New fabrics will change the way you dress on the course. These ClimaCool shorts from Adidas retail for $70 and make your khaki shorts obsolete.

I’m surprised it has taken this long to happen.

Nearly a decade ago, the humble golf shirt was reinvented a miracle of technology. Borrowing heavily form the ski and endurance sports industry, golf clothes manufacturers began employing synthetic fabrics that were cooler in hot weather, warmer in cold weather, breathed better, wicked perspiration away and then allowed it to evaporate, and provided better sun protection. At the same time, these shirts were lighter, virtually impossible to crease and their soft silky drape looked good on golfers. They were perfect for golf travel because you could jam a lot of shirts into a small space while saving weight (now that airlines want to screw you at every turn!) and avoiding looking like something the cat dragged out of bed when you showed up hopelessly wrinkled at the first tee.

Finally this breakthrough has come to the lower body.

Replacing those worn khakis with synthetics makes even more sense than it did for shirts. Pants and shorts are heavier and take up more room in our precious luggage than shirts, and unlike shirts, you are likely to wear them more than once, making their much higher level of stain resistance and anti-microbial properties more important. Whether it is Arizona desert hot or coastal Scotland chilly and moist, you’ll appreciate the comfort these fabrics add over traditional cotton. Again, they won’t wrinkle, they are very durable, and you won’t notice those black streaks you get around the pockets of your khakis from stashing balls and tees over and over during the round.

All the leading manufacturers offer these models now. Adidas has its ClimaCool, Nike its Dri-FIT, Greg Norman Collection has Play Dry, and so on.

These ClimaCool pants from Addidas run $80 and will outlast two or three pairs of cotton ones.

I personally have been wearing the 21st century shirts since the 20th century, but only this year made the switch to high tech pants and shorts. I wish I’d made it years ago!

Aviara is one of the most scenic courses in Southern California

Just about every top club and ball maker is in southern California.

So is the famed Aviara Golf Club in Carlsbad, CA, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary. The onsite luxury lodgings, the Park Hyatt Aviara Resort, has partnered with Callaway Golf for an exclusive getaway package to Callaway’s world headquarters

The Callaway Golf Experience Package is made for the deep pocketed golf and travel enthusiast. From now through Labor Day, you can combine  golf at Aviara with the same kid of high-tech fitting that Callaway’s sponsored Tour players get, and go home with a new custom-fitted Callaway driver at the end of it all. That’s a hell of a souvenir.

I’ve personally done this similar deal at Taylor Mad,e, but I know folks who have done Callaway. It all depends whose clubs you like, but Callaway fans I know have loved the experience.
The package includes accommodations at Park Hyatt Aviara, unlimited golf for one , daily breakfast for two, private sedan service to and from Callaway HQ, a 90-minute custom fitting session, and your new driver (additional fee applies to Callaway RAZR Hawk and FT Tour models and some upgraded shafts). You’ll get the specs for the rest of your clubs, but you’ll have to buy those yourself!
The package price starts at $800 for the first night and $395 per night fro the golf and lodging and breakfast beyond that.

For more information or to book the Callaway Golf Experience Package, click here.

You really can have it all with the new Bushnell Hybrid.

About a year ago I wrote a column comparing the pros and cons of handheld laser and GPS units for managing distances and unfamiliar courses.

Well, we live in a world of rapidly advancing technology and you no longer have to choose, thanks to rangefinder leader Bushnell, which just introduced the best of both worlds.

The first of its kind on the market, the aptly named Bushnell Hybrid is a combination laser rangefinder with GPS.  It will officially debut at the annual PGA Merchandise show later this month, and be available at retail starting in February, at a suggested retail price of $499.  

