Month: February 2023

Categories
Golf Practice

Getting the Most Out of Golf Simulators

By Scott Messner

I love living in northern Wisconsin. I enjoy the four seasons, even the beautiful white, cold winters we experience. The winters can be long however, up to six months in length. It can be a struggle to work on your golf game. Golf vacations are costly, out of the reach of many golfers, and they only last a few weeks at best out of the long winter. 

My solution for many years was a DIY Indoor Golf Net in my basement paired with a SkyGolf SkyPro Bluetooth Golf Swing Analyzer.

This setup worked incredibly well but it had a few drawbacks. 

While I’m happy I have an eight-foot ceiling in my basement and not anything shorter, it restricted me to hitting irons. I could not hit drivers, woods, or hybrids. The swing analyzer tracked a large amount of data but lacked a few data points I really wanted. It didn’t record swing path or clubface angle at impact, which was surprising since it did record clubface angle at several other swing positions. 

When my son was in eighth grade and working hard on his game to play on the high school golf team when he got there, we would drive one and a half to two hours south to rent time on an indoor golf simulator. The time and money it takes for a four hour round trip by car limited us to three or four times at best during the winter.

Then everything changed. Our local bowling alley ten miles away installed a golf simulator. Only a year later, Lakeland Fitness and Golf, where we golf now in the winter, opened a room with four simulators!

Whether you are practicing on the range or playing the simulated real-life course you’ve always dreamed of, a golf simulator provides an incredible amount of data about your swing. This allows you to feel much more easily what your club is doing in the swing. You can then build more self-awareness of your swing, giving you greater control of it.

Still, golf simulators are not the real thing. The biggest difference is you are hitting off a mat, with it serving up a perfect, level lie for every shot. To make matters worse, while playing a course on the simulator, you’ll get this same, perfect, level lie whether you’re on a hill, in the rough, or in a bunker. There is a Terrain Penalty setting you can enable on the TruGolf E6 Connect simulator I play on. Like real life, it penalizes you for missing the fairway. The power and spin of your shot will be reduced to varying degrees for lies off the fairway. You must make a judgement if and how much you’ll have to club up. 

Here’s the funny thing. I have yet to see anyone besides myself have the terrain penalty setting enabled. 

Also, most people do not like to putt on simulators, so they either let the computer decide how many putts they take as a score on the hole, or they have it set for ten-foot or even larger gimmies. “Reading” the greens, if you can call it that, is not realistic on golf simulators. I do, however, find the distance accuracy to be good. I enjoy working on my putting stance, stroke, and distance control while playing on the simulator and find it beneficial to my game, so I set the putting to five-foot gimmies. 

One last observation I have noticed on the TruGolf E6 Connect simulators I play on is that my shots off the tee with my driver are twenty to thirty yards longer on many occasions. Given this, I play the back tees so that my approach shots are most like what they are on outside golf courses. I do not want to regularly be hitting wedges into greens on a simulator when I’m hitting 7 or 8 irons on the course.  Be aware of any anomalies like this on the simulators you play on.

Adjust the settings of the simulator you play to best mimic what you see on an actual golf course. The goal is to get the simulation as much like real life as possible. This means you will not score as low but you’ll be better prepared when golf season comes around and it counts. 

We have numerous opportunities every day out in the world to exercise our faith. Do not take the easy route. Go out of your way to serve others and tell them about Jesus. By taking advantage of every opportunity to show our faith and tell others of Jesus, we are building our faith.

Paul instructs Timothy in 1 Timothy 4:13-15 to exercise the gifts that God has given him so all may see his progress. 

1 Timothy 4:13-15
13
 Until I come, pay attention to reading, to exhortation, and to teaching. 
14
 Don’t neglect the gift that is in you, which was given to you by prophecy with the laying on of the hands of the elders. 
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 Be diligent in these things. Give yourself wholly to them, that your progress may be revealed to all.
Categories
PGA Tour

This Week on the PGA Tour – 2023 Genesis Invitational

By Scott Messner

Jon Rahm continued his recent success by winning The Genesis Invitational at The Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California on February 19th, 2023. Rahm’s final score of 17 under par was two shots better than Max Homa’s 15 under par. 

Like Scottie Scheffler at The WM Phoenix Open last week, not only did Jon win the tournament, but with the win ascended back to the number one Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR). He’s won an astonishing five of his last nine professional starts. 

