Category: Golf

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

After last week’s blog about the wrists and what the PGA pros do to manipulate the club head, let’s just say we have only just begun. This week I am going to discuss the half way back position. That is the terminology I am going to use for when the club head is parallel to the ground, half way back. Nobody allowed the club to get to an open position at this point in the swing, even though there were 15 players out of 61 that got the club face open at the top of the swing. To review, there were 21 players that were square half way back, 17 were slightly shut, and 23 that were shut. So what conclusions can be drawn.

Obviously, whether it be consciously or unconsciously, no player wants to fan the club open early in the swing.  My thinking is that by opening the club face early in the swing, it  would have a tendency to make the swing really on the flat side. You would get a lot of forearm rotation early in the golf swing, which apparently is not a good thing.

I think some of the shut face positions are due to a natural tendency to want the club face to continue to look at the target line for as long as possible. I see a lot of beginning golfers get in this position half way back.

There were only 12 players or about 20%, who were both square half way back and at the top of there swings. This to me would be the ideal way to swing and I am sure would be the way most instructors would try to teach. Eighty per cent have some variation on the square and square method. You have to wonder how much of this is consciously done or is this something that players work on and just can not seem to correct. Surely they know that they do this with all the video they watch of their swings.

Within this 80% group, there has to be a lot going on to make some of the moves they make from the half way back position to the top of the swing. So lets look at the three that make the biggest moves, that is going from the shut position half way back to open at the top. There were 3 players  Ray Floyd, Colin Montgomery, and Jack Nicklaus who did this and I mentioned last week that Ben Hogan went from slightly shut to wide open. All four had pretty distinct swings with Floyd’s being the most unorthodox. Again it’s pretty hard to draw any conclusions from those 4 players about why their hands and wrists worked the way they did.

In conclusion, the lesson to be learned here is don’t start opening the club face until you get at least past the half way back part of the backswing. That is even if you want to open the club face at the top but that will be discussed in later blogs as we get to the top of the swing and bring it back to the ball. Heading to San Diego to see the grand kids for Christmas, so it will probably be about 2 weeks before I continue the wrist study.

 

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

Today’s blog is inspired by the blog, All About Golf by Brian Penn. It was a post about whether or not to start the swing with an early wrist break, or go with the more traditional one piece takeaway. The post also contained a video by Nick Faldo, showing an early wrist break drill or precocking the  wrists and then starting the golf swing. This set the wrists in a square position and maintained them in the square position throughout the swing. My comment at the time was that I thought the wrists were the most misunderstood part of the golf swing. I did a blog a few years back on wrist cock and came to the conclusion that they are going to do what they are going to do and not even think about them. Well, after studying 61 golf swings from all era’s I found many surprises when it comes to what the wrists do in the golf swing. I studied two places during the back swing when it came to the position of the clubhead. One was when the club shaft is parallel to the ground and the second at the top of the swing. I always believed, that  whatever  position  the club head was in, parallel to ground, that it would be in the same position at the top of the swing, but this was simply not true. But before we get to the raw data, we must discuss how the wrists function and move. Even this has some debate about it.

The wrist is capable of the three sets of distinct movements. Flexion and extension, supination and pronation, ulnar deviation and radial deviation. Supination is described as turning the palm upward and pronation is turning the palm toward the ground. However you can not do this without turning the forearm. The debate is whether the forearm turns the wrist or does the wrist turn the forearm. It really does not matter but it makes Hogan’s term about supinating the wrists at impact incorrect. What Hogan should have written is that the wrist should be flexed at impact. Even though the wrist is capable of 6 distinct movements only 4 of them are totally independent of any other part of the arm.

