Do You Tinker With Your Swing?

Ten years ago I wrote this post about the urge