The end is here.

No more golf at Ratfuck [Radrick] Farms. Played the front nine yesterday from the tips (why not? score posting is over) and as I was teeing off on #9, grounds crew was pulling the rakes from the traps on #8. There were no tee markers or benches, and the hole locations hadn't changed in a week. So my season is over.

After 18 years...

In 1991, when I was a boy of 51, I entered a few Senior Tour qualifiers. Yes, I'm just 6 months younger than Jack and 7 younger than Lee. I knew I could never compete with them, but I thought I had a shot.

On the third hole of the first event, I hit one poorly judged, but well struck, shot, which led to a 9. On the next hole, I clipped a tiny branch with my tee shot, made triple by missing a 6 inch putt, and tightened up as I never had before. I finished the round with a birdie on the #1 handicap hole, for a smooth 103.

Since then, I had no rounds in the 60s and damned few in the 70s. I didn't understand the damage until last Saturday.

Playing golf in mid-November in Michigan is a rare treat, and I was having a so-so round. In five holes I had a birdie, two pars, a bogey and a double...I got up to the 6th tee, the toughest hole on the course, and made myself relax every muscle in my body. I made a mediocre pass at the ball, but it had good trajectory. For the rest of the round, that was all I tried to do...relax and let the stroke occur without thought.

Best ballstriking since 1981! I had the yips and didn't know it...not the putting yips, the golf yips.

But that's over now.

Generating Power

Power is a function of the energy transferred from the clubhead to the ball. Force is mass times acceleration, not force times speed. A clubhead which strikes the ball moving at 80 mph was moving at a different speed a foot before impact. That speed was either faster or slower than 80 mph. If it was slower, the clubhead is accelerating as impact begins, and will transfer more energy to the ball than if it was moving faster before impact and was actually slowing down.

The easiest, surest way to make your clubhead accelerate into the ball is to shorten your backswing and lengthen your follow-through.

You must understand that the faster the clubhead is moving, the harder it is to control its location. If you practice just making good contact with a compact backswing and a long follow-through, you will develop power without trying to do so. What feels like a compact backswing will, over time, lengthen itself out, and produce more powerful shots, without your doing anything but trying to make good contact with the ball.

Just don't try to do anything but make good contact. As you learn to do this, you will become more confident, and what feels easy and compact will become easy and less compact, i.e. extended. And your shots will fly longer.

End of the season

And not one club in my bag from the beginning. Now playing with Ping Rapture driver, Adams a3 hybrid 3 & 5FW, 3-5 a3 hybrids, 6-9 a3 irons, 50º [bent from 52º] and 58º Mizuno wedges and a 64º Cleveland. Old Ping Anser putter.

Age and Score

I've reached the age where my age in years (69) is a larger number than my lifetime best score (68); that was when I was 27, and repeated a few times in my later 20s/early 30s. My best ageplus score is age plus 8, a 74 three years ago when I was 66. Full disclosure: that was a short course, but a tricky one.

Equipment

The R7 Driver (TaylorMade) I'm using now is the best I have EVER used. Period.

The original Ping Anser is my putter of choice, for now.

I've learned to like Cleveland Wedges. Thinking of getting three groovy models before they go out of fashion.

Irons? Right now, 3456 Callaway BB, 789E, Hogan Apex Forged or Apex Plus (the E there would have to be the Forged). Could substitute 34 hybrids, or even go all Apex Forged, but I'll try the AF/BB combo this weekend, with old Cleveland 49 and S56.

Trevino's secret

is my secret too. The left hand holding firmly on the club controls where the face is looking, and that factor -- where it's looking, more than path, more than center hit -- controls the direction that the ball starts.

The old-timers (i.e. the golfers who were old when I was young) used to talk about "don't lose the club at the top." I figured out early that the only way I could be sure of where the face was pointed was to be aware of where my left hand, really the knuckles and/or back of the hand, was throughout the stroke.

The release is an un-hinging motion, a backhand left-handed slap at the ball, supported by a continuing rotation through the ball. The hand gives direction, the rotating core provides power.

Saturday morning

Waiting for the ride to the course. My car is in the shop, my wife will drop me off.

So it goes.

Thursday's outcome

Five over in the first two holes, then five over for the rest of the round! Took until the third tee for me to make a decent stroke, then three more holes until I made a good stroke, but from then on I was in a zone, able to just hit it without a thought in my head!

My Latest Changes

Since I've been preaching for ages that eye-dominance matters, I went to the range yesterday and set up open, right eye just inside and behind the ball...and hit dozens of straight shots.

Next, I made sure that on count 4 of my 7-step preshot routine [waggle 3 times, 4 ground the club, 5 forward press 6 back and 7 through] I took a good look at the 'picture' of the club in it's pre-impact position, and held that image in mind as I swung through the ball.

I've also incorporated a flat wrist at the transition -- no cupping or hinging.

Having made those changes, I hit several shots with 5fw hybrid, 3-iron, and 2-hybrid...the 2 hybrid hits the ball higher than the 3-iron, but shorter, and with less spin. The 5-wood has the distance and height advantage over the 3-iron, so it stays in the bag. The 2-hybrid is gone, and the 64º Cleveland is back!

Tee time today = 2pm. Can hardly wait.

Sobriety

Today, September 5th, is day 48 without alcohol. It's getting easier, especially since my game seems to be coming back.

Club selection

I belong to the world's most exclusive club, the Take Enough Club Club. If my buddies are swinging a 7 or 8 iron, I've probably got a 5 in my hand from the same distance.

Why?

1. Because knowing that I have enough club means that I can modulate my stroke, from what feels like about 60% effort to about 80% effort, and
2. that, in turn, means that it's extremely unlikely that I'll have a gross mis-hit, either fat or thin, pushed or pulled, sliced or hooked.
3. That means I don't have to feel like a dummy for having hit an embarrasment of a shot, and
4. THAT MAKES THE GAME EASIER. Not easy, mind you, but easier. And
5. that means I have more time and energy to devote to preparing to hit the best shot of my life.

Part of my routine this year has been to silently repeat to myself, before each and every stroke, that this is the most important golf shot of my life. It's the only one I have any control over. The past is gone, the future isn't here yet. So I have to first visualize the perfect shot -- the one that I know is within my physical limits. Then set up for that shot, mentally and physically rehears the checkpoint of my stroke, then step up to the ball and perform the stroke.

One final point about club selection. The most important club in my bag is not the one that I use the most, it's the one that shortens the golf course the most. That would be the driver.

IMPACT: The Essential Thought

Golf is, in the limit, all about impact. I've found that I can't play the game with Snead's 'blank mind', but I can drill down to a single sense impression.

1. The thought process starts with an overview of the shot I want to play; the landing area and the trajectory that I want to employ, either straight, draw/hook or fade/slice.
2. Then I leave that thought, and go to the setup, stance and alignment, and clubface orientation. I follow Hogan's example: the body can only accommodate one swing sequence. The hands and body must perform the same task repeatedly, but inserting the club in the hands is like inserting a drill bit into a chuck. I start out with the grip on the club with the face perpendicular to the line of flight, then turn the handle clockwise to produce a left-to-right shot, anticlockwise to promote a right-to-left trajectory, then aim accordingly.
3. Then I leave thought to and revisit all of the sequential cues and feels that make up my swing, from the takeaway to the shoulder hitting the chin to the left heel plant to the transitional hip sequence to the finish pose
4. Then I leave all of that behind, and concentrate on approaching impact feeling as though the knuckles of my left hand are above and behind my left wrist. I know, intellectually, that they're not, and that my right hand is in fact driving the clubhead down, but I also know that it takes almost 1/2 of a second for a sense impression to reach the brain. And I know from experience that this sequence of thought gives me my best chance to hit a decent, acceptable golf shot.

THAT'S ALL I CAN ASK. Or say, today!

Understanding Hogan's game

"Good golf begins with a good grip."

That sentence is the lead statement in Ben Hogan's classic, Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf.

Hogan is acknowledged by most writers to be at the top rank of shotmakers, a golfer who achieved still unparalleled success (such as five wins -- including the three majors that he could enter that year -- in six starts) because of his ability to control the trajectory of his full shots. Those shots were not the longest of his contemporaries; Sam Snead was notably longer with every club. Hogan's success came as a result of a highly disciplined and sophisticated approach to playing the game. His goal was to score as low as possible on every round. That meant two things: taking advantage of the holes that were set up advantageously for him, and avoiding high scores on those holes that didn't suit his game. For example, he said of #11 at Augusta, "If you ever see me on that green in two, you'll know I made a mistake".

