The Nintendo Wii is a video game console that requires more than just sitting on the couch and moving your fingers and thumbs. You actually have to get up and do life like motions to make your video game character move in the same way you do. In other words what you do with your body your character mimics on the TV screen.

I'm not going to go into details on how this works, because frankly I'm not a video game guy and I have no idea how it works. I'm just glad it works and I bought the Wii for my 5 kids so they would have be "active" when they played video games and not just sit on their back ends. Needless to say it's really cool technology if you've never seen it.

The Nintendo Wii comes with a golf game. This game requires you to "swing" your Wii remote like you would a golf club. Now obviously you can't swing a little 6 inch by 2 inch remote control the same way you would swing a golf club, but the motions are similar. You take a backswing, and then come down and swing through the ball.

Now I don't think this has helped my golf game much at all if any, it's just too different, you don't swing at nearly the same speed and you have no feel for hitting a ball. Although I do thing it has helped during the winter months to stay flexible and at least have my body get a feel for a golf swing on a much scaled down swing.

Having said that, where I absolutely believe this has improved my game is putting. I have no doubt my putting has improved dramatically because of practice on this game. For the first few months I had the Wii, I played the little 9 hole game over and over again. I got to the point where I could pretty much hit any put under 40 feet. I started to get a little bored and then I discovered "Training". This allows you to practice various aspects of your game, driving, chipping and putting.

Once again, I don't think driving and chipping on this will help you much if at all on your "real" golf game but the putting absolutely. In this training you just practice hitting puts at various distances with various breaks in the green. The more puts you make the higher your score and you win metals- bronze, silver, gold. It's pretty fun. So with practice I was quickly up to golf metal status each time.

I live in Utah where we have cold winters and it's pretty hard to play golf during those months, but when last spring came along, I was anxious to get out there and play some golf. I "practiced" (and I use that term loosely) all winter on the Wii. I really didn't think that "practice" would translate to lower scores on the golf course, but I was amazed at the results.

My handicap went down 3 strokes from what it was last fall. How does that happen over the winter playing very limited golf? I was consistently hitting more puts over and over. I started reading greens better and hitting puts at near perfect speed each time with any thing under 25 feet. I didn't make every put, but I was definitely making many, many, more puts inside 25 feet. That is about the max speed you'd swing the Wii remote to hit a put on the video game. Now can I say with 100% surety I'm a better putter because of the video game, of course not.

But think about it, the majority of your strokes in a game come on the green. If you can knock in "makable puts" (I deem that anything inside 25 feet) then your scores can go way down.

Now golf is such a mental game, maybe it was more confidence than "practice" on a video game, but hey when I comes to getting better at golf, I'll take any edge I can get to be better. All I know is that my handicap is now consistently 3 shots better than it was the previous year. Happy Golfing!