Category: Golf

Back into the Sunday groove for the blog and that is about the only thing that is groovin because the golf game is definitely missing a beat. Took it easy on Monday and Tuesday with the weather not great, and gave the back a little more time to heal. Started playing on Wednesday and shot a miserable 83 at Scenic Valley. Saturday did not get much better with an 80 at South Park and today shot 77 at Rolling Acre the boring way with 14 pars and 4 bogies. This week was a fishing expedition and it was trying to get comfortable over the ball. The putting was bad to awful and although I had some short game moments it was not enough to over come bad play.

Some of the low lights were 22 putts on the back nine of Scenic Valley, hitting lots of fat irons at South Park and some awful high right drives at Rolling Acres. When the ball striking goes as it has over the last 2 rounds it is always a little of a mystery to me because over the last 2 years or so that has been the strongest part of my game. No real progress on the mind body connection only to say that it is disconnected. Hoping to get in the full compliment of play this week, and we will see what happens. Everybody goes through periods of play like this but it still does ease the frustration. To me it is the racing mind syndrome. Even though the game is slow and time between shots can take forever, when it come time to hit the ball the mind is just flying. Sometimes it is thinking about things that are not even pertaining to what you are doing on the golf course. When it gets to this point you hit one inch behind a 50 foot putt and it goes 32 feet. Yes, I did that today. Even though Rolling Acre is not the hardest course in the world and it is pretty wide open, I am still amazed that I shot 4 over par. No new ideas on the horizon but hopefully I will have some kind of inspriration right on the golf course this week.

The blog is again two days late, but for a different reason, just real busy, and Masters watching. The good news or should I say the great news is, my back issue is about 98% better and I played under some beautiful conditions on Saturday and Sunday. While the scores were not that great, with a 77 at South Park, and an 81 at Riverview, which did feature nine’s of 44-37, as I played the last 10 holes one over par. I was pretty much pain free the whole round.  Not a lot to report on the mind body connection, as I was just so happy to be back out there, that I think the concentration was not the best. I did do some things, which I will see how they work out this week. The weather has turned nasty again and I may not get out again until Saturday, although tomorrow and Thursday may have some possibilities.

Now I did watch the Masters on Sunday, and I must say that was one of the great driving exibitions that I have ever seen. It goes to show just how powerful a tool of long and STRAIGHT can be. The rest of Bubba’s game was not that great. He putted better on Sunday than he did on Saturday and he made some very clutch putts on the front nine but he certainly did not putt lights out. The driving was spectacular however and that was enough to allow him to cruise home to victory. It was not a particularly exciting Masters but you have to give Bubba his just due, that he played an excellent final round. There is the old saying the Masters doesn’t begin until the back nine on Sunday, but this one was over at the eighth and ninth holes with the four shot swing. Bubbas steady one bogey one birdie back was enough to easily win. Sounds more like a U. S. Open finish than the Masters. The over reaction to Tiger’s record breaking performance has changed  the Masters forever, and I don’t think it is for the good. I am not going to go into any great details but here are two facts the Masters committee did not take into consideration when they changed the course in a panic. Tiger only beat the record by one shot and the second place finisher shot shot 282 who was that long bomb driver Tom Kite. Any golf course needs tweaked once in awhile, but what they did to that course makes sure that Tiger’s record will never be broken, and has turned something that was once very special into just another major.

The blog is two days late and I will explain that later, as this was a wild and wooly week. First to the weeks scores. Mt Lebo 9 35     Fort Cherry  84     Mt Lebo 9 38     South Park 76 Scenic Valley 79. Nothing to write home about, although there was some solid play along the way.

I tried a new putting technique this week, which was a dismal failure. In right handed terms I tried a left hand low split grip and I mean a really split grip. I put my left hand at the bottom of the grip near the steel and my right hand at the top of the club. There were two things that I thought were a positive effect of this grip. First it made your shoulders parallel to your intended line and it allowed you to keep your left arm straight during the stroke. I thought this might me a way for me to putt right handed. To make a long story short, it proved to me that putting is close to 100% mental, which in the long run may prove to be helpful. My putting grip contributed heavily to my wonderful 84 at Fort Cherry.

