You may be asking yourself what is going on with Jordan.  He’s just not the same!  Instead of looking like a Jedi Master on the putting greens he’s starting to look like Hans Solo…you know, still cool but definitely not one with The Force.  Last year he seemed to win everything he entered, now that’s not the case.  You may even be contemplating if you should put him in your Masters Pool next week, and then you realize that would be as crazy as Kim Kardashian becoming a nun.  Opinions are in no short supply as Jason Day seems to think Jordan is playing too much and Jordan might be wearing himself out.  I remember when I was his age, walking up hill, both nines, in the snow, carrying two bags on each shoulder.  Oh to be young again!  But this does bring up an important question, is there such a thing as too much golf?  If there is such a thing, I still haven’t found it, much like The Force!  What do you think?

The TaylorMade M1 driver came out last September. If you have been watching the Golf Channel at all this past week you can vouch for me there is a newer TaylorMade driver on the market now. You know, you probably saw the commercial every fifteen minutes. The new M2 driver came out, with the same technology as the M1, but now it’s even better and you can hit it even farther. According to my calculations, and assuming each driver hits is farther than its predecessor, if I were to have bought a brand new driver from TaylorMade every time a new one came out in the past two years I should be hitting it at least 715 yards (or at least longer than this sentence). With technology these days I get how there can be new advances every so often, but twice a year? Hmmmm!?! Is TaylorMade helping or hurting its sales with a new driver every six months? What do you think?

There has been quite a bit of hype around the ‘Big Three’ of Jordan Speith, Rory McIlroy, and Jason Day these past few months…and for good reason. They do seem to be playing golf a little better than others. Now, with the surge of Rickie Fowler’s game they are considering adding another player to complete the foursome. But now we have Adam Scott winning two weeks in a row and we always seem to hear Dustin Johnson’s name when he plays…Bubba is changing his attitude to help him win more tournaments. Arguments could be made for many players to throw into the mix of great golfers, so why are we limiting it to three or four golfers. Heck, in a couple months Tiger could be giving these young guns a run for their money! Golf is in a great place right now with players from all across the world…how many should we highlight? What do you think?

It seems technology is giving us statistics we can’t even count! Remember back in the day when all you cared about was how many greens or fairways you hit? Now we have to worry about spin rates, smash factors, and scrambling percentages, which kind of makes me want to get smashed while scrambling through all the stats of my last round. As an example, on the PGA Tour they have a ‘Strokes Gained: Putting’ statistic which is ‘the number of putts a player takes from a specific distance is measured against a statistical baseline to determine the players strokes gained or lost on a hole. The sum of the values of all holes played…Oh no I’ve gone cross-eyed!’ In English, it tells you how much better you are at putting than everyone else. Can all these statistics make us better players? What do you think?

I know who I would pick…the guy that can squat you, me and the rest of your foursome.  I would also pick Rory in a golf match right now, but that is beside the point.  The real debate is whether or not you think lifting weights does more harm than good.  A case could be made to whether or not Tiger’s health issues are a result of heavy lifting or even the Navy SEAL training he did for fun.  Tour players are constantly training in the gym these days and fitness seems to become more and more a priority of the top players.  So the question may instead be, at what point/“dumbbell weight” does exercise become detrimental to your golf game.  What do you think?