Golf in India

 

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-india-golf-20120706,0,3345846.story

 

Among the 3 million or so charities operating in India, "golf for the destitute" wouldn't exactly top the list of pressing social needs.

The way pro golfer Indrajit Bhalotia sees it, however, offering hope of a life-changing career for a few has a place alongside meeting the temporary needs of multitudes.

Bhalotia, 40, confident and understated, born into a well-off family, started playing golf at 4. He became India's top-ranked player in 1990 and founded ProTouch Golf Academy, selling equipment, apparel and lessons to the well-heeled.

During a slump in 1998, hoping to get his winning form back, he pledged 10% of his future winnings to charity. Eventually he decided that wasn't enough, that anyone could give money but he needed to do more.

"Golf's been very good to me," he said recently at the Royal. "It's the least I could do. There was karma for me in this."

He started recruiting impoverished children through Ek Prayaas, a Kolkata charity, and among the club's caddies. A lifetime spent whacking small white balls allowed him to spot aptitude within minutes of their first swing.

"Sure, I might miss one Tiger Woods," he said. "But out of five, I can pick out four."

 

ALTON: Women charged with exposing breasts on golf course

http://www.thetelegraph.com/news/golf-71493-course-women.html

The Short Game's the Thing? Nope

Conventional wisdom holds that the short game is the key to golf success. If you want to win on Tour, or even in matches at the local course, you've got to chip, pitch and putt like a magician.

If that's true, however, how do you figure Tiger Woods's win last week at the Memorial? He ranked 41st in the Tour's new strokes-gained-putting metric, and 42nd in strokes gained—short game (shots inside 100 yards excluding putting)? Or Jason Dufner's victory at the HP Byron Nelson two weeks earlier, when he ranked 56th in putting, actually losing strokes to the field on the greens?

Mark Broadie, the Columbia Business School professor who came up with the strokes-gained-putting statistic now used by the PGA Tour, has devised a way to quantify the relative contribution to scoring of the long game and the short game, and his conclusion is probably not what you think. He is expanding this and other interesting new golf statistical research into a book for publication next year, but here's the take-away: Shots that originate more than 100 yards from the hole have twice the impact on score of shots from inside 100 yards—including putting. Long-game results account for about two-thirds of the variability in scores among golfers on the PGA Tour (the short game is one-third).

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702303753904577454662959172648.html?google_editors_picks=true

Golfing in North Korea: The Hermit Kingdom's Newest Pastime

About 30 km outside the North Korean capital, the Hermit Kingdom's only golf course cuts through heavily forested slopes running down to the waters of Lake Taicheng. The late Kim Jong Il is rumored to have once frolicked there on a luxury yacht. He is also famously credited with shooting a world-record 18-hole score of 38 under par — including five holes in one — on the day he opened the course. The story was reported by the rogue state's lone news service, the Korean Central News Agency, which said 17 bodyguards witnessed the round. Strangely, nobody at the course seems to recall his presumably spectacular performance.

More recently, the secluded course played host to a different type of visitor: tourists. Last month, 15 foreigners and one North Korean competed over three rounds in the second Democratic People's Republic of Korea Amateur Golf Open. The tournament, organized by Dylan Harris of the U.K.-based Lupine Travel company, brought together golfers from six countries for eight days of golf and sightseeing. The experience offered a rare glimpse into one of the world's most reclusive countries — and an even rarer chance for everyday hackers to win a national championship.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2116565,00.html#ixzz1x1JWexcY

Piedmont Driving Club

http://dealbreaker.com/2012/05/let-the-wives-and-children-of-these-drunkards-be-confronted-with-and-shamed-by-the-grotesque-conduct-of-their-husbands-and-fathers/

Ber'ovice, Slany, CZ, Back 9

#10 requires a climb up a hill, just to get to the tee . . . 8^) . . . then some more hill climbing to play the hole . . . tough . . .

#11 is not so bad, you get to come back down the hill on the other side of the lake.

#12, 162 m on the card, but slightly uphill . . . I hit a half 7wood to make sure I got there against the wind . . .ugly low slice, like we do it  in scotland, laddie . . .

#13 is a welcome par 5 . . . smashed a drive that the wind just beat down.

smashed a fairway wood that suffered a similar fate.

stopped to look at this tiny snake in the fairway my companions viewed with respect.