The search on how to get the mind and the body connected may have made some progress this week. When you try to get the mind to control the body is when you get into big trouble. The best way to get control of the body is to give up control of the body. A little Zen-Buddist philosphy thrown in here and I would love to go in to it more and I will,when I am more up to it.

Ah yes, when I am more up to it, which will explain why the blog is two days late. Around Friday through Saturday for some undetermined reason I began to develope lower right back pain. Now I have never had any serious back issues in the past. I had some lower left back issuues that have flared up three times in 38 years but they were always from something I did and never lasted for more than a week and swinging a golf club never seemed to make it worse. Even this lower right back pain did not seem to effect how I could swing a golf club. In fact my Saturday round at the Park was amazing because it was on a blustery cold day. However, at 12:30 am on Sunday I could not get out of bed for 5 minutes the pain was so great. Despite that I did play golf Sunday and could swing relatively well. In hindsight this was probably a mistake. What was weird is that sleeping made it much worse. I was able to go to work on Monday and had a short day today. You never know how important it is to tie your shoes until you cannot do it. Today with rest and finding a way to sleep on my stomach, I am much better about 40%. I am hoping that I will be able to get on the links this weekend. Hopefully I will have something to write about next week and be back on the Sunday blog.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. Lets hope this video is worth about 450 as I explain one of the basic elements of the shoulder swing. The video is shot in the golf room, where all the brilliant ideas of the last 3 1/2 years have evolved.

As you can see, the shoulder rotation will control the legs in the golf swing. The right shoulder turning down to start the downswing will automatically kick that right knee in toward the ball. Next week I will dissect the arm movement and one other subtle element of the shoulder control  swing.

Last week I wrote about how golf instruction has been more of a reactive profession, rather than a proactive one. It reacts to someones success and tries to incorporate that person’s technique into normal instruction. I used the example of Jack Nicklaus and his ” flying right elbow” at the top of his backswing. Today I am going to discuss things that some great players did that golf instruction has not incorporated in fundamental teaching.

Three of the all time greats Jack Nicklaus, Sam Snead, and Bobby Jones, all had this little quirk, where they turned their head to the right, so essentially they were only looking at the ball with only  their left eye. Despite these players great careers, this has never developed into something that the average player has been told to do. Maybe it should.

Two of the great faders of the golf ball, Lee Trevino and Paul Azinger hit these very controlled and highly successfull left to right shots, while using a very strong grip. Now we know how they did this, by developing swings that held on at the end and did not turn over the wrists. But any instruction book will talk about weakening your grip in order to move the ball from left to right. But maybe their method is easier.

I have mentioned this one before, but the great Hogan, another great fader of the ball,  used a closed stance for all his longer clubs down to the 5 iron.  The only time he squared his stance was for the 5 iron and for the more lofted clubs he began to open his stance. Golf instruction advocates a square stance, and to fade the ball, an open stance for all clubs.   The closed stance is recommended for hooking the ball. Maybe not.

All these areas, are things that need to be explored. There are other examples, but it is hard to explain sometimes, why some things are quickly picked up and incorporated in the teaching of golf, while other things are ignored or thought for some reason not to be important. Over the next few weeks, I am going to write about my last 2 years of playing, what I think is the most important part of the physical side of the game, and how all this ties in to keeping the mind and the body connected, which will be my main goal of 2014. Lets just hope I don’t lose my mind in process. 

With winter blazing away here in the Burgh, I am going to discuss golf instruction today, and what I see is one of its biggest problems. Has golf instruction been proactive or reactive. In other words has golf instruction come up with new ideas to help people play the game better or does it react to an individual’s succes and incorporate it as a proper way to play the game. Let me give an example when golf teaching reacted to a players success.

As you headed into the golf season of 1962, one of the basic fundementals of the golf swing, was that the right elbow should remain fairly close to your side at the top of the backswing. It was a given, that this was the only way you were going to be a consistant ball striker. In fact, golf instructors would term this.”the flying right elbow fault” and all the problems that it would cause. Then along came Jack Nicklaus and his quote flying left elbow. Many golf gurus felt that Jack’s elbow would keep him from being a truly great player. Even after winning the 1962 U.S. Open in Arnold Palmer’s backyard and the 63 Masters, golf experts would talk about that elbow when he missed the cut at the 63 U.S. Open. Naturally, as Nicklaus’s record became even greater, his flying left elbow now became an asset. The teaching world started saying that by allowing his elbow to get further from his side that this increased Jack’s arc and helped him create so much clubhead speed. The modification from this point on, was that it was all right for a player to let his right elbow get away from his side at the top of the swing, as long as his elbow was pointing to the ground and it returned to his side at the start of the downswing. However, is this something that the average golfer should strive to do? I am not too sure.