Hogan devoted the entire first lesson of five to setting out every detail of his grip. Yet today very few players, even among the pros, use it. That very few might well be none, because as Hogan stated, if a little part of the grip is not right, the whole grip is wrong.

Hogan was not a large man, standing well under six feet tall. He fought against a hook, learned to play a fade, a shot which is hit with a face that is open to the path of the clubhead, which usually produces a weak, high shot. But his fade was low and strong.

While Hogan could play the ball high and low, fade and draw, his aim was to use one shot -- the low, strong fade -- as often as possible.

No one, not even Hogan, hits every shot the way it's planned. But most of the deviation from plan of Hogan's shots was due to judgment or circumstances beyond his control...taking the wrong club, dealing with a gust of wind or the sudden lack thereof, a margin lie. And rarely was the deviation very large.

So why is it that no modern pro uses Hogan's grip?

My answer is that Hogan's method was -- and is -- extremely demanding. I said he fought a hook. Dave Hill stated that Hogan set up -- beginning with the grip -- in such a way that he couldn't hook the ball, and then employed a hook swing.

So, rather than developing a stroke in which everything is consistent -- a "neutral" grip and a "neutral" swing path -- Hogan used a grip that would cause most people to hit a weak slice, then employed a swing that would cause most people to hook the ball violently.

Think of it this way. If Hogan was walking though a five-foot wide tunnel and wanted to stay in the middle, he'd have his right hand on the wall on his right and his left hand on the wall on his left. He'd be pressing equally hard with each hand, and he could stay in the middle with his eyes closed.

The conventional way of walking a straight line through a tunnel is to look straight ahead and let your eyes guide you. It's easier...as long as there's enough light to see where you're going. And as long as the tunnel doesn't curve, or ascend, or drop, or get narrower or wider.

We can think of Tournament Pressure as a factor which makes it harder to see where you're going. In fact, anything that takes your attention away from making your characteristic stroke will have a negative effect on your ability to score. Hogan's secret, ultimately, is that he chose to discipline himself to play boring, one-shot fits all, golf. He famously refused to lose his focus. He rarely talked with playing partners, gabbed with the gallery, and was frosty with the press. He went to work, did his job, got paid and went home.

And when he went home, he practiced. Every day. 50 balls with each of thirteen clubs -- 650 balls -- in the morning, then a snack and four or five more hours of just hitting balls with the clubs that hadn't worked so well in the morning. Easily 1,200 balls/day, 300 days of the year, for ten years before World War II and 25 more years after it, retiring from active competition in 1971, That's 1,200 x 300 x 35...12,600,000. TWELVE POINT SIX MILLION balls in practice alone after he turned pro at 20!

According to one man who caddied for him at an exhibition in Detroit in the 1940s, Hogan knew that he couldn't expect to play well in a tournament round unless he had hit 50-100 balls before the round, and unless he had won the tournament, he'd hit another 100 or so after each round. I'm not going to estimate how many more balls that would add up to; I mention it only so that you, the reader, will understand what it took for Hogan to be the ultimate ballstriker that he was.

Playing a round, given the gruelling conditions of practice, was a pleasant respite, a relief from the drudgery of beating balls.

12.6 million! Let's say that Hogan hit about 100 balls an hour. That's 126,000 hours. 5,250 days at 24 hrs/day. That's 14.4 years!

Now, if a recreational golfer hits balls at Hogan's rate, and puts in 2 hours/week for half a year, he could reach Hogan's practice-ball total in a mere 2,423 years.

I don't know how many recreational golfers put in 52 hours of solid ballstriking practice/year, but I'm sure it's fewer than half of them.

So, that's the answer to understanding Hogan's game. Hard work, and lots of it.

One of the more famous Hogan quotes was this: he was talking to a young pro who had just come out on Tour, and he asked how much time that pro spent practicing every day. When he heard the answer, he said simply, "Double it."

He had this conversation with many young pros. And they say he wasn't a friendly, helpful guy!

Sobriety

34 days today. After overdoing it during and after the Cink British Open victory over Watson (who is ten years my junior) I went off the sauce.

Playing golf sober is...different. More after today's round, due to begin in 70 minutes.

Why the short game is so important

Because it takes the pressure off the long game, and allows more birdie-hunting. If a flagstick is tucked behind a trap, the conservative play is to hit to the fat part of the green, the riskier play is to gun it at the flag and count on height or spin to stop the ball.

After decades of emulating Hogan's strategy of going for the safer shot, I've started shooting at all the pins -- sucker pins as well as the 'green-light specials'. Hell, if I'm 40 feet away in the middle of the green, 3-putting is a possibility, but if I'm 20 feet away in a bunker, I've got just as much chance of making par, because I know I can get out and leave myself a makeable putt. And if the shot comes off as planned, I'm confident that I won't bogey the hole, and have a reasonable chance for birdie.

Inspiration

Thanks, Tom Watson, that was great!

New stuff, and an aha! moment.

First, the aha! moment. Since I started playing this game, I've been concerned with the fact that my approach to the ball is too steep, leading to poor contact, either thin or fat, a majority of the time...except for putting, of course.

Yesterday it dawned on me that this problem -- if it was a problem -- was solvable by concentrating on a spot higher on the surface of the ball, 4 o'clock high (assuming that the 12 to 6 position on the clockface is perpendicular to my eyeline and the target line). And it works.

The new stuff is a couple of drivers, a Hi-Bore and an R7. I'm tempted to do a Mickelson and put both in the bag, drawing the Hi-Bore and fading the R7 (set up with the heavier weights on the toe side.)

We'll see, but right now it's raining.

Forgiving equipment

I played yesterday with a relative who is now a teaching, formerly playing, pro. He showed up with (as usual) Ping Eye2 maple laminate woods, and proceeded to drive it long and under beautiful control.

At one point, I asked him if he's considered getting into newer equipment, and he replied that he just doesn't have the time to do the research to find out what would be the best length, shaft-flex, etc. for him...and why should he.

Indeed.

I believe it would be a mistake for him to do what I did, try to adapt my made-for-persimmon driver stroke (off of a very low tee, with the ball back at the middle of my stance) to modern equipment.

Too late now? I'm on the fence.

Foot (or, more precisely, Heel) Work

Way back in the Snead era, I learned to raise my left heel on the backswing, then "trigger" the downswing by planting that heel firmly on the ground and rotating around it. I've never been even moderately flexible, nothing like Snead, but the two-inch lift probably gave me an extra foot or so of clubhead travel back, and through, which meant that I had more time to generate head speed on the downswing.

Then I read Hogan, and started keeping the heel down more and more, until I stopped lifting it altogether.

Now, pushing 69 years of age, I'm working to re-establish the heel lifting. Not easy, by any means, but rewarding me with more headspeed, which means more distance with every club.

More important, it reduces the strain on my oft-injured lower back.

Long-time problem solved.

Since I started playing golf, in my 20s, when lateral epicondylitis ended my tennis career, my main problem has been getting too much height and spin on my shots. Seen pros, read countless books and articles, and now, finally, at age 68, I diagnosed and cured the problem. Now my drives run out, but I can still put enough spin with the wedges to stop the ball after one bounce (on the hard greens) or spin it back on the softer ones.

The problem was coming in to the ball too steeply. The solution was to reverse engineer my swing. I recognized that all that talk about hitting down on the ball to take a divot might work for someone else, but I had been unconsciously letting my left arm bend early in the downswing -- actually, letting it bend a lot in the backswing. The bend was caused by too quick a backswing for my relatively unmuscular arms to manage. Slowing down the backswing allowed me to pay more attention to the transition, which now consists of three consecutive feels (to use Percy Boomer's term): 

1. the left shoulder hitting my chin (a result of rotating my torso, not just moving my left shoulder independent of the right)

2. rotating my right hip clockwise to complete the turn (Hogan's term was 'like a mechanic giving that last little pull with the wrench' or something similar). 

3. contracting the left tricep as the forward swing starts. I should mention that the whole transition leads into the hitting area, or what I think of as the delivery phase of the swing.

Yeah, golf sure is simple! 

Hogan

I don't understand. Ben Hogan is still acknowledged to be the most accurate ball-striker of all time. Not the longest hitter, but a master of controlled power.

He wrote the book, Modern Fundamentals of Golf, in the mid-50s, when he had virtually retired. It's a complete guide to swinging the club as he did. And yet, it's not recognized as the ultimate method. Instead, we hear about "The Plane Truth", "Tour Tempo", "Stack and Tilt" (or is that shake and bake)?

Oh wait, I DO UNDERSTAND. If Hogan's method is the best, then no one could expect to write a golf book that would sell.

