The Goofy Game of Golf/Life Searching for the Answer

Today I am going to discuss some of the things I have done with my golf swing, in trying to find the answer to this goofy game. This blog will only be the tip of the iceberg of all the things I have tried over the last 18 months. These are the ones that lasted more than one round and at times I thought they had some merit. One of the things that I have felt was misunderstood and taught improperly was wrist cock. Practically all instruction talks about wrist cock as a lifting motion. I think this ignores the fact that the wrists are going to roll over after impact. I tried to just let the wrists break in a back and forth motion like a slapping motion with no upward lifting of the club by the wrists. At the top of the swing this put the right palm pretty much facing the sky. My biggest problem with this is that my wrist always felt a little tight at the top of the swing. After about 2 weeks of doing this I gave up on it because it simply was not producing results. I still think the wrists are still the most misunderstood part of the golf swing and you see tremendous variations of wrist cock by the pros. You have swings like John Cook and Paul Azingers where their wrists seem very stiff and then John Daly and Phil Mickelson have big wrists cocks which makes the club go below horizontal. Another swing debate is whether the left heel should come off the ground during the backswing. Most players today keep their heel on the ground but lets face it, two of the greatest golfers of all time Bobby Jones and Jack Nicklaus raised their heels quite high at the top of their backswings. In fact, Jack Nicklaus said that the first move for him to start the downswing was to plant the left heel back on the ground. So I felt if this was a good swing thought for the great Nicklaus lets try this. Lets raise the left heel at address and keep it there doing the backswing, and plant the heel to start the downswing. By starting the left heel raised at address this solved the problem of how much to raise it during the backswing. I did this for about 6 weeks and had some great lower body action and the results seemed pretty good. But planting the left heel to start the downswing sometimes gave my swing a jarring motion and again the inconsistancy of ball striking especially on the short irons made me finally abandoned the left heel plant. Byron Nelson once said that you can not stand too close to ball. Jim Furyk may have already proved that, but I set out to see if that was really true. I played for awhile by resting the top of the grip on my left thigh at address. Then I would back off just about a quarter on an inch. I will admit I really felt cramped at address but I hit some pretty good shots with this method. Believe me you are close to the ball. I did this for about a month but again the lack of results and never getting really comfortable over the ball caused me to abandon the getting close to the ball experiment.. Things that I tried that came and went quickly, was the 10 finger grip, keeping the weight on the left heel through out the swing, keeping the right knee kicked in for the entire swing, and purposely coming over the top ala Sam Snead. In the next blog I will go into detail on the thing that I called real meat in the blog that I started doing it. This went against all golf teaching, and for awhile there I thought I was really on to something, but alas it was just swing number 287 biting the dust.

Today I am going to combine the final 2 truths about trying to  learn the game of golf. Number 3 is the only common denominator that  really effective golf swings have, is that on the downswing the belly button passes the ball before the arms and the hands. It sounds simple enough, but the problem is I wrote earlier the arms can go 70 miles per hour and the body can only turn about 15 miles an hour. Every shot that is pulled can be attributed to the arms passing the belly button before impact. This is why the release of the hands is always inhibited because with the arms passing the belly and a full release of the uncocking of the wrists, the ball will go at least 50 yards to the left of the target. There are lots of other bad shots that can be atttributed to this one problem. Sounds easy enough, belly button first then the arms. There are many ways that have been advocated for starting the downswing and any instructional book writtein by Leadbetter and Harmen will give you methods of doing this but it just is not that easy. The fourth fact in the learning process is that there is only 2 senses that come in to play. You can see what you are doing and you can feel what you are doing. Many times what you think you are doing is not actually happening. The order should be this. Either through video, mirrors, or a second set of eyes you need to see what you are doing then put a feel to what is going on. You can always on the practice tee, stop your swing at any time, and simply look and what you are doing and make sure it is correct and again put the feeling into play. On the next blog I will go through some of the strange and wacky things that I have done with my golf swing in searching for this elusive answer. The biggest problem with this blog will be trying to remember all of the things I have done because quite frankly I am trying to forget them.

