Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay – scenic beauty, great golf, luxurious accommodations

If the first things that come to mind when you think of Half Moon Bay, California, are pumpkin patches, Christmas tree farms, the Mavericks surfing contest, seafood, and the rugged beauty of the San Mateo County coast, that’s fine – the seaside community at the junction of Hwys 1 and 92 is justly famed for all of those things. There are two more thing which the mention of Half Moon Bay should bring to mind, however: luxury resort accommodations and great golf.

The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay
Situated on the coastal shelf between the rising foothills of the Coast Range and the crashing Pacific Ocean surf, just off Hwy 1 about 3-1/2 miles south of the town of Half Moon Bay, The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay resort provides an unlooked-for luxury destination in the long stretch of ruggedly-beautiful California coast between the Monterey Peninsula and San Francisco.

The 6-story resort hotel features 261 rooms, ranging from the merely luxurious “standard” rooms to top-of-the-market suites – with most rooms featuring ocean views, and many having outdoor firepits.

Situated in a dramatic setting on a bluff overlooking the Pacific Ocean, the Ritz-Carlton

Half Moon Bay offers luxurious accommodations, and all the amenities expected of a 

first-class luxury resort.

No first-class luxury resort can aspire to that designation without amenities above and beyond well-appointed hotel rooms and suites, and The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay does not disappoint when it comes to dining, spa facilities, or available activities.

The resort’s main restaurant, Navio, serves coastal cuisine featuring fresh, local ingredients. At the time of my visit to the resort last September the first local salmon catch in three years was brought in by the fishermen of Half Moon Bay, and chef de cuisine Sean Eastwood and his staff certainly did well by this local delicacy. For fine dining – including a wine cellar featuring the finest selections from regional, national, and international vintners – Navio stands with the best that the Central Coast region, from the Monterey Peninsula to San Francisco, has to offer.

Navio, at the Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay, offers fine dining in elegant surroundings.

Other dining options at the resort include the bistro menu offered in The Conservatory Lounge (with live music in the evenings), and informal, fireside dining at Mullins Bar & Grill at the golf course clubhouse. My favorite from the Mullins menu: the smoked ribs. The resort has its own smoker, and the smoked ribs that they serve rival any that you will find in the BBQ capitals of the South and Southwest U.S.

Opportunities for indoor and outdoor exercise activities abound at the resort. The 24-hour fitness center features state-of-the-art cardio- and weight training equipment, daily aerobics classes and a yoga studio, and outdoor activities include tennis, bicycling along the coastal trail, and of course, golf on the two award-winning golf courses.

For those with relaxation in mind, or looking to work out the kinks after exercise, the resort features a complete spa facility with 16 treatment rooms, whirlpools, a co-ed Roman mineral bath and a complete range of massage services, facials, manicure and pedicure treatments, and more.

The Roman mineral bath in the spa at Ritz-Carlton Half Moon Bay is ideal for relaxing after an active day.

No matter which of the services and facilities you take advantage of during your stay at The Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay, you can be certain that the courteous and attentive staff will do their best to ensure that you enjoy your stay.

Half Moon Bay Golf Links
Though I am as easily distracted by fine dining and luxurious accommodations as the next person, the focus of my visit to the Ritz-Carlton, Half Moon Bay resort was golf. The resort features two championship-caliber courses – The Old Course, a classic American Parkland-style course co-designed by Arnold Palmer and Francis Duane in 1973; and The Ocean Course, a true links-style layout designed by Arthur Hills in 1999. Hills was also responsible for major remodeling work on the Old Course, conducted in two phases: on the back nine in 2000, and on the front nine in 2009. I played the two courses on back-to-back days during my visit, and came away tremendously impressed by their playing qualities, their condition, and the professionalism and attentiveness of the staff.

Both of these distinctive courses deserve more detailed individual attention, so look for Parts II and III of this series to learn more about The Old Course and The Ocean Course at Half Moon Bay Golf Links.

What’s Coming Up in Bay Area/Northern California Golf in 2013

As we hang up a new calendar and welcome in the new year, it’s time to look ahead at what 2013 has in store for the golf fan in Northern California.

Amateur/USGA golf

The high point of 2012 for golf in the Bay Area was, of course, the United States Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco, and while we won’t be welcoming the USGA’s biggest event back to the area again until 2019, when it returns to Pebble Beach, there is still plenty of USGA golf happening in Northern California in the coming year. 

