I generally only do product reviews when I come across a golf product that I’m genuinely excited about……….and I’m naturally cynical when I’m approached to take a look at a golf product, which happens fairly frequently.

However, I’ve made an exception this time. While the creators of Mobitee, a GPS assistant for the iPhone (+ iPad & iPod), reached out to me to tell me about their freshly updated app, I quickly saw the value in what the guys at Mobitee have developed.

I’ve tried a few GPS apps on my iPhone, but the thing that stood out for me with Mobitee is the number of useful features that are integrated into one application. In addition to the ‘bread & butter’ GPS tool, Mobitee provides the following features:

Welcome Screen

• guide to approx. 25,000 courses worldwide….incl. course address, green fees and directions
• flyover of each hole at each course  (this is a pretty cool way to visualize hole layouts when playing a new course)
• club advice for each shot based on your club yardages
• interactive scorecard, with the ability to keep scores for up to 4 players (the scorecards can be shared by email after the round)

At US24.90 it’s not the cheapest iPhone golf GPS app on the market, but it’s definitely one of the most feature rich and user friendly.

Mobitee Lite Download Competition

Until 10 July 2011, if you download the free Mobitee Lite you go into the running to win up to $250 in prizes…..a pretty good way to try out Mobitee for free and give yourself a shot at collecting a prize.

Some Screenshots

Rangefinder

Scorecard

Player Details

Course Details

Bag

What started as a quick visit to the Golf Channel website to look back at the 2010 PGA Championship turned into a couple of hours online this watching The Golf Channel’s “The Golf Fix” videos…….a reasonable alternative to the golf that I’d planned to play until the wild weather rolled in.

If you haven’t already you should get over to the Golf Channel website and check them out. There are over 150 instructional videos to digest. I think I’ll get my golf fix here for awhile…..in addition to YouTube of course!

Golf Channel Dominates

Incidentally, as I was looking around online I discovered that the Golf Channel has a very impressive, and growing, share of golf content on the internet.

The Golf Channel is obviously all over general golf content, including the latest golf news, results and videos……they do a pretty good job of merging related content for major tournaments as well – for example the PGA Championship site.

However, a surprise to me was that the Golf Channel also runs many regional golf sites, including  Tucson Golf, where you can book tee times and golf vacations.

I haven’t been able to find a directory of Golf Channel ‘powered’ websites, but I’m pretty sure they number in the dozens……clearly the most dominant player in online golf content, and seemingly growing!

I’m currently spending about 90 minutes a day in the car (sometimes moving), on my way to and from the office. I’m not a big fan of commercial radio, so have been using this travel time to indulge in a variety of podcasts.

I recently discovered some pretty good golf podcasts on the PGATOUR.com website, the best of which is ‘oPINionated with Chris DiMarco‘. This weekly podcast features Chris DiMarco talking candidly to broadcast journalist Greg Warmoth…..about golf mainly, but other topics as well.

I’ve found myself warming to DiMarco’s straight talking and willingness to share his views on a range of topics……mostly golf, but other stuff as well. It has also been interesting to listen to DiMarco talk about his attempt to regain some form on the PGA Tour. DiMarco spent 50 weeks in the world top 10 between 2002 and 2007, but has barely featured on the tour since then.

Anyway, if you’re looking for a good quality golf podcast I’d highly recommend oPINionated. Below is a summary of the other podcasts on offer from PGATOUR.com:

The PGA Tour Minute: Joe Cowart delivers a brief audio update from the final round of the 2010 Greenbrier Classic at the Old White Course in White Sulphur Springs, West Virginia, where Stuart Appleby shot a final round 59 to take the lead and earn his first PGA TOUR victory of the year

PGA Tour Replay: Doug Bell, Fred Albers, & Bill Rosinski with the PGA TOUR Live Team on SIRIUS 209 & XM 146 get you ready for the 2010 World Golf Championships / Bridgestone Invitational from the Firestone Country Club in Akron, Ohio featuring pre tournament interviews with World #1 Tiger Woods, last week’s runner up Jeff Overton, 2010 US Open Champion Graeme McDowell, 2010 Winner Anthony Kim, & last week’s winner Stuart Appleby

European Tour ‘Race To Dubai’: Former European Tour professional Robert Lee hosts a new weekly Podcast bringing you all the latest golfing news plus a light-hearted look at life behind the scenes on tour. With unparalleled access to all the top players, Robert, with the help of fellow former professionals, will guide you through the European Tours tournaments each week offering listeners the chance to interact with the team and get their questions answered. And if it is tips you are after, some of the worlds best golfers will be on hand to help make your drives longer and your putts more accurate

Fairways of Life: In an encore presentation from earlier in the year, Matt Adams visits with the legendary Charlie Sifford, who broke golf’s color barrier and was inducted into the World Golf Hall of Fame in 2004. Adams also offers his take on the situation regarding Tiger Woods’ personal life

Talk of the Tour: John Swantek is joined this week by Peter Oosterhuis of CBS Sports to discuss the RBC Canadian Open. Tournament Director, Tim McNeely, and Charleston Gazette sports editor, Mitch Vingle, preview this week’s inaugural Greenbrier Classic in West Virginia

I’m finally investing some time to properly analyze my golf swing in an attempt to correct some fundamental swing flaws. After seeing my swing on video a few times now, I reckon I’ll need to invest a lot of time! I did come away from the range today with renewed optimism, having successfully applied a couple of swing changes…….all is not lost.