Studying 61 tour players swings, men and women, here is what they did at the two positions of the swing. First when the club was parallel to ground, 21 players had the club head square, 17 slightly shut or closed, and 23 had the club face shut. Nobody had the club open parallel to the ground. At the top of the swing I judged the club to be square, open or closed. I did not try to break it down any further because it was just too difficult. There is a video of what is called “the model golfer” who is making the perfect swing. He looks like a Star Wars character, without the helmet.   His position half way back and at the top of the swing   is square, and I used this in my comparison of how players had the position of their club face at the top of the swing. Of the 21 players that had a square club face  parallel to the ground , 12 were still square, 7 were open, and 2 were shut faced at the top. Of the 17 players who were slightly shut faced at the parallel position, 9 were square, 5 were open, and 3 were shut at the top. Of the 23 players who were shut faced  at the parallel position, 10 got back to square, 3 moved to  open and 10 remained shut at the top of the swing.  Here is what I consider to be the big surprises.

I fully expected Ben Hogan to be open at the parallel position because he is so open at the top. In fact he is by far the most open at the top of any golfer, with that toe of the club pointing right to ground. However at the parallel to ground position he is slightly closed or shut faced. He goes from that position and gets it wide open at the top. No wonder he had to practice so much.

Tiger Woods. Tiger has had 5 different golf swings. His 97 Masters swing, the 2002 Butch Harmon swing, the 2007 Hank Haney swing, the 2013 Sean Foley swing, and his current swing and I don’t know who the hell his coach is now. I have to have a little levity, this is a long freaking blog. Despite all these coach and so called swing changes Tigers club position at parallel to the ground and at the top has always been the same, slightly shut to square. One swing I watched from 2015 he may have been square at the half way back position. Essentially, no coach really changed the position of Tiger’s club face during the course of his swing despite other swing changes.

There is no rhyme or reason as to who does what. There are hookers who are at any of the 9 positions and there are faders  of the golf ball who represent any of the 9 positions.

Jack Nicklaus and Luke Donald had swings that were from instructional videos. On their instructional video they were both square and square. However on videos when they were in the heat of competition Nicklaus would be shut to open and Donald would be slightly shut to square at the top. Draw your own conclusions

I was surprised by how many shut faced golfers there were. Two of most shut faced at the top were Lexi Thompson and Dustin Johnson. These golfers have had great success on their respective tours and I am sure that their swing coaches know that they are this closed at the top. You have to wonder why they don’t try to go to a more square to square method. Would it mess them up that much and if the answer is yes, then a better question would be why.

I have a feeling that I have just scratched the surface on what  the wrists really do during the golf swing, and why do the great players lets theirs wrists go all over the place. We all can’t turn like Ricky Fowler or Rory, but it seems simple enough to be able to keep the club face square throughout the swing. However, is this really important or necessary for good ball striking. At this point I am not drawing any conclusions on what I have been seeing on wrist action and the golf swing. The only conclusion I have drawn so far is  that nobody truly understands what role the wrists should play in the golf swing. In future blogs I will look at some swings specifically and who falls into each grouping. One thing for sure, when you see a slow motion analysis of a swing, don’t pay attention to Peter Kostis, when he is talking about spine angle or how quiet a player’s legs are. Watch that club face at those two key postitons of the back swing. Too be  continued, I am tired.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

While there is still some golf left to be played in the Burgh, my game continues to flounder in the fall. This week, I am going to write about something I read in another blog, about how hard to hit putts. The Grateful Golfer asked the question, do you play your putts to die at the hole, or do you try to hit them 8 inches past the hole. Most of the respondents replied, that they play their putts to die at the hole. The Grateful Golfer also mentioned the Pelz philosophy of putting the ball 17 inches past the hole, which according to Pelz’s data, gives the ball the best chance of going in. I have a little different take on how you should think about the speed of the putt. I feel it depends on the length of the putt. I break my putts down into three arbitrary lengths, and have a different thought process on each putt.

Let’s start with putts over thirty feet, or approximately 10 steps. First of all, I try to make every putt. I am not an advocate of trying to get the putt within a 3 foot circle. I believe in the small target theory. Even though I am trying to make the putt, this is when I am trying to die the ball at the cup. I know my chances of making such putts are slim, so trying to die the ball at the cup gives me the best chance of not 3 putting, and a few will find the promise land in the bottom of the cup.

