Mutually Beneficial New Year’s Golf Resolutions
This is a rake. It is used to smooth out footprints and divots in sand traps. USE IT!
2014 is here. Hopefully it is a year of many great times on the course and many satisfying rounds of golf. At the first of each year golfers often post their New Year’s golf resolutions. Here are a few suggestions which are not personal score or game related, but very beneficial to all of us golfers. EVERY one of these resolutions is attainable with little effort. That little effort, multiplied by each hole and each player, makes golf exponentially better for everyone.
Play Fast
Slow play is one of the reasons the golf industry is struggling. It takes too long. Help yourself and all the golfers around you by playing as quickly as you can. That doesn’t mean to hurry. Simply play when ready. Keep up with the group in front of you and politely let faster groups through if you are holding them up. Tell your stories and engage in your conversations when walking or riding to the next shot, not in your pre-shot routine.
Fix Five Ball Marks Per Green
Another way to help yourself and others around you, as well as establish good standing with the golf gods, is to fix many ball marks. Pack your favorite divot tool of choice and set a goal of fixing FIVE ball marks per green. I always do at least five and sometimes 10. The golf gods will love you and let you make some long putts if you do.
Fix your divots! Care for the course!
Care for the Course
All golfers should do their best to care for the courses they play on. Try to leave the course in as good or even better condition than when you found it.
Replace your divots. Tap down your spike marks (after the hole has been completed of course). Sand divots if sand is provided.
Rake Bunkers
There are rakes in sand traps/bunkers for a reason. Rake your tracks and divot in the bunker, and smooth out a few others while you’re at it. Nothing quite as un-thrilling as ending up in the heel print of a 300 pound golfer who didn’t rake the bunker.
Use Good Manners
Keep quiet on the golf course. Turn your cell phone off, or at least put it in silent mode.
Don’t walk in someone’s line on the putting green.
Don’t stand in someone’s peripheral vision in front or behind when they are hitting shots.
Don’t move around or make noise when someone is hitting a shot. That goes for you “change jigglers” on the putting green too. We know what you’re doing.
Obey Local Rules
Keep carts on cart paths if asked. Stay out of ground under repair and sensitive areas.
Tip Your Caddie Well
If you use a caddie, tip him/her well.
Do Not CHEAT
Sandbaggers are CHEATERS
Cheating doesn’t help anyone. Leave the foot-wedge in the garage.
Sandbaggers are CHEATERS. Play to an honest handicap and punch in all your rounds to insure it is accurate.
Donate Your Old Golf Clubs
How many clubs do you have in the garage? I collect my extras a couple of times a year and donate them to my course’s junior golf organization.
Arrive Early
Don’t be late for your tee time! Get there early to keep your playing partners and the golf course on schedule! Plus, you’ll probably play better anyway if you don’t rush from the parking lot to the tee.
PGA Tour Hyundai Tournament of Champions TV Times & Field
Yes the 2014 PGA Tour season technically began a few weeks ago, but the “real” season starts….. TONIGHT!
PGA Tour
Hyundai Tournament of Champions
Friday Jan 3 – Monday Jan 6, 2014
Plantation Course at Kapalua
Kapalua, Maui, HI
Purse: $5,700,000 – Winning Share: $1,140,000 – FedExCup Points: 500
TV SCHEDULE
Fri 01/03 GOLF CHANNEL 4:30 PM – 10 PM ET
Sat 01/04 GOLF CHANNEL 2:30 PM – 7 PM ET
Sun 01/05 NBC 3 PM – 4 PM ET & GOLF CHANNEL 4 PM – 10 PM ET
Mon 01/06 GOLF CHANNEL 4 PM – 8 PM ET
| Hyundai Tournament of Champions Field | ||
| Austin, Woody | Bae, Sang-Moon | Blixt, Jonas |
| Brown, Scott | Dufner, Jason | Duke, Ken |
| English, Harris | Ernst, Derek | Gay, Brian |
| Haas, Bill | Henley, Russell | Horschel, Billy |
| Johnson, Dustin | Johnson, Zach | Kirk, Chris |
| Kuchar, Matt | Laird, Martin | Merrick, John |
| Moore, Ryan | Points, D.A. | Reed, Patrick |
| Scott, Adam | Simpson, Webb | Snedeker, Brandt |
| Spieth, Jordan | Streelman, Kevin | Thompson, Michael |
| Walker, Jimmy | Weekley, Boo | Woodland, Gary |
Self Assessment – Hooked On Golf Blog 2013
2013 was one of the best, yet most difficult years for Hooked On Golf Blog. I was fortunate to take the HOG World Tour out of the country three times and play five of the world’s top 50 courses. I made many new golf friends and business associates, reviewed a ton of great golf equipment and waxed semi-poetic about professional golf and my own golf game (or lack there of).
Why was 2013 difficult? 2013 was a year of major changes in my world. First and foremost, it was the first full calendar year in existence for my new and awesome son, Master Seve. This little guy has been such a positive influence and has completely changed my world. I was skeptical about having a kid at the ripe old age of… old, but glad I did.