Two-day experiment

Killed two birds with one stone. I've been told by pros, golfing buddies, etc., how wrong it is for me to play with blades [aka musclebacks] (Currently, Mizuno MP29s) and with stiff shafts to boot. Well, long story short, I played two rounds with a set of Ping Eye2 BeCu (Super-Game Improvement, according to the Maltby Playability index) irons with a senior shaft.

They are now back at the consignment shelf. Cost me a total of $30 to "rent" them for two days. Only two problems with them: with the soft shaft, the head sometimes came swooping in looking left, sometimes lagging back looking right. Occasionally, I'd hit one dead straight (I never play for that) that might go either a little shorter than I expected or a LOT SHORTER. My normal carry distance with a 7-iron is about 135 yards. The PingEye2 was good for a carry of about ten yards less (when struck low on the face). Probably due to more loft and more bottom-weight. BUT I tend to hit down and through, in the middle of the face, on my good swings. And hitting on the middle or higher with those things I couldn't get more than 95-100 with the 7-iron.

Sure are pretty, though.

The Power of the Cock

That would be wrist-cock, of course. 

Discover your inner slugger. Learn to use whatever body composition and condition you have to stabilize your hands, so that they can release and square up the clubface with minimal effort and maximum effect.

If you've seen pix of Ben Hogan or Sergio Garcia as they began their downswings you will note that the clubhead is still visible behind and on the target side of the body when their arms are parallel to the ground. That's called "lag", and they maximized it. Decades earlier, almost 100 years ago, Bobby Jones did the same thing. 

The difference is that Jones let the club lag by releasing the grip with the last three fingers of his left hand a bit at the top, then regripping on the way down. But what they all did was cock their wrists fully -- meaning they brought their left thumbs as close to, and IN LINE WITH, their left forearms -- at the top of the swing, or the end of the backswing.

The next step is critical. Every top golfer does exactly the same thing: he (or she) begins the downswing, or more properly the forward swing, by relaxing the hands while rotating the torso counterclockwise (if right-handed). Some start the torso rotation by turning the hips first, some slide the hips, some just rotate the upper chest and use the hips and legs to stabilize the upper body. Those are stylistic, not functional, differences. The important thing is the relaxation of the hands.

As one rotates the upper body, one pulls the arms and hands around and down. The left thumb, which supported the club's weight at the top, being directly under the shaft, stays under the shaft until the weight of the club (and the eccentric clubhead) start rotating, and the thumb is passively rotated from below the shaft to above it. 

The function of the right hand in this movement is to SUPPORT the left hand. Hogan's phrase was "one corporate hand." I find it indispensable to think of ONE CORPORATE HAND, rotating through impact, as if there was a giant, ten-fingered, two-wristed golf glove into which I'd inserted my hands. 

If this is done properly, there is very little effort involved. The legs turn the hips, the hips turn the chest, the shoulders follow, then the arms, then the hands rotate through the ball. My intention is to keep on turning the chest through the ball at a constant rate; everything else follows. And I stay balanced throughout. There's no sensation of diving forward (like Tiger Woods) or falling backward (Like Jack Nicklaus). Those individuals play a different game, Power Golf, because their body composition -- lots of well-developed fast-twitch muscle -- lets them generate much higher clubhead speed than ordinary, middle-of-the-normal-curve individuals. The tradeoff works for them. Tiger's long drives are around 350 yards; mine is 100 yards less.

But what we have in common -- all good golfers have in common -- is ONE CORPORATE HAND that pours and rotates smoothly through the hitting area.

Backswing basics that are virtually unknown

The most important difference between a swing machine, like Iron Byron, swinging a golfclub and a human being doing the same thing, is that the machine starts from the top and has only to swing the club down and through the ball. We humans utilize a backswing.

When you swing a club, you hold it at one end (with your hands, part of your nnn pound body). At the other end, there's a weighted clubhead. Even though you can't readily see it, the shaft bends a bit, from a tiny fraction of an inch to several inches, because of the twirling of the clubhead around your hands.

When you swing the club back, the faster you swing it, and the more abruptly you stop the backswing, the more the shaft will bend. If you can start the forward stroke immediately after the backswing ends, the shaft will retain, even increase, the bend, or flex, into the downswing. As the club approaches the ball, the shaft will be convex forward (bent away from the target side of the ball).

But inevitably, as the clubhead catches up with the hands, the shaft will kick forward and move through the straight position, so that it is concave forward. As it does this, the face of the club moves from open (toe back) to closed (toe forward). 

The greater the bend is initially, and the longer it is retained, the more clubhead speed will be generated, and the more rotation of the clubface will occur. That means longer, less accurate, shots.

I call this "working the shaft." As I've stated many times on this blog, I'm not a very strong, or even moderately strong, person. Small muscles on a large frame do not make for 300 yard drives, and at almost 69 years old, those muscles have not gotten bigger or faster. So it goes.

But.

I've learned to take the club back BRISKLY, and brake the rearward action with a braced right side -- from the ground up: my right (back) lower leg retains its position, and pushes forward as the club moves back. My right arm is braced, and I push it forward, retaining a low elbow flex. This "loads" the club, producing a maximum bend, and I push forward as fast and as hard as I can (again, I'm not that strong) which gives me my maximum accelerating clubhead speed.

It's a feel thing. I try to feel the retention of the shaft bend. Most of the time, I can.

I know most golfers think the backswing should be slow, and the forward swing should be long a fluid, but watch the two best ballstrikers of the 20th century pro ranks in their primes -- Ben Hogan and Lee Trevino -- and their backswings are twice as fast as Phil Mickelson. 

They were/are both several inches shorter than I, so I don't take the club back as far as Hogan with the driver (neither of them took the shorter clubs back very far). Also, I'm not very flexible, so a long swing is always going to be "hit or miss" with miss more likely than hit, for me.

Your swing and mine.

The best swing you can make is uniquely yours. It will resemble other golfers' actions to an extent, but you can't really expect to copy any other golfer exactly.

Great golfers -- and I'm not one of them -- have swings that they have built up over years of experimentation and practice. Every great golfer has made all the compensations to produce reliable shots: shots that are reliable in how fast the clubhead moves, the trajectory of each club, and the tendency to move to the right or left. All great golfers can hit shots with more or less than normal clubhead speed, high, low, or in between, straight, draw, hook, fade, slice, and any combination. They may have a preference for one sort of trajectory, but the great ones can hit any shot.

The real unspoken secret of golf is this: the better one gets, the harder it is to play the game! The reason this is true is that getting better means you become more aware of each little facet of the golf stroke, and that awareness can unbalance the complex action of the swing. So, if you want to have fun playing golf, great! But don't try to score, because then golf becomes work, and the lower you want to score, the harder you have to work.

Too much practice

Heresy!

No less of an expert thanHarvey Penick wrote, in his little red book, "Just because two aspirin can cure a headache, don't take the whole bottle."

Just because some practice is necessary to learn the basics of the stroke, don't become a Range Rat.

First of all, every serious golfer wonders why he can't take his range swing to the course, until he learns the differences between the range swing and golf. 

1. On the range, you decide where you want to hit the ball; on the course, the target (the fairway, green, hole) is there, and you either hit it where you should or you've made a mistake. You don't get to decide.
   
2. On the range, you can hit 10 5-irons in a row, making changes until you're satisfied with the result, then hit a bunch more 5-irons, and convince yourself that your stroke is fine. But in reality, you've developed a stroke that is tailored for a particular situation that you'll never find on a golf course.

Once he gets onto a course and is playing, the range rat has in mind his perfectly tailored stroke, not the stroke he can expect on an average. That perfectly tailored stroke ALWAYS, ALWAYS sends the ball further than the expected average. Just two days ago, I stood on a par-3 hole and scoped the distance to the flag as 107 yards. The hole was cut very close to the front of the green, and the ground leading up to the green is sloped at about a 40º angle, so anything short is going to roll 20 feet down and 30 feet short. I know that, with the temperature hovering around 50º Fahrenheit and a 15-mph sidewind, my average hit with a 9-iron would be sufficient...but a sub-average hit with that club would leave a difficult, blind, uphill shot. So I took an 8-iron, and hit it pure. 40 feet past the flag, just off the putting surface. 

Even an average hit with the 8-iron would have been 10 feet past, but a sub-average hit would have a good chance of staying on the green, and would be a legitimate birdie try, given the hole location. I made my par with a simple chip and putt, missing birdie by less than a foot. And that was off of the worst possible result with the eight-iron.

What most golfers need to practice more is what I just described: analysing the situation, making decisions, and keeping score. That's golf.

Perfect swings? They don't exist.

