Category: Golf

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today’s post will be slightly different, in that I am going to cover three aspects of the golf swing, that have conflicting viewpoints, plus I am going to put in my two cents worth on the subject.  I am going to look at hip turn, shoulder turn, and the backswing, which are so interconnected that it would be difficult to discuss one without getting involved with the other. First, the various viewpoints on each aspect.  You should restrict your hip turn or you should not restrict your hip turn.   You should turn your shoulders at least 90 degrees or you do not have to turn the shoulders 90 degrees.  You should keep your backswing compact and avoid over swinging, or you should make a nice long backswing, which will give you plenty of time to accelerate the club and keep your swing very smooth.

So in order to start the discussion, one has to start out with the famous X factor of Jim Mclean’s, which started this whole mess.  The X factor states that the more you can turn your shoulders, without turning your hips, the farther you will hit the ball, plain and simple.  The standard difference between you hip and shoulder turn is about 50%  You turn your shoulders 90 degrees, your hips should turn about 45 degrees.   According to the X factor,  if you could make that 90 degree shoulder turn with only 35 degree hip turn, then you would increase your distance.  If you can make a greater than 90 degree shoulder turn, with less than 45 degree hip turn you would  hit the ball even further. Is this true? It is absolutely true. Should you swing a golf club like this? Absolutely not is the correct answer. If you want to play golf past your 50th birthday then this is not the way to swing a golf club. Watch Greg Norman’s swing  in the late 80’s and the early to mid nineties. He had minimal hip turn and maximum shoulder turn. Played very little golf after age 45. Same thing can be said about Tiger.This swing is so hard on your body you will see more and more of the modern player fall by the way side.So many of todays players swing this way, that you can bet not many of them will be playing on the senior tour.     It is no coincidence that Phil and V.J. who have larger hip turns have played great golf well past their 45th birthday.

Now let’s move to the shoulders where there is another swing method call the limited shoulder turn golf swing by Don Trahan. This swing is easy on your body and depends more on a vertical lift of the arms with the shoulders probably turning about 70 degrees. I don’t have a lot of problem with the theory here but this swing is harder to time than what Mr Trahan would lead you to believe. It is way too specific in making certain moves in the golf swing. At least this swing won’t put you in traction.

Finally, should your backswing be compact or should it be longer and no worry about “over swinging”.  I think this is a personal preference, but which ever way you decide to go there is one key factor. .If you decide to take a more compact swing then your tempo should be rather quick. If you are going to take a longer backswing then you should have a slower more languid tempo.  A slower short swing and a fast long swing just will not work.

My take on all of  this is very simple.  At the top of the backswing, the top part of your back or shoulder blades if you prefer, should be facing the target. I don’t care how you get there to do it. The thing that makes your swing compact or long is the arms, and how much the wrists cock.  The golf swing is a turn and the only thing that should limit the turn, is your physical capabilities. So if you have to turn those hips to get that back to face the target,  go right ahead. Do you think  Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus did all right with a big hip turn? Next post will be should you start the swing low and slow or is low and slow the worst thing you can do?

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today’s post is about where your weight should be distributed at the address position of the golf swing.  We are not talking about between the right and left foot, but where on the bottom of your feet.  Again, there is more than one theory  in golf instruction. There are three ways that are advocated: 1. The weight should be on the balls of your feet at address. 2. The weight should feel like it is over the arches of the foot or just in front of the ankles. 3. The weight should be on the heels or towards the heels of your feet.  There is only one thing that everyone is in agreement. Your weight should not be on your toes.  One thing that you should be able to do at address is wiggle your toes.  So now look at each one.

The proponents of having your weight on the balls of your feet like to say that this gets you into an athletic position and gets you ready to move and gives  your body a lively feel. This is by far the most popular instruction. The big negative here is that the balls of your feet are not that far away from your toes. This instruction also likes you to shift your weight into the heels to try and prevent you from going on your toes during the swing.  The inside of your right heel on the backswing and the outside of your left heel on the downswing.

