Category: Golf

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Golf: The Putting Grips Of The Pros

Putting is by far the most individual aspect of the game of golf. There is more written about putting than any other aspect of the game. Despite the fact there are people that keep insisting that greens in regulation is the most important stat in the game, because they want ball striking to be more important, it really is putting. If Colin Morikawa had putted well in the fourth round of the first two majors he would have won both of them. He definitely struck the ball better than the law firm of Schauffele and Scheffler. How do the people that make a living at this game attach themselves to the putter. I divided them into four groups. The normal grip with the right hand below the left and any variation. The self explanatory left hand low grip. The yip fixing claw grip. Finally the long putter, including the one that is braced against the arm. This was far from what I would call a scientific study. I watched golf on Thursday and Friday for about 3 weeks. I included women pros, although most were men. The total number came to 108. What were the results and did I feel I learned anything.

There were 58 pros who used what I would call the conventional putting grip, basic reverse overlap. Thirty two used the left hand low. Nine used the claw grip and 9 used a unique putter. I was surprised by two things. The conventional putting grip is still the preferred method of gripping the putter by a wide margin. I was surprised at how few players use the claw. The most unique grip was by tour player Joe Highsmith. He is left handed and keeps his right hand low and claws, calling it the reverse claw. Even in the short time that I did the survey, there were some players that changed their grip method. What did I learn from this little survey? Not a whole hell of a lot, quite frankly other than something that I already knew. That putting is all in your head. The other thing, which I have advocated in the past, is do not become enslaved to one method of putting. Do it until it stops working but then move on to another method. I have what I feel are about 4 or 5 methods that I use to putt and will change them based on results. None of them involve making a major grip change. Putting is nothing more than confidence and guts.

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Golf: The Top 20 Golfers Of All Time

Anytime you make a list like this there is always going to be disagreement. I tried to make the process as objective as possible, with opinion thrown out the window. The criteria I used was wins and major championships. Winning is not emphasized enough in golf. There have been many golfers over the years that have made very good livings on the PGA touring with winning hardly any tournaments. The golfing media is into top 10 finishes and even scoring average to some degree. I gave a player one point for a win and 5 points for a major championship win. Since this is going all the way back to the 1900’s, the U. S. and British Amateurs are considered majors. I will go into this more as I go through the list but there still had to be some subjectivity when doing the process. Professional wins in some cases had to be weighted somewhat and some not included. I did not include any team events and no senior wins were included. The quality of play is very good, but it is not the quality that is on the regular tour. If it was, these guys would be playing the regular tour, because they would win about two to three times the amount of money. As much as I admire the longevity of players like Bernard Langer and Hale Irwin their senior careers were not included. The two surprises to me that just failed to make it were Lee Trevino, not enough regular wins, and Vijay Singh, not enough majors, both falling one point short of making the top 20. No active player on the PGA tour made it, with Rory coming the closest falling 10 points short. With no further ado, here is the list and since most of the surprises are from the middle on, I am going to go from no. 1 down to 20

No 1. Tiger Woods  95 wins  18 majors  185 points. No surprise here. Tiger’s record speaks for itself. The amazing thing here is that he has 38 European Tour wins to go along with his 3 British Opens which is third all time. He really is a winning machine. What is remarkable he did about 90% of this from 1997 to 2008. It was quite an 11 year stretch.

No. 2 Jack Nicklaus 64 wins  20 majors 164 points. Just not enough worldwide wins for Jack to catch Tiger. No question, major championship record 2nd to none, and with as many 2nd and 3rd place finishes he had, if the emphasis had not been placed on winning so much, he would have probably slipped just ahead of Tiger. Even though it is very hard to win in golf it still in my view the name of the game.

No. 3 Sam Snead  76 wins   7 majors 111 points. No question Tiger and Jack stand alone at the top. The next 5 are going to be separated by only 9 points. Sneads lack of a United States Open Championship is the big flaw in his record but even if he had won, he would not have challenged the top two. Other than the Open, it is clear that Snead knew how to close the deal.

No. 4 Gary Player  60 wins   9 majors  105 points. The first surprise for me on the list. I would not have ranked Gary that high. His worldwide wins put him in that position. Here is where I had to make some decision on the quality of wins and there were some, I gave no points for. The ones that I did give credit to were against good fields. You cannot argue about his record in the majors, he is tied for 5th all time.

No. 5 Ben Hogan  58 wins  9 majors  103 points. Many people rank Hogan 3rd on the all-time list. His horrible auto accident limited his activity. The odd thing about Hogan was his terrible playoff record of 8-12 and 1-3 in the majors. No question 1953 was his great year, playing in only 6 tournaments he won 5 including 3 majors.

