Scuffy golf doesn’t have to be forever
October 10, 2014
Some golfers are a little “particular” about how we appear on the golf course, and that includes our golf clubs.
If you can’t be good, you can at least look good, I often say.
This time of year can help meet that goal, if only because most men look far better in slacks than they ever do in shorts.
As for golf clubs, few things are more annoying to devoted golfers than to scuff the glossy tops of their drivers and fairway woods with a bad swing.
The nasty scratches from those past mistakes stare back at you with every subsequent swing, daring you to make the club even uglier with the next attempt.
There are ways to fix this problem, without going out and buying a fresh new club.
First, learn to swing better. I scuffed my driver, five-wood, and seven-wood shortly after The Lesson this past summer, but haven’t added any more scratches since then.
Second, find a way to mask the minor scratches. There are several options, including a dab of shoe polish, or nail polish, or for the truly daring, a light rub of toothpaste to smooth out the lines.
Third, have the clubs refinished, or do it yourself. This requires careful preparation, paint that meets the club maker’s specs, and the painstaking use of wet 600-grit sandpaper.
For the less adept among us, there is now a fourth option. The folks at ClubCrownStripe.com are now selling dozens of special film appliqués for drivers and fairway woods. Think of a small-scale version of the vinyl wraps that grace DART buses and other vehicles.
The films add a single gram to the total club weight, which only certain princesses with a pea sensitivity should be able to detect.
The designs now available include over 70 options for devoted college alumni and military veterans, along with other looks intended to help with alignment issues. One of these stripe designs is in the black and red colors of Fulham FC, a nice blending of my interests.
Scuffy golf does not have to last forever.
Local ladies play limited club contests
The Rules of Golf permit golfers to use up to fourteen golf clubs in a regulation round of golf. Actually using all fourteen clubs in a single game is a rare occurrence for most golfers, especially on their home courses. In my last home round, for example, I went the whole day without ever using my pitching wedge.
Several golf instructors suggest playing a limited-club round or two in order to develop scrambling skills.
Locally, the annual fundraiser tournament for Kent Sussex Industries has played a popular Three-Club event for many years.
The ladies of Cape Region golf clubs joined in the “limited” fun recently in their weekly contests.
The Kings Creek Ladies 9 Hole game for Oct. 1 was “Three Clubs and a Putter,” in which each player selected her putter and three other club for use in her round. Sue Eisenbrey won first place and Noreen Buzerak finished in second place. Eisenbrey also won closest to the pin honors on the eleventh hole, at 10′ 11″.
The Kings Creek Country Club Ladies 18 Hole Golf League played their own Three Clubs and a Putter event Oct. 2. Barb Hines won first place in the first flight, followed by Ruth Lauver in second and Anita Pettitt in third. Pettit also won closest to the pin for the day on the fifth hole, at 23 feet 5 inches.
Brenda Butterfield earned first place in the second flight, with Prabhat Karapurkar taking second and Nancy Froome coming in third.
The ladies of Sussex Pines Country Club played a Five of Clubs tournament Oct. 7. This format usually requires the putter to be counted toward the total of five clubs, leaving a choice of four others. Hazel Pusey won the contest, with Susan Shockley coming in second and Nancy Riale finished in third.