Define overweight anyway you want—body-mass index, too much belly falling over the top of your pants (what a friend calls “dunlap disease”: Your stomach dun lap over your belt), or your clothes don’t fit. You know when you’re overweight and most of us are.

So says golf’s leading food and weight-loss coach Larry Jacobs (left), who offers a program aimed specifically at fellow golfers. About 35 years ago, Jacobs was suffering “incapacitating belly pain” that no doctor or ER could identify. It took two years to find a nutritionally aware physician who suggested it could simply be a particular food not agreeing with him; they soon determined that Jacobs was allergic to eggs. After his disabling pain vanished he was inspired to learn all he could about food, health, and fitness, and help others suffering similar conditions.

The original plan wasn’t specifically designed to help clients lose weight, but as they identified and eliminated problem foods, Jacobs noticed they were getting smaller and feeling better overall. So his program eventually became more about helping people with big bellies rather than bad bellies—with an important difference.

“I don’t like the word ‘diet,’” he says. “Diet means eating less, counting calories, and trying to defeat your hunger: If that worked we’d see a lot more thin people. Whatever ‘weight’ people lose that way, maybe half is fat and the other half is muscle and water, which you don’t want to lose. And eventually they get hungry again, revert to old habits, and put back some, all, or more of the weight they’d lost.”

Jacobs’ program—conducted through teleseminars that can be attended online or over the phone—begins by helping each individual identify his or her problem foods. He is very specific about what to give up temporarily and what can be eaten (as much as one likes) in the first two weeks. His information on “Eating Clean” is delivered in two-week intervals.

“I make a big promise: I can show any golfer how to go from being a fat storer to a fat burner in two weeks or less without dieting, calorie counting, or starving—guaranteed. In the first session, I temporarily take people off a handful of very common foods that statistically cause difficulties, foods like nuts, dairy, and a few others. When you go off those it’s amazing what happens to how you look and feel. And there are 50 or 60 foods that you can eat with no restrictions. It’s about eating clean, eating the right proteins, the right fats and oils, the right carbohydrates and starches, the right beverages. Since food is the foundation, when you finally get that right the results can be amazing.”

For golfers, Jacobs breaks the day into a front nine (morning) and back nine (afternoon/evening), and says that just as in a round of golf, you can make a lot of pars, birdies, even the occasional bogey or other.

“If you get a good breakfast and some physical activity early it’s like being under par. But if you screw up and don’t get your exercise, that’s a bogey. But just being a few over par isn’t going to ruin your game or your handicap, and you have the rest of the day to salvage the round. Even if you make a double-bogey you don’t give up the game; you get back to trying to make pars.”

There is much more to the program, explained in great detail at Jacobs’ website, thingolfer.com. His next series of seminars begins on February 15^th, and is being offered at half-price. They always sell out.

Larry Jacobs gives new meaning to “thin to win.”

That middle ground is also home for instructional training aids, some with more straps and buckles that a dominatrix’s guestroom. But no matter what one thinks of the products (and over the years I’ve seen many that were just silly), you have to feel compassion toward the creators who sincerely want to help the golf public play better.

Which isn’t to say it’s all hooey. As technology has improved—especially video cameras and computer software—the aids have improved as well. Every golf geek is now overloaded with data and research on the swing and desperately trying to make sense of it all, looking for the holy grail of lasting improvement.

A few days before the show began I attended an outing run by TourEdge Golf, a clubmaker that deserves closer scrutiny for its high-end Exotics line (particularly lightweight woods and hybrids, like the new XCG5, right) and more bargain-priced club lines like Bazooka. For someone new to the game, it’s hard to find a better deal in quality equipment.

Joining TourEdge was a potpourri of golf companies including Sun Mountain (terrific outerwear, carts, and bags—that’s the new superlightweight KG2 bag, bottom), Innovex and Polara balls, SkyGolf (state of the art GPS devices and clubfitting technology called Swing Labs), and Medicus. This last company made a name for itself with training clubs that featured a hinged shaft (below) that “broke” when the swing went off-plane or otherwise fouled up.

From those humble beginnings Medicus has become a big player in golf training and has made a commitment to identifying what makes a good swing. Two of their teachers—and I apologize for not getting their names—presented what they called the five commonalities of great players, five best practices that Medicus will endeavor to promote with training aids.

