The Better By Saturday Series
Thanks to the editors at Golf Magazine, I discovered a great new way to reduce the mounds of print material around my house.
Perhaps I should explain.
I’ve subscribed to Golf and a few other magazines devoted to the sport for well over fifteen years.
That quickly adds up to several hundred periodicals, most of which include at least two or three segments devoted to golf instruction.
It just so happens that my memorizing skills are not so good that that I can read a golf tip and remember it for all time. Therefore, I usually hold onto the magazines when they’ve included a particularly useful teaching lesson, so I can refresh my recollection.
With a handicap that’s gone from 14 to 24 and back again, I could certainly use the help.
Nonetheless, my hoarding led to some unsightly stacks of dozens of old magazines stashed in a few spots around the house.
With Golf Magazine’s Better By Saturday series, however, I can now safely rid myself of a mass of clutter.
Each of these short volumes contains so many useful tips on playing golf that there’s just no reason for me to keep those old magazines. Besides, many of these tips are the same ones that have appeared in Golf.
Greg Midland, Dave Allen, and the other editors structured each book around one of the four main aspects of the game—driving, iron play/long game, short game, and putting.
Each of the short, easily understood suggestions from the magazine’s Top 100 Teachers is accompanied by a photograph to illustrate the point.
On occasion the lessons also include short paragraph-long sidebars, called Quick Tips, which supplement or explain an aspect of the tip under consideration on that page.
And these tips can quickly help golfers, as the titles promise.
Donald Crawley’s note about fluffy lies helped fix an occasional bout of the steeps with my fairway woods, in the Iron Play/Long Game volume.
A Quick Tip Richard Coop gives in Driving about the level of effort has already helped curb my enthusiasm off the tee, with good results.
The chapter on Sand Play in the Short Game book supports everything my golf pro taught me in a lesson. The combination has significantly helped with these shots
Even the Putting book has proven to be handy, and that’s easily the best part of my game. Dave Pelz wrote a good piece on breaking putts that I’ve known for years but occasionally need reminding.
Golfers who have ready access to a good teaching professional might not need these books as much as others.
For everyone else, however, especially those who have played golf for a while and developed a few bad habits, these books will be very handy
They should also be useful for the teaching pros, who can adjust these quick lessons to their students’ needs.
Review date: July 11, 2004