The beneficiary of all tournament proceeds is the TGR Foundation, the charity of tournament host Tiger Woods. The TGR Foundation supports students from underserved communities through educational resources and career training. As an added bonus for golf fans, we were able to see Tiger tee it up this week. Woods made the cut and finished at one under par in a tie for 45th place. Sign up to volunteer at a PGA Tour event if there is one near you!

The Riviera Country Club has almost one hundred years of history and is one of the most unique courses on the PGA Tour. It was designed by George C. Thomas Jr. and opened in 1927. 

It is one of few courses on the PGA Tour that has kikuyu grass. It’s a spongy grass that provides great lies in the fairway but big challenges from the rough. Kikuyu grass is actually an invasive species that was brought to California for a variety of reasons, including erosion control and possibly was brought to Riviera for the polo field. It eventually overtook the golf course.

The designer, George C. Thomas Jr. (1873-1932), was a nationally known rose breeder who bred over one thousand varieties of roses in his lifetime. He also raised English setter dogs and helped found the English Setter Club of America. While he didn’t design many golf courses; three on the east coast and twenty-something in California, many of his courses have stood the test of time and are revered today.

George C. Thomas Jr. did not charge a fee for his design of The Riviera Country Club or any other of his other designs. He was an amateur architect and designing courses was almost a hobby. In fact, the CBS crew over the weekend discussing Thomas called his golf design work a passion. I will not speculate as to why George Thomas did not charge for his design services, but I wonder how many of us always look for something in return, instead of freely giving the talents we have been given.

In James 1:17, James the Just, brother of Jesus, reminds us that all good and perfect gifts, including all our talents, are gifts from God Almighty, creator of the universe.

James 1:17
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 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom can be no variation nor turning shadow. 

Use your gifts and talents freely, serving others in the ways of our LORD and Savior Jesus Christ, all for the glory of God.

The PGA Tour leaves the west coast and heads to the PGA National Resort Champion Course in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida for The Honda Classic starting February 23rd, featuring The Bear Trap! 

Categories
PGA Tour

This Week on the PGA Tour – 2023 WM Phoenix Open

By Scott Messner

This past Sunday, February 12th, Scottie Scheffler won the 2023 Waste Management Phoenix Open by two strokes over Nick Taylor at the TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course in Scottsdale, Arizona.

Last year, the WM Phoenix Open and The Thunderbirds raised $10,500,000 for Arizona charities.  Since Waste Management became the title sponsor of the Phoenix Open in 2010, the tournament has raised a staggering amount of money for local charities, over $110 million. Do you live near a PGA Tour event and want to serve through volunteering? Since the money raised stays local, the easiest way to volunteer is to check the PGA Tour schedule and go to the website for the tournament you’d like to volunteer at.

Scottie Sheffler’s final round 65 was bested only by Beau Hossler’s 63. Not only did Scottie win $3.6 million in the first full field PGA Tour designated event, but he also recaptured the number one Official World Golf Ranking (OWGR), overtaking Rory McIlroy. 

A major turning point was on the iconic 163-yard par 3 16th hole. All three players in the final group missed the green, with Scottie missing long and left. He pitched on leaving himself a 15-foot putt for par which at the time was to maintain a one stroke lead. With over 16,000 fans watching, he drained the putt to save par, and ultimately take a two-shot lead to the 17th hole after Nick Taylor missed his par putt.

Take away the huge crowd and crazy environment, and the 16th hole is just a shorter length par 3 with a couple bunkers. Although I struggle to make 15-foot putts anywhere, I have a much higher chance alone on a practice green than in front of thousands of vociferous spectators. Professional golfers like Scottie Scheffler rely on their experience in those situations – they’ve been there before. 

The 16th hole at the TPC Scottsdale Stadium Course has been dubbed “The Coliseum”. The loud fans and frenzied environment remind many of the ancient venue in Rome, where many early Christians were martyred for refusing to acknowledge the gods of the Roman Empire. Their faith in Jesus delivered these early Christians through their trials, just as it does for so many who are persecuted in the world today.

The Bible tells us through the apostle John that we have overcome the world through faith in Jesus. 

1 John 5:4-5
4
 For whatever is born of God overcomes the world. This is the victory that has overcome the world: your faith. 
5
 Who is he who overcomes the world, but he who believes that Jesus is the Son of God?

Be bold in your faith. Serve others, allowing the light of Jesus to shine through you. Exercise your faith, grow in your faith, allow God to use you in amazing ways for His glory.

Next week is The Genesis Invitational from The Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades, California! We hear some guy named Tiger is playing. 😊