Bladed Balata Blog

Of course we’ve all seen them.   The customized golf ball. The classics include “IF FOUND PLEASE HIT IT BETTER THAN THE LAST GUY” and “I’M NOT LOST I’M HIDING FROM _____________” or, contrarily, “PLEASE STOP TOUCHING MY BALLS”. They’re fun and funny and I have always kind of hoped I’d someday be grown up enough to have my own. Tiger has his own. Just stamped TW. It’s rad. Kind of elitist, but still awesome. A pretty cool sort of special. Your own branding. And I had, until very recently, been waiting for the day when I would, too, be cool enough to have my own. Ladies and gentlemen, I have good news. It’s not as hard as I thought. It’s not hard at all, really. I have cracked the completely non-existent code. Or, more precisely, my beautiful sister-in-law has. And the solution comes factory direct. In this case TaylorMade’s factory . And for less than the price of the package of sharpies you’d have to buy in order to mark your ball like the unlearned, inexperi...

When I was younger and just starting out I googled that a lot. How to play cheap golf. How to play golf for free. Where to play the cheapest golf. Will someone pay me to play golf? How do I get sponsored to just play golf? I wished I had a rich uncle. Or just some random benevolent benefactor. Like Robin Masters from Magnum P.I. “Yes,” Robin would say to me, over a rotary dial phone, “You absolutely may (Yes may. Not can. Robin is a writer and his diction and grammar are impeccable.) live in my fantastically large and beautifully crafted pool house that exists unused on my 200-acre Hawaiian estate while haphazardly driving my Ferrari on winding North Shore back roads, because, for reasons I will politely leave unstated, I owe you my life and my favor and, well, I really just like you and want you to live your best life.” But, I (This is me now and no longer Robin Masters. Yes, I know we sound very similar. People mix us up all the time.), inst...

Friday was my 37 th birthday. Before that time, I’m pretty sure I had inadvertently been part of an unpaid research project. I love beer . I love wine , too. But I have always loved beer . At first it was Coors Light . Then gradually I moved on to really amazing beers. Crafted and artisanal beers . I think their wonderful. I think beer can be one of God’s greatest gifts. And that it serves a profound purpose in life. In lives in general. And served my life, specifically throughout certain periods, as a reward, or even a relief, after long and hard days, weeks, and years. You could even go so far as to point out that my two beautiful children honestly might not even exist in the world today if my wife and I hadn’t had a few glasses of wine on each of those magical nights of their respective conceptions. It’s all a game of what-if? and I-wonder-what-might-have-been. Let’s not get lost in those catacombs again. What I do know is this. I’m not much of a drinker anymore. I ...

Working to earn tradable currency might be one of the strangest things we do. We toil all day for small pieces of paper that we immediately turn around and trade in for goods and services. We want and need things. So we work at a completely unrelated task for someone else. So that they’ll give us money. Paper. Coins. That have practically magical values, worth beyond their corporeal reality. Which we then solve our own problems with by giving them to someone else who, in turn, gives us the thing we wanted in the first place. If you stop and think about any system we’ve created as a species, it’s all a little bizarre. But, if you stop and think about anything for long enough, it will absolutely start to seem absurd. As a general tip, try not to do it. Especially in terms of your own golf swing. Or golf swing mechanics et al. But, if we must, and per the case of this blog we absolutely do, let us consider the way in which we obtain the things that we want. In the cate...

We all need games. Something fun to break up the day to day. Or to break up work from the next work. And making up a game might be the best thing of all. To create something with a friend that makes it all a little easier. Because then you have this light and airy thing to look forward to, that you made, with someone who isn’t work. It’s kind of amazing. So take this blog and maybe make up your own thing. Or please use ours. But no matter what… Don’t forget. Fun is important. It might be the most important. I have a best friend. His name is Brian. We’ve been friends since 1994. So I got that going for me. (In order to take fun seriously in your life you do not need a best friend that you’ve kept since 1994. But it helps.) Our parents knew each other and our families all hung out for the first time, way back then, at a local park. That park had a pond. And that pond had ducks. We bonded over our mutual appreciation for the classic Nintendo game Duck Hunt and how well g...

Speaking of legends, here is the link to the Taylormade putter that, reportedly, Tiger is practicing with, getting comfortable with, and considering making a more or less permanent switch to. Check it out HERE And here’s a less opinionated, non-golf-magazine article making the report Check it out HERE Now that that’s out of the way. Back to today’s story. I remember the first time I noticed someone else’s stuff was nicer than mine. I mean people’s things were always nicer than mine. I just remember the first time I noticed. We were poor. Not like feel sorry for us poor. More like our birthday presents were new but our clothes were all from Goodwill poor. And those sneakers that the new boy in class was wearing all those years ago definitely did not come from any bargain bin. Even as a 3 rd grader I could tell they were special. That they probably cost more than all of my second-hand clothes combined. I had never seen anything like them. For one, they were an unu...