The Hybrid looks similar to previous Bushnell laser rangefinders, like the one I carry and love and use all the time, but added inside is GPS.  The laser technology provides golfers with distances accurate to within one yard – precise enough for even Tiger Woods – to virtually any point on any course in the world (that explains why in mapping practice rounds, more than 90% of PGA Tour pros use Bushnell laser rangefinders).�
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The GPS function adds distances to the front, middle, and back of the green via satellite, and four pre-chosen reference points on every hole come in handy when the shot is blind or you don’t have a good target to hit with the laser. It is also very useful when playing those miserable “cartpath only” courses, and you are constantly deciding what clubs to bring (always the wrong ones!). Now you will have the approximate distance before you leave the cart, and the exact distance when you arrive at your ball.

One of the things I never liked about most golf GPS units is you have to download courses for online databases before your trips, sometimes with a pricey subscription, but the new Hybrid comes ready to go out of the box, pre-loaded with  more than 16,000 North American golf courses – and zero  membership fees.  To feed our egos, it even has “shot distance” mode to measure how far our monster drives were hit.  I hope it goes up to 350!

A great holiday gift I guarantee your golf pals do not already have!

Buying presents for golfers is not easy. Clubs are too personalized to just pick one for someone, as I recently posted, stupid golf gimmicks are just plain stupid, and a dozen golf balls, while always needed, just doesn’t exactly say I love you. A gift certificate for a lesson is a great idea, but you have to be careful about bruised egos since it can send the wrong message.

So what to get the traveling golfer? I usually recommend a book that will help plan dream trips, since this is something a lot of golfers don’t have, but first, special for this season, I have a gift that I guarantee your intended recipient does not have. If they do, my guarantee means I will eat my hat (preferably one with a prominent golf logo).

The item at question is a DVD of a new documentary, Scotland’s Caddies. The title is sort of self-explanatory as to the “plot.” Award-winning director Ron Colby interviewed loopers at St. Andrews, Turnberry, Gleneagles, Prestwick, Dornoch, Troon and more far flung locales, like Brora and Royal Aberdeen, then edited them a 69-minute film.

More good news: This also fits into the category of bargain gifts at just $19.99 plus shipping.

Let’s face it: Scotland is number one on every golfer’s dream list, and playing with a caddie is an integral part of the experience. I love playing with caddies, and have done it countless times around the world, but I am always surprised at how those how haven’t are often intimidated by the idea. After all the caddie works for you. So whether your intended is a student of the game who loves all things golf related or actually planning a trip and needs the icebreaker in the to the world of caddies, this is it. While the film is entirely based on Scotland, most of the practical caddie stuff applies equally well to that other dream destination, Ireland.

Among the film’s highlights are the caddies themselves telling stories about “being on the bag,” as we say, for a host of celebrity golfers like His Airness Michael Jordan, the only James Bond ever to play golf in one of the 007 movies, Sir Sean Connery, and leaders of the free world for every political bent, former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush.

More practical advice includes the caddies’ priceless and strongly felt opinions on tipping habits and personalities of golfers from around the word and from different parts of America and the world.
Besides the history and practical parts, the footage itself is great, almost all either shot on one of these unbelievably desirable and stunning links courses or in an equally desirable and stunning pub over pints – a caddie stereotype mainly because it is true.

Want a preview? Depending on your attention span, 30 and 60-second clips are currently posted on YouTube.
This is a great gift for any golf travel fan, but especially for one who is actually planning or contemplating a trip to the Old Sod. In that case, you can make it even more deluxe by wrapping it together with the absolute best book to read on the airplane en route to such a journey, Blasted Heaths and Blessed Greens: A Golfer’s Pilgrimage to the Courses of Scotland by one of history’s greatest golf scribes, James Finegan.

Where are two other book ideas that it is highly unlikely your golfer already owns:

The Most Expensive Golf Book Ever Published

A New and Helpful Guide to the Best Golf Courses in Nearly Every Nation on Earth

Happy Holidays!

Should you be carrying this in your golf bag?

Tis the season for weird golf gimmicks to start popping up in every catalog under the face of the sun. If you are like me, your mailbox is overflowing with the likes of Brookstone, Sharper Image, Herrington, etc.

In years past I have received such items as the slightly useful but impractical item as the golf ball personalizer; pointless items like the golf ball locating sunglasses; and I admit at one point I even carried and used the drink keg/pump booze dispenser hidden inside a faux driver (I was younger).

