For those who live in cold-weather areas of the nation, year-round golf is a pipe dream that usually is lived out by only those in warm weather parts of the country like California, Florida and Hawaii. With the Full Golf Swing simulator, you are enveloped by a screen and two curtains that transports you to great weather, challenging golf courses and the best part - no waiting for annoying drunk five-somes in front of you. So, turn up the heater and get your golf clubs out of your garage.

Courtesy of Uncrate.com

Hall of Fame golfer, Gary Player has just come out and disclosed that he knows of at least one player on the PGA tour that has taken steroids to enhance their golf game. It’s quite understandable as to why players are beginning to take such drastic measures as the game has always been more favorable to players who can drive the ball just a few yards further than their peers. Take a look at Tiger Woods and how he has changed the perception of professional golfers from fat and lazy hacks to lean and mean hitting machines with laser like focus and drive! This happened in just the last 10 years, so for players who’s habits have already been engrained into them, it looks like steroids is one of the fastest ways to catch up!

Random testing is already going on in the LPGA and is slowly making it’s way into both the US and European tours. When asked, players like Phil Mikelson and Tiger Woods don’t believe it will be a big problem on the tour. I tend to agree since we all know that golf is more about mental toughness than any other sport out there. It doesn’t matter if you can drive 300 yards, but if you can’t make that 10 ft birdie to win the whole thing, then there shouldn’t be any concern about steroids tainting the game. Until they create a steroid for the brain, I don’t think golf has that much to worry about!

by Tom Callahan

An interview with Jack Nicklaus after Tiger won the Masters in 1996

Q: Jack, what were your impressions of Tiger Woods today, especially in light of what Greg Norman said the other day, that he might hit the ball as far as Daly?

A: I don’t know what Norman said, but this is the first time I played with Tiger. I’ve wanted to play with him for a while, but we never hooked up. Arnold and I both agreed that you could take his Masters, and my Masters, and add them together, and this kid should win more than that.

More than 10 Masters? To do it, Woods would have to win this year and every even year until 2016, by which time he’d be 40. The reporters hearing Jack Nicklaus in the Masters pressroom are reasonably certain he has lost his mind.

This kid is the most fundamentally sound golfer I’ve ever seen at almost any age. And he’s a nice kid. He’s got great composure. You know, he handles himself very, very well. Hits the ball nine million miles, and without a swing that looks like he’s trying to. Does he hit it as far as Daly? I think, if he tried, he would.

Arnold and I were laughing at 13 today. I drove it around the corner. Tiger hit a 3-wood out to the right, at least 40 or 45 yards behind me. He took out an iron, and Arnold said, “He’s laying up,” and I said, “Nnnnno, he’s not.”

Could this be some kind of overcompensation for the Al Campanis-style scrape Jack got himself into in ‘95? A cunning newsperson had tossed out the subject of race and golf, and by a selective construction of Carnak’s spitballs, led Nicklaus almost to the edge of the Jimmy the Greek abyss.

He’s got a great set of golf clubs in his bag. He doesn’t have the “waffle irons” a lot of kids have today. He’s got good forges-they look like golf clubs-and I think a kid learns to play better golf if he has that kind of club.

He doesn’t use the graphite and the other stuff to hit the ball long. He’s got an X100 steel shaft in his clubs. He could hit the ball farther if he used something else.

Oh, maybe Jack is hoping the kid will play his equipment.

I don’t know whether he’s ready to win or not, but he will be your favorite for the next 20 years. If he isn’t, then there’s something wrong.

Wasn’t Jack our favorite for the last 20 years?

I’ve said all along if this young man can handle you guys and go through all of that-a pressure I didn’t have when I was growing up, because we just didn’t have that kind of media coverage-if he’s strong enough to get through that and progress with it, then he’ll be as good as anyone who ever played the game, or better.

Better?

Q: Jack, when you were 20 years old, you finished second in the U.S. Open, and a lot of people, like Hogan, thought you should have won. Is Tiger capable of doing that well in a major?

A: Absolutely. He may be capable of doing better.

There’s that word again.

And, you know, that is a very tall order for him. But at this point in time, he seems to be handling that part of the issue very well.

Of all the wonderfully wise things about Nicklaus, maybe the most wonderful and the most wise is that he never exalted himself at the expense of ghosts. He never said he was better than Bobby Jones. He never said he was better than Ben Hogan. On the record, he had a right to feel he was the best golfer who ever lived. In his heart, he must have felt it. But he never said so.

Just as he didn’t have to knock down the past, he doesn’t have to knock down the future. He doesn’t say he hit the ball as far as Tiger Woods, or he would have hit it as far, if he’d had the benefit of titanium, if he’d been playing with moon rocks. In fact, he goes out of his way to say he didn’t hit it as far, and he makes a point of mentioning Tiger’s forged clubs.

Nicklaus was once the youngest Masters champion at 23 and remains the oldest at 46. He was the best teenage golfer, the best 20-year-old golfer, the best 30-year-old golfer, the best 40-year-old golfer and the best 50-year-old golfer of his time, which is a heck of a long time.

