By now y'all have seen Thor's (Dave Collard's) official account of the RSG-Ohio Open. As good as it was, I still feel the need to embellish it. I was intending to post my own article, but since Thor did such a fine job, I'll just add my own stream-of-consciousness as a followup on his. Here goes.... >DYNACRAFT TOUR > >On Friday, in spite of wet, rainy weather, with dire forecasts of more >rain, we met at the Pal Joey Pro Shop next to Dynacraft for our tour... >Fred headed off to visit relatives after purchasing a new driver and >6-wood. Fred has a set of Pal Joey irons, but his woods are old and wooden. He had been meaning to try out some metalwoods but never got around to it. Much to both our surprise, it turns out that Pal Joey is the subsidiary of Dynacraft that sells completed clubs. They had lots of their clubs in a sale barrel, and -- at that price -- Fred never hesitated. >Meanwhile, we checked out the golf museum there, which contains many >interesting old clubs. One of the old irons and one of the old woods looked remarkably like the set I learned on as a teenager -- and my father before me in his teens. A few years ago, I found them and restored them to their former glory. Since then, I've been lobbying for my own museum, but my wife has other ideas on appropriate decorations for the family room. >I asked the guide if Jeff was around. Jeff who? Jeff Summit, the >author of that shaft book. Sure, do you want to see him? Dave T >started drooling at this point, so of course we headed to his office. >Jeff was wonderful - spent about a full hour in his lounge talking >with us (well, mostly with Dave T and Rick Nelson). I was interested, >but not that interested, and followed for a while... >The thoughts spewing from these minds were too much to >contain - glowing mathematical symbols started floating in the air; a >mist rose about them as they entered the nether-realm of Torque >and Flex and Kick Point... Thor is absolutely right on the drooling, and I suppose on the rest of this chapter as well. As far as I was concerned, the trip out from New Jersey was ALREADY worth it, and it wasn't noon on Friday yet. I got the chance to pick the brain of one of my favorite authors, and took copious notes. I'll make a separate post for the golf club techies on that, and say no more about it here except... My one regret is that I didn't bring my copy of "Modern Guide to Shaft Fitting" for Jeff to autograph. >... Dave T tried with a Dynacraft Titanium. He hit the >ball well, but most of all he worked his magic 'touch' on the club, >as I went next and hit a pure drive with 102 mph swing speed, slight >draw, 250 yards of carry. Man, if I could only do that every time! >Or even once a round! Dave, will you be my caddy? Hey, man, YOU are the one who insists on carrying. With my 55-year-old back, pulling is more appropriate. But I'll tell ya what! Next time we do this, the "novelty round" can be two-ball teams SHARING a bag of 14 clubs. You and I can share, and the effect should be the same. :-)} (Seriously, sharing a bag has all the problems of cart-path-only, and few of its virtues. Or are there any virtues to carts? Sorry, lost my head there for a moment. ;-) >We chose Mexican, because Coops wasn't there to get us lost, and I >knew of a place down the road. Thor, you weren't supposed to know about that adventure in Greensboro. Coops, I tried to get them to hold the Mexican until you arrived, honest! >GOLFWORKS TOUR > >... We also saw a set of clubs get gripped with leather. Terry Horn and others: the Neumann grips are back !!! GolfWorks couldn't get them for a year or two, but they can now. >Then, we headed over to the club-fitting and testing area. We all >wanted one of those in our house. Imagine a large garage. One wall >completely missing, and that side is aimed at a driving range with >flags every 50 yards in a perfectly straight line. Party time! I >want one! They had a LONG club there - 56 inches, which they use for >demonstration purposes. Only Dave T had even a marginally successful >swing with that club. He said he had to swing slower than when he did >his Harvey Penick exercise, swinging in ultra slow motion. I had the advantage of seeing several RSGers hit before me; they hit huge slices. I guessed it was the enormous swingweight due to the length; it would have to be at least SIXTY swingweight points higher than normal. (That puts it something in excess of J-0.) The only way to cope was to lead with the legs/hips and wait for the club to catch up; a real hook swing. Seemed like I was waiting forever, but the result was a manageable fade rather than a pretzel-slice ("banana" doesn't do justice to the slices that club induced). >Steve then showed us some top-secret stuff. We got to see next years >new lines of driver and iron heads. I could tell you about them, but >then I would have to kill you. One thing I think we can say: square-grooved irons will be so identified in the catalog, and there will be more of them. That means I'll have an alternative to Golfsmith for my iron heads. Now if only Dynacraft will come around... >Back to the Pro Shop where we picked up the prizes for the RSG-OHIO >tournament. Thanks Steve Gilligan - great tour! I'd like to add my thanks to GolfWorks for their support of this RSG event. They