Dangerous! A yellow triangle on each side of its head. You have been warned.

flew my short iron out of the rough into the back of the green. 3 putt, I assume.

The course is adorned with these unusual, unique features, small, shallow grassbunkers, with close-cropped rough in circular shapes in the fairway . . . they're not really an obstacle, except in an uneven lie kinduva way . . . me, I LIKE a fluffy lie, if my ball tees up for me . . . 8^) . . . my companions said they are called kolkols, for the architect, who I couldn't find on the internet . . . Kolkolnik (?)

you can see on the hole diagram how these kolkols are introduced intentionally into the landing zones.

#15 I don't remember much about . . . striking the ball well, but floundering . . . if you've ever experienced that . . .

#16 is a classic island green par 3 . . .not so long, but the #5 handicap hole . . .  did have a left to right wind this day that may explain that . . . 8^) . . .

Camera foul up...

no pix of 17 & 18 . . . 17  I don't remember, but 18 . . . is an awesome par5 finishing hole . . . drive right of the straight line to the hole forced because of a grassy hill & bunkers, then hit down into the throat of a tight landing area squeezed between the hill and some bunkers backed up by a creek area . . . so naturally I tried to club it over the bunkers on the inside of the dogleg and got caught up in the tall grass above the traps. tried then to play it smart with a 5iron to wedge distance, which flew 40 yds too far into the bunkers on the right . . . l-o-o-o-o-oo-ng bunker shot to the back of the green 3 putt down the treacherous pin location . . . pttthhhhhh.

I think it's a good, if not great layout . . . needs to grow in a little bit . . . which is only to be expected . . . reminded me of Barrandov in Hungary that way . .  . not as tough a walk, but there ARE places, like to start #10 where a walker will know it . . . 8^) . . . Solid 3 on the Scottsdale scale . . . but easily could grown into a solid 2.

Ber'ovice, Slany, CZ Front 9

http://www.gcbr.cz/

Par 72, 6579m(~7100Yds), Slope 137

Berovice looked hilly in the pix I saw on the internet . . . so I was eager to play . . . it WAS a tough walk, but i think it will only improve as a golf course over the next few years as the newness wears off and the strategically plantings mature. It reminded me ofAusterlitz and Balaton in Hungary in that way.

After a rather heavy lunch at the Hotel Hejtmansky in Slany, I toddled over for my round in muggy heat. I found myself in league with 2 golfers and an observer, charming czechs whose names I've forgotten: a young man who complained amiably that his trainer had changed his swing two weeks ago and now he could hardly hit the ball at all, and two young women . . . the golfer was almost expert, the best of the threesome . . .

First hole told me all I needed to know that day: foozle my drive (I never do that anymore), 3 bladed irons, including one into the water, a fat pitch, then a 45 foot putt to salvage a double bogey. Dang.

Mindful of my ineptitude so far, I took an extra club against the wind and j-u-s-t made it over the water on the par 3 2nd. lobbed it up on the green and 3putted for 5. Dang, again.

#3 - don't remember much about this par 5 -- apparently I was playing so bad my photography was forgotten.

#4 a longish par 4 . . . apparently I was taken with the fairway view, as typical, perhaps . . . nice driving vista . . . and apparently I was off in the right rough, again . . .

I would say those are my partners balls, rather than mine . . .

#5, short par 4 . . . good drive, and a foozled wedge . . .floundering

#6 was probably the first good drive I hit, against the wind . . . my partners complimented me, all I could say was I Want More . . . if you see how I mean . . .

#7 is a downhill medium length par 3 . . . not much going on and I didn't play it particularly well, so, well, there you are . . .

#8 seemed to be the first hole I actually played . . . kinduva short par4 . . . not a particularly good drive, into the short rough on the right, sort of on the hill, above the sand trap over there . . . then hit an 8 iron I lost track in the hazy blindness . . . but it wound up 12 ft above the hole. . . missed the birdie.

#9 is a short par 5 . . . looks easy, said I, sad negatory shakes of the heads from my companions . . . there is water, they said . . . I hit a good drive down the middle, but as it turns out that's not good . . . wound up in some gnarly rough . . . tried to just get over the water, but only foozled it to the waters edge . . . 5iron from there to the front of the green and a twoputtpar. easy. like I tho't . . . 8^D . . . just needed the lucky foozle.