The Golfer's Wife

A View From The Back Door

Yeah. So. There won't be any golf around here for awhile.

An App For That

We are what is referred to as ‘early adapters’ here at The Household. This means that when a new gadget comes out that in any way relates to something in our lives, we have to have it. So when the first rangefinders came out The Golfer was all over them. After a certain amount of research he settled on one, and used it quite happily for years.

In order to use this particular rangefinder a course must be ‘mapped’. This means that some person has walked the entire course, picked certain attributes of each hole as markers ( like maybe a particular sand trap, or a tree, or the edge of a water hazard etc. And of course each tee box and the front, center and back of the green.) and plugged in the coordinates of said markers. Then GPS is used to figure the yardage between all the markers, which can give you the yardage from various points on the fairway to the green. When you are playing you bring up the hole on the rangefinder and you can see the yardage from where you are to all of the markers. You don’t get any kind of picture of the hole. It’s just a round green circle representing the green, with all the markers between the tee and green labeled ( tree on left, hazard on right, second sand trap on right, etc. ). If you happen to want to hit the ball and land someplace not by a marker ( like maybe you want to lay up ) you have to estimate the yardage, based on the yardage to the closest marker.

Over the years a great many of the worlds courses have been mapped. If you happen to play a course that has not been mapped you are more then welcome to do the mapping yourself. Which can take 6-8 hours, since you have to walk the course and pick out markers and type in coordinates. Not something you will do for a course unless you will be playing it a lot. In order to get access to the course maps you pay a yearly subscription fee. One price will get you all the courses in your state. A slightly higher price will get you all the courses in the US. An even higher fee will get you courses all over the world. The only caveat being that, no matter which subscription you choose, you can only have 10 courses on the rangefinder at any one time.

In spite of the flat picture maps, and the being SOL if you happened to play a course that wasn’t mapped, overall The Golfer was very happy with his rangefinder. It was the best thing available. Then he got an iPhone. Since there is an app for everything on an iPhone, there are of course, several rangefinder apps. He bought one for $10. No yearly subscription. Just a one time charge of $10 ( The soundness of the business plan for this particular app is a matter of some speculation here at The Household. But for now it’s available, so The Golfer bought it. ). It operates on much the same principle as the rangefinder. People have mapped courses and you can download any map you want. There are a couple of key differences however. You can download as many maps as your iPhone can hold. And when you download a map what you actually get is Google Maps pictures of each hole on the course. Not only do you get the yardage, but you can see every sand trap, every hidden pot bunker, and how maybe it’s better to miss right because that way lies another fairway, but left is a large patch of nasty rough. And as for the yardage, you can get it from any point on the hole to any other point on the hole. So if you hit your tee shot, and then are wondering if perhaps your second shot should be a lay up, you can get the yardage from where you are to the green, where you are to where you would lay up, and the yardage from where your lay up shot will land ( you hope ) to the green, and make a decision as to whether to lay up, or to go for the green. Quite an improvement on the previous range finder.

The number of available course maps with this app is actually pretty tiny. But more are constantly being added, and adding a new course is easy. There is a nifty web interface. Basically you have it do a Google Maps search for the course, then click on the tee box and the green for hole, and Google maps uses it’s GPS to pull up all the images it takes to get a complete picture of the hole. Do that for every hole, and voila, mapped course from the comfort of your home. The Golfer went on an out of town golfing trip with the guys a couple weeks ago, and it took him just 10 minutes to map the course they were playing, from his hotel room.

The one downside to this rangefinder app is that, to fully utilize all it’s awsomeness, the iPhone has to use it’s GPS constantly, which runs down the battery. Totally drains it in a little over 2 hours. Which really only gets you through the first 9. The Golfer solved this little problem by purchasing an auxiliary battery pack for his iPhone. Which meant he also had to buy a bigger holster. One that was made to hold an iPhone with the auxiliary battery pack attached. The extra battery pack lasts through an entire round, so when he’s done he still has a fully charged phone. At $10 for the app, $80 for the battery and $30 for the new holster, The Golfer figures it’s a bargain. Even if this particular app eventually disappears, there are others, and new ones show up everyday. And if he does end up paying a subscription fee at some point ( because one of these app developers not only writes the app, but comes up with a viable long term business plan ), better a subscription for a Google Maps version of the course, with the ability to add new ones in minutes, than the flat, markers only, maps his old rangefinder provided, and no way to add a new course on the fly. 

It is the opinion of us cool headed business types here in The Household that the current rangefinders are not long for this world, at least in their current form. In order to survive they will need to, at the very least be able to provide yardage from any point on a hole to any other, and an easy way to add new courses. And if they do that they are basically the same as the iPhone apps. And since you already have the iPhone, why exactly would you buy the rangefinder?

