Your friendly neighborhood GolfBlogger has a cousin who is a doctor of Oriental Medicine in Hawaii. He’s been practicing accupuncture for many years now and apparently has quite a practice.

But in spite of that family connection, I’ve always been skeptical of such things. While I am sure that they work for some, I seem to get along just fine without them.

So when a copy of Tap In Golf arrived in the mail, I wasn’t at all sure what to make of it.

What Tap In Golf seems to offer is essentially an accupuncture program to help golfers reduce tension and bad thinking during their rounds. The difference is that instead of sticking needles in critical points, Tap In Golf asks you to tap them with two fingers.

Author Stephen Ladd says that Tap In Golf is “a combination of cutting edge quantum physics and centuries old wisdom ... whose most widely known therapy is acupuncture”

While this sounds like it belongs in the same league as pyramids and crystals, Ladd does his best to disabuse the notion that it’s a new age “airy fairy” (his words, not mine) thing.

There is definitely a serious method involved here. You identify the problem—say, tension on the first tee—rate its intensity, develop a reminder phrase and then tap a key area while reviewing the phrase. It’s all very systematic, and the book offers a plethora of examples.

Perhaps the most useful—or at least, the most grounded—thing in the book for me was the chapter on proper breathing techniques. I believe that I can speak somewhat authoritatively on breathing, as I play most of the brass instruments, and in high school was all-state choir (I sang bass). Music teachers preach that to get the proper wind, you need to breathe through your diaphragm. Most people, however, seem to breathe upward through the chest.

So does Tap In Golf work? I don’t know. I do not personally have tension or attitude problems with my golf game. The game is a joy for me and each shot—good or bad—is just an opportunity to make another. Sure, I’m not a great player, and I of course would like to get better, but I am always very positive on the course.

I also think that my natural resistance to such things would negate any positive effects that Tap In Golf could have.

But if you already find that this sort of thing works for you, then you should give this book a try.

I am a huge fan of Tilley hats and am the proud owner of two: a lightweight summer golf hat, and a wool winter one. They feel great, wear like iron and never fail to get a complement. They are so much more stylish than the run-of-the-mill baseball cap.

Callaway now offers a branded Tilley—a wide brimmed classic style, with the Callaway logo embroidered on it.

You WILL NOT be disappointed with your Tilley.

I think Nick O’Hern did the impossible this last weekend: He got inside Tiger’s head.

As everyone in the free world surely knows by now Nick O’Hern beat Tiger Woods in a match play event for second time (O’Hern topped Tiger two years ago at La Costa) at the World Match Play Championships. Tiger was down early in the match, but fought his way back to take it to extra holes. And then he missed a four footer.

Afterwards, everyone was talking about the putt. Tiger, in a state of denial, seemed in his press conference to be saying that he hadn’t really missed the putt; that an untended ball mark had marred his otherwise perfect stroke and line.

But for me, that wasn’t the story at all. The story was that for perhaps the first time, someone had gotten into Tiger’s head rather than the other way around.

I—and probably everyone else—could tell that Tiger was going to lose early in the match. O’Hern never trailed a hole, and Tiger was struggling to keep it close. The striped one was wild, playing as much from the cacti as from the fairway. To me, that was a sign that he was pushing too hard; thinking too much.

The sad thing was that he didn’t have to. Granted, O’Hern is ranked sixteenth in the world, but he’s not really in Tiger’s league. O’Hern is 137th in driving distance; 176 in driving accuracy; 191 in greens in regulation. He’s a dangerous putter (2nd in putts per round), but that’s about it.

I think that the advantage that O’Hern had was that he had beaten Tiger before ... and Tiger was thinking about it. Simply put, O’Hern was in Tiger’s head.

The best case for that comes in Tiger’s own words:

“It’s not the streak,” Woods said. “It’s the fact that I’m disappointed I didn’t pay attention to detail, something so simple. Something so simple like that just escaped me.”

That “something so simple” was fixing the ball mark. He simply forgot. When he stepped up to that final putt, Tiger was thinking about putting away the pesky Australian, and not paying attention to details. There was something else on his mind ... and that was O’Hern.

Its good to see that Tiger is not superman.

I am, however, a bit disappointed that Tiger didn’t win. I am dreading all the second-guessing about whether a match play event really counts on Tiger’s win streak. It would have been far better for him not to have finished first in a regular event. Then we could have put it to rest once and for all.

