Grey Goatee Golf and Travel

Carl Pettersson

If Carl Pettersson has an exercise regimen, it’s a secret he holds close to his comfortable belly.

But never let it be said fat men don’t wear plaid. Pettersson drove it a ton, hit more greens than anybody, and made tons of putts over the weekend, and they found a red tartan jacket to fit him as the champion of the RBC Heritage at Harbour Town in Hilton Head.

Colt Knost, even more jumbo than Pettersson, finished third. Robert Garrigus, no Slim Bob himself, averaged 311 yards per drive at Harbour Town, contended seriously and finished tied for 13th after a Sunday 74.

It was a good week for the big boys.

In this first third of the PGA Tour season, we’ve seen the whippet-lean Kyle Stanley win. He works out …

We’ve seen Hunter Mahan win … he works out.

We’ve seen Tiger Woods win … he works out, for better or worse …

We live in an era where the Titleist Performance Institute, for one, is in the business of golf-specific exercise, where you tailor your exercise program  to fit your physical limitations, if you have any (!), to be able to play without injury, and to strengthen and increase mobility where you’re weak and immobile, all in the service of a stronger, freer, more repeatable golf swing.

For instance: In the fitness world in general, it’s all about the core … At the TPI, at the risk of oversimplifying, it’s no good to have a strong core if it won’t move, so mobility is more important than strength.

Check out the core on Colt Knost … six-pack abs, for sure, and not because his belly is taut and ripped.

We’ve seen Dustin Johnson in Golf Digest doing some one-legged squat thing with his other leg straight out in front, a pose heretofore thought physically impossible by humans. On the cover of that magazine, Johnson was swinging a club while standing on a physio ball. Do not try this at home.

Really, don’t try it at home … the TPI people I talked to said the stunt on the ball demonstrates superior balance (if you can do it at all), but does nothing for your golf swing.

We don’t know what Dustin Johnson does for a workout, but we know he missed the Masters with a lower-back injury … those same TPI people said, more or less, see? See what we mean?

When you post a score, and get to a number, and it stands up against the field for a day, you still have to play the weekend. From the vantage point of Friday, it promised to be a volatile couple of days at the Masters.

Phil Mickelson

Fred Couples knew they were coming for him, and if he’d shot par on Saturday he’d be solidly in play.  But on an idyllic day at Augusta National Golf Club, the leaderboard went stormy, and Couples got caught in the maelstrom.

Couples shot 75, steadying himself after an unfortunate start, and he’s still in it at 2 under par. Rory McIlroy, a shot off the lead after 36, played himself out of contention with a Saturday 77.

For the largest part of the day, names like Matt Kuchar, Jason Dufner and Louis Ooosthuizen took their turns on top of the leaderboard. Oosthuizen  (7-under) will be in the next-to-last group with Bubba Watson, whose stealth 70 on Saturday left him alone in fourth at 6-under.

Nobody mentioned the name Peter Hanson on Thursday or Friday, and a second-round 74 scared no one. On Saturday, he hit irons straight as power lines and made his putts — eight birdies — in a round of 65. At 9-under, he earned the target on his back heading into Sunday, and the guy closest to him has won a couple-three of these things playing in the final group.

Phil Mickelson nailed a long eagle putt on 13, precursor to the shot of the tournament on 15. He got big air under a full-swing flop shot that landed soft, when a low-running chip would have blown through the green.

“This is going to land like a sack of flour,” commentator David Feherty said. “No one hits that shot. No one.”

Mickelson topped the jewel on 15  three holes later, when he shaped a left-to-right bender from a blind lie 237 yards from the hole that found the green within makeable distance.

“He buttoned it,” was the way Nick Faldo called it on TV.

Mickelson made the difficult putt, for birdie, to finish at 66, 8 under par. Lefty had 30 on the back nine.

Hanson is a likeable fellow from Sweden, but the noise on Saturday was for Mickelson.

So nice to tune in at 12:30 Pacific and catch Fred Couples finishing up a 67 to stand as co-leader, at that point, after 36 holes of the Masters.

Fred Couples

On Wednesday night in this space, I wrote of Phil Mickelson,” “No win here would be as popular with the galleries.”

