Sanding Your Grips to Improve Your Game

The golf grip is one of the most important parts of your golf club. It is the only direct contact that you have with your golf club. I completely agree with Golf Pride's explanation: "The traction that a fresh grip provides lets you hold the club lightly without the subconscious fear of losing the club during your swing. This relaxed state promotes proper swing mechanics and wrist action. While a worn grip causes you to grasp the club tighter, causing arm and wrist tension that inhibits proper swing mechanics."

In addition, Golf Pride recommends: "As a rule of thumb, you should regrip once every year. Regardless of whether you play golf every day or twice a year, ozone, heat, dirt, and oils are constantly at work breaking down the materials that make up your grips."

However, I've been able to extend the life of my golf grips by simply sanding them down when they start to get slick with medium grit sandpaper to reveal a fresh layer of rubber. As a reference, Fred Couples uses 220-grit sandpaper. To get them extra clean, follow the sanding with a wash using dish soap and rinse with water. Try it and discover how a little sandpaper can prolong the usefulness of your grips and save you some major coin!

Bubba Watson & Co. Rules!

First there was New Kids on the Block in the 80s. Their inexplicable success spawned a flood of "boy bands" including the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, O-Town, and 98 Degrees. But musical tastes changed and the boy band phenomenon faded.

That is, until Ben Crane, Bubba Watson, Rickie Fowler, & Hunter Mahan formed the "Golf Boys". Check out their newly released video for their soon-to-be-#1 song, "Oh Oh Oh":



How awesome is that? These guys must be truly cool cats to appear in such a hilarious video. Bubba might have choked away the Deutsche Bank Championship last week, but he is still a winner in my book!

Adam Scott Copies Tiger Woods Again!

Charles Caleb Colton once wrote, "Imitation is the sincerest (form) of flattery." If that's true, Tiger Woods must feel like Adam Scott is absolutely in love with him. It is well known that Adam Scott was completely captivated by Tiger's golf swing and set out to copy it as best he could. He did a pretty darn good job and his swing looked like a carbon copy of Tiger's until Tiger started toying with it about a decade ago. But if you look at Adam's swing now, it's still the same old swing. He's like a human time capsule preserving Tiger's vintage swing circa 2000.

But the swing isn't the only thing that Adam copied from Tiger. Adam hired Tiger's former swing coach, Butch Harmon, to perfect and maintain the swing clone. Proof of Butch's influence can be found if you watch Adam's pre-shot routine where you can see him use Butch's golf grip method. On the equipment front, Adam signed an endorsement deal with Titleist, Tiger's former weapons dealer. Then, after Tiger dumped his caddy, the grouchy Steve Williams, who do you think was there to yank him off the unemployment line? Adam, of course. Most recently, Adam copied Tiger by winning the 2011 World Golf Championships-Bridgestone Invitational at Firestone Country Club last weekend, a course that Tiger has won seven times before!

Now is there anything left for Adam to copy? An easy one would be to wear red on Sundays. A much harder one would be to win a major. But I'm most interested if Adam will try to date one of the Nordegren twins. If he ends up marrying one, he could start having affairs on her to be a true Tiger copycat!

Joey Chestnut is the Tiger Woods of Eating!

I hope that everyone had a great 4th of July weekend. One of the great recent traditions of the celebration of America's independence is Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest. The excitement this year surrounded Joey "Jaws" Chestnut's title defense. He is ranked #1 in the world by the International Federation of Competitive Eating. Joey plowed through 62 hot dogs in 10 minutes to win by a Tigeresque margin of victory of nine over his closest competitor, Patrick Bertoletti. Check out the event below:



It was Chestnut's fifth-consecutive championship earning him $10,000 and the coveted mustard yellow championship belt. Hmmm...I guess the real lesson here is that if you're going to dominate an individual sport, do it in golf rather than eating. Also, I'm pretty sure that the groupies aren't as hot on the hot dog eating circuit as it is in golf.