No. 6 Walter Hagan  47 wins 11 majors  102 points.   Hagan was a match play king winning 4 PGA championships in a row when it was contested at match play. During much of Hagen’s career there were only 3 professional majors to win per year. Even with less opportunity he finished 4th all time in major championship wins.

No.7 Arnold Palmer 62 wins  7 majors.  102 points. Tied with Hagen but I used majors to break any ties. The king was by far the player that gave golf its first major boost in popularity. Just could not win the PGA and only came close a couple of times losing by one shot to Julius Boros in 1968. His go for broke style which won him many a tournament and was popular, also lost him a couple of majors at least.

No. 8 Peter Thomson  65 wins  5 majors  90 points. By far the biggest surprise on the list. The man who gets no respect. He won 5 British Opens 4 in the 50’s when there was not a lot of American participation. He did win one in 1965 when it was beginning to get a foothold on being a big tournament again, thanks to Palmer. He won eleven times on the Senior Tour so it showed he knew how to play against his peers. He dominated what was known as the Great Britain tour in the 1950’s. It is hard to judge the quality of the competition at that time so I gave him only a half a point for those wins. It was hard to judge this player but one thing is for sure he knew how to win and is a forgotten great champion.

No.9 Bobby Jones 21 wins  13 majors  86 points. The only amateur on the list and the greatest amateur of all time. Another player who did not play in that many tournaments but won most that he played in. He had one of the greatest years in golf when he won the 4 major championships at the time in one-year, 1930.

No. 10 Seve Ballesteros  57 wins  5 majors  82 points. Again another worldwide player who had a magnificent short game. He got the Ryder Cup to go European and turned it into a premier event. He was wild off the tee which contributed to him never winning a U.S. Open. He finished 3rd in 1987. He helped put European golf on the map

No. 11 Greg Norman  69 wins  2 majors  79 points Again another worldwide player getting his just do. Second least number of major wins in the group but contended many times and had two unbelievable losses, the Mize pitch in and the Tway bunker shot. During 86 and the first major of 87 he was tied or in the lead in 5 straight majors after the 3rd round, the only player to ever do it. Then he lost the 6-shot lead to Nick Faldo in the 1996 Masters. What is amazing is that he still managed to finish 2nd even though he shot 78. Of the 44 players who played on Sunday only 11 broke par and just 5 broke 70. Faldo’s 67 was probably one of the best final rounds in major championship history. Normans career will always be thought of as what might have been.

No. 12 Roberto De Vicenzo  74 wins  1 major 79 points. Another surprise on the list. De Vicenzo was another great worldwide player whose wins had to be evaluated. He may have had 2 majors if not for the scorecard mistake at the 1968 Masters which cost him a place in a playoff with Bob Goalby. He was truly a great player and obviously new how to win. He and Norman are the only players with fewer than 3 major wins in the top 20. De Vicenzo had a great senior career which again shows that he could play with his contemporaries.

No. 13 Tom Watson  37 wins  8 majors  77 points. Another on the list that could not win the PGA, but he loved the British Open winning it 5 times. A player, like so many, that ran into putting problems late in his career, or would have won much more. Made the big chip in on 17 at Pebble Beach to keep Nicklaus from winning his 5th U.S. Open in 1982

No. 14 Phil Mickelson  46 wins  6 majors 76 points. It took Phil awhile but once he broke through in the majors he went on a tear. He ended it in 2021 by becoming the oldest to win a major. Like Sam Snead he never could win the U.S. Open but finished 2nd six times. 2006 was the brutal one when he double bogied the last hole to not even get into a playoff. His course management has been questioned the most of anyone on this list. There are many out there that think he would have won much more if had not made so many dumb mistakes.

No. 15 Harry Vardon  41 wins  7 majors  76 points. I put Vardon below Mickelson because there was no question the competition was not as great in the early 1900’s as it was in the 2000’s. Vardon is credited with starting the modern game. He was the dominant player for the first 20 years of the 20th century. Another victim of the bulky putter late in his career.

No. 16 Billy Casper  59 wins  3 majors  74 points. Casper went on a transformation in the mid 1960’s going on a diet that included buffalo meat. He dropped 40 pounds and added two majors, a U.S Open in 1966 which saw him make up a 7 shot deficit on Arnold Palmer, and a green jacket in 1970. He was the best putter of his era with that wristy pop stroke. He wrote an instructional putting article for Sports Illustrated, that my Dad and I followed to a T.

