ll need to break 90 a lot more, of course. I plan to accomplish this with a lot more practice. Yes, practice. I still chomp at the bit to get out on the course whenever possible but I’ve also come to appreciate practice a lot more. I also have some specific plans for that practice and some coaching help which I will tell you all about in a post coming to your screen very soon. One specific goal is to fix the chicken wing you see in my swing in the photo below.

Blogging & Sharing Goals – I need your help

If you’re already familiar with this blog and my writing style, I hope you’ll expect that my documentation of this process will be anything but dry and strictly technical. I’m still me. I will share any tips I think are helping that may help people in similar situations but we all know I’m no pro. My goal is to deliver such a post at least once a week. In addition to that I intend to write another post about some other golf topic once a week.  Martini blogging can never be ruled out so if you think I’ve strayed too far off topic, let me know and I’ll owe you another post. Please feel free to participate in the comments with your thoughts, encouragement, tips, etc. And if I don’t live up to my two post a week promise, crack the whip!

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Skirt Golf Raising Money for Charity – Please Help

April 14, 2011 / / 2 Comments

Breast cancer awareness and research is a cause that’s close to my heart. Yes, literally. (c: And close to my family. My lovely and brilliant mother is my favorite survivor. Charity events may seem saturated with pink ribbons, but this disease still effects so many women and families and still hasn’t been cured!

Now, a group of guys over in the UK are getting together at Astbury Hall, a Troon Golf facility in Bridgnorth, Shropshire, to don skirts and play 18 holes in the name of this excellent cause this Sunday, April 17th. Jonathan Gidney, a European Tour Pro, is the organizer of this event (and a participant). The guys are great sports and looking forward to playing golf in skirts for this wonderful cause. They banter about on twitter and have great fun. You can follow along there under the hashtag #skirtgolf as they will be live tweeting from the event with pics & vids. Should be good fun, or as Jon says on twitter: #goodtimes. And ladies… did I mention these are some sexy dudes? In addition to the comedy, there should be some nice eye candy while watching them play in skirts! They tee off at 9:20 AM local time. Yep, that’s 1:20 AM Pacific time. I plan to have a nap and get up in the middle of the night to follow along. Who am I kidding? I may not get that nap in.

Here are some of the twitter handles for the players: @JGidney, @millichampios, @DownDaMiddleDan, @nirmski, @barrybethell, @stu1hemming, … You may want to follow them all on twitter in case they forget to include the #skirtgolf hashtag in any of their tweets! Plus, they’re fun to follow anyway. I do from @TheGolfChick of course!

Please contribute to this cause by donating on Jon’s “Just Giving” page here. By the way, Stu Millichamp (@millichampios) is feeling extra generous and has decided to match any donations that are made before the event starts! How awesome is that? So get over there and donate now! (Skirtgolf image from Jonathan Gidney’s Just Giving site.)

If you don’t happen to be on twitter or miss any of the action, I will post a follow-up here with pics, and I’m sure there will be plenty up on the donation page as well and probably a few facebook pages. I’ll let you know!

Again, please contribute and keep spreading the word about breast cancer awareness. May they all roll true!

Update: Here is the “official” music video from the Skirt Golf event. Yes, it’s a custom song. Enjoy! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1-v72h-ZDA

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Mesquite Am Golf Chick Early Bird Winner Announcement

April 5, 2011 / / 5 Comments

We have a winner! All Mesquite Am participants who registered by March 31 (the early bird deadline) using the golf chick code were entered into a drawing to win their hotel stay free.  And the winner is…

Rob Kaczur from Surrey, British Columbia.

Congratulations, Rob! You will be receiving a certificate from the resort. I look forward to meeting you in Mesquite! Thanks to all who signed up early and played!

It’s not too late! We have a nice group of people registered with the golf chick and they’re still coming in. It’s not too late to get in on all the fun! Plus, the Mesquite Am extended the lower early bird rate through April 15th! They also announced that the nightly dinner parties, which are always themed, will be based on the majors of Men’s professional golf (plus the Mesquite Championship). That should make for some fun decorations, games, prizes and more. If you still haven’t registered, you may do so here. And don’t forget to enter “golf chick” as your promo code for the bonus fun!

By the way, The Golf Chick is not officially associated with the “Doing it in the Desert” Monday skins game, which is run by George Salcedo. Haven’t decided if I’m playing in that or not, but I usually just play a casual round at another course not on my rotation, since there are so many great courses around there.

However, I will be at Cigars Under the Stars on Wednesday night, June 1st, poolside at Casablanca. Will you? (If so, let them know in a comment in the blog linked here to make sure they have enough cigars!)

