Eye Spy Golf is a site with a fabulous premise: using Google Earth to catalog every golf course in the US. The courses are organized by state and city, and you can run a search on a particular area. Once you’ve found the course you want, you click on the link to download the KML file and launch Google Earth (all this assumes that you have the Google Earth app already installed; it’s a free download from Google). The app then takes you directly to a detailed satellite photo of the course.

You can see a screenshot of my home course above.

Of course, you can do this without the help of Eye Spy Golf, but you’d spend a lot of time whirling about on Google Earth looking for courses from a birds eye view. And then when you found one, it’s possible that youi wouldn’t know which one it was.

In addition to letting you pick and zoom in on specific courses, Eye Spy also gives you information abotu he courfses, such as fees, addresses and a driving map.

Its neat stuff.

Let’s welcome the Aspiring Golfer  to the golf blogosphere.

This year, Gary Player will mark his fiftieth appearance at The Masters. He won the event in 1961, becoming the first non-American to do so. He won again in 1974 and 1978. In all, he won nine majors and 163 tournaments. He’s the only player to have won the British Open in three different decades.

Perhaps even more important in this day and age: he recently celebrated his fiftieth wedding anniversary just before the MasterCard Championship in Hawaii..

And then the 71 year old Player went out and shot two rounds of 69 in that event.

I had the pleasure of watching Player at this past year’s Ford Senior Open in Dearborn, Michigan. While long past his prime—even by Champions Tour standards—you still could see glimpses of the youth. I wonder if there’s ever been a golfer who maximized his skills as much as Player.

Acer XP Fused

The Philosopher’s Stone of the alchemists of golf club design lies in the movement of weight down and away from the center. This both stabilizes the head through increasing the moment of inertia and increases the launch angle, helping the player to get the ball up for maximum distance.

One way that designers acheive this in metal woods is by reducing the weight of the shell. As this weight is reduced, discretionary weight is made available to place in more strategic locations—low and away from the center.

That’s the theory behind carbon composite heads like the Callaway models and the GigaGolf XP Fused line. By using a carbon composite head, the designers are able to move a greater proportion of the weight to the sole of the club. This makes it more forgiving—which is exactly what amateur golfers need.

The Gigagolf XP Fused Fairways are constructed from 17-4 stainless steel and carbon composite. If you’re a bargain shopper, at around $40 these just might be the right one s for you—especially because GigaGolf offers a 30 day playability guarantee.

We had a snow day here today, as most of the school districts in the region—mine included—cancelled classes. That meant that I could sleep in and just generally relax. And that’s all good.

The downside was that I had to spend a good hour clearing the driveway of six inches of snow. I do it the old fashioned way—with a shovel. It’s good exercise, and you can really work up a sweat. Unfortunately, as the temperature is hovering at around twelve degrees, and the wind is blowing stiffly, that left me frozen to the bone.

Fortunately, I have a cure: a mug of hot cider fortified with a shot of Myers Dark Rum.

I can’t wait until spring.

I was recently visiting the Golf Galaxy in Toledo where I saw stacks of these previously unknown balls from Maxfli. For a minute I felt like Robert von Beringe discovering the mountain gorilla. Then I realized that it was just Daly on the box.

After some online research, I’ve turned up absolutely nothing about this ball outside the Golf Galaxy and Dick’s Sporting Goods websites, which leads me to believe that it’s a “house brand” for the two companies. That makes sense because TaylorMade (Maxfli’s parent) has made exclusive stuff for Dick’s before and Dick’s now owns Golf Galaxy.

The ball appears to be a two piece, large core offering designed to minimize spin. That puts it in squarely in the distance ball category, but is certainly not going to make it a favorite with better players.

No matter. Since it’s priced at around $15 for 15 balls, the Powermax appears aimed at more occasional players.

The GolfBlogger’s Thesis that Tiger Woods is ultimately bad for the Tour is spreading. Quoting the same sources, today’s edition of Cybergolf International offers the same thoughts as the GolfBlogger’s Monday column.

It’s good to be ahead of the crowd.