ORLANDO, Fla. -- When Boccieri Golf developed its Secret Grip it did so principally to provide golfers an easier way to back weight a club. What it discovered, company president and CEO Stephen Boccieri said, was that it actually improved performance.

"From a performance standpoint, I never thought there could be a grip that would enhance the capabilities of a golfer," Boccieri said. "What we found was that players were picking up four miles an hour on ball speed by using this grip."

The Secret Grip was officially introduced at the PGA Merchandise Show here and is the latest offering from the company that has the Heavy Putter in its line of clubs.

The grip weighs in at 92 grams, 40 grams more than a traditional grip. A tungsten button on the butt end of the grip accounts for the additional weight.

"We have a full line of back-weighted golf clubs," Boccieri said. "What a lot of customers said to me last year is that they like the driver, they like the irons, but if they buy any one of my components they have to buy a complete set. The economy is saying I don't want to spend $300."

The grips, which will retail for $18.99, can be installed on any brand of club.

Back-weighting clubs is not knew. Jack Nicklaus back-weighted clubs, as do a number of tour players. The process of back-weighting clubs has been somewhat cumbersome, requiring drilling through the end of the grip. The Secret Grip accomplishes the same thing simply by changing the grip.

"None of the average golfers know anything about back-weighting," Boccieri said. "Jack Nicklaus used it in his day and people throughout the tour do it, but it's kind of behind closed doors, basically. We think the Secret Grip is going to enhance the back-weighting technology that Boccieri Golf has developed with its putters and now its swing clubs."

What is Boccieri's theory as to why the Secret Grip increases ball speed?

"At the top of the swing, when you have more mass in your hands, you have a better transition with that momentary pause at the top," he said. "The first move that the average golfer makes with a high swing weight, they cast from the top. With more mass in the left hand, like everybody says, it's like dropping into the slot. So what's happening is they're creating more lag and holding onto the angle of retention longer into impact."

-- John Strege

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The barefoot running phenomenon continues to seep into the golf shoe business, the latest entry the Barefoot B.E.R.B.S..

Introduced this week at the PGA Merchandise Show here, the Barefoot B.E.R.B.S. bills itself as the first minimalist soft spike shoe. It was designed by Jeremy Berbert, who has played professional golf and owns an irrigation and landscaping business in Westminster, Colo.

"I flew out to Vegas to see a buddy of mine, a professional golfer who is very much into fitness," Berbert said. "He was wearing the Vibram Five Fingers shoes. As a professional golfer myself, I knew that practicing golf barefoot is the way to go. It gives you balance. The only problem is that socially it's not acceptable. You can't go around a ritzy country club barefoot. Unacceptable. Plus, there's slippage. You don't have any traction, any stability under yourself when you're in that type of shoe."

Berbert set out to design "the most comfortable golf shoe ever," he said. "Oliver Wilson wore the Vibram Five Fingers at Dubai [in November of 2010]. His reaction when he was done was that they were not waterproof and they didn't have spikes. So I made the Barefoot B.E.R.B.S. that actually have a unique spike design. We limited the weight by not adding 10, nine, eight or seven, whatever, spikes. We have five on each shoe. And the design allow the perfect amount of stability because of how you swing."

The Barefoot B.E.R.B.S. have a suggested retail price of $139.

-- John Strege

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Taking on-course video of your own swing has never been practicable, given that it would require a cameraman to tag along.

"Essentially I was out playing and frustrated with my game and came home and complalned to my wife," Woody Nash said. "She said, 'why don't you videotape yourself out there?' I said it would be too difficult to do and everybody would be mad at me, because I'd be carrying this tripod around. She knew I had a background in developing products and said, 'why don't you invent something?'"

The result is the SwingShot, a device equipped with a high-definition video camera with audio, an LCD imageviewer screen and GPS. It fits in the golf bag and easily sticks into the ground via a turf spike. Best of all, the golfer can operate it himself.

Nash and his business partner Pat O'Donnell who have introduced the SwingShot at the PGA Merchandise Show here, intend to loan the devices to golf courses, who will then charge the consumer a fee, recording themselves onto a Micro SD card that they can then take to their teaching pro for analysis. It also could be used on the driving range.

"Most everything that's available today for capturing video on the driving range is pretty involved," Nash said. "It requires a laptop and stand and the golf shop would be worried about the cost and would have to put staff with this equipment. Iin this case they just give it to a golfer, who films himself, then brings it back to [the pro] who can do the video analysis."