No. 17 Byron Nelson  48 wins  5 majors  73. I am sure many would put Bryon higher on this list. He had one of the greatest years in professional golf winning 11 tournaments in a row. Nelson is probably the only player on this list that did not enjoy tournament golf. For him golf was a ways and a means to buy a ranch and become a rancher, which is exactly what he did. He probably would have won a lot more if his heart had been in it. No Open championship for Nelson.

No. 18 Gene Sarazen  38 wins  7 majors  73 points. Sarazen had one of the most famous shots in golf the double eagle at no. 15 at Augusta in 1935 that propelled him into a tie with Craig Wood and the next day won the 36 hole playoff. It is unlikely the Masters needed any help in establishing itself as a major but the double eagle shot solidified the deal. This allowed Sarazen to become one of only 5 players to win all of the majors.

No. 19 Ernie Els  47wins  4 majors  67 points. Els will be always known as the man that Tiger Woods kept from winning even more. If Tiger had not come on the scene when he did, Els probably would have won at least 3 more majors. Els had one of the worst cases of the yips when he 7 putted the first green in the 2016 Masters. Els had a great career, but it will be what “Wood” have happened if Tiger had not come along.

No. 20 Nick Faldo 36 wins  6 majors  66 points. Last but certainly not least Nick Faldo was the man that started all the swing change nonsense. He made a big swing change with coach David Leadbetter and turned his career around. He went from a journeyman player with the nickname of Nick Foldo, to becoming a 6 time major champion winner and no. 1 player in the world.

There you have it, the top 20 golfers of all time. Some would argue that there is too much emphasis on worldwide wins rather than concentrating on PGA tour wins. I tried to value the wins but in some cases I think I went overboard. I was really surprised by Peter Thomson’s record. His British Open wins, particularly the ones he won in the 50’s have always been tainted by so called weak fields. However, the last time the British team beat the US team in the Ryder Cup was in the mid 50’s. I just cannot go along with the premise that the best golf was only played in America. I think it is a good list driven by one thing, winning. Winning on the world stage and winning in national events no matter where they are played is still one of the most difficult things to do in golf. I feel there will be some current players that will crack this top 20, but we will see. For now, I will take any of the top 20 against any other 4 you want to have.

 

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Golf: Mystery No. 4, The Yips

I have done other articles on the yips, but this is going to be a more in depth look at this dreaded affliction. I will look at the yips from a more historical standpoint, by reviewing some of the big-name golfers that have been affected. What is amazing to me is that the yips have been around since the early 1900’s and there does not seem to be any remedy for them. It is not for lack of effort. None other than the Mayo Clinic has done a major study on the yips in the early 2000’s. They came to the conclusion that the yips may be more of a physical problem than a mental one. I disagree with this conclusion completely, but more on that later. There are many well-known players that have battled the yips, some with more success than others. Let us go back to the first known case, or at least to the first golfer who admitted that he had this problem.

The first well known player to describe the yips was Harry Vardon. They were not called the yips in the early 1900’s. Vardon described watching for this jump of his right hand. His gaze would be riveted on his right hand waiting to see what it would do. He wrote that if it did not happen on the first hole that he would be fine. One of his treatments for the affliction was to practice putt right around dusk or dawn. The lighting would be good enough to see the hole but not good enough to see the character of the green. Vardon had the affliction on putts of 4 feet or less. He blamed all of this on a lack of confidence or lost confidence when it came to making short putts. Vardon had many observations on putting but his best one was the finest way to putt is the way that gets the ball into the hole. Vardon would not be surprised about all the putting methods that are used today some 130 years later. Another wave of yippers, so to speak, came along in the 1920’s and Tommy Armour was given credit for naming the ailment the yips. In his instruction book ABC’s of Golf, the Y chapter is Yips. He does a great job in describing the yips and I feel there are many key words in his description. The yips are a BRAIN SPASM that impairs the short game. There comes that ghastly time when with the first movement of the putter, the golfer blacks out, loses sight of the ball, and hasn’t the remotest idea of what to do with the putter. Armour also states that everybody gets them. Even Bob Jones got the yips. He got rid of them by not lining putts up with the blade of the putter anymore. They would still come back occasionally in the heat of tournament action. The other key aspect of the chapter is that Armour talks about yipping putts in the hole. He writes about yipping a 2-foot putt on the 71st hole missing it in the British Open but then on the last hole needed a three-footer to win and wound up taking a different grip, different stance and somehow making the putt. Despite the changes he yipped but it went in for victory.