Now lets go to having your weight toward the heels at the address position. You hear about this recommendation the least, but none other than Ken Venturi wrote this as one of the  key fundamentals of the address position.  With your weight on the heels, Mr. Venturi felt that this kept you from standing too far away from the ball, and allowed the body to make a turn a lot easier. The biggest negative of having the weight favoring the heels is sometimes keeping your balance during the swing could be a problem. It is by far the least given advice but obviously has it’s advocates.

Finally having your weight over the arches of your feet or just in front of the ankles, is real popular on the golf channel instruction.  This, you could say is the compromise between the first two.  Your arch is farther away from the toes and getting closer to the heels but you don’t put the weight on the heels. The big positive here is that you should have no problem keeping your balance during the swing.  How much this frees your body up to turn is debatable but again shifting your weight into heels during the swing may help that.

Well hear are some rhetorical questions and you can give your own answers or just food for thought.  Do we really need to be in an athletic position to make a golf swing if we really are not moving off the spot where we are starting?  Do the heels really give us enough of a base to make a golf swing?  Can you really feel pressure in your arch to feel that this is where you are putting most of your weight at address? Something to think about and we will cross that bridge later.  Next up hip turn, do you or don’t you.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today’s post is going to discuss ball position. It is a much less complicated part of the golf swing discussion, but none the less, an interesting subject. There are two schools of thought concerning ball position. You should keep the ball in the same place, preferably off the left heel for every club in the bag. None other than Jack Nicklaus is the major advocate of this view. The other viewpoint is the ball should be played off the left heel for the driver, but then the ball should be moved back gradually toward the center of your stance, as the clubs get shorter, with the wedges being played right in the middle of your stance.  There is a third view on ball position, by another all time great, which I will get to at the end of this post.

Here is the interesting part.  Both advocate their position for the same reason. They say that their method of ball position allows you to swing the same for every club in the bag. Instruction  to play all shots off the left heel, says that since the ball is in the same position for every club, your swing does not have to change in order to hit the ball cleanly. Instruction  to move the ball back in your stance as the clubs get shorter, says that this is where your arc of the swing will make contact with ball naturally on a descending blow. This way your swing stays the same, and you catch the ball at the proper point, with out making any adjustments of your swing.  So who is right.  I will let you decide on that one, because that is not the purpose of these posts.

Now for the third view on ball position by the great Bobby Jones. He felt that ball position could be one of the things that you could change on a day to day basis depending on how you were playing. He felt this was one method to try to get back on track if you started out with some poor ball striking.  He felt you should play the ball forward in the stance, opposite the left heel as a general rule, but he would move it forward or back if he opened with a few bad shots and magically his game would return.  He would not move the ball position on any particular pattern of bad shots. It would be an instinctive move forward or backward until he just started hitting the ball better. Another method he used to get the feel back in his game was to choke up and down on the club. He salvaged many a round by playing all shots with his hands just an inch or so about the steel line of the shaft. He would wait until the end of the round to go to the practice range to try find the swing issue. He never tinkered with the swing during the round.

Well, there you have it ball position. Another bevy of information on something that should be so simple but lots of view points.  What’s a golfer to do. Next week will be weight distribution of your feet at address. Now that’s a real good one. When I first listed that one I wrote thank God are feet are not bigger or there might be more than the three opinions on this.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Well, its been about 2 months since the last blog with good reason. My game has completely hit the crapper. I went the entire months of June and July without breaking 80. I am still playing about 3 to 4 times per week and I am in good health physically. Mentally I think I’m OK but death is looking pretty good right now. Just kidding. I finally did break 80 three times so far in August. So whats been the problem. Well a couple of experiments went very bad, obviously and one I stuck with for about 3 to 4 weeks because it looked like it might be worth something and it was worth about 800 dollars in lost bets, and tournament fees. Right now I am going back to a swing that I used from 1986 to 1994 and have had some success but my putting has been really bad. Its like anything else when you hit a period this bad its always something. I am not discouraged and just keep repeating the mantra there’s a reason for everything.

