Bunker Mulligan "Let us endeavor so to live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry." ~Mark Twain

The Houston Open begins today. It isn?t a full field, but some of the top ten did manage to put their names in. I don?t keep up with the rankings and overall tour happening like some golfers do, but this is a week where the leaderboard, and television coverage, may highlight some of the lesser-known golfers.

Fred Couples is defending champion. Freddie is one of those that gets little attention because he?s so relaxed. He just doesn?t get worked up over things. I think it would be fun to watch him repeat.

But there are a few others in the field that I enjoy seeing do well. So, I thought I?d try to put together the pairings I?d like to see at the top of the leaderboard on Sunday. And their sequence is irrelevant.

Couples and Paul Azinger. Play golf. Talk football and basketball. Have a relaxing afternoon.

John Daly and Hal Sutton. Maybe Hal will see a fire in JD that makes him want the big man on his Ryder Cup team. Both have endured hard years after big ones.

Matt Kuchar and Steve Elkington. Two guys that go out and play hard, and have a good time doing it. Matt still has stars in his eyes.

Jay Haas and Justin Leonard. Both are steady, and Jay?s success this year may help bring Justin back to his winning ways.

Notah Begay III and Scott Hoch. Quality players who could drive one another to the top of the list.

?Everyone? wants to watch Tiger. Not me. I like to see what the others have in their bags week to week.

A man entered the bus with both of his front pockets full of golf balls, and sat down next to a beautiful (you guessed it) blonde.

The puzzled blonde kept looking at him and his bulging pockets. Finally, after many such glances from her, he said, “It’s golf balls”.

Nevertheless, the blonde continued to look at him thoughtfully and finally, not being able to contain her curiosity any longer, asked …

“Does it hurt as much as tennis elbow?”

Last week I played golf with a friend who uses a Titleist driver and 3 wood. We got up to the 17th tee and he gave me the 3 wood and said, “Try this.” It had a heavier head than my MacGregor, which I like. I teed it up and hit the ball straight down the fairway, clearing a fairway bunker I occasionally have difficulty getting past using my driver. Of course, I knew it had to be the club!

Actually, I thought about the feel of the club, and concluded the added clubhead weight was the primary advantage. I’m an engineer, so preservation of energy and momentum instantly came to mind. I got home and did a quick search for the Titleist 983 series of clubs just to see what they cost, but also to find out a little about the swing weight. The Driver is about $500, and the 3 wood costs about $225. A little steep. A lot steep. Maybe when I get my handicap down in the single digits, I’ll reconsider.

Well, there was no information on club head weight, so I pulled out the handy Golfsmith club builders catalog. All their driver heads are in the general vicinity of 200 grams. No help.

Last night I pulled out two of my old drivers. One is the first metal driver I ever bought. It was manufactured by Head, better known for their tennis gear. But it has a low profile, and I’ve used it off the fairway many times. I’ve reshafted it three or four times as I experimented with club assembly. The head is a little heavier than my current Liquidmetal driver, but not by much. I may put some lead tape on it to see how that affects my shots.

The second driver is one of my traditional clubs, and one I always enjoy hitting. It is a Harvey Pennick persimmon head on a graphite shaft. Nobody hits persimmon clubs any more. Everyone wants the latest technology. But I generally hit the ball just as well with this driver as I do with any other. It just has a smaller sweet spot, which requires more consistency in my swing.

But when I hit the sweet spot on my persimmon driver, the sensation is magic.

When I started playing golf, I found a set of old clubs at a garage sale. They had metal shafts coated to look like wood. They were rusty and pretty beat up. But I learned to hit the ball with them. I decided I needed some new ones while playing with a new partner one day. He asked if I was going to use my brassie or my niblick on the next shot.

I was a young GI, with very little disposable income. And a new set of clubs, a complete set of irons and woods, cost $100 in the Base Exchange. It took quite some time before I convinced myself I had enough money to get that set, but I finally did. Like every set at the time, the woods were made from laminated maple. They served well, but they just weren’t persimmon, the royalty of golf. A persimmon driver alone could cost more than what I paid for my complete set. That wasn’t happening.

I eventually moved up to a set of Wilson Staff 1200 woods, almost top of the line for laminated maple woods. And I used them for more than a dozen years. I picked up the Head driver in a bow to the advancement in technology. I’ve used it off and on now for about ten years.

As I got interested in rebuilding clubs, I picked up a few persimmon heads to play around with. They have become throw-aways. Nobody wants a wooden wood any more. I liked the feel when I struck the ball well, and I could control the design myself with different shafts, inserts, grips, and modifications to the head itself. I bought a new persimmon head from Golfsmith, attached it to a light Aldila graphite shaft tipped at 45 inches, and put on a Winn grip. It is a nice club.