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Mesquite Am Early Bird Deadline Tomorrow! (Make that Today)

March 31, 2011 / / 1 Comment

Thanks so much to those of you who have already signed up for the Mesquite Am – we have a good looking group coming together of “golf chick participants.” How do I know? I’ve met some of you and I have to assume anyone who signs up for this must be good looking. Heh. Oh, plus we’re already at about 60 people in our group, so the statement also applies to size! Plenty of room for more though!

Tomorrow Today is the last day to get in on the the early bird deals! If you sign up by Midnight (Pacific Time) on March 31 (I guess that would actually be 11:59:59 PM), you get the discounted entry fee of $475 and get entered into the Golf Chick drawing for a chance to win your hotel stay free. On April 1, the entry fee goes up to $525, and the Mesquite Am will draw the name from all the golfchick participants for the complimentary hotel stay winner (stay tuned – I will let you know!)

Guests and parties

Also – I noticed several of you are bringing non-golfing guests, which is great. We will have adequate seating for all of us reserved at the tent on welcoming night. After that, we’re on our own at night and can sit wherever we want. For those of you who still haven’t signed up, guests can join the nightly parties for $125 (that doesn’t change on April 1). There is also plenty for non-golfers to do during the day which will be listed in the program.

Let’s get together!

Speaking of nightly parties, would anyone be interested in all of us going out somewhere together after dinner that first night? I was thinking of maybe getting a shuttle bus or something and hitting the town for a couple hours – something casual like a lounge with live entertainment, billiards, darts, or even karaoke – just so we can get to know each other a little bit before we go off to our pairings for the tournament. Please let me know if you’re interested in the comments so others can see what you’re saying. Also, anyone who has registered, please don’t assume I have your email address – if you haven’t contacted me, I don’t. I may be contacting golfchick participants aside from this blog so please make sure I have your email address. If you leave a comment, I can get it that way, or you can always send me a note to kristen(at)thegolfchick(dot)com.

We’re going to have so much fun. I can’t wait to see or meet you in Mesquite in a couple months! Spread the word!

Sign up here (don’t forget to enter “golf chick” at the bottom of the form either in the “promotion code” or “how did you hear about the event” box!

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Getting Fitted for my Green Jacket

March 29, 2011 / / 8 Comments

The long awaited, much hyped new EA Sports game was finally released to the public today: Tiger Woods PGA TOUR 12: The Masters. That’s right, we can all now finally play Augusta, at least in the virtual world. The game is available in stores today and if you pre-ordered it, it’ll be on the way. It’s available for X-Box, PlayStation and Wii, which is what I went with.

In order to play Augusta, you have to use a pro avatar or work your way up through the Tour and earn your way there using your own profile. As far as I know, you cannot bring Tour experience from an earlier game version to help get you there. So, since we all want to play the course as soon as we get our hands on the game, we’ll be playing as one of the pros at first, right? I went with Suzann Pettersen. She seems like a cool chick and I have heard great things about her fun personality.

Right away, you’ll notice a few new things besides the course.

As the game is loading, it asks to set up your balance board. I wish I had one – that would make the game even more real! (Update: Twitter friend @ToddLewiSS just told me that board only had a usable width of about 16.5″, so at 5’11”, my stance is a bit wider than that. As he pointed out, it might be fun to use for little chip shots but not for a full swing. I’ll have to think about whether or not I want to invest in this after all.)

Next, you have a caddie! Not just the Tour pros, either. When I create my own avatar (and I will), she will also have a caddie, whose own course knowledge will grow as my own experience progresses. Also, see that tee looking thingy next to my caddie in the pic above? Yep, you can re-position yourself within the teebox for better angles. Pretty cool.

Another tricky thing you may notice is that the wind actually swirls around on some holes! Careful with those shots. You may pick a club and a shot and by the time you swing the wind changed direction. Yeah, just like real golf! Only on the course, you don’t have the handy-dandy wind icon that tells you which direction and how hard it’s blowing. Just a cool little feature, I thought.

So, how did I do? Well, with swing settings on advanced, nice weather, Thursday pins and precision putting selected, here’s how “we” did:

As you can see, I had an eagle, a birdie and two bogies heading at the turn…

But then I made two birdies on Amen Corner alone! Had a three putt bogey in there and a couple good par saves. So what if the scorecard shows you going “out” on both sides? We know what they mean!

So thanks, Suzann, for being so reliable out there. And for having such a great caddy. He gave me a lot of good advice.

I recommend when you play this, you listen to your caddy! I liked figuring out my shots and THEN asking for advice to see if we agreed. Surprisingly, we usually did!