Considering his accomplishments, Nicklaus avoided arrogance remarkably well. Not entirely, but remarkably well. If Tiger’s benchmark is Jack, if Woods means to play, think, compete, win, lose, dare, dream, live, love, laugh and be happy at the level of Nicklaus, then it’s a wonder he isn’t bent over at the waist from the incalculable weight of all the years ahead.

by Alister Nicol

Let’s put the record straight. Every time I have been on a golf course or at a golf tournament in bad weather in the United States for the past 20 years or so, folks have come up to me and said, “this should suit you” or “this should suit the European players.” Balderdash. Rubbish. Nonsense. Tripe.

I don’t know anyone who likes to play in cold, wet and windy weather. It just so happens that, at least in Britain and Ireland, we have to endure more than our fair share of these conditions.

But only once have I actually heard a player say he relishes lousy weather. That was at Augusta in 1983, when torrential storms interrupted play on the weekend and the Masters went to a Monday finish.

During a rain delay, Seve Ballesteros was one of the many people seeking the sanctuary of the clubhouse. The downpour was almost the sole topic of conversation, but the Spaniard was totally unfazed.

“I am the best wet weather player in the world,” he confided earnestly. “Rain? No problem.”

It was dry overhead come Monday’s final round and Ballesteros, who has lived all his life on the shores of the stormy Bay of Biscay � where howling Atlantic gales regularly sweep in foul weather � proved himself by ripping out a birdie-eagle-par-birdie start on the still-wet course.

That blistering beginning brought forth an unforgettable tribute from Tom Kite, in contention until the Spaniard took off like an Apollo mission. “It was like Seve was in a Ferrari,” commented Kite, “and the rest of us were driving Chevys.”

Ballesteros had several of the closing holes of his second round in deepening gloom, but that didn’t bother him either. He birdied three in a row.

“When I was a boy, I was not allowed on the course at Real Pedrena during the day,” he explained. “So I became accustomed to playing when it was getting dark.”

He didn’t like it, but golf was his passion. So he did it. And if it was raining? So what? He still played as if his very life depended on it. And if he was chased off the course, he’d hit shots from the sodden beach nearby.

I have many friends in Florida who will not contemplate going to the course when the temperature drops to around 60 or below. But to someone like myself, born and bred on almost the same latitude as Hudson’s Bay (thank goodness for the Gulf Stream), that’s comfortable.

When the mercury drops below 40 in Scotland, that’s another matter. But we still do it. It is not at all uncommon for Brits to go to the first tee clad in thermal underwear, topped up with three sweaters and a rain suit to boot. And I am talking summer here!

The morning of the third day of the 1987 Open Championship at Muirfield, in July, was a prime example. Three-time champion Gary Player, competing in his 33rd consecutive Open, insisted it was the coldest, wettest, windiest day he had ever experienced.

Scott Simpson had won the U.S. Open at the Olympic Club in San Francisco the previous month, yet after seven or eight holes at Muirfield that wicked Saturday he feared he might not break 90. He shot 82 and was happy to have done so.

Sandy Lyle, then at his peak, somehow found a way to get round in a par 71 without once reaching into his sopping wet bag to take out a wooden club (remember them?). Big Lil ironed his way to one of the smoothest rounds of all time in the most vile weather ever to be visited on a tournament. Even the seagulls were walking � in single file!

It was so bad that one bemused Japanese journalist kept asking all and sundry in the Media Centre: “Why not play Open in summer?”

Some years back, Lee Trevino offered his explanation of why European players have done so well in the Masters since Seve set the pattern in 1980.

“These guys are so accustomed to playing with five layers of clothing that when they come over to the States to play in good weather and in shirt sleeves, they can make a proper swing at the ball,” the Merry Mex quipped.

“Shoot, these guys can all play when they are wrapped up like Egyptian mummies � and they can really play when they take off all those layers.”

But as far as actually enjoying a round of golf when it is cold, wet and dismal? Forget it. We get so much of it, however, that we have learned to endure the hardships.

And those fortunate enough to have been born with natural talent, such as the Seves, Sandys and Nick Faldos of the world of golf, have adapted their God-given gifts accordingly However, they, in common with every other golfer professional or amateur, much prefer to play in shirt sleeves in a flat calm with the temperature hovering around the 70s.

Okay, I know that Jack Nicklaus, properly recognized as the greatest player of all time, is from Ohio where winters are more severe than at St. Andrews. But the summers are predictably long and hot.

As the widely accepted Home of Golf, Scotland is a beautiful land. But it is rarely blessed with week after week of endless hot sunshine, even in the best of summers.

Weather conditions are far from ideal for golf. Maybe that’s why we have produced so few Open champions in the modern era and only one since World War II.

So I leave you with this poser: Who was the last Scot, born and living in his native land, to have won the Open?

I’ll give you the answer next week � when I am back under Augusta’s southern sun and sipping a cool mint julep as opposed to a warming glass of single malt.