Sure Cures

We settled on the HEAD FREEZER, a wire doohickey that attaches to your cap or visor and has two parallel wires that run horizontally in front of your eyes. On each wire is an orange bead. When you look at your golf ball, the two orange beads become four, just as one pencil held in front of your nose becomes two. Now the four beads give you a perfect rectangle in which to keep the ball framed as you swing. This gadget taught us to keep our head rock steady through the swing, and we hit more good shots with it than bad. We give it a birdie. Unfortunately, it looks like night braces, those things kids wear to bed to straighten their teeth.

Now we were keeping our knees good and high and our head good and low, but for some reason, we weren't getting any distance. We stepped into Carnac's office, third barstool from the end, and he outlined the problem.

"No club speed," he said without even looking up.

No club speed, eh? We'll fix that. Naturally, we began where anyone would begin, with the POWER GOLF SHIRT. The ad said the Power Shirt would add yards to our drives, but the only way we could figure a shirt could give you extra yards is if they made it for Chris Patton. The shirt comes with arrows that stick out of the shoulders, making you look like a doorman at the Hotel Mars. You start your backswing, turning the arrow on your left shoulder until it points outside your right instep and then let fly. That's a turn big enough to worry a chiropractor. We gave this one a par, because it's hard to keep your eye on the arrow and the ball at the same time. Still, can Power Socks be far behind?

We forged ahead, buying the SKYHAWK HI-SPEED DRIVER, which is a driver with a hole in the head to reduce air drag, thus getting you more club speed. One brochure said it would give us an additional 19.3 yards per shot because it reduced air drag by 41.3% according to air-tunnel tests at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida. We do not know where the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University is, but we would hate to be a cheerleader there. O.K.! Gimme an "E"! You would have to have a hole in your head to buy this thing. It's about as tinny as Bolivia. There is nothing more disconcerting than hitting a driver that makes a mousy, wimpy little whiiiish sound on the downswing. Besides, one guy who came up and looked at it said, "This looks like a Chrysler I had once." Double bogey.

Far better was the MERCURYLOADED DRIVER. We didn't care whether it worked or not, we just liked saying it.

"What you hittin' there, Frank?"

"Oh, just a little mercury-loaded number I picked up."

The idea is that mercury, one of the heaviest liquids known to man, actually straightens the club face at impact, giving you a more accurate tee shot. Unfortunately, the thing feels like you're swinging a bunker rake. Bogey. However, it makes a nice thermometer.

We could have gotten elemental and bought the YAMAHA EX GOLD KEVLAR IRONS, which are "investment cast, perimeter-weighted steel clubheads with Kevlar inserts in back of the cavity...with Kevlar-graphite composite shafts," but we had that for lunch. We could have tried thousands of metal woods, but that's old hat. Metal woods have been around for years. Kelly showed us a 1919 ad that read, "Metal Golf heads.... They never rust!"