EnderinAZ

After Friday's dismal results I was back over to the pitching chipping area to practice short shots. 20 feet to the green's edge and ten feet more to the flag. Working out of deep pretty dead dormant Bermuda grass. The depth is the part I am looking at. The rough around the greens tends to be 3 to 4 inches deep, thick, and wet. (they water the crap out of the green grass to keep it green). I have never played this course in winter. The greens are sloped. All of them. And now, cut short and fast. I cannot spin the ball hard enough to make it stop much from the fairways or fringes. From the rough? Not at all if it is down deep. Anyway courtesy of the deep grass and slopy greens and I end up with a LOT more 30 foot come back putts than I would care for. After about an hour and a half I have an even broader understanding as to which clubs and swings do NOT produce a workable ball flight. Oh well tomorrow is another day.

Good morning spies! Going to be another great day here in the desert with temps in the low 70's. I should plan on working on my short game (oooh it stinks) but with the warm air I think I am going to grab my ipod, ear buds, and ebike and go for a ride. Not long, 30 miles or so. Haven't ridden while it has been cold so my butt wont take more than thirty miles. Hope you all have a great Saturday!

Absolutely boomed my drives today! Straight, long, and on target. Fairway shots with my hybrids were fantastic. Inside 100 yards and it felt like I was trying to swing my wedges with my elbows. Combine that with 6 three putts and well, conflicted is a kind word for today's round. But it was a beautiful day in the mid 70s, I had good guys to play with, and the course is in great shape! It was fun!

Good morning spies! Today is finally a shorts day for the afternoon round. Temps will stay around 75 all afternoon with mild breezes. An excellent day for golf! Now the trick is to play golf excellently or to at least have fun.

There is a little local shop that sells "refurbished" balls and I have bought some from them with mixed results. Balls that have been in the water for a while have a definite sound and feel and distance loss as far as I am concerned. I started getting too many of that type of ball from this shop and have since stopped buying from them.

Meetings ugh, I hate meetings. I was the engineer who sat in the back and grumbled then couldn't hold back when someone would bring up some project that was stupid or impossible. With typical tactless engineering speak I would announce that the project just proposed was stupid or impossible. The excited chatter would quickly fizzle out and the meeting would tailspin into the ground. So I hope your meetings go well without an engineer like me in attendance . Good morning spies! Holy crap the greens were fast yesterday! Combined that with brutally hard pin placements (several of the greens pins were in places that if your ball rolled by the flag at a speed that would carry it a foot past the hole rolled an additional 10 feet and clean off the green) made for a frustrating day. But, at least I got out and played. Another picking day. We have a Ruby Red grapefruit tree to pick today. These are wonderful!

Played a 4 man team, count 3 net balls on 1-8 and 10-17 on holes 9 and 18 count 4. The twist was each team had to use 4 holes from each player as part of the score. As and example for player 1 the team had to use his scores from holes 1, 2, 10, and 11. Player 2 was 3, 4, 12, and 13. And, so on. We finished in second. The course on the other hand..well... This time of year the greens are fantastic. Short and fast, real fast, real real fast, and real real real fast with ZERO stopping power. I lost 8, yep that is eight strokes on two greens. No 4 putts from 10 feet because I am an air head. Nope, fast greens with pins on a slope and a phenomenon called angular momentum (dl⃗ dt=∑τ⃗ if you feels so inclined) This is where the ball catches the lip of the hole, changes direction and speeds up as it leaves. And boy did it leave. Took a while to find a place to rest. So a chip -it rolled down off the green- and 2 putts later I walk off with an 7 off of a lipped par putt. The other one was not as dramatic. I just could not get the ball to stop up near the hole. It rolled up, slow to an almost stop, then roll right back off the green again. My first putt was for birdie on a par five. My last putt that actually went in the hole, was for a double. I ran the scores so I know there was 1 par and 1 bogie on that hole out of 16 players. All the rest of us shot a 7 or above. I don't mind tough pin placements where you have to pay attention, but this was on the high side of ridiculous and decidedly unfair.

I have one friend who is terrible at anything inside of 4 feet so he gives all those length puts and expects that in return. If there is no money on the game I give 'em back. If he and his usual partner come to the course ready to bet, I make him putt them all out and always win the money.

Good morning spies! I probably shouldn't write this, but... We will reach 70 this afternoon! We tee off at 12:30 (if no frost delay this morning) and it will be warm enough for shorts!! Yeah, okay, enough gloating . You all have a great day.

I like the looks of the Smoke the best. As for the rest of the specs, meh... They don't mean a thing until I can hit the club and develop my own specs. When I was fitted last April I tried the latest and greatest Stealth and Paradyme drivers and stacked what I could do on trackman vs my current Sim 2 Max. Paradyme 10 shots. Consistent results, nice ball flight, 6 yards longer than my current driver. Stealth 10 shots. Tended to hook on me. 4 to 7 yards longer than my Sim. Not enough increase in distance or accuracy in either club to make me want to drop 650 bucks on a new club and an additional 2 hundred on a different driver shaft. I honestly believe these new "10" drivers would do little to improve my game. Not to say I wouldn't jump at the chance to use one I just can't justify the cost for distance gained disparity to make the purchase.

Two of our picking team. My wife, Amy on the left and Wendy, one of the organizers of the picking group, on the right. They are in front of 300 pounds or so of oranges, lemons, and grapefruit all destine for a local food bank. I did make it to the driving range though. So it was a good day!

Well no. It was a sign on the wall in the instrument department office of the first commissioning job I worked in '86. It really fit the job so I never forgot it. Had to listen to Red Shoes and although the music fits my age group I cannot say I heard it before.

