I have always been interested in anything high-tech. Anything high-tech to do with golf is a particular passion. I have spent thousands of dollars on a launch monitor that, while being extremely versatile, accurate, and a great teaching and learning aid, was of little interest to golfers looking to learn. I have bought the little gizmos that attach to golf clubs, hinged clubs, weighted clubs in all shapes and forms, and have been using video since the early 1990's in the days of VHS cameras, clunky computers, and video capture devices loaded into those computers.

I have just about covered the spectrum as far as high-tech golf equipment is concerned.

Last year I purchased the Tour Angle 144 because I was fascinated by the concept. I will get back to this in a little bit.
What I have to say about it is totally unsoliscited and based solely on positive golf results while using it. The Tour Angle 144 is simple to use, does not intimidate, and gets right to the heart of the matter.

It was always and is still a passion of mine, as a teacher and player, to learn what it was that the great players have in common as far as their swing technique. As far back as the 1980's I was talking about getting video of all the great players through history and doing a computer analysis of what their swings have in common. Lacking the necessary technical computer programming skills, this idea never came to fruition. Although I am sure it has happened somewhere along the line in the development of golf swing analysis software.

Be that as it may, from my experience anyway, golf is a difficult game to learn and to play. Furthermore, it is quite difficult to learn the game of golf and the golf swing  no matter how you go about it or no matter what you are told to the contrary. You can look at video, look at pictures, listen to The Golf Channel or golf on television, read magazines, listen to teachers of the game or Tour pros, or find information wherever you want to look.

But the bottom line with golf is that it is a game of doing. If you play the game of golf, you want to enjoy it, you want to have fun. I guess that means being able to negotiate your ball around the golf course. In order to do that you have go be able to make contact with the golf ball, and move that ball in the general direction that you want it to go; hopefully down the middle of the fairway and onto the green.

But golf in the abstract (the contemporary learning process) and golf in practice (actually playing and hitting shots on the course) are two entirely different things. Hence the development of high-tech equipment, teaching and learning aids. Where there is a need to be filled, there will be an invention to fill that need. I guess it is true that necessity is indeed the mother of invention.

So it is the beginning of a new golf season in the year 2014. I was looking through drawers and doing some spring golf cleaning in the pro shop and came across a drawer filled with all my high-tech teaching and learning aids and gadgets. Getting back to the Tour Angle 144, I used it a few times last summer when I made my purchase, and wrote it off a just another learning aid and through it in the drawer with the rest of the stuff.

Somewhere along the line I put it in my brief case. I found it yesterday while looking for some folders, and decided to take it out in the yard and give it a try. I did watch the video that came with it about a month ago, and absorbed the explanation and theory behind the device. I saw how it is supposed to work.

Well lo and behold, on this sunny almost warmer  spring evening,I found that if you use the Tour Angle 144 the way the inventor says to use it, it really does work. The first few shots were iffy, but I hung in there. I finally started to feel what the device is supposed to teach me. It really does work. The things you learn are, I think to some extent, are the things that the great golf swings have in common; some of the very essence of what my idea from many years ago would have accomplished. The Tour Angle 144 lets you learn while you practice and guides you to some very important swing positions from setup to takeaway to impact to follow through.

You are learning while you are doing, and that is the spirit and essence of getting the hang of the game of golf. All the ideas and abstraction mean nothing to any of us unless we can actually go out there and make it happen in practice, in reality, while swinging the golf club, hitting shots, practicing and playing.

The Tour Angle 144 is one of these teaching aids. It is the best $39.95 I have ever spent on my golf game. As a teacher and a player, I expect to us this device a lot from now on becasue it reinforces positive habits and gives be positive results (better golf swings, better golf shots, and confidence in what I am doing.

You can go to http://www.tourangle144.com/ and find out for yourself!