My wife wants to got to Kentucky for Easter break, but she and I both have no idea what to see or do. So I’m fishing for ideas. It’ll be the two of us, and two kids, age 10 and 5.

What’s good to see in the Louisville or Lexington area? Historical sites? Is the Lincoln homestead worth seeing? And are there any must-play courses in the area? Decently priced resorts? How about the state parks? Are there any with good recreation that time of year? I know that the state parks have courses ...

I’d really like some advice here ... I’ve never been to Kentucky, but hear its gorgeous ...

And if there’s a resort out there that wants to give me a good rate in exchange for a pictorial review, send me an email ...

I spent my afternoon and evening at the Michigan Golf Show at the Rock Financial Showcase in Novi, Michigan. It bills itself as the world’s largest golf show—and it certainly is huge. But I think it’s more like a tent sale—or a sidewalk sale than anything else. What it had was miles of tables of discounted clubs, balls and apparel. You can see a single vendor’s tables in the picture at right.

The vast majority of the clubs at the show seemed to be last year’s models—not a bad thing, but it contributes to the tent sale atmosphere. There also were a large number of clubs from what I would call “second tier” manufacturers like Dunlop and Rawlings.

I did see some good deals, though. Rock Bottom Golf had TaylorMade Rescue Duals—which are now selling at GolfSmith for $199—for $140. Quite a bargain. I also spotted a staff bag full of LaJolla Knife woods for $39 each. I’ve always wanted to give one of those funny looking clubs an extended test. But I passed.

At this point, though, I regret not picking up the $79 V-Steel 5-Wood that I saw. I’d like to get a new five wood, and the V-Steel has a good reputation.

Other vendors were selling component knock-off clubs, most of which looked pretty bad. There are some really good companies out there that you might call “smart followers” like GigaGolf and Pine Meadow who follow in the footsteps of the big names. And I’m a big fan of well-designed original components, like those made by GolfSmith and GolfWorks. But the ones at the Michgian Golf show were clearly subpar. The ones with the pseudo Nike swoosh and the R7 logo designs were particularly egregious. No real golfer would mistake them for the real thing, but they clearly were designed to fool someone.

Many of the smaller stalls there were the pro shops of local courses selling last year’s demo clubs, logo apparel and their excess baseball cap inventory. I bought a nice Callaway golf shirt at one of these for $10.

Another thing that tempted me were several booths with slightly used golf balls. I looked for some Black Max balls—I enjoyed playing those last spring—but none of them had it. If you were looking for ProV1s , though, you were set. The vast inventory of used Pro Vs makes me wonder if there are really that many incompetent golfers hacking these things into ponds—or if some of them were those Titleist knock-offs that were in the news a while back.

The markdown on the other balls I like to play—Noodles, DT SoLo and Callaway HX Hots wasn’t enough to get me to buy used.

Number 41.

My present to myself is to play even more golf next year.

Here’s the downside of living in Michigan—the weather is insane. Last week, it hit eighty degrees and I was playing golf in shorts. Today ... well ... see for yourself:

Hyacinth in the snow.

My backyard. You can see my LGB G-Scale train in the lower left.

 
Of course, a couple of days from now, it’ll be back to warm again.

Sigh.

This has absolutely nothing to do with golf, but my alma mater, West Virginia is playing in its first NCAA Tournament in years tonight.

Lets Go Mountaineers!