I saw two amazing golf shots in my regular Thursday round. One good, one not so good.

Good

The good one was on the #1 handicap hole, a long par 4 with a big tree in the middle of the fairway. My pal knocked his 2nd shot in the hole from 190 yards.

Not so good

The 2nd amazing shot was my other buddy chipping onto the green on #18. I can’t even figure out how he did this. He double hit the ball which isn’t extremely strange. But the 2nd hit was on his recoil and he knocked the ball behind him with the back of his club!?? I could sit there with a bucket of 500 practice balls and never pull that off.

I was invited by some guys who work at my home course to go play a around with them Tuesday. They had some kind of free “corporate” pass at a “resort” course about an hour drive East of here in a town called Heber City.

When we got there the weather changed from sunny to a lightning fest with a cold rain. I had only an umbrella as I had my “Summer” bag. My Summer bag is a lighter bag with no rain gear in it. Summers here are dry and 90-105 degrees.

So we waited until the rain had almost stopped and then started our round. It was very cold and wet but we played through it. Finally on about the 5th green the bad weather blew over and it was nice and warm.

The chap who invited me grabbed my cell phone and called the pro shop and asked if we could start our round over since the weather was so bad when we started. They had no problem with that. The chap was so unhappy with his round that he wanted to just start over. I’ve never done that before but since I was their guest, and I hit the same house on one hole twice, I went along with it. So we got in about 23 holes and it was quite fun.

That’s one hell of a mulligan.

The site Webmaster Tips & Tricks has featured Hooked On Golf Blog as their August “site of the month.”

WTT is a site geared toward helping out webmasters with their design, operation, promotion, managment and many other aspects of running a site.

I’d like to thank my pal “dojo” WTT for featuring HOGB. Folks, please drop in and say hello to dojo and check out her site. Tell her mediaguru sent you.

I just checked out the Buick Championship field. Tiger wasn’t in it, so I guess someone else gets to win this week…

I did see Jason Gore’s name on the list though! No doubt he’ll be the big story for the week. How do you think he’ll do for his first event as a card carrying PGA Tour member? He’s already got some great tour experience so I don’t think he’ll be too nervous.

Like I said before, I bet Nike is really glad to already have him in their pocket. I wonder when the first JG Nike commercial will be out.

I’ve spent a few days “under the hood” here at HOGB. As per the previous tweaking post, I’ve made some mods. Let’s see if you’ve noticed and if you like them.

1. Changed the site to a fixed width instead of fluid. I can go back to fluid later…
2. Made the HOGB logo image a link to the blog home
3. Moved up recent posts to better spot
4. Added random golf quotes to upper right (thanks MJ) and nuked upper left quotes.
5. Added text sponsor link section
6. Added “previous entries” and “next entries” to the bottom of each page
7. Implemented text justification in posts
8. Fixed image bug where images bigger than post table would extend beyond the table. That bug made me want to change to fixed width originally but now that it’s fixed I could go back to fluid…

Cool? Any problems? Any suggestions?

The Ping site has pics of the new G5 gear. I’m quite impressed with the G2 driver. Of course they come out with the G5 driver 1.5 weeks after I get a G2 in the bag.

Quick quiz:

Question: What’s the difference between a G2 and a G5?
Answer: 3

I do own a G5 however. I’ve had a G5 for close to two years now. It’s an Apple Powermac Dual G5…

Notes about the NEC Invitational.

Tiger is good. He made an awesome birdie on #16 after driving it into the trees. He had to punch out to about 195 yards. He smoothed a 7 iron to 17 feet and made an improbable birdie. He took the outright lead into the last two holes and never gave it up, despite driving it in the trees on 18 as well. (Sounds like the ‘05 Masters).

Tiger won his 5th tourney of the year to extend his #1 ranking and money lead. He’s looking at the rest of the PGA Tour in his rear view mirror now.

Speaking of the ‘05 Masters, Chris DiMarco had posted his score of -5 and was in the clubhouse watching Tiger knock it in the trees. He was hoping for a chance at another playoff but that never happened.

Stuart Appleby had some interesting nuggets. First he knocked a drive on 16 over 400 yards for the 3rd time. 2nd, he was penalized two strokes because his caddy picked up his moving ball which he’d dropped near the cart path. The ball apparently has to travel two club lengths before it can be stopped.

Kenny Perry just plain melted down. He had it to -8 at one point but jumped on the bogey train and made stops at most of the holes en route to a 74 and a tie for 6th.

Played in the final pair of the match play at one of my clubs today. 27 holes, me and my opponent. I had him down two in the first 18 and I really gave him some breaks by making a few mistakes. Over all I played pretty solid.

My opponent closed me out on the 25th hole though. We were all square after 22 holes but he had 3 birdies in 4 holes to seal the victory. Pars just weren’t good enough on those last few holes.

Though I lost the championship, I’m still fairly happy with doing as well as I did. I didn’t melt down or hand him the match. He “won” it by making some birdies.

Maybe next year…