plenty of apps for golf swing

Golfers who are also avid gamers may have been spoiled by games like Tiger Woods Golf, which lets gamers know the virtual course layout and exact distance to the pin before they even swing their "club." The Swing by Swing app gives real courses that same video game flavor by providing distance data for more than 34,000 courses. You can even keep track of TaylorMade RocketBallZ Driver your score and number of putts on any course in the world. While all these services are free, users can pay extra to upgrade to "Looper" status. Subscribing to this service is like having a virtual caddy (as fans of "Caddyshack" already know), with benefits that include measuring the distance of specific clubs and 3-D overlays of every shot you hit in a given round.

You might not think there's a lot to the game of golf, but you'd be very wrong. Golf^ provides a number of interesting facts about the game. Now avid players who don't know the history of the sport can catch up with this app that's full of facts. Each fact can be shared easily with friends so they can learn a thing or two as well.

Do you ever hit the links with other golfers who prefer to make up the rules as they go along? This official app from the United States Golf Association is designed to keep everyone honest with their score keeping (this includes you, too!). Professionals, amateurs and beginners alike can tap into the app at any point for guidance on what to do when a ball gets lost or lands near a hazard, like an alligator or a beehive (yikes!). Not sure if you are allowed to take a swing at a ball in play when your TaylorMade RocketBallZ fairway wood stance is out-of-bounds? Rules of Golf has the answer. For more ambiguous questions, you can email the USGA directly via the application and get a ruling. This app is all-knowing. Just don't get upset if following the letter of the law adds a few strokes to your handicap.

Fanatics of PGA and LPGA action shouldn't be without the Golf Channel app. You'll see leaderboards for each significant tournament in addition to video clips that will bring you right discount golf clubs onto the course. Golf Channel also has frequent live chats as well as columns and blogs by golf experts. You can even follow specific players to see how they're doing in the tournaments that matter most to you.

There’s no repeat champion at Senior PGA without Waston

There might have been some pre-tournament posturing going on. But there could also be carnage this week.

"My goal is to think you're never really out of it because everyone's going to make bogeys," Couples said. "I don't know if under par discount golf clubs is going to win, 10-under is going to win or if 2-over is going to win, but I know it's a very hard course."

Allen, who won at TPC Tampa Bay last month and teamed with David Frost for a victory at Savannah Harbor, will try to repeat his Senior PGA Championship win of 2009, when he was two strokes better than Larry Mize. That was the last year this tournament didn't go to a playoff. Tom Lehman took the 2010 title.

Funk is 13th on that list and seems more concerned about the course than the competition.

The 10th hole, a 539-yard par 5, includes a multitiered green. Funk, Allen and Langer will start their round there Thursday.

Harbor Shores opened two years ago for its first full season in one of Michigan's most economically distressed communities. The Jack Nicklaus-designed course was built on land that was home not long ago to abandoned factories and industrial waste.

Funk is coming off a victory this month at The Woodlands. He's in a group for the first two rounds Thursday and Friday with Michael Allen and Langer, the Champions Tour's top two money winners this year.

"I thought maybe we could reverse the order and play the greens as tees and the tees as greens and it would be easier to putt," Funk said. "Just play in reverse."

"You do have to be precise, but the Taylormade R11 irons greens, to what point?" he said. "When you see some of the greens, I don't think anyone can be precise enough to hit it in the certain spots on these greens."

"There's a lot of short irons where you've got some really small areas to hit to, but if you can hit them — and you've got backstops — if you can use the course to your advantage, I think you can score decent out here," Allen said. "I know I'm going to say that and be jinxing myself and swearing a few times at myself for a ball coming up in a place I can't play it hardly, or not feeling that I got the best out of it. But that's golf, too."

"I think the golf course is phenomenal," Langer said. "If he had done one-third of the undulations on the green — that's my personal opinion — I think it would be in the top 20 golf courses I've ever played."

The tournament will take place without its Taylormade R11 driver defending champion. Tom Watson had to withdraw because of a wrist problem. He won last year's championship at Valhalla, beating David Eger in a playoff.

The course was awarded the Senior PGA Championship in 2012 and 2014, amid hopes that it could help restore some stability and prosperity to Benton Harbor, which is under the jurisdiction of a state-appointed emergency manager.

