Spring weather is here, which can mean only one thing: lots of golf clubs will soon get thrown into the lake. At least these magazines can tell you where to buy some new ones.
In Golf Digest’s latest issue, duffers can score their fill of tips to help cure those pesky slices or improve that yippy putting stroke. One piece offers suggestions on how to part ways with a golf instructor when you’re not clicking. But the golfing instructional mag’s real money shot this issue is an excerpt from Tiger Woods’ former swing coach Hank Haney’s book “The Big Miss: My Years Coaching Tiger Woods.” It dishes that Haney’s attempts to help Woods, who has won 14 major championships, were stymied when the golfer chased dreams of becoming a Navy SEAL. Elsewhere, the Condé Nast golf publication delivers ho-hum coverage of the upcoming Masters tournament, which starts the first week in April. One survey segment of the mag informs us that 68 percent of readers believe that four-time tournament winner Woods has at least one more Masters win left in him.
Golf offers a dizzying array of tips for players. “A lateral hip move will rid you of your banana ball forever,” the mag advises. We also liked a bold, lengthy feature that drives home the underappreciated fact that “most amateurs, obsessed with mechanics, sacrifice distance and accuracy by swinging too slowly.” Likewise, a preview of the Masters includes an assessment of the course at Augusta from the always-frank Johnny Miller. The 18th hole is “pretty good but not a sensational finishing hole,” Miller gripes, complaining that it’s one of those uphill holes, which are never fun. “For a finishing hole at Augusta, 18 is kind of bland.”
Gear is the real game in golf. The new yearbook of Athlon Sports Golf promotes its advertisers — ranging from club-makers and cigars to BMW — by wrapping their ads around a handy and very friendly hole-by-hole preview package of golf’s major tournaments. It’s a golf bag keeper for the season. It totals 80 uninterrupted pages of photos, stats and factoids about each hole in each famed course hosting the tournaments. There’s also a package of bio-spreads on the top 20 contenders for prizes. Added in the mix are 27 how-to’s from top pros on ways to fix your game, and if they don’t help you break into a PGA tour, at least you can win rounds of clubhouse drinks from members of your foursome.
Golf magazine swings for the sweet spot with its annual Equipment Buyer’s Guide. It’s exactly what a catalog should be. Its glamor close-ups of clubs — categorized into sections of heads, shafts and grips — is eclipsed only by the similar close-up spreads on shoes, GPS gadgets, range-finders and other accessories. Don’t go shopping without it. Keep in mind, however, that the USGA might not want to relax its equipment rules to encourage the flood of high-tech gear making its way into the game, assuring balls will fly faster and farther. The issue wraps up what the top manufacturers are developing. No wonder the multibillion industry is returning to growth in 2012 after its long drought.
With an election-year debate over taxes coming to a boil, the New Yorker delivers an entertaining account of three Big Apple tycoons — and the gymnastics they and their tax lawyers have gone through to avoid city taxes. In 2000, hedge-fund billionaire Julian Robertson of Tiger Capital Management kept numbingly detailed logs of his daily whereabouts with the help of his staff, allowing him to argue he spent most of his time out of the city and thereby avoiding a $26.7 million tax bill after a lengthy court challenge. Martha Stewart didn’t fare so well in a dispute over her whereabouts in 1991 and 1992, in which, trying to make a similar argument, she “emphatically” claimed she hadn’t appeared as a guest on the “Today” show in NBC’s New York studios. Her lawyers recanted before NBC archives were consulted.
Tina Brown can’t resist the urge to foist her Britishness upon Newsweek readers. More often than not, the editor appears to be operating on the idea that the US could do with a bit more of the UK’s left-leaning worldliness. This time, UK Prime Minister David Cameron is smiling on the cover, revealing that he has “a few things to tell your president!” Generous portions of compare-and-contrast are served up, with Cameron taking the UK’s budget crisis by the horns while Obama dawdles. Likewise, another feature offers a typically British view on “How Obama Caved on Israel,” though it’s true Obama is a first-rate caver. Elsewhere, however, it was heartening to see an overdue piece on “The Ruthless Overlords of Silicon Valley,” a fitting name for labor-exploiting, copyright infringing, privacy-invading, billionaire technology brats like Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin and Mark Pincus. Pull the plug on ’em.