In 2012 local courses hosted qualifying tournaments for the U.S. Men’s and Women’s Opens; respectively, Lake Merced Golf Club & Harding Park Golf course, and Half Moon Bay Golf Links. In 2013 Lake Merced Golf Club is scheduled to host a sectional qualifier for the U.S. Women’s Open; information on a local qualifying site for the 2013 Men’s Open is not yet available.

Two USGA championships will be contested in Northern California in 2013: the U.S. Junior Amateur July 22 – 27 at the Martis Camp Club in Truckee, and the U.S. Senior Women’s Amateur Championship September 21-26 at CordeValle Resort in San Martin, home of the Frys.com Open.

Another distinguished amateur event on the Bay Area golf calendar – and one which has been there since 1917 – is the San Francisco City Championship. The oldest continuously-played municipal golf tournament in the United States, “The City”, as it is known, is played at the Lincoln Park and Harding Park golf courses, and can boast as past champions such illustrious local stars as 1964 U.S. Open Champion Ken Venturi (San Francisco), 1999 U.S. Women’s Open Champion Julie Inkster (Santa Cruz), and 1969 Masters Champion George Archer (Gilroy). Deadline for entries is January 15; competition in the various divisions takes place in late February and March. More information about the tournament is available at http://www.sfgolfchampionship.com/.

Amateur events like these are well worth any golf fan’s time to come out and watch, as they illustrate so well the depth of interest and participation in the competitive game across the full spectrum of age and gender.

Professional golf
In the realm of professional golf in the Bay Area/Northern California, the Pebble Beach AT&T National Pro-Am needs no introduction. The AT&T is a perennial crowd-pleaser, the largest annual draw in the area for golf fans of all stripes. The tournament’s unique format, which features pro-am teams playing the full tournament over three courses, coupled with the unrivaled scenic splendor of the Monterey Peninsula, makes it a fitting opener for the Northern California golf season. This year’s AT&T Pro-Am will be played February 7-10.

The 7th hole at Pebble Beach is just one of the many scenic spots on this beautiful course. (photo by author)

Professional golf returns to Pebble Beach later in the season with the Champions Tour’s The First Tee Open, this year with a schedule change that moves the event from its early July time slot to the final weekend in September. The move to September is a good one for the tournament, as the weather on the Monterey Peninsula is generally more welcoming in late September than it is in early July. The lack of schedule conflicts with the PGA Tour that weekend may tempt some more of the PGA/Champions Tour crossover players to make the trip to Pebble for the event. The First Tee Open is a real treat for local golf fans – smaller crowds, budget-friendly ticket prices, and convenient nearby parking to watch championship-caliber golf on one of the finest golf courses in the world.

Next on the calendar for professional golf in Northern California is the Frys.com Open, played October 7-13 on the challenging Robert Trent Jones II course at CordeValle Resort in San Martin. With the institution of the wrap-around season for 2013-2014, the Frys.com Open takes a jump in prestige with its new role as the PGA Tour’s season-opener. The tournament’s new status as the players’ first chance to score FedEx Cup points in the new season should bring a deeper field to the event in 2013.

The Champions Tour returns to the Bay Area in the fall with their year-ending championship tournament, the Schwab Cup. Back in the Bay Area after a detour to the Desert Mountain Club in Scottsdale, Arizona in 2012, the Schwab Cup will be contested at Harding Park Golf Course in San Francisco October 31-November 3. The Schwab Cup has a long history in the Bay Area: Harding Park hosted the Schwab Cup Championship in 2010 and 2011 following a 7-year tenure at the Sonoma Golf Club.

Another must-see event at Pebble Beach Golf Links in 2013 will be the Callaway Pebble Beach Invitational, November 19-24. A unique pro-am event which pits players from a variety of professional tours – PGA, Web.com, Champions, LPGA, and Symetra Tour – against each other in a length-adjusted format, the PBI is another extremely fan-friendly event. Spectators can walk the fairways at Pebble Beach, Spyglass and Del Monte right behind the pros, getting a perspective on these great courses that no other event can offer. Admission is free, and parking – which can be an ordeal when the AT&T Pro-Am or the U.S. Open are played at Pebble – is convenient, nearby, and free.

Unfortunately, the Bay Area/Central Coast region will continue to be without an LPGA tournament in 2013. The distaff Tour has been absent from the Bay Area golf scene since the demise of the CVS Pharmacy Challenge, contested at Blackhawk Country Club, after the 2010 season. Also missing from the local professional golf calendar is the WEB.com Tour (formerly Nationwide Tour) event at TPC Stonebrea, which is on a one-year hiatus while the clubhouse at the course undergoes renovations.

