By Steve Pike

TaylorMade R11 Driver

For: Low- and medium-handicap players. 

Suggested Retail Price: $499

Details: TaylorMade-Adidas Golf takes moveable weight technology a step farther with what it calls  “adjustable sole plate’’ technology in the R11 driver. Combined with TMaG’s flight control technology and moveable weight technology, the R11 gives a golfer 48 ways to set up the club head. The R11 includes two weight cartridges weighing 10 grams and one gram. To create a neutral bias, a player must install the heavy (10-gram) weight in the toe; for a draw bias, put the heavy weight in the heel. If a more neutral setting is desired, 4- and 6-gram weights are available separately. 

Comments: Despite all of its technology, the R11 likely will appeal to most golfers for one reason: the white color of its crown. That’s what’s going to initially attract them to the driver on the shelf and it’s what they will see when they put the club on the ground. Most won’t know that the R11 is 440cc as opposed to their current 460c driver, which is OK because that’s a bit of the eye trickery of the white crown.

Callaway Diablo
Octane Driver

For: Medium- to high-handicap players

Suggested Retail Price:  $299

Details: The 46-inch driver’s club head is made of forged composite, a material Callaway developed in conjunction with research and development partner Automobili Lamborghini. Callaway says that technology has allowed it to design a club head with a greater transfer of power at impact and more accurate trajectories vs. its all-titanium counterparts.

Comments: Taking more weight out of the crown and moving it deeper in the club head helps a player (at least in theory) create more swing speed and better accuracy. The latter is particularly import given the 46-inch shaft.

Titleist 910 D2 Driver

For: Low- and medium-handicap players

Suggested Retail Price: $499

Details: The Titleist 910 D2 (460cc) features a “SureFit Tour’’ dual angle hosel that allows the loft and lie of each driver to be independently adjusted and set. SFT technology features a sleeve and a ring, each with four settings. The sleeve settings are numbered 1, 2, 3, 4 and the ring settings are lettered A, B, C, D. The result is a matrix of 16 loft/lie combinations that allows the club fitter or golfer to make left or right flight improvements (mostly via lie adjustment), and launch and spin improvements (mostly via loft adjustments).

Comments:  The technology sounds more complicated than it really is, but it’s best to consult an experienced club fitter when fitting the loft and lie to individual specifications. Once most players have their specs locked in, there is no need to change.

Bridgestone Tour
B330-RX Golf Ball

For: Medium- to high-handicap players

Suggested Retail Price: $45 per dozen

Details: Bridgestone’s version of its popular Tour B330 ball, the Tour B330-RX is for a player with moderate swing speeds between 85 and 105 mph. The multilayer urethane ball features a large and soft and a 330-dimple design. The softer core allows the ball to fully compress, especially for players with slower swing speeds.

Comments: Egos aside, most players have a swing speed on the lower end of the 85 to 105 mph scale, making the Tour B330-RX a better performing ball for them than the premium Bridgestone B330 or Titleist Pro V1, each of which is designed for players with swing speeds in excess of 105 mph.

Bushnell Hybrid Rangefinder

For: All players

Suggested Retail Price: $499

Details: A combination of Bushnell’s popular laser rangefinder with GPS.  The company says the Hybrid provides golfers with precise distances within one yard to virtually any point on any course in the world. The Hybrid’s GPS function allows users to access more than 16,000 North American golf courses that have been loaded onto the device, making it ready to use right out of the box without ever having to pay membership fees. 

Comments: Obviously a player must check to see if his or her course is among those loaded in the Hybrid. Rangefinders are becoming more popular, but it should be noted that rangefinders of any kind are not allowed in tournaments played under U.S. Golf Association rules.

FootJoy DryJoy Tour
Golf Shoes

For: All players

Suggested Retail Price: $170 per pair

Details: The DryJoy Tours feature what FootJoy calls “the next generation’’ Tri-Density TPU Stability PODS outsole. The new shoe has four cleats vs. two in prior models.  A fiberglass composite support bridge is enlisted to provide mid-foot stability and support. The shoes incorporate a new Cyclone cleat by Softspikes to create maximum ground contact.

Comments: Stability is vital for a good golf game and the technology in the DryJoy Tours help achieve that goal. The DryJoy Tour’s improved stability and connection with the ground is something most players, especially big swingers, will notice right away.

By Steve Pike

So you want to be like Tiger and Phil? 

Good luck. But you can get a little closer by doing one thing each of them does. That is, get fit for clubs — even a golf ball. And don’t let your ego get in the way. With a little bit of time and research, chances are good you will find the correct club and ball for your skill level. 

Ever-evolving golf club technology has made it almost impossible to buy a bad golf club or set of clubs. That doesn’t mean, however, that every driver, iron, wedge, putter, or even golf ball, is made for every player. Understand that a two-handicap player plays a completely different game from an 18-handicap; and a PGA Tour player plays a different game from a two-handicap.

Also understand that most golf equipment companies market their clubs through PGA Tour players. 

Those players validate a specific golf club and technology. Equipment companies use that validation to sell product. They want to make players — low- and high-handicap  — believe that the driver or wedge that works for Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson will work for them, too.

Today’s sophisticated club and ball technology work so long as a player has the talent to make it work. For example, a player with a swing speed of 90 miles an hour doesn’t need a ball such as a Titleist Pro V1 or Bridgestone Tour B330. Those balls are made to perform for players with swing speeds in excess of 105 mph. Chances are, nobody in your Saturday foursome has that kind of speed.