Rules

The yearly women’s leave-the-husbands-and-kids-at-home-and-go-somewhere-fun-and-eat-and-drink-and-shop trip was this past week, so I was without a computer. And even if I had brought it along I certainly had better things to drin.. uh, do than pay attention to golf. So this morning I logged on for the first time in days to see what exciting things I had missed. And you know what? I hadn’t missed a darn thing. This is the slow season. Actually it’s referred to as the ‘silly season’.  Really just not that much going on. The majors are all ancient history, the FedEx Cup has come and gone. And the Presidents Cup ( or the Ryder Cup, depending ) is over. As is the Solheim Cup, in the years when it is played. There are still tournaments, on both tours. But the name players have all gone home for the winter. The people playing are the ones trying to earn enough to keep their tour card for next year.

So, since there is nothing worth mentioning going on with the tours, lets talk rules. Not golf rules, cc rules. As I mentioned awhile back, we belong to a country club. Country clubs have a LOT of rules. Which is not necessarily a bad thing. There aren’t many places where you take offspring these days that have a rigid set of rules, that are enforced. I don’t think it harms their psycies at all to have to actually dress appropriately and behave themselves. And they seem to have managed to adapt, as we haven’t been thrown out yet.

Anyway. CC rules come in sets. There are the pool rules, the Upper clubhouse rules, the Lower clubhouse rules, course rules, etc. Recently, in Golf Digest, Jerry Tarde commented on course rules.

Rule #1 is not an actual rule at our cc. As in it’s not actually printed in black and white in the membership book. It is generally seen as BAD FORM to throw a club, but it’s certainly done. As in the recent club-up-in-the-L********’s-tree incident. And I’m sure when they drag the ponds they find a large number of clubs among the rest of the muck they pull up. And you all know what happens to The Offspring if they throw a club. But while it certainly isn’t condoned, there is no actual rule against it.

Rule #2 is also not a rule at our cc. Drive through the parking lot on any sunny day and you will see people changing their shoes.

Rule #3 is an ABSOLUTE at our cc. Along with collared shirts which are TUCKED IN. The rule used to be no denim of ANY kind was allowed anywhere on club grounds. There was some mumbling and grumbling about this a few years ago so they took a survey on general attitudes towards denim, and the up shot of that was a rule change. Denim is allowed in the Lower clubhouse ONLY. Meaning in the grill, bar, and casual dining room. But while nice denim pants, skirts, dresses, shirts etc. may be allowed, washed out, ripped up jeans are not. And denim is still not allowed in the Upper clubhouse, and don’t even THINK about wearing it out on the course. Not even pants of the 5 pocket design that aren’t made out of denim are allowed. We may let you eat some lunch wearing a pair of Levi’s, but we’ll be damned if we’ll even let you on the practice green in them. Which is actually fine with me. As I said, it doesn’t hurt anyone to have a little enforced decorum in some part of their lives.

Rule #4 is not a rule at our cc. But normal rules of etiquette pretty much apply. When you enter the room, remove your hat. That said, walk into the bar/grill at any time on a Saturday afternoon and half the people will be wearing hats.

Rule #5 is also not a rule at our cc. But once again, normal politeness and golf etiquette applies. You don’t make noise when someone is about to strike the ball. A cell phone going off definitely qualifies as noise. So while most players have their cell phone on them, they are set to silent. Mr. Tarde argues that the younger generation thinks of the cell phone as an appendage, and that banning it risks alienating whole generations of golfers. Mr. Tarde should hang out at our course. He would see that even the ‘older’ generations will give up their cell phones only when you pry it from their cold dead hands. I don’t foresee a rule banning cell phones on the course anywhere in our future.

And about the swearing, also no rule against that. Thank goodness. Not that I ever….well, okay, yes I do. Not a lot. Really. But sometimes….when the 4th putt, that was only 6 inches, lips out….well. If there was a rule I’d be in big trouble.

Golf and the Olympics...again

We had a dusting of snow today here in The Wild West. And the high was somewhere around 30. The baseball powers that be decided that was reason enough to postpone the Rockies/Phillies game scheduled for tonight. So instead of sitting at the ballpark freezing my a** off, I am sitting at home watching the Avs play the Blackhawks.

As long as I am sitting here I figured I may as well weigh in on the recent IOC decision to include golf in the 1916 Olympics.

This is what I had to say about it last year, during the Summer Olympics in Bejing. At the end I said:

So the golf-in-the-Olympics discussion around here usually consists of:
   
‘Lets hope they never manage to add golf to the Olympics’.

‘Yeah’.


So much for that.
  
My opinion hasn’t changed any. I still think it’s a silly idea. I imagine that a lot of the pros will play in 2016, just to show support, and for the novelty. But after that? I doubt you will see the worlds top players in the Olympics.

The over all reaction of the golfing world has been luke warm. The players have dutifully said how wonderful it is, but they aren’t exactly brimming with enthusiasm. Although I will admit, you can’t expect them to be too excited about something that is 7 years away. Half of them may be at least semi-retired by then.

Regardless of the players reactions, the rest of us still think pretty much what we did before. See here and here.

The only person who seems to think it’s a good idea is Ron Sirak. And I have to say, for all the reasons I mentioned before, I think he is being very optimistic on how much being in the Olympics will contribute to the growth of golf. With 27 other sports being contested at the same time, most of which aren’t played regularly, on television, by professionals, how much time will people really spend watching the golf?