The coming year holds lots of promise for Bay Area golf fans, with plenty of opportunities to see high-quality amateur and professional golf played on some fine area courses.

You’ve Got To Love Johnny Miller…

…especially if you’re a golf writer looking for a quote. With over two dozen wins on the PGA Tour, two majors to his credit and a 22-year career in the broadcast booth for CBS, Johnny has the credibility to speak his mind – and he certainly does; he is well-known for not pulling punches when doling out his opinions from the broadcast tower or in interviews.

Sportswriter Dan Jenkins mentioned Johnny’s acerbic commentary style in his 2005 novel Slim and None, when his main character, fictitious PGA Tour pro Bobby Joe Grooves, compared Miller to the blunt-spoken announcers at European Tour events:

“Hit a bad shot in America and every announcer but Johnny Miller will throw you a softball. Say something like, ‘That’s not exactly what he had in mind.’ 

But hit a bad shot in Europe and the Brit on the mike will say, ‘Ah, there’s old Aunt Martha, trying to play golf again.’ ”

Johnny was on hand the weekend before Thanksgiving at Pebble Beach as honorary host of the Callaway Pebble Beach Invitational pro-am tournament. Enjoying a pristine late-autumn Central Coast afternoon while he waited by the 18th green to present the trophy to tournament winner Tommy “Two Gloves” Gainey, Johnny was asked about the news that the current world #1, Rory McIlroy, was soon to make a wholesale equipment change. The young Northern Irishman is rumored to be signing a multi-year, multi-million dollar deal with Nike, and dropping the Titleist clubs and ball that have been in his bag for four European Tour victories, six PGA Tour wins, and two major championships. Johnny’s answer was typically blunt:

“It could be a major issue. It’s one thing to change clubs, but it’s another thing when you change ball and clubs. I did that with Wilson in ’75, and it literally ruined my career. I never tell anybody that, but since we got on it… they had that truncated-cone dimple ball and crappy woods – the irons were good, but I mean it was a disaster for me. It would have been one thing if I could have kept playing Titleist or something, but they wanted me to switch to their new ball.”

The problem with good players is they think they can win with a rental set, you know, but it really isn’t true. You have so much confidence you feel like ‘Hey, it doesn’t matter, I’ll take the big bucks…’ ”

McIlroy obviously feels differently about it than Miller; on Tuesday in Dubai he was asked by reporters if he had any concerns that the change would jeopardize his game. He replied, 

“No, not at all. I think all the manufacturers make great equipment nowadays and it’s all very similar – a lot of them get their clubs made at the same factories. I don’t think it will make any difference.”

With Nike in the equipment news recently promoting their new “cavity-back” Covert driver, and the second generation of their resin-core-technology ball, this is probably not what Rory’s new handlers in Beaverton would like to hear.

On the other hand, the folks at “The House That Swoosh Built” may not be concerned. With players’ roles these days more as brand ambassadors than pitchmen for a specific line of clubs or model of ball, McIlroy is not likely to be shoehorned into an existing product line; in fact, far from playing clubs manufactured in some überfactory churning out clubs for all comers, Rory’s new sticks are likely to be handmade Nike-skinned replicas of his successful Titleist clubs, and the ball he plays may be a finely-tuned special, custom-crafted to his liking – the goal is for him to win with the Swoosh on display, and the details of what he uses to get there will probably never be known outside his immediate circle.
 

McIlroy rubbed a little salt in the wound for his former friends at Titleist with comments he made after his victory at the Dubai Championship Sunday. Asked what he would do with his clubs now that he had played his last round with them, he responded (laughing), “I’m not sure yet, I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll keep them as a bit of a memento.” 

****************************************************

Of course, you can’t talk about Rory McIlroy these days without also talking about Tiger Woods. Not only are the two knee-deep in a palsy-walsy “bromance” of a sort that would have been unthinkable for Woods to get involved in – at least with a competitive rival – in his glory days, they are going to be stablemates in the Nike Golf empire.

