Mackenzie: The Golf Bag

For those who like to walk the course, a good bag is a great investment.  The MacKenzie company specializes in high quality golf bags. 

Their premium ‘Walker’ model (shown left) was originally designed by PGA tour player Peter Jacobsen, who also founded the company in the eighties.

This all leather bag costs a little over $700 and, while the build quality certainly justifies the hefty price tag, I opted to go for the less expensive Llama model. The Llama retails for $250 and is hand-made in Portland, Oregon from water resistant ballistic nylon.

Premium leather details on various places give the bag a very classy look and the leather strap is very comfortable on the shoulders.

The bag weighs only 1.5 kilograms (3lbs) and has enough pockets to fit everything you need during a round.

 

I was most impressed with their customer service and willingness to accommodate specific requests.

If you are interested in buying a MacKenzie, please don’t hesitate to contact Thom! 

European Senior Tour

In my opinion one of the most interesting tours is the European Senior Tour. Great players on classic golf courses, what’s not to like?

As you probably know there are lots of beautiful courses around that are deemed too short for regular tour events. European Senior Tour events are also played on these kinds of courses. As fairways get narrower shot making, placement and trajectory control becomes more important than length. The senior players grew up playing these kinds of courses and you can learn a lot just by watching them dissect a course. Guys like Ian Woosnam, Sam Torrance, Sandy Lyle and Peter Fowler have been competing at the top for decades and it’s just great to to see that they still have some great golf in them.

Schedule

Here is a list of this year’s upcoming events; I can highly recommend attending at least one of them.

Jul 21-Jul 24    The Senior Open Championship 2011 Walton Heath G.C., Surrey,Surrey,England
Jul 28-Jul 31    US Senior Open 2011 Inverness Club, Toledo,Ohio,USA   
Aug 19-Aug 21 Cleveland Golf / Srixon Scottish Senior Open Fairmont St. Andrews,St. Andrews, Fife,Scotland   
Sep 02-Sep 04    Travis Perkins plc Senior Masters Duke's Course, Woburn GC,Woburn,England    
Sep 16-Sep 18    Casa Serena Open Casa Serena Golf,Prague,Czech Republic        
Sep 22-Sep 24    Cannes Mougins Masters Cannes Mougins,Cannes,France
Sep 29-Oct 01    Senior Open de Portugal Belas Clube de Campo,Lisbon,Portugal
Oct 14-Oct 16    Benahavis Senior Masters La Quinta Golf & Country Club,Marbella,Spain      
Nov 04-Nov 06    ISPS Handa Australian Senior Open TBC,TBA,Australia
Nov 18-Nov 20    Fubon Senior Open Miramar Golf & Country Club,Taipei,Taiwan
Dec 09-Dec 11    MCB Tour Championship Constance Belle Mare Plage,Poste de Flacq,Mauritius

Taken from: http://www.europeantour.com/seniortour/index.html

Van Lanschot Senior Open at The Royal Hague G&CC 

Last month the senior tour came to The Netherlands and they played The Royal Hague G&CC (aka ‘De Haagsche’ in Dutch). The course is regarded as one of the finest examples of a links course on Europe’s mainland. During the first few days of the tournament the heavily sloped course showed its teeth as the rain and wind prevented players from going low. On Saturday, the lowest score was three under by Peter Fowler. On Sunday, Des Smyth played some incredible golf. Coming from 4 strokes down behind Fowler, he put together a string of birdies and two eagles to finish at 6 under.

Here are some swing clips that were taken at this particular event:

Sam Torrance short iron approach at the first hole.

Kevin Spurgeon in slow mo….

Bunker shot by Mike Harwood

Bill Longmuir long iron approach shot.

Here comes Johnny

Miller, Watson, Palmer and Nicklaus having some fun during a clinic.
   

Here he shows us 4 different ways to draw or fade the ball.
Note that Johnny does not take into consideration the 'new ballflight laws' aka the 'D Plane' .
   


   

DIY underlistings for leather wrap grips.

The following video outlines the process of creating your own underlistings for vintage leather wrap grips. Sometimes when you need to reshaft vintage irons the original grips are still usable while the underlistings are not. They either are glued to the old shafts or are disintegrating due to age. Since I could not find any underlistings on eBay I decided to create my own. 

This method allows for more than just the standard tapered shape of the grip. If you want you can even do a reverse tapering. Or maybe you just want to have the part under the right hand built up a bit.

For these old Hogan grips from the 1950’s I managed to reuse the end caps, the grip collars and the wraps themselves. I had to cut the collars with a knife but they will go back on the new shafts together with some black electricity tape of the same width.

Have fun!

Shaft Removal redone

This is an addendum to the ‘restoring irons’ series I did last year. Separating the head from the shaft can be a difficult task, and some of the older sets need a different treatment than the one described here.

While reshafting a set of Ben Hogan 1953 Precisions I found that the conventional way of removing the shafts did not work as expected. I had removed the shaft pins and torched the hosel until it was red hot. The head would not move at all. If this happens it means that the epoxy is not the reason that the head does not come loose. I could think of only two possible reasons.

The first assertion is that corrosion has formed a bond between the shaft and the head; not implausible after 58 years of use.

The second assertion is that the shafts have been hammered into a very tight hosel, thus forming a mechanical bond that simply can’t be broken by heat.

Either way, I knew I needed to resort to a different way of getting the shafts out of the clubheads. What I did was this:

1. Cut the shaft an inch above the ferrule.
2. Insert a solid metal rod into the shaft. The tighter it fits the better it will work.
3. Clamp the shaft (with the rod inside) in a vice and make sure that the shaft can’t twist.
4. Grab the head with two hands and try to turn it loose.
5. Once it gives in you can start to pull it off.

It turns out that the shaft tips weren’t abraded at all and that little or no epoxy had been used for these clubs. Epoxies weren’t very strong those days so I figure they just made sure that they also secured them with pins and the mechanical bond by hammering the shafts into a tight hosel.

 

 

As described above, you must put a rod inside the shaft before clamping it in a vice. If the rod is too small in diameter the shaft can break due to the twisting of the head.

This happened to me but fortunately I managed to fix it by removing the ferrule and repeating the process with a better fitting rod. (see below pics)…

 

Mickey Wright and George Knudson: Swinging in Style

Mickey Wright

Mickey won 82 events on the LPGA Tour, putting her in second place on the all-time win list. She is also the only golfer in LPGA history to hold all four majors simultaneously.
Still not impressed? Ben Hogan said her swing was the best he'd ever seen.

"When I play my best golf, I feel as if I'm in a fog, standing back watching the earth in orbit with a golf club in my hands."

George Knudson

Knudson won five Ontario Opens, five Canadian PGA Championships, and posted eight major victories on the U.S. PGA tour. He finished tied for second (with Tom Weiskopf and Billy Casper) one shot behind George Archer in the 1969 US Masters.

"transfer weight and rotate"