This year’s crop includes all of the above and some equally bizarre items and I admit I was tempted to order the 73-degreee wedge (yes 73 degrees!) from the Herrington catalog because if skill cannot help my short game, surely spending money can. The only reason I held back is because I have way too many golf clubs and way too little disposable income. Maybe next year.

But this is the one that leapt out at me, from the pages of Hammacher Schlemmer, known for its eclectic, often very expensive, and sometimes great gift selection. But this time they struck out.

“The Weed Whacking Golf Driver.”

This is December not April’s Fools, so I kid you not. The point of this is to carry a second (fake) driver that has an actual motorized mini string weed whacker concealed within its head.  Or as the catalog copy reads: “This is the golf driver with a built-in grass trimmer, ideal for surreptitiously improving one’s lie… Requiring only the semblance of a square stance and proper grip for activation, two thumb buttons built into the handle activate the trimmer for a quick clearing of obstructive grass.”

So when you hit your ball into the rough, which was designed to penalize you for missing the fairway, you simply removed the rough? Get it?

This is the stupidest golf product I have ever seen, and I have seen a lot, in addition to being an utter slap in the face to golf, the rules of golf, and even if like me you don’t exactly follow the rules of golf, the spirit of the game. It also presupposes that destruction of the actual golf course by visiting players is acceptable.

In order to buy this product – and they should not sell even one – you need to buy into several assumptions:

Your friends won’t questions why you carry two drivers.

It’s either worth substituting for an actual cub or carrying too many and cheating on every single shot instead of just those in the rough.

That the situation in which you need a weed whacker on the course will arise with regularity.

No one will question why you keep thinking about hitting driver out of the rough, lining up, changing your mind and putting it back in your bag to hit wedge.

That you are a pathological liar who should not be playing golf anyway.

That if you are going to cheat anyway in the rough, this is a better way to do it than simply moving your ball.

That it is okay to do your own landscaping/destruction on someone else’s very expensive and manicured golf course when that grass is there on purpose. Admit it, you are a vandal.

Only $39.95.

Sun Mountain's ClubGlider, with its cool retractble legs, has become my travel case of choice after years of trying to find the best.

Long gone are the days when you could toss your golf clubs in a simple zippered soft-sided bag and expect the airline to get them to your destination intact. In fact, long gone are the days when you could expect the airlines to do much of anything – except screw you – but that’s fodder for another day. Today we are wrapping up my series on golf travel gear by talking about golf travel bags, meaning the bags you put your actual golf bag in.

I will start candidly by saying that I have never, ever once used a hard case, those things that look like they should have a tuba in them. But I am increasingly fascinated and think they may make more sense than I once gave them credit for. They look heavy and bulky, but I imagine they are not actually heavy, as hard thin plastic is probably lighter than a lot of the interior skeletons that go into making the so called “soft bags” impervious to damage. One problem with the hard case is that it takes up a huge amount of room, both at home and in the trunk of your rental car. If you go to Europe, there is no chance a twosome, let alone a foursome, could share a car with these. But if you just go to golf resorts door to door, they are probably the easiest to use, certainly the easiest to load with their clamshell design, and the most protective. So I am not against giving hard cases a fair shake. But I spend a lot of time at airline check-in counters, and the vast majority of bags I see are of the soft-sided variety. Someday I will try a hard case, but until then, I will talk about the rolling soft case, with which I have tons of experience with, good and bad

For years I used to use the same bag most Tour pros use, the Club Glove’s “Last Bag.” even though I never liked certain features. After all, the name itself, “Last Bag,” as in the last bag you will ever need, coupled with a lifetime warranty, suggests strength and durability. And I have to admit I was sold on the hype – if the players who travel to tournaments worldwide use it, and trust their clubs to it, why shouldn’t I? My guess is they get it for free. But then again, so did I, and I still stopped using it. But let’s start at the beginning.