With three wins – but no majors – on his record in 2012, and a new wunderkind potentially relegating him to a second-fiddle position at Nike, speculation about what lies ahead for a sputtering Tiger Woods is the subject of much discussion in golf circles these days. Johnny also had something to say about what’s to come for Tiger:

“I think Tiger will have a good year; obviously he’s due to win a Masters. If he can win a Masters and get that monkey [off his back]…The old career is gone – it’s like it’s past history; somebody else did it. Now he’s got kind of a new time of his life, which just about every golfer goes through from 35 on. It’ll be interesting to see if he can get the little bugs out of his head, the worries and this and that.” 

“Right now the young guys aren’t scared of him, that’s the big difference. Before everybody was scared to death of him, but now it’s sort of like ‘Yeah, yeah, you were great, unbelievably great, but that was before – now it’s our turn.’ That’s what he’s got to overcome.”

Love him or hate him – there is rarely any middle ground – Johnny Miller is always worth listening to. When he’s in the mood to talk he’ll tell you exactly what he’s thinking, and even if you don’t agree with what he says, you have to admit that there are few in the world of golf who have as much credibility to back up their opinions.

Golf pros pay their dues – in Wednesday Pro-Ams

Think a golf pro’s life is a bed of roses? All private jets, courtesy cars, and million-dollar paychecks? Well sure, in the upper strata of the profession there’s a lot of that, and even the “bubble boys”, the guys who are floating in the nether-land around the 125 mark in the standings are making a hell of a living compared to your typical blue-collar guy, desk jockey, or even small-corporation CEO, but the guys (and gals) who play the game for a living pay their dues – every week in the Wednesday Pro-Am.

The Wednesday pro-am is a staple of every professional golf tournament, and along with skyboxes and hospitality areas, it is a big part of the income stream that supports professional golf’s commitment to charitable giving.

So, besides the obvious benefits that come to the recipients of the tournament’s charitable giving, the benefits to the amateur players are many: the thrill of playing a round of golf with a big-time pro; the good feeling that comes from knowing that their money not only bought them a great experience, but is helping one of the many local charities that are supported by the event; and bragging rights for a year about the time they teed it up with Ernie, or Vijay, or Phil.

But for the pros? What is their experience like? You might have to get a golf pro good and drunk before he’d admit it (these guys are not known to be prone to biting the hand that feeds them…), but many of them dread the Wednesday pro-am more than a root canal sans novacaine.

In addition to the same good feeling that the amateur players get – knowing that their efforts are helping charitable causes – they know that they are supporting the Tour which supports them by acting as a draw to bring the big-money amateurs into the fold. They also know that when they tee off with a threesome of amateurs in tow, they are in for a 5- to 6-hour round during which they will spend a lot of time doing things like standing over their ball in the fairway while a playing partner looks for yet another lost Titleist, and listening to excuses like “I carry a 10 handicap, but these new clubs just are not working out for me!”

The pro’s three partners are usually named Hooker, Slycem, and Chunk – or should be, if you go by the majority of shots they hit. They’re generally local business bigshots (LBBs), or the top salesman who works for a local business bigshot. Top salesman gets the pro-am slot when the LBB’s latest trophy wife swears she’ll divorce him and pull his bank account out through his ears if he doesn’t take her to Hawaii instead of to another damned golf tournament.

The three amateurs are either playing the latest blades – custom-forged and hand-ground by trolls in the Black Forest, surgical implements which the Tour pro himself wouldn’t try to hit, or grand-dad’s Tommy Armour Silver Scot irons with shiny-slick leather grips (“They’re the originals!”, he’ll exclaim with pride) that have more business being in a glass case in a museum than out on a golf course.

Off the tee they’ll hit screaming worm-burners or high pop-ups; on the rare occasion when they do get in the fairway they’ll hit smothered hooks, banana balls, or chili-dips so severe that the local planning commission has to approve their divot. Out of a greenside bunker – and oh lordy, do they find the bunkers – they’ll take a mighty swing that scatters two shovelfuls of sand onto the green, only to have the ball pop up and land at their feet; or they’ll hit a thinned screamer that sets a new Land Speed Record traversing 200 feet of green to find the other bunker – or a water hazard – on the opposite side.

The long-suffering pro plays through all this commotion and distraction with a smile on his face and a smoldering fire in his heart. He’s trying to get a read on the golf course so that he has a clue where he should be playing the ball tomorrow when the real action starts.

The pro wants his caddy studying breaks and grain patterns on the greens, not helping the amateurs and their drinking-buddy caddies find another lost Pro V1x, or reading the 40-foot, double-hump, triple-breaking putt that Amateur #2 left himself after skulling a 60-yard wedge shot 140 yards to the far side of the green.