Now I am going to switch gears, and talk about who golf instructors don’t want you to emulate. Bob Ford, the well known pro at Oakmont Country Club, the sight of many USGA tournaments, wrote an instructional book, where he writes about the Uncle Charlie syndrome. We have all known Uncle Charlies. This is a player of any age but ususally around middle age or older, who for lack of a better term, does just about everything wrong when trying to hit a golf ball. He will have a poor grip, bad address position, and has a swing that ususally ends up with his left foot coming off the ground and winding up straight across from his right foot. However, Uncle Charley hits the ball pretty well, gets about 230 out of a drive, keeps the ball in play, has a pretty good short game and shoots between 80 and 85  consistantly and even breaks 80 once in awhile. What Mr Ford’s point is, that even though Uncle Charlie can do this, he is an exception and this is not the way to play golf, if you really want to get better.  But what if an “Uncle Charlie” won a tour event or even a major, and went on to a long and successful career on tour.  Now I know this might seem extreme, but would golf instruction find a way to put a good spin on letting your left foot come off the ground at the end of the golf swing. Food for thought. Next week I am going to discuss some subtle things that the great players have done, that for some reason golf instruction seems to ignore.

Today’s blog will be about one of the all time greats Slammin Sammy Snead. If he had won one or two U.S. Opens, he probably would be in the discussion of the all time greatest golfers. Even with the Open blemish Snead is always mentioned in the top 5 or 6. His graceful swing was a thing of beauty and allowed him to win 3 Masters, 3 PGAs and a British Open on his only trip over there. Hogan also won the British on his only trip. It makes you wonder how many majors these two would have had if they had made the trip yearly like everyone does now. Even though Snead’s swing was graceful and powerful he did have some flaws. In the book The Venturi Analysis, here is Ken Venturi’s take on the Snead swing.

On strictly the technical side, Sam’s swing is not as classic as it looks. He sets up with his feet a little closed and the clubhead aiming slightly to the right of his target, then gets the ball onto target by delivering the club to it on a path a little outside than on which he took it back. This is a pull, and you probally know from experience that a pulled ball is a stronger more powerful shot than one hit with clubhead moving from in to out. Sam can make this move without hitting many shots off line to the left because he gets his right shoulder lower at impact than it was at address and because he clears his left hip a little more than ususal. Other golfers who swing this way might look a little jerky, but Sam does it smoothly and almost effortlessly.

Venturi also goes on to write that Snead benefitted from having longer arms than normal and being double jointed. Last week I wrote about how the average golfer will aim right of the target, and then make what I called a violent move over the top, but jerky will do, which results in a pulled shot. What I find interesting is that Venturi says the moves that Snead makes keeps him from missing the shot left. Nothing is ever said that aiming right, even if it is “slightly”, will cause him  to have to do something from missing the shot to the right. Sam Snead in the early sixties wrote 3 instuctional books. In none of those books does he acknowledge that he has that type of swing. He does talk about having a closed stance for the driver, but Hogan did the same thing for a fade with the driver. In fact, in all of Snead’s books he tells the reader that the best shot is the straight shot. When I teach beginners, and I ask them to aim at a target that is only about 50 yards away, about 80% will aim right of the targer, 10% will aim left, and 10% will be right at the target. So whats the point of all this. I am not too sure. I always thought that the reason most people aim right of the target is because they are to the side of the ball and that causes the illusion of aiming at the target. We have all felt the power of the slightly over the top swing and the increase distance it produces. So could aiming a little right of the target be a more natural way to play the game. I don’t know. Did Snead know he was aiming right. In other words did he have a good mind body connection, or was this just the way one of the greatest self taught golfers of all time, just happen to hit the ball.   We’ll never know. Next week I am going to discuss another great one, which will lead us to what I think is the biggest problem in golf instruction today.