Hey guys, been a while since I threw up a blog and I got a lot of stuff going on so I figured I'd post an update. First things first, I'm praying that something good comes out of the FTP hearings tomorrow.

Now for the good stuff. My wife is pregnant with our first child. We had our first ultrasound earlier this morning and got to see the heartbeating. It was so cool! Looking at that monitor and being able to see the heart flickering as it beat was something I will never ever forget.



That is the baby to the right of the mouse. Sort of below the mouse is the embryonic sac where the baby is getting all its nutrients for the time being. You can see the babies heart if you look in the right spot. If you follow the mouse arrow across the baby, to the little gap between its body and head, at the base of that little canal/valley/gap is the babies heart! So my wife is around 7.5 weeks along, and has a due date of March 7th. Very exciting stuff!

In other news, since poker went away(basically) I've been doing a lot more golf stuff. I got my PGA membership last month which was nice. The biggest perk to that being free entry into any PGA Tour event, yes that includes the Masters :) For most events I can get guest and family in too which is great. In a couple of weeks the PGA Championship will be in town about 20 mins down the road from me, so my parents are going to come down and I can get them in for free. I think were going to go on Saturday.

As for some even cooler golf news, we are getting a TrackMan! For you golfers out there it is really the coolest piece of golf technology out there right now. The PGA Tour uses it at every tournament and every big club manufacturer has a handful at their headquarters. It's a doppler radar for golf that is used to measure 22 different things through the golf swing and the ball flight. The doppler actually tracks the ball through the duration of its flight. If you are ever watching golf on TV and they tell you the club head speed, the ball speed, the carry distance, total distance or they show the flight of the ball in real time, that is TrackMan in action.

Here are the 22 things it measures.

Club SpeedBall SpeedSmash FactorSide Total*Attack AngleLaunch AngleHeightLanding AngleClub PathLaunch DirectionCarryHang TimeSwing PlaneSpin AxisSide Last DataSwing DirectionSpin RateTotal* Dynamic Loft* Spin Loft* Face Angle*

Here is a little introduction video on the TrackMan.




You can also go to the TrackMan website to see more videos.

We will be using the TrackMan for a variety of different applications. First a foremost we will use it for club fitting. Whether someone wants a new driver, a new set of irons, or a couple new wedges the TrackMan is the answer. We can very quickly find the optimal specs an individual should have on their clubs to make them as efficient as possible. And rather then just having them hit a bunch of shots and deciding which looks and feels better, or us telling them which clubs are better for them, the data from the TrackMan will do all the talking.

Sort of related to club fittings is a gap fitting. What were are going to find out here is how far someone carries each of their clubs and the gaps between different clubs. Distance control is so important on the golf course and unfortunately a lot of amateurs have no clue how far they hit their clubs. The gap fitting will be a big but necessary ego check for a lot of golfers. Many of them choose what club to hit based off of some dream iron they smoked 2 years ago. So what we will do is have our clients to hit 5 solid shots with each club in their bag and then we will print out a nice table that lists each of their clubs and the corresponding carry distance. We will also check for gaps that are either too big or too small and find a solution.

Along with fittings we will also use the TrackMan in regular lessons. There have been some pretty revolutionary changes in the understanding of how the golf ball and club react in recent years and a lot of it has been credited to TrackMan technology. It will be a huge help in showing someone what we want them to work on and what numbers we are looking for.

Last but not least, whenever we don't have a fitting or lesson scheduled to use the TrackMan we will rent it out to our members to use during practice. It's so easy to use and can really enhance anyone's practice sessions.

The price tag on it is kind of high, $20k+, but it should pay for itself very quickly and then we will really be reaping the benefits.

As for some poker related content I have been playing every now and then but not very much at all. When I've played it has been a mix between plo and nlhe, but nothing too serious. I did recently get some footage of a CR member playing .5/1 NL so I will be trying to crank out a leakfinder series before the TrackMan gets here and takes over my life in 3 weeks. Hope everyone is doing good with whatever they are doing, be it still playing poker or moving onto a new job/career.