Saturday, 5:20 am. It was a cold and foggy morning in Pacific Palisades. The only lights you could see were coming from my Riviera issued golf cart. The deer at this time were scurrying back into their homes on the outskirts of the course. The work day had only just begun.

The answer to the title is - we CAN DO BOTH...

Better golf without practice. Has a nice ring to it, doesn’t it? I recently picked up a book of the same title written by Alex J. Morrison in 1940. He is the same author who wrote “A New Way to Better Golf”, which by all accounts online seems to be the better and more widely read of the two.

6 Month Recap - The Big Picture

One of my resolutions for 2012 is to read at least 100 books this year. Throughout my life, I’ve read about 40 books on golf, and I hope a good chunk of the 100 this year are golf related. On my most recent trip to the LA 84 Foundation, I happened upon a copy of the Golfing Machine, one of the books that has slipped through my fingers during this quest. I decided to take the plunge, and after skimming through the book a few times, I’m getting excited.

As another year draws to a close and a new one begins it is time to take stock of where we are and to think a little about where we are going. Improvement in golf is an incremental thing. Those of you who have been in The Dirt for a good while know what I am talking about. It happens when players think wide and are open to a wide range of ideas.

Hi Dirters, and Happy Holy Days!

I'm working on an idea about helping young golfers turn pro, especially proven talents coming out of college onto the pro circuits without substantial parental capacity or other assistance meeting the demands of event entry fees, caddie fees, equipment and training costs, and travel, lodging, and meals expenses. The idea is to get many people vested in the young pro's career and for many people to help in small amounts, either by direct support gifts of modest size or by dedicating some proceeds of product sales or teaching revenue to the support effort. (And if anyone wants to sponsor and help arrange a clinic for me to teach at your club, we can cover expenses and dedicate at least half the balance to this project as well.)

Certified 14 new coaches since June, now 106 in 18 countries! Most recently Allen Terrell, Head Golf Coach at Coastal Carolina, Conway / Myrtle Beach SC, and next Michael Shelton from Kuala Lumpur Malaysia in Orlando.

Learning how to caddy on the Future tour, PGA PAT rounds, the SunCoast Tour, and LPGA Qualifying School (Stages II and III).

Back a couple of years ago now when Elk and I first started to go over a lot of historical information about the golf swing, he was visiting just prior to the Canadian Open and I gave him a copy of one of my favorite books.  My Golfing Album by Henry Cotton.  Ironically he had a copy of this very book on in bookshelf but like many of the hundreds of golf books he'd collected over the years he had never really had the time to really scour through it.  That changed quickly and it soon became a favorite talking piece for us.  So much so that many of the first videos we did For Secret In The Dirt were inspired at least in some ways by what Cotton was all about in this book.
Some of you may remember a piece that we did called "11 Things" which we released on New Years 2010 as a single web page and a PDF.  This was the point when we decided that we would begin to build this website.

Being a golfer in LA certainly has its positives and negatives. Positives: nice weather, solid golf shops in the area, The LA Open at Riviera. But although there are some decent muni’s here with quite a bit of history, the best public courses for your money may set you back an hour’s drive or more. But I recently was lucky enough to stumble upon something completely unique that LA offers the avid golfer - the LA 84 Foundation.