The holidays are over, and its time to get back to this goofy game, and continue the quest for the answer. Today I am going to discuss the second of the four truths of this game. Eighty five to ninety per cent of all golf problems start before you take the club back. Let’s discuss the top three mentioned in an earlier blog. First the grip. The correct golf grip is  difficult describe, so I will refer you to instruction books that have some great pictures of the grip. Both Tiger’s and Annika’s books have great pictures of the proper grip. One older book that has great pictures of the grip is Sam Snead on Golf, written in 1961. Everyone talks about Snead’s great swing that his grip kind of gets lost, but I think he had the best grip in golf, and it is pictured perfectly in this book. Problem number 2 is standing too far away from the ball. Byron Nelson claimed you could not stand too close to the ball and I dont know about that, but his point is well taken. It is better to crowd the ball a little rather than feel you are reaching for the ball. Here is a very easy drill to get the right distance from the ball. Once you have establised your address position, just  take your right hand off the club and let your right arm just dangle straight down and relax. Now swing your right arm back to the club. If your right hand meets the club shaft where your left hand is, then you are too far away. If it meets the club shaft so now your grip is split, then you are too close too the ball. If your right hand comes back to where it was in the proper grip position, then you are the correct distance from the ball. What is great about this drill it works for every club in the bag and you can even use this on the course as your part of a pre shot routine until you get use to being the proper distance from the ball. The final big problem is most people will align themselves to the right of the target. There is no doubt in my mind the best way to get a proper aim at the target is with the Jack Nicklaus method of picking out something  in front of the ball that is line with the target. At the range a second set of eyes can be a big help. If you are not line up at the target properly, then your chances of consistantly hitting good shots are not good. If you saw someone aiming a gun 20 to 30 yards right of their target and they kept missing you would not be telling them to pull the trigger differently or having a rifle better placed in their shoulder. After you get by these three problems there are some other things that can cause problems at address. I think that the weight distribution on the bottom of the feet can cause some confusion if you read enough golf books. It use to be you would here about having the weight on the balls of your feet, but now on the The Golf Fix they say, that the weight should feel like it is in the arches of your feet. The reason you want the weight getting back towards the heels, is it is easier to turn the body. If your weight heads toward the toes at all, it will restrict your body turn,try it. I think another big problem is in knee flex. Your knees do need to be flexed but a line drawn from ground through the ankle to the knee needs to be close to perpendicular to the ground. Many people when they flex their knees allow them to go toward the ball. As Sam Snead said to President Eisenhower when he was doing this “Mr President stick your butt out” That will take care of the problem. So we have gone through fact number 2 and in the next blog we will cover numbers 3 and 4. together.