Most serious golfers, as a round comes to a close, especially one in which they have performed more poorly than they expected (90+% of the time) will immediately head to the range to "correct" the swing "errors" that cost them their expected score. That's a waste, except for the people who profit from selling range balls. They'll never get a chance to replay today's game, and the next time they play, a different set of "errors" and "poor swings" will bedevil them again.

What the range rat doesn't ever grasp is that everyone's swing -- yours, mine, Jack's, Tiger's -- is pretty much the same day in and day out, but pretty much the same is not a pure repetition. There's so much going on in even the simplest swing action that variability is unavoidable.

Golf is nothing more than coping with that variability. You can't practice it away.

A reminder

I spent some time tonight talking with a novice, and it put me in touch with the way people -- all of us, but especially those starting to play golf as adults -- feel at the beginning.

They just want to hit the ball...and it's not easy. Moreover, they would be better off, by far, if they could convince themselves to learn how to swing a golf club, and then use the swing to hit the ball.

The important step is learning how to set up, get ready, execute a backswing, and let the forward swing be a reaction to the setup and backswing. 

When we mis-hit the ball, the natural inclination is to try to alter the swing. That way lies frustration. Learn the swing, practice it, familiarize yourself with it, take it to the course, set up, put the swing into motion.

Simple to say, difficult to do.

Hybrids -- last chance

Well, folks, I really tried, but from the time I started, and people told me how difficult it is to hit long irons, like the one and two, I worked to do the "most difficult" thing. I learned how to hit the low, boring 'stinger'. It's my go-to safety play when I need 200 yards, straight (yes, I've lost 20 or so yards since my youth).

I spent an hour on the great, grassy tees at Miles of Golf (the owner's name is Miles) beating balls with hybrids and long irons. Now the hybrids will find a home in my garage.

And the only reason I don't carry a 1-iron any more is because the 2-iron I use now is close to what my 1960s vintage 1-irons were, in both shaft length and face loft. And I now carry three wedges, not two.

Time marches on.

New driver!

Well, there is some point to technology after all. My new (previously-owned) Cleveland Hi-Bore really gives a different ballflight. Worth the $49.00 price tag!

On the count of seven

A short while ago I wrote about the seven step count I use. Now that I'm back to actually playing golf (although the course is in very rough shape, and thin hits at 39º will make anyone want a new pair of hands) I'm even more cognizant of how beneficial this is. It gives me a feeling of anticipation bordering on inevitability that I'll feel the sweet compression of the ball as I silently sound "SEVEN".

And why did I choose seven? Sailing the seven seas? Seven pillars of Wisdom? The magical number 7 plus or minus two? I don't know.

Just hit "NUMBER SEVEN" on wikipedia...7 really is quite the number!

A word to the young from the other side of youth

When I was a young man, I found out early that I would never be a long hitter; I lacked the talent, namely strength and flexibility. I decided if I was to enjoy the game, I'd have to live with whatever length I could muster with a controlled stroke.

There is always a debate about what's the most important stroke in golf -- the drive, short-game, long approaches, putting. It's all important, of course, but for every stroke, there are two elements to be controlled, distance and direction.

The truth is simply that control is purchased by giving up power. If I hit an 8-iron as hard as I can, I might be able to get 150 yards out of it, on a dry, windless day, level ground. If I take a controlled stroke, making sure the face is perpendicular to the path, and hit a high cut, the ball will stop about 100 yards away. So I know that my controlled distance is between 2/3rds and 3/4ths of my maximum.

Same thing with the driver; I might get about 270 from a well-struck drive at full throttle; but on a narrow fairway, a nice little 200-yard shot will make my day.

Now, if that narrow fairway has water on the left and trees on the right, and slopes to the left, a stronger golfer would just rear back and fly the trouble to a wider landing area beyond the narrow point. I admit, I've given in to that temptation, but I know the outcome, and it's not pretty. Would I like to have 50 more yards? Of course! I'm not a fool; but the one time in 10 I can pull it off simply isn't worth it, in terms of my scoring.

I've already gone past where I wanted to go with this, so I'll give out the Wisdom of the Ages: If you're very lucky, you'll live as long as I have, and you will become weaker, unable to get the distance you have now.

If you're past the age of 27 (like Tiger and Phil) you're already weaker and less flexible than you were at 27, and the process is on its way. You'd better learn how to hit to spots, under control, or when you get to be my age, you won't be able to compete with the likes of me.

And you won't enjoy it.

The past weekend

two more typical Michigan "Spring" days; frost delays, wind, cold... I've now completed my experiment and consider that my standard driver will be a persimmon, as will be the three wood. The backups include a laminate and two Tis.

And Kenny Perry, Mr. Nice Guy, lived up to his modus operandi and choked at the end.  

Yesterday...

It was windy, still some patches of snow on the ground, but I did the experiment. I played with the persimmon driver and 3-wood and just as I said, it was easier to control, and keep down into the headwinds and crosswinds, and I don't think I lost a single yard on the best hits.

So, I'll keep them in for the nonce.

Explanation of the loft x directional accuracy relationship

In the previous post, I wrote that the lower lofted clubs will produce "straighter" shots. What I meant was close to that. It's not the trajectory; the greater the loft angle, the more backspin vs. sidespin, and the less bend in the trajectory -- less hook and slice.

But -- and this is very much a concern -- The ball will always fly off the face of the club perpendicular to that face. If the sole of the club is parallel to the ground, then the shot will leave the face pointed toward the target. If the toe of the club is higher than the heel, the ball will start out more in the direction of the heel; if the heel is elevated, the ball will begin its flight toward the toe. 

For a right-handed player, if the ball is higher than the player's feet, the tendency would be to pull the ball to the left; lower than his feet, we tend to push to the right.

The greater the loft, the more severe the deviation of the initial flight.

And so, in the end, the lower-lofted driver is more likely to send the ball in the direction the face is aligned.

Woods in the wind

No, not Tiger...persimmon. I still have a couple of actual tree product drivers and 3-woods. My Citation driver is about 4 or 5 degrees stronger than the Ti wonder, with [of course] a much smaller face/hitting area/sweetspot. And a shorter shaft and about 2 ounces more weight (which amounts to 17%. And zero trampoline effect, but more gear effect.

All of these factors make it a tempting choice for an old geezer. 

• The smaller hitting area is no problem, because I don't create a lot of clubhead speed, and the ballmarks on the face of the bigger drivers indicate that I tend to be very close to the middle 95% of the time, anyway. 
• The slower one swings the club, the less feel one has, and the added weight of the persimmon club makes up for that, since feel = weight x speed. 
• The lower loft of the face means straighter shots and lower shots that won't plug in soft fairways.
• The smaller face means that I can tee the ball almost as low as I do for an iron tee-shot, and not have to use a special "modern driver swing" that catches the ball on the upswing.
• The only negative is that the modern ball just doesn't spin the way the old balata did, so there's less lift, but on a windy day...I might have to try that!

The new season begins.

And it's a cold, cold, windy start. Still debating and changing what's in the bag. Yesterday it was a 9.5 degree driver, Adams 3-wood, 2, 4-P MP 29, Cleveland 52, 58, 64 Wedges, Burke Blade...91, with two temp greens, one actual birdie. 1st 18-hole round of the year.

Today it's colder, and we're under a winter storm watch. I've switched out the driver to a 10.5 MacTec, put the 3-iron back in, and subbed the BH 57º with lottabounce for the 58 & 64 Wedges, and swapped the Voodoo in for the Burke.

And I may play today...or not.

Tiger's Game

Tiger (Woods, as if) has a swing to envy, but not to copy. I hate it when teachers, pros, commentators try to get everyone to Be Like Tige...few, if any, have the body -- strength and flexibility -- to make Tigerlike moves even once. And his swing is a complex constellation of compensatory moves that has taken him decades to groove, and alter as his body changed from skinny adolescence to muscular maturity. 

Johnny Miller's comment yesterday (final round at Bay Hill) was spot on: his putting dominance is based more on "guts" than technique. Unlike the pretenders, Tiger doesn't leave putts short very often. Like all great putters, he's still dancing with the same girl, that SC Anser clone, and has not messed with, or up, his stroke.

And the short game: more guts, and technique, and strength. But he's not unbeatable; he actually loses 70% of the time. 