After the round he’ll pal it up with his ams at the post-round awards banquet (like he wants to spend another minute with these guys…), and pose for a few more pictures with the ams and their former-cheerleader wives, cussing to himself and hoping that the sadistic tournament committee doesn’t parch the greens ’til they’re slicker than a linoleum floor for tomorrow – when the course becomes his office, and he goes to work to earn his living.

Book Review: “Let There Be Pebble: A Mid-Handicapper’s Year in America’s Garden of Golf” ☹

I lingered a long time with my fingers poised over the keyboard while I pondered how to proceed with this review. On the face of it there is much to be admired – even envied – about a golfer/golf-writer/wanna-be novelist who ditches his hum-drum life in some Midwestern fly-over state to spend a year in one of the most beautiful physical landscapes on the planet, schmoozing with the best professional golfers in the world, not to mention celebrities from the worlds of sports, TV, movies, and music who also flock to the place. On the other hand, there is also something a bit “Gee, Toto – I don’t think we’re in Kansas anymore!” about it.

The chronicle of this journey, as related by author Zachary Michael Jack, careers drunkenly back and forth between two extremes. The book frequently lapses into an uncomfortably-adolescent hero-worship of both the place – Pebble Beach Golf Links and the nearby town of Carmel – and the people who live there and/or frequent the area professionally or as tourists; it will then veer off into a coldly cynical assessment of the California-craziness of the place as seen through the lens of a Midwestern upbringing, with long stretches in which the author settles into a naively insouciant familiarity that struck me as somewhat self-deluding.

Jack deserves credit for having the chutzpah to shoulder his way into the Pebble Beach/Carmel community, like the gawky nerd who crashes a party thrown by his high school social superiors. Taking in four big-time golf tournaments at Pebble Beach during his year Out West, he interviewed anyone who would stand still long enough, from the mayor of Carmel and the people responsible for the day-to-day operations of the Pebble Beach Golf Links, to golf luminaries such as Gary Player, Johnny Miller, and Jack Nicklaus – even the other golf writers who were covering the tournaments. He brazened his way through open houses in multi-million dollar homes on 17-Mile Drive while renting a room in a Carmel bungalow and sleeping on a yoga mat, and took a stab at the singles dating scene in the area. He ventured north, to San Francisco and Sausalito, where he spoke with (and fawned over) Michael Murphy, founder of the Esalen Institute and the author of a book that is simultaneously (and sadly) the worst book ever written about golf, and the one which has probably sold the most copies: Golf in the Kingdom.

Despite the implication of the sub-title, “A Mid-Handicapper’s Year in America’s Garden of Golf”, Jack appears not to have played much golf during his year in Pebble Beach. He refers to only two rounds played, one at Pebble Beach Golf Links itself, and another at “The Poor Man’s Pebble Beach”, Pacific Grove Municipal Golf Links – a fine municipal course just up the road from the high-priced tracks of the Del Monte Forest – which he dismissed as ordinary. He spends nearly as much time dropping names, and describing (and dissing) the politics and social mores of the area as he does talking about golf.

Another reviewer noted that the author of this book seemed to be very fond of the sound of his own voice – and I most heartily second that opinion. His prose is verbose and overwrought, and he revels in inane wordplay and puns of the worst sort (not that there is a good sort...). To make matters worse, the book appears to have been proofread and edited by a dropout from sophomore English – bad enough coming from a commercial publishing house, but the egregious lack of quality is made even sadder by the fact that the book was published by the University of Nebraska Press.

By way of example:

• On two occasions in the text, in a reference to a person seemingly suffering from Tourette’s Syndrome (a neuropsychiatric disorder characterized by motor and vocal tics), the person is spoken of as having “Turret’s”.

• Bushmill’s Whiskey, one of the sponsors of Irishman Graeme McDowell,  the winner of the 2010 U. S. Open which Jack chronicles briefly in the book, is referred to as “Bushnell’s” (makers of precision optical instruments and laser rangefinders for golf and sportshooting).

• The name of a well-known Bay Area sportswriter is misspelled.

• He uses, unattributed, the nicknames for Pebble Beach as a whole – “Double-Bogey by the Sea”, and its most difficult stretch of holes  – “Abalone Corner” (the eighth, ninth, and tenth), which were coined by Golf Hall of Fame sportswriter Dan Jenkins.

