ORLANDO, Fla. -- A trend among golf shoes is thinner outsoles, bringing them lower to the ground. The idea is, the lower to the ground you are the more stability you'd have during your swing.

But one thing has stopped outsoles from reaching their ideal thinness: spike receptacles. So PrideSports has released a new spike system with a receptacle that is about 20 percent shorter than the receptacle in the popular Fast Twist system. Called Performance Insert System (PINS), the shorter spike allows the outsole of the shoe to be thinner. All Adidas shoes this year will have this new spike.

--Ashley Mayo

ORLANDO, Fla. -- It's not a headcover, it's a bag cover. MiniZoo's covers debuted at the PGA Merchandise Show, and they transform your entire golf bag into a furry dog or cat. The head of the covers wrap around your driver, and it has zippers to make your animal-bag fully functional during your round.

MiniZoo's founder, Alexander Roberts, is a longtime caddy who has worked at Riviera, Bel-Aire and Aronomink. He hopes the covers, which he'll start selling in mid-March (www.minizoogolf.com), will ignite interest in kids who don't already play.

--Ashley Mayo

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The folks at Cleveland Golf/Srixon are giddy proud of their latest clubfitting contraption, tentatively named the SCUBA (for Self-Contained Universal Bending Apparatus), which has been on display at the PGA Merchandise Show. A portable, foldable lie-and-loft bending machine that fits inside a small suitcase and features a hand-drill-driven bending arm, the SCUBA allows you to bend a stone-cold cast wedge as much as four degrees flat and six degrees upright (and possibly even more than that -- no one has figured out what the true limit is yet) without breaking or even slightly cracking the club. That has to be music to any clubfitter’s ears.

-- Stina Sternberg

With all the buzz coming out of Orlando about the latest advances in new golf technology, I thought it prudent that we put it in some perspective. The fact is, all the hype is still not reaching the masses.

Witness the flood of notes and pictures we're getting from readers and friends with nominations for the most OBSOLETE collection of clubs. Mind you, these are not some relics retrieved from attic or garage, these are every-Saturday-morning-tee-time gamers. We all know the economy is tough, but I'll say it again, playing these clubs is like using mud-stained pond balls.
 
For instance, Virgil Beshears writes in: "I am the most obsolete player I know. When I was in high school, my dad got new clubs and gave me his old ones. I have been using the irons ever since. I graduated high school in 1988." That's four Presidents ago.View image

Or maybe you'd prefer Daniel Kuhlman, whose driver purchasing philosophy goes like this: "My newest club is as recent as 1999 or so. That club would be my replacement driver, a Knight TiRANT 285cc with a titanium insert that I may have found on the bargain counter at K-Mart." Nice. View image

Virgil, Daniel, everyone: Pay attention to our reports from the PGA Merchandise Show. There's a better world out there.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- No longer do you need a power source and an extension cord to run a Doppler radar-based launch monitor at a driving range. FlightScope has introduced Prime, the same operating system as their previous Kudu, only it runs on a chargeable five-hour capacity battery and transmits data wirelessly via Bluetooth to a laptop.

Custom-fitting just got less messy.

-- Max Adler

ORLANDO, Fla. -- - At country club tournaments and outings, generally you never know how you or your team stands until you finish. The golf cart company Club Car is introducing fleets of carts with Visage R+ Technology screens, which in addition to giving the usual distances to holes and hazards, offer real-time scoring between groups, akin to television tour coverage.

No more waiting by the markerboard by the pro shop for the slow groups to come in.

-- Max Adler

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Among the categories surprising most people this year at the PGA Merchandise Show is rain gear. AnnMarie Dodd, a longtime golf fashion writer, says fashion in rain gear is finally meeting up with function. Rain jackets are lighter, stretchier, less noisy and have more golf-related extras than ever before. A few companies to pay close attention to are Zero Restriction, Greg Norman, RLX Outerwear and Sunice. I've seen a few pieces today, and my favorite is Zero Restriction's Chino pant. It's made with patented Tech Wear Epic fabric, which is essentially cotton that's injected with silicone, making it breathable and totally rainproof.

