River Ridge Golf Club - West Houston, Katy Texas

Tips From Our PGA Pro, Trey Birchum:

Time to check out the bag

Time to check out the bag...Now that the time has changed and the season is in full swing, its time to take a look in your bag and check the condition of your equipment. How long has it been since you changed your grips? Has it been over a year? Two? The life of the club?

The only part of your body that touches the equipment is your hands; everyone knows that. So why would you play with grips that are slick and glassy and slide around in your hands? It’s pretty simple math- if the clubface is twisting around in your hands, that changes the angle that the clubface will approach the ball, changing the direction of your shot. So why risk it? Change them or at the very least use some warm soapy water and clean the winter dust off of them. The one grip that you must have in good condition is your putter grip; that is the one club in your bag with no loft, so any twisting or shifting of the hands is definitely going to cause a misdirected shot. Don’t take the chance- if you don’t want to spend the money or time to fix anything else, make sure your putter grip is in the best shape of any in your bag. The other equipment check I remind people about is one that is almost universally overlooked; what kind of shape are the spikes of your shoes in? Are they worn down to a nub? Can they pass for loafers? Your hands are the only thing on the club, your feet are the only thing in contact with Mother Earth; you really don’t want either one of them sliding around on a golf swing. As many uneven, sidehill and downhill lies as we have, you better have some decent spikes in your shoes or you’re going to be missing shots not because of bad swings, but bad equipment. There are already way too many variables to this game to make it simple; make sure you control the things you can control, and your equipment should be right at the top of the list. Take a look into your bag and get everything there in working order before you go at 2009 in earnest; if your game is still in bad shape after fixing that, then come see one of our PGA Professionals so we can start to work on you.

Fairways, greens and one putts.....

Trey Birchum
PGA Head Professional, River Ridge Golf Club
email: tbirchum AT riverridgegolfclub.com