Phil's Product Reviews

Planning Your Play Around the Course Can Save You Strokes

2010-01-29T22:45:00.000-08:00

How many times have you seen a tournament player huddling with his caddy over a little notebook he pulled from his pocket before selecting the club to use for his next shot? Often, right! That is probably because it was the caddy who filled the book with notes as he walked the course behind the greens keeper who was setting up the tee box markers and placing the pins for that days play.

The caddy paced off distances to every hazard and to every pin placement, marked off the relative position of every major bump and hollow that could lead to an awkward stance, plotted a route from tee to green on each hole that would allow the least obstructed path to the hole. Around the green he carefully measured the distance to the hole from several points around the edge and noted the topology of the green with specific interest in the area right around the hole.

PLAN THE PLAY

The pros call it course management. They know to within a yard or so how far they carry every club in their bag, and they know how much they can spin every shot when taking a full swing. Armed with this knowledge and the information in their "little notebooks" and their confidence in the consistency of their game, they are ready to plan their play.

You only have to be aware of the statistics kept by the PGA to rank players to get a clue about planning your play. First, number of greens hit in regulation; second, number of drives that stop in the fairway; third, putts per round; fourth, trouble saves like up and in from a bunker or from the rough. There is a direct correlation between keeping the ball in the fairway and hitting the green in regulation. There is also a correlation between hitting greens in regulation and fewest putts per round. Those correlations are in large part due to course management,i.e. planning the play.

Making par consistently, and having an occasional birdie or eagle keeps you in contention to win. Anything you can do to increase your chances of making birdies or eagles improves your chances of winning. Likewise, avoiding wasted shots that lead to bogies, doubles and the dreaded "other", also improves your chances of scoring well. Golf is definitely a risk versus reward game. The trick is to plan your play to take advantage of your strengths to create birdie opportunities for yourself and to avoid taking wasted shots.

PLANNING ELEMENTS

Distance-You have to be able to reach the green in regulation OR you have to plan your play so that your approach shot at the pin will be made with your favorite club from a comfortable and controllable distance, leading to a one putt finish with the fewest strokes possible.

If you are not long enough to reach a green in regulation, but have honed your short game to the point were you can get up and in (chip and one putt), from one to twenty yards off the green, nine out of ten attempts, you would want to plan your play to get within that range with the fewest strokes possible. If,however, your short game is not that good, you should plan your play to set up your shot to the green from a position of comfort and confidence.

Direction-There is a preferred approach direction to any pin placement on any green, except the par 3, seventeenth, known as "ALCATRAZ", at the TPC in Palm Springs. There are not very many ways to approach an island green from a fixed tee box. That is true for all island greens. A green may be "protected" from attack by sand traps, its proximity to a water hazard or by deep rough and extreme slopes that seem to coax balls to trickle off its edges. There usually is one unguarded entry and other less obstructed approaches that afford a player the chance to get his ball close to the pin if he plans his play to take advantage of the opportunity offered.

The bailout option or plan B-There are factors that can not always be predicted or controlled. A bad lie in an unreplaced divot; a sudden gust of wind; wet ground from a broken sprinkler that causes your ball to plug on impact. You get no relief from the rule book, play it is it lies. Your confidence in the originally planed shot is now uncertain. So, if you are going to miss this shot, where do you want to miss it? Short or long? In the rough or in the trap? On the green far from the cup or in the fringe ten feet away? Pick the shot you have the most confidence in for your next shot, then favor that result as you attempt the shot you originally had planed to play by shifting your aim point, adjusting your swing, or moving up or down one club length. The object is still to get the ball in the hole using the fewest strokes possible!

The planning process should be completed for every hole before the start of play. Then stick to the plan. If you have a mishit and get in trouble on one hole, plan your way out with the fewest shots possible. If you have to card a snowman (8), so be it. Do not let that sway you away from your plan for the rest of the round. Your plan was to complete the round in the fewest shots possible while playing within your ability and comfort zone. It just does not get any better than that, so why abandon the plan?

Keep it on the short grass and I will meet you on the tee.
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Custom Fitting Golf Clubs

2010-01-29T22:17:00.000-08:00

Question: Do you believe that golf club design technology is advancing at such a rapid rate that one or two year old models are already obsolete? How about five or ten year old models? The major club manufacturers want you to believe it’s true. This is one reason why more golfers with handicaps of 18 or less don’t spring for custom fitted clubs. They don’t want to “miss out” on new improvements that might get them a few more yards or make their shots more accurate.

