This is the tenth in a series on things to do to feed your golf addiction in the off season:

Sort Through Your Old Golfing Magazines

Thanks to annual gifts from relatives, I get Golf Digest, Golf Magazine, Golf Week and Golf World. They’re all fun reads—full of tips, equipment reviews and other things to entice a Golf Blogger. But it’s a lot to read, and during the season, I tend to only really delve into the two weeklies, Golf Week and Golf World, new equipment reviews, and the relevant tournament previews. Most of the remainder of the magazines—that is, most of Golf and Golf Digest, and especially the features and tips—wait until the off season.

So it comes to pass that, by December, I have twenty four combined issues of Golf and Golf Digest, as well as a random pile of Golf Weeks and Worlds with things I wanted to save. It’s only after the snow flies that I begin to work my seriously through the volumes. I read every article, consider every tip, and then discard the issues in the recycling bin. I used to tear out articles that interested me for future reading, but with everything on the web these days, I don’t need to create my own archives any more.

What I find interesting about reading a year’s worth of two golf magazines in a relatively short span is just how similar these magazines are from issue to issue, and to each other. They’re virtually indistinguishable, both in tone and content. To the extent that anyone “needs” these Golf or Golf Digest, one or the other should be more than enough. Indeed, it’s likely that I could get by with picking up the just four “Majors” issues of the monthlies at the News Stand.

Still, having a pile of golf magazines to browse through on a cold winter’s night does a lot to feed the golf addiction.

This is the ninth in a series on things to do to feed your golf addiction in the off season:

Make Some New Year’s Resolutions

The New Year is a great time to reflect upon the old, and to make some resolutions for improvement of your golfing life. Get out some of your old score cards and notes (yes, I take notes—don’t you?) and replay those rounds in your mind. In your day dreams, try to identify where things went wrong, and what areas you could stand to improve.

In my own reflections this morning, I’ve determined that I have two primary problems. First, I am too often hitting long irons and woods into par fours. That indicates a lack of distance off the tee. Second, I have an inordinate number of two putts, with a bogey as the result. That tells me that my recovery shots from around the green are not getting close enough to the hole to make a one putt a consistent proposition.

So I’ve come up with a four resolutions for the new year:

1) Improve my distance by losing weight. My theory is that with less weight around my middle, I’ll be more flexible. And more flexibility will result in a longer swing and more speed. My only question is how to go about it. My go-to diet in the past has been the Adkins, but it’s very limiting. I’ve also thought about just keeping track of, and reducing calories. That has more appeal, because it’ll still allow me to have a Coke or other evening drink if I plan it right in cutting calories elsewhere. There’s another benefit to reducing the calories: some studies have shown that reducing calories increases lifespan (quite apart from the weight related problems). That’ll mean more time on this planet for golf.

2) Improve my distance by increasing my strength. I’ve got a GolfGym PowerSwing Trainer , which is essentially a golf grip with a set of those resistance cords attached. My resolution is to use those three times a week to improve strength, particularly in the core.

3) Improve my distance by improving my flexibility. One of the very best things I got to review this year was the G2 Fit Self-Guiding Golf Stretch Fitness Mat . It’s a brilliantly simple idea: a high quality exercise mat with the stretching exercises printed right on the mat. No watching DVDs or flipping pages in a book. It’s all right there. I have been using it daily for a couple of months and will continue into the new year.

4) Finally, I’ll work on my short game some more—in particular, the pitch shot. For my money, that’s the easiest of the short game shots, and the one I should turn to more often. It’s also one of the three basic scoring shots described by Stan Utley in his excellent The Art of Scoring.

New Years resolutions are of course made to be broken, but over the years I’ve had a much better record keeping my golf-oriented ones than with the others.

This is the eighth in a series on ways to feed your golf addiction in the off-season.

Watch Live Golf On Television

Watching live golf on television is a great way to treat the winter golf deprivation blues. I especially enjoy the early season tournaments, for they serve as a harbinger of the more pleasant times to come.

For those of us in the frozen Northeast, Midwest, Great Plains and Mountain States , it really helps that the first two PGA Tour Tournaments are held in Hawaii. The tropical vistas are a welcome relief from our own white scenery.

The Tour then moves on to California, Arizona and Mexico—three more locations whose climates couldn’t be more different from those of us who get four real seasons. Most of the early tournaments are broadcast on The Golf Channel and CBS. It winds up in Florida about the time that things start warming up here in Michigan.

The Champions Tour begins in Hawaii, and is covered for the most part by The Golf Channel. The European Tour kicks off the New Year in Africa before moving on to the Middle East. Finally, the LPGA waits until February to kick off the season in Thailand.

Of the early season events, my favorites are the WGC Match Play, the San Diego Open (formerly the Buick) and the Northern Trust. The SBS, by virtue of inviting only winners from the previous season, has a strong and recognizable field. The San Diego Open is a favorite because it’s at Torrey Pines, a course I’ve played. I just love the look of the Riviera Country Club, site of the Northern Trust. The Riviera is one of those courses I’d do almost anything to play. Match Play is the most exciting form of golf out there. And there’s an argument to be made that based on strength of field, the WGC Cadillac is one of the best non-majors of the season.