On putts that are between five and thirty feet, is where I adopt the Pelz philosophy, of getting the ball 17 inches past the hole. These putts have a greater chance of going in at that speed, and you want to make every effort to give them the best chance of going in.

Then there are the putts that are 5 feet and under. This is where I try to take a more aggressive attitude and get the ball to go in with a little more speed. The ball will usually hit the back of the cup. Here is a good drill to get the experience of doing this on the golf course. On the putting green start with a 3 foot putt that is fairly straight. Have 2 balls, one you are putting and the other one just about 3 inches directly across from the other ball the same distance. With the first ball make the putt with a nice speed going into the hole. You don’t want it going so fast that it hits the back of the cup and pops up in the air but you want to feel it dove in the cup or  hit the back of the cup. Then step up to the second ball and try to hit the putt with the same speed, but miss the cup on purpose to see how far this putt goes past the hole. You will probably be surprised how far this putt goes past the hole. Most likely it will be 2 to 2 and 1/2 feet. Then try to make the putt coming back. This will better prepare you  for the consequences of missing a short putt with an aggressive speed. Then do the drill with short breaking putts and at various distances under 5 feet.  With this aggressive attitude you should make a lot more of those little knee knockers.

These distances are certainly arbitrary and you can set up you own distances for each of the three philosophies. Certainly those philosophies will change on extremely down hill putts. By adopting a speed philosophy based on the length of the putts, should result in better putting stats.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Searching for the Answer

It’s been about six weeks since the last blog and the season is winding down. The year has been disappointing but I hope a very useful learning experience. My handicap rose from 3.6 in the spring to  5.2 with the handicapping season officially over on October 31st. My play was erratic all year and my tournament play with some brief exceptions, horrendous. The blog is back to the title of searching for the answer, instead of trying to execute the answer. Fortunately or unfortunately I did not execute the author either. So, what happened?

This time last year I thought I had found the answer, which was finding your that day golf swing. It was to approach each round with an open mind and try to feel your golf swing, and let your ball flight patterns dictate how you would swing for that day. Another way I put it was to abandoned that swing thought before it abandoned you. In the beginning this seemed to work out well and I thought I was really on to something for the 428th time. But as the year went on things began to go in the wrong direction. The way I was trying to compensate did not work as well on some golf courses and really did not work for tournament pressure. I wrote last spring that I thought the best way to get in the groove on the day that you played was to do opposite of the bad shot, rather than trying to allow for the bad shot. In other words if your first tee shot of the day was a high right shot, rather than aiming more left and trying to play that shot, I felt it would be better to aim right and draw the ball which would correct the problem of the first swing. There is not enough space in this blog to write about why this did not work, but it had to do many times with the way certain courses are designed and really trying to play a shot that was not the right shot for the situation. Needless to say this year went by too fast and did not go the way I envisioned it. I did manage to play 100+ rounds for the fourth consecutive year and I am still counting as there is still a little golf season left in the Burgh.

So the quest will go on, with a little different strategy. Now we all know that great ball striking does not always mean great scoring. Without great ball striking, however, you will not have great scoring. Yes, with a great short game and putting, you can always salvage a round where you are not hitting the ball very well, and maybe even pull out a round close to par. But that is still not great scoring.  The way to go about getting consistent ball striking every time you play  will be a major goal, in the coming year. It will boil down to finding a way to control your body and using particular muscles to control the way the golf swing is performed. I will discuss this hopefully with some positive answers in future blogs.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

The blog is back and it is coming from sunny and warm San Diego. I am taking a much needed break from golf and really enjoying those three grand kids. Needless to say this has been a very disappointing golf year, which has seen my golf game go all over the place, and trying to execute the answer has proved fruitless. The golf year has essentially zoomed by, and it is hard to believe it is October 1. I did have another even par round since the last blog and my performance in the South Park senior championship was not to bad.  I finished tied for third, only one shot from the lead in my age group, and finished about 10th in a field of 55, shooting a 4 over 76. Other than that, my play has been mediocre at best, and my tournament play has been horrendous. My handicap has bounced around like in no other year. I started at a 3.5 index and slowly but steadily climbed to a 5.4 and then got back to 3.6 but then in just 30 days jumped back up to my current 4.6. Did I learn anything during this depressing journey? Well I hope so and I did surprise myself in one area.