The day's final observation: the dominant players of each previous generation appeared in contrasting pairs: 

• Snead v. Hogan: Snead had the power, and the talent, that Hogan envied, but Hogan had the mental toughness and work ethic (and pure cussedness) that Snead didn't approach. They were both poor kids who valued the money, but Snead seemed to have enjoyed golf more (considering that he was still playing into the last year of his life)
  
• Palmer v. Nicklaus: Arnold was there first, the transformative power hitter who feared nothing, not trees, not long putts, not even young Jack, who hit it further and higher and straighter and smarter. Jack was the first of the rich kids.
• Nicklaus v. Trevino: another talent mismatch, but Trevino knew how to get under Jack's skin, and nobody ever played more smart shots, had more control, or more guts on the green than Lee...but if Nicklaus was playing his best, he was untouchable.
• Mickelson v. Woods: Each was a young phenom (Mickelson won a pro tournament before he turned pro), each was strong, both could putt...but Tiger is Hogan to Phil's Snead. He has the work ethic, the mental toughness, and the mean streak PLUS he has Team Tiger: Stevie, the IMG group, Elin...and Pappy's Ghost. 
• Woods v. ???: Not Els, not Garcia, not Harrington. Some kid, maybe McIlroy. 

 

Tiger, Tiger, burning bright

 The Tiger 

William Blake. 1757–1827

 

TIGER, tiger, burning bright in the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye could frame thy fearful symmetry? 

In what distant deeps or skies burnt the fire of thine eyes?

On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire? 

And what shoulder and what art could twist the sinews of thy heart? 

And when thy heart began to beat, what dread hand and what dread feet? 

What the hammer? What the chain? In what furnace was thy brain?

What the anvil? What dread grasp dare its deadly terrors clasp? 

When the stars threw down their spears, and water'd heaven with their tears,

Did He smile His work to see? Did He who made the lamb make thee? 

Tiger, tiger, burning bright In the forests of the night,

What immortal hand or eye Dare frame thy fearful symmetry?

Back to the real things

This happens to me occasionally: I get seduced by the driver technology that helps so much, and try some "forgiving" irons, which allows me to be sloppy, which raises the score and depresses the confidence.

So, once again, MP-29s, 2-PW. I can hit them, if my stroke is working, so having only blades in the bag forces me to be a better ballstriker. I suspect this would be true for anyone.

Last minute thoughts

It's still cold here, but I've put away the garage net. Nothing like seeing the trajectory. This winter I've completed the shift from 20th Century golf to 21st...no more working the ball, just pick a line and pound away.

No more blades. No more persimmon. Just POUND it, FIND it, POUND IT AGAIN.

Reflections on Doral

1. Tiger's putting, on familiar greens, from all distances, was a disappointment. 

2. I cannot remember seeing such poor decision-making from pros in contention; Phil tried to give it away, ignoring his caddy's warning, and Watney, sitting in the middle of the fairway after a decent drive on a par-five, with Phil not on the green after three shots, doesn't lay up to a decent wedge distance. Oh no, he goes for the green, pulls it into a bunker, takes two to get out, and ties Phil with a bogey.

Puke-o-rama!

3. Johnny Miller continues to make the best comments: "If I was Phil's caddy, I'd have him wear a shock collar."

The ultimate cureall...count on it!

Got the yips? Can't take the game from the range to the course? Find yourself quitting on shots? Too distractable? Confused?

Try this: The Counting Cure.

Caution: you must be a veteran golfer, one who has hit every possible good shot enough times so that you have a visual memory of what that shot looks like from your own vantage point as you watch it. If you have that experience, from a putt to a drive, try this.

First, visualize the shot you want to hit. 

Next, carefully set up to the ball. Make sure your ball-position, grip, body alignment and posture are all the way they should be to execute the shot you've chosen.

Next, waggle the club exactly three times, simulating the hand-action necessary for the chosen shot.

Next, bring the clubhead to a stop, either on the ground behind the ball, or hovering just above the ground behind the ball.

Next, rotate your right (back for a right-hander) thigh counter clockwise and move it toward the target,

Next, take the club back,

Next, strike the ball.

Now, here's the catch. Learn to do all of this while counting, in your head, 

ONE

TWO 

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

No other thoughts are allowed in, once you start the first waggle.

Works for me. 

Contrasting theories

The great Bobby Jones wrote, "No one ever swung a golf club too slowly." The great Ben Hogan write, "You can't turn your hips too fast."

Both are, imho, correct. Jones was referring to a swing; Hogan was referring to a stroke. A swing is at one end of a continuum, a stroke at another.

A swing is one, continuous, flowing action; a stroke is a complex collection of individual movements. A swing resembles a waterfall; a stroke is more like an internal combustion engine.

Every golfer has to decide on a model action - swing or stroke. Each has its benefits and costs. 

If a golfer adopts the swing as a model, he must learn to direct his awareness outward, to the clubhead. The ONLY sensation he should be aware of is the path of the clubhead, path referring both to the space through which the clubhead travels and to the pace of that clubhead as it moves through space. The benefit is ease of repetition; the cost is power.

If he adopts the stroke as a model, he must learn to direct his awareness inward. He will have to keep all of his body movements in his awareness. Because the stroke is so complex, it needs continual adjustment, and will be difficult to repeat; but the benefit is power - a stroker will send the ball much further than a swinger. Just not as accurately.

But truth to tell, we all become strokers sooner or later. Why? Because we're humans and we have to find a way to think through the complex, or golf would be as boring as working on an assembly line.

I'm just sayin'

There's one overriding reason I keep on golfing as I get older and weaker. That's very simple: every time I go to the range, or hit balls in my garage, or play a round of golf, I know for a fact that I've ended the day just a little bit closer to understanding golf.

That's progress, and incentive, rolled into one.

The challenge is to drop the arrogance that I believe tempts every good golfer and offer oneself up as ready to learn.

I've been fortunate to have had the opportunity to play on great courses against good competition and found a pro who gave me good guidance.

The strategy I've adopted for the coming year is to keep my effort at its most efficient level. I have to swing hard enough to make a true, ballistic stroke, where there's only one moment when I put energy into making the club go forward, but easy enough so that I have no sensation that I'm in danger of losing balance and falling, or, worse yet, pulling a muscle and putting myself in pain.

That means hitting my pitching wedge about 100 yards, +/-5. I can then count on about 12 yards difference between adjacent clubs: 88 for the gap, 76 and in to the green for the SW, 112 for the 9, 124 for the 8, 136 for the 7, 148 for the six, 160 for the five, 172 for the 4, 184 for the 3 and 196 for the 2. I can count on about 215 from the 3-metalwood and 235 from the Driver.

For me, that's what I get with a swing that feels like a 70% effort. It may be less, or more, but it's a start.

When I get on a course, if I have a 160-yard shot to a flag that's sitting on the back of a green, I sure don't want to go long: I want my next shot to be a putt, so my best chance of getting what I want is to hit my 6-iron, confident that even if I swing a little harder than I want, or catch it just right and have a little draw to deal with, I'm not going over. In short, I try to play every shot with the least opportunity for the worst outcome.

If I have the same distance to a hole cut on the left-front of a green, right behind a trap, then my shot is to grab the 4-iron and hit a high cut, aimed right at the flag. That way, I've taken the trap out of play, and if I overdo the cut, I have a putt or at worst a chip.

So, although I can count on 160 yards with a normal stroke with the 5-iron, I wouldn't use that club for either of these two circumstances. That's not the way a Tour pro thinks, and not the way I thought when I was young and stronger; it's the way I choose to strategize now.

It turns out, as I sit here and analyze it, that it's not the simplest way to play, but golf, for me at least, is the most complex game I've ever played. By comparison, chess and bridge, "intellectual" games, are both much simpler. Golf is like playing the New York Times Crossword puzzle. The structure is pretty much the same, day-to-day. After playing it hundreds of times, you get to know the standard crosswordese clues -- some of us refer to them as "Gimmees", like an 18" putt -- and you know there'll be days when you can't fill the grid without an error, and it takes you longer. But you just learn to keep working at them, and gradually you get better, and faster. Even the easiest Monday puzzle (Monday is the easiest, Saturday is the hardest, Sunday is the funkiest) is worth doing, like playing a short course with relatively flat greens. 

And that will be enough blogging for a Thursday afternoon.

Lessons from a pro

Most pros are selling a dream: good golf is easy.

Good golf is damned hard. It takes commitment, the desire to push your body to the limit, the psychological strength to do whatever is necessary to make the lowest possible score on every single hole you play, the intelligence to know what that score is. And the character to accept that no matter how hard you try, or how great your talent, there will still be the occasion when you hit a terrible shot, and it will be your fault, and you have to make the best of it.

In other words, good golf is not a relaxed, happy, pleasant walk in the park. Good golf is a trial, a task. Good golf feels great AFTERWARDS. 

Some pros will be honest and tell you that. They can help by pointing out things that you're doing that may seem right to you, but have been proven to be less than optimal. Sometimes those things are "fundamentals" that earlier golfers have proclaimed necessary to play good golf. For example, you might have gotten the advice that proper setup posture is as if you were sitting on a shooting stick, or a high stool, with your weight more toward your heels.