Question: Have you hit a new “demo” club that you borrowed from your Pro-shop or Club Pro and found that club-for-club you hit the “demo” farther? Did it make you want to invest in a new set? Were you glad you had not “wasted all that money” on a custom fitted set? The club manufacturers want you to answer, ”yes”, to all of these questions.

Question: Have you tried any of the new hybrids and found them easier to hit, i.e. get up in the air? Have you always hit the “woods” better than your irons? Are you planning on replacing some or all of your irons with hybrids? The club manufacturers would sure like you to consider it!

You have probably caught the gist of what I am trying to teach you. Golf club manufacturers want you to buy golf clubs! If they can convince you that their product will help you to play better golf, they sell more clubs and make more money.

Way back in 1947 I went to work for J. R. Ingels, head Professional at Fairview Country Club in Elmsford, N. Y. , and one time president of the PGA. I worked in the “backroom” of the Pro shop where we repaired and modified clubs. J. R. was a pioneer in the art of custom fitting golf clubs for players with grooved swings and handicaps of 18 or less. I learned quite a bit about the golf swing and how to generate club head speed and attendant power by listening to him. The point being that the most critical part of playing golf well is the swing, not the club. That is the magic of the game!

New clubs have been introduced into the game for as long as the game has been played. Gene Sarazen invented the sand wedge out of necessity. He needed a better, more consistent method of playing out of sandy lies and hazards. He first introduced it into the game in the 1932 British Open, which he won. Since the official rules of the game limit each player to using no more than fourteen clubs in any 18 hole round, guys have come up with all kinds clubs to improve their personal shortcomings in handling a particular shot. Most notable probably is the plethora of putters available on the market today, followed closely by the bevy of wedges that are in common usage everyday. The sale of golf clubs is BIG business.

Most golfers will answer yes to most or all of the questions posed above. They would be wrong! Back in the 1970’s the standard loft angle on a 9 iron was 48 degrees. Nowadays the loft on a 9 iron is 42-44 degrees. Today’s 9 iron is equivalent to about a 7 ½ iron back in the 1970s. When Tiger hits his 9 iron 159 yards today, he would have needed a very strong 8 iron or an easy 7, back in the 70’s. The same is true of the rest of the clubs. The manufacturers de-lofted the clubs as a marketing gimmick, so the weekend golfer would think he was hitting it farther. They got a bonus out of doing it because the steeper faced 2, 3 and 4 irons started looking like 1 irons, and as the old saying goes, “Even God can not hit a 1 iron!” This created the market for the hybrids that are easier to hit. It also brought about the introduction of a whole new family of wedges to fill the gaps between lob, sand and pitching.

So, how do you get off the golf club merry-go-round? In order to get the most out of your particular grooved swing, you have to improve your consistency. The best way to do that is to eliminate as many factors that contribute to inconsistency as you can. One-size-fits-all sets of golf clubs are a myth. Your clubs should be fitted specifically to your swing. The club length and club head lie (sole parallel to the ground at address) and loft have to be tailored to your stance and club face position at impact. Each club in your set should feel exactly the same throughout your swing. That translates to proper weighting and balance of each club. Additionally, you need the right grips, shaft flex and head design to maximize your club head speed and lift angle at the point of impact. Consistency is the key to being able to play this wonderful game with more enjoyment.

PPV - It Is Not Just For TV !

2009-12-09T15:45:00.000-08:00

There was a time when almost everyone associated PPV, Pay-Per-View, with paying a fee to your cable or satellite TV provider in order to witness a "live" event like a concert or a championship fight, or maybe a just "released-to-video", first run movie. Many big time internet marketeers, however, associated PPV with generating massive amounts of highly targeted traffic to visit their websites or sales pages. This was a tightly guarded technique of advertising that the "Gurus" were not eager to share!

Well, the cat is out of the bag, so to speak, and now we know why the "BIG BOYS" were not anxious to share. While we struggled to develop a following, build up a good reputation, create that all important "list" for future email advertising campaigns, and tried to buy "clicks" for $2 to $10 a piece using Pay-Per-Click with Google, Yahoo, MSN or whatever, they were using PPV to get clicks for a penny a piece! You read that right, I said a penny a piece!

How would you like to have that kind of an advantage? Highly targeted traffic for less than $1.00 per hundred! It is mind blowing. All of the visitors have had to respond to your ad by choice, so you know that they are interested and may be ready to buy, or at least subscribe, if you have an interesting offer. You build your list with high quality potential buyers. It is no wonder that the "gurus" seem to do so well!