In any case, it’s 7 years away, and a lot can happen in 7 years.

Meanwhile there are baseball playoffs and hockey games.

The Presidents Cup

This week is The Presidents Cup. I could just link to my Ryder Cup post and say ‘read this and just substitute Presidents Cup everywhere it says Ryder Cup’. But that’s not quite right.  As mentioned back in that post, the Ryder Cup is a team competition between a team made up of players from the US and a team made up of players from Europe, which was started back in 1927. It has a long and storied history, and lots of Tradition. And if I’ve said it once I’ve said it a hundred times, and I’m sure I’ll say it again, Golf is nothing if not Tradition. And for decades this was fine, because 99.5% of professional golfers were either from the US or Europe. But golf was not immune from globalization. The game made inroads in other parts of the world, and people outside of the US and Europe became infected with the fever. Most notably people in South Africa and Australia. But if you look at the list of current PGA players you will see players from Japan, Korea, Argentina, Columbia, and Fiji, just to name a few. Which meant that every other year, while European and US players played the Ryder Cup, some of the best golfers in the world could only sit on the sidelines and watch.

In order to rectify this situation and, lets be honest here, in order to keep the TV revenue flowing in the off years when there wasn’t a Ryder Cup, in 1994 the PGA created The Presidents Cup. The format of which is the same as the Ryder Cup, but the two teams consist of the US and ‘the rest of the world except for Europe’.

The Presidents Cup is a good match play tournament, and it is great golf. But it’s not the Ryder Cup. To see how the golfing world feels about it all you have to do is look at the press coverage. Ryder Cup points are tabulated and re-tabulated and there is speculation for months before hand about the captain’s picks. And once the teams are known the possible match ups are discussed endlessly. There are months of articles leading up to it, and non-stop speculation as to the outcome of various matches. It is all the golfing world talks about for weeks leading up to the actual tournament.

For this years Presidents Cup the big stories are the fact that there was a fertilizer mishap on some of the greens at Harding Park ( the course where this Presidents Cup will be played ) and they got burned pretty bad, and would they be ready for play, and the fact that 2 weeks before the tournament the ‘rest of the world’ team captain Greg Norman announced that he and his wife of just 15 months, tennis star Chris Evert, were separated. Which was a bit of a shock since they had both left their previous spouses to marry each other. Even the staid world of golf has it’s little soap operas.

Anyway. Players do consider it an honor to be on the Presidents Cup team and, since the teams do consist of the worlds best players, it is, as I said, great golf. It’s main problem is that it just hasn’t been around long enough. In golf 15 years is not nearly long enough to have established Tradition. And without Tradition, it’s just another tournament. Give it another 50 years or so and it will have acquired enough Tradition that people will have totally forgotten it was originally created to grab TV revenue.

Meanwhile, here are the basic facts for this year, including team members, format, and TV times and stations. We will be watching it here in The Household. Well. Except for on Thursday and Saturday ( and hopefully on Sunday ) when it conflicts with Rockies playoff games. Playoffs over Presidents Cup any day.

Distractions

Believe it or not there are times when it’s not golf 24x7 around here. These past couple weeks it’s only been golf about 12x7. Lots of other things going on.

To start with there was the weather. We have absolutely beautiful falls out here in The Wild West, but every year, just as fall is starting, Mother Nature whaps us upside the head with a couple of days of cold wet weather, just to remind us what’s coming later. She did said whapping last week. Which was the signal to pick everything from the garden, clean up the flowerbeds, check the size and wearability of all coats/gloves/boots/ski-and-snowboard-gear and replace if needed, get out all the corduroy/jeans/long-sleeved-shirts/sweaters, and make sure every car has a scraper.

Then there are the Rockies ( the baseball team ). They were in a race for the NL wild card spot, which they finally managed to clinch today, but we were chewing fingernails for a week or so there. And there is even a chance ( somewhat slim since their remaining games are against the Dodgers  ) they might win their division. In any case there will be baseball around here well into October. Which means more nights at the ballpark instead of blogging.

And there are the actual Rockies. As in the mountains. The Aspen are turning, which requires the yearly trip to take in the green and gold hillsides ( notice please flatlanders…they are referred to as hillsides, not mountainsides. You ski down a mountainside, but you look at Aspen on hillsides. Don’t ask me why. That’s just the way things roll.).

There has been some golf. The cc had it’s yearly version of the Ryder Cup. The Golfer was the captain of Team USA this year. They were victorious over Team Europe. Which means he automatically qualifies for next years tournament, so he was happy.

Tonight the Avalanche start their season, which means we will now be adding hockey games to the mix. Tonight they are honoring Joe Sakic and retiring his number. Very bitter sweet. The Avs have never started a season without Super Joe. This is a ‘rebuilding’ year, so great things are not expected. But hopefully they can at least win this home opener for Joe.

The Presidents Cup is next week. And the weather is supposed to stay up in the 70’s. So I’m sure we will be back to golf around 20x7. At least until the first baseball playoff game.