I’m just reporting what I heard, but it should get all golfers thinking—and practicing.

1) Steady Head. Make that “basically steady,” as the head shouldn’t move more than an inch during the swing.

2) Weight Forward Coming Down. That is, the body’s weight should move to and stay on the front leg in the downswing. How much? 80-95% of the body weight should be over the front leg at impact. There’s also, they say, a direct correlation between weight forward and handicap.

3) Flat Left (Forward) Wrist at Impact. Higher-handicap players tend to break or “flip” their forward wrist toward the target at impact rather than keeping it flat. Think of it this way: The hands should lead the clubhead to and through the ball.

4) The Path of the Sweetspot Is A Diagonal. A little confusing, I know, but this is about swinging on plane and actually thinking of the clubhead moving on a diagonal path, not straight back and through. The only way to bring the sweetspot flush into the ball is from the inside coming down.

5) The Clubface Controls the Ball. This one amazed me as I’d always heard that the first part of a ball’s flight was the result of swing path and then how the ball moved (left, right, straight) was caused by the angle of the clubface at impact. According to the Medicus research, 85% of the ball’s entire flight is due to the clubface angle at impact.

Medicus is selling a simple training aid—it looks like an overly long yardstick—called Vision Track (that’s it in use at the top of the page). It helps fix numbers 4 and 5, which strike me as the most difficult elements to improve because they are the hardest to see. Hence Vision Track. I haven’t tried it yet, but I’m certainly intrigued. You may be, too.

There have been 59 PGA Merchandise Shows and I’ve been to the last 28. While I’ve obviously missed a few, I’m willing to bet that it’s rarely been more difficult after a show is over to know where the golf industry is headed.

According to the official tallies, more than 42,000 visitors looked at wares from more than 1,000 exhibitors. More than 6,000 people attended Demo Day. I shudder to think how many balls were hit.

Yet inside Orlando’s Orange County Convention Center the atmosphere was less than robust. Maybe it’s just my aging eyes, but the aisles never seemed too crowded, the booths rarely stuffed. Even the fashion section—which has grown year after year as “hard goods” has shrunk—was quieter than I remember.

I’ve been hearing for years that the show is no longer about writing orders or significant product introductions. I describe it like a high-school reunion: A chance to see how everyone looks and perhaps more important, to note who didn’t attend. It’s also a great chance to catch up with old industry friends, of which I’m happy to say I have many.

So what was there to see? I noticed a few trends, which I’ll mention here and follow up on over the next few days. There are always dozens of products worth describing: Check out the stories I’ve already posted and you’ll see what I mean. There will be more to come so please keep checking back.

The big news of the last few shows has been in technology, and that remained true last week. I love geeky products like Swingbyte, a tiny device (right) that clips to the clubshaft and sends a frightening amount of data on your swing to an iPad or smartphone. The GolfBuddy Voice is a new GPS unit, about the size of the ipod shuffle, that speaks out yardages. It will be available in the spring.

There’s also great work going on in clubfitting (perhaps the most overlooked tool in the game), nowhere more interesting that at Swing Labs, which can tell after just 15 swings if your clubs are right for you. They say the average distance gain for 90% of the golfers they work with is 10 yards.

As noted, there are few big introductions at the show in clubs and balls. My inbox receives press releases announcing new gear almost every week. But it was a chance to actually see and touch some of the new stuff like TaylorMade’s RocketBallz, Nike’s VrS, Ping’s i20, Callaway’s RAZR Fit and RAZR XF, and TourEdge’s XCG5, plus new balls from Titleist and Bridgestone among others. Among the lesser-knowns, the innovative short-game system of clubs from SCORGolf (shown at top) is fascinating, while the balls from Innovex are pretty damn good for half the price of big-name pellets.

One area of surprising change is footwear. Ever since Fred Couples began wearing what looked like skate-boarding shoes the golf-casual trend has taken off. Fred’s brand, Ecco (left), is leading the charge with new looks and technology both above and below the sole. I loved the insanely comfortable shoes from True Linkswear, while there were designs both new and retro from adidas and Nike (which I’ve already written about), and a company called Barefoot BERBS. At the more traditional end of the scale, it’s hard to make shoes that look and feel better on and off the course than those from Allen Edmonds.