Let’s discuss the surprise first. I felt going into this season that I would be able to execute the answer and had very high hopes with some very good scores at the end of last season. I felt if I was not executing the answer by mid season, around June or July, that I would be ready to hang them up, or at least play only at a recreational level. Well a couple of things happened that changed my mind. One of them was the old age game. That my problems were age related, was one of the traps I was beginning to fall into. So in order to disprove that, I must go on. When things don’t go well, it is an easy thing to fall prey to. I don’t see any decline in my game that I can attribute to age. My distance is still the same and I putt the same, streaky. I am as dumb as I have always been on the golf course, so that hasn’t changed.   It was also something I learned or think I learned, that may be the main reason that I am going on, at least for another year.

One of my edicts in golf is that 85% of all bad shots are caused  before you take your swing. In other words the swing is not the thing. It is problems at the address position, which I have discussed in the past, that leads to bad swings and thus bad shots. Now I am revising that to 95% for anyone with a single digit handicap. For as much as we stress and stew over our swings, its what you do before you start your swing that leads to disaster. I have also read about how the body is suppose to move, which as led me to believe that many of the fundamentals of the address position in golf are wrong. As I embark on this new way to stand up to a golf ball, only time will tell if I am just seeing another flock of birds. I will be in San Diego until October 6th, and then it will be  back to trying to find and execute the answer to this goofy game. In the Burgh, if we are lucky, the golf season should last until right around Thanksgiving. I have played 93 rounds this year, so I should make the 100 round mark for the 4th consecutive year. I will only be blogging when the spirit moves me or if my address position theories look like they have some merit. Keep plugging away.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

It’s been two weeks since the last blog, with the first week being a week of grand kid fun. There was the celebration of my daughter’s birthday who happens to be born on 7-7-77. I should remember that even in my old senile days. One of the days we all went bowling and that was an interesting experience. I haven’t bowled in about 25 years or more and bowling uses an entirely different set of muscles. I had a hard time finding a ball that would fit my thumb. Now, I don’t have that unusual  size of thumb but even with a 16 pound ball there were some thumb holes that were too small. I had to use one that was too big and in trying to hold on to the ball I got a cramp in my hand that lasted 3 days. It was a good thing golf was on the back burner for awhile, because I don’t think I could have played anyway. Then, the two older grand kids six and eight stayed overnight and I got introduced to mindcraft a game that they love, and I still really don’t know what the hell is going on. I will be going to San Diego at the end of September and you better believe I will figure it out. It was a great 8 day visit.

This week it was back to golf, where my slow but sure comeback is continuing. The rounds this week were 77, 75, 76, 80, and 76. The 80 was yesterday at Fort Cherry where par is 70 and it was by far the worse round of the week.   This round was caused more by poor thinking and some off putting, but the ball striking was not much worse than in the better rounds. My 76 today was again marred by some bad thinking as I had 4 birdies, but 2 double bogies kind of crushed the possibility of this being a really good round. I am back to the shoulder control swing with some modification, and this re-learning of this swing has delayed progress on finding your that day golf game or swing. I have had my best putting stretch in a long time and that does help the score to say the least. As the physical side of my game gets more comfortable I expect to apply this to helping me find my “that day golf swing. I felt I had to get back to something, as bad as I was playing and scoring. The last two weeks have felt that I am back on track. The weather here in Pittsburgh has not helped much either, as this has been one of the wettest summers on record and the golf courses are paying the price. It has been a challenge to keep the courses playable. I have one more week of regular golf and then I will be hitting the tournament trail in full force. Beginning in August and to the end of September I will be playing in about 10 tournaments. So the answer will be executed or it will be my golf game that will go to a watery grave.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

A little better news to report this week concerning the golf game. After many weeks of el stinko golf I played the last 12 holes of the week even par. It was solid golf with 8 pars 2 birdies and 2 bogies.  Have I found something? Who knows. It may be that I brought all the things I have been talking about over the last 5 years together to shoot a decent stretch of holes. Or this may be just one of those goofy stretch of holes that anybody mired in a slump has once in awhile. This week I would like to discuss a couple aspects of golf that I just find interesting and wonder how if any it affects our own golf games.