…..but this post isn’t about me, it’s about a bloke with a YouTube Channel featuring fantastic slow motion footage of tour professionals’ golf swings. This ‘bloke’ appears to prefer anonymity, so I know not his name. I do know that he has posted approx. 150 videos over the last year, all taken with his Casio EX F1 camera at golf tournaments that he actually attends.

I’m finding these slow motion videos really helpful to understand the key positions in the golf swing that I need to replicate….somehow, sometime. Check out the Rory McIlroy video below.

Just sat down to take in the first round US Open telecast and quickly discovered that I needed more than what the guys at NBC were sending me. It seems that in this age of on demand content, I’m not satisfied with sitting in front of the TV and waiting for score updates, waiting for a glimpse of a player that I’m following, waiting for the commercials to finish.

So….I usually turn to the PGA Tour website for the latest scores and detailed leaderboard, but for this year’s US Open at Pebble Beach I discovered an interactive play tracker from the official USGA website. Features of the play tracker include:

• Difficulty Map: view how difficult a hole is playing for the entire field, for each round
• Hole Grouping: view which players are currently playing a particular hole. Select a player and view their scorecard
• Hole Stats: zoom in on each hole to see a detailed hole layout, hole description and see how many birdies, pars, bogies there have been for the round
• Leaderboard: the play tracker also incorporates a leaderboard

……and just in case you’re still worried that you’re missing something you can download the USGA’s official iPhone application!

“I thought it was over, I thought I had won the tournament” were Jack Nicklaus’ words from the clubhouse when Tom Watson hit his 2-iron into the gnarly fescue grass to the left of Pebble Beach’s 17th green. It was the closing stages of the 1982 US Open and Watson was about to chip in for an improbable major victory.

I was reminded of Waton’s heroics while listening to a golf podcast recently. So I thought I’d go in search of some footage on YouTube. I found the clip below, which starts with Nicklaus’ birdie run on the front nine, and concludes with Watson’s incredible birdie, birdie finish to win.

A few months ago I came across a great news website called Alltop. It describes itself as an online magazine rack, but the site essentially collects headlines from the latest stories from the best news sites and blogs that cover a particular topic, eg golf.

I generally head for PGA.com or Yahoo Sports for my golf news, but there’s plenty of other great golf content out there, and Alltop.com is a simple and easy way to find it. Check out the video below to see how it works:

One of the cool things about the site is that you can create your own Alltop page to gather content for all of the topics you’re interested in……..that’s if you have time for interests outside of golf! It’s pretty easy to set-up, but the site has a tutorial that steps you through the process.

Alltop recently enhanced its credibility by adding foundgolf.com to its list of golf sites We’re last on the list, but you gotta start somewhere!

Last November I shared a fantastic golfing experience with a couple of good mates……..seeing Tiger Woods win the Australian Masters at Kingston Heath Golf Course in Melbourne, Australia. The golf was great, Tiger was iconic (and still a role model!), the weather was perfect, the company was easy and the beer was, well beer. Our days in Melbourne could only have been more perfect if we’d managed to squeeze in a couple of rounds of golf ourselves.

Before the weekend was out we agreed that we’d return to Melbourne for the 2011 Presidents Cup, which is being hosted by the Royal Melbourne Golf Club from 14-20 November. This time we would bring our sticks and find time for a couple of rounds of golf…….or more. Our planned trip to the Presidents Cup came up in conversation while playing golf with one of my travel mates yesterday, and we agreed that we should find out when tickets go on sale so we don’t miss out. A bit premature possibly, given that the tournament is still 18 months away, but you can never be too prepared!

Anyway, while looking for information about the tournament and ticket sales, I came across the official Presidents Cup website, hosted by PGATOUR.com. The site has a heap of great information, including past results, video highlights and of course information about the 2011 Presidents Cup.

The website also shows the current qualification standings for the US and International Teams. Ten members of the 2011 U.S. Team and International Team are selected based on official earnings from the 2009 Wyndham Championship through the 2011 PGA Championship (with money earned in 2011 counting as double). The current standings are shown below.

So did I find out when tickets go on sale? No – the only information I could find was that tickets would go on sale in 2010. I have signed up to the Presidents Cup Newsletter, so hopefully I’ll be one of the first to know when the tickets are available this year. Then all we need to do is wait for November 2011 to roll around!

I recently went looking for swing tips on YouTube to help me to hit both a draw and a fade with more success than I’ve been having of late.

What I found was the video below featuring Justin Rose with one of the most concise explanations of how to hit a draw and fade swing that I’ve seen (Rose makes it look much less complicated than I’m sure I’ll make it!)

Rose features in a number of other instructional videos produced by Golfalot.com. The other videos are pretty good too.

You can view all of the Justin Rose instruction videos at Golfalot’s YouTube site or through their website at Golfalot.com

As I write this post I’m listening to a wrap-up of the Arnold Palmer International on internet radio from PGATOUR.COM.

I’m not sure how long this radio program has been around (not long from what I can tell), but I think I’ll be tuning in regularly. I live in Australia, so I’ll be sleeping through most of the program, but I should be able to pick-up some of it on either end of the day.

The PGA Tour radio program is delivered by XM Satellite Radio. XM has approx. 200 internet radio programs, including music and other sports, although I think you need to pay a monthly subscription for access to everything.

Do I really ‘need’ golf radio on top of all the other golf media (eg websites, magazines, podcasts, television)? No, but since when did ‘need’ really dictate our decisions, particularly when it comes to golf!

Here is the current weekly program:

Sunday