Slight tangent here: Looking at the new shoes and traction systems I couldn’t help but recall the big stink that accompanied the introduction of softspikes about 15 years ago. Golfers fretted about slipping either while swinging or walking down clubhouse steps. Guess those problems slipped away.

Retro was also big in the fashion aisles. Being a child of the ‘60s I waxed reminiscent at the new Arnie line from Quagmire (below). If you fondly remember the Munsingwear penguin, small collars, real polyester, and shirt pockets with flaps (to say nothing of the cigarette packs in those pockets), then check it out. There are also some fun t-shirts there, as there are from Linksoul, a new company from fashion legend John Ashworth that further enhances his reputation for style and quality.

Another aspect of fashion, hardly contained to the soft-goods arena, is color. Everywhere I looked was color: blindingly bright, almost luminescent, an appropriate wonderful world of color in the town that Disney built.

Cobra/Puma has staked its claim to orange, thanks in part to staff player Rickie Fowler (above, in orange of course), and actually displayed its new clubs surrounded by Florida’s favorite fruit. There were brightly hued grips and balls, too. And in the fashion aisles the entire spectrum was on display, an absolute rainbow in every booth. From industry leaders like Ralph Lauren and Greg Norman to the new blood at Abacus and Sligo, it was a ‘60s Technicolor explosion tripping through the traditionally staid game, like Hunter S. Thompson and Tom Wolfe teeing it up while dropping acid.

Which begs a question: Do dynamic colors signal a coming upturn in the economy, a leading indicator of bright times ahead? Or do we turn to a pulsating palette when times are tough and we need something to stir our souls? Like when the groundhog sticks his head above ground in a few days, does effervescent color mean many more months of economic winter or can we expect a spring-like rebirth?

No matter how the golf economy does in the short term, I’m not alone in worrying about where the game will be 5, 10, 20 years down the line. As always, the PGA Show featured numerous lectures, panels, and initiative launches regarding golf’s future. I hardly heard it all, but amid all the gum-flapping and finger-wagging was one fact, stated by Jack Nicklaus, the greatest player of all time, that gave me pause: Speaking about his own family, Jack said that of his 22 grandchildren, only 1 has any real interest in golf.

If that’s the future of golf then color me blue.

In my nearly 30 years in golf, including more than 18 at Golf Magazine, one of the saddest things I’ve learned about those who play the game is that they don’t do all they can to get better. Sure, they read books and magazines and ask their friends for advice. But they rarely take the most important step to true improvement: Working with a golf pro.

There are countless reasons for this, including cost and time. But talk to real golfers and what you learn is that many think, foolishly, that they aren’t good enough to get professional help: They’re embarrassed.

I know, it makes no sense that they are reluctant to show their less-than-perfect swings to the very people who can make those swings better. But it’s true.

So my first suggestion is obvious: Find a golf pro—at your club, the local driving range, a resort or golf school—and take a lesson or two. Forget your fears and commit to a little work. You’ll know pretty quickly if you are comfortable with the pro, if he or she speaks language you can follow, understands your game and what you’re trying to do, and truly wants to help you get better and have more fun.

Suggestion number two might be a short cut to number one: Check out Tom Patri.

Tom (that’s him, above right) has been one of Golf Magazine’s Top 100 Teachers since the program began back in the mid-1990s. At the time, he was Director of Instruction at Westchester Country Club (where the old Westchester Classic used to be played). He’s worked with hundreds of men’s and women’s Tour players, club professionals, top juniors, and amateurs. He’s also been honored by Golf Digest, and named Teacher of the Year by the Metropolitan PGA and South Florida PGA sections, and twice by the Southwest Florida PGA.

The man can teach. Plus he’s a good guy.

And through the miracle of modern technology, he’ll even come to you.

Go to Tom’s website and check out his very cool On Line Video Academy. If you have a video camera or a smartphone, you can send him a short clip of your swing and he’ll send you back a video analysis. For $75, Tom will analyze your motion and faults and respond with full audio, video, graphics, and drills.

If quick, it’s easy, and it’s private. (Packages are available for multiple lessons.)

Tom also teaches in the New York area during the summer and the rest of the year at his academy in Naples, Florida, which is a pretty nice place to spend a week or two this winter, warming up in the sun and heating up your game.