The highest level of golf, the PGA tour, always makes golfers at all levels wonder how the pros are able to shoot such great numbers. Now what I am about to write about, does not mean that I think that this is  the only reason that the pros shoot such good numbers but I wonder what would happen if they were made to do just one thing. HIT THE DAMN SHOT. For every shot, there is a big discussion between the player and the caddy. There are numerous practice swings and even more thought and swings, for shots around the greens. Then when they get on the green, they read putts from behind, the side and in front of the ball. I would like to see a tournament that had a shot clock. It would be 45 seconds for every full shots and long pitches. Thirty seconds for shots around the green and putts. The clock would start as soon as the bag came off the caddy’s shoulder for longer shots and as soon as the ball was placed in front of the mark for putts.  Despite all the call for speedy play in golf, do you think if the low handicapper took this much time to figure out each shot and putt would his game improve. By the same token, if the pros were made to speed up via a shot clock would their scores go up. I  really don’t have any opinion on the answer, but I would love to see that PGA event with the shot clock to see what would happen.

Then there is the swing thought. The swing thought has been around for 100 years. Bobby Jones writes about in his books on Golf written in the 1930’s. My point is, golfers have made no progress on the swing thought in 85 years. It is something that is just excepted in golf. Your find some kind of swing thought. It may range from starting back low and slow, slow the transition, shift the weight to left side, to make a full back swing. There are too many to mention, including address position adjustments. The one thing that all these swing thoughts have in common is that eventually they do not work. We as golfers, just accept this, as that’s just the way golf is. Part of my trying to execute the answer mantra, is to abandon that swing thought before it abandons you. But why does this happen? Is it because this swing thought even though it helps us temporarily, causes another fault in the golf swing. There are many golf mental guru’s who advocate no swing thought. Maybe they are right but I don’t know. Maybe instead of having a swing thought we should have a swing feel. Maybe the way a swing feels will stay with us and won’t abandon us. I don’t know, we’ll see.

It might be a little bit of time of we’ll seeing, because the grand kids are in town and golf will be on the back burner, but I might be able to squeeze in a couple of rounds. We’ll see.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

Trying to execute the answer has proven to be much more difficult than I anticipated to say the least. The weeks scores continue to be horrible ranging from 76 to a wonderful 89 but I think I may have discovered the folly of my ways.

When I first came up with the answer, which is finding your “that day golf swing” as quickly as possible, it was at the end of the golfing season last year. I came up with a method of accomplishing that goal which I discussed in previous blogs. The main principal of that method was to start each round with an open mind about your swing and feed off the results of the shots and make adjustments. Because it was at the end of the golfing season I played most of my golf at Scenic Valley, but it would not have made any difference what golf course I was playing, it was the fact that I was playing the same golf course. Obviously when you play the same golf course the opening tee shot is exactly the same. Once I started this process of trying to execute the answer my scores were very good and ball striking improved dramatically.  One of the few times I did not play well is when I went to Lindenwood and my ball striking was not as good for 8 holes, until I started to draw all my shots and I played the last 10 holes 1 over par. This should have been a tip off right there but I am a slow learner. I did go out to San Diego and shoot a very good round, but its opening tee shot has similar characteristics of the opener at Scenic Valley. Because the opening tee shot was the same all the time, I don’t think I was being as open minded about my golf swing as I thought I was. Now, I don’t think this is even the way to go about finding you “that day golf swing”. The opening tee shot of a round is very important. It’s not to say it is round maker or breaker, but it is important non the less. I have hit great opening tee balls and have had bad rounds, and on the other side of the coin, had a very bad opening drive and shot one of the best rounds of my life. But because of playing the same opening tee shot, I think this led me astray on how to execute the answer. I still feel you should abandon that swing thought before it abandons you, but I think there is a different way to go about doing it.

