Daddy, your funny.

While I was in Birmingham for our friends wedding I stumbled upon the Golfsmith Store there. It was about 8pm and we were headed to the rehearsal dinner. Off the side of the highway there it stood in all its bright red glory. I said to the wife, I have to go there before we leave!

Well the next day I loaded up my youngest daughter and took the drive down to the store. What a place. I’m not so fortunate to have a Golfsmith in Las Vegas. No idea why they won’t come here. We have SO many courses in such a small area, and there are only a handful of retail golf stores in this valley. I’m really shocked that Golfsmith hasn’t made it way here yet. Anyway, I got to the store right after it had opened and was the only person in the place. I walked around for a bit looking at all the different sections that they had. WOW. What a store. They have everything there.

The clubs are incredible; they go on for days it seems. But, the best thing about the store I found was the hitting area. As I walked by the eight indoor ranges I was in awe. The y had every club that you could think of just sitting there begging to be swung. I went and asked one of the employees “Do you have to schedule a session or is it open to hit anytime.” “Go ahead” he replied. So I asked “Are all the clubs back there available to hit?” “Anything that’s back there that’s marked demo, swing away.” Excuse me I thought. Did he just say what I thought he said? I looked at my phone to see what time it was. Ok, plenty of time. I wheeled my daughter up the ramp in her stroller to the indoor range and began to drool; right there in front of me was my choice of some of the best clubs on the market.

Ping, Callaway, Adams, Nike, TaylorMade, Cobra, Titleist you name it, it was there. After about ten minutes an employee came up and asked me how things were going. Considering every time I hit a ball my daughter erupted with laughter I thought things were going pretty good. “Have you been able to see your stats?” huh? What’s he talking about. “How do you do that?” He then showed me how to line of the ball so the computer could read it and then I could see the results on the monitor. HOLLY CRAP that was cool. I’ve never had my swing analyzed like that before. The slice was there, not as bad with some clubs, REALLY bad with others. The one thing that I was happy with was my club head speed was coming in just under 100mph, I was averaging 96mph. Hit 101mph once but I really loaded up for that one. The guy told me that I was right in the range for stiff shafts and that’s what I should be swinging. He did highly recommend getting fitted for a driver first before I make a purchase. I’m going to start to look into that.

The last area of the store that I stopped at (after picking out a new Under Armor hat) was the putting green. Again, more putters than I could imagine. What I wasn’t expecting to see was the new TaylorMade Corsa Ghost putter. I didn’t even know they were out yet. The employee working that section told me that they had just taken them out of the boxes as they were opening up! I hit about 15 putts with it, what a putter. I really wanted to buy it while I was there but shipping it back to Vegas was not something I wanted to do with a new putter.
I left with my hat, a love for Golfsmith and a happy baby who had an absolute blast laughing at me!