The next two golfing greats to be plagued by the yips were Sam Snead and Ben Hogan. Snead got rid of his yips with the croquet style of putting which the USGA quickly banned. There was another pro who had been putting with this croquet method for about a year and no one complained. When Snead did it and had great success, all of a sudden, the USGA had to step in. Snead got around the ban by going side saddle and but that did not give him as good a view of the putt but still accomplished the original goal of getting rid of the yips. Hogan, more of a golf traditionalist, really never got rid of the yips and this cost him many a championship over the years. Bernhard Langer has battled the yips throughout his career and has managed to solve them with various methods, to enable him to have one of the greatest professional careers ever, especially on the senior tour. Two of the best examples of what the yips can do, happened over the last 30 years. In a Shells Wonderful World of Golf match in the late 90’s between Johnny Miller and Jack Nicklaus, Miller had the yips very bad that day and missed short putt after short putt to be defeated by Nicklaus by a resounding 11 shots 70-81. Without a doubt the most graphic example of the yips was Ernie Els’s disastrous 7 putt on the 1st green on the first day of the Masters in 2016 for a 9. If you have the stomach for it, you can watch this on You Tube. What I think is lost in all of this is that he went on to play the next 8 holes in even par. He did run into trouble on the back and shot an 80 for the day. The next day he shot 73 but of course did not make the cut. You have to wonder how he was able to gather himself enough to shoot as well as he did the rest of the day. There have been other players of the recent past that have had the yips, but the above examples are the most graphic.

What can we surmise about the yips over the years from this historical perspective. Let’s get one thing off the table right now, and with all due respect to the Mayo Clinic, the yips are strictly a mental problem. The idea that yips can be brought on by overuse of muscles like in writers cramp or playing the violin too much, just is not true. The yips affect all types of golfers not just the pros and anybody that has a job cannot practice enough to cause the above problems. I wish that was the case, but it simply is not true. This is not an example of focal hand dystonia. As we look back, there are some key observations about the yips made by the professionals that have had to deal with them and instructors that are trying to help the afflicted. Tommy Armour statement that everybody gets the yips is very telling. I see people yip putts and chips every day I play. When a pro misses a huge putt down the stretch believe me, he has yipped it. People will not admit to the yips because I think they fear that if they use the word that the yips will get worse. I don’t blame them, but it does not change the facts. One reason there is the belief that the yips have some kind of physical cause is that many of the remedies involve making a physical change in the way you putt or chip. From the different grips to the long and belly putter, they have all been used to combat yippy strokes. Different techniques in chipping have been used to help with chipping yips ranging from left hand low to chipping one handed. Somehow changing the way you putt or chip, rewires the brain enough to make that part of your game functional again. Some method changes seem to last longer than others, and you will see pros go back and forth between methods. I have written about this before but the reason I think all these method changes work is because the yips are a symptom of a problem, not a disease in itself. The best analogy I have of this is a lack of red blood cells or anemia. If someone is anemic, it can be caused by many different things at many different levels. A person could be losing blood, not producing red cells, producing flawed red cells, or have red blood cells destroyed internally. The idea is to find the disease that is making a person anemic. The exact same thing can be said of the yips. The idea is to find the issue that is causing the yips. What could be causing the putting yips may not be causing the chipping yips. There is driving yips, and in my view shanking is nothing more than the iron yips. These can also have different causes than the putting or chipping yips.

At least for the moment, the best we can do is muddle through some of these temporary but effective solutions to keep the yips under control. From a personal note, it always amazes me how I am always surprised when I make the first yip of the day. I do not know why I have this reaction. I have it more so on putts, rather than on chips. I know I battle the chip yips more than the putting yips, but I still should not be surprised when I do either one. Stress over a particular putt or shot many times will precipitate a yip. I do not disagree with this statement. However, the yips seem to happen on the easier shots and putts, not on the more difficult ones. I know when a shot or putt is perceived as easy, this automatically puts our expectations higher on the result of the shot. I am not sure that this is enough in the thought process to cause a yip, but it is one of the frustrating things about the yips. One thing is for sure, there are no cures for the yips as of yet, despite what you see on internetville. Please do not give anybody any money that says they can cure your yips. It ain’t happening man. If I ever find a permanent solution to those darn things believe me, it will be free of charge.  

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Golf: Mystery No. 3, Why Things Work, Until They Don’t

A thing is defined as an object or entity not precisely designated or capable of being designated. I think thing is the perfect word for what we try on the golf course to get through a round of golf. Those things may include swing thoughts, swing methods, various address positions and mental processes that we think will either get us through a round of golf or improve our golf game in general. In fact, it could be any combination of these things, that one could use to suddenly improve their ball striking abilities. Putting is an even more fickled activity. There are endless ways and techniques that are described in putting. One of the amazing things about all of this is that we are not the only ones doing all of these different things to try and improve are games. You hear about pros changing their swings all the time. They are putting one way one year and then another way the next year. Vijay Singh has won three major championships in 1998, 2000, and 2004. In each of these majors, he won with a distinctly different putting method. From this point on I will go back to calling all of this, things again, because I do not think it makes any difference which of the things we are discussing. They all have the same thing in common. They work for a while and then they don’t, so we go to a new thing. Sometimes we will go back to an old thing that we may have used years before and gosh darn it, it starts to work again. Alas, over time it quits working. Let’s take a look at each part and see if we can unravel this mystery. No spoiler alert here, we don’t but I am going to proceed anyway with lots of theories. I will look at each part, why they may work, why they quit working, and is there any alternative.