I have had great results with my first two PPV campaigns. The first has been running for eleven days now and the second for only four. The first ten days have produced over 1500 new subscribers for my "list" and yielded over $3900 in sales at a cost of about $12. That is a breakthrough for me and I could not be more pleased! I just launched my third campaign last night and am working on a fourth that I hope to have ready to go by Saturday (in three days). It is too early to get giddy about the results but I hope that when I get a dozen or so campaigns running in six or so niches, they will collectively generate a fairly steady income of $25,000 per month, or more. It is just a matter of finding something that works and then repeating it enough times to generate the income you need.

I will let you know how it is going in future blogs. If you are interested in trying PPV for yourself, I highly recommend Mass PPV Traffic.

Proven Paths Are Easier to Follow

2009-09-09T19:19:00.000-07:00

America's history has always intrigued and amazed me. How in the world did the Pilgrims ever find the courage and resolve to board those sailing vessels and set out to settle "the new world"sight unseen? I can't envision the misery of the life they must have been living that made setting sail into the unknown the best option for survival. Whole families, infants to grandparents, risking everything they had, including their lives, to get a new and better chance in life.

In contrast, I was reading an article in The Press-Enterprise a couple of days ago about our public schools efforts to improve the performance of students relative to academic performance in English and math as well as in the percentage who actually graduate. It is pretty pathetic. There seems to be no motivation for a new and better chance at life among the "average youth" of the current generation. Opportunity abounds, education is there for the taking, there are no restrictions on travel, awareness is at an all time high what with cell phones and the internet, wireless communications and social networking with Facebook, My Space, You-Tube and Twitter, and yet, so many opt out! Why is that do you suppose?

I am asking! It makes no sense to me. The pioneers who pushed westward in horse or oxen drawn Conestoga wagons and took on the mighty Mississippi, the Rockies and the Sierra Nevada, carving trails that later bore their names, like Chisholm and Donner, were driven to find a better life for themselves and their families who would follow. What happened to that spirit of adventure that made America great?

Maybe things have been made too easy and we have all become too soft, too complacent. Our pioneering ancestors paved the way and we all learned that the paved or proven paths are the easiest to follow! I have found that this is true for doing business as well. Find something that works and makes a profit and repeat it as many times as you can. I have evaluated many opportunities and found that the best ones that produce the most durable long term income all follow proven concepts that can be repeated over and over again. You may wish to visit my website and check them out.

Hurrah for America's Youth!

2009-06-10T16:30:00.000-07:00

It has been quite awhile since I have had any prolonged exposure to teenagers or young adults, so I was happy when my daughter called and asked if I wanted to attend my eldest grandson's Court of Honor Ceremony as he became an Eagle Scout, or his High School graduation? I said, "How about both?" She said, "They are over a week apart. Do you want to stay that long?""Yes, of course!" I responded, "So long as I am not in the way. Get me a room in the Marriott down the street and I'll be fine." That is how I came to be writing this entry in Redmond, Washington instead of from home in California.

I had my doubts about attending all these youth group functions, not just the actual ceremonies, but all the preliminaries and after parties as well. My concerns centered on a preconceived notion about today's "entitled" American youth who have often been portrayed by the modern day media as extremely self centered, shallow and disrespectful toward their parents and society in general (think Paris Hilton, Brittany Spears, Eminem, et al as their role models). I have become more outspoken and less tolerant of offensive behavior after I passed seventy, and I didn't want to embarrass my grandson in front of his peers.

Happily, I had nothing at all to worry about! The young people I met are all outstanding citizens. They are intelligent, articulate and very, very funny. That is the HA! HA! kind of funny, not the oddball variety. I expected the scouting community to be accomplished in service to society in general, and charitable to the needy, but I was blown away by the magnitude of their accomplishments. The even bigger surprise was the scope of accomplishments by the graduating class. I attended awards ceremonies for track and field, music, art and theater. Each had the years achievements documented on video and in slide shows. I have never been more entertained in my life. These young people are a very bright and talented bunch who are really going to amaze us in the future.

What an uplifting experience this has been! America, your future is going to be invested in very capable hands. These kids are nobodies fools, so no matter how depressed or forlorn you believe things to be right now, rest assured that they will get better.

Catering to the Customer is a Clever Concept!

2009-03-30T16:42:00.000-07:00

Sixty plus years ago I got my first job as a newspaper delivery boy. I got paid a penny for each paper delivered, and got docked a nickel for every complaint filed. Sam Meyer, the circulation manager for the Daily News and my boss, told me to remember that the customer is always right, and the profit is in the tips. I wasn't sure what he meant by that, but it really did not matter because my father told me before he let me take the job that accepting responsibility was a serious thing and that if I was going to do it, I had to do it right and make him proud!