Needless to say, having a baby (now 14 months old) is quite time consuming and demanding. I spend a lot of time chasing this little guy around on all fours, giggling, and wrestling. Time I would have otherwise spent blogging about golf.
2013 was also the first calendar year I had what is referred to as a “day job.” Yes, for the first time in almost 50 years, I had 9-5 job complete with my first W2 and first cubicle. Big changes. No more blogging and being a sole computer geek at home in my jammies, working on my own schedule. That meant my time for blogging was in the wee hours before work and/or between times I wasn’t at work and wasn’t chasing Master Seve around.
I managed to squeeze 340 golf blog posts out of my strained cranium and limited schedule in 2013, almost an average of one per day. In comparison, 2012 was a year of 495 golf blog posts. The drop in content, combined with different algorithms for Google’s search, hurt the blog’s traffic a bit and especially the ad revenue in 2013. Over the years this golf blog had grown to such an extent that the cost of producing it was substantial, requiring some powerful and capable web hosting. That’s why I had to go to an advertising model to bring in some revenue. This thing had to at least pay its own expenses.
A positive, yet additional strain my schedule and my brain was accepting a golf writing position for a very large website, Answers.com. I became the “golf expert writer” and have produced some 90+ articles, reviews, and golf related stories there. That has been a fun gig and it will continue. Check out golf.answers.com!
In addition to all those things above, I do computer programming, web design and app development in my “free” time. Oh, and I do one other golf writing gig as a “ghost” writer for a golf company, but I’m not allowed to mention the name.
What is the point of the last few paragraphs? Mainly that I feel like I’ve kicked ass producing what I have, but wish I had the time to do more. It all adds up to a nutty schedule, but somehow I’ve managed to pull it off and that’s not going to change. Right now I’m looking back at 2013 to see what worked well and what didn’t, so I can strategize 2014.
What worked well was much of the content which usually has worked well here, insightful blog posts and commentary which readers find useful and informative. Hard to say what posts or kinds of posts did not work well. Some are more popular than others naturally.
I changed the site design this year to a mobile friendly version. That worked okay, but some screen widths could be a bit better, like my Nexus 7 or 7 inch tablets. That’s not content per se, but something which could have been better.
As mentioned, I noticed a drop in ad revenue from the google ads here, as well as a drop in other paid ads. Some drops were as much as 90%. Imagine that if you were in business. Not cool. Google has changed some things and search traffic is not as hot as it was. Other ad types are tighter too. So I tried some different ad providers and formats. I even leaned toward the more TMZ style content ad links. Honestly, those haven’t produced much and I think I’ll get rid of them soon.
I’ve worked the social networking end for a long time. HOG’s twitter followers are around 2,400 while my personal is at about 3,500. The HOG Facebook is has about 1,500 fans. I started up a Google+ account for HOG too and that one is growing, and surpassing by far the FB impressions. For a long while I’ve simply used the social media outlets to post links to my blog posts. I’m not exactly sure how many people REALLY click the links and actually read the posts. There are always those who click the like button on FB, but that doesn’t translate to an article read necessarily. I’ve been very frustrated and disappointed with FB. Since they changed their model for impressions, the HOG FB posts with links are only seeing 25-50 views out of 1,500 followers. They’re set up to make you pay for your fans to see your content. It seems like a waste of time at this point. Twitter blows away FB for HOG and so does G+.
I also think perhaps I should approach the social networking thing a little differently for 2014. Perhaps rather than just posting links to blog posts, I should use the social networks as a supplementary avenue for reaching people. Treat them as their own entities by creating content and doing more interaction within that scope.
Fantasy Golf 2013 gets a C grade. At the end of the season I sent an email to Nike to arrange the grand prize for the winner. As luck would have it my contact was on maternity leave. I didn’t know that and the winner started to get very irate, to the point of actually threatening me we legal action because his prize hadn’t come yet. I couldn’t believe what was happening. I was being threatened with legal action because my free fantasy league which got this guy a new free driver wasn’t delivering it fast enough. I told the guy repeatedly that Nike had been sponsoring for years and he’d get his prize but I was practically stalked. Of course, the prize did ship and the guy got it. The end result was that I have NO desire to run a fantasy league this year. Who wants to get stalked/sued for providing a free service which gives people a chance at free golf gear? Not me. Maybe I’ll cool down about this later, but for now there will be no fantasy golf for 2014. Last year’s winner can thank himself for not having a chance to win anything else.
When HOG started back in December of 2004 it was uncommon and quite groundbreaking. It was only one of 3-4 other golf blogs in existence. Now there are hundreds. I was one of the first bloggers to do golf equipment reviews, course reviews and those types of pieces. Now golf blogs are a dime a dozen. Most are mediocre and many give us folks who work it hard a bad name. They’re all over social networks too. Time to differentiate HOG from the rest again, though I feel the quality content and photos do a good job of that already. I’m not sure how or what I’m going to do, but it is time for some change and new groundbreaking to happen. There is a lot of golf blog noise out there, much of it posted without so much as a spell checker and forget using the right “your” or “you’re.”
My next post will be more of a look forward with these previous comments in mind. Looking to the future and what changes and new ideas can be implemented.