are a class act! >WARMUP ROUND > >We parked. Got out of our cars. The rain immediately stopped (see!). >We paid, we played. This is a beautiful course - not in great shape, >but passable, and for the price, I would definitely go back. I'd go back if it were in my neighborhood at that price. But it's not worth a long trip to get there. Great call for the practice round, though. >It did not rain the entire round except for a few sprinkles as the second >threesome was putting out on the last green! Thor the Weather God is taking inadequate credit here. We didn't get so much as a drop of rain until his threesome putted out. My threesome had to hit wedges and putts in the rain, but it waited to rain in earnest until we had our umbrellas up and were headed to the cars. Given what the rest of Ohio was experiencing all day, that's unbelievable. >THE MAIN EVENT > -- Granville was closed, so we drove 20 miles to Chapel Hill -- >This is a new course >and was not in perfect shape, but the greens were fantastic, and the >course drains very quickly. Beautiful setting up in the hills, a >variety of holes, and will be a great place to play in a couple of >years. It's a great place to play right now. - The greens are fine. Sunk two long putts in 27 holes, and only 3-putted one hole (stupidity and rushing, not REALLY a "miss"). I wouldn't mind playing greens like this all the time. - I thought the fairways were pretty good for the most part, given the soaking they had absorbed. My home courses of Hominy Hill and Howell Park wouldn't have been a lot better, and they're mature and somewhat celebrated. - The rough was the big problem. The grass hasn't grown there enough to hold the ground together, so the heavy rains produced some erosion ditches. Finding your ball in the rough -- even getting to it, if you were pulling your bag -- was an adventure. >There is one huge hike to 4 holes that are sort of separated >from the rest of the course, but otherwise it is easy to walk. Five holes across the road, but who's counting? I love those holes. I had an absolute train wreck on 15; one ball OB and another in the hazard. (At least I wedged the ball from the hazard onto the green, for a minor victory.) But I also got a birdie for a skin on one of those holes. And the long par-5 14th is a beauty: elevated tee to huge landing area -- grip and rip!!! -- and a green with a swiftly-flowing river front and right. >We had one golfer waver as he looked out at the intermittent rain and >finally lost faith. Too bad, because it didn't rain on us at all >except for a sprinkle on about a half a hole. Thor IS the weather god! We put up umbrellas on the third green and took them down again as we left the fourth tee. And that was IT for the rain. >It was a blast! The winners: > First - Jim Hoskins won a driver. > Second - Fred Stluka (lost the tiebreaker) won a driver. > Third - Guy Cooper won a 6-wood. > Fourth - Tom Kiihr (lost the tiebreaker) won a T-shirt. > >We also had a prize for lowest number of putts - Fred Stluka won with >only 26 putts (tells you something about the condition of the greens). >John Griffin got a prize for second place with 27. > >Other prizes were GolfWorks hats and balls: > #3 Closest to the Pin - Thor > #6 Long Drive - Thor > #8 Closest to the Pin - Nobody (210 yard par 3 into the wind). > #9 Long Putt - Tom Kiihr > #12 Closest to the Pin - Jim Hoskins > #14 Longest Drive - Thor > #16 Closest to the Pin - Mark Georg > #18 Longest Putt - Fred Stluka and his magic putter Pop quiz time! Multiple choice. "Thor and the Bubble Burner" is: A. A Scandinavian myth. B. An '80s Rock group. C. A mystery novel. D. An inconsiderate host who takes home the prizes himself, including BOTH long-drive holes. If you answered "D", just remember that he organized, planned, and ran a GREAT weekend, also offering us protection from the rain for three days. (Or was that due to the fact that I had bought a rain jacket at GolfWorks on Friday? Yeah, that's the ticket. :-) But whenever I hear somebody mention "the hammer of Thor" I'll smile, knowing that it's really from Taylor Made. I think it's worth pointing out that at the Hershey event in June, Fred missed an astronomical number of putts with the same strange putting implement that won the putting prize this weekend. (All long and left, if I recall.) He's certainly adjusted something. Congratulations! >Dave, Pete Hope, and John Griffin each won a skin in the gross skins pot. Mine was on 13, a short dogleg-right par 4. Decent drive, decent 9-iron to the green. The 30-foot birdie putt looked dead straight, and was! For a while, it looked like my par four on 18 might hold up for a skin. I was much prouder of that one. Big drive left me 145 yards from the green. But I had to cross a good-sized lake for the last 100 yards. Hit the green and trickled into the rough. I almost holed the chip, and just had a tap-in for par. >It was a great event and, although disappointed that we could not play >Granville, I had such a good time. I was amazed that we had 15 >golfers show up in the rain - and I think they were all glad that they >did. It certainly was. Thanks again, Thor! >MATCH PLAY MADNESS I'll assume y'all read the Draconian rules of this sport. I thought it would be frustrating, but it was a blast. Wonderful