Modern teaching reverses that: you can move through the ball more efficiently if your weight is more toward your toes, on the balls of your feet. The difference is a matter of a few inches, but that small difference can help you to get more clubhead speed with less risk of injuring your lower back. A good pro will do more than tell you that: he'll CONVINCE you of that.

The hardest thing a pro has to do is take a chance on losing you as a paying customer by pointing out that what you're doing is wrong -- if you want to improve. 

But ask yourself: if the pro doesn't know better than you, or you can't accept the fact that he knows more than you, then why are you there?

Bottom line: either accept the fact that a pro can help you, or go be a pro yourself.

Hand-eye coordination

When all is said and done, hand-eye coordination is the key to making a good golf stroke. Most of us are way too adept at the eye part, and way too lax about the hand part.

Because I was trained as a pianist from an early age, I have what is called "good hands." And yet, I have to carefully remind myself to become aware of the sensations in my hands in order to execute the best golf strok of which I am capable.

I suspect this is true of others, but I can't be sure.

Intensity

After watching TW fall to TC in the 2nd round of the Matchplay yesterday, and noting his smile when he said "I lost" I got to thinking that the intensity Woods once had is gone. And it will not return.

Having climbed the mountain and paid a fearful price, in pain and doubt, I believe that Tiger's quest to surpass Nicklaus' record in majors will not be successful. He's matured beyond the boyish single-mindedness and begun to THINK about the value of records. 65 wins before your 33rd birthday, against stronger fields than anyone before him, and now, as he ages, and endures the highs and lows of parenthood...there's no way he can compete with the same fire in his belly.

Yes, and one more thing...he's now the second most successful multiracial citizen of the United States!

But there's more. Watching TWs swing in SloMo I was struck, again, by the extreme downward shift he uses to start the downswing; he keeps his spine angle, but comes down about six inches by flexing both knees. It's the key to his swing, and it's a move that is fiendishly difficult to repeat without lots and lots of practice. When he overdoes this, it's FORE RIGHT...yesterday, that took him O.B., and probably cost the whole match.

Well, when that happens, it has to affect his confidence. He is human. And now he's shown Tim Clark up close and personal -- and the rest of the pros in clear relief -- that he's all to human.

That doesn't make him any easier to beat, and he's still the best golfer in the world, off his record, but it gives 200 other great golfers hope that, if Tim Clark can take him down...

Deep thinking about shotmaking

In a competitive pro career that started in 1930 and ended in 1971, Ben Hogan was acknowledged as the best scorer of his time, the man who could analyze a course and shoot a number.

He had either zero or two holes-in-one on Tour, and he said that he might have had more if he'd aimed for the flag, but that was something he RARELY did.

Huh? The best scorer of his day, maybe of all time? And Tiger Woods has 18 now in a career that is in its 11th year? 

Hogan was aiming to set up a one-putt. He understood, better than anyone else, that the game is about making the lowest score on the hole. In reference to #11 at Augusta, he said, "If you see me on that green in regulation [two shots] you'll know I made a mistake" because he figured it was easier to make a four chipping from off the green (or a three) than trying to get a long putt close.

Ya think Ben knew something you don't?

Maybe that was his secret.

It ain't necessarily so

Watch a video or film or sequence photos of any top player and it's obvious that there is a decided shift of the hips toward the target (roughly -- there are no straight lines in human movement in 3space) takes place as the downswing starts. This is what observers, including teaching pros, have seen for decades, in person and on film and video. So the idea formed, and has become Holy Writ, that the hips -- or the lower body in general -- lead the downswing.

Well, that's true enough, but it leads to an erroneous and hard-on-your-back conclusion, that you should make that move to start the forward stroke.

In reality, what happens is this. The accomplished player -- the golfer, as opposed to the hack -- reaches the top of the backswing in very good balance. He knows intuitively that he has to move the club away from the target to get to the back, or back-inside, of the ball, and moves his hands, which hold the club, away from the target.

That movement threatens the delicate balance of the backswing. Being an athlete, the golfer keeps his balance by countering the move of his hands with a move of the hips.

That hip movement, in turn, pulls the hands toward the ball. At some point before the arms have reached a horizontal position, the golfer begins uncocking his hands, which sends the clubhead forward and around...and that movement is compensated by a rotation of the hips that, again, maintains the golfer in balance. But the thing very few people understand is that the hand move sets up the whole sequence - first the hands, then a little shift, which works on the hands again, which feeds back into the body to make it turn...

In other words, if you don't TRY to do anything more complicated than keep in balance, all you have to do is start the hands in the proper direction and then release the club EARLY ENOUGH.

Teachers talk about a late hit because they see a late hit in pictures, but when hackers try to hit late, they don't hit early enough! By the time you feel your wrists start to uncock, the ball has been struck.

How to bias your game

I am in favor of bias over balance. The main tradeoff in golf is between power and accuracy. The simple truth is undeniable...the faster the clubhead is moving, the harder it is to meet the ball with the percussive center of the clubface, better known as the sweetspot. 

Now some of us are gifted with the talent to get the clubhead moving faster than average, some of us are only averagely talented, and some of us -- about a third of all golfers -- can generate significantly less clubhead speed than the average player.

Long ago, in the wood & balata era, the USGA designated the distance a male scratch or zero-handicap player, the mythical par shooter, can hit the ball with a driver as 250 yards; female scratch players were presumed to be able to move it out there 220 yards. The male was also presumed to be able to hit his longest fairway wood (a spoon, or 3-wood) 220 yards, so the maximum length of a par-three hole was set at 250 yards (driver for a scratch player) and 470 yards as the maximum length of a par-four (driver and spoon).

Let's say there's a male golfer today who can manage an average drive of about 240 yards -- below average ability. There are two schools of thought:

1. Below average distance - correct by body-building, training, equipment changes, practice, effort. In other words, shore up your weakness.

2. Below average distance - compensate by working on accuracy, short-game, game-management, trajectory control.

If you read the popular magazines, the front cover most months promises something inside that will give "10 more yards" or "15 yards further" or "gain 25 yards in 25 minutes" or something else along that line. It amounts to some change in technique, equipment, or conditioning that will give you more clubhead speed.

And reduce your accuracy.

Well, that's all well and good if your concern is selling magazines, books, training aids, conditioning programs, technical 'breakthroughs', golf clubs and balls. As Charles Revson, of the Revlon cosmetics company used to tell his employees, "we're not selling cosmetics, we're selling hope". Hope you can believe in...works for some.

But, if your goal as an individual is to lower your golf score and get 10 more smiles/round, and put your friends' money in your pocket, you need to embrace the suck. You don't have the talent to hit it significantly further than you already do. NOTHING will give you so much as ONE FREE YARD. You are like everyone else who plays golf, from beginners to the best players in the world. There is no free yardage. It costs accuracy.

Who cares how fast he or she can swing a clubhead when you're on the green faced with a 20-foot putt? Or facing a pitch over water, or an escape from a bunker? My mother, if she hadn't died 35 years ago in her 70s, was strong enough to make any of those shots. She never played golf, but she had enough strength. So does my 10-year old grand-daughter. She doesn't play golf either, but she can dance, each with utensils...

There is only ONE longest hitter in the world at any time. That's the guy who wins the latest long-drive contest. His need for accuracy is minimal.

There is only ONE best player in the world at any time. It's the guy who wins the latest professional golf tournament. It doesn't matter if he scores 10 under or 10 over par for four rounds, so long as he turns in the lowest score, he's the "Champion Golfer of the Moment."

As of today, that's Dustin Johnson, winner of the 2009 Pebble Beach Pro-Am. Tomorrow, he may be the champion again, because today is Saturday and the 2009 Los Angeles/Riviera C.C. tournament is scheduled to finish on Sunday, and he's in the field.

No, you don't really expect to add 10 or 20 or more yards, do you? Even if you understand that you can't get them for free?

The way to lower your scores is the same for you, me, Tiger Woods or Dustin Johnson. You have to use whatever tools you own, including your physical endowment, or talent, and play each hole as efficiently as possible, making the lowest score you can and avoiding making any large scores.

That means you have to learn to maneuver the ball; you can hit with any given club at average height, higher or lower; you can hit straight, left-to-right or right-to-left. Combine the three heights with the three trajectories and you have three times three, or nine different shots you can hit with any club.