My initial route covered about two square miles of mostly single family residential area plus three fairly large apartment complexes and a half mile long retail shopping strip. There were 316 subscribers on the route and one of my incentives was a 25 cent finders fee for every new one I signed up. That was the good part. The bad part was trying to collect from them all once a month and keeping track of who paid and who had not!

Tarrytown is on the east bank of the Hudson River, seventeen miles north of Manhattan. The town is one big hill rising out of the river to an elevation of almost 200 feet and then flattening out in an area known as Grasslands, the site of George Washington's Headquarters for the battle of White Plains during the Revolutionary War. My route covered about one quarter of the town, the southwest quadrant, starting at the river and extending half way up the hill to Broadway (US Rte.9), historically known as the Albany Post Road. It was a steep slope down to the river from any place in town, and trying to go east up the hill in winter was almost impossible! The point being that my bike was useless, not only because of the hill but because the specified method of delivery was to place the paper inside the storm door at the front of the house. Consequently, I walked the route in two segments, starting at Broadway and moving downhill to the riverfront apartment complex.

In the winter of 1947 we got hit with a snow storm that dropped 27 inches on us, six days before Christmas. I had to close my books and settle up with Sam before the new year so I went out to make my deliveries and collections in snow up to my a--! That was when I found out what Sam was trying to tell me about good service and tips. When I finally got home(after 11 PM) I had $767 in my pocket in addition to the subscription payments! Sam said, I guess they liked your efforts.

I learned that lesson pretty well and it has stayed with me. When I started doing business on the web I was wondering how I was going to apply it. My customers were/are invisible for all intents and purposes, so the first issue was finding out who they are, and what they want or expect from me. I realized that I needed some tools in the form of software to manage my customer relationships. So, I started to explore what was available because I am not a programmer, nor do I want to be. Eventually this led to my evaluating several companies who provide customer relations management support. In my judgment, the best bargain can be had with Sales Mango, but each business has its own needs, so I have compared what I consider to be the top 5,here. If you are looking to build a good relationship with potential customers, you should check it out.

Have You Lost Track of Them?

2009-03-03T14:18:00.000-08:00

Have you ever said to yourself, " I wonder what ever happened to __name___ ! It sure would be nice to know if he is alright." Maybe someone in your family has gone missing, seemingly vanished from the face of the earth. Do you have a neighbor who exhibits really peculiar behavior and makes you feel very uncomfortable whenever he is around? While these situations are very different in their nature, they all require some kind of investigative effort on your part to restore your peace of mind. That is assuming that you are truly disturbed or anxious about these uncertainties in your life.

I have had all three of these situations arise within the past two years, and in each instance I pursued a resolution to my quandary. The thing that surprised me the most was how much easier the investigation process became in a relatively short period of time.

Back in late 2006, I wanted to try and get together for the Holidays with my BFF from high school (1950-54), whom I had not seen since our 40th class reunion in 1994. He was the President of a small New England college for 30 years or more, a very prominent community figure, a Harvard trained lawyer with ties to the JFK administration in 1960-63, and to the United Nations Federation of Developing African Nations from 1963 to 1968. Googleing him led to over 19,000 hits and over five pages of biographical material. I thought he would be a cinch to find. Guess again! After he retired from his college presidency he seemed to have disappeared. Even though I had all of his history, his full name, date and place of birth, and tons of public records, I could not locate him. There were no records of his death on file anywhere in the United States, which was a relief, but I was stymied!

Internet search engines dedicated to people searches all failed to find his current location. They came up with property deeds, his kids birth certificates, state law licenses for NY, MA, CT, PA, DEL, DOC and FL, property tax records from six states, drivers licenses from four states, public utilities records from six states, etc..
I was about to give it up when I got my USGA (golf) membership renewal notice in the mail. BINGO!

My nephew disappeared right after his retirement from the army back in Maryland about fifteen months ago. My brother expected him to go home to up-state New York. When a month passed and he had not arrived and had not been heard from by anyone in, or close to the family, my brother reported him missing.

My nephew is no kid! He put in his twenty-five years serving his country, got wounded at least twice that I am aware of, is divorced with a daughter just going off to college. He had always been a very solid, stable individual, and was a full Cornell when he retired. So where did he go?

