Some of you know about this already, but I figure now is a good time to let everyone take a peek :)
A few weeks ago, I started building an application for the iPhone and iPod touch that lets me track my golf score while I'm out playing. The first version is done now, as is the website and blog that accompany it. The application, called TeeShot, will be available for sale through the iTunes application store on Friday - the same day that the new iPhone 3G is released.
You can check them all out at the
TeeShot Live website and at my new
Talkin' TeeShot blog.
TeeShot Live, is more than just an "about this application" website. It is the place where users go to upload and download courses and will eventually be a place where they can keep in touch with their friends who are out playing golf. Today, though, it shows off the
features of TeeShot and lets users start downloading courses (there are already over 100 courses up there).
I am really excited to see what folks think of the application and how it does at the iTunes Application Store. TeeShot costs $19.99 (less than a half dozen golf balls) so I'm hoping lots of people pick it up just to give it a try.
The cool thing is that the new iPhone 3G has a GPS receiver in it, so an upcoming version of TeeShot will use that to help golfers figure out how far they hit each shot and how far they are from the green and more!
Check it out!
Labels: "TeeShot Live", golf, iPhone, TeeShot
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Damn crows!
On my way to play golf at
Newcastle with
Tony this morning, I was driving behind a car that also appeared to be headed to the course, but not until he hit a crow that seemed to be eating something in the road. He just drove straight into him, no swerves to avoid the bird. I was thinking that was pretty mean and hoped it was the only birdie he would get that day.
On the 12th hole, while we were putting, a crow flew into my golf cart and grabbed my muffin that I had not yet opened, took it out of the cart, opened it, and started eating it. WTF!?! He flew away before I got back but there was no way I was going to eat that avian flu laden muffin anymore. Crow owes me 3 bucks.
After the round, I went to
CameraTechs in Ballard to get the sensor on my 5D cleaned up before our trip to South Africa. On my way out, laden with 8 cupcakes from
Cupcake Royale, I ran into
Christopher Vaughn and while we were talking, a crow up in the tree crapped on my shoulder. WTF!?!?!?! I bet it was the same one from Newcastle thinking "here's your crappy muffin back -- I ain't payin' 3 bucks for that..."
Next time I get a chance, I won't swerve either.
Labels: crow, golf
After my fitting at Callaway, I headed over to PGA West in La Quinta to play at the Jack Nicklaus Tournament course. I got there just in time and headed down to the first tee where the starter told me that I was going to play alone and there was no one behind me for another 30 minutes. The bad news was that I was playing behind a bunch of foursomes and it was going to be S-L-O-W. Perhaps I should play two balls, he suggested.
Great idea! Instead of an incredibly slow 5.5 hour round of golf, it will be an incredibly fast 36 hole day!
Today's round turned into a concurrent 36 hole day of golf comparing the Callaway HX-Tour with the Nike PowerDistance PowerLong ball. On each hole, I played two balls from tee to the hole, alternating tee shots between the different balls and then kept each ball's score. I figured that the golfer and the clubs are the same, so perhaps over 18 holes something will really pop to show which one works better for me.
The front 9 was pretty much all Callaway. It had 3 GIRs while the Nike only had 1 (and that one was followed by a 3 putt!) and after 9, Callaway was leading 42-48. The Back 9 started pretty much the same with a bogey for the Calaway and a triple for the Nike (flying into the next neighborhood on the tee shot didn't help). Then the Nike started to really catch fire (perhaps it was the 103° heat -- or perhaps it just got sick of sucking). and went par - bogie - bogie - birdie - bogie - birdie. The first birdie was particularly impressive. After a crappy 100 yard 3 wood tee shot (one of only two fat shots in the day) the second 3 wood did a low cut, staying out of the desert breezes, flying 210 yards and rolling to a stop about 2 feet from the cup. It just goes to show that even a crappy tee shot can lead to a birdie if you stick with it.
At the same time the Nike was heating up, the Callaway went into a slump, finding the water on the par 3 12th and a lot of sand leading to a couple of double bogies while the Nike was doing it birdie thing. On 17, though, the Callaway came back with a par 3 tee shot to about 20 feed and a perfect roll to the cup for it's first birdie -- and my third for the day!
The score on the back 9 was nearly a mirror image of the front 9 - Callaway 47, Nike 42 but that last birdie put the Callaway on top 89-90. Effectively a tie with the Nike up one GIR and the Callaway with two fewer putts. The Callaway feels much better on the clubface, yet the Nike costs about 1/2 as much.
The real winner, though, was me. The little competition made what would have been an incredibly slow round into a much more interesting and fun game.
In other news on the round, while the Nike Ignite was still pretty unreliable, the Cleveland Launcher 3 and 5 woods were great both from the tee and the fairway. My irons, with the help of the tip from the fitting session, were also very nice, though still a bunch shorter than I would have liked, most of the iron shots flew high and straight with a slight tendency towards the right. They were not hooking like they had recently and I only had one fat iron shot.
Wedges need some work. I thinned 5 or so wedge shots close to the green which would have been at least 5 strokes off the day had I hit them well. There is a lot of sand on this course and I was in the bunker probably 15 times (a LOT of sand...) but most of the outs were very clean.
Seeing the ball roll was awesome. Maybe soon we'll see some of that up near Seattle.
All in all, not too bad on the scoring front considering how early it is in the season and how long I had to wait on the tees. There are lots of places where things can get better, I just need to get out and practice more. I'm looking forward to it!