They also anticipate placing the SwingShot in high-end resorts, allowing golfers to record their rounds for posterity sake.

-- John Strege

ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Swingbyte was an idea a native Ukrainian who had never played golf came up with on a whim, partnered with a former Canadian Tour player, and developed with help from University of St. Petersburg (Russia) aerospace instrumentation experts that had experience working on Russian drones.

But that's not what makes the Swingbyte so interesting.

The Swingbyte is a small device that weighs less an ounce and attaches to any club in a golfer's bag, just below the grip. Once the user hits a shot, the Swingbyte transmits instantaneously digitized feedback, via a Bluetooth connection, to a smart phone or tablet.

It will show the swing plane and path the club has traveled from any angle, including an overhead. It features a metric page, too, that will show clubhead speed, lie angle, and other data that might help in identifying a flaw in a golfer's swing.

"We worked with top area pros in Chicago," said Nathan Wojtkiewicz, one of three founders of the company and the vice president operations. "We asked them, 'what do you want to see, what's important [from a teaching perspective]? We've got a thousand data points. Let us know what makes the most sense.'

"Teaching professionals we've shown it too, almost 100 percent of them, are like, 'yes!'"

Among its utilities for a teaching professional, Wojtkiewicz said, is that he can have a student hit 10 shots with the Swingbyte attached to his club, identify a flaw on which they work, then at the end of the session take 10 more shots. "It gives them instant feedback that enables the teaching pro to say, 'see, I'm helping you.'"

It also has value to the "do-it-yourselfers," as Wojtkiewicz called them, to analyze their swing themselves or to take the data to their teaching pro.

The device, introduced at the annual PGA Merchandise Show here, will retail for $149. The information can be downloaded to the web via a free tier or a paid tier ($49 a year), the latter providing additional analysis and the ability to share the information with your instructor.

As for the developmental history of the Swingbyte, the native Ukrainian, Alex Pedenko, is a software developer who was tinkering with robotics technology in a shop one day, thought the technology was cool, and wondered what else he might do with it.

"He thought golf would be pretty cool," Wojtkiewicz said. "He developed a working prototype fairly quickly on a limited budget. He was at the University of Chicago business school and on the first day of orientation they did a speed-networking drill. As chance would have it, Pedenko and Brian Payne, a former Northwestern golfer who played the Canadian Tour for seven years, were seated next to one another.

Payne asked him what he was working on. "Well, I'm working on this golf product with sensors," Pedenko replied, meanwhile explaining the product. Payne was excited and wanted to hear more about the product, suggesting they schedule a game of golf to further discuss it.

"I've never played golf in my life," Pedenko replied.

A partnership was formed notwithstanding, and the Swingbyte was developed with help from University of St. Petersburg experts with whom Pedenko had a prior acquaintance. It was then entered in the New Venture Challenge at the Universitiy of Chicago's Booth School of Business, and came in third in a field of 75 products.

"That kind of validated our product and our business plan," Wojtkiewicz said. The result was on display Thursday at the PGA Merchandise Show, where it stands out as one of the show's most interesting new products.

-- John Strege

ORLANDO, Fla. -- Mercedes AMG and high performance have been synonymous in the automobile world and now it will see if it can replicate the association in golf equipment.

WSH, Inc. will introduced a Mercedes AMG Formula One line of equipment at the PGA Merchandise Show here this week.

"We were granted a global sports licence license from Mercedes AMG, for doing a line of clubs, apparel and accessories under their prestigious logo," said WSH, Inc. CEO Michael Lee, the founder of Nickent Golf. "Under Mercedes, our approach is that anything associated with Formula One isn't going to be cheap. Our initial convesation with Mercedes Stuttgart is that we want to create a line that the Mercedes owner can enjoy. It doesn't necessarily have to be a $2,000 driver. But we're launching it right at $399. That's the ceiling of drivers these days."

Three sets of irons will be introduced as well, along with wedges and putters.

Its driver and fairway wood technology, developed in concert with Mercedes' aerodynamicists, feature Venturi Channels, which have been used in Formula One cars "to manipulate airflow whereby a funnel is created as air flows through the vehicle, and is constricted, and as it flows out...a jet effect is created," according to a company news release.

-- John Strege

Former U.S. Open champion Graeme McDowell will have his own brand of apparel, G-Mac by Kartel, the company announced on Tuesday. It will be introduced later this year.