I have the whole set, driver, 7 iron and wedge. I usually have people try the 7 iron first and only one guy hit his same sweet little draw shot with it on first swing. Everybody else pushes the ball to the right, most of the time with a fade which is exactly what the instructions and videos say will happen if your tempo, lag and hand and wrist actions are out of sync. Your swing must be in sync and I am envious.

Oh yeah, they still sell chains as Les Schwab's. Those passes you used to drive over require you to take chains with you to cross them this time of year. Every year, in Anchorage Alaska, they have over 300 crashes and fender benders on the first day they have snow. The first snow is usually more than 6 inches of heavy wet snow that makes the roads unbelievably slick. The little town of Soldotna where we lived (=~ 3000 people) there were somewhere near 70 wrecks on the first snow, and we drove on the white stuff for 8 to 9 months a year!

Good morning spies! First day in a week where the morning temps have crested 40 degrees. Still a frost delay but maybe only an hour or so. No concern of mine as today is another picking day. Went and checked out the yard we are picking today on Saturday. They have a tangelo tree that has fantastic fruit. I am going to grab a few of those this morning. We will pull 5 to 6 hundred pounds of lemons off of one tree today. Lots of fruit, but an associate number of BIG POINTY thorns. (shudder) Hope you all have a day that will be as tasty as mine!

Had a Ladies tournament at the big course today so they sent us over to the Par 62 executive. Had one of those days where I was off ever so slightly. Had an 160 yard par 3. Flag is down in the lower right and back of the green. The green slopes from left to right and front to back. Front of the green is 144 yards from the box. I hit a perfect 8 iron, except it wasn't. The ball flew at the left side of the green and looks to land on the fringes and take the speed out of the ball as it bounces right and settles onto the green for the long slow roll to the flag. The ball hits the fringes and bounces once straight over a little rise on the high side of the green. Now instead of my planned 3 to 5 foot putt I have a brutal chip from dormant Bermuda that has been mowed down to green height toward a tight flag on a tough down hill landing zone. The ball lands pretty softly but with only a little backspin. The hill takes hold and when the ball stops I am 15 feet from the pin in deep thick green grass. 3 more strokes and I walk off with a double. I hit an overhanging branch no bigger than a pencil (It broke off and I picked it up in disbelief), made a slight direction change, bounced into the false front of the green, rolled up onto the fringes and then just off, and a little more off, then it is 4 feet off and picking up a little speed, and then after a 10 foot wander down the hill a plop into one of the many ponds that snake their way through the course. When I worked in Algeria things could get really odd. I put up a sign that said "I used to be disgusted, now I'm just amused". I pretty much played the day thinking just that.

Your northern compatriots cannot drive on it either. The believe their big 4WD pickups and SUVs can go anywhere, which for the most part they can. What the can't do is stop anywhere!

I spent 16 years working in the Arctic oilfields of Alaska, and I have been outside working in 58* below zero Fahrenheit ambient temperature and no wind. Wire insulation explodes off the copper at that cold when you try to straighten the wire. I have also had the unmitigated joy of working out in 137* above zero in the natural gas fields of central Algeria in the heart of the Sahara desert. Of the two?? I'll take the hot any day of the week!

Good morning spies! All these tales of frozen woe make me very very happy I do not live where it is cold anymore. My son in Bend Oregon is looking at 3 degrees this morning which is just 4 degrees warmer than where I worked in Prudhoe Bay Alaska above the arctic circle. Anyway not for me today. It will be about 60 when I tee off this afternoon. Stay safe.

My drives on the par 4s at Coyote normally leave me between 80 and 105 yards from the pin. So today I put out some traffic cones out in the practice area measured at 80 and 90 yards. My goal was to land the ball between the cones from a high draw 3/4 swing pitch with my 58 degree. I spent an hour working on this and feel tomorrow it will be a shot I can use. You can see the Bermuda grass has gone completely dormant

Get a Lag Shot. Exact same concept as the whip only you get to actually hit golf balls with it! Made a huge difference in my game in just a week or so of hitting balls on the range with it. I am straighter and more consistent with all of my clubs now and I attribute the improvement to swinging the lag shot

Good morning spies! 38 degrees in Mesa this morning with bright cloudless skies. Going to get up to the mid 70s today and all I can say is "About time!". Practice day today. Heading over to the short Iron area on Coyote and taking the Garmin Approach R10, some traffic cones for targets, range finder, and wedges. Once I get these dialed in I feel my scores will take a dramatic drop. Of course that could take two years, but what the heck, gotta start somewhere!

Good morning spies! Brrrr 35 this morning in Mesa with bright sunshiny day ahead. Will go out to the pitching chipping area on the course today for some never ending honing of my short game. Played well yesterday over at AGR. Left my ego in the bag and tried to play fairways and greens. No hero shots. For the most part it worked shooting a 78 on a par 73 course. Moving picking tools over to the next house today as well for Tuesdays pick. These folks have a massive lemon tree that is very prolific in its fruit production. Lemons are hard to pick though. The tree has long very pointy and unbending thorns and does not release its fruit from the branches. So when the lemon finally comes off the tree, and flies out of your picker to land under the tree in the low branches the unwary picker will just reach into the dense branches to grab the fruit and pull out a punctured and bleeding arm.

Had a good round today after a 2 hour frost delay. Hit the ball straight and was able to work my wedges the way I like. Shot a 5 over 78. No birdies, but not for the lack of trying...

So you have been using companies like Vice and Cut? How do you feel the smaller company balls compare with the big 3 - Titleist, Callaway, Taylormade?