Let's take the 7-iron for example. If I hit a shot at "normal" height and straight, I can carry that shot about 125 yards and watch it roll out another 10...135 in all. If I hit it higher, it will carry 5 yards less and roll 5 yards less, 125 in all. Lower, and it will carry about 130 and roll 15, 145 in all.  If I hit it right-to-left, my draw or hook shot, I can count on adding 5 yards each of carry and roll to the straight distance, and if I hit it left-to-right, I can subtract 5 yards each of carry and roll. So, a straight shot will be at a minimum of 125 yards carry and roll, and a maximum of 145.

A draw will push the maximum up to 155, a fade or slice will cut the minimum to 115. 

THAT'S 40 FUCKING YARDS, PEOPLE. And that says nothing about the lie, the wind, the elevation change, rain, heat, cold...or, for that matter, variation in expended energy.

OHANDBYTHEWAY, the stronger a player is, the wider the gap between the maximum and the minimum. 

The next post will present the algorithm to lower your scores.

Feeling the swing

If asked to feel something, I use my hands. That's what they're built for, with more sense receptors in the fingertips than anyplace else on the body, inch for square inch.

But what we really use to feel things is our brains. The sense receptors are activated, send signals to the brain, we interpret said signals and "feel" things.

Just fine for feeling a lump of clay or the surface of an apple. But if you're 'getting the feel' of a golf club that you're swinging up and back around your body, then forward, you're using your sense of the weight of the club relative to your hands. And receiving the neuro-electric information and interpreting it takes time.

Indeed, by the time you feel just where the clubhead is (aside from the address position, when you can look at the thing) it isn't there anymore.

Soooooooo, what we all have to do is pinpoint the thing we WANT to feel that allows us to make a good, efficient, stroke at the ball.

Once you get that, you build the rest of your routine about that last feel.

My little secret

I find it difficult to impossible to completely empty my mind, but I've learned to do something that allows me to make a stroke - not really a swing - without having words in my brain.

After I've visualized the flight path of the ball and set up in a way that will produce that (based on several million ballstrikes in my past), I look at the ball and start counting the dimples. While I'm counting, which takes some amount of concentration to actually focus on the dimples, without any further thoughts about anything - not my body, my hands, the shaft, the clubhead - the stroke takes place.

Sometimes, maybe once or twice per round, everything goes according to plan. Since that's about as well as Jones, Hogan, Woods, Nicklaus ever did, I'm content.

Learning

Any time you hear someone who seems to have all the answers, you can be sure he's not getting any better at golf (or anything else, if there is anything else).

Either you're learning something new, refining what you already knew, or getting rid of something you thought was true, OR you're getting worse.

That's why we practice, and play. Either one, done with an open mind and a committment to be committed, allows learning.

Learning gives own knowledge. Knowledge is power. Power corrupts.

Handicaps

When people I don't know ask me on the golf course, "What's your handicap?" I usually answer weakness and arrogance.

But seriously, there's a better, simpler way to assign handicaps. The current method is to take the average of the best ten of your last 20 rounds (best in terms of score minus par rating) and multiply that by 0.96, and that's your "Index". Now divide that index by 113 (don't ask) and multiply the result by the slope rating of the course you're going to play and round to the nearest whole number.

Here's how I'd do it. Take the card from your last round. Determine your modal score relative to par. (The modal score is the one that occurs most frequently. So suppose your card had 10 bogeys.

Automatically, that's your modal score, because if you have 10 in 18 holes, you can't have more of any other score.

Anyway, continuing on, let's say that  of the remaining 8 holes, you had two doubles, an "X" (where you picked up, out of the hole) four pars and a birdie. If form holds true, the most likely score for you on any given hole is bogey or better.

So, here are the levels:

1. Modal score = better than par

2. Modal score = par or better

3. Modal score = par or worse

4. Modal score = bogey or better

5. Modal score = bogey or worse

6. Modal score = double bogey or better

7. Modal score = double bogey or worse

and on and on ad infinitum.

Here's the interesting thing. Between any two players, find the difference between them. If the difference is 0, they play even. If it's 1, that's worth a half-stroke/hole. Each whole number is worth one-half stroke/hole. So if my last round was exactly what I described above (level 4), and I play with a guy who had 12 pars, 4 birdies and two others (that's level 2), I get one stroke/hole.

FORGET RATING THE HOLES. FORGET AVERAGES. FORGET COURSE RATINGS OR SLOPES. 

C'mon Tiger, let's play!

The performer's NOMIND.

When you're learning to play the piano, you endure hours of practice so that your fingering is automatic, and your hands stay at the same level. My first piano teacher placed a penny on the back of my hands while I did scales, and if I made the penny drop, she'd whack my hand with a ruler. Now when I type, I look at the screen and the words appear as if by magic, because I learned touch typing in 1950 (not for numbers, though).

In the learning phase of golf, we have to practice for 10,000 hours (not a made-up figure, cited by Gladwell in his new book, "Outliers", on athletic and musical performers). In that time, if we've done it right, we learn where to place and how to move every part of our bodies, from feet to hands. After enough time has passed, we have developed our own, characteristic "Signature Swing", and with it we can hit shots as well as our genetic and environmental limits will permit.

That means there's no more learning to do.

So that we can play our best, a few of us train ourselves to focus our attention on the path we want the ball to take, pay attention to how we set up, start the club moving on the backswing and feel where the shaft and the clubhead are right up to the end of the backswing. 

Notice I didn't say "try to feel" -- we've learned to do nothing but TAKE IN INFORMATION on the backswing.

Once the backswing feels complete, we acquire the ball, or more precisely the spot on the surface of the ball that we're aiming for. This varies depending on the trajectory we wish the ball to take. At that point, our well-trained bodies take over and the stroke is completed at a subconscious, or nomind, level. We then can observe if this has been one of the 5-10% of our shots (same percent as Hogan, Snead, Woods, Nicklaus) that comes off just as we'd planned, or not.

The point is, we don't give ourselves a bunch of instruction as to what to do during the swing. We take in information on the backswing, then let the subconscious take over on the forward part of the stroke, while we look at the spot on the ball.

This state of nomind is best practiced with the putter, a ball, and a target, be it a hole, a coin, or a golf tee. The trick is allowing yourself to feel the motion of the club -- not your hands, not any part of your body -- and then shut that off by looking at the ball. You give NO commands, no instructions, as to how to do it. You ALLOW or PERMIT your trained body to make the ball go where you want it to go.

NOTHING about a flat wrist, a steady head, an accelerating stroke. NOTHING. NOMIND.

As soon as you start directing what your body can accomplish without direction, you are heading into dangerous waters. That's how the yips -- and more golfers yip with the driver than the putter -- begin.

Attaining NOMIND is not easy, but once learned it becomes automatic, and golf becomes easy. 

Playing the game

The key to lower scores is to concentrate on strategy, rather than tactics. Strategy means keeping a target SCORE in mind, and playing the shots that allow you keep at that score or lower. Tactics involve how to swing the club, or make a stroke.

As long as you're trying to think, or remember, your way through the stroke, golf is Hard Work.

The common errors

Most handicap golfers, from the mid-single digits to the 18-and-over crowd exhibit the same basic flaw.

Flaw #1: Most of these folks move their hands and arms too much, and their torsos too little. They understand that power is in part a function of the length of the backswing, so they do the natural, instinctive thing, and push their arms away while keeping their torso pointed right at the ball. That poses several problems, most egregious being the disconnection between the major body mass and the much lighter arms, but also making it very difficult for the clubpath to come from the inside out. That -- not a grip fault -- is why 90% of amateurs slice the ball.

Not a whole list here. Fix flaw #1 by keeping your hands pretty much in front of your body, even on the target side, until you've rotated your torso about 45º away from the target. If you continue until your back is almost facing the target, the weight of the swinging club will move your arms back much more than it feels like you're moving them. If it doesn't happen, you're rotating your torso too slowly.

The next thing you do is reverse the torso rotation. Unless you have a death-grip on the club handle, that will keep the clubhead behind your hands. As you rotate smoothly past the ball, you should feel the club being pulled downward at the ball.

This is the moment to avoid Flaw #2. Most beginners believe that the best golf shot has the leading edge of the club even with the bottom of the ball at first contact. That may be true, but it means that, when you make an error, half the time you'll be hitting "fat"-- hitting the ground behind the ball (away from the target). As you feel the clubhead being pulled away from you and down, try to hit the top of the ball. You can even pull up a bit, which will increase the speed of the clubhead, as well as reducing the chance of a fat hit. And increased clubhead speed is the most rewarding thing you can do with a full shot.

"Forgiving" clubs

Back in the day, golf clubs were designed by golfers, who then hired manufacturers (or golfers were paid by manufacturers to design clubs). They were tested by the designing golfer, and others, and tweaked by what golfers felt and saw on the range and on the golf course.