The army tracked him through shipping orders, aircraft manifests, pilot logs, and anecdotal information, from his base in Georgia, through Dover, Delaware (USAFB) to a USAFB in Germany. He was located visiting some wounded soldiers who served under him in Iraq and were being treated in the US Hospital in Germany. Something he said he felt obligated to do. Finding him only took five days.

The strange neighbor incident came up while I was visiting my daughter and grandsons in Seattle. His questionable behavior involved activities being pursued in his garage at odd hours of the day and night, accompanied by strange odors and the sounds of machinery running non-stop. The family had been living there for five years or more, as long as my daughter at least, and were always very pleasant and somewhat aloof. The whole family appeared to me to be mid-eastern, Indian most probably, with an unpronounceable surname that I would never attempt to spell.

My daughter went on the computer to a people search site that offered almost instant background checks. The next day she was able to download a comprehensive background report that identified her neighbor as a third generation Indian-American restaurant owner. During an ensuing casual conversation with their seventeen year old son, I found out that they were experimenting with a method of smoking salmon that required frequent refueling, day and night! Mystery solved in one day.

Wow! The Times We Live In

2009-02-26T19:59:00.000-08:00

President Obama revealed his budget plans today using numbers that I can't even imagine--TRILLIONS! That is-- $4,000,000,000,000-- twelve damn zeros behind the number. Staggering!

The real problem is that at no time in the history of this nation has government spending solved an economic recession. In 1933 Franklin Delano Roosevelt tried to pull the country out of "the great depression" following the crash of Wall Street in 1929, by creating jobs through massive federal projects like the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) and the Public Works Administration (PWA), both of which were directed at putting our labor forces to work improving the infrastructure of the nation.

TVA built dams in order to get sources of water to run hydroelectric power generation stations for both home and industry. PWA focused on transportation needs, roads and bridges, and Railways. Unfortunately, none of this effort was very well thought out. Dams have to be placed were they can capture the flow of water in a river and cause it to back up behind the dam, forming a lake. Consequently, their location is always somewhat remote from centers of population (sources of labor), and the completion of the project floods huge areas of what was previously fertile farm lands behind the dam, while greatly reducing the water supply to the area downstream from the dam. In many cases this led to more job losses for farmers and local businessmen in the region. Eventually, however, TVA became much more efficient and expanded its activities into areas like erosion control, reforestation, mining technology improvements, malaria control practices and much, much more. It continues to serve the nation in the present day.

PWA is a different story. It never really got off the ground despite the fact that the picturesque Parkway system in New York, complete with quaint arched stone bridges and expansive, landscaped medians, was built by the PWA. FDR started to gear the nation up for war time military production and the PWA was abandoned in 1941. It was the war effort that brought the nation back to being the industrial leader of the free world and ended the depression.

Sorry, didn't mean to go off on a tangent. It just makes me wonder why we never seem to learn anything from our past blunders. Speaking of which, my efforts at affiliate marketing took a turn for the better when I started following already proven methods of some successful marketers. My reviews of some of these systems can be found here. I also found a cut and paste system that I was able to copy and do quite well with.

I JUST WANT TO BE HEARD !

2009-02-10T15:48:00.000-08:00

After seventy plus years of watching, listening and learning, I thought it was time that my voice be heard. I tried letters to the editor in the local newspaper but their circulation, which never was very large, is getting even smaller each month. Then I found the internet!

What a great audience! Actually, it was the grandchildren who introduced me to the wonders of the internet; email, You Tube, eBay, My Space, Face book and all the arcades and downloadable games, etc.. Having retired in 1995, I have unfortunately discovered that my "nest egg" isn't adequate to withstand the current economic disaster that has befallen all of us this past year. Consequently, I started looking for ways to produce some supplemental income.

It is absolutely amazing how many multi-millionaires the internet and e-commerce have spawned!!!----OR---- could there be some exaggeration, hype, misinformation or some other form of skulduggery---dare I say, FRAUD, going on?

So, one of my pursuits has been to look into some of the schemes, plans and systems being promoted by "common folks" and Gurus, alike, and letting the community know what I find. This blog is one attempt to do that, along with my review site. I hate being afraid to take bold steps to improve a situation for fear of being ripped-off! I am sure that I am not alone in that regard and I would love to save some other poor, unsuspecting soul from unwarrented grief.

Something else that amazes me is the enormity of the web search engines. The first time I went searching for some information about a particular topic and the results popped up in a fraction of a second with over a million items found, it blew my mind!! I come from an era when most people thought that the Yellow Pages were a really comprehensive compilation of information. The variety of topics that people explore, chat about, post pictures and videos of, or pontificate about in articles and blogs is staggering. There is something for everyone.