Rory McIlroy is back to Players Championship

"It isn't a priority for them, as they would rather win a major or a World Golf Championship event."

To hear McIlroy tell it, the boycott wasn't his idea anyway. He publicly admitted that skipping The Players and giving up his PGA Tour card in 2010 were mistakes.

"Visually, it's very tough off the tee. It makes you feel uncomfortable because it looks like you've only got a little bit of fairway to hit, but actually once you get up there, it's a little bit wider. It's just very demanding visually."

"That's another example of being Mizuno MP-69 Irons involved with Chubby and ISM and maybe being led down the wrong path, or a path that I didn't want to go down. It was something I sort of felt like I had to do.

Woods has had his own struggles on the course although he did win the tournament in 2001, and he will be back this year after missing The Players last year because of left leg injuries and pulling out in the middle of his final round in 2010 because of a neck injury.

"I would think when it was played at the end of the March it was getting to be the fifth major," Chandler. "Moving it to the middle of May has made it about the 10th most important tournament in the world.

"I think just spending a little bit of time around Chubby and Lee and hearing their view of the PGA Tour, obviously they're very pro-European Tour, while I've always been one who wanted to play Titleist 910F-D Fairway Wood on the PGA Tour."

There's no question the Stadium Course is one of the most difficult — shall we say Dye-abolicial — tests the players face all year on the PGA Tour, even for Tiger Woods.

"I don't like the course," McIlroy said in 2010. "It's a Pete Dye course. It creates angles, a bit like Whistling Straits. He designed that course as well, where the tee boxes are sort of lining you up in the wrong direction.

McIlroy turned 23 Friday while he was on his way to a tie for second in the Wells Fargo Championship, losing in a playoff to Rickie Fowler. It can be difficult growing up under the constant media glare when reaching the top at such a young age.

"I don't feel that comfortable on the golf course yet," McIlroy said. "Not to say The Players isn't a great event. It's very prestigious and it would be great to win it one day.

"You know, it's a golf tournament I grew up watching on TV. It's a great place. You've seen a lot of great stories there over the years."

Fowler hasn’t contended in months

True enough, but unlike with world No. 2 Rory McIlroy, the Fowler meter is still running on empty in the United States, where the colorful 23-year-old is still trying to live up to his considerable skills, even bigger reputation and a gallery audience that tops 'em both.

Already the third-biggest fan draw on the PGA Tour behind veteran mega-stars Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson, he’s been left stalled at the starting gate by McIlroy, who turns 23 on Friday and already has a major championship to his credit. McIlroy also won this week’s event, the Wells Fargo Championship, in 2010.

Fowler’s longtime swing coach in California died a year ago, and Fowler hasn’t hired a replacement. Like Watson, a frequent practice partner, he’s basically doing it as a feel player, minus a second discount golf clubs set of discerning eyeballs. His caddie Joe Skovron notwithstanding.

Although, as Fowler reminded, he did beat the Ulsterman by six shots to win the Korean Open last fall, an event that also included Korean notables Y.E. Yang, Seung-yul Noh and John Huh, all currently playing on the PGA Tour with some distinction. But since nobody in the States saw the victory on TV, it was relegated to the category of, out of sight, out of mind.

Fowler, who played on the 2010 Ryder Cup team, said he entered the season with three goals spot-welded into brain: Win his first tour event, make it to the FedEx Cup finals, and earn a spot on the Ryder team in Chicago. So far, they remain blurry spots on the horizon at best, though after an opening 6-under 66 at Quail Hollow, which left him locked in a tie for the first-round lead, he’s better positioned than at any point in months.

Watson won the Masters three weeks ago, with Fowler tagging along in the gallery for moral support in the playoff, proving that you don’t need an "entourage," as Skovron put it, to win big.

Fowler said that even though he hasn’t contended in months -- his best finish this season was T7 at the Honda Classic two months ago -- he wasn’t tempted to call Butch Harmon, Sean Foley or any Ping G20 driver of the other swing doctors many other players have on speed dial. Fowler knows his swing faults and has learned how to self-diagnose his fixes.

A victory on a stage like Quail Hollow, with players like McIlroy, Wooods, Mickelson and Lee Westwood in the field, would send his popularity up yet another notch, not to mention end some of the eyebrows that have slowly been raised as his victory drought in the States is well into a third season.