Now, golf clubs are designed by engineers. The first really "engineered" golf clubs were designed and manufactured by the genius who invented the rabbit-ears TV antenna. He (Karsten Solheim) designed his putters and irons with some of the weight removed from behind the sweet spot, or the center of percussion [pc], and relocated at the toe and heel of the club. Some more pc metal was relocated along the bottom of the club, and hey presto, balls struck on the sweet spot went higher. Balls struck off the sweet spot, toward the toe or heel, went straighter than they had with the older, "golfer" designs, and lost less distance, to boot. 

Solheim reckoned he could market these clubs to the average golfer, since they would require less precision to get a semblance of a golf shot. And right he was.

Still, the men who played golf for a living didn't want clubs that hit the ball higher; they knew how to do that, and actually preferred to flight the ball lower, where it would be less affected by wind. Nor did they want a club that straightened out their shots; most of them considered the straight shot the hardest to produce, and preferred curving the ball left-to-right or right-to-left, to gain access to the more difficult pin positions.

We call the modern clubs [designed by engineers and tested by machines that grip the club mechanically, hit without a backswing (thereby not "loading" the club) and input motion at the beginning of the stroke, never adding power with hand action, never rotating the head around the shaft, the way human beings do] forgiving, because they let us get better results from off center contact than we would get with the golfer-designed clubs.

I call the older designs rewarding, because they allow golfers to shape shots and keep them down out of the wind, because of their more uniform distribution of weight in the clubhead.

As far as actually learning how to hit golf shots, the more you can observe the results of a mishit, the easier it is to build a stroke that allows you to shape shots, access difficult hole locations, and become a better golfer. 

It's all a tradeoff, of course. And you don't have to be doctrinaire. For example, I have several sets of clubs, some very rewarding, others more forgiving, and neither is best for all conditions, all rounds.

The Golfer's Goal

The obvious goal is better -- lower -- scores. But that's the distal goal. The proximal goal is your best swing.

Most of the world's golfers look at the scorecard and make the obvious observation that, as the holes get longer, par goes up. They use this bit of information to define their best swing as the one that sends the ball the furthest distance.

There's nothing wrong in that. It's the obvious choice. 

It's not mine.

At my advanced age of 68, I can still hit a 7-iron a maximum of 155 yards on a level lie in the fairway, 70º, windless day (like we see a lot of those), as opposed to the 185 yards I could manage 30 years ago (the figures are approximate -- I've lost about one yard/year off the driver since my peak at the age of 27.

If I have a shot of 155 yards under the conditions I just described, I am NOT going to take a 7-iron, or a 6-iron. I might hit a five, probably a 4-iron. 

Why? Because I've hit a shitload of 4-irons and I get more and more accurate as I scale down the effort from the 185 yards that is now my max with that club until I reach my most accurate distance, 155 yards. When I aim at a target that is that far away, the circle of balls past the target, short of it, left of it and right of it is as small as it gets. Hitting to a nearer target with the same club gives me no more improvement in accuracy, so 155 yards is my BEST distance with the 4-iron under benign conditions.

The point is, and I can't overstress this, no matter your level of talent, no matter your mastery of the skill of ballstriking, your most accurate -- hence, most efficient -- use of any club is considerably less than your maximum distance.

That is the swing that will help you reach the distal goal of your lowest score.

How mammals learn, Part Deux

Well, we learn many different things in many different ways. There is the "human see, human do" method, which involves watching someone do something and then attempting to translate what you've seen into your own movement.

This is very, very, inefficient. Years ago, I watched a lovely lady pianist attempting Rachmaninoff's Concerto #3, which demands a lot of fortissimo (very loud) playing. She struck the keys so hard that she actually lifted her ass off the piano stool. I know this because I was looking at her ass.

What I saw was a movement that was the RESULT of other movement. No one learns to play fortissimo by being told 'get your ass in the air'.

Golfers who watch good golfers 100 years ago noted how their hips (or, the front part of their asses) moved, shifting and rotating. That movement, in the early 20th Century, hadn't been part of golf instruction, but thanks to the keen eyes of the observers, it was soon incorporated into the lexicon of golf instruction.

It is, of course, bullshit. 

Those early observers noted that the good golfers -- who were pretty much self-taught -- didn't move their heads (so much that they'd be noticeable) or bend their arms (more than about 30º) at the elbows, and so more bullshit was added.

Then, there was the advent of the high-shutter-speed still picture, which enabled the observer to see what could not be seen with the naked eye, things like clubhead lag and shaft flexion. Sometimes, famously in Ben Hogan's first book, "Power Golf" the focal-plane shutter sweeping horizontally across the frame created a FALSE image! But true or not, there was much more bullshit added.

Now we have video, and complex discussions of the plane of the swing (wrongly defined; there's no such thing as a curved plane). Even more bullshit.

Then there are the "scientific" attempts to analyze the stroke; Ralph Mann's computer analysis of 100 pros defining (make that SWAGing) how "The Pro" swings. And too too too many others to mention. 

Well, let's just say that attempting to copy external observations is as likely to get you a good golf swing as playing "Hamlet" in Act V will get you to know what it's like to be dying.

Which brings me, at loooong last, to the point. The most efficient way mammals learn is by thinking of what we want to do, trying to do it, and observing whether we got what we wanted. If we did, we do it again; if not, we do something else.

Three steps: CONCEPTION, EXECUTION, CORRECTION.

Oh, but that's too simple. You can't make a living telling people to just hit it. Try, and if you don't succeed, try something else. 

But it is that simple. If you don't think so, go Google SEWGOLUM.

 

How mammals learn (and golfers are mammals)

Experimental psychologists define learning as a change in behavior as a result of practice over time. Note that the definition is not an improvement, but a change. Practice something inefficient and your behavior will change, and become less efficient, as long as your practice is directed at making you more inefficient.

I know lots of golfers who believe that "the secret is in the dirt" and that they can improve their game by practicing more. I think of the secret as "in the safe" -- the safe has a combination lock, and the reason to practice is to figure out the combination.

My combination works ONLY for me. I can tell it to you -- it's very simple -- but I guarantee that it won't help you if you follow it. 

I've been playing golf for more than 50 years, and it took until very recently for me to unlock the safe, but once I did, I found my secret, and it works. It worked last week, yesterday, and it will work today. 

Alan Watts wrote, "Once you've gotten the message, hang up the phone."

Why did it take me so long to get the combination and unlock the safe? Because I tried way too many combinations that belonged to other people: people like Sam Snead, Ben Hogan, David Ledbetter, Jack Nicklaus, Lee Trevino, Eddie Merrins, Percy Boomer, Jeff Goble, Bobby Clampett, Nick Faldo, Butch Harmon, Hank Haney...and that's a partial list. 

All of those books and lessons amount to the same thing: ways that other people play golf. Not one of them gave me a way for me to play golf that is best for me. The only person who was able to unlock the combination was me.

Now, I don't have to practice. I can warm up, but I have nothing to learn. I have the combination and have opened the safe. I took out the secret, memorized it, burned the paper that it was written on, and left the safe empty and with the door ajar.

I have to add that if I had tried to use the method I now employ earlier, I don't know whether it would work as well as it does. Perhaps it works so well because I tried all of those other approaches, perhaps not. No one can tell for certain what might have happened in a parallel universe.

Why golf is difficult.

The ball is a mere 1.68 inches in diameter. Any impact above the equator -- the horizontal midline -- of the ball is a miss, so the whole target is 0.84 inches. Subtract about 1/8 inch for the little depression in the fairway that the ball has nestled into, and we're down to 0.58 inches. Another eight of an inch for the grass, and we're at 0.42 inches.

Even on an easy swing with a wedge, the clubhead is traveling at about 50 mph. Imagine trying to drive a car going 50 mph through an opening with 0.22 inches on each side. Not an exact analogy, but that should give you an idea.

Damn tough game.

Tradeoffs

Robert Heinlein made up the word TJANSTAAFL...there just ain't no such thing as a free lunch.

Anyone who things you can hit golf shots both longer and straighter because you're using some equipment, or some technique, is just wrong.

No, not just wrong. Stupid as well.

The physics -- not the psychophysics -- are immutable as gravity. Increase both power and accuracy? It's like the perpetual motion machine, or the fountain of youth. Nice to contemplate, but not possible in the real world.

My goal on this blog

I've been a lifelong athlete, a golfer for almost 50 years. I'm also a scientific investigator of learning and human performance, and a statistician.

I've renamed this blog in the hope of providing useful, and unusual, information on how anyone, at any level, can increase his enjoyment of the game.