This the seventh in a series on things to do to feed your golf addiction in the golfing off season:

Watch A Golf Movie

If you can’t get out to play, watching a golf movie just might feed your golf addiction. Here’s a list of The GolfBlogger’s Favorites:

1. The Greatest Game Ever Played

A faithful adaptation of the book that plays well on the big screen. Its no wonder, the author, Mark Frost, once wrote the tv series Hill Street Blues. The casting is perfect and the story compelling. It’s the original David and Goliath sports story. There are a lot of subtle bits in this movie , though, that people who didn’t read the book will miss. For example, the book goes into a great deal on the class conflict between the professionals and the amateurs. If you didn’t read the book, you’ll miss the point that the professionals are always referred to by their first names—Harry Vardon—while the amateurs are referred to with a honorific—Mr. Ouimet.

2. Dead Solid Perfect

Based on the Dan Jenkins novel, this originally appeared on cable. It follows a struggling professional golfer—played by Randy Quaid—as he travels about on tour. Very funny.

3. Tin Cup

This Kevin Costner movie is like Bull Durham for golf. Costner plays a washed up driving range pro who decides to play in the US Open to win the heart of a girl. It’s most famous for the scene where he plunks ball after ball into a pond on the last hole of the Open. It’s a good romantic comedy.

Continued...

This is the sixth in a series of essays on things to do to feed your golf addiction in the off-season.

Practice Your Putting

Putting is one of the few golf activities that I can engage in year-round at GolfBlogger World Headquarters in Michigan. When the snow is falling, the wind blowing and the temperatures plummeting, I can still lay out a small putting course in my family and sun rooms and get some quality time in with the flat stick.

And that’s a good thing, because putting is fully half the game of golf. Two of the stokes on every par are set aside for putting, so on a par 72, 36 of those are for putts. The math here is simple. To score well, you need to putt well. Teaching pros have long insisted that the easiest way to improve your scores is to improve your short game. I’ll go one further. Simply work on improving your putting.

Fortunately, the putting stroke is the easiest thing in the game to master. Compared to a full swing (or, god forbid, one of those dreaded Dave Pelz three quarter clock swings), the putting stroke is simple, slow and controllable.When a ball goes offline on a drive, it’s often hard to tell which of a dozen things actually went wrong. When a ball falls short, rolls long or heads offline on a putt, the cause usually is obvious.

Given the central importance of putting, and the relative ease of fixing a bad stroke, I have always found it strange that players who regularly three jack on the greens will spend so much time focusing on the full swing . it does absolutely no good to get to the green in regulation if you’re going to three- or even four-putt once you get there.

So feed your golf addiction this winter by practicing your putting. Set up one of those mechanical ball return targets in a room with a short carpet and have at it with a couple of dozen putts a day. Concentrate at first on tempo and a smooth stroke. Work on distance control. You might even consider getting one of those putting plane systems that are designed to align your eyes, shoulders, clubface and path for a clean stroke.

Another fun thing to do is to head to the local well-stocked pro shop, such as the GolfSmith or Golf Galaxy and spend an hour or so putting around on their large professional greens. My conscience usually bothers me after a free session like this, so I buy a box of balls.

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This is the fifth in a series of essays on things to do to feed your golf addiction in the off-season.

Look Up An Old Golf Buddy

The holidays are a great time to reconnect with family, friends, and ... old golf buddies. You can feed your golf addiction by bringing back the ghost of Rounds Past with a buddy you haven’t heard from in a while. Invite him (or her) for a few drinks at the local watering hole—or even better—patronize your favorite course’s clubhouse. Then spend the afternoon drinking, watching sports on the big screen tv, and eating bar food (my favorite are the fried mozzarella sticks.

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This is the fourth in a series of essays on things to feed your golf addiction in the off-season.

Play a Golf Video Game

If it’s too cold to get out on the course, playing a golf video game can be a pleasant afternoon’s diversion and a way to feed your addiction.

I experienced my first golf video game on an Apple II circa 1984. The screen was green and black, and the graphics primitive, but the mechanics not far off from many games today. There was a small bar at the bottom of the screen, and at the top a player’s eye view of the course. To swing, you hit the space bar, and watched a status meter race across the gauge. You hit the space bar again when it a mark at the far end, and a final time when it swept back to a mark on the near side. It was all about timing. If you hit the space bar before the status meter reached the top, your shot would be weak; hit it after the top mark, and you would overswing. Hitting the space bar before the bottom mark caused a slice; after, a hook. Once the ball was struck, the view shifted to an overhead showing where the shot flew.

Since that first game, I’ve owned and played dozens of others, including a hand-held lcd game, several PC based games, Playstation, Game Cube and Wii, on my cell phone and now on my BlackBerry. I’ve had games that featured Jack, Arnie, Vijay and ... ahem ... Woody.

For most of the games, the basic play mechanism has remained the same—timing the status meter. More recent games, however, have incorporated mouse movement into the control. I don’t like those as much.

The golf video game that’s been the most fun is the Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 Wii game. Like all Wii games, it features a motion sensing mechanism. You actually swing the controller like a club to make the ball go on the screen. It’s part simulation, part game. The game aspect involves earning “upgrades” such as better outfits, equipment and access to improved courses.

I like it, but frankly, I’m not very good. Thing One, the teenager, kicks my butt.

A close second was an Accolade Jack Nicklaus PC game that had a very neat course editor. I spent more time designing courses than playing them.

Another game that I really liked was Sid Meier’s SimGolf. In that one, you began with a plot of land and a pile of money and started constructing golf holes. Like all of the “Sim” games, it was all about management of assets, as you developed your backwater course into a fabulous golf resort. You could play on the course you developed, but game play was very simplistic.

Golf games are only going to get more realistic. There are a number on the market that use real clubs and sensors to detect the clubface positions. But those, I think, stray too far to the simulation side of the continuum to be considered a game.

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