For a golf blogger some days are great and some days are awesome. The awesome ones are when unexpected packages show up for review, and they’re not another bent piece of metal known as a “golf club stand.” Oh no. The awesome days are when those unexpected boxes of joy contain really useful, tasty, enjoyable, relaxing, score-improving…. Davidoff limited edition golf cigars.
The Davidoff Golf Scorecard Edition 2016 cigar is a Gran Toro format. This is about a six inch cigar which is fairly thick with a ring gage of 55. “Enjoyment time” (love that) is about an hour. During that our I offer my golf opponents the opportunity to surrender, because I’m deadly with the cigar as my 15th club. Today they declined the offer and paid the price. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
This Dominican based cigar is wrapped in a veinless leaf. I didn’t know how much I would like that until I had one. The strength is medium to strong by my experience, but Davidoff’s rating is medium.
A box of five hours of enjoyment time will run about $120 but don’t fret. That’s the same cost as a couple of boxes of Titleist ProV1’s, but you won’t find any great cigars in the bushes.
What’s a great test for a golf bag? How about walking 122.7 miles with it, after schlepping it thousands of miles across the pond from Utah, USA to the Home of Golf, St Andrews, Scotland! The bag I chose for that test is the Puma Superlite Stand Bag. Let’s look at the bag’s features and then talk about how it fared on my grueling and fantastic testing.
Puma Superlite Golf Stand Bag Features
The Superlite is, of course, super-light. It weighs in at a mere 3.8 pounds. Every ounce counts, especially over time.
The bag has a 4-way top with four dividers which go all the way to the bottom. This is great because it helps keep clubs from tangling up and becoming hard to put in our take out. At the top of the bag is a grab-handle with comes in very handy. I use it every time I put the bag down to stand the bag straight up for getting clubs in and out. I also use that handle when putting the bag in the trunk of the car.
There are five zippered pockets on the Superlite. These are one reason I went with this bag for Scotland. I thought of using a smaller bag, but needed room for rain gear and sweaters and such. There’s a large apparel pocket which fits an amazing amount, plus two small item pockets, a ball pocket, tee pocket, and insulated beverage pocket. The small pocket at the top with the white zipper is waterproof and has padding inside. That’s where I put my phone and small camera to protect them. Each pocket has a large rubberized loop which makes them easy to grab and open. Nice touch. The ball bag has room for a lot of golf balls. So many, that I barely even fill it up 1/5 of the way. I use that extra space for other necessities like extra beverages or apparel items.
The stand portion of the bag is very solid. Some cheap-o stand bag’s stand mechanisms work poorly and the bag has to be set down just right or in a strong fashion to get the legs to deploy. This bag’s legs open and close with ease. Plus, they open to a nice wide and solid base. Once again, the cheap-o bags may not open wide enough and as a result the bag’s base isn’t wide enough for a solid stance.
The bag has padded dual shoulder straps to help the bag stay balanced on the player’s back. More on the straps later in the critique section.
The Superlite is made from 100% polyester. It protects the contents from water and moisture extremely well. A couple of the rounds in Scotland were very wet. I deployed the included rain-hood and with that in play the bag kept everything dry. In the image below you can see how well the bag deals with water.
Looks
Style is part of the overall package and this bag has it. I love the solid, bold looks and colors of this bag line.
Critique
My critique of this bag, and an area I think it could be improved, is with the straps. I have a bad back so carrying the bag isn’t typically going to happen. But I do it sometimes. In Scotland I carried a few times, one in particular at the extremely hilly Cruden Bay. Since my back problems are in the lower area of my spine, I like to wear the bag up high. I don’t want the weight of the bag in my lower back or buttock area. I need it laying in the middle of the back or higher. With the bag very high the X part of the straps ended up right on my shoulders. So the weight of the bag was not on the padding of the strap, rather it was on the gap between the padding and the frame of the strap. Also, with that setup, often the strap would flip over as I put it on, resulting in the non padded side being the one against my body. Then I would have to mess with it for a bit to flip the strap over.
On The Course
I’ve used this bag for dozens of rounds at home in the desert heat of Utah. I’ve also logged rounds in French Lick, Indiana, Philadelphia, and over a dozen rounds in Scotland. The performance and ease of use has been great. The variance in conditions has been large and the bag has performed brilliantly in all of them.
At Panmure Golf Club near Carnoustie, Scotland
My favorite highlights about the bag is the large pockets, for such a small footprint of a bag. The bag’s design makes great use of space. Getting the clubs in and out is super easy.
Conclusion
With it’s brilliant design and engineering the Puma Superlite Golf Stand Bag seems to defy the laws of physics. It has the space of a larger carry bag or cart bag, but is light and easy to carry. Golfers looking for a solid carry bag, or any bag to just lighten the load for travel or other reasons, should check out the Puma Superlite.
Wow it has been six days since the last post here. I think that’s a world record, even for when I’ve been traveling. That’s like John Daly going 10 minutes without a Diet Coke. On the personal end of things there have been a lot of changes in my world, which have had an effect on HOG’s world operations. I got a new position at a local company as a Sr Web Developer. Yes, I’m sure this comes to a surprise to those of you who thought golf bloggers made millions, but that’s the deal.
So I’m getting used to a new schedule. The new schedule has hurt the golf game a bit, and having just started this new gig my brain is a bit fried. So I haven’t had the cranial energy reserves to put out a quality post. In my (small) mind, no post is better than a crap post. Not to worry. HOG isn’t going anywhere but up, or to the golf course. I’ve been at this gig for over 11 years and I don’t plan to stop anytime soon.
FORE.
You thought I was kidding when I mentioned the possibility of using three shot trackers at the same time during my golf this weekend. Well here’s the first look at the Arccos system.
Arccos is a real-time golf performance tracking system. It delivers advanced GPS distances, automatic shot tracking and a shot analysis platform to measure and evaluate each shot. Knowing one’s strengths and weaknesses though a device like this can really help from a game management standpoint, as well as giving the player information on what needs to be worked on.
I’m looking forward to testing out this unit. I’ve heard a lot about it. I’m sure this unit will provide me a lot of information regarding what I can work on, since well, the granny over the top dual chicken wing swing has some weaknesses.
Stay tuned for my review soon.
I’m going to be doing a lot of testing of golf apps and shot tracking systems this month. One of the new ones I’m going to test out is mobitee with PIQ.
mobitee is an on-glove device which gives distance to the green, plus it gives the golfer real time swing analysis. I’ll be doing my first round of testing with mobitee this weekend and posting my full review when I have enough rounds logged to formulate some solid takes.
If the unit is as cool as their packaging it will be awesome. Seriously. What a cool design.
Stay tuned.
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