I’m sorry, but I don’t understand the problems some people have with long putters. They violate the spirit of the Rules? And driver heads the size of Volkswagens don’t? Perimeter-weighted irons don’t? Performance-enhancing shoes don’t? Tees with hair-brush bristles don’t?

It’s been years since I’ve tried a long putter, and I didn’t like it. But that’s just me, and that’s now. I’m happy with how I’m putting with a conventional-length model. Now. But should that change for any reason I want the option of something different that might restore my enjoyment of the game.

And since my belief is that any enforcement of the Rules should flow from average players up (rather than from pros—a tiny percentage of those playing golf—down), I see no problem anchoring a longer putting shaft to one’s forearm, belly, sternum, or almost any other body part for that matter.

The long putter also could be a big boom to the golf equipment industry. Nearly all the major manufacturers are making them. TaylorMade just announced that it tripled its fourth-quarter forecast for sales of belly and long putters, predicting it will sell five times as many in 2011 as it did in 2010. “We can’t make these putters fast enough” is the official statement.

Among the TaylorMade pros already using a long putter are Retief Goosen, Martin Laird, Spencer Levin, Scott McCarron, Blake Adams, and perhaps most amazingly, Jim Furyk. If Furyk, who used to be deadly with a short putter, has decided to go long there must be something in it. As well as a warning to us all that putting is mercurial at best, maddening at worst. So why shouldn’t we have a technological cure?

It’s also hard to overlook the long-wand success this year of Adam Scott, Bernhard Langer, Webb Simpson, and Keegan Bradley. Others who’ve given it a try include Ernie Els, Vijay Singh, and Tim Clark (shown at top at the Masters!). Even Phil Mickelson tried a belly model earlier this year, while Michelle Wie (right) tested one almost as tall as she is.

Maybe you’ll be next?

If you are curious about how to use a long putter, check out this YouTube video of putting guru Dave Stockton offering some tips.

And if you still think long putters are the devil’s work, let me know. I’m curious to hear your argument against them. They certainly can’t make golf on TV any duller.

Someone has a pretty good idea for attracting new golfers to the game: Free Instruction.

Crystal Springs Resort, in western New Jersey, is the newest home of a David Leadbetter Academy, and one of the way the folks there are settling in as nice new neighbors is offering free one-hour golf clinics for beginners, especially novice adults.

There are clinics for hotel guests, social/sports club members, and also total beginners off the street at some of the resort’s various locations.

Yes, this is only one resort, and it’s not exactly around the corner (the resort is little more than an hour northwest of New York City). But it’s a great start, and a great way to keep the instructors busy a few hours a week while possibly getting a few people interested in the game.

Let’s hope other resorts, golf schools, private clubs, etc. follow this example.

What’s wrong with the pros’ games as compared to ours? For the vast majority of us who play weekend, slap-it-around golf, just about everything. Because golf is their livelihood, the pros aren’t playing a game, they are working, so they must treat golf like a job: We have other jobs, so if golf isn’t fun for us we shouldn’t be wasting our time.

Furthermore, the courses the pros face are ridiculously long and hard. Plus, they constantly tweak and change their equipment (which they get for free, if you didn’t already know). And since they practice practically every day, how they swing, how they think, and how they perform are pretty much out of our range of possibility.

If you need any more proof of that last point, I give you Ray Romano, Charles Barkley, Rush Limbaugh, and whoever else becomes a “Haney Project.”

However, Rory McIlroy’s other-worldly performance at Congressional last weekend does offer two lessons for real-world golfers.

First, play fast (or at least faster). McIlroy moves around the course the way we’ve always heard the Brits do. No drawn-out routine, no multitude of practice swings. Step up and hit it. In fact, McIlroy was ready to go so quickly that NBC’s cameras often missed the rigamarole we’ve gotten used to seeing before pros pull the trigger.

That’s because he doesn’t have any rigamarole.

How many times have you played behind an incredibly slow foursome and joked, “I didn’t know they were playing the U.S. Open at Goat Track Muni today.” Watching Rory play ready, set, go was like watching someone move briskly—and properly—around the local publinx. Yet I’ll bet the blokes back at Holywood GC, his home course in Northern Ireland, still thought he was dawdling.