This week’s PGA Tour Event is the Honda Classic, played at the PGA National Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. To whet your appetite, here are a couple of satellite photos of the course, complements of Google Earth.

More after the jump.

During the long, cold Michigan winters, I have a lot of fun building golf clubs. It’s relazing, and keeps me looking forward to arrival of spring. some, I build for myself; some for others. I generally build a set to be auctioned off in my kid’s elementary school auction fundraiser; and I sometimes will repair a club brought to me by a friend.

If you’ve never built a golf club, I suggest you give it a try. It’s not terribly expensive to get started (although it can be quite expensive if you buy all of the optional tools). And it’s not terribly difficult at the basic level. The tricky part of golf club making is not the assembly, but in the choosing of which parts to assemble it with.

Golfsmith has a number of convenient kits to get you started in clubmaking. Teh Viper Ti 464 driver kit gives you a 460cc titanium clubhead with a moveble weight system, a matched Proforce graphite shart, a velvet grip, ferrule (the plastic slip that goes above the clubhead and offers stability and reinforcement to the shaft) and a matching clubhead cover.

You’ll also need to get the clubmaking supply pack, which comes with the proper epoxy (superglue will NOT work), grip tape and solvent, a vise clamp and a step-by-step instructional DVD.

What you’ll need to have on your own is a vice, some sandpaper and a fine toothed saw—all stuff the average homeowner already has.

Give it a shot. It’s fun.

I don’t get XM radio, but have been getting emails saying that the site got a good mention on the PGA coverage today. It apparently involved satellite photos of the Gallery Course. You can find them here.

Welcome to those who are following up on the XM mention.  I hope you like the site. I started GolfBlogger four years ago when blogging was a relatively new thing because I wanted to see what blogging was all about. At that point, it seemed to me that most of the blogs were about politics and technology, so I decided to stay away from those topics. I loved golf— I play and have coached golf— so I decided to write about that.

I think of GolfBlogger as a cross between two more well-known blogs—http://www.instapundit.com and http://www.gizmodo.com. Instapundit offers a series of short, pithy comments on political news; Gizmodo writes about new tech products. Combining these two with a golf twist led me to Golfblogger’s general format, which is to offer short, pithy comments on golf news, and links to new golf products.

The signature post for Golfblogger is each Friday’s Ridiculous Item of the Week, in which I highlight a stupid, tacky, or silly golf product. But there much, much more here. Take a look around.

And if someone could PLEASE fill me in on the XM details, I would really appreciate it. What was the show? Who said what? What was the context of the mention?

Thanks and welcome.

I have been watching the Match Play Championships today on The Golf Channel, and just saw an ad for the Big Break. And at that moment, it occurred to me that the fix for that insipid show is right under TGC’s nose.

The problem for me has always been that the interpersonal drama that the producers of The Big Break so desperately want is completely absent in the current format.  Because elimination is determined by individual skill challenges, there is no reason for any of the golfers to even talk TO each other, let alone talk about each other. They can love each other or hate each other, and it has no effect on the outcome.  That’s why, to me, the entire production seems so contrived.

What they need to do is to restructure the Big Break as a series of team events—sort of like a mini Ryder Cup each week. They could base it all on nine holes, if they wanted to speed it up and keep production costs down. The golfers would (as with Survivor) be initially divided into two squads. And each week, the losing team would be forced to vote out one of its members. Presumably, the team would vote out its weakest link. But they might also vote out someone who simply irritates the others, regardless of skill.

And that’s where, finally, the interpersonal drama would have some meaning.

If the teams were uneven because of attrition, the larger team would have someone sit out. The same person couldn’t sit out twice.

The show would be made more interesting as the show highlighted the various types of golf games available: match, twosomes, scramble. They could even come up with some original ones.

Each week would begin, however, with a skills challenge. The winner would get a “mulligan” (immunity), regardless of whether he ultimately on the winning or losing team. That would create some additional interpersonal conflict. If a player already has the mulligan, and doesn’t play up to the team’s expectations, she’d be under a lot of fire from the others. Imagine the comments: “We would have won, but she already had a mulligan and didn’t earn her share of the points. She’s a quitter and I hate her.”

At some point, the teams would be small enough that they’d be merged. Then, the players would be reassigned in different (random) pairs each week. The winning pair would get immunity. The others would be on the chopping block.

Of course, every other week, there wold be an uneven number of players. In that case, the player with the Skills Challenge mulligan would sit out. She would be immune from expulsion anyway.

When down to the last three, it would become a straight match play event.