Royal St. Patrick's Golf Links
in Wrightstown, Wisconsin
920-532-4300
Just Imagine...
Below are the "Links" to our most recent Newsletters that are emailed to our loyal listeners. If you think you may have missed one of our emails, or you remember it being so good you want to read it again...this is where you will find it. Enjoy!
May 1, 2018
This week someone will come in and pay for all 4 players. A dad and his grown sons, maybe a financial planner and his clients. I will say the total is $192. Move this scenario to Pebble Beach, and the pro in that Golf Shop informs this father that the total is $2100 before caddie, forecaddie, caddy tip and souvenirs. Ouch! Let’s carry this out further. That day we each do 125 players, half of mine play 9, all of theirs plays 18. I mean who is walking off after the 9th hole at Pebble? For the day I will collect $4,460 in green fees, Pebble $65,625. At the end of the month with 30 Chamber of Commerce weather days, me $133,800, Pebble $1,968,750. At the end of the year, considering I have 5 viable months and there wasn’t a single rainout or SNOWSTORM in there, and I never gave a discount - EVER, $669,000. We know Pebble, has 12 months, probably doesn’t use Groupon, and lets say it never rained for them either, $23,625,000. Where am I going with this? Pebble Beach makes 35 times more money on green fees than RSPGL does, but the things they buy, costs the same. When we buy fertilizer, we both pay $24 a bag. To be proportionate, they should pay $875 a bag. A sleeve of balls here, I pay $6.50, they should pay $227.50. Candy bar $.81, Pebble’s candy bar cost $28.35. Used Triplex mower for greens, RSPGL $15,000, that’s right, Pebble should pay $525,000. We can certainly make the assumption that things cost more in Monterey Bay. Maybe their electric is a little higher, their garbage, towel service, their hoagie rolls and their labor are all a little more, or are they???? The Green Bay Packers often do not pay full price for things, so the business providing that service can market that they are the official toilet paper of Lambeau Field…Charmin it is not. Is it not possible that Pebble Beach services are severely discounted, as companies vie to be their official sponsor? When I think about it, I’m really proud of what we have accomplished here. It makes me wonder….there are courses that discount their product to half of what it costs to play here…aren’t their expenses the same as mine? No one has been able to explain that to me. That’s exactly why the golf landscape is beginning to change.
May 2018
Grab a club while you read this article, you will need the visual to follow along. When being fit for correct lie angle, the goal is to get the club bottom to “bottom out” completely level. If you set your club on the table next to you, you can picture “level bottom”. Raise the handle a little bit and now the toe of club is touching bottom, lower the handle, and now the heel would bottom out first. Myth 1 – the way you position your hands address, can find level bottom during swing. Most people when they swing do not return their hands to their original address position, most come in with their hands higher, which would mean that the toe of the club would impact the ground. When the toe of the club digs deeper than the rest of the club, you get a toe deep divot and you get a shot to the right. The reason it goes right is because the toe of the club slows down, when all that turf must be torn out. When the toe slows down, the face remains open. The heel hitting first is the complete opposite of this, and everything will go left. So why is this so bad? If you are a bad player with bad fitting clubs, the reason you might be so bad is that the toe is constantly getting stuck. No matter how nice your swing looks, everything goes to the right. However, there is an alternative, you are good player playing bad fitting clubs. You have figured out the toe is getting stuck, and you have a hard flip at the bottom of your swing that actually speeds up the toe as you brace to move all that extra earth. Should you ever decide to actually get fitted for clubs, you will have a big problem. The flip at the bottom of your swing will remain, but the toe will not be entering deeply, which means every shot you hit, will now go left until you can get rid of the flip. This article can actually be used to make the case that it might be easier for a bad player to find correction from having their clubs fit correctly, while a good player will also find success; all be it after a swing change. Don’t ever say I’m not good enough to be fit. Being not good enough is actually ideal. Next month, I’m taking this one step further, YOU have the right lie angle, but the wrong shaft for that lie angle...more to come.
Tales From The Tall Grass
May 8, 2018
What would golf be like if the fairways were brown? Yeah, there would be patches of green, but lots of brown. There might even be some weeds. Those weeds might even have some small flowers, but you can be sure that the grass type might be inconsistent. A little of this, and a little of that when it comes to strains of grass. Striping is not real necessary. Mowers will mow towards the green down the right side and back towards the tee on the left. Imagine the tee boxes slightly unlevel. The tee turf would be tight, but the size and shape irregular. Imagine the bunkers with an unkept look. Sure the sand would be raked, but edges might be shaggy, faces with dirt patches, strains of blue stem or other wiry grasses might give these bunkers the look of an unmaintained Groucho Marx eyebrow. The roughs would be shocking! Imagine the worst yard in your neighborhood. There would be brown, but patches of green. Bare dirt in places, thin and wispy strands of grass in others. An occasional overgrown crabgrass plant would dot the landscape. There would be good lies and bad ones, but rarely would your ball sit up perfectly on an over fertilized Kelly green crew cut, like it does where you typically play. You don’t need to imagine different greens. Greens are important and great the way they are. What you can’t possibly imagine is that they call THIS golf in Scotland. Americas obsession with manicured perfection is why the courses you play seems nothing like this. But those obsessions are not free. The more courses need to resemble Augusta, the more maintenance budgets increase. The more it takes to groom a course, the more the customer must pay to enjoy it. Why have the Scots not tried to perfect their courses? Why do they love golf so much, even though their conditioning is so inferior? I find the whole premise fascinating. Why has golf evolved so differently? Whose right? Whose wrong? Someday I’ll figure it out, and when I do, I’ll be sure to write about it.
Articles From The
Wandering Mind of
Nick Stephens, PGA
April 17, 2018
March 27, 2018
Dollars and No Sense...
Want To Have Our Incredible Monthly Newsletters Emailed Directly To You?
Past Newsletters, Enjoy!
Cut The "I'm Not Good Enough"...