So while I was out there the hacking away, the USGA was making fools of themselves at both the men’s and women’s Open. There’s been plenty written about both events but here is what has to happen in golf, whether it is the PGA tour or major USGA events.  To make my point lets go to other major sports. Let’s look at football, namely the NFL. The New England Patriots are the playing Cincinnati Bengals and lets rev up the stakes a little bit and say it is a play off game. About midway through the 1st quarter the New England player returns a punt 75 yards for a touchdown down the sidelines. Because of camera angles and players bodies, even on instant replay the player looks like he stays in bounds, and the touchdown stands. New England kicks the extra point and kicks off to the Bengals for a touch back. Cincinnati runs one play gains 3 yards. Now all of a sudden it is brought to the attention of the TV booth that a side line camera man has a still shot which shows that the runner on the punt return barely hits the out of bounds line at the 20 yard line. There is a brief time out and the referee makes the announcement of what just happened and declares that the touchdown and extra point will be taken away from New England and the game will continue with the Bengals 2nd and 7 on the 23 and the score 0-0. Now as ludicrous as this sounds this is exactly what happens in golf time after time and this is what has to change. At the very least golf has to assess any penalty before the players start the next hole. This idea of golf trying to go back in time and undo grievous mistakes is ridiculous and really makes the game  worse not better. The way they informed the players of the rules infraction at the Women’s Open, you could argue that the USGA put the fix in to make sure that Lang won the event. You don’t know what was going through her mind at time when she thought she was tied for lead. She may have been feeling fatigued and may have tried a riskier shot to make birdie to end it right there. If Nordqvist had known she was 2 shots down at the 18th tee box she would have hit the riskier driver off the tee to try and reach the green in two. Inadvertent rules infractions happen all the time in golf. Do I think Anna Nordqvist should have been penalized for barely touching that grain of sand, absolutely. But she should have been penalized before she stroked her putt on 17 or not at all. Until the ruling bodies of golf realize that golf is played by human beings, and mistakes happen that should not be corrected 15 minutes to 24 hours after they happen, the game will always be tainted.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Well, its been two months since the last time I have blogged about my game. I have been playing the same amount as usual, about 3 to 4 times a week. Since the first of April I have played 26 rounds, with some 9 hole rounds thrown in. The golf, overall, has been mediocre at best and sometimes pretty horrible. I have had about the same number of rounds in the 80’s and 70’s. At least no more rounds in the 90’s although one was close, 89. My four tournament rounds have all been in the 80’s with one birdie in 72 holes.  Naturally, I have been trying all sorts of things to bring me out of this funk, that I have been in, since the middle of March. I have had just enough good rounds, one 74 and two 76’s, with a couple of 77’s and 78’s thrown in, to keep my handicap in the mid 5’s. The new rule about not counting rounds when you play alone is also helping. So with heading into the summer months here is what I think may bring back.

If there is one thing I have learned through this down time is that the swing is not the problem. That can be said about any golfer with a single digit handicap, and any pro tour golfer. The proof of this is the current analysis of Jordan Spieth’s golf swing. Spieth has had some 4th round issues since his infamous Masters collapse. Naturally, this has led Spieth to be on the slow motion camera more than any golfer in history. Watch his right knee, watch his left knee, watch his follow through, and blah blah blah. This past week Spieth wins the Colonial. Now let me ask you something. Did he really hit the ball any better in this 4th round than the 4th rounds where he did not close the deal? HELL NO. What he did do of course, is putt better than humanly possible for the last 10 holes, plus a chip in. How much do you think that had to do with his right knee or left knee. ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

Here is the final conclusion. One of my mantras even 6 years ago has been that 85% of all bad shots are caused before you start the swing. I revised that just last year to 90%. Now I can say with certainty that it is 100%. I am talking here about golfers with single digit handicaps. There are some swing fundamentals, of course. If you are shooting in the 70’s then you have that down pat. There are so many things you can do wrong at address. I will discuss these in future blogs, especially if I am right about this. I can tell you that this is all I will be working on in the next few months. As I always say the numbers never lie, so we will see what happens. Maybe this game is not as goofy as I think.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

THE MASTERS, THE MASTERS, THE MASTERS, the talk of the town after the great Spieth collapse. After reading a cajillion articles about the subject, I still feel there were some things that were missed, and/or not emphasized enough in the reporting of the event and the aftermath.