Thoughts, opinions, criticisms, and suggestions welcomed. Tell me what you think.
2013 World Golf Rankings
Written by: Tony Korologos | Thursday, January 2nd, 2014
Categories: European Tour • Pro Golf • Rory McIlory • Tiger Woods
Categories: European Tour • Pro Golf • Rory McIlory • Tiger Woods
Below is the world golf ranking through 12/1/13 for the top 50 players in the world. Tiger Woods is on top, having moved from the #3 position one year ago. Rory McIlory was #1 in the world one year ago, but has now moved to #6. Despite winning the U.S. Open, Justin Rose stayed at #4. The big mover was Henrik Stenson naturally. He moved from #53 to #3 in one year. Phil Mickelson moved from #17 one year ago to #5.
| Rank | Player | Avg Points | Total Points | Events |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tiger Woods, USA | 11.69 | 479.49 | 41 |
| 2 | Adam Scott, AUS | 9.60 | 393.43 | 41 |
| 3 | Henrik Stenson, SWE | 9.16 | 476.20 | 52 |
| 4 | Justin Rose, ENG | 7.16 | 372.50 | 52 |
| 5 | Phil Mickelson, USA | 7.06 | 345.92 | 49 |
| 6 | Rory McIlroy, NIR | 6.50 | 318.44 | 49 |
| 7 | Matt Kuchar, USA | 6.15 | 319.93 | 52 |
| 8 | Steve Stricker, USA | 5.72 | 228.94 | 40 |
| 9 | Zach Johnson, USA | 5.45 | 283.23 | 52 |
| 10 | Sergio Garcia, ESP | 5.31 | 265.30 | 50 |
| 11 | Jason Day, AUS | 5.29 | 232.65 | 44 |
| 12 | Ian Poulter, ENG | 5.24 | 256.68 | 49 |
| 13 | Brandt Snedeker, USA | 5.18 | 253.89 | 49 |
| 14 | Graeme McDowell, NIR | 5.01 | 260.31 | 52 |
| 15 | Jason Dufner, USA | 4.98 | 258.83 | 52 |
| 16 | Dustin Johnson, USA | 4.80 | 230.55 | 48 |
| 17 | Luke Donald, ENG | 4.76 | 233.48 | 49 |
| 18 | Charl Schwartzel, RSA | 4.74 | 246.50 | 52 |
| 19 | Jim Furyk, USA | 4.55 | 218.20 | 48 |
| 20 | Keegan Bradley, USA | 4.31 | 224.18 | 52 |
| 21 | Webb Simpson, USA | 4.30 | 219.10 | 51 |
| 22 | Jordan Spieth, USA | 4.15 | 166.06 | 40 |
| 23 | Hideki Matsuyama, JPN | 3.88 | 155.03 | 40 |
| 24 | Thomas Bjorn, DEN | 3.76 | 191.95 | 51 |
| 25 | Lee Westwood, ENG | 3.69 | 191.88 | 52 |
| 26 | Jamie Donaldson, WAL | 3.66 | 179.34 | 49 |
| 27 | Ernie Els, RSA | 3.55 | 184.37 | 52 |
| 28 | Bubba Watson, USA | 3.45 | 162.32 | 47 |
| 29 | Bill Haas, USA | 3.35 | 174.21 | 52 |
| 30 | Nick Watney, USA | 3.26 | 169.72 | 52 |
| 31 | Hunter Mahan, USA | 3.23 | 168.15 | 52 |
| 32 | Victor Dubuisson, FRA | 3.22 | 132.20 | 41 |
| 33 | Ryan Moore, USA | 3.16 | 160.96 | 51 |
| 34 | Louis Oosthuizen, RSA | 2.96 | 154.07 | 52 |
| 35 | Gonzalo Fdez-Castano, ESP | 2.95 | 153.59 | 52 |
| 36 | Graham Delaet, CAN | 2.86 | 148.60 | 52 |
| 37 | Miguel A Jimenez, ESP | 2.79 | 130.96 | 47 |
| 38 | Francesco Molinari, ITA | 2.77 | 144.20 | 52 |
| 39 | Martin Kaymer, GER | 2.71 | 140.82 | 52 |
| 40 | Rickie Fowler, USA | 2.66 | 133.13 | 50 |
| 41 | Billy Horschel, USA | 2.63 | 136.58 | 52 |
| 42 | Jonas Blixt, SWE | 2.62 | 136.44 | 52 |
| 43 | Matteo Manassero, ITA | 2.60 | 135.32 | 52 |
| 44 | Kevin Streelman, USA | 2.58 | 134.42 | 52 |
| 45 | David Lynn, ENG | 2.58 | 134.13 | 52 |
| 46 | Thongchai Jaidee, THA | 2.57 | 133.67 | 52 |
| 47 | Jimmy Walker, USA | 2.48 | 128.87 | 52 |
| 48 | Peter Hanson, SWE | 2.40 | 120.12 | 50 |
| 49 | Joost Luiten, NED | 2.35 | 120.09 | 51 |
| 50 | Branden Grace, RSA | 2.34 | 121.77 | 52 |
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