That was an error of omission:  A win by Couples at the Masters, where he won 20 years ago, would delight the masses at Augusta and around the golf universe.

Even his fellow pros would say, “If I can’t win, I sure wouldn’t mind if Freddy did.”

Couples, 52, will be the oldest man playing on the weekend, and if he were to close the deal, he would be the oldest Masters champion by six years. He’s the old guy here, but he’s still got the sweetest swing and the coolest cool.

When Couples finished, he was in a tie at 5-under with Sergio Garcia, Rory McIlroy and Jason Dufner. Garcia and McIlroy would soon thereafter drop a shot. Dufner? The definitive journeyman and quiet soul has made a recent habit of playing very well in majors — he lost in a playoff at the PGA last year, remember. He’s an easy guy to pull for, too.

They say Saturday is “moving day” in a 72-hole tournament, but Friday at the Masters there’s been a whole lot of moving going on, and it’s still early. Tiger Woods, for instance, is hovering around level par and has some ground to make up on the back nine if he wants to play in the final couple-three groups tomorrow with the likes of Couples, McIlroy, Garcia and Dufner. The TV people hope he gets it done.

Tiger Woods

Three weeks ago, the world No. 2 was oak-solid in Inisbrook, and climbed back to No. 1.

Two weeks ago, the world No. 1 in the minds of many, if not on top of any lists, won a tournament for the first time in a while.

And last weekend, a scraggly-bearded, steady-swinging redhead chilled the field in Houston, and now he’s No. 1, too, in one small measure: the PGA Tour money list.

Three tournaments, three winners, three names to throw in the soup for which there is no recipe … just the richest of ingredients for the most savory Masters Tournament in many years.

None of the three winners above is named McIlroy or Mickelson. One of them, however, is named Woods, and hell if that doesn’t make all the difference down in Augusta, Ga.

Luke Donald, apparently in his prime at 34, won in a playoff at The Transitions, and got his No. 1 back, supplanting Rory McIlroy. Donald led the PGA and European Tour money rankings in 2011, was everybody’s player of the year, and still seems to think we all think, “What have you done for me lately?” And we do.  Get used to it, Lukey.

Last weekend, with the narrowest of leads down the stretch, Hunter Mahan made par after par when the birdies weren’t forthcoming and won the Shell Houston Open. He’s the only player on the big tour with two wins this season.

Hunter Mahan

In between, Tiger Woods won a tournament. Tiger Woods played well in every facet of the game. Tiger Woods won by five strokes, over a strong field, at Bay Hill.

McIlroy is at Augusta this week, site of his final-round breakdown last year. In the view of many, he has the talent and the personality — with a redeeming victory at the U.S. Open in the bank — to be the “next.”

Mickelson is here, too, where he’s won three times. He’s nobody’s “next” — he’s just Phil. No win here would be more popular with the galleries.

Unless maybe it was Woods. The Masters doesn’t need Tiger Woods — it would endure without him, or anyone. But world golf needs Tiger Woods, and the Masters is golf’s biggest stage.

At the very least, it will mean something, again, if you beat him this week. And we know there are guys who can do it. Bring the big spoon.

The Seattle Golf and Travel Show in February was directly adjacent to the Seattle RV Show, a happy confluence of scheduling given the golf show’s increased emphasis on golf travel destinations.

Before we even get out the calculator to see if an RV makes sense for your golf road trip, there are some obvious pros and cons.

Pros: Plenty of room for golf clubs, luggage and supplies; legroom; built-in sleeping, bathing and cooking quarters.

Cons: 1) The cost of gasoline; 2)The cost of gasoline; 3) “Sleeps four” doesn’t necessarily mean comfortably; 4) It’s an RV.

The standard joke in RV Nation: it’s not miles per gallon, it’s gallons per mile. Let’s say 10 mpg for our calculations, which is about average and better than we might have guessed.

So: Four grown men are heading to,let’s say, Bend, Ore., for a four-day, three-night trip in, say, September for — just for instance — golf.

