It’s been a while since I did a report on my “other” golf site, The Golf Space at www.thegolfspace.com. “TGS” is a golf social networking community site, like facebook or myspace, only it’s designed specifically for golf. The Golf Space provides a free hub for golfers, golf businesses and golf courses to connect and network. Each member has his or her own videos, blogs, photos, networking tools, golf matchmaker, forums, handicap, golf stats, scorekeeper and more.

1.5 Million Golf Visitors

Since opening during Masters week 2006, The Golf Space has now had over 1,500,000 visits to the site. Visits are “unique” individuals, not “hits” which likely would be in the neighborhood of 40-50 million. That’s an average of about 68,000 visitors per month. Given the fact that there was pretty much no traffic at the beginning, I’m sure that 68K is a very low average estimate now.

3000+ Members

The best way networking site can succeed is by having more members. The same weekend that the 1.5 millionth visitor hit, the 3000th member signed up!

There are golf social networking members from nearly every continent in the world. Some are golf nuts, golf courses, golf businesses, professional players and even some caddies from the home of golf: St. Andrews!

Want a cool 2008 U.S. Open golf hat from Torrey Pines? That’s one of the many cool benefits you’ll receive as a member of the United States Golf Association.

For a mere $15 and no extra cost for shipping, I got my 2008 U.S. Open hat, USGA 2008 Rules of Golf book, USGA bag tag with my name on it, and a few other goodies and discounts. Benefits for USGA members include preferences to purchase tickets to the U.S. Open and other USGA Championships.

I’m happy to say my USGA goodie package arrived in today’s mail.

This PGA Tour season has been strange, with the advent of players who were “in the money” but didn’t make the 36 hole cut. Many people, myself included, didn’t like this setup.

As of yesterday the PGA Tour has amended their structure to have two cuts, reducing the field to the top 70 players (and ties) for the final Sunday round. Terrific. More confusion. “Did he make the cut? Yes but he didn’t play on Sunday.” WTF?

Today I did a tour of the OGIO world headquarters. What a place. I’ve got a bunch of pictures and video I need to assemble for a feature article, but until then you can watch this video of me jumping into their skate pit. The pit is part of OGIO’s indoor skate park, where skaters, BMX bikers and motocross riders can do stunts.

Quick… tell me who played in the 2005, 2006 or 2007 Accenture Match Play Championship finals. Better yet, tell me who won them. Chances are, if Tiger Woods wasn’t playing in them not many people will remember.

The 2008 Match Play ratings were 67 percent higher than last year’s (Henrik Stenson won last year). In fact, the 2008 ratings were the highest since 2004 when, you guessed it, Tiger Woods defeated Davis Love III.

There’s no doubt tournament and TV sponsors need Tiger to be in the field and better yet, winning.

Guess what. That trickles down to the tiny little “golf blogosphere” as well. Golf web traffic is always higher when Tiger is playing

I’m now riding in the back of my buddy’s SUV, on the way back home from the big Winter golf trip. It’s raining now, but as we get higher in altitude toward home that rain will turn to snow. It’s snowing at home now.

The game improved again today, especially with only 29 putts after I switched back to my regular putter. I hit the range and pounded a bunch of wedges, getting the feel of hitting down on the ball since I either bladed them or hit them fat the day before.

I shot one over on the front nine with a couple of birdies. My four man team for the day shot the best Chicago score thanks to my birdies and the great play of one other guy. On top of the Chicago money, I won some individual bets finally. It was nice to collect a few bucks to make up for all the losses I had the previous days and head home with a smile on my face.

I tested out some new gear for the first time on this trip, which may not have been a great idea. If my game isn’t crisp it’s hard to evaluate gear or write an accurate article on it. That being said I’m pretty impressed with the new MacGregor MT 3-wood and the MT Irons.

I look forward to getting back home, especially for tomorrow. I’m taking a “VIP” tour of the Ogio world headquarters.

The game improved a bit today. I tried a new putter, which is not a usual thing for me. I don’t play the revolving putter door game. Though this is a great putter, it’s so light compared to my other one that I gagged hard on a lot of short putts.

Bizarre par three

Imagine this… You hit a par three in regulation and you get a six! I did that today. Addressing my third putt (yes, the putter thing I just mentioned), I accidentally moved my ball when I addressed it. Had I realized I could put it back I’d only have one penalty stroke, but I didn’t and had two shots. Net result is a six on a par three which I hit in regulation.

I shaved off five strokes from yesterday’s round and hit many more solid iron shots. The short game is, well, a disaster. I eventually gave up on chipping off the tight lies and started putting off the greens. The short game needs a ton of work.

Almost aced a par four

The course we played today has a driveable par four. It’s about 320 or so. I was very mad after chunking two chips so I put a little extra into my drive. It was solid and flew right at the green. The ball ended up about 2-3 feet behind the pin. I don’t know how it didn’t go in. My putting troubles with short putts continued and I missed a 2-3 foot eagle putt. It was at that point that I told my pals the only way I could get a birde was by having a two foot eagle putt…

Washington county drug task force pulls me and my buddy over

We ate dinner in Mesquite Nevada. On the way back to St. George my very good friend Arnie (great golf name) talked about speeding, getting pulled over, driver’s licenses etc. About 10 seconds after we had that discussion we saw the flashing lights. We’d been pulled over.

Arnie didn’t think he was speeding and we didn’t know why we’d been pulled over. As it turns out, he had a burned out license plate light. The cop who pulled us over was on the “Washington county drug task force” and was pulling over suspicious vehicles. That burned out light qualified us.

He checked us out and was obviously casing out the interior of Arnie’s car with his cop flashlight. It quickly became obvious to him that we weren’t drug runners or druggies, so he said “have a nice evening” and we went on our way.

Tomorrow is the last day and then I head back home to the frozen tundra. The weather report for home is…. drum roll please… snow. Big surprise.

Day 2

I’m on vacation so my blogging is at a minimum until I get back in to HOG headquarters on Monday.

After day two of the big golf trip with a bunch of buddies I’m having a great time, though my game is really bad. It is no surprise how rusty I am after a three month layoff.

I’m testing a bunch of awesome new gear, though my game can’t do it justice. New in the bag are a bunch of clubs from MacGregor Golf: Face-off putter, MT irons, MT 3-wood. Other items I’m testing include some apparel items, cigar cases and golf tees.

I now own the rights to one of the most bizarre and boneheaded golf bag incidents on record, which I’ll describe later…

Looks like Tiger is still alive in the match play. I watched the last few holes today as I was handing out money to all my opponents in the cafe after today’s round at Green Spring.