Golf is Hard (the blog) is wondering and opining (is that a word?) which version of golf is actually the hardest.

1. Real golf.
2. Tiger Woods 08 on the Wii
3. Fantasy Golf

Which is harder?

Real Golf
Real golf is pretty darn hard. I’ve been playing for about 10 years and have yet to break 90. Umm, 95. It takes dedication, talent and tons of time to get better at real golf. I’d say out of 10 stars (10 is Tiger Woods), It’s a 7.

Tiger Woods 08 on Wii
Not that hard at first - but I tried my game on Doral and shot +15. In real life, I’d probably shoot +35. Real golf is harder for sure. I’d give Tiger 08 on the Wii 4 hard stars out of 10.

Fantasy Golf
So here’s the deal with fantasy golf. It’s super easy when Tiger is playing, otherwise it’s hard. Really hard. Not harder than real golf, but I’m giving it a solid 5 hard stars out of 10. Take this past week for instance… I had to change my lineup on Sunday because just about everyone else I had picked either “MC” (missed the cut) or was playing horribly. I stuck Allenby in just before the deadline and nabbed 14 quick points. Thanks to the weekly preview, I managed to give Luke Donald the start.

So there you have it.. real golf it turns out is quite a bit harder than Tiger 08 on the Wii and Fantasy Golf.

Neat new feature on titlest.com that let’s you show how you mark your ball.

But they stopped short! They should have created a widget that let me embed my ball on my blog and websites. Darn!

I took a screenshot because I just had to share… this is my NEW ball marking strategy. I didn’t have one before! Two dots, one purple, one red - my daughters favorite colors.

About 20 minutes after my post yesterday, Tiger caught fire and putted his way back to victory.

I managed to be smart enough to Tivo it and caught the ending late last night.

The guy is iconic, thrilling and rock solid. That was fun, fun, fun to watch.

Hit the range (and picked up a golf club) for the first time in more than 2 months. Whatever I had found towards the end of last year is long gone.

Meanwhile, Tiger looks human today at the Accenture Match play against JB Holmes. He just shanked one that was unplayable and is down 3.

We both had bad days.

I’m Tivo’ing this tonight… it looks terrific!

Who’s better… Tiger at Golf, or Nike making amazing commercials?

Caught up on issues of Golf Digest on a trip to Seattle and read a great interview with Jack Nicholson who laid out some of his own rules:

1. No double bogeys on first six holes.
2. I don’t gamble. But, if we must gamble, I only collect. I don’t pay.
3. Under pressure, I’ll cheat ya.
4. Any green in regulation, the second putt is called goo-oo-ood.

This is exciting… my 10 year old daughter is doing her very first service learning project. She’s picked the New Haven Diaper Bank to try to help and is hard at work both in school and online trying to fundraise. I’m using a bunch of different outlets to try to help her reach her modest goals of $500 by February 11th (that’s the due date on the service learning project). Obviously I’m proud of her, and am even more excited to see her accomplish her goals.

She and I shot a video (outtakes coming soon), built a blog and started to use my Facebook account to promote her efforts (i.e. we’ll do anything to raise the money!) In addition, she got the school principal to agree to let her distribute flyers to every class in school - pretty slick I thought.

Hi!

This blog and web site is designed to help raise money for the New Haven Diaper Bank - I’m doing a service learning project called “Dimes and Dollars for Diapers” and my goal is to raise as much money as possible.

Here are some of the facts of why I’m doing this project:

• Safety net programs, like Food Stamps and WIC, which are supposed to provide poor children with basic necessities do not cover diapers.
• An adequate supply of diapers can cost over $100/monthly
• Infants need up to 12 diapers a day; toddlers about 8 diapers a day. In low-income households babies may spend the whole day or longer in a single diaper.
• Cloth is not an option for most poor people. Most childcare centers require parents to provide disposable diapers. Furthermore, most people living in poverty do not have easy, affordable access to washing facilities.

You should donate now because without clean diapers, lots of bad things can happen.

• Parents who are working or in school cannot take advantage of free or subsidized childcare if they cannot afford to leave disposable diapers at the childcare centers.
• Inadequate diaper changing increases the risk of numerous health problems from skin diseases to hepatitis.
• A baby crying non-stop from being in a soiled diaper for a prolonged time is at greater risk of abuse.

For more information, please visit the New Haven Diaper Bank.

• Make a donation of course!
• Send the link her blog: http://diaperdrive.blogspot.com/ to your friends who care about babies who need diapers
• Learn more about why this is a problem
  

Not only is real golf hard, it turns out that fantasy golf is hard as well! I’m playing as part of The Golf Space’s fantasy golf group on Yahoo! and am having a tough time picking players. I mean, if it isn’t Tiger or Phil, then who the heck do you pick for points?

This week I’ve done especially badly picking guys like Pat Perez and Carl Pettersson, neither of whom I’d know if they knocked on my front door and said hi, I’m Pat Perez (or Carl Pettersson for that matter).

In any case, fantasy golf is sort of fun for just this reason - it’s a chance to get to know some guys who you wouldn’t normally have even noticed. J.J. Henry is from Fairfield Country in Connecticut near where I live. Being a homer, I usually try to get him on my roster as much as possible (bad strategy usually).

Happy new year!

Sure, I have other new years resolutions (less bread, more exercise etc), but what’s really important are my golf goals for the coming year. I have 3.

1. Play more golf! This happens to mean a new job that will allow me to play more. I played the most golf I’ve ever played in 2007 (about 20+ rounds), and this year I’d like to play at least 5-10 more.

2. Stay in the moment on every shot. I’m very zen about golf (it’s why I started playing in the first place). But as I started to shoot lower scores last year, I noticed that I kept looking ahead and figuring out what I needed to shoot to make my goal over the last few holes. That’s bad! I resolve to not do that and enjoy each shot for what it is.

3. To fully counter #2, above, I want to shoot a 95 or lower this year. Take that Mr. Stay in the Moment.

How about your golf resolutions, got any?