The Club Glove lineup looks cool, and is loaded with features you will never use, like the ability to piggyback duffels and other cases on top of your golf bag to roll through the airport. The first issue with this is that the golf bag itself doesn’t roll very well, and this is compounded once you strap other bags to it. Besides you still have to take those bags off and check them or carry them on, so it is just as easy to roll another piece of luggage or have a carry-on over your shoulder. But as I mentioned the bag doesn’t roll very well and that is a huge problem with it. The wheels themselves are heavy duty and great, but the design is poorly balanced and if you do something like put your shoes in one outside pocket, and don’t perfectly counter balance this weight with a couple of dozen balls in the other pocket, the thing keeps flipping on its side while rolling through the airport, and believe me, this gets really old really fast. 

The other annoying thing about the Club Glove is how hard it is to get your clubs in and close. Basically, the zipper seems to stop just short of where it would be open enough to work, and it is pain in the ass to zip up and get the clubs in and out of. That is with normal clubs – forget about an extra long shaft or putter. Club Glove does offer the Last Bag in an XXL size which presumably would be easier to deal with in this regarded, but the regular size is already so heavy that with airlines cutting baggage weights I can’t imagine making the limits with a bigger version. As it is I have had to stop carrying some accessories with my clubs.

But none of this is what stopped me from using the bag, which I still have. And none of this is the reason why I will likely never use a Club Glove product again. That reason is the questionable durability and warranty and unquestionably bad customer service. After all, it costs almost three hundred bucks ($289), which ain’t chickenfeed, and Club Glove proudly calls it The Last Bag (as in the last you’ll ever need) and also describes it as burst proof, with a lifetime warranty. Well mine burst, and in a separate incident, the zipper broke. I called to return it and got a horrible runaround, with the customer service rep clearly trying to dissuade me. I finally got the authorization and packed it up (very hard to get that thing in a box) and shipped it for $30 or $40 bucks from UPS, and finally got it back with the hole fixed but not the zipper. I emailed and later wrote and mailed a letter to the company’s president, who I have met, and their pr person (not currently), who I had worked with, and got no responses to any of these. I believe you should get what you pay for, and Club Glove commands a price premium and in exchange supposedly backs its products, but that was not the case for me, so I dropped them. And if it is not the case for me, clearly identifying myself as a golf journalist, I find it hard to believe it will be the case for you.

I still don’t know if there is a perfect travel bag, but in the aftermath of my now-partially fixed Club Glove, I switched to Sun Mountain’s ClubGlider, mainly because I was have been so impressed with their regular carry bags. So far I am much happier This model does three things very well that address all my concerns: it stays balanced while rolling, it is much, much easier to load and unload thanks to a zipper that goes all the way around the head of the clubs so it opens more like a book, and it has an awesome set of retractable legs that make it into a four wheeler. These can be used if you ever have to go longer distances, like between terminals, but it also means that when you are in line at the airport, instead of either kicking your bag every time the line moves three feet, or bending down and pulling it, you simply push it along like a luggage cart. Believe me, people stare in jealousy when I do this. The downside is that the legs make it a bit heavier, and I still always worry about my weight limit. Also, while I haven’t had a problem in the past year I have been using it, the construction does feel a little less heavy duty than the Club Glove did. It also does not hold the clubs as snugly, which doesn’t feel as safe, but I make up for this by padding them with clothes. So far, the ClubGlider and I have been to Europe several times, Canada and Mexico, and all over the US , and I am very happy with it. It comes in three sizes from $230-$299.

If this is your idea of golf weather, you had better pack the right gear for the job.

Last post I explained about picking a perfect carry bag for the traveling golfer. Now I ask, what should you put in that bag besides balls and clubs?

Let me preface this by saying I play golf all over the world, in every season and condition, often on short notice, and I don’t really like unpacking and repacking my bag all the time, so in short, my bag weighs a ton, as I keep it ready for anything I might encounter, including sleet and high winds. I treat golf travel like the Boy Scouts treat the wilderness, with the motto “Be Prepared.” So you might not want or need everything on this list, but these are the best, all personally tested and backed by many thousands of miles of experience.