By the way, I do use the Wii Motion Plus on my controller, but that’s not all. I also have a Chicken Stick, which makes it feel much more like playing golf for real. It has a real grip and partial shaft, and the weight of the controller and motion plus in the device just about feels like the weight of an iron.  (You activate the b button by pulling that ring behind the club.) Awesome. You need one of these: Bad Chicken Wii Chick Stick Golf Club

Stay tuned as I will be posting progress reports with my own player and how I progress. Going to start on Tour and earn my way to Augusta this time.

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Potential LPGA / PGA Partnership – About More than Combined Tourney

March 16, 2011 / / 5 Comments

A few months ago, I posted a sort-of teaser about more to come regarding Tour players’ thoughts on having a combined PGA/LPGA event. Those conversations I mentioned did not happen. Players clammed up after there seemed to be some backlash against those in favor of the idea.

However, now it seems there may be more going on behind the scenes. Not just a combo tournament, it seems some higher-ups are tossing around plans/ideas that involve the PGA assuming responsibility for the LPGA Tour in at least some capacity. And now that someone with some serious clout is writing about it (see Ron Sirak’s Golf Digest article here), maybe players will be more likely to speak up as well. We shall see. What do you think of the idea(s)?

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Snowshoe Golf!

February 27, 2011 / / 4 Comments

Since it’s snowing here tonight for the first time since 1989, I thought it a fitting time to tell you about my snowshoe golf experience. That’s right. I said snowshoe golf. What else do you do when there’s 4 feet of snow on the golf course?

snowshoe golf hole

Earlier this month, I went to McCall, Idho to see my sister. It was during the town’s famous Winter Carnival,office dog when tourists pour in and make the tiny town burst. There are all sorts of things to see and do – live music, incredible snow sculptures, comedy, hockey, theater (my sister was the lead in this year’s play), snow bike race, snowmobiling, casino night, even a “monster dog pull.” *Side note: McCall is an extremely dog friendly town, which I love. Businesses have ads in the phone book to showcase the “shop dog.”* But what was I most excited about? Of course it was the snowshoe golf!

I had never heard of such a thing but thought it sounded like terrific fun. They set the snowshoe golf course up at the city course – McCall Golf Club (which, during the winter, transforms into an outdoor winter sports venue for sledding, cross country skiing, and more – and of course dogs are welcome).

They charge $20, and all net proceeds goes to local charities. For your 20 clams, you also get a souvenir cap. You can bring your own snowshoes or use some of theirs. They give you a couple tennis balls, a styrofoam cup, offer you a club or two (why two?) if you didn’t bring your own, and set you on your way. The cup is used to pack snow to make a tee, kinda like they used to do with dirt before tees were invented (bonus trivia tidbit for you). I went with my awesome fraunt (friend/aunt) Jo, who is a local and an all around winter sports fiend! Yep, she even curls. So after a quick stop at the bar for bloody marys, we strapped on our snowshoes and headed to the first tee. Jo had never played golf before and I had never used snowshoes before. Good pair.

Surprise! It’s hard to hit a tennis ball with a golf club off the snow!

Guess what? You don’t want to hit down on the ball. Doh! That was a struggle for me the whole round. You want to try to hit the middle of the back of the tennis ball with the edge of the club. I think I had a 6 iron. Seems to me a hybrid/utility club might be more suited to this game. Most of my tee shots were decent but beyond that, it was rough out there. We were looking for the beverage cart to refresh our drinks after the first hole. I mentioned that to the group we caught up with on the next tee and they called in our order and let us play through. JJ himself delivered our refills on the next hole. What service!

beverage cart

The nine-hole course is set up to direct the snowshoe traffic away from the regular tees and greens.  According to the “course architect,” James Johnson, the ball distance is about 1/3, so they set up the holes in feet rather than yards. This year they had 3 par 3’s (100 – 125′), 3 par 4’s (275 – 350′), and 3 par 5’s (400-475′). Par is 36.  The actual holes are buckets dug into the snow with flags next to them.  In case you want to set something like this up at your course, JJ says they try to make it interesting by routing fairways through natural paths through trees and placing greens next to trees and hazards, and using contours. They also use the plowed paths as “water” hazards – play the ball as it lies without grounding club, or take a drop and add a stroke. (Or toss it out and forget it was ever in there, like we did.) One day they had a tournament and the low score was 41. I’m guessing that guy has done this before. I think I shot in the high 60s!

showshoe golf fun

Does it look like I had any fun? I made a promise to Jo that I would come back next year for some more. Looking forward to it already! I’ve got more photos from the trip up on facebook if you’re interested.

Here is a video from a couple years ago put together by one of the event’s former sponsors. Enjoy! www.youtube.com/watch?v=oFb6pa8FGCI

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