First the event. I think the key spot, which led to the 12th hole debacle is what happened on the 11th hole and immediately afterward. After bogeying the 10th, he hits his drive in the trees, hits a smart recovery shot and then an absolutely brilliant wedge about 8 feet to a very dangerous pin. This is the type of putt he had been making the whole tournament to save many a par. He missed this one. Now walking to the 12th tee, I think he had to feel he still had a 3 shot lead at the worst. The big scoreboard right behind the 12th tee showed his lead had suddenly and I do mean suddenly been cut to 2 shots, when not to long ago he had a 5 shot lead. All of a sudden it was a golf tournament again and I think this threw him off just enough to butcher the 12th hole.

Second the SHOCK. Everybody expressed shock and disbelief. If we were paying attention should we have been that stunned. When Jordan Spieth walked off the 9th green on Sunday did I think he would win the Masters, absolutely, but I added, I bet he will make it interesting. Well, he made it a lot more than interesting, he lost the tournament. Why did I think he would make it interesting. He did the same thing on Friday and Saturday. Twice he could have taken this tournament by the throat and each time stumbled down the stretch. If he would have parred the last three holes on Friday and Saturday, he would have had anywhere from a 6 to 8 shot lead going into Sunday, and it would not have made any difference, if he had hit it in the water on 12 His double bogey on 18 on Saturday was particularly UG-UG-UGLY.

Third will he be able to recover from this collapse. Most people feel that he will come back and win as much, just as if he had won the Masters. They write about he’s young, he’s mentally tough and he’s a great player period. I think it’s a flip of the coin and it may not even be that good if two things don’t change. The first one is just a mental thing. He has got to get out of this we mode.   It sounds gracious when you win but when you lose it sounds a little weird. What was more disturbing was when he said that we will prove that we can close the deal on a tournament. What are you talking about? You have already shown you can do that. Two major wins last year and numerous other victories. It would have been more appropriate to say I had a bad day and I will learn from it. Your the boss man. There is one thing that Jordan Spieth will have to change about his game. He doesn’t get much flak about this from the media and Faldo touched upon ever so briefly, but the bottom line is this, Jordan Spieth is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW, OH SO SLOOOOOOOW. On Friday his group got put on the clock and despite the fact that Rory was hitting shots almost before Spieth’s ball stopped rolling on Saturday,  walking off the 17th tee they were the only group on the course. From taking forever to make some decisions and backing off short putts one two or even three times you wonder how long his nerves will last. Lets face it, every time he makes a 3 footer, it’s like he’s making it 2 or 3 times. Let’s hope he does come back, because Jordan Spieth is great for the game of golf, but some re-evaluation is in order.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Well, it’s been 25 days since the last blog, and a lot has happened. I have been able to play 8 rounds of golf, which makes 11 for the year. This is the most I have been able to play, this early in the season. Now, here are the scores, and hold on to your hats. 76, 90, 92, 94, 90, 85, 78. Yes, that’s right 4 straight rounds in the 90’s. I haven’t had a stretch like that since I was probably 13 yrs. old. Now, some of this was due to experimentation, but I have done this before, and never saw scores like this. The first 90 score even had 2 birdies. These scores could not be blamed on the weather. The conditions weren’t perfect but they weren’t that bad. The scores can not be blamed on early season rust. You can see, I shot a 76 which featured a one under 35 on the back nine. As usual there was something to be learned and there were some interesting facts from these horrific rounds.

The first thing was my over all reaction to these rounds. I did not fret or worry about them at all. You might think that this is real easy to do because it is early in the season. Let’s  see how you react, if you did this in June or July. But this is four straight rounds in the NINETIES. Two of the rounds were partially due to some horrendous putting of 40 putts each. It made me aware of how easy this can happen and how a prolonged slump can be just around the corner.

