Golf Research In Play Announces Golf Club Trade-In Program - Portion of Proceeds to Benefit Give2TheTroops 'Tee Off For The Troops' Campaign

Golf Research In Play Announces Golf Club Trade-In Program - Portion of Proceeds to Benefit Give2TheTroops 'Tee Off For The Troops' Campaign

The Worst Golf Villain of All Time?

With all of the sniping going on in professional golf these days including Rory Sabbatini calling Tiger "beatable", Michelle Wie dropping out of tournaments and everyone screaming foul, Daly smoking 4 cigarettes from tee to green on a par 3, Sergio whining, etc, the golf world is abuzz with stories "vilifying" players. This got me thinking about "Golf villains."

Kaiser Soze (Usual Suspects), Hannibal Lechter (Silence of The Lambs), Darth Vader (If you don't know this you should be deported from the planet), and a few others are always debated as the most "Evil" movie characters of all time. What about in the world of Golf movies? Who is the most evil movie golf villain of all? Here are the nominees:

Judge Smails (Caddyshack): Smails may not just be the most evil man in the history of golf movies but he may also be a nominee for most evil movie character of all time. He certainly ranks ahead of Johnny Lawrence from “The Karate Kid” and Norman Bates from “Psycho”. I can't remember one scene where he was likable or a moment where I felt sad or happy for him. Even Denzel in "Training Day" managed to deceive us for a minute or two that he was a good guy. Smails is a Country Club snob who believes he is above everyone and makes no secret of his feelings. He is rude to his friends and his family. He also has a temper on the course and you can tell a lot about a person by the way he acts on the golf course. Smails throws clubs, yells and cheats. He treats people like crap - look how horribly he treated his grandson Spalding, "You'll get nothing and like it!" when Spalding wanted lunch during a round of golf. He would not let Dr. Beeper return a page on the golf course thus demonstrating that the well being of others is of little or no concern to him. He has a volatile temper demonstrated when he threw putter from the 18th green over the clubhouse hitting a woman while she ate her lunch. He actually let his caddy take the blame for the flying putter and proceeded to tip him $.50 for caddying 18 holes. I think when Danny Noonan approached him about the caddy scholarship and Smails responded with, "The World Needs Ditch Diggers Too" it pretty much summarizes his character. He is so cold that he is almost inhuman.

Auric Goldfinger(Goldfinger): For those not familiar with Goldfinger, it was a 1964 James Bond flick and possibly the best Bond flick of them all. I would highly suggest renting it if you have not seen it. Aside from being a gold smuggler and a murderer Mr. Goldfinger is also a cheater. He cheats at cards and he cheats at golf. To his credit he did pay his golf bet when he lost a game to James Bond. Even if we put aside our feelings about Goldfinger as a murderer and a smuggler, he is still a serial cheater. We all know plenty of cheaters,Judge Smails cheated as well but Goldfinger plans for cheating in advance and it is part of the sport for him. What also makes Goldfinger truly stand out as an "Evil "golfer is that he uses his bodyguard/driver/assassin "Oddjob" as a caddy. Oddjob is a pretty intimidating guy considering that he kills people by throwing his bladed hat at them resulting in the target being beheaded. I think if you cheat and bring an assassin as a caddy that's pretty bad if he helps you cheat that’s even worse. When Bond won the round and exposed Goldfinger as a cheater Oddjob crushed a golf ball with his bare hand and beheaded a statue with his hat to show Bond just what could happen to him for exposing Goldfinger. When I play with someone and they improve a lie or magically find a ball in the woods in plain sight propped up on a good lie with an easy exit after 10 minutes of looking for it I usually say, “wow you play like Auric Goldfinger” they think I am referring to some European tour player or something. It is my way of saying, “You are a cheater.”