“When it comes to choosing a golf club, more important than the quality is the fit,’’ said Dan Hager, a certified club fitter, PGA professional and manager of golf operations at The Links at Boynton Beach. “A good example is, if you’re a 42-regular jacket and I handed you a new 34-short that costs $800, it’s worthless to you because it doesn’t fit. You’re better off with a Penney’s Towncraft that does fit you.’’

“People unfortunately buy clubs off a rack. They’re buying hope. Then they go out and it doesn’t help their game.’’

There are 13 variables that go into a fit, Hager said, some of them minor, such as the grip. The major factors, Hager said, include a club’s shaft flex, and lie angle and length of the club.

Most major golf equipment companies offer fitting systems for drivers and irons. Titleist and Bridgestone also offer ball-fitting systems and some companies even have custom-fit putter systems. Club fitting can take as little as 15 minutes or up to two hours depending on the fitting system and how technical a player wants to get.

“If I was going to buy a set of clubs that lasts two years, I could find two hours that makes an $800 or $1,0000 investment worth it,’’ Hager said.   Ú

Lucille Ritacco tries to keep warm while watching
her golf partner, Frank Garito, tee off at The Palm Beach
Par 3 Golf Course Saturday afternoon. The temperatures
were in the 50s at the time with strong winds
out of the north. Photo by Tim Stepien

By Tim Norris

On the first tee box at Red Reef Park executive golf course one early winter day, looking to adventure ahead, a parade of humanity shows off its theme and variations.

On an unusually cool day, the parade has slowed. From behind the clubhouse counter, Jay Fischer of the city of Boca Raton Recreation Services saw only a few of a usually hardy weekly woman’s group. Still, he can watch and learn.  

Tee pushed into ground, ball set on it in balance, club brandished from the bag, the enterprise and the effort reveal them. Thwack! Sculled. Thwack! Topped, Thw … missed.  (Oh, the humanity). Mostly, thwick, thwock, tink, tonk, clean and airborne, looking to the wide uplift of green and the deep-throated rattle of dimpled ball finding bottom of cup.   

Tempo, rhythm, bobbin and pendulum, arc and downswing, herk and jerk, on the first tee a game of almost infinite variety greets players of almost infinite variety. Encountering the course, the players meet the methods. Meet the gadgets. Meet the drills. Meet the sales pitches. In concept, golf is a game of numbers, of yardages, relation to par, handicaps, net scores, trajectories and angles.

In a player’s hands, though, Fischer acknowledges, it eludes prediction.

Variety rules

Light changes, wind changes, temperature and humidity play tricks; grass can be thin or thick, wet or dry. Do they look skyward to a particular deity or down and around to the gods of golf? Do they celebrate a solid shot registered in the bones and sinew, Decry a hook or slice and examine a misshapen divot? Pound a club to ground? Shrug or swagger? Quietly regain the cart or shoulder the bag and glide or soldier on? 

Golf can seem like an exercise in paint (or putt)-by-numbers. It isn’t. Even among the greats, variety is the rule: the classic balance of Ben Hogan, the Barcalounger ease of Sam Snead, the lash-and-twist of Arnold Palmer, the leaning and head-bending after-look of Chi Chi Rodriguez, the forward hike of Jack Nicklaus, the explosive downswing of Tiger Woods, the strong grip of Patty Berg, the long-limbed torque of Michelle Wie. 

That variety is part of the game’s mystery, harking to the alphabets once posted above grade-school blackboards. Nearly everyone learned to write by copying them, yet no two signatures are alike. Nearly everyone can read Hogan’s Five Lessons or Harvey Pennick’s Little Red Book, but no one will perfectly follow their blueprints. 

If they did, a veteran of the game might say, wouldn’t that be dull?

Reaction is relative

In mid-morning, walking past people in coats and sweatshirts, a husband and wife show up for 18 holes in summer wear. The man steps to the first tee in shorts and shirtsleeves. Temperatures may seem absolute; reaction is relative. The couple is, Fischer learns, from Norway. The course set-up may be ironclad; golfers are clad, within the rules, in whatever suits them. Cold? Try a round on the Folgefonna Glacier!

As the day warms into afternoon, more players venture out.

Can they find the green 132 yards out, flirt with the flag? Can they avoid the sand traps? Can they get the ball in the air? Will they shank one into the long line of hedge skirting the tee box or bend a shot way off to the right and splash down across the Intracoastal canal near that yacht with “Sexy” amidships in shiny silver letters?

Regardless, they will parade their own stuff, and form does not always follow function. One gentleman shows a back-swing about two feet long and smacks the ball straight down the middle, just short of the green and its shimmer of seashore paspalum grass.  

Satisfaction in sameness

In pausing to smell the flora, to take in the scene, they might find a worthier goal than chasing a number: finding satisfaction in sameness, like the distant view of an old-time assembly line swarmed with workers in matching coveralls, or of uniformed troops massed into rectangles. Taking comfort in difference. Achievers achieving or falling short. Relaxers relaxing just enough or too much. 

New hybrids or old persimmons, the exact yardages of a GPS, iced tea or beer for a chaser, focus locus or focus pocus. 

Every day, the guys in the Red Reef golf shop say, is a good day for a game.   Ú

In Coasting Along, our writers occasionally stop to reflect on life along the shore.