Well, you can’t call it a tradition yet, but as in the last year, I played my last round of the season on December, 30th. This year I chose the closest course to my home, the GC Pankow to be the venue. As it has been four weeks since I last swung the club on a course, my swing was a little bit rusty.

It was a little after 09:00 this morning and 4° Celsius and surprisingly, already a few other golfers were out in the course. Turned out that an even bigger surprise were the frozen greens, hard as concrete. The club hadn’t set up winter greens, so we played on the regular greens. I had left my second shot on the opening par four some 20 meters short, so I needed a little wedge onto the green. On a normal summer green the ball would be tucked to the pin, but on these ones the ball bounced as if it had hit a rock and could be found some 5 meters behind the green. Another chip, two-putt, double-bogey. Dayum!

On the following holes, I tried to leave my shot into the green short, so it has its first bounce in front of the green and then rolls onto it, avoiding the “concrete bounce”. It helped sometimes, but not always.

But what am I complaining, I was out playing golf, everything from pars to triple-bogeys, single- to three-putts, rough to the left, rough to the right, hit eight fairways, produced some really nice shots and fucked up a couple real bad. My game today was kind of like a resume of this season: some highlights, but also the insight that there is plenty of stuff to work on – more than I would admit myself.

This season was the first season I wasn’t able to improve my handicap, it got worse. Still hangin’ in the mid-twenties instead of the low twenties. Maybe the biggest handicap is in my head, I need to work on some mental issues. Currently, I’m reading Oliver Heulers “Jenseits der Scores”, a book that approaches all the mental issues and being halfway through it, there are so many things in the book that I recognize myself in. But I’ll write on that some other time.

To you – my dear readers – all the best wishes for 2008!

“Play for the pars, the double-bogeys will come!”

One of the presents I got for my birthday was the Tiger Woods DVD collection consisting of 3 DVD’s featuring his life, his victories and his heritage. Commentaries are spoken by Laurence Fishburne, it comes in a neat box and looks good on the shelf.

Contentwise I wasn’t so satisfied. Except for the victories part, most of the videos are interviews with friends (such as Wayne Gretzky, Michael Jordan or Charles Barkley) and family, commenting on various aspects of his life, his upbringing or his game. Tiger Woods himself of course talks a lot about himself and his game. As interesting as this may be, it gets kind of boring after 30 minutes as you just see people sitting in chairs and talking.

Personally, I want to see the man in action and that’s why in my opinion it isn’t sufficient to dedicate only one out of three DVD’s to the numerous victories of Tiger Woods career. Ok, all the important moments are there, but I want to see more of that stuff. More in depth analysis of his game and how he approached various situations in the tournaments. That’s the main reason I was a little disappointed of the collection.

Well, maybe I’ll get myself the Tiger Woods’ British Open Triple for Christmas as a compensation.

Wednesday, 19. December 2007
21.15 Eurosport, Golf Club

Another really nice collection of shots from this years PGA tour season. This time: the top 5 golf shots that no one remembered.

Wie die Berliner Morgenpost vor ein paar Tagen berichtete, ist der Golfdome-Deal (wir berichteten) alles andere als in trockenen Tüchern. So hat der GC Semlin am See zwar einen Kaufvertrag mit der Golfdom GbR, aber die zum 1.12. avisierten Zahlungseingänge konnten nicht verzeichnet werden. Falk Billion, der als Berater das Konzept begleitet, meint dazu:

“Ich will niemanden vorverurteilen, aber es gibt internen Aufklärungsbedarf über die Identität, Bonität und Seriosität eines der beiden Investoren. Ich hoffe, dass sich das in der nächsten Woche klärt.”

Mittlerweile hat der Eigentümer des GC Semlin am See einen Privatdetektiv zu Ermittlungen engagiert. Die Berliner Golf-Soap geht weiter.

Wednesday, 12. December 2007
19.30 Eurosport, Golf Club

Great, a site calles http://www.golfgo.cz/ is stealing content from this blog. Steal this you motherf*****ng bastard!!!

It may look like the timbersports of golf, but what Long Drive World Champion Jason Zuback performs here is pretty impressive:

Link: www.youtube.com

(via The Deep Rough)

The movie “Bobby Jones – Stroke of Genius” is – as you might have guessed – a narration based on the life of Bobby Jones, the most sucessful amateur golfer the world has seen to this day.

Link: www.youtube.com

Unfortunately, the movie is not even close as riveting as the stellar golf record of Bobby Jones. It is executed quite similar as  “The Greatest Game Ever Played“, depicting the life of Francis Ouimet. But the story never picks up any momentum, it is a narration without a peak, it just quietly flows along.

On the one hand, the movie could put an emphasis on the game of golf and the great victories of Bobby Jones, on the other hand it could show the struggle of Bobbies family life that lead in the end to his withdrawal from tournament golf. The movie tries both but doesn’t do either thing better than good.