The list of similar inanities, malapropisms, and flat-out mistakes goes on and on, and they come more frequently the further along in the book one reads, as if the proofreader was skipping along hurriedly in order to get an unpleasant job over with.

I have to admit, I only finished this book to see just how much worse it could get – and the further I read, the worse it got. This is the biggest train-wreck of a book I have read since I put down Golf in the Kingdom about 2/3rds of the way through. Pebble Beach and the Monterey Peninsula area deserve to be treated much better than they fared at the hands of Mr Jack, and if there were border guards controlling access to the region, they would have the author’s picture in their “Undesirables” file, to prevent his returning and perpetrating any more nonsense of this kind.

The book jacket describes the author as a former newspaper columnist and sportswriter, and his current bio has him writing poetry, and teaching English at a small Methodist college in Naperville, Illinois. Heaven help his students if they retain anything they learn from him about writing.

High-tech help for your golf game at GolfTEC Improvement Centers

In almost no other sport or game is the quest for perfection so potentially frustrating, if not downright futile, as in the game of golf. Unlike nearly every other major game or sport, golf is played on an ever-changing field of play, with a variety of implements that are each designed to a different job – from smacking the ball 200-hundred + yards down the fairway, to rolling it a few feet, or even a few inches, along the ground on the putting green – and everything in between. Mastering the skills required to use all of these tools correctly, in order to get the ball from the tee, to the green, and into the hole – in the least number of stokes – can be a supremely frustrating journey.

Browsing the shelves of golf books in the “Sports” section at your local bookstore (if you can still find one) or library (ditto…) will illustrate a fundamental truth – something over 90% of the books related to the subject of golf ever published, and many of the bestselling, are instructional titles. The problem is that teaching yourself to play golf effectively, beyond the most basic concepts of stance and grip, is beyond the capabilities of all but a very small, gifted, percentage of the population. For example: professional golfer Larry Nelson, with 10 PGA Tour victories and 19 Champions Tour victories to his credit, including the 1981 & 1987 PGA Championships and the 1983 U.S. Open Championship—didn’t take up golf until he was in his early twenties. Freshly mustered out of the army after a tour of duty in Viet Nam, he taught himself to play by reading Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf, the best selling golf instructional book ever published.

For most of us, though, playing golf with any level of facility is going to involve professional help. One of the most common teaching venues is at a driving range – either in a group lesson or one-on-one with a teaching pro – which seems logical. Since the point of the exercise is to produce the desired ball flight, hitting balls at a driving range where the flight of the ball can be observed seems to make sense.

While the satisfaction of smacking balls downrange is enticing, there is no guarantee that either you or your instructor will be able to effectively make the connection between your actions and their result. A more certain method of connecting swing motion with result is to make use of the latest instructional technology, in an indoor teaching facility equipped with video cameras and launch monitors.

One resource that I have recently explored in my own pursuit of improved quality and consistency in my golf game is the local GolfTEC Improvement Center. Started in 1995 by two graduates of the Mississippi State University Professional Golf Management program, Joe Assell and Mike Clinton, in nine years, GolfTEC has grown from modest beginnings to 148 locations across the country, with a footprint covering approximately 70% of the United States.

While other teaching facilities may utilize the same type of equipment that GolfTEC centers do – video cameras, launch monitors, and biometric measurement systems – the heart of GolfTEC’s teaching system, and its greatest strength, is the database of swing motion information that GolfTEC instructors can draw upon to evaluate a student’s swing. Built up over years of measuring the swings of PGA, LPGA, and Champions Tour pros in the fitness vans that accompany the professional golf circuit, this treasure trove of information allows a GolfTEC instructor to compare the student’s body motion during the golf swing to the information compiled from sessions with the finest professional golfers in the world.

After fitting you with a pair of tiny, three-axis accelerometers, one between your shoulder blades and another at waist level, your instructor will film your swing a few times, gathering video and biometric data as a baseline from which to begin your instruction. Then, pick a pro golfer to compare your swing to, or more realistically, let the GolfTEC instructor pick one (because, hey – everyone thinks that they swing like Freddie Couples…).

With your data in the bank, your instructor will pull up a video clip of the chosen pro from their extensive database, and show you an enlightening (but often sobering…) side-by-side comparison of your swing and the pro’s, accompanied by the biometric data showing the body motions that affect your golf swing. With the video and the biometrics of your swing as a baseline, your instructor will show you how your swing motions compare to the chosen pro’s, and where your swing can be improved.