So there you have it. A classic-looking cotton Chino you can play with in the pouring rain.

--Ashley Mayo

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Like it or not, it looks like the colored golf ball may be making a comeback.

At the PGA Merchandise Show, Srixon is unveiling its line of Tour Yellow Z-Star golf balls. Hardly a novelty, the Z-Star is the company's flagship premium ball. So what gives? Why make a tour-level golf ball in a color normally reserved for range balls?

For starters, the ball isn't actually yellow, but rather a green/yellow combination. According to Chris Beck, brand manager for Srixon, studies have shown yellow to be the most visible color in the spectrum. Additionally, studies have correlated that green/yellow colors have a calming, stress-relieving effect on people.

For those who think that is hogwash, Beck is quick to point out the reason many talk shows have a "Green Room," that is, indeed, green, is to give guests a place to relax before going out in front of a camera on live television.

Visibility, however, was the driving force. According to Beck, the company did several tests that showed the yellow ball was easier to spot atvirtually every distance. "It was twice as easy to see at 210 yards and three times as easy to spot at 250 yards," he said.

Although intriguing, colored balls for better visibility are not exactly new. In fact, colored balls have a long, if inconsistent, history. Living in Vermont in the 1890's, writer Rudyard Kipling "invented" what many believe to be the first colored golf ball when he slapped a coat of red paint on a white sphere in order to make it easier to see while playing snow golf. In
1928, Wilson ran full-page ads in Golf Illustrated touting its "Oriole-Orange and Canary-Yellow" Hol-Hi ball -- at a whopping $10.75 per dozen (about $109 in today's dollars) but they never caught on.
 
Fifty years later, Ping began producing golf balls, including its Ping Punch ball, where one hemisphere was one color and the other side another. That effort failed, but the use of colored balls exploded when Wayne Levi (at the 1982 Hawaiian Open), and then Jerry Pate (at the 1982 Players Championship), won using orange-colored Wilson ProStaff balls. Pate also made noise earlier in the year when he used the carrot-colored sphere to card the first ace ever by a professional during the Bing Crosby National Pro-Am on Cypress Point's famed 16th hole. More recently, Nike brought on its Nike One Black in a limited black color -- even getting some of its tour players to use the ball in competition.

Will that happen with the Srixon Tour Yellow Z-Star? Too early to tell, but Jim Furyk was seen eyeballing the spheres during an appearance at the Srixon booth. If Furyk were to put the ball in play that would be high visibility, indeed.

-- E. Michael Johnson

ORLANDO, Fla. -- If you ever wanted to know exactly how your driver shaft behaves, a step to uncover that mystery was made today at the Orlando PGA Show.

Fujikura Composites, in cooperation with Vicon Motion Systems and Bentley 3, have designed a high-speed camera and software system that can identify oodles of precise information about how the shaft droops and bends. They don't know what the ideal numbers are yet, only that they can measure them. Once they put several tour players on the system they'll have a better
idea.

But one secret they've found is that the slower the butt end moves during impact, likely the farther you'll hit the ball, as it indicates a better wrist release. That's right: slower equals faster.

-- Max Adler

ORLANDO, Fla. -- It’s impossible to know the exact positions you’re hitting during your swing. So Eric Lewis invented a video swing recorder, which debuted today at the PGa Merchandise Show. The 15-ounce camcorder has a mount that easily attaches to a golf bag or push cart, and the camera’s head is on a swivel that can rotate 270 degrees.

The camcorder’s lithium rechargeable battery lasts for more than five hours, so you can literally have it on during your entire round. You can analyze your swing from the device by replaying your swing forward and backward, frame by frame. And you can also upload your swings to a computer (via the SD card or a USB connection) or a television. It’s not available today, but in a few weeks you’ll be able to buy one for $350 at V-Swing.com.

-- Ashley Mayo