Second, it’s time for fans in this country to stop carrying a torch for American golf. McIlroy’s victory along with his youth—as well as the performances of the non-Americans who finished behind him, including Jason Day, Louis Oostehuizen, Charl Schwartzel, even Sergio Garcia (an old man at 31)—should remind us all that golf truly is an international game, perhaps the most world-wide and world-wise of them all. The leaderboard had nearly as many flags as the United Nations, something we should be applauding, not appalled by, if we want golf to rise out of the economic doldrums it’s in here at home.

While in the US private clubs and public tracks are closing faster than new ones are opening, we need the game to spread, grow, and thrive elsewhere. American golf is stuck at the halfway house having gotten fat (and a little stupid) by trying to eat too many hot dogs too fast. We have to let the rest of the world play through until we’re back in shape and back on course. In the meantime, if there’s no one else playing, the game is doomed.

So thank you, Rory, for teaching us a thing or two about golf. Now, are we smart enough to listen to and learn from some kid? I hope so.

The Timeless Swing, by Tom Watson, is that rare individual: an easy-to-understand instructional tome. Much like his DVD, “Lessons of A Lifetime,” which I reviewed favorably a few months ago, Watson’s book presents its teachings clearly and completely, and with just enough of Tom’s personality to make it a keeper.

If you’ve been reading Watson’s instruction articles in Golf Digest for the past 30 years, the advice might not all be brand-new. But compiled in one place it’s very smart and sound, well thought out and well explained (Watson’s collaborator was Nick Seitz, longtime editor at Golf Digest). What I like best are the visuals—big, bright photographs with corresponding text highlighted in yellow so there is no confusion about what Tom is saying and what he deems important. There are hundreds of photographs, including detailed sequences of Watson’s swing, and they all make their point.

Also, the book contains Microsoft Tags, which get scanned into a smartphone and bring up a video of Watson demonstrating the relevant bit of swing theory. Very cool and an interesting use of technology, particularly if you wonder, as I do, where golf instruction is heading.

Another bit of golf foreshadowing is the chapter titled “Swing Younger,” which has about a dozen tips for making your swing, like Tom’s, truly timeless.

This is one of the most intelligent golf instruction books I’ve seen in years, good information intelligently presented.

To quote Monty Python…

“And now for something completely different.”

The Rolex World’s Top 1000 Golf Courses is a bold attempt (perhaps more risk than reward) to narrow the list of 33,000 courses around the globe to an elite thousand. Like all such lists, it is admittedly very subjective and more about starting arguments than finishing them.

Is it a “must” for every course lover? Let’s see…

I won’t describe every feature, every page, every nuance of this heavyweight. (If you desire such disclosure, read what my colleague Brian McCallen wrote on his A Position page.) But I will point out a few highlights.

Of the great grand, 362 are in the U.S., 282 in Europe, 237 in Asia-Pacific, and 119 “elsewhere.” There are courses in countries one wouldn’t think of as golf havens, including Venezuela (where President Chavez decries the game’s capitalist background), Poland, Guatemala, and Pakistan (but, alas, not the one near Osama bin Laden’s now-famous not-so-safe house). The inclusion of such out of the way places is to the book’s advantage, proving that the game is truly international and adding an implicit hope that more and better layouts will turn up in these and other exotic locales soon.

Each course gets its own tissue-thin page, with a short description and details such as address, pars and yardages, dress code, playing restrictions (many are private, no surprise) GPS coordinates, altitude, nearest airport, hotels, restaurants, and non-golf attractions. What courses do not get, unfortunately, is a photograph: There is but one for each country. There are, however, a lot of maps.

And, of course, each course gets a grade. For reasons unexplained, grades are given as a numeric score from 75 to 100, in 5-point increments. (Many wine publications use a similar system; I’m not a fan of those, either.) Perfect 1oos were given to 15 courses: Augusta National, Bethpage Black, Carnoustie, Cypress Point, Kingston Heath, Muirfield, Oakmont, Pine Valley, Portmarnock, Royal Adelaide, Royal Birkdale, Royal County Down, St. Andrews, Sunningdale New, and Torrey Pines South.