Rain Gear: I have extensively tested rains suits from various manufacturers, and my general advice is that any of the major brands, including Sunderland, Sun Ice, Adidas, Nike, etc will keep you pretty dry in normal rain conditions. I like the newer “soft shell” fabrics, the ones that feel like smooth fleece, because they are quiet, light and comfy. That being said, if you might play in hail and pouring rain, or on the leading edge of a hurricane, and you can afford it, I suggest you do what I do, and what a lot of PGA Tour pros do, and invest in the Rolls Royce of rainwear, Zero Restriction. There is no doubt in my mind after years of playing in the rawest conditions, that a) GoreTex based fabrics are the best and b) the ones made by Zero Restriction are the best of the best. They take everything about golf into account, even make hats specifically designed to fit with the collars of their jackets and avoid pouring rain down the back of your neck. They have handy features like cuffable bottoms you can send to the tailor for perfect fit, belt loops, an underrated raingear feature, and great inside pockets. Trust me, it the best you can buy. Another very worthwhile investment is a GoreTex baseball cap, not always easy to find but available in better pro shops, especially in rainy locales. I got one at Bandon Dunes.

Just because this anonymous guy is a well regarded golf writer does not mean you should look like him - invest in a Zero Restriction rainsuit.

Cold/Wind Wear: I’m not a sweater guy, and I am not really a vest guy, but I am fan of the light, unlined short sleeve windshirt. It solves the problem of cool and windy weather not quite bad enough for the rainsuit, and it gives me a chance to flex my pipes on the course like Tiger. I used to carry the version with zip off sleeves because it seemed to cover more bases, but at the end of the day it is one more gizmo that is a pain to use. I carry the short sleeve windshirt rolled up in addition to my rain suit.

Rain Gloves: Some people shun these like the plague, but I can’t imagine playing in the rain without them – plus they keep your hands warmer. Any pair, like Footjoys, work great, but again, the best – and priciest – are Zero Restriction. I keep them in the zipper pockets of my rain jacket since the only time you will ever use them is when you also use your jacket, and that way you know where they are and they don’t get lost.

Rain Hood: In a previous post I mentioned my secret foul weather gear weapon, the Seaforth Rain Hood, for your clubs. Get one, it is the best. Don’t settle.

In heavy rain, you'll thank me for recommending the Seaforth hood!

Laser Rangefinder: Also covered in a previous post. The traveling golfer will inevitably play courses that are unfamiliar, and this covers more bases than a GPS. You don’t have to do stuff in advance, like downloads, and you don’t have to worry about whether the course has been mapped. However, when the battery dies it dies very suddenly, here one minute, gone the next, and these can be hard to find abroad, so I carry an extra. You should too. NOTE: I have nothing against GPS. If you are tech-obsessed and want to deal with the downloads and stuff, by all means go that route.

Camera: I take pictures when I travel, and the best investment I made was a neoprene case for my little digital camera that has a carabineer style hook I hang from the otherwise useless towel loop on my carry bag, along with my laser rangefinder. You are more likely to take pictures if you don’t have to go fishing for the camera.

Cigar Stuff: I like stogies on the course, though I never smoke them otherwise. Weird, I know. Anyway, if you are like me, invest in a windproof lighter, one with the jet fighter type flame. Believe me, it will pay for itself. Also carry a good cutter.

Sunglasses: I am not going to get into whether the “Golf specific” models really help your read greens better or not. Pick a pair you like, cheap or expensive, fashionable or plain. But whatever you do, get a pair for golf, and keep them in your golf bag (in a case). Otherwise they will inevitably get forgotten at least once when you go to play.

First Aid Kit: I am not by nature a worrisome guy, but you can’t imagine how many times playing partners have asked me if I have aspirin. Occasionally, after a lot of whiskies, I might even need some myself. Bandaids are also an evergreen item on the golf course. You are less likely to use insect sting stuff or antacid, but you never know, and back-up emergency sunscreen is handy too. Years ago I played in a friend’s member guest and instead of the usual golf shirt or towel, the gift was a cool, small, and very well packed first aid kit for golfers with all this stuff in it, that I now carry. Buying something like this is easier and neater than trying to build it yourself.