Your first session at a GolfTEC Improvement Center is just the beginning of your journey to a better golf game. With just the adjustments in my grip, setup, and swing that I was shown in my first session, I saw noticeable improvement in the direction and consistency of my driving and iron play. Depending upon the level of your desire for improvement, and the amount of time and money you are able to devote to the project, your instructor can lay out a lesson plan that will help you achieve your goals in the game of golf.

If you are serious about improving your skill level, and your enjoyment of the game, you owe it to yourself to check out your local GolfTec Improvement Center.

Movie Review: “Golf In The Kingdom” ☺

Michael Murphy’s book Golf in the Kingdom is one of the most revered volumes in golf literature, commanding pride of place in many a golfer’s bookcase – why I’ll never know, as the book is a mish-mash of pseudo-mystical babble that has nothing of value to say about the game of golf.  Through this book, Murphy, who is one of the co-founders of the Esalen Institute, and a central figure in the Human Potential Movement, is almost single-handedly responsible for the golf-as-spiritual-journey movement (keep your crystal-gazing meditation – give me a flat left wrist, a straight left arm, and a full follow-through…).

The book is so pretentious, so obscure, so dismally bad that it is hard for me to believe that my hometown of Salinas, the small Central California farming town that gave rise to the literary genius of John Steinbeck, can also claim Murphy as a native son (I blame Stanford University – that’s where Murphy, a pre-med student, wandered into a class on comparative religion by mistake, starting him on his path to mysticism. Without that fateful wrong turn, he might have ended up as just another 8-handicap internist spending his Wednesday afternoons at the country club.)

So, take a bad book, hand it over to an inexperienced filmmaker – indie director Susan Streitfeld (with one minor feminist flick to her credit) – to make a movie out of (as screenwriter and director), and the result is this terrible bit of nonsense.

The actors, an experienced cast which includes Malcom McDowell (A Clockwork Orange, Hidalgo, Bobby Jones: A Stroke of Genius – in which he portrayed Bobby Jones’ friend, and the original golf writer, O. B. Keeler), Frances Fisher (L.A. Story, Titanic), Julian Sands (A Room With A View, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) and the ever-lovely Joanne Whaley (Willow, Scandal) overplay the dinner-party scenes in the manner of summer-stock novices striving to make an impression – a fault which I lay at the feet of the director, as I have seen all of these actors deliver fine, nuanced performances in other films.

Mason Gamble (Dennis the Menace, A Gentleman’s Game – a much better golf movie, based on the book by Tom Coyne), who portrays the young Michael Murphy, stopping off in Scotland for a round of golf on his way to study navel-gazing techniques in India, and David O’Hara, who is best known for his portrayal of the mad Irishman Stephen in Mel Gibson’s 1995 film Braveheart, suffer by comparison with the other cast members mostly by virtue of spending more time on screen under Ms Streitfeld’s direction. 

The film jumps from scene to scene, back and forth in the storyline (such as it is) with such reckless abandon that it must be intentionally non-linear – no one could edit a film this badly by accident and hope to ever work in the field again. The staging of the dinner party scenes is reminiscent of some low-budget local theater group’s idea of minimalism, filmed, as they were, in an Oregon barn rather than in a weather-beaten 18th-century home in a storm-battered seaside Scottish university town (or at least in a reasonable facsimile of that setting).

The exteriors were filmed at a superb golf course complex on the Oregon coast, Bandon Dunes. Unfortunately, Bandon – though comprising several linksland-style courses – looks little like the east coast of Scotland, where “The Kingdom” of the title (The Kingdom of Fife, home of St Andrews and many other iconic Scottish courses) is supposed to be found. It’s beautiful, but it’s not Scotland. Aside from the (imported) stands of gorse, the vegetation is all wrong, and then there’s the issue of the sun rising on the wrong side of the land. Nice try, on a low budget, but they’re not fooling anyone who has any experience of the Pacific coast of the United States, or the east coast of Scotland.

After premiering in Oregon, at Bandon, and screening at a few film festivals here and there, I don’t think that this film ever hit theater screens. Even here in the San Francisco Bay Area, where small indie films of all types can find audiences, this film was never screened (that I have been able to determine). If you insist on seeing this train wreck for yourself, it is available to rent from Netflix – take my advice, though, and have a copy of Caddyshack or Tin Cup on hand as an antidote, to be administered immediately after you eject this disc from the DVD player…