It will be very unlikely I will be adding any new courses to the list the rest of the golfing season which is getting extended by some nice late November and early December weather.  I am going to write about the first of what I call the four true facts about trying to hit the golf ball reasonalbly well. The swing is not the thing. There has been as much written about the golf swing as any subject known to man. There are different methods, different instructor philosophies and many ideas on the best way to learn this tough frustrating game.  If you have read only 1% of all books that have been written on the subject and then turn on your TV set to watch the greatest players in the world play this game you have to wonder, did any of these guys even take a lesson. Yes, there are some classic swings out there like Ernie Els, Luke Donald, and Adam Scott. But for everyone of them there are 10 Paul Goydoses, John Daleys, Jim Furyks and Lee Trevinos, just to name a few. What I like about all the TV commentators is they always talk about what all these guys are doing right. I think the golfing public would be better served if they showed what all these players are doing technically wrong. Just looking at the four players just mentioned here are some of the things you could list. They stand too close to the ball, they aim left, they overswing, they get shut faced at the top, they take the club back outside the line, they get real loose at the top of the swing, their clubhead points right of the target at the top of the swing, and their clubhead points left of the target at the top of the swing.  I am not being critical of these players. They are all great players that have had great careers through hard work and dedication. The point is, if these same players had 5 handicaps and came to you for a lesson you would probably change at least 3 or 4 things that they are doing from an instruction standpoint. If you look at the top 100 money winners on all 3 tours and I am willing to bet that you could find at least 4 technical flaws in at least 85% of those players. So what can the rest of us take from all of this. If you handicap is 15 or less don’t worry about your swing. Don’t worry if you get shut faced at the top, or your right knee is giving in, or you swing is too long or too short. The great players of past and present have gotten along quite fine with their swing flaws. One of the things you always hear is that one of the reasons professionals are able to get away with those swing flaws is how much time they spend on their games. That may be true but every pro spends a lot of time and effort on their swing. If there was one technically superior way to swing that golf club then that pro would be dominating the tour like no ever has before. So from Nicklaus’s flying right elbow to Palmer’s twisting finish the swing is not the thing.

Well the season is winding down and I don’t know if I am going to get another course in this year. I thought this would be a good time to discuss the golf swing and write about the true facts of trying to hit the golf ball. A couple of blogs ago I wrote about what not to waste your time on. After over 40 years of studying the golf swing, I am going to discuss the absolute truths about playing this game. In this blog I am going to list them with a brief comment and then in future blogs I will discuss each one in more detail. One “The swing is not the thing” If you don’t believe that one then I suggest you watch any PGA tour event. Some of the swings on tour could make your eyes water and yet these guys are carving out huge sums of money and having great careers. From Lee Trevino to Jim Furyk to Paul Goydos, and on and on, the exact way you swing the club can be very diverse. Two” 85 to 90% of all golf problems happen before you take your swing”.  The top 3 problems I see in teaching people to play this game is poor aiming, standing too far away from the ball and a poor grip. There are other ones but these are the top three. Briefly on aiming, when I ask 10 students to aim at a target about 100 yards away, 8 will be aimed 8 to 10 yards right of the target, one will be aimed left of the target and one will be aimed at the target. Now to the swing itself. There is only one thing you must do in order to have an efficient golf swing. All the strange swings on the tour do this. Three”On the downswing your belly buttom must pass the ball before your hands and arms do”. Sounds easy enough but here is the problem. Your belly button moves like it is in a school zone, 10 to 15 miles an hour. Your hands and arms move like they are on I 70, at 70 to 80 miles an hour. The golfer usually over uses his legs  and under uses his upper body on the backswing. The reverse is true on the downswing. He under uses his legs and over uses his upper body in “hitting” the ball. That is a big key to the answer. How do you keep the hands and arms from passing the belly button to soon? The fourth fact in trying to learn this game is, there are only 2 senses that you can use in the learning process. One can feel a golf swing and you can see a golf swing. You can not smell taste or hear a golf swing. Is there an answer out there, maybe. Is there one part of your body that can control the entire golf swing? I don’t know, we will see. My instructor put it the best way and I quote the Babe. “Control the body, control the clubhead and you will control golf ball.

Today we went to the Links at Spring Church in Apollo Pa which is about a 55 minute drive. This course is about 15 to 20 years old and is one of those courses that I put under the heading of fake links course. This is a design that removes most of the trees from the course, lets a lot of weeds grow up around various parts of the course, calls it heather and thinks this has something to do with being a links course. This course had delusions of grandeur when it first opened, charged as much as 55 dollars on the weekend, did not give much of a break during the week, and went the way most of these courses did, that tried to do this, into reorganization.  Today the course is a little more reasonable and with the fall rate we played for 25 with a cart. Today they had the tees up and it played about 6200 yards and from the tips will play about 6500 yards. From the blue tees they changed two par 5’s into longer par 4’s so from the blues the par is 70 and from the whites the par is 72. Essentially they changed two interesting par 5’s into 2 longer boring par 4’s. Go figure. The overall design of the course is good with many interesting holes but the greens have never been really that good and today they were plugged and half sanded and ran a 4 on the stimp. Needless to say this course is not worth the trip, at least until they become more rate friendly. The hot dog at the turn was fair and we did have a beautiful day to play. My swing thing as I will call it from  now on, is still working quite well. Even though I got off to a slow start I was able to shoot even on the back for a 76 and Pete shot a very nice 78 and would have done better on better greens. I don’t know how long the weather will hold up but maybe I will get a few more in before years end. Sixty two down with twenty eight to go.

