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There has been more discussion about soft spikes than there was on the O.J. trial.
Since this is my space and you can't stop me, let me tell you a short story.
Last year, they had the Michigan Amateur at the Pines. They had about 200 players with caddies. All, were required to wear soft spikes. That's 400 people tromping around the greens that day.
I played that afternoon, right after they had finished. You could not tell that those greens had been touched. They looked like they had just been mowed.
I was sold, then and there ( see, it was a short story).
One half of our golf swings should (and I said should) be with the putter. We have to be crazy not to make such a simple change. We can make the area, that we play half our game, the best area on the course. As golfers, our biggest bitch is about spike marks. We don't have to depend on the greens keeper, or on rain, or the golf gods. Just us, you and me. All it takes is just a little effort and very little money. And just one time.
We spend hundreds of dollars trying new clubs to make our game better. So why not spend a few cents to improve our putting area?
We all know how nice it is to get on the greens first thing in morning. Soft spikes can give us this all day.
"I'll slip!" is the biggest objection I hear. We spend most of our life without spikes on our feet and manage to get around O.K. Sure, you can slip, but I slip with spikes on too. If you slip during a swing you probably swung too hard anyway.
I am basically a lazy golfer. Two thirds of the time I don't even put my golf shoes on. I wear my tennis shoes. ( I'm not sure what the politically correct term is for this kind of shoe now days, but that's what we used to call them. ) I don't like walking on spikes across the parking lot, or down cart paths, or occasionally across roads to get my stupid ball back.
Soft spikes will save the greens, the cart paths, the carpet in the club house, the deck we sit on to lie to each other about our game and, maybe, that new $400.00 driver when you step on it.
A few of the courses in northern Michigan have gone to soft spikes. A few are requesting that members go to them this year and will make the course spikeless next year. So it's slowly coming.
Even if just half of us get into soft spikes, it will make the greens twice as good. Peer pressure will bring the rest along. Look what it did to smokers.
The only drawback I can see to soft spikes is that it takes the best excuse I had for missing short putts away. Don't worry, I'll come up with one that works just as well.
Let's make the switch.
Ken
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