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acking as much as you can in as small a space as you can is the key to efficient traveling by air these days, especially if you want to carry on as much as possible to avoid extra charges and keep things simple. Club Glove, a world-wide leader in the design and manufacture of premium luggage that is used by more than 90 percent of players on the PGA and Champions Tour, has continued to develop new innovations with its latest lineup of choices for travelers and golfers. The company was selected to provide the luggage for last year’s USA Ryder Cup squad, including its ultra Ballistic lineup that is water resistant and has up to five times the tear resistance of standard polyester. Included in the luggage for the American team in Chicago was the Carry on II that can handle much more than you ever imagined in a carry on with today’s restrictions. It has a patented high-impact plastic wheelbase with in-line skate wheels and bearings with a telescoping, adjustable and retractable 42-inch handle. Lightweight and with loads of handy compartments and two packing organizers, this carry-on is light-weight, yet strong—even when packed to the brim. Designed specially with Ryder Cup logos, but available in a number of colors and styles from Club Glove, the luggage ensemble for the US team also included Last Bag XL and TRS Ballistic Check-in XL, as well as the protective
Stiff Arm Device. The Last Bag XL is one of the more popular golf club travel bags on the market, while the Check-in XL features five packing modules for easy, wrinkle free clothing and accessories organization. With its unique rigid, yet soft-sided design, the luggage carries dimensions never before seen in the industry. Extremely functional and durable, all pieces in the collection are U.S. woven with military-spec INVISTA CORDURA® 1050 denier Ballistic Nylon fabric for unmatched abrasion and tear resistance. Available in all black or a fashionable two-tone black and bronze color scheme, the line has a new camouflage colorway called “Digital Camo.” This design scheme features a modern camouflage pattern of green, tan and brown, and is offered in select golf and lifestyle pieces. “Our creations are in a category of their own thanks to incredible functionality and durability that eases the lives of our customers on every trip they take,” says Club Glove founder Jeff Herold. “Digital Camo is not only cool; it celebrates our pride in helping American families by manufacturing in the United States.” The unique feature that Club Glove has used to make navigating airports easier with multiple pieces of luggage is the exclusive Train Reaction system that allows users to quickly and easily connect bags and drastically reduces the amount of effort needed to pull or push gear by creating a perfect center of gravity and weightless feel. This allows for three pieces and over 90 pounds of luggage to be rolled with just one hand with an assembled luggage “train” that selfbalances without toppling over. For more information on the Club Glove line of luggage: www.clubglove.com
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imple, yet effective training tools always seem to work best in golf, and a brand new device invented and promoted by one of the top-ranked teaching instructors in America—Mike Bender—uses some old school elements like a stick and foam for the Benderstik. Uniquely designed to help players build a consistent golf swing that can last for a lifetime, the Benderstik provides the kind of feedback that Bender says leads to “perfect practice,” where the carrot is a smoothly sublime golf
32 Golf Vacations • April 2013
swing and the stick is what helps a player develop it. The flexible Benderstik is easily positioned to influence at least eight major elements of the golf swing—from takeaway to a hip turn and follow through—essentially imparting “practice range truth” to what a player thinks he or she has learned in a lesson. That is, unless that part of the swing is executed properly, the yellow ball will interfere with the arms, head or hips. A swing that doesn’t contact the ball begins to build the muscle memory of a proper takeaway, plane, downswing and follow-through. Among the swing faults that can be unlearned with the Benderstik are swaying, sliding, over-swinging, flipping the ball and losing one’s posture. It is best used in conjunction with alignment sticks, or a pair of clubs. Bender, named as one of the Top Five Best Teachers in America by Golf Digest Magazine, who for more than a decade has been on GOLF Magazine’s Top 100 Teacher list, and in 2009 was named the National Teacher of the Year by the PGA of America, has utilized his tinkering abilities to develop a tool that most golfers will find very useful. “It’s perfect practice that’s the path to perfection,” he adds, “and to get that you need physical feedback. At the start of my career in the early 1980s I had what I thought was a good swing, until I saw what I was doing on video. My takeaway and backswing were way too vertical, and I had a high finish like Jack Nicklaus, because he was the best in the game. I, of course, wasn’t Nicklaus, and needed to start with a backswing more like that of Doug Sanders. But after a week of practice with what I thought was a new swing, I’d come back to the video and see that it didn’t really change. Feel, as Greg Norman once said, is not necessarily real.”
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