I don’t know if I really needed to be made more aware of this, but it really brought home the fact that it’s not where your good shots wind up but it’s where your bad ones go. During this 4 round stretch I hit a lot of quality shots, but I hit a lot of horrible shots, that ended up in hazards and entirely off the golf course. The quality shots caused some swing experiments to last longer than they should have.

Because of this bad stretch, I found a major swing flaw that I had, and I mean major. I will discuss this in a future blog, but let’s just say for now it started my small comeback in the last 2 rounds. The 78 was highlighted by quite a bizarre finish. The last 6 holes went like this: Birdie, Double Bogey, Birdie, Double Bogey, Par, and a 30 yard pitch in for an Eagle.

Lastly I would like to write about two golf related items. Naturally the Masters is coming up and I am anxious to watch it as much as anybody else. Do I think I know who is going to win? Hell no. My bold prediction is this. The scores will be high. Any time the Masters scoring record is threatened they set the course up to be impossible the next year. Just look it up. I don’t think this will be an exception. So expect another U. S. Open kind of Masters and I think that is a damn shame. Do I think the best golfer in the world will win the Masters. NO. WHY. Because the best golfer in the world won’t even be playing in the Masters, Lydia Ko. Chew on that for awhile.

 

 

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today I am going to discuss the other two things that I thought had real potential to help one’s golf game, but turned out to be, just dust in the wind. The first one was the mind body connection. It was initiated by the old argument of how much is this game mental, and how much is it physical. My contention is that it is a 50-50 split, but there is a definite disconnect between the mind and the body in many instances, which will cause bad shots, or poor results. I discussed these instances about two years ago and I am not going to write about them today but the goal was to find a  way to keep the mind and the body connected. It was a fruitless effort, but one that I still think maybe worth pursuing. Then last year I tried to find what I called, your that day golf swing. In fact, I thought this was the answer. It went something like this. You should go into each round with an open mind, and not be influenced by what went well in the last round. I even had a cute little saying, “abandon that swing thought before it abandons you. Needless to say this was not the answer for various reasons that are not worth going into.

So that was the past and I am ready to move on from those acid trips,  as I head into the new golf year. What am I going to do now? Well, as usual I have some ideas. One of my many mantras has been 85% of all bad shots are caused by things you do before you swing. At the end of last year I amended that to 95%.  I am going to try to prove that theory. I am going to do some unique and different things at address that go against some traditional golf teaching but is much more aligned with the way the body is supposed to move. I am going to continue to take a hard look at how the wrists function during the golf swing.  I am beginning to feel that this is a big key on good solid ball striking. I have already played four 18 hole rounds, and three 9 hole rounds this year, and so far have made no progress on the above. I have been fine tuning some things, that may prove to productive.  As this year progresses the better I do, will mean that progress is being made and there will be more blogs. That is one thing about golf the numbers never lie.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today I am going to discuss some of the things I have tried over the last five and a half years of writing this blog, which I hoped would make this game easier to play. There were three, that I named, the shoulder control swing, the mind body connection, and finding your that day golf swing, which I thought was the answer. Over the next 3 weeks as golf season get’s closer and closer I will  discuss each one, and where I went wrong.