Shooter Mcgavin (Happy Gilmore): Shooter is a showoff and gets his name from the fact he likes to make a childish shooting expression with his fingers when he knocks the golf ball in the hole. I know that if I played with anyone who did the shooting move after sinking a putt I probably would not play with them again. For the most part I don't think rest of Shooter's selfish, deceitful, and childish behavior seems too different from many of the Primadonnas on the tour these days. His character is a more dramatic, comedic, and entertaining version of what we hear at most post PGA event press conferences. In addition to his trademark shooting gesture when he celebrates, what makes Shooter special is that he would take an old lady's house away to assure he wins a "Gold Jacket" (move version of a Green Jacket) as he demonstrated by buying Happy's Grandmother's house from the bank. Kicking an old lady out of her house is really bad. However, from a golf perspective the shooting gesture is worse than what he did to Granny. The shooting move is golf's equivalent to nails on a chalkboard while being poked with a sharp stick. I get chills just thinking about Shooter's celebratory move.

David Simms (Tin Cup): Tin Cup itself is a great movie. Every time it is on I stop what I am doing and I am just drawn in by the drama right away. I think I once toggled between Tin Cup and The Masters for two hours and I watched a few minutes of it during game 6 of the Sox/Yankees ALCS Series in 2004 (I am a big Sox fan). For Don Johnson and Cheech Marin the movie totally makes up for "Nash Bridges" and for Kevin Costner it is at least a down payment on "Waterworld" and "The Postman." David Simms is not that bad of a guy but because Tin Cup (Costner) is so likeable and such an underdog and Simms is his nemesis it makes Simms look like more of a pretentious jerk than most touring pros. Later in the movie we learn that he also hates puppies and old people. However, it should be noted that to the best of our knowledge Simms did not kick any old people out of their homes like Shooter Mcgavin and as far as athletes who hate animals he can't hold a candle to Michael Vick. I am not sure he is evil as much as he is the perfect arch-rival for Tin Cup. The stark contrast between Simms and Tin Cup paints Simms in a very evil light.

We can't all be staples

I saw this article a couple of months ago in Fast Company Magazine about how Staples operates their Warehouse with robots. What caught my attention was how clean the warehouse was. Wow! It looks like you can eat off those floors. ...and the Robots! y warehouse is 11,000 square feet and we share space with Wildcard Golf and Swing 'em Again Golf (used clubs).

Anyhow, we moved from 5,000sf to 11,000sf and we clearly ran out of space. Swing 'em again basically closed the showroom because used clubs take up a lot of space. We had a customer try to find us a couple of weeks back and I felt badly because they expected to see a big sign and a store. I must confess it is just a big warehouse. We are also way in the back behind Pilkington (you will see their trucks from the street) and next to the very smelly medical waste treatment warehouse. It keeps the rent down.

See if you can figure out which pics are from Staples Warehouse and which ones are ours. By the way, in our defense, we do keep the assembly area very clean and organized. As long as assembly and shipping area a well oiled machine we will continue to keep our customers happy. We like our space. Hopefully nobody gets hurt climbing the mountains of boxes!

Bad week...better weekend

Last week was a tough week. We were doing a little test with our Google Adwords account where we increased our spend by quite a bit. Our expectation was that our increase in spending would increase sales based on higher click through rates and better ad placement. For thise of you that are not familiar with adwords, you are probably very bored. I would like to direct you to more interesting content on my blog before you click to some other site. Anyhow, we spent lot's of $$ and we had an exceptionally slow week from google. I bought a couple of books on PPC from Amazon at the end of last week to see if we could be doing things a little better. I bought:
Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site and Ultimate Guide to Google Adwords

My summer reading list is not exactly "To Kill A Mockingbird" and "1984."

Anyhow, by Sunday morning our customers were back and all was well in the world again. I am still trying to figure out is there is a software solution to managing my bids more efficiently. Another project for this week.

Don't Blame Michelle Wie

Sometimes I think most of us forget how poor our judgment was at 17 years old. I can remember meeting up with friends in my high school parking lot on a Saturday night, driving into the worst part of Hartford Connecticut to buy beer and drinking it in my school parking lot before we figured out to go. As an adult, I would consider that poor judgment and basically stupid. I realize now that I was very lucky that I did not get caught. However, I was not a stupid teen but I was a normal kid doing stupid teen things. My parents also dictated a lot to me and influenced my judgment and corrected me on a lot of things. Most kids enjoy a similar experience growing up. There are some exceptions - kids from the great depression, kids from broken homes who have to fend for themselves, etc. However, for the sake of this rant let's assume that Michelle Wie has it pretty good. I am fairly sure she did not buy golf lessons and greens fees with a paper route, food stamps, and 5 cent soda can redemptions. She had a pretty comfortable home life like me.