The collection will feature Pima cotton and fine wools, the company said, and will combine "the crafted style and vibrant colors that Graeme has become synonymous with," according to a news release.

"Working with Kartel on this project has been fantastic, their quality of product and people is as good as it gets, and I've worked very closely with them to develop a really nice collection that looks fantastic and maintains the modern vintage style that I have grown to love," McDowell said in the release.

Kartel is an Irish clothing brand, while McDowell is from Northern Ireland.

-- John Strege

The Humana Challenge is a golf tournament, of course, the old Bob Hope Classic re-invented and re-invigorated. But it is more than that, as the festivities in La Quinta, Calif., have demonstrated this week.

Former president Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation have partnered with the Humana Challenge to help promote a healthy lifestyle. Among the activities were a Wellness Walk, a Healthy Fun Fair and the Clinton Foundation Conference, "Health Matters: Activating Wellness in Every Generation."

We bring this up because Nike has just introduced the Nike+ FuelBand, "designed for anyone who wants to be more active," the company says. The Clinton Foundation and Humana Challenge would like that to be everyone.

The FuelBand is worn around the wrist and tracks your everyday activity, including steps (or swings) taken on a golf course or otherwise and calories burned, and translates it into what it calls NikeFuel. The band contains colored LEDs that indicate the NikeFuel earned. It is red to start the day, but hopefully not red ending the day, red having been defined as sedentary. The object is set a NikeFuel goal for the day that has been achieved when the band LED goes to green.

"Before, there was no simple metric that worked across different activities," Stefan Olander, vice president of digital sports for Nike, said Thursday at a news conference to introduce the device. However you are moving, the Nike+ FuelBand is recording it.

What is NikeFuel? It's "a newly created fitness metric...which is based off the rate of oxygen consumption and motion," Roger Cheng wrote at CNET.

"Glenn Gaesser, a professor at Arizona State University's school of nutrition and health promotion, said the device could be useful in promoting activity, and more importantly, discouraging inactivity, which has led to a number of health problems. The FuelBand's motivational techniques are in line with what the government and health organizations have been pushing in terms of increased daily activity."

The Nike+ FuelBand connects to a computer via USB cable or to a smart phone via an app and bluetooth to help track your progress. It will go on sale on Feb. 22 and will cost $150.

-- John Strege

The Seaforth Rain Hood is a product that most golfers probably are unaware of even as they've likely seen them on telecasts of PGA Tour events.

The hoods are widely used by tour caddies as a means of keeping their players' clubs dry during the course of a round in the rain. In fact, the hoods were developed and refined through input from tour caddies, including Ken Doig Jr., the brother of the company founder, Carolanne Doig.

"Basically my brother was a caddie on tour at the time when the rain hood was being developed and we were trying to perfect it," Doig said. "My family, we're all golfers. We have a course here in Seaforth, Ontario, the Seaforth Golf Club. A lot of the feedback and improvements and design features were the result of talking with the pros and their caddies. Practically all the time we can claim we have the number one players in the world on both the men's and women's tours using it. We've had as high as 92 percent of players at the Players Championship using our product."

So why is the Seaforth Rain Hood better than the hoods that come with the golf bag?

"The hood that comes with a regular golf bag doesn't have a velcro flap-type opening," Doig said. "It's zippered, so you have to use two hands. Plus it was never really made to be a rainhood. Originally it was made more to protect clubs to contain them."

The hood weighs only seven ounces and when rolled up for storage it takes about as much room as a sleeve of balls, Doig said.

The company also features the Seaforth Slicker, which basically is a rain suit for the golf bag. "It's becoming increasingly popular with college teams," Doig said. College players carry their own bags in the course of competition.

The hood sells for $25, the Slicker for $40.

-- John Strege

Each year it seems to become easier to travel with golf clubs as a result of modest improvements with travel bags. Case in point is Sun Mountain and its ClubGlider line of travel bags, including its newest offering, the Journey.

ClubGlider bags feature retractable legs that take much of the strain from loading, lifting and pulling it. They also come with pivoting wheels.

The Journey is a smaller, lighter and cheaper version of the Meridian, weighing in at 12.8 pounds (the Meridian weighs 14.3 pounds). It also is made of 1200 denier fabric rather than the ballistic-type nylon in the Pro and Meridian.

The Journey, at $200, also is substantially cheaper than its Sun Mountain brethren. The Meridian's price is $280, the Pro $300.

-- John Strege