First, the shoulder control golf swing, that I introduced in January of 2013. I even did two videos on the subject in March of 2014. The shoulder control swing is exactly what it says, in that the turning of the shoulders can control all aspects of the golf swing. By folding your arms across your chest, and making a golf swing, your legs will move perfectly, and of course with your arms folded across your chest, they are have nothing to do with your swing. I played with this swing for almost 2 years and had some really good success. I shot one of my best rounds, during the time of the blog, and struck the ball quite well. I had some problems trying to adapt this method to my short game and putting. I struck the ball well, but I did have problems trying to work the ball with this method, particularly trying to hit a draw. It was during the 2014 golf season that I began to abandon this method, although I would go back to it for brief times, even in the 2015 season. So what was the problem? It was those damn arms. Here is one of the simplest, and yet one of the  most frustrating keys to the golf swing. On the downswing, the belly button has to pass the golf ball before the arms. Do this and you will hit a quality golf. Here is where I made the mistake. Turning the shoulders does actually control the leg action. When you make a correct shoulder turn on the backswing and downswing the legs have to move in the correct way. They literally have no choice. When you release the arms from across your chest and place you hands on the golf club, the shoulders no longer can control those pesky arms. You have to make a conscious decision to do so. Bobby Jones said it best when discussing putting and keeping your body still. Trying to keep your body perfectly still, can create too much tension in the stroke, so he advocated relaxation, and if the body moved a little bit so be it. By TRYING to keep the arms out of the swing, and mostly being unsuccessful anyway, just became too much of a distraction.  The shoulder control swing is a great teaching aid and drill on how a golf swing should really feel, when the arms are not involved.

I played the first round of the year about 12 days ago at Scenic Valley, and if I was even having the slightest doubt that this was a goofy game, the first round of the year ended all of that. The first drive of year was a low right liner that went about 180 yard that left me no shot to the green so I laid up to the right about 20 yards short of the green. I hit a great pitch to about 3 feet and made the putt, par. The next hole I hit an ok drive, hit wedge in about 12 feet below the hole and made the putt, birdie. The third hole an uphill par 5 I hit a fair drive, a 2 iron over the water, and another wedge in about 15 feet and made that putt, birdie. Now I have played Scenic Valley a lot over the last 10 years and I have never been 2 under par after 3 holes and here I was 2 under on the very first round of the year in February with temps in the low 40’s. Needless to say I got back to reality in a hurry with a double bogey on the next hole, and did manage to scrape it around to break 80 with a 78. Had not hit a ball in 2 months and birdie 2 of the first three holes. Goofy, you got that right.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

The blog is back after about 3 weeks and today we are going to take the wrists from the top of the swing to impact. I did not try to get into gray areas when it came to the position at the top. I judged the player to be open, square or closed. I would not argue that some players that I called open or closed, somebody else may say they were square. The two extreme positions of open and closed at the top are club face pointing to the sky when closed and the toe pointing to ground when extremely opened.  The model golfer swing is square throughout and that is what I used for a comparison.

Of the 61 swings I looked at, there were 31 that were square, 15 that were open, and 15 that were closed at the top of the swing. If the players maintained that position all the way through impact then the players that were open and closed would wind up hitting big right to right slices or big pull hooks. Obviously this is not what pros do. There is manipulation of the club head to produce a good shot. The players that are closed at the top have to rotate the toe of the club in a clockwise direction to begin to square the club head. The opposite is true of the open at top. They need to rotate the club head in a counter clockwise direction in order to square the club head. You can open the club more  than you can close the club at the top of the swing, so there can be even more manipulation club head from the open position. These are the elements of what the wrists are doing during the golf swings of professional golfers. I will go into specific examples in future blogs. I haven’t drawn any conclusions because I haven’t been able to take much of this to the golf course, because of the holidays and I have been felled by a mild cold. Even though the weather has not been too bad, when you get to my age you don’t take any chances with the weather, when you are feeling a little under the weather.

Speaking of the holidays, which were great, I must relate two stories. First I was in San Diego for one week, from Dec. 22 to the 29. With the exception of one day, it was warmer in Pittsburgh, than in San Diego.  That may never happen again.  My grand kids got the X box for Christmas. One of games they got was the PGA tour one with Rory on the front. That’s the answer to golf, just put the game on the easy mode and you will be shooting in the 50’s for 18 holes  every time. My 6 year old grand son hit ball extremely well. The game can be set up for a Tour event. Here is what he liked to do. Even though he could hit the ball well, his favorite thing to do was to hit the ball on purpose into the crowd. On the game this would send people ducking and the ball would hit people in various places. He would get the biggest kick out of this and just laugh and laugh. A new perspective in golf. In future blogs I will be looking at some individuals players and try to make sense out of those very interesting wrists.