Michelle is dealing with a lot right now, injuries, missed cuts, negative media attention and criticism from other golfers. I blame her parents for a lot of these issues. A professional sports career or a great career of any sort is a marathon not a sprint. Tiger played a couple of years of the U.S. Amateur and a year at Stamford before going pro. Michael Jordan played college hoops, and Kobe Bryant was not the MVP in his first year. It appears that Michelle Wie's management team made a lot of poor decisions on her behalf and may have done a lot of damage. Let's not forget she is a 17 year old girl and she has the emotions and feelings of a 17 year old girl - she is not a robot and all of this must be hard for her. She did not make the decision to go pro at 15 by herself, she did not pick up the phone and demand sponsors exemptions into men's events only to miss cuts. She did not make the decision to pursue PGA greatness before establishing herself as an LPGA great. Somebody made these decisions with her. However, only Michelle Wie feels the embarrassment and emotions that comes with these events, missed cuts, losses, and media scrutiny coupled with the insecurity and emotions that a teenage girl already feels. I feel really badly for her right now. She is a kid who has been badly mismanaged.

Because Ms. Wie is a celebrity we forget her age and we also forget that behind her there is a family, sponsors, and management that dictate where she goes, what she does, and where she plays. The next time Michelle Wie says something to the media that makes you roll your eyes, or she misses a cut, or has a questionable injury think about what you were doing at 17 years old and then give her a break. She is a victim of those around her.

I hope that Michelle Wie has the opportunity to meet Jennifer Capriatti one day. Jennifer was a teen sensation in tennis and in her formative years she took a break and did some of the things that the rest of us did as teens. She got caught. I got caught too. However, my picture was not in People Magazine when I got caught. Jennifer resurrected her career on her own terms and played some great tennis and she seemed really happy doing it. I noticed when Jennifer Capriatti had her comeback I did not see her dad parked behind her at the press conferences anymore.

Good luck Michelle. I hope that you are happy. If you are not, I hope that you find it because you are 17 and you deserve nothing but happiness.

The Warrior Custom Golf "Field Test Program"

I received an email a couple of days ago from the "VP of Client Services" at Warrior Custom Golf telling me I have been specially selected to field test their 2008 clubs and receive $100 of free gifts. Pretty sweet huh? Apparently the VP of Client Services does not use his or her name. Just the title. email was from "VP of Client Services" email address was vp@warriorcustomgolf.com. I have been in sales a long time and I have never seen people use their titles as email addresses or not give their name at all. Maybe I will change my email address to "el presidente@gogrip.com."

Anyhow, all joking aside, I called to redeem my offer. Warrior Custom Golf (WCG)was very warm and friendly and they asked for my name, redemption code etc.
We established my Handicap and then the friendly support person walked me through the offer. At first I thought that they were going to send me a bunch of Fairway Woods and a Driver customized by their master club fitter for me to try. The email clearly states that I need to pay shipping and handling which is totally cool by me.

Here is where I struggled a bit. Warrior is going to charge my credit card for $139+ per club for this special field test. I pointed out that I could go to a store or web site and buy Fairway Woods and a Driver for a little less money and I would not be obligated to field test them. I also asked some questions about what was required of me for the field test. One thing about me is I am very polite on the telephone. I ask a lot of questions and I don't like to upset people. However, when I started asking a lot of questions about why I have to pay for the clubs and the details of the field test, I was magically disconnected.

I have made this point before and I will make it again...there is no such thing as a free golf club unless you are displaying it when you tee off at the US Open or your mom buys it for you for your birthday.

I would like to thank the VP of Client Services at WCG for the generous offer. Free clubs for $139+ each plus shipping. However, I never got to hear about the $100 of free SWAG that comes with my free field test. Best deal I have heard about in a while.

I hope this guy is a customer

I think when we had "recreational golfers" in mind with our product line we were thinking of this guy. I pray he had a GRIP driver in his hands.