After opening my last league round with a solid, if unspectacular run of two pars and a bogey, I began to entertain the conceit that I was finally getting over the winter doldrums. I had found fairways and greens on two of those and just missed the green on the par 3 second. Things just seemed to click.

The Golf Gods promptly punished me for my hubris.

From the elevated tee on the par five fourth, I pulled my first shot, sending the ball over the fence and out-of-bounds. Disappointing, but not disastrous. I was at that point still confident I could salvage the hole.

After my partner and opponents had taken their hacks, I re-teed and hit my third. Dead left, out of bounds. I reloaded for six, this time with a four iron—a club which I had played with certainty and great effectiveness off the tee on the first hole.

The four iron sliced badly left, hitting a branch and trapping me behind a stand of trees, underbrush and swamp. I was dismayed not to have found fairway, but I was at least off the tee.

From that location, I found two options: hit the ball back to the tee, or try to go forward over the trees. I went with the second. I didn’t want to see that tee box again, and was confident that I could hit a towering wedge and find the fairway on the other side.

More punishment. I hit a branch at the very top of the last tree and the ball went straight down into the muck. A drop, another ball. Aiming slightly left of the offending tree. Same branch. Same result. Another drop. This time, back to the tee, then finally forward to the hole.

Five shots later, I was in. The Golf Gods had turned me into their Job.

Then, as if to further demonstrate their cruel and capricious nature, those same small Gods relented. I birdied the next hole.

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.

Read the rest of the series.

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.

Read the rest of the series.

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.

Read the rest of the series.

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

Visit Your Local Clubhouse

Even if the course is closed, there’s a good chance that the clubhouse still is open for drinks and meals. What better place to relive your past season than your favorite nineteenth hole? It’ll be even better if you can get your regular foursome together once or twice a month.

Order a dog and a beer—or whatever you usually get after a round. Then get a scorecard and try to mentally recreate your best round of the past season. Talk about the best day—and the worst. Challenge your buddies to a game of Golden Tee. Or just stare out at the snowy landscape.

My favorite clubhouse sits on a hill overlooking the first tee, the driving range, a creek and the eighteenth green. It’s as beautiful on a snow-covered day as it is in full green summer. The barkeep is friendly, and the chili extraordinary. There’s wifi for writing GolfBlogger posts, and a seat near the window in the early afternoon offers great light for reading.

There’s an economic aspect to this, too. Many courses depend on restaurant sales to ultimately balance the bottom line. In GolfBlogger Country, course clubhouses cater to parties, weddings, meetings and so on. One local club is widely recognized for their Sunday Morning brunch buffet. Eating at the clubhouse may help ensure that the course opens next spring.

Read the rest of the series.

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

Maintain Your Equipment.

Cold, snowy days are a good time to give a little tender loving care to your equipment.

Get your bag out of the shed and empty it completely. If you’re like me, chances are you’ll find old scorecards, useless balls, protein bar wrappers and plenty of dirt—the detritus of a busy summer. Vacuum the inside, and wipe it down. Then wipe down the outside. Snip any stray threads. Get the goo out of the zipper teeth; I use Goo Gone for that.

Wipe down your pull-or-push cart. Oil the bearings. Tighten the bolts.

Then take a look at your clubs.

Get the dirt off the heads, and take a scrub brush to the grooves. Then give them a good buffing with a clean cloth. Wipe down the shafts, too. If there’s any residue, try the Goo Gone on that, too.

If your plastic ferrules are nicked or scruffed, you can buff those up, too. Put a little acetone on a lint free cloth and give the ferrule a quick swipe. That’ll take out the scruff marks. If there are deeper nicks, you may need to give it a stronger swipe. Be careful with the acetone. That’s powerful stuff, and not to be breathed. It can cause brain damage, or worse. Avoid getting it on anything plastic or painted. It’s best to do this in the garage with the door open (that’s what I do).

Finally, take a look at the grips. Give them a good scrubbing, at the very least. A better option, however, is to simply replace them. Replacing grips is very easy and relatively cheap if you use rubber, slip-on grips. Here’s how:

1) Get some grips, and double sided grip tape from Golf Galaxy or Golfsmith or Hirekogolf.com.

2)Cut off the old grips with a utility knife.
3) Strip off the old tape. Use a hair dryer to melt the glue if the tape is stubborn.
4) Secure the club in a vice with soft rubber clamps. You can get ones designed for golf clubs from the companies mentioned above.
5) Apply the tape: There are two ways to do this: You can start at the lower end of where the grip would be by running it in a spiral pattern up the shaft. Or, you can run it lengthwise up one side of the butt and down the other. Peel the backing off the tape so the stick side is revealed.
6) Put another small strip over the hole on the butt.
7) Put something to catch the mineral spirits under the butt end. I use an aluminum paint tray for paint rollers.
8) Pour some mineral spirits into the grip while holding your finger over the hole at the bottom. Slosh the spirits around inside the grip.
9) Pour the spirits over the tape. Add a little bit more of the spirits until the glue on the tape is slick.
10) Push the grip onto the shaft.
11) Most grips have a couple of little marks at the top and bottom ends to help with alignment. Make sure that these align with each other. Otherwise, the grip might be slightly twisted, which may affect your swing.
12) You can put the logo up (I do), or down (as most pros do). Just make sure that the marks line up parallel to the shaft.

Read the rest of the series.