Even though I am putting all of these things under one heading there is one of these things that is a little bit different. Swing methods are more of complete swing techniques, where all the other things could be looked at as band aids or quick fixes. Ah yes, good old swing methods or systems. There have been many over the years and I am not going to mention any of them because they all suck. They are associated with some well-known instructor or player and have lots of testimonials. This is what you might call the long version of all the other things listed above. You decide to try one of the methods and give 100% to it. You practice, you make the changes in your swing, and this is what happens in any system. At first there is some back sliding. You’re getting use to new swing and pre-swing techniques, but after x amount of time and rounds, things begin to click. You feel you are hitting the ball better and your scores are even coming down some. What eventually happens is your game goes back to about the same level it was when you started the new system. You will see this with tour players when they change swing coaches. There is the period of adjustment, the supposed break through happens, but then they wind up with pretty much the same record they had with their old swing coach, over the same time period. The band aide treatments just do all of this in a much faster time frame, sometimes in the matter of a few holes. Change your grip, stand taller, stand closer, be more relaxed, change the waggle, speed up your tempo, slow down your tempo, be more rhythmic, finish in balance, swing easier, swing harder, make a full backswing, smooth transition, and finally who gives a shit. Then there is the mental game of picturing the shot, visualization, positive attitude, keeping your cool, not reacting to bad shots, playing conservatively, playing aggressively, letting go of bad shots, making the correct adjustments to the conditions, and finally who gives a shit. Like all of the methods, these things work until they don’t. They usually stop working quicker and rarely make it to the next round. These are facts Jack but why does this happen. I will be damned if I know but here are some theories that are probably worthless, but I don’t care.

We are all trying to improve, God love us, but most of these things are tried because at least in our own minds our games are actually getting worse. If we shot our handicap every time, I am not too sure we would be doing any of these things. Right now, my index is 5.7. If I shot below 80 every time, I think I would be fairly satisfied and would just go ahead and swing away without a care in the world. In my last 20 rounds I have had 6 rounds in the 80’s and one as high as 88. I have had some horrible ball striking rounds. I have tried all of the quick fixes with some really good results. I am way past trying any system. I know better than that. I feel the quick fixes work because they distract me from what is causing my horrible ball striking day. Sometimes what is causing this may not even be related to golf. Regardless, once I make a change then I get a new feel, whatever that may be, and I immediately start hitting the ball better. Now once if a while, just to make things interesting, I will do something different and continue to play poorly. I usually give it about 2 to 3 holes and then try something else. Some rounds I never seem to make any progress. Another way to look at this is to say none of these things really work, even though they seem to. Changing some relatively minor aspect of your swing should not make all that big of difference. Maybe doing something like that triggers some neurologic pathway that allows you to swing better and that in turn causes better ball striking. The reason it stops working is that this pathway had nothing to do with the poor ball striking and simply loses its effectiveness due to repetition. All of this goes against the idea that we are supposed to groove our swings, so we can repeat our swings on command. There is the adage that you can have a flawed swing if you repeat the mistake all the time. That is why you practice, to groove that swing.

There is no doubt that this is the biggest mystery of the game. It could be summed up in the following way even for the beginner; learn, success failure and repeat. If you look at tour players who have had success and then lose it, never to see their winning form return you could say the middle step disappears. For those of us who have never reached such great heights, the middle step does always happen, it just may be for a very short time. For all the things that I have done to my swing, and it ranges into the 100’s believe me, I have had a few that last a full season, but most don’t last for a week. Maybe we should just swing the way we feel most comfortable and to hell with results. Just accept the fact that you will have good days and bad days on the golf course. Sometimes the bad days stretch out over weeks. When that happens, it is extremely hard not to try and do something. Tucking my right elbow right into my side, I bet that’s the answer. What do you think? Thank God it’s January and I don’t have to think about it for the moment.

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Golf: Mystery No. 2, Good Shots, Where Do They Come From and Where Do They Go.

