Archive for February, 2010

John Daly – Inspirational

During the ongoing Winter Olympics, the Norwegian Curling Team have been noticed more for their apparel, than for their game.   Their colorful pants must have been inspired by Loudmouth, made famous by John Daly.

I -- on the other hand -- find inspiration in watching John Daly play golf.

Banana-balls and The Dictionary

Since some of my friends are not that familiar with golf, I started making ”the BASE Jumpers Guide to Golf”. The idea was to draw what ever parallels there might be between the two activities and make a comprehensive guide to the fine game.

Golf, like any other activity, has a lot of terms that make no sense to the good people who do not participate in the game. For instance a ”slice” is when the flight of your ball curves to the right (if you are a right handed player) and the intention was to hit it straight. In BASE jumping this would be very similar to an ”off-heading opening”.

The project was short-lived though. First of all: to my friends that do not participate in neither golf nor BASE jumping the document would make absolutely no sense. Second, and more importantly: It was not funny, comprehensive or useful in any way.

However. What I did discover in my research for the project was that an impressive number of golf-related terms describe shots that go bad. Which gave me a new idea:

In stead of a guide, I hope you will find the new dictionary, useful. And should you wonder how my game is nowadays, I can report that I in some mysterious way have revived the slice, and every now and then I do manage to hit the odd banana-ball.

Not the real deal

It has been a few days and that alone calls for an update. While I’m still working on the layout of my blog I’ve spent more time hacking at the indoor driving range. And yesterday: Pebble Beach Links Resort. On a simulator…

Simulator golf is not real golf and hence the score should not be compared to a real score… if you ask me. Some say the simulator is easier than the real deal; I say it is not so. However: should I be wrong I have a difficult task ahead of me. I didn’t pay that much attention to the final score but it was closer to 120 than the sub 80 score I’m working my way to.

When I returned from Spain I thought I had it all figured out and now it’s quite obvious I haven’t got a clue. These things happen. All though in a way it didn’t happen at all. It’s more like a pilot crashing his plane in the flight simulator. That doesn’t suck nearly as much as if it was for real.

That said: the new simulators at Innesvingen are really quite impressive and well worth a visit.

Phil Mickelson’s short game

I just found this video of Phil Mickelson and have decided this is a shot I really need to learn. It’s probably not that useful, but who cares as long as it looks cool?

I am an artist

I want to do something about the lay-out golfdreams. For instance I do need a cool header. Just see what my friends at basedreams have done. I have no idea how to go about, but in my search for an answer, I went out of bounds and discovered Wordle.

Wordle is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. It can also do this to the text from any website that has an Atom or RSS feed. Below you can see what it did to golfdreams.net, and while it can’t be used for a header, or any thing else for that matter, I think it’s quite cool.

Closet golfers: Come out!

This morning I had a message in my in-box on Facebook. It said: “Closet golfer. Is that you?” Mind you, this was from a person I do not know, and my first thought was that someone apart from my immediate family and nearest friends had read my blog! How about that?

However it wasn’t so. It turned out I have written a short piece in the Norwegian skydiving Magazine: Fritt Fall. In the article I am looking for “closet golfers”, who also skydive, or used to skydive, for a tournament. It’s cool to see people have taken notice, and it’s good to see I am not the only skydiver who have gone over to “the other side”.

For marketing purposes I believe it would be wise to use other media than golfdreams.net to promote the event. For now…

Fine tunes for the keen golfer

This just in from Ted Rudd; a distinguished member of Team Basedreams:

Hunter S. Thompson serving as caddy?

Mr Piggy

Cured meat has been on the menu for ages in Norway, but the Iberico gives you yet another reason to move south.

This little piggy just fitted in the golf bag:)

Last day in Spain

Costa del Sol is also called Costa del Golf and for the last round of the trip we went up Golf Valley again. A little further down from La Cala you find Santana, which was the battle field of the day.

To the great dismay of my golf buddy, Morten, the yellow tees were not as far behind as they normally are. Luckily he didn’t insist we play of the white tees (which makes the course longer and more difficult). The set-up suited me just fine. Fine to the point where I after six holes was just one over par. I then I hit a triple bogey which made the score card look a lot un-cooler.

Sparing you further details from the round I can reveal the final score of… Ta-tam: 85! 13 over par. This could potentially drag my handicap below 20.

Some would of course argue that the course was too easy with some off the tees as far down as the ladies’ tee-boxes. I, on the other hand, say it was golf at it’s finest.

Now I’m back i the real world and the in-door driving range at Fornebu. While that is in no way golf at it’s finest, it’s not too shabby living five minutes away.

A great mind at work at Alferini and Flamingos

If Liberace played golf, I am sure his favorite place in Spain would be Flamingos. Not because of the courses, but the hotel would definitely be right up his alley.

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