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As we look back at 2007 on the LPGA tour it is easy to see who’s stock was up and who’s went down.  Lorena Ochoa certainly became blue chip this year along with Paula Creamer, Natalie Gulbis, Suzann Petterson, and Christie Kerr.  Mi Hyun Kim, Seon-Hwa Lee, Jeong Jang, and Morgan Pressel all showed they deserve to be called elite as well.  The biggest drop off in my mind would have to be Michelle Wie as she lost any momentum she had going into this year but she wasn’t the only one.  Karrie Webb failed to show up this year along with a slip up from Ai Miyazato who was supposed to dominate.  Julieta Granada never seemed to live up to her win in the 06′ championship and Annika Sorenstam’s back kept her out of any meaningful competition this year.  It should be an interesting 2008 with my bet on Lorena to dominate again, but watch out for ”Pink Panther” Paula and another strong year from Petterson. 

Callaway golf has created a collectors item with a 25th anniversary version of their FTi driver.  Only 2500 will be made and each will be individually numbered.  The main difference from the standard club will be that the crown, sole, shaft, and grip will be silver in color.

If you are looking for a great deal on golf in Florida on the suncoast look no further than www.Bigsummergolf.com.  They have great discount rates on many courses in Manatee, Sarasota, and adjoining county courses.  It runs from early April through late September on most of the courses and offers substantial discount rates.  Check it out and save big bucks! 

By Jack Moorehouse

On difficult courses, hitting good approach shots is often the key to scoring well. On these courses, good approach shots are as critical as driving and putting well. But conquering a difficult course doesn’t just happen. If you’ve never played the course before, studying it will tell you whether or not you need to concentrate on hitting better than average approach shots.

How can you recognize such a course? These courses often have what Jack Nicklaus calls “created challenges”— narrow fairways, hard-to-hold greens, and heavy, thick rough. Add to these things, awkward tee shot angles, uneven fairway lies, and small and elevated greens, and you have a course where hitting a good approach shots is a must. If you play the course a lot, you must learn how to hit precise approach shots to maintain your golf handicap.

On The Tee
Hitting a good approach shot starts on the tee. Rather than blasting the ball as far as possible with your drive, play target golf. You’ve probably read about playing target golf in my golf tips. The key to doing it is picking specific targets for your shots, targets with a real purpose. On courses where good approach shots are vital, playing target golf usually means finding level ground. Sacrificing some power off the tee in favor of hitting the right spot is the smart play, even if you have to tee off with a short club.

Why level ground? Hitting a 5-iron into a green from a level lie beats hitting a
7-iron from a severely angled lie every time. In other words, if you have a course with undulating fairways and you have to hit the ball high to have any hope of stopping it on the green, catching flatter spots from the tee is critical. On difficult courses you often find yourself in situations where it’s next to impossible to hit shots with the high trajectories needed to hold greens, like a steep downhill lie. So target these spots whenever you can.

Below are five keys to a hitting a shot with a high trajectory. As usual some of the more important elements are built-in at address

* Play the ball a little farther forward in your stance
* Keep the clubface slightly open
* Hold your hands level with or slightly behind the ball.
* Swing under the ball, not around your body
* Release the club freely with your hand and wrists
As far as your swing is concerned, there’s not that much different when hitting a high trajectory. Swing the club pretty much as you normally would, although you may want to swing a little more upright, if you really want to deaden the ball when it hits. Using a fade spin on the ball also helps. Also, try keeping your hands from turning over during the release until well after impact.

Around The Greens
In addition to hit the ball high, you may want to put some backspin on the ball. Backspin works best when the greens are not too hard and there’s some moisture. When the greens are hard, dry, and slick, the ball tends to skip off the green. Also, the more elevated the green, the shallower the trajectory into the spot, so the harder it is to deaden the ball and the stronger the skip off the green’s surface. Also, the smaller the target, the less skipping room the ball has when it hits.

The problem with having the ball bounce off the green is that you never know where it will stop. Depending on the landing spot, you need to consider your options carefully. Choosing the wrong option can really cost you strokes. Depending on the lie and the situation, hit a shot you have confidence in and are proficient at, not a shot you’ve never player before. Staying conservative in this situation saves strokes more often than not, as I’ve said in my golf tips.

If you see players hitting a lot of shots with high trajectories, you know you have a course where hitting good approach shots are a must. Learning to hit approach shots with high trajectories will help you conquer many difficult courses and will keep your golf handicap from ratcheting upwards. Conquering these coursed is a challenge. But it can be done with the help of a well-conceived pre-round strategy and technically sound swing. So don’t be intimidated by them.

Jack Moorehouse is the author of the best-selling book “How To Break 80 And Shoot Like The Pros.” He is NOT a golf pro, rather a working man that has helped thousands of golfers from all seven continents lower their handicap immediately. He has a free weekly newsletter with the latest golf tips, golf lessons and golf instruction.

Lorena Ochoa overcame her inner demons to take the year end ADT championship and take home the 1 million dollar purse.  With the win she supplants Tiger with most tournaments won this year, and Annika Sorenstams record year earnings.   In my book she should be golfer of the year, she finally got her major, won 9 tournaments and 4 and 1/2 million dollars.  Natalie Gulbis showed she belongs as well placing 2nd while she herself won for the first time on tour this year.  Paula Creamer stayed hot and placed third after her win last week.