Hey, don’t yell at me…

What’s interesting is the number of courses rated 75 and 80 that are in the book while almost every golfer I know could come up with dozens just as good or better that aren’t mentioned. Of course, without including some low-scoring courses many countries wouldn’t be represented at all, and the point of the book seems to be covering the world rather than creating a truly “top” list.

Which is fine.

What’s not so fine, in my mind, is the explanation of how the ratings were done. Did five of the 200 “inspectors” see the three courses in the Mariana Islands or just one? Like or hate the top-course lists in the golf magazines, they have (or had; policies may have changed) rules about how many panelists had to play a course for it to be included. I suspect a number of Rolex’s top 1,000 made the list based on a single opinion. And while I’m sure the book’s producers did a wonderful job lining up “enlightened amateurs, professional golfers and journalists specializing in golf course architecture,” I don’t think any one vote should be enough.

So the guide’s claim to be the first “genuinely independent world ranking” has an ironic twist: perhaps too much independence.

I expect that if Rolex continues to fund this undertaking, more raters will see more places and the judgments will become more well-rounded. In fact, if the selection committee wants to make this tome truly special, I suggest that future editions state the number of raters who actually went to each course, played it, and filed a report. That would be unique.

All that said, I still think the “World’s Top 1000” is $35 well spent (it’s available in bookstores, golf shops, and from Amazon). You will be introduced to courses you’ve never heard of and be fueled for architecture arguments for years to come.

In many ways, Drain-O is one of those items that you look at, slap your head, and say something like, “Why didn’t I think of that?” But while it’s true that others have had a similar idea, Drain-O takes the concept a few smart steps further.

Drain-O is hardly the first putting aid that works by resting your putter along a fixed arc and then making a stroke. But what makes Drain-O better is that it doesn’t force all golfers to mimic the same arc, allowing for personalization based on factors such as a golfer’s size, shape, and feel.

The Drain-O arc is a curved metal rod that easily can be manipulated to replicate a straight, inside-in, or outside-out putting stroke. Once you know which stroke works best for you (and a little time with Drain-O will help determine that), you can groove that stroke quickly and easily by orienting the rod the right way.

Once your arc is determined, a guide attaches to the putter shaft. For some drills, the guide slips over the rod and the goal is to keep it on track; on others, the guide rests on either side of the rod, which makes it incredibly easy to see if the putter is rotating too much or not enough, or moving either too close to or far from the proper line: Any wrong move and the guide hits the rod.

Much easier than trying to imagine how it works, check out the Drain-O website where there are videos of it in use. When I was at the PGA Show, it took me about three strokes to grasp the concept and see for myself how it works, while diagnosing my myriad putting flaws. The website also includes numerous testimonials, some from top instructors, that note how Drain-O identified and helped cure putting flaws in minutes, if not seconds.

If you need help fixing a bad stroke or grooving a good one (and want something light and simple enough to fit in your golf bag), check out Drain-O. It really seems to work.

And so the Swinkey was born.

Now referred to as the “Swiss Army Knife of golf training aids,” the Swinkey is a long metal tube that stores stainless-steel spikes inside. With the stakes in, out, and fitted into the ground or the tube, Swinkey can perform the tasks of five (at least) tools.

It’s a system for working on set-up (left), from forming a “T” on the ground to establish ball position to using the spikes to check swing plane and alignment.

Insert the spikes into the side of the tube and stick the whole thing in the ground and it becomes a putting stroke trainer (right).

The Swinkey has a golf grip at either end allowing it to work as a stretching aid (below); some 40 stretching and strength-training exercises are on the company website and blog. It also works as a warm-up aid before playing.

Leave the spikes in the tube and it’s an adjustable weighted swing trainer.

Finally, at 48 inches long, placing the Swinkey inside a golf bag helps protect the clubs (especially the driver) from damage when traveling.

But that’s not all: There’s a camera mount at one end so it can function as a monopod for helping take swing sequences or shooting foursome photos. An elastic string is included for use to help with eye alignment when practicing putting.

Chances are golfers are finding other uses, as well, which is why the website and blog are updated regularly. There’s even a special YouTube Channel for helping users get the most out of the device.

The Swinkey, which comes in a choice of 10 colors, is available for $99.99 (with free shipping) online. You’re sure to find a use for it—maybe even a new one. If so, Brian wants to hear from you.