Sunscreen: I am a bit anal about this since I spend so much time outdoors, and I use only the really good European stuff with Mexoryl as the active ingredient, hard to find in this country but better than our stuff. Anyway, whatever you use, use a high number (I use 50) but most importantly for your golf bag, get a spray bottle. That way you can update during the round without getting your hands greasy. Trust me, it’s the way to go.

Insect Repellent: Only necessary in certain places like Minnesota, but when you need it you need it. Don’t buy into all that homeopathic organic stuff. I don’t use much insect repellent, I am sure it is bad for you long term, but if you are only using it when you need relief, use the good stuff: 100% DEET. Studies have shown it is the only ingredient proven effective, and even most “heavy duty” formulas are light on DETT. Buy one like Ben’s 100%. Also, very important, put it inside something, like a heavy freezer bag. If it leaks, it can dissolve your golf bag. Really. I had to trash a howl carry bag due to an insect repellant leak. Now imagine what it does to your skin.

NEXT: The Perfect Airline Travel Bag

This is the carry bag I used until recently, Sun Mountain's fully-divided Four 5. Note the sleeves for each club.

Golf magazines love to do these stories called “What’s in the bag?” where they look at the clubs a tour pro plays in excruciating details, as if replicating those irons and shafts will save your game. It won’t but you’d probably still be better off copying a tour pro’s gear than my own, unless you too want to struggle to break 90.

Where I know my equipment is on the travel front. After all, I play more different courses every year than anyone on Tour, and way more courses than a top player like Tiger Woods, and I don’t have my own jet or handlers to lug the stuff. I carry my own bags, to my car, on the shuttle bus, to the airport, into my hotel room, and whenever possible, on the course.

So in the course of my career as a travel and golf writer, I’ve tried lot of things and come up with some personal favorites for the traveling golfer, which might be especially relevant cold weather approaching and longer distance golf escapes on the horizon.

Carry Bag: I love Sun Mountain. There I’ve said it. I’m not paid to say it, like the guys on Tour and their equipment. It’s just hat over many years, Sun Mountain has earned my respect for innovation, consistent leader of the pack quality, and most of all durability. In an era when stuff falls apart more than ever, Sun Mountain is a throwback.

Here’s my story. When I was a younger man, in 1989 to be precise, the concept of the automatic stand bag was still brand new (for those of you under 40, this is the fun feature where you take your bag off your shoulder, the legs deploy and the bag stands. In prehistoric days, we used to lay the bag down on the ground next the green), my best friend bought an early model from Sun Mountain, a company we had never heard of, because the colors were cool. It had an early technology version of automatic legs powered by gravity, not a pedal and spring mechanism like those today. Anyway it worked. After a few years of heavy use, he got bored and moved onto another color scheme. He gave me the bag, my first “nice” golf bag ever. I used it, also heavily, for a few more years, and then seduced my something shinier, I got a new bag and gave it to my friend Joe (real name). Joe still uses that bag today. It doesn’t even look that used. The bag began this journey more than two decades ago.

That’s one reason why I love Sun Mountain.

Since then I have gone through a lot of bags, and inevitably the leg mechanism or the legs themselves break and fail, and the moment I set my bags down on a smooth surface like a hotel lobby floor, the legs flail and it looks like a drunk swimming. Or the zippers or pockets rip. The shoulder straps don’t usually fail, but they have. In short, I’ve used a lot of bags over the years, and now I am back to where it all began, with a Sun Mountain Superlight 3.5. That means it weighs three and a half pounds, about the lightest full-featured bag (lots of pockets, holds a full set of clubs) on the market. This weight is important if you are carrying. Yet it is super strong, super comfy, super everything.