Today, finally got to course number 61, Timber Ridge which is about a 65 to 70 minute drive in Mount Pleasant Pa. It was pretty windy today and very chilly to start but as the day wore on  the sun came out and it got a little warmer. I had never played this course before and it was a unique golf course. The course plays 6300 yards from the back tees was in pretty good shape for the time of year as the greens were smooth and ran about a 5 on the stimp. The greens were the most sloping and undulating greens I have ever played. They were not very big but at least 13 to 14 greens had severe slopes from front to back or from side to side. On one 9 foot putt I had as much as 3.5 to 4 feet of break from left to right. The course is hilly and many holes are tree lined but the course is not super tight. The course has one hole the 13th that is a 650 yard par 5 which is one of the longest par 5’s I have ever played. The course plays to a par of 72 and overall was  interesting and challenging, especially with those greens. I would hate to see them running even a 7 on the stimp. Playing this golf course you would learn the value of keeping the ball below the hole. Since yours truly did not know the extent of the slopes on many of these greens I did find myself in some very difficult putting positions. Despite that I managed to shoot a 5 over 77 with 5 bogeys and no birdies. There was no hot dog at the turn since the course was not very busy in the windy conditions. This will be a course I will be wanting to play again, just to see it in more golf like weather. I can not say that this course is worth the trip but still a very enjoyable course to play with lots of interesting holes. My own game is coming along quite nicely at the moment as I think this new thing I am doing may be the real deal. Or it could be that swing number 318 will be just as disappointing as swing no. 1. Sixty one down with twenty nine to go.

Because of weather, and visiting grandkids, but mostly the weather, I have not been able to play a new course for the last 2 weeks. Therefore, I thought this would be a good time to write about the search for the answer and some of the things I have looked at over the years. This blog I will cover the garbage. The things not to waste your time on in the golf instruction literature. The first thing to avoid is any of the so called golf methods. These include the square to square method, natural golf, stack and tilt, Jimmy Ballard method, swing the handle and automatic golf just to name a few. I compare method golf to weight loss diets. They help some people but they are not for everyone. The only thing you can say about both things is that who ever invents them, its puts a lot money in their wallet. Its not to say that there are not some good things in these methods but if you follow them to the letter you will always be a frustrated golfer. They always have some tour player that has used or is using the method with great success but more often that not, 5 years or so later, he or she is doing something else. Now lets get to worst instuction book that was ever written and that is The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan,written in 1955. Jack Nicklaus, Tiger Woods, and Annika Sorenstam, all wrote instruction books that described the way they played golf and were titled accordingly. The idea of these books is to show in detail how these great players go about hitting a golf ball and if the average golfer can apply some of this to their own game, so much the better. If the Ben Hogan book had been titled similiarly, like How I Play Golf by Ben Hogan, then I would have no beef with the book. Ben Hogan was a golfer who was plagued in the early part of his career by a terrible duck hook. So everything he describes in this book concerning golf technique is with the sole purpose of keeping a player from hitting the ball from right to left. The problem is that 90% of all people that have taken up the game are slicing the ball, hitting it from left to right. So if you pick up this book thinking that it is truly the modern fundenmentals of golf,  you won’t last very long playing the game. However if you are troubled by a duck hook then this is the book for you. The problem is the book doesn’t really say this and that is why I think it is the worst book for instuction ever written. Now that we have taken care of the garbage, on the next golf swing blog we will get to what you really have to do to hit the ball reasonalbly well. Hopefully the weather will improve and we can get to course n0. 61 in the next 7 to 10 days.