This presupposes (please) that none of them owns a motorhome. One South Puget Sound dealer offers fall rental rates of $104 (sleeps four) or $189 (sleeps six) per night. Our frugal dudes go cheap, so: $312.

The most direct route from Seattle to Bend is I-5 to Portland, then Highway 26 southeasterly to Madras and south on Highway 97 to Redmond and Bend. It’s about 360 miles, so figuring some in-town driving, you’re talking 71 gallons of gas (at 10 miles per) for the roundtrip. At $3.50 a gallon, that’s about $248.

RV park hookups are 50 bucks, more or less, so: $150.

All in all: gas and lodging, $710,or $177.50 a person.

Compared to what? Four guys in,say, an SUV. You might get about twice the gas mileage, so: $114. Hotel lodging will cost maybe a third again as much as the rental/hookup combo, so: $616.

Total for gas and lodging, for a road trip in a conventional vehicle: $730, or about $182.50 a person.

If you’ve read this far, you’re old enough not to dismiss RV golf travel out of hand.  It pencils, and who’d have thought?Your objection, then, is one of style rather than substance (see No. 4 under “Cons”). That’s a hard one to get around.

Steve Elkington is more than a championship player. He’s a questing soul, a seeker of truth and beauty in the art, science and sorcery of golf.

Last spring (The Blogolfosphere, May 10, 2011), Craig Foster got an email from Elkington, a 10-time winner on the PGAtour, including the 1995 PGA Championship. Elkington had been testing out Foster’s Dynalign© system, and he wanted Foster in Houston, like right now, for a first-hand tutorial with the inventor.

Which brings us ‘round to the epidemic, maybe even pandemic, which nonetheless lies outside the jurisdiction of the Centers for Disease Control. So, too, are the USGA and the Royal and Ancient silent on the subject. Which does not mean it hasn’t caught the attention of people in high places.

It started among old people, old golfers, to be precise, but it didn’t stop there. KeeganBradley, the 20-something PGA Championship winner in 2011, caught the disease, and he’s living with it today.

Elkington (l) and Foster teamed to make the DynAlign video.

What “it” is is the belly putter, and it’s all the more lamentable, according to guys like Craig Foster, because it’s 100 percent preventable.

Foster, an Olympia, Wash., golf inventor and golf club technician, believes his DynAlign golf alignment system will do everything a belly putter can do, all with a traditional putter, i.e., it will firm up your stroke and take all the slack and floppy variables out of your flatstick game.

Foster, despite no help from golf’s officialdom or epidemiologists, is far from alone in decrying belly putters, which allow a golfer to jam the shaft of a long putter into his gut where it is held firm, negating the natural looseness of free-hanging arms with a normal putter in hand.

Debating thefairness of the belly putter is a losing battle, right now, and Foster wouldrather talk about his DynAlign system, which uses the natural physics of the arms’ skeletal structure to remove the hands and wrists fromthe putt.

Elkington is a true believer in DynAlign, and for good reason: it works for him. Elkington, 49, is no fogey about anything new if it enhances the golf experience, and he went on Twitter last week to shout the good news. The stats are solid as bone: In 2011 PGA Tour play, Elkington was 368-for-368 on putts of four feet and in.

Last spring,when Elkington beckoned Foster to the Champions Club in Houston, he had his fulltime video guy running a camera from the time Foster climbed into his car at the airport.

The result is “The Stroke of the Future,” a video course in DynAlign mechanics. It’s available only from Elkington’s Web site, Secret in the Dirt (http://secretinthedirt.com), which the golf literati is learning is the place to come to steep in the craft and theory of golf.

The download from Secret in the Dirt costs $35, and to sweeten the deal a 45-page .pdf file of Foster’s original DynAlign instruction manual is included, along with a transcript of the video.

“The first person I know of who downloaded it is a guy from Madrid who joined my Dirt group a few days ago,” Foster said. “He improved his putting just by watchingthe promo videos, and he was very enthusiastic about DynAlign.”

Foster has stayed patient with the marketing process for DynAlign, because he, like Elkington, knows it works, and no burying a shaft in your belly necessary.

“It feels like I have just reached the top of a mountain after a long climb,” said Foster. “That’s a pretty good payoff in itself.”