He’s actually broken out a Band-Aid of his own last week, when on the practice green at New Orleans, he switched to a left-hand-low putting grip, which he used at times as a teenager. He recalls shooting scores of 10 under on four occasions as a kid with different grips.

Fowler, whose colorful attire, new facial hair and shaggy haircut make him look a little like Capt. Jack Sparrow, played the last 12 holes in 6 under, and like his best friend on tour, Bubba Watson, he’s making his way along in the professional ranks basically flying solo.

Guys have gone cross-eyed trying to fix their strokes over the years. A few more putts toppling in the hole could make all the difference, since he had skidded from 31st in strokes-gained putting to a rather stunning 154th this year. He made four birdie putts from outside five feet Thursday.

"I feel that I'm good enough to win," he said. "I definitely feel like, with the amount of people expecting or thinking that I can win, is a compliment. You know, with it being my main goal for this year, that's my main focus."

As ever, Fowler drew a throng, regardless. He was dressed in sort of a cobalt turquoise ensemble in the first round, and while it might not work for the old guard, the young fans have embraced him as a generational idol. But it’s not just kids. You know he’s in a different ping g15 irons level of public approbation when you see adults wearing the flat-billed caps in neon orange, Fowler’s traditional Sunday attire.

The 66 was his best opening round of the season by two strokes, and was within one of his best round, period, which was recorded last week when he finished 10th at New Orleans.

"It's definitely been a slow year," said Fowler, whose new television commercials for a national hotel chain began airing last month. "It's getting there, though.

"I've felt like I've made some really good swings the past few weeks, so hopefully I'm turning a corner, can get into contention and start having some fun and start

Curtis misplaced his putting stroke somewhere

Curtis, 34, never lost his thirst for competition or his talent, but somewhere along the way he misplaced his putting stroke.

“I’ve always been a decent putter,” he said last week before the Zurich Classic at T.P.C. Louisiana. “I just wasn’t making the birdie putts I needed to make.”

For the first two rounds, Curtis was paired with Justin Rose and Graeme McDowell, the 2010 United States Open champion. They were his neighbors in Florida, and until Curtis moved his family back to Ohio, he used to play occasional practice rounds with them.

At the suggestion of Herb Page, who coached him at Kent State, Curtis moved his right hand over the top of his discount golf clubs left for his fourth start, in San Antonio. The payoff was immediate. He won last weekend’s Texas Open, sealing his two-stroke victory with the help of a 22-foot par putt on the penultimate hole.

Leonard, the 1997 British Open champion, is 10th on the career money list with more than $31 million in earnings, but can relate to Curtis’s struggles. Last year Leonard did not record his first top-10 finish until his final event and was prepared to enter qualifying school, if that’s what it took, to retain his tour status. Like Curtis, Leonard’s troubles began on the greens.

In the two years after he won the 2003 British Open at Royal St. George’s, Curtis missed 27 of 44 cuts. He did not have a top-10 finish in 23 events in 2011 and fell off the tour radar, his status so low he made only three starts — and earned one paycheck — in the first three months of 2012.

“It’s amazing what putting can do and how it bleeds into other parts of your game,” Curtis said. “Golf’s such a funny game. It’s 90 percent mental.”

“My wife said that before I made the putt, my 5-year-old got so excited, he was saying, ‘You’re going to make it, Dad!’ ” Curtis added, “For him to see me on TV and winning, it put in TaylorMade RocketBallZ fairway wood perspective what I actually do.”

Curtis entered the tournament ranked first in three-putt avoidance and second in strokes gained putting. His story was much different in 2011, when he was 114th in three-putt avoidance and 57th in strokes gained putting.

Last Sunday, Liam jumped up and down and pointed at the television in the family’s home outside Cleveland as Curtis made one clutch putt after another. None was bigger than the 22-footer for par on the 17th hole.

Having regained his confidence on the greens, Curtis said, he feels free to make aggressive swings because he trusts TaylorMade RocketBallZ Driver his putter to bail him out in the end. He felt so comfortable with his game, he did not play a practice round last week despite never having seen the course.

“Ricky would be telling me that Ben’s playing well and that he just needs a few putts to drop here and there,” McDowell said. The victory, he added, “really changes his year: he goes from playing off scraps to playing the best schedule in the world.”