Yesterday played course number sixty, 3 Lakes Golf Course in Penn Hills which is a 25 to 30 minute drive. I had played this course about 20 to 25 years ago and remembered nothing about it. The course was in very good shape and had the fastest greens we have putted so far. They ran a 7.5 on the stimp and were very smooth. The course was still very wet despite all the sunshine we have had, as again the temperatures hit the lower 80’s. The course was typically hilly but was fair and very enjoyable to play. We played from tees that made the course play about 6300 yards,to a par of 72 You can play from tees that will stretch the course to 6800 yards plus. The course played  long enough, with the wet conditions. The hot dog at the turn was fair as it was one of those bigger fatter dogs that just doesn’t taste as good as the smaller round hot dogs. My swing change continued to work well and I shot a 75  and Tony came in with a nice 76. This course use to be a country club but went public about 5 years ago. I am sure these greens were even faster back then but it was fun putting on a relatively quick putting surface. The greens did have some undulations in them but overall were very fair. The course had some tight holes with many trees and even from the middle tees was good challenge. This course was definitely worth the trip. As I said the swing change I made seems to have helped me quite a bit. It is not a new thing as far as golf instruction is concerned and so I am no closer to any new discoveries concerning how to hit this little ball or playing this game but the quest will go on. It is a little easier to continue the search when you hit the ball reasonably well. This past week was great weather wise and I got 5 courses in. However things are looking a little shakey this week so we will have to see if any are going to get added this week. Two thirds of the way home with 30 to go.

Yesterday with beautiful fall condtions I had another 36 hole day. The first course was Stonecrest in Wampum Pa. about an hour and 5 minute drive. This course plays about 6400 yards from the back tees with most of that on the back nine, and plays to a par of 71. The course was in very good shape with the greens running a 6.25 on the stimp and were very smooth. This course is very flat and has a very good design. The three finishing holes are very long and demanding par 4’s playing 440, 468, and 426 and with the wet conditions played all of that yesterday. There are many tree lined holes but yet the course is not super tight. The hot dog at the turn was very good. I got off to a horrible start but did make a swing change in the middle of the round which seemed to work well for the rest of day. But for this 18 because of short game blues again, I could only muster an 83 while Pete shot 80. Then we headed about 6 miles south to Beaver Falls to Fox Run golf course. I had never played this course before and this was a pleasant surprise.  It was about 6500 yards from the back tees and again most of this was on the back nine.  The par was 72 and the course was in very good shape with these greens running a 5.5 on the stimp and they too were in excellent condition. This course had many interesting holes with lots of water that came into play. The course was hillier but was again very enjoyable to play. Two of the more interesting holes were early in the round. The 2ond hole was a 365 yd. par 4 with a dogleg left. The dogleg was well down the hole about 260 yards out and the green which was relatively small was surrounded by very large trees. The third hole was a short par 4 of 297 yds. with a large tree directly in the middle of the fairway about 200 yards out. Again on the back nine there was a stretch of demanding par 4’s, 12, 13, and 14 that were all over 400 yds. My only compaint about this course was some of the scorecard yardages seemed to be off but it is a minor complaint as this was a good solid golf course. My swing change started working well on the front nine and I shot a 1 under 35 on the front but the wet conditions and again bad chipping caused me to stagger in with a 40 on the back for 75. Pete shot 82. The hot dog at the turn was good but they had no relish or onions. Overall with the beautiful day and two solid golf courses this was one of the better days of the trek. These courses are worth the trip and I will be going back. Fifty nine down and Thirty one to go.