Keep it under the trees with this low runner

By Chuck Winstead
golf magazine top 100 teacher
Published: November 01, 2005

What it is: A running punch shot

What it’s for: Keeping your ball below low-hanging branches

When a tree branch is hanging between your ball and the green, hitting the ball under it requires some adjustments. But the payoff is big: If the ball is sitting clean, a low-flying runner just might scoot all the way to the green.

The Play
To keep the ball low and chase it down the fairway, you need to control the three things that make it go up: loft, clubhead speed and backspin. Typically you hit down on irons. In this case, you want to flatten out the bottom of your swing.

1. Use a 5-iron and position the ball two inches back from the middle of your stance. This will tilt the club’s shaft forward and de-loft the face.

2. Make a three-quarter-length backswing for better control.

3. At impact, don’t let your right forearm rotate over your left. Think of this shot as a really long chip and finish with the clubhead below the level of your hands. It might help to squeeze the club a little tighter with your left side so your right forearm can’t turn over.

4. The low knuckleball produced should run well down the fairway after landing so, when possible, aim away from any bunkers short of the green. If bunker play is a weakness, plan to hit short of them.

From Golf.com

Ok, so here’s something you don’t see every day. My friend (his identity shall remain a secret, as I have promised him that) owns a TaylorMade R7 TP retail driver. While he likes the driver overall, he strongly disliked the tinny sound it made at impact. He decided to stuff cotton into the weight holes to try and deaden the sound. But after doing so, the cotton compacted, and he ended up with about 20 little pea-sized cotton chunks rolling around in his clubhead. It sounded like peanuts in a jar!

What he did next is the interesting part. He deduced that, since there was no way to retrieve the cotton pellets and cotton was flammable, it would be clever to pour a little gasoline into the weight holes and let the cotton soak it up. Then, he could light it and burn the cotton into noiseless ash. Here is where the trouble starts…

I think he poured a little too much gas into the holes because when he lit it, flames shot out about 6 inches from all four holes, scaring the living $hit out of him! He dropped the club immediately and it landed head first onto the driveway (at least he was smart enough to do this highly technical procedure outside), leaving big scrapes on the crown. When he thought that the fire was out, he picked up the driver by the head only to feel the sharp pain of hot metal searing his fingertips. In knee-jerk reaction, he dropped the club again, scratching up more of the clubhead!

After a momentary fit of rage, he collected himself and tried to think through the situation. He decided to play it smart and allow the club to cool off before he picked up the club. Staring at his nicked up baby, he wondered if he could buff out the scratches in the paint. Well, those concerns about scratches soon became irrelevant as the paint started peeling off the clubhead before his very eyes! It turns out that there was still a bit of fuel inside the clubhead that continued to burn as my friend waited for it to cool. The smoldering fuel heated the clubhead so much that it peeled off most of the paint!

But there is a bright side to all of this - the procedure to burn away the cotton worked, and there are now NO more rattles in the head!!! When he phoned me and told me this story, I just about peed myself laughing, which prompted him to hang up the phone on me. I will try to be more consoling in the future…

Golf Grouch Comment: That’s one way to smoke your driver! Who knows, maybe an engineer at TaylorMade will read this story and turn it into the next big thing in driver technology: RPD (Rocket Propelled Driver). Tom, tell your friend that he’d better apply for a patent pronto!

 From Grouchygolf.com

Paula Creamer, complete with pink outfit, hat and ball, crushed the field at the Tournament of Champions on Sunday, by eight strokes.  According to “The Golf Channel” it was the first tournament ever won using a pink ball.  Paula joined Lorena Ochoa and Suzann Petterson as the only multiple tournament winners this year.

We’ve all faced this shot at some point—a lob over a greenside bunker. And we’ve all probably chipped the ball into the bunker at one time or another, costing ourselves strokes. It may even have cost us the hole, if we’re playing match play. Mistakes like that chip away at our confidence, so the next time we face the same shot, we’re worried more about coming up short than hitting the ball past the hole. It’s enough to keep us awake at night.While the greenside lob is a challenge for most weekend golfers, it doesn’t have to be your undoing, not if you follow the keys listed below.

Six keys to hitting a lob over a greenside bunker:

* Check out your lie
* Take a nearly full swing
* Drop the club into the ball
* Keep the clubface pointed to the sky
* Let your legs and body rotate
* Keep your head stable and centered

The key to making this shot is the lie. Check it out carefully before making a decision. If you have a tight lie, you won’t be able to slide your club under the ball and you’ll skull it. If have a fluffy lie, you’ll get under the ball too much and dump it into the bunker. Neither mistake is good. So get a firm sense of how much grass is behind the ball and how much air is under it before deciding what to do.

Once you’re committed, assume a slightly open stance, take a full backswing, and “drop” the club into the ball, popping it up. Keep the clubface pointed to the sky as you complete a short follow-through. And let your legs and body rotate forward, but keep your head stable and centered. If you’re in deeper rough, make a slightly faster swing to compensate for the grass.

You’ll need to work on this shot in practice to master distance control. Place a club 15 yards ahead of you and try landing shots just past it. With practice, you’ll learn to hit the shot properly and stop worrying about coming up short. You’ll also build confidence. And you’ll be able to sleep again.

 Article from www.Howtobreak80.com Newsletter - November 7, 2007

Nike continues with its Sumo theme bringing irons to the mix this time.  With weight moved even further to the perimeter to increase the latest buzzword MOI.  They also added dampening material to decrease vibration of the club.  So far I have yet to hear of any professional players using these clubs and I do not expect to.  They are super game improvement irons meaning playability is much harder to achieve.