We have all had this experience playing golf. We are having a bad day, not hitting the ball well at all and then all of a sudden, we hit a great shot, whether it be a drive or an iron shot. As soon as I do something like that I say “Where do the good shots come from and where do they go”. The opposite can happen also. You get off to a great start hitting the ball down the middle and onto the green for anywhere from 3 to 15 holes and then you hit one of the worst shots of your golfing career. During a round, this phenomenon can happen off and on. This happened to me about 4 days ago. On number 1,3, and 5 holes I hit wonderful iron shots with two of them resulting in birdies. On 2 and 4 I hit absolutely horrible iron shots that resulted in bogeys. They were all from under 150 yards in, and basically from the middle of the fairway. A round of golf can take many different paths. You can get off to a bad start then around the 5th or 6th hole something clicks and you play well the rest of the round. That is not so mysterious to me. The next two scenarios are a big mystery to me. You get off to a great start and then it could be as early as the 7th hole, you just suddenly lose it. You play poorly for either the rest of the round, or around 3 to 5 holes, then boom you finish up strong. The last scenario is the biggest mystery, when you get off to a bad start, seemingly right the ship around the 6th or 7th hole, and then around the 14th or 15th hole your game goes south again. You can see this even at the highest level of play. The one that stands out, is Corey Pavin in the third round of a Masters, back in the late 80’s or early 90’s. After 2 rounds he was in the hunt, only 2 or 3 shots out of the lead. He had a horrible Saturday and was 10 over for the day heading to the 18th hole. There must have been a lull in the action because CBS elected to show him playing the hole. He hit a beautiful drive around the corner, hit an iron within 3 feet for a birdie to shoot 81.

Now many golfers feel that the most common cause of bad shots made by tour professionals are caused by pressure. There is no question that at that level the circumstances are a factor. The quality of shots at any level can be affected by the situation. Everyone has gone through the experience of coming to the end of a round with a chance to shoot your best score and fouling up the last 2 or 3 holes to miss it by one shot. This cannot explain the pattern of shots that I am writing about. That is not to say that some good and bad shots cannot be explained. The average golfer has a number of courses that he plays on a regular basis. Some holes just seem to fit a golfer’s eye so to speak and, on these holes, he has a tendency to hit better shots. On the other side of the coin there are holes that the average golfer does not like and therefore has more of a tendency to hit bad shots. In other cases, these great and terrible shots, to me, remain a mystery. Unlike the swings of the pros that look so bad but produce shots that put them on the PGA tour, I think this is a mystery worth solving. I am not too sure what is the biggest mystery, the good shot that comes out of nowhere or the bad shot that unexpectedly rears up its ugly head. Solving this mystery, I believe is tied into solving the mystery of the horrible condition known as the yips. I have battled the yips off and on for years. I will go along for 10 holes or more and not have one yip. Then bam I will yip a putt or chip. One of the so-called cures for the yips is to forget about them. I know this does not work because I am always shocked when I have the first yip of the day, so I am not thinking about them. Naturally when I have the first yip, I do think of ways to avoid future ones, sometimes succeeding and sometimes not. I went through how some rounds progress, but another problem of these good and bad shots is you can have days where it affects just one part of your game. Everyone has had the experience of having a day when you are driving the ball well and your iron game is terrible. You can have the opposite ball striking day or have the most frustrating day of all where your ball striking is great and the short game and putting are horrible.

Naturally, I have not solved this mystery, or I would not be writing this blog. Have I thought that I came up with a solution to this problem? I would say about 2,345 times. This mystery has been around forever. Most people say that it’s just golf. Some golf instructors like to call this the vagaries of golf, which means the unexpected or the inexplicable change in a situation. As a descriptive term, that explains the situation as well as any one word can, but this does not give us any answers. There are some clues to the mystery, but they are not 100%. There is no question, I get a certain feeling, just before I am going to hit a good shot. In other words, I know that I am going to hit a good shot. There are other times when the good shot is a total surprise. The same thing for a bad shot. I know the shot will not turn out, but I go ahead anyway, and I am not wrong. Again, some bad shots come right out the blue. I feel really really good but then I swing, and the result is horrendous. One thing that is obvious, good shots bring more good shots and bad shots do seem to perpetuate themselves. Like everything, both things eventually come to an end. The key to playing better golf is to keep the good shots going longer and the bad shots ending quickly. The quest will go on.

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Golf: Mystery No. 1. With Those Swings How Did They Make It To The Tour.

