Callaway CEO Pay

Callaway (ELY) CEO George Fellows received total compensation of $3.4 million in 2006, a year in which the company's sales rose 2%, to about $1 billion. Fellows' compensation included about $1.2 million in relocation costs and resulting taxes. Perks include up to two sets of golf clubs every two years.

Fellows joined Callaway in August 2005, when the feeling among some industry analysts was that Callaway - particularly its drivers - had lost ground to TaylorMade.

The driver/woods business appears to be doing quite well for Callaway these days, however, thanks to new products and heavy marketing. Total sales in that category rose 26% in '06, to $266.5 million. And in the first quarter of '07, when Callaway got its square-headed FT-i driver and its cousin, the FT-5, in stores ahead of most of its rivals, sales jumped an estimated 10%.

ELY shares are up about 20% since Fellows' arrival.

Cast Away

A couple of weeks ago I eavesdropped on the clerk in my neighborhood golf superstore, who was offering club-buying advice to a husband and his wife. "Unless you're a professional," he said, "there's no reason to even think about forged clubs. Most pros play cavity backs these days."

After four years of playing I shoot in the low to mid-80s, and I'm convinced that the high 70s are in sight. But at this time of the year I'm just as likely to shoot in the low 90s. In other words, I'm no pro. But the first time I hit with a forged club, I drove home, picked up my cast Cleveland TA5s and traded them in for that set of Mizuno MX-20s (proof that all forged clubs are not blades).

A, custom-fitted set of Wishon forged irons (cavity-backed 3-5, musclebacks from 6 on up), came 18 months later, and I've been playing them about two years. This past winter I picked up a used set of Titleist 690s.

Here's 3 Reasons Why I'll Never Play Cast Clubs

1. Like the Wedge Guy, I believe forged clubs have made me a better ball striker. Wide-bottomed, perimeter weighted clubs hide a lot of faults. I prefer to know what my faults are even if it's because I harbor the naive belief that I can fix them.

2. Remember the first time you caught a ball flush with an iron? Magnify that feeling 5x and you'll have a sense of the difference between forged and cast.

3. Forged clubs are often sleek and beautiful to behold, even after countless rounds.

Crinkly Grass

The old bar joke about everyone looking better at closing time applies equally well to golfers in April, especially those of us who live in the northern reaches of the middle of the country. By the time March rolls around, the indoor golf domes are packed, and if the line of people at Golf Galaxy's cash registers was ever as long as those waiting to try new clubs in its simulators, Dick's would have had to pay a lot more than it did to buy the chain.

We got an early blast of spring in Minnesota this year, and a bunch of courses scrambled to open their doors March 24 to take advantage of golfers' deprived state.

I was out the next day. The greens were brown, hard and pocked with pitch marks from the previous fall. Water remained in some low spots, and the fairway grass crackled under our feet. The trees were bare, the bunker sand hard and wet.

But I didn't resent paying full price for my first ever March round in Minnesota, and neither did the hundreds of other golfers who took every available teetime that day.