The Golf Club: May 17, 2014

BOSTON (CBS) - The sun is shining. Birds are chirping. Fresh cut grass. It must be golf season, so to really enjoy this wonderful time of year, every Saturday on 98.5 The Sports Hub Hardy's taking us to the links starting at 6am with interviews, training tips, fundamentals and state of the art equipment reviews with experts on The Golf Club.

Leading off Saturday's show was Hardy's chat with Lou Papadellis of Shining Rock Golf Club in Northbridge. The 4th Annual Sports Hub 'Who's Your Caddy? Classic' is next month, Monday June 23rd at Shining Rock so Hardy spoke with the general manager for a preview.

"How do you keep getting talked into this? Having a bunch of Sports Hub guys take over your golf course for a day?" joked Hardy to start the conversation.

"We actually love having you. It's such a great event and it's always fun listening to Gresh and Zo do their show live," said Papadellis.

As for the course itself, it's still in its infancy. Shining Rock was built just five years ago and for awhile Hardy viewed it as one of the best kept secrets in all of Massachusetts. But it's gotten plenty of recognition since then and was recently voted the best public course in all of the Bay State.

"We have people that travel long distances to play at our golf course and people are just thrilled with it."

Tickets for the 4th Annual Sports Hub 'Who's Your Caddy? Classic' go on sale Monday May 19 at 10am and can be purchased right here on CBSBostonSports.com!

Listen below for the full interview and a detailed rundown of Shining Rock:

Next to join the show was John Tuffin, director of golf at Pinehills Golf Club in Plymouth.

If you haven't played there, it sounds like a real treat. Tuffin explained to Hardy that it's not just the 36 holes on the course that makes for a great time. Rather, Tuffin tries to create an all-encompassing, pleasant experience for his golfers and it starts as soon as your car is parked.

"We are fully staffed at our bag drop. So you pull right up to the bag drop and our staff will take your clubs out of the car, load them onto the cart and park you right on our practice facility. We have a phenomenal practice facility. Three different putting and chipping greens and a huge grass tee with real targets that you can hit towards.

"It's the total experience right behind the golf shop. Walk out the door and it's right there. What we hear from our players is that they like to come down here early because they do have that experience of being at a great practice facility before they play."

Tuffin went on to say it's a daily fee course with a country club feel, and their slogan is, "Come be a member for a day."

There's two separate 18-hole courses to choose from, and Tuffin explained to Hardy the difference between the two, plus the unique characteristics of each.

Listen below:

Next up was instructor Rob Churchill of LeBaron Hills Country Club in Lakeville.

Churchill wasn't all that complimentary of Hardy's golf game at first, which offended him.

"In every foursome there's one guy who has the most fun. Might as well be me," joked Hardy.

After the exchange of pleasantries, Churchill gave a valuable lesson and swing tip.

"My miss continues to be the pull. The pull hook. The snap hook. I'm running out of ideas to try and fix that thing, so can you give me a quick fix to hooking the ball?" asked Hardy.

"Get more of your body involved in the swing. If you just start snapping the ball you're trying to knock the inside of the golf ball to the outside of the planet. You really can't swing that hard at the golf ball. So for someone that's snap hooking the ball all the time it's usually a big arm, flat plane swing that's too fast," said Churchill.

Swinging too fast?

Hardy found that concept to be confusing.

"But club head speed equals distance!"

"But the whole body has to be a part of it. You can't just make it a one man show and have your arms just doing the whole thing for you. It doesn't work. It's just not effective. You gotta slow down. You've gotta get your body involved with the swing," said Churchill.

Listen below for the full lesson, including one very important tip for golfing this early in the season:

The last guest of Saturday's show was Steve Show, general manager at Golfsmith in Watertown.

Cobra has a great line of clubs out now called the BiO CELL and Show gave us all a rundown of what makes them so unique.

"The BiO CELL product is probably best combination of straightness and distance there is on the market today," said Show.

"The BiO CELL + is geared towards the better player and the BiO CELL is geared more towards the masses that benefit from adjustability with a little higher MOI (moment of inertia) and more forgiveness heel to toe. They both have their E9 technology, which is nine points on the face that create equal ball speeds. You can have good ball speeds on mishits, which is nice for most of us."

Listen below for the full product breakdown:

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