CNN's Rafael Romo reports that Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has declared war on the game of golf. Hugo Chavez thinks golfers are lazy. Chavez is seizing golf courses in Venezuela in order to turn them into public housing projects. Venezuela still has 23 golf courses but they are risk of being taken over by Chavez. Take a look:
The Wall Street Journal has an article that says you know gas prices are high when Texans start driving golf carts. The vehicles the WJS is talking about do look like golf carts but they are actually small electric powered vehicles. A company named ZAP makes electric vehicles but there are many others that have been around for a while but were primarily used by businesses. Many streets do not allow these slow, small golf-cart-sized vehicles.
"It makes so much sense for getting around. We go everywhere in it," says Mrs. Peters, 41.
It's a sure sign electric cars have a future when they're catching on in Texas. Others here, too, are abandoning the family car and driving to the office in what appear to be fancy little golf carts. Small battery-powered vehicles have been on the market for years but have mainly been used by workers driving around factories and university campuses.
The small cars are powered by batteries charged by plugging them into regular 110-volt house current. Though they do look like golf carts, they have heftier frames and more powerful engines. Now, with high gasoline prices driving booming sales, many are going to ordinary folks like the Peterses, who have fallen in love with gasoline-free transportation.
Here's a video from the WSJ that shows people driving around in the vehicles that resemble golf carts.
The AP reports that Iowa golfer Ted Kemp hit two holes-in-one in the same round of golf.
Luck doesn't even to begin to describe golfer Ted Kemp's round on Monday. Kemp, a 12-handicapper, knocked in holes-in-one on back-to-back par 3s at the Muscatine Municipal Golf Course.
Kemp used a pitching wedge to sink his tee shot on the 3rd hole from 130 yards out. Then, after remarking to his group that it would be something if he repeated his feat, he did just that.
Kemp grabbed an 8-iron and nailed a hole-in-one from 182 yards out on the 8th hole.
The AP also cited a 2000 study by Golf Digestthat put the odds of hitting two holes-in-one in the same round at 67 million to one. Japan's Yusaku Miyazato also managed the same astonishing feat in 2006 during the the second round of the Reno-Tahoe Open.
Aiming your golf ball at people or animals is unacceptable behavior as the Supernanny likes to say. Pro-Golfer Tripp Isenhour is in trouble for his bad behvaior. He killed a protected hawk with a golf ball while filming an instructional video.
Tripp Isenhour has never gotten this much attention for a single golf shot. Really, he's never gotten this much attention, period. Isenhour said it was a "one-in-a-million" golf shot that killed a protected hawk and that he was only trying to scare the bird he now faces misdemeanor criminal charges for killing.
"It was unfortunate, but there'll be plenty of time for me to tell my story," Isenhour said on the Golf Channel's PODS Championship post-round show Friday, his first interview since news broke that he killed the protected bird Dec. 12.
"It's one of regret and remorse that it happened, because I'm certainly sorry to hurt a migratory bird, or any bird for that matter."
Tripp Isenhour says he didn't mean to hit the hawk with the golf ball. He claims he was just trying to scare the bird away.
"I want to let everyone know there was neither any malice nor deliberate intent whatsoever to hit or harm the hawk. I was trying to simply scare it into flying away."
The Chicago Tribune's golf blog Bunker Mentality quotes a witness who disagrees. Investigators also blame Isenhour according to the AP story.
Investigators said Isenhour killed the hawk because he was upset it was making noise as he tried to film an instructional video. He allegedly first drove in a golf cart toward the bird, then 300 yards away, to hit balls at it. When the hawk later landed within 75 yards, Isenhour's shots got closer until he eventually hit and killed it. The bird fell to the ground bleeding from both nostrils, witnesses told the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission.
Isenhour has been charged with a misdemeanor criminal offense. The maximum penalty for such an offense is 14 months in jail and $1,500 in fines.
Have you heard of Urban Golf? It sounds like a fun concept for those who can't make it to the golf course or are tired of that scene or can't afford it. You can play it just about anywhere but do be considerate of others. You can see a website with rules here (via BuzzFeed). There's also an Urban Golf Association.
Philadelphia Weeklyreports that the game is really catching on London, Seattle and San Francisco. They talk about people playing urban golf with an Almost Golf ball or a "leather orb."
Urban golf is just like its grass-cut cousin, but designed for fans of the gentlemen's game with no access to snooty clubs or expensive gear. Urban golfers just grab a thrift-store 5-iron, beers and some desolate cityscapes (Philly has a surplus of all three), and presto-the entire city is your fairway. No fees, no dress codes, no bans on Jews or blacks or Mexicans or women, no dressing like a total dick-just good, clean dirty urban fun. Anything can serve as a hole: trash cans, lamp posts, even storm drains (for that satisfying "sunk putt" feeling). Some golfers use a plastic Almost Golf ball that travels about a third the distance of a regular ball and won't break windows. Others prefer a leather orb filled with goose feathers, which won't roll into street gutters and just sits up to be hit. Now a common sight in London, Seattle and San Francisco, urban golf has yet to catch on in Philadelphia despite our 900 acres of vacant, blighted land.
In this video below golfers play an organized game of urban golf at USC. They write, "We actually were able to play through the USC campus without killing anyone. This ball was amazing. It is super light, but has CO2 pressure inside so it goes a nice 50 yards with a 9 iron, you can work it just like a golf ball, but it won't break windows or dent cars or kill anyone. That rules."