New Zealand Women’s Amateur Championship t the Mount Maunganui Golf Club

“The putts were dropping a lot more today which was nice and Sarah played really well so it was nice to have that added pressure. It heightens the focus.

“I made a soft bogey on my 17th hole and I stood on the sixth tee and put a good one down there and made eagle to finish well at even par. I have a lot more momentum now.

Alvarez knows that three top players in Lydia Ko, Emily Perry and Chantelle Cassidy are not here this week but she still holds hopes of being selected for the Espirito Santo in September.

Wellington’s Julianne Alvarez won Callaway Razr X Tour irons the women’s qualifying after carding an even par 72 in round two to win by two shots from fellow New Zealand rep Sarah Bradley. I felt really confident that I was backing myself and that made me feel good,” said the 15-year-old from Manor Park.

“My aim for the tournament was to play good so I would still be looked at for the Espirito Santo team – a good solid performance will get me looked at for that team.”
“I am really looking forward to playing Match Play on this course because it is the perfect Match Play Mizuno MP-58 irons course – there is a lot of risk and reward out there. Hopefully I’ll make it through to the final on Sunday and would love to meet Julianne there.”

“Today was a grinding day,” said the Waikato rep Bradley

“I feel good about being the No.1 seed but you know Match Play is anyone’s game. It is there for anyone now Ping G20 fairway wood and it’s unpredictable. I am not taking anything for granted.”

With the two rounds of Stroke Play in qualifying complete the top 32 women players have been found to contest the NZ Amateur.

“It is good to have an opportunity to win this title. Julianne is a great golfer and she showed that today. I am taking the mindset that I am going to go for it and try and win this title.

Meantime Bradley was happy with her finish on the sixth hole that saw her come up with an eagle.

Obama added pressure on Augusta to drop its restrictive policy

"His personal opinion is women needs to be admitted," White House spokesman Jay Carney told reporters, saying he had spoken to Obama concerning the issue, as the prestigious Masters tournament got arrived in Augusta, Georgia.

In a very rare moment of agreement with Obama, Republican front-runner Mitt Romney, the Democratic president's likely opponent inside the November 6 election, said if it were approximately him, "of course I'd have women in Augusta."

The question of whether women needs to be able to become members on the home in the Masters has existed for a long discount golf clubs time. However it took on added significance after Ginni Rometty became ceo of IBM, one the tournament's longtime sponsors, in January.

Carney was asked whether Obama believed the men's-only Augusta club should open its ranks to women, especially given Rometty's position.

"It is obviously approximately the club to make a decision," Carney said on the daily White House briefing. "He believes Augusta should admit women. You already know, we're type of long over enough time when women needs to be excluded from anything."

Club chairman Billy Payne was pressed around the eve with the Masters on if the club would alter its policy.

Maintaining true with all the club's secretive traditions, he refused on Wednesday use a clear answer, saying that membership issues weren't for public debate.

DILEMMA WITH IBM

IBM, our planet's largest technology services company, is often a long-standing sponsor from the Masters and it is past four CEOs are actually granted membership to Augusta National. The club now faces Taylormade R11 irons a dilemma of if you should change its policy to allow for Rometty to become listed on or spurn among its major sponsors.

Augusta's invitation-only membership continues to be steeped in secrecy considering that the conservative club opened in 1932. Women can play in the course if asked by a part but cannot become members themselves. The club resisted pressure to desegregate for years simply admitted its first black member in 1990.

The club won't reveal its full set of members, thought to be around 300, although it may be known that a number of the powerful men from industry and finance, including Bill gates and Warren Buffett, are members.

When asked whether Obama - who may have played golf regularly throughout his presidency - would ever play in a men's-only club, Carney said, "I was without that conversation with him."

Carney pushed back up against the notion that Friday's White House conference on females and the economy had electoral implications, insisting it turned out meant to promote economic initiatives.

But Obama's re-election campaign has made not a secret of the efforts to court women voters, with his fantastic Taylormade R11 driver fellow Democrats have sought to depict the Republicans' concentrate on contraception and abortion as an attack on women's rights.

With a campaign stop in Pennsylvania, Romney took care to not supply the Democrats any more ammunition.

"I'm not only a member of Augusta. I not really know basically would qualify - my golf game is certainly not good - but only were a member and if I could run Augusta, which isn't planning to happen, but of course I'd have women in Augusta. Sure," he was quoted saying.