The Cobra F Speed LD Driver is designed for players who somehow cannot seem to maximize their fast swing and ball speeds. The Cobra Speed LD/F is designed to help those players achieve maximum carry and accuracy. It does this with a design that creates one of the highest moments of inertia available in a driver head. The tuned clubhead and shaft promote a high launch with a slight draw bias.

Here’s the schedule for the 2007 PGA Tour. The season is divided into three distinct sections: the regular Tour events, the PGA Tour playoffs for the Fedex Cup and the PGA Tour Fall Series. All events are worth 25,000 Fedex Cup Points, with the following exceptions:

Mayakoba Golf Classic at Riviera Maya-Cancun: 12,500 Fedex Cup Points
World Golf Championships-Accenture Match Play Championship: 26,250 Fedex Cup Points
The Masters: 27,500 Fedex Cup Points
The Players Championship: 27,500 Fedex Cup Points
The US Open: 27,500 Fedex Cup Points
The US Bank Championship in Milwaukee: 12,500 Fedex Cup Points
The British Open: 27,500 Fedex Cup Points
Reno Tahoe Open: 12,500 Fedex Cup Points
World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational: 26,250 Fedex Cup Points
PGA Championship: 27,500 Fedex Cup Points
All Tour Playoff events (beginning with the Barclays) are worth 50,000 points

Continued...

For the casual golfer or fan, match play can be confusing. With terms like All Square, Halve, and Dormie, 1-UP, 5 and 4, Match Play is a whole new ball game.

Most golf tournaments are “stroke play.” In these events, all of the golfers play a certain number of holes, and the player who has the lowest combined total score is the winner.

In Match play, golfers are pitted directly against each other. A player is not concerned with the entire field—only with beating the opposing golfer (or side, in team play).

Scoring in match play is quite different from stroke play. Each hole in Match play is scored as a separate event. The player (or team) who finishes a hole in the fewest strokes is the winner of that hole. At the end of the match (however many holes they are playing), the player who has won the most holes is the winner.

The scoring system leads to some unusual terminology. The results of match events are not reported by strokes, or by the total number of holes won, but by how many MORE (or fewer) holes a player has won, along with the number of holes left in the match. So, if after 10 holes, Tiger Woods has won six holes and Phil Mickelson has won four, the announcers would report that Woods is 2-Up through 10. At the same time, Mickelson is 2-down. If both players have won the same number of holes, the match is “All Square Through 10.”

Adidas’s new Powerband golf shoes are just the thing for the technologically obsessed.

Featuring a “powerband chassis,” Adidas says that the shoes are designed to promote lateral stability, which in turn promotes the leverage needed to generate more power.

For comfort, the Powerbands are equipped with a “visco-elastic foam” that’s supposed to mold itself to the the exact shape of your foot. In the shoe’s bed, a substence called “adiPrene” is supposed to provide a “fast, reactive response for immediate feedback to promote improved footwork for better weight transfer and balance.”

And that’s not all. The shoes have something called a “Grip Zone” which is supposed to secure the foot securely “turning the foot and shoe into a single solid unit” and and new kidney shaped lugs to prevent slippage.

Good heavens.

I just hope they feel good and wear well.

Good heavens. Phil Mickelson just hit a 280+ yard shot with a four wood.

How is that even possible?

Now I just watched him land an eight iron from 204.

Good heavens.

The Pro: Lessons from My Father About Golf and Life by Claude “Butch” Harmon, Jr.

At its core, “The Pro” is nothing more—or less—than a son’s touching memoir of his father. Like all sons, the author has stong memories of his father and of the life lessons that he taught.

What makes the memoir different is that the father in this case is Claude Harmon and the son, Butch (Claude Jr.)—two very recognizable names in the world of golf.

For the uninitiated, Claude Harmon was a well respected, lifelong club and teaching pro who has the distinction of being the last club pro to win a major (the 1948 Masters). Son Butch also is a well known teaching pro who is perhaps most famous for guiding the game of the young Tiger Woods.

The book is not a linear biography, but rather a collection of vignettes that tell the reader much about the life and times of Claude Harmon, Sr. Butch details his work as a pro, efforts on the Tour, business failures, his ousting as the pro at Winged Foot and resurrection at a club in Texas and of course, his relationshiops iwth family and friends.

Claude Sr seems to be a guy that I very much would liked to have knows: honest, forthright, and generous to a fault. Butch clearly has the utmost love and respect for the man.

The book also is interesting for the role that Ben Hogan plays. Claude, Sr. and Hogan were close friends—so close that Hogan apparently cried upon hearing of Claude’s death. Hogan comes across in the book as a much different fellow than the man of legend—a kind man who loved children. (Another interesting point: Like anyone who ever met him, Butch refers to Ben as Mr. Hogan.)

At the end of each chapter, Butch summarizes his father’s lessons by offering a page of “Claude’s Pearls,” such as “Improvement requires taking a long term approach.” There are no actual golf lessons here, but anygolfer would do well to heed the pro’s wisdom.

It’s a good book, and one I recommend.

My favorite times of the day to play are at sunrise and sunset. I love the quality of the light at those times, glowing rather than glaring. And I love the quiet. In Northern Michigan, at the height of summer, I’ve often finished rounds of golf at ten o’clock at night, and still had enought light to putt for a while afterwards.

Eternal Sunset is a site for those who love the twilight. It shows live, rotating webcam shots of the world as sunset passes over each location. The one on the left is from Portugal.