Labels: Callaway, golf, Nike, PGA West
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Callaway Fitting at Indian Wells
I'm down in Palm Springs for the weekend before I head to the MIX 07 conference in Las Vegas. This morning, I had the chance to visit the
Callaway Golf Fitting Center at
Indian Wells. Unlike the cheesy launch monitor at Puetz in Seattle, the Callaway fitting center has a great setup. Several high speed cameras capturing launch angle, spin rate, head speed, ball speed, etc as well as capturing high speed video of my swing so we can look at it and try to figure out what causes that occasional duck-hook.
The setup is much like in this picture (except I'm not left handed). You're hitting shots from the tee box on the 18th at Pebble Beach and the plasma TVs right in front of you are showing you all of the details of your shot including an animated ball trajectory, layered over your previous shots with the same club. Once we established some baseline data with my own 6 iron, we then tried different Callaway 6 irons with a variety of shafts, then compared their data with the information from my club. All in all we tried maybe 8 different 6 irons with occasional returns to my 6 iron to see make sure the differences weren't just because I was getting warmed up. The club that ended up getting the best results (most on line shots and best distance mainly) was the Callaway fusion irons with a stiff graphite shaft and +1 inch length. The big change from my current Cleveland TA-5 clubs is the updated
Fusion design and the graphite shafts instead of steel. I had noticed when I was trying the Taylor Made Burner a few weeks ago that a lighter shaft makes a noticeable difference in clubhead speed. This stayed true in this case.
6 iron stats w/ Fusion:
Head Speed: 76
Ball Speed: 106
Back Spin: 4480
Launch Angle: 21
Side Spin: 47
Side Angle: 0.50
Swing Path: 2.0
Angle of Attack: -3.0
Efficiency: 1.39 (93%) This is how close to the middle of
the clubface I hit it
After the 6 iron, we moved on to my driver. While my Nike Ignite was once godly, it has become wildly inconsistent over the past year or so. Way right, then way left, then way too low... Now, of course, much of this can be blamed on the guy swinging it, but as my swing has evolved over the past couple of years, the club has not kept up with the changes. The first 8 shots on the monitor were all over the place. Good to see the computer sees the same thing I do. We tried a number of Callaway drivers and soon settled on the
FT-i. It looks kind of like a book stuck on the end of a stick (as opposed to my Ignite that looks like a Volkswagen stuck on the end of a stick). The unusual square shape is supposed to provide more consistent results even on shots that are not in the middle of the clubface, though I also think that the shape helps make it easier to line up and hit the middle of the club face. Either way, the results were impressive. The first three shots were nearly on top of each other - a slight draw starting out just right and working its way back to dead center. Sweet! I had a couple of bad shots but they were still not too far off from the middle - no nasty slice or duck hook like other drivers, including my Ignite, exhibited. We played around with different lofts and shafts and settled on the 11° stiff shaft with a neutral bias.
Driver stats with FT-i
Head Speed: 92
Ball Speed: 135
Back Spin: 2600
Launch Angle: 13
Side Spin: 57
Side Angle: 3.0
Swing Path: 2.0
Angle of Attack: 0.20
Efficiency: 1.47 (98%)
As we talked a bit more about customizing the clubs, we also decided a couple of extra wraps under the grips would make them fit my hands a bit better which would let me not grip so hard.
Finally, we looked at the video of my swing and he pointed out that I tend to slide too far to the right on the backswing, putting my weight on the outside of my right foot and then I slide back to the left on the downswing which puts me too far ahead of the ball and requires some pretty severe arm action to hit it. Trying to stay more centered with more weight on the inside of my right foot will allow more of a hip turn and will keep me in better position coming down on the swing. Seeing the video of this and this one tip really helped. This one little thing was simple enough that I could pay attention to it during my round that followed and helped a lot with making better contact and hitting fewer (almost none, actually) fat shots.
Interestingly, there was not huge pressure to order the clubs on the spot. Instead, he gave me the printouts of some of the info (I forgot to get some of the other ones because I was running late for my tee time) and gave me his card and said they could order them, or I could order them online. The tricky thing about club fitting is that you can't just go in to a store (or on ebay) and pick them up but once you get them, you know it is right.
The most pressing need is for the driver. I'll probably order that pretty soon since my Ignite is so unreliable at this point. I'll probably wait a week or so on the irons, perhaps go hit them again before placing an order but it will be nice to have something that I
know is tailored to my swing. The only other thing I want to ponder is if another brand of clubs would work as well given a similar setup.
Stay tuned!
Labels: Callaway, golf, technology
Yay! I can still hit a golf ball!
A couple of months ago, I went to Whistler with the kids and we went snowboarding. I'm not very good but it is a lot of fun when there is lots of powder. This weekend, there wasn't but I went up anyway. On the first run, about 50 feet into the run I fell backward on my left outstretched arm and heard a little
in my elbow. Feh - no biggie, I'll keep going. 3 more turns and I did it again - same arm - same sound. That was it. I was done for the day and the season.
For the next few weeks, I couldn't fully straighten or bend that arm. According to my doctor, I may have chipped a bone in my elbow but I think the damage was more to the soft tissue in there. A few weeks ago, I wanted to try out one of the new Nike drivers at the local golf store and I realized that the elbow was not ready for golf. Even on a slow take away, it was very uncomfortable to swing a club. Dang!
I started doing some weights to work on that area and this morning I went to Bellevue to hit some balls on the range. I'm glad to say that I can now hit a ball again. Maybe not as far as I could a couple of summers ago, but I hit about 80 balls and they all went pretty much where I wanted them to. Phew!
So now I'm ready for summer - and ready to try out one of those new drivers again :)Labels: golf, snowboard