In the interest of full disclosure, I did cross one Sun Mountain bag off my list of personal favorites. About a year ago I decided to try used to switch up a weight class to the 4-pound model, which happens to be the lightest fully divided bag on earth. Fully divided means there is a lined tube for each and every club, and on paper, this is a really good feature few golfers use. It is good because it protects your shafts, which at least in my club cost a lot more than the bag, and in some cases, more than the clubheads. If you are one of the wise golfers who have gone through a real custom fitting process, your shafts are probably the costliest thing you own in the way of golf equipment – and the easiest to damage. Especially if you walk, you might notice constant nicks around the shafts near the heads, and that’s caused by rubbing from the other clubs. I went fully divided to stop this, and as long as you don’t mind a slightly heavier bag that is still as light as most on the market, you might consider the same. Sun Mountain’s fully divided bag is the 4 Five, and it is unique among regular carry bags and you get more protection when playing, more when traveling, more all the time.

So why did I ditch it? I carry a lot of stuff, so maybe its my fault because the pockets on my bags are always bulging, but I found it hard to put the clubs in and take them out, and impossible to keep them in order and thus more difficult than with a regular bag to find the club I needed. In fact, I kept having panic attacks thinking I’d just lost a club, only to find its head hiding under another one. But it was having to lean on the clubs to jam them back into their tubes that did me in and sent me back to the Superlight 3.5. If you carry relatively little in the way of accessories, and have fancy shafts, you might want to give it a try. For me the noble experiment is in the past.

The first thing you’ve got to know when you go carry bag shopping is that golf club companies for the most part do not make bags, even is they do have a big logo slapped on them. My experience is that most major “branded” golf bags will fall apart pretty quickly, the exceptions being Ping and Taylor Made, while I believe alt he other come out of the same crappy Chinese factory. Ping which has a long track record of making durable, light and convenient travel bags, and has long been the favorite of college athletes and professional resort caddies. Taylor Made recently starting actually making bags and I tried one and it is fine, except the water bottle holder is really bizarre, apparently designed for those who hate their water bottle and want to lose it as quickly as possible. They do offer some flashy colors though.

Next: What Travel Gear is in my Bag?

If you are a USA fan, now you can wear your heart on your shoe.

Okay, I promise this is my last post about shoes – unless they come out with some really cool skull and crossbone pirate models.

In the meantime, let’s talk about the good old US of A.

I’ve already mentioned that I am a big fan of the Adidas Tour 360 golf shoe, and not just because I got mine for free (I did, in the interest of full disclosure). Rather I like them because I try to always walk, and I have worn a couple of pairs of these straight out of the box for 18 with no breaking in and always enjoyed good results. I can swear they are comfortable, but I am not good enough to critique the “performance.” Then again, if your score is reliant on your shoes, you might have bigger problems

For today, I’ll stick to fashion in my analysis.

In conjunction with the recent US Open, and just in time for Independence Day, Adidas made just 3,500 pairs of this custom patriotic version. 300 will be sold online direct from the manufacturer, the rest you’ll have to hunt down at specialty golf shops. These are the same model, the Tour 360 4.0, that were worn by Adidas sponsored athletes at the US Open and will be worn at the Ryder cup. Besides the cool flags, the shoes themselves are red, white and blue and run $180. If you can’t find yours in time for July 4th weekend, don’t fret: the other 300 pairs I mentioned go on sale online July 12th.

Here's one from my personal collection of golf shoes, the Adidas Tour 360.

A few weeks ago I wrote about my personal experience with golf shoes, including the Adidas Tour 360, the model I wear the most.

Well Adidas just upped the ante in the shoe wars with a trade-in promotion: bring in any old pair of golf shoes, from any manufacturer and in any state of disrepair, and get $20 off a new pair from Adidas, any model they make. Hell, the shoes you trade in don’t even have to be golf shoes, they can be anything, and who does not have a ratty old pair of shoes or sneakers kicking around?

Okay twenty bucks is not earth shattering but if you were going to be buying new golf shoes for this summer anyway, every little bit helps – especially these days. The promotion runs through July 5th.  They have a site explaining the policy and offering a retailer in your neck of the woods