I pulled it out yesterday and made a few swings in the back yard. It goes back in my bag this weekend. The weight is a little more than others, but I don’t subscribe to the “lighter is better” mentality. I know from coaching baseball (and engineering) that swing speed is what matters, but you should swing the heaviest implement you can at the fastest speed. If the added weight slows your swing, get something lighter. But the added momentum of additional weight moving at the same speed increases ball speed. Distance. Yes, distance suffers if you don’t hit the ball “on the screws” and the smaller clubface is less forgiving. I don’t care. It actually makes me swing better knowing that.

The additional benefit is the feel of hitting a shot well with persimmon. The sound is different, too, although it isn’t the “click” we used to get from a persimmon hitting a wound ball with a balata cover.

There are few things in life better than standing on the teebox as the sun comes up on a beautiful day, the smell of dew on the grass and the feel of a well-struck ball off the face of a persimmon driver. I love this game.

Well, it’s almost noon. So far I played 18 holes (not very well), bought groceries, picked up a new storage shed at Sears, unloaded it, and mowed the grass. All that’s left to do is set up the shed.

As I walked off the course today, one of the marshals was headed out to the back nine. I told him he shouldn’t go out there right now. He looked at me with a question on his face. I told him I stunk it up so bad, the wind needed some time to clear the odor.

While playing poorly today, I did a lot of philosophizing. People who don’t play golf, or those new to the game try to equate it to hitting a baseball or tennis ball,, or some other moving object. They can’t understand why it is so hard to do.

Their analogy is wrong. Golfing is like pitching, not hitting. Being a really good golfer requires the same kind of skill as being a major league pitcher, only you use a club rather than your fingers and wrist. Actually, you use a club and your fingers and wrists.

A pitcher goes into a game hoping to have “all his stuff.” So does a golfer. A pitcher works with speed, direction, and ball spin. So does a golfer. Hitting the ball is not the issue, hitting it with the right spin, speed, and direction is everything.

A pitcher may throw a fastball, curve, slider, and change. He needs to “spot” each of these in a way that keeps the batter off balance. A golfer hits tee shots, irons, sand shots, chips, and putts. Each of these is different in the same way as pitches. And each must be hit to a specific spot for the player to score well. Today, I had none of my “pitches” working, and played bogey golf. Had I been a pitcher, the manager would have pulled me no later than the second inning. Each shot requires different skills and feel, especially close to the green.

For those of you unfamiliar with the game, next time you watch, think of the analogy. A long drive is a fastball, a good sand shot is a finesse changeup, and that long snaking putt that drops is a curve ball that caught the corner.

Davis Love III’s “home” tournament is next, but it’s difficult to get excited about another tournament after last weekend. Love is defending, and playing well enough to repeat. The dark horse this week, and every week this season, will be Nick Price.

He’s total class. A gentleman in the mold of Byron Nelson according to several inverviews I’ve seen with his peers. That comes across when he speaks on camera. I saw him on the Golf Channel this weekend doing one of their “Playing Lessons with the Pros” features. He is completely unassuming, and genuinely friendly. Besides that, he still has one of the finest swings in the game, and his iron accuracy puts him at the top. He doesn’t hit the driver like Love, Tiger, and Phil, but he can compete through that accuracy when his putting is on.

I didn’t see Daly’s name in the field this week. That’s a disappointment. I’ve decided that the name players I’ll follow and root for this season are Big John, Ernie Els, and Nick Price. All three have the potential for a British Open win, and the US Open is within the grasp of each. Of course, the younger players are always interesting to watch as they try to get that first win.

I woke up this morning to thunderstorms. I play in heat, cold, dry, wet, but no longer do cold/wet in combination. Just getting older. I don’t do sparks. The weather is a disappointment because I was hitting irons very well yesterday. If I hadn’t had 36 putts, I would have scored my best round of the season, in spite of the temperamental driver. I’ll just make some biscuits and gravy this morning and watch the Masters this afternoon.

Chris DiMarco and Phil Mickelson had better days yesterday.

I don’t get excited about golf tournaments except for the Masters, US Open, the Open Championship. I still watch others, but they are like watching an NFL game when neither team is one you really follow. The PGA Championship doesn’t come close in my mind, and I don’t consider it a major.

Each of the three true majors has a particular reason for being in the group. The two Opens are special because they are “open” to all, not just pros. The Masters is special because it is Bobby Jones’ tournament and, as Blogger Vance points out, it is a rite of spring for those up north who haven’t had the luxury of playing golf through the winter.

Today will be a full day of golf among the azaleas. I have my special veggie dip ready, and the big leather easy chair is big enough for me and the two dogs. They like golf, too.

John Daly is out. He’s in good company. So are Jack, Arnie, Shigeki, Fuzzy,and Ben. And so is Weir.

Mike Weir has to sit around and watch someone else win the tournament, and be a part of the award ceremony. The previous year’s champion slips the green jacket on the new champion.

It may be tough.

Then again, Phil is making a move, and Mike might enjoy being the first one to congratulate him on winning his first major.