That said, I was duly impressed at demo day at the recent PGA show in Las Vegas by a gadget called the Powerchute.  Essentially this swing aid clips on to the shaft of your club in two places and creates tremendous resistance when you swing.  Try it a few times and you realize that it also seems to set your swing up for the right sequencing in terms of hip rotation, the breaking of the wrists, and other dynamics.  I can’t explain it any better than to say it just feels right.  But the real moment that you realize it’s working is when, after taking, say, five swings with the Powerchute on your club you remove it and take a normal golf swing.

You know that sound you hear five seconds after an F-15 flies overhead– that sort of turbo-charged ROAR?  That’s what your next swing will feel and sound like.  Not only does the product promise to increase swing speed but I found an even greater benefit was that my follow through was far more complete than before.

I remain skeptical of all golf swing training aids but as a professional journalist I must tell you that I went out and shot a career-best 79 at Shadow Creek two days after using the Powerchute.  Connection?  You decide.

If you see a guy at the driving range with a black billowy contraption stuck to his club– and he’s wearing a wig and dark glasses– it just might be me.  Long drive champion Jason Zuback and another golfer named Jack Nicklaus attest to the advantages of the product on a perky video on the company website.

Simply put, a standard golf glove has been re-engineered with additional Velcro on the backs of the last two fingers.  An additional strip (pictured left) inserts into the regular Velcro closure then wraps around the entire hand– while it’s holding the club inside the palm– and sticks to the Velcro on the back of the pinkie and ring fingers.

The device was invented by the friend of a golfer who’d lost two fingers in an accident and was having trouble holding onto his clubs.  While the Grip Lock would be perfect for older golfers who are having a hard time maintaining grip pressure, it’s also a terrific teaching tool.  An instructor can now guarantee that the student is maintaining a perfect grip by setting that grip on the club and then wrapping the Grip Lock around hand and club to ensure that the student holds it. There’s also an odd comfort in having something firmly grasping your hand while you swing.  It reminded me of early golf lessons from my father, and and the reassurance of his hand over my hand as I learned to hold a club properly.

The company is so new that they haven’t even included a contact number or email address on their website, but you can call them at 888-9GRIPLOCK.

Just in case you need another example of golfers’ general lack of imagination (and if you are wearing khakis right now this especially applies to you), consider the marks most players put on their golf balls to help identify them in case of a tournament mishap: these marks generally run the entire gamut from one dot all the way to two dots.  Okay, some players draw a line through the name of the ball, and the craziest sticks might go so far as to dot the “i”s in Titleist with a wild color, such as blue.  But the fact is that short of writing your name and address (and thereby encouraging derisive emails from anyone who finds a dozen of your balls in the woods– or in their backyard)– there really aren’t that many great options.

Until now.  Enter Tin Cup “personal imprinting system,” which I encountered recently at the PGA Show in Las Vegas.  I’m not really sure it qualifies as an entire system, but it’s a fine idea, and also fun.  The product consists of a stainless-steel half-shell with a pattern cut out.  Put your golf ball in the shell, use a colored marker to write over the cut pattern, and suddenly a perfect bear or short-haired pointer or the silhouette of Alfred Hitchcock’s body (if you are old enough to remember that from his t.v. show) appears on your ball.

Even better, the company will reproduce corporate logos or other patterns, allowing you to write the whole thing off.  You could even put your own profile on there, if you really want to.

Pair this personal signature with a custom driver skin from Big Wigz Skins, and your identity as a golfer may no longer be related to that crazy hitch in the middle of your backswing.