fun! >It was Ohio v the Rest of the World, and Ohio was soundly beaten. It was wonderful fun even though I lost my match, for Ohio's only win. Congratulations, Gary Raines, on a solid 3-and-1 victory. BTW, I MUST recount this for the atmosphere of the course, the day, and the Match Play Madness event... At Chapel Hill, the ninth and eighteenth holes are similar, and both fabulous finishing holes. They're long par-4s, at about 400 yards from the whites. They finish at the clubhouse, which is a large ex-church high on a hill (hence the name of the course). The fairway is almost the elevation of the church, but there is a deep valley in between. That valley is filled with a lake, with both greens on the church side of the lake. So a big drive allows you to go for the green and par. Miss your drive at all, and you have to be brave to go for it. By the time my match reached the ninth, it was getting pretty dark. I hit toward the green from 160 out in the fairway, but lost the ball pretty quickly after it took off. Several seconds passed, then we heard applause from the clubhouse; my ball was on the green. The previous matches were on the deck at the clubhouse cheering in the matches still out on the course. After we finished, we did the same. >EAGLESTICKS > >Sunday was a beautiful day, and EagleSticks is a beautiful course in a >beautiful setting. Great views, flowers, scenery, with sweeping >vistas of the rolling hills. Spectacular. I would like to play golf >there sometime :-) Really, this is a grand place to be, but we were >forced to take carts and remain on the cart paths. I just don't know >how you can play this way. Worse yet, it's a "stadium" type course with mounding at the edge of every fairway. They did the right thing for bounces and for aesthetics, and ran the cart paths behind the mounds. But that means that you can't see the fairway from the cart path in most places, so you have to guess or "just know" when to stop and get out for your ball. It took me the whole first nine to mentally adjust to the fact that we really were going to do this. Until then, I was griping to Coops in our cart (sorry, Coops; hope I didn't make the round any worse for you). >It took us almost 6 hours to play, and I always felt in a hurry. I am >sure I could have walked it in 4, played better, and lost fewer balls. I felt much the same, but no way was it 6 hours; a little over 5. Still dismal! We took three hours for the front 9, but just a little over two for the back. Fewer lost balls, and we were getting the hang of cart-path golf. Still, you're right that we felt rushed. >The greens are impossible - crazy slopes at crazy speeds. How tough were the greens? They were SO tough: - Everybody in the RSG groups had at least one 4-putt green. - Saturday, Fred Stluka won low putts with 26. Sunday, I had 25 putts on the front nine alone. (44 total. Ouch!) - In all seriousness, I had four GOOD putts on the 15th green. (Actually, three good ones and an outstanding one. And the outstanding one wasn't the one that FINALLY dropped.) - The short par-3 fifth was set up with a sucker pin, way left at the bottom of the sloped green. Not one of my group beat par, EVEN IF YOU ONLY COUNT OUR PUTTS. Two 3-putts and two 4-putts. - I got a skin with a bogey, a five on a long par-4. Gotta tell you something if only one of us managed better than double-bogey on the hole. Really, "bikini wax" doesn't quite do them justice. >But I managed to have a good time anyway, and, although I will not >return on a weekend morning unless they change their policy, did enjoy >playing on a course in tip top shape. In the final analysis, I think we all had a good time at EagleSticks. A few personal thoughts about the day: - I learned on Saturday that my "safety shots" off the tee were not going any straighter than my driver. So on Sunday at EagleSticks, I used driver off the tee at all but the par-threes. Didn't harm me any, and sometimes helped. Even though EagleSticks' well-bunkered layout looks tight and intimidating, the mounding keeps the ball in play unless it's WAY off line -- and I did a good job of not driving WAY off line when it mattered. - Speaking of "well bunkered layout", there are a lot of really visually dramatic holes here. A lot of the par-fours and -fives have elevated tees looking into lime-green fairways and deep emerald rough, pocked by bright white bunkers almost glaring at you in the sun. Dramatic, and initially intimidating. - The bentgrass fairways are in beautiful shape. Every time I hit a good iron shot, I took a perfect rectangular "pelt" divot. (I do tend to take divots with my irons, but oval, not the rectangular ones that the pros take. Now I know that it's the fairways they play on as much as the way they swing.) - Tom Gillin is a relatively new golfer, but taking lessons diligently and improving fast. I played with him last year, and the slice he had then is pretty much gone. And at EagleSticks, he proudly broke 100. Well, he should be proud; he got the same score I did, and I was proud of mine. He also picked up a skin. Watch out for him next year. In closing, let me thank Thor again for the wonderful job he did of organizing this event -- and the unbelievable job he did of seeing that we didn't get rained on while we played. Cheers! Dave