One of my golf mantras has always been the swing is not the thing. Despite our obsession with our golf swings over the years, there have been many ugly, fundamentally bad swings on the PGA tour. There is nothing derogatory meant here. In fact, I have a high admiration for these players, that they were able to break free from the so-called norm and develop some kind of swing that allowed them to play at the highest level of the game. On the opposite side of the spectrum, there have been players that have had beautiful swings that are about as technically perfect as any swing can be. These players have had success on the tour, but not as much as some people think they should have, because of their great looking swings. This list is far from complete but here are some of the golfers with bad looking unpleasant swings that have had good to great PGA tour careers: Doug Sanders, Chi-Chi Rodriguez, Miller Barber, Gay Brewer, Lee Trevino, Hubert Green, Ray Floyd, Paul Goydos, Jim Furyk, Matthew Wolf, Allen Doyle. There are many more that could be added. Even Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus when they came out on tour, had things about their swings that observers were quite critical of. In Palmers case, it was his big turn and how hard he swung at the ball. It was described as a lash at the ball. Nicklaus on the other hand was criticized for the uprightness of his swing and that flying right elbow, that many said would be his Achilles heel. Women tour players have a tendency to have more fundamentally correct swings, but they did have a poster child for the unorthodox swing, if not ugly, in Nancy Lopez. She had such great tempo and balance, that her swing was far from ugly, but there was not one thing about her swing that was fundamentally correct, except for her impact position. The beautiful swingers over the years, whose careers did not achieve what they should have according to some, were Gene Littler, Tom Purtzer, Tom Weiskopf, George Knudson, Steve Elkington, Adam Scott, Greg Norman, and Louis Oosthuizen. These players had very good careers but the general opinion on all of these players is that they should have won more. You could put many more names to this list, but you get the point.

I am not too sure that a lot of golf observers get the point. What I mean by that is, when all of these unorthodox swings are discussed, the golf media is always looking to say something good about them. I saw one golf magazine have a headline that read what you can learn from Matthew Wolfe’s swing. In my view, absolutely nothing. At the top of his backswing the clubhead is directly over his head. Try that sometime but don’t hurt yourself. The other mystifying thing is how did they get to some of their swings. Many of them had fathers that were teaching pros. Everyone has to start somewhere and that is usually the fundamentals. How do you go from there and wind up with the finished product that you see on tour? However, they got there, I think it is brilliant. Some of the players were self-taught and explains some of the quirks that these players have in their swing. No matter how they got there, it still remains a mystery with those unorthodox swings, or whatever you want to call them, how they were able to have such success at the highest level of tournament golf. Some of these players success may have been short lived, and I am sure that makes people wonder if they had had more fundamentally sound swings, would they have had longer periods of success. But slumps are common in golf no matter what kind of swing you seem to have. What about those esthetically pleasing fundamentally sound golf swings that do not seem to be able to achieve what they should. What all of this says to me is that all these swing changes that you read about these players making from time to time is one big waste of time. It boils down to one basic thing that most everybody knows but just refuses to believe. That when you get to a certain level everything is determined right between the ears.

I know some that will read this and think that this really is not all that big a mystery in the game. They will say that the unorthodox swings have enough of the fundamentals of a good golf swing even though they do not look like it to explain their success. The more orthodox swings have some small non apparent flaws in their technique, which explains their lack of success. It is shown that players that change their swing seem to come out of slumps. Yes, these players do come out of slumps and players have won majors after changing their swings, Tiger Woods being that prime example. Nick Faldo is the poster boy for swing change. Hooking up with David Leadbetter he went from basically being a journeyman tour player to a 6-time major champion. He only did this once. In other examples of players who went through swing changes it did bring them success, but no more than they had before they changed their swing. There are some players who changed their swing for whatever reason and never regained the form they once had. Even though this is a mystery to me, I feel that it is a mystery that is not worth solving. What one needs to take away from all of this is that the swing is not the thing. If you really want to improve your game, and who doesn’t, you had better look somewhere else other than your golf swing.

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Golf: End Of Handicap Season Wrap Up

Needless to say, the golf diary ended about 2 months ago, and even though hell did not freeze over, I continued to play. I am at 132 rounds and counting. The season has a ways to go, but the handicap season is coming to a close. I stopped the diary format because as much as a stats geek guy I am, when it comes to baseball, I’m about as much of a non-stats guy when it comes to golf. Unlike a lot of people who put a lot of emphasis on greens in regulation, I’m all about the putts. Putting is the most important part of the game. This is a very hard thing for most golfers to accept. With all the tinkering and swing changes we go through to try and hit the ball better, it is not a surprise that many golfers feel the most important thing in golf is to hit the green. I have had many a good round in my life where I have hit less than 6 greens in the round. I consider a good round 3 over par or better. I have never had a good round where my putting total is 34 or over. It is a simple equation. If you make putts, you score and if you don’t you don’t. Ball striking is a very complex process. Putting is a very simple process. It takes a man to hook and fade a golf ball at will. Anybody can putt. This is the ball striker’s mantra. Unfortunately, it is not true. Putting is what separates the men from the boys, so get over it. Putting is the most important part of golf and I do not need any stat analyses to tell me that.