The way I felt going into this season is, that if I was playing as bad as I am playing right now, I would be getting ready to shut everything down including the blog. I have a little more than half the season to go, and with this new direction to take, I am going to continue to plod along and see what happens. With golf it is easy to see if you are going in the right direction, all you have to do is look at the number.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

It’s been two weeks since the last blog and not to much positive has happened. The golf has been mediocre at best, with score ranging from mid 70’s to the mid 80’s with no end in sight. It appears executing the answer is going to be just as difficult as finding the answer. I am going to discuss one interesting thing that I am doing with some positive results.

In some areas of the country, this is not a concern, but in Western Pennsylvania playing from uneven lies is an every day problem. The basic lies are uphill, downhill, ball below your feet and ball above the feet. The general advice has been to play the slope. If the ball is above your feet you are suppose to aim to the right of the target and allow the ball to draw, right to left. If the ball is below your feet then you are to aim to the left and allow the ball to go from left to right. A  lie that is downhill will go from left to right and an uphill lie will have a tendency to be pulled, so you aim a little right.  Now there are all kinds of address position adjustments that you make for each lie and any instruction book will go through them and many of you already know this. What I have been doing the last two months with some pretty good results is trying to fight the slope. If the ball is below my feet I will aim a little right of the target and try to hit a draw. With the ball above my feet I will aim a little left of the target and hit a fade. The result is a shot that travels pretty straight or does draw or fade a little bit. This move has been particularly effective when the ball is below my feet. The shot flies a little lower but is very straight and carries much farther than the typical way you play a shot that is below your feet. This has also worked well for the ball above your feet trying to hit a fade, and trying to draw the ball off a downhill lie. Where it has been a little less effective is on the uphill lie and trying to hit the fade, but it’s not been bad. So try this, you may like it, remember fight the slope.

Needless to say the last 3 to 4 weeks have been pretty frustrating and discouraging but trying to find your that day golf swing will continue. I have one 36 hole tournament this week and another 18 hole tournament later in the week. I am not brimming with confidence right now but you never know. That’s why I call this game goofy.

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The Goofy Game of Golf Trying to Execute the Answer

Back in the Burgh, and three rounds into a stretch of time where I will be playing a lot of golf. I am not going to comment on these first three rounds and the next blog will be 2 weeks from today at the end of the golf fest. During this time I will be playing in three tournaments. If I am ever going to execute the answer this should be the time.

Do you remember that old Memorex cassette tape commercial where they would ask “Is it live or is it Memorex?” and they would show a famous artist singing or playing and you would have to figure out which one it was. This is similar to when you hit a bad shot on the golf course. Was the bad shot caused by a poor swing, or was it from a pre swing  problem. Even though I feel that 85 to 90% of all bad shots are caused from pre swing problems, how do you know for sure? Lets define pre swing problems. First there is the fundamental address position. You could be misaligned, too far or too close to the ball, or you could have poor posture. At this stage of the game I doubt it would be a grip issue. Then there are other pre shot factors. The lie of the ball, the lay of the land, your club selection, the conditions of the course, the weather, and how the shot fits your eye. The last one is particular important on the tee ball. Now I realize that any of these things, can lead to a bad swing which will result in a bad shot. If all the pre shot elements are right that still does not guarantee that your swing can not lead to a bad shot. So when the shot doesn’t turn out well which one is it? Is there a way to know? I am not too sure, but I do think this is one of the keys in trying to find your “that day golf swing or game”.   Naturally, just playing the odds, when the shot does not come off it is probably something that has happened before you took the club back. I really don’t have the answer to this question quite yet. I think in trying to figure this out will help in managing a round. One final point is that sometimes bad shots should be looked at as just one of those things, that are going to happen and sometimes should just be ignored or forgotten. The next two weeks should be interesting.