The good news this year is that I shot my age 73 seven times this year, after failing to do it at all last year. I had four 71’s, two 72’s and one 73. In all 7 rounds I had 28 putts or less. Since the last golf diary on July 31st I have been the model of inconsistency. I have shot two of the 71’s but also shot 90. I am on a bit of a run now with 7 straight rounds in 70’s. I almost got my 6th hole in one when I left a 7 iron on the 15th hole at South Park 1.5 inches short of the pin. I got a new set of irons and ditched the graphite shafted Titleist AP 3’s. That has improved my iron play from horrible to mediocre. I have been driving the ball well. The short game is mediocre, and the putting is really up and down. The yips have been bad to ok. The one thing that has plagued me in my so-called senior years is the horrible shot. I am the perfect example of it is not where your good shots go as much as where your bad shots go. They are definitely round killers. I am working on a new iron philosophy that started on shots from 50 to 100 yards. Once I got inside 90 yards, I would start to use my 60 degree wedge and make the adjustment when I got closer to the hole. In the last 2 weeks, I have started hitting my gap wedge (48 degree) or my pitching wedge (44 degree) when I have a shot of less than 100 yards, depending on how much green I have to work with. The results have been good so far, which is a big reason why I am on this little 70 run. I have begun to apply this to some longer shots depending on the situation. I will hit my 6 iron 160 yards instead of the normal 170 to 175. I have just started doing this, so it is hard to tell what the effect will be on my scoring abilities. Will update when appropriate.

I will end the year with a handicap index of 5.8. During the year I got it down to as low as 4.0 and it reached a high of 6.2. Most of the increase was due to the bad shots mentioned previously and to some horrible putting. I really had some great putting rounds through about the middle of June. Since then, I have struggled on the greens with just a few good putting rounds sprinkled in. The Handicap season is over but playing golf will continue as long as the weather holds up. I played 7 rounds beyond this date last year. Hopefully, I may be able to get more in this year. No matter how many rounds I play I am going to start a little series about the mysteries of golf of which there are many. The articles may be endless. Let’s hope not.

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Golf Diary

The Rounds: Beaver Valley Score 77 Greens In Reg. 10 Putts 31

South Park Gold Score 73 Greens In Reg. 11 Putts 31

Indian Run Score 76 Greens In Reg. 13 Putts 36

The Good: The ball striking for the 3 rounds was good. My method for striking the ball changed dramatically from the Beaver Valley Round to the Indian Run. Of course, I am always changing my swing or “searching for the answer” so to speak. I believe, but not sure, because I am too lazy to check, that this was the first time this year that I have hit double digits in greens in regulation 3 times in a row. The short game was ok, and I am going to put it on the good side. For the three rounds I got it up and down 9 out of 20 times.

The Bad: Putting. The worse day was Indian Run, where I 3 putted 3 times. I only had one 3 putt in the previous 2 rounds but I missed a lot of putts that were under 10 feet. I had my share of yip putts. If I had been having any type of day on the greens, I would have taken 2 to 4 strokes off each round. Even though I had the worse day at Indian Run I was putting better toward the end of the round. We will see if I can build off of that.

The Luck Of The Rounds: Other than putting I had good fortune in all three rounds. Not to go into too much detail but every time I hit a bad shot it came out ok. Every time I hit a tree I wound up in a playable place. The best way of explaining this was if I had putted well and had bad luck, I would have wound up shooting the same scores. Luck in all three rounds ensured that my rounds were going to stay well within the 70’s. I have been on a good luck roll.

Next Round: Tomorrow, North Park

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Golf Diary

Round: Played South Park Score 79 Greens In Reg. 7 Putts 32

The Good: I drove the ball pretty well. The weather was beautiful.

The Bad: The iron game was bad. The short game and putting were pretty horrid. I had one long putt from off the green that went in for a birdie on the 2nd hole but I failed to get it up and down the other 10 times. I made a long birdie putt on the 11th hole and another one of about 8 feet on 10 for 3 birdies on the day. Other than that, my putting was not good. But the short game was the culprit today for the high 70 score, 0 for 10, just like most of the Pirates. I was doing all sorts of things today trying to find something that would work and nothing could really get me going.

The Luck Of The Round: Made two long putts and I always feel that has to be a little luck. Never really had any bad luck today. It’s not that I often that I make 3 birdies, but I could not do the basic things that you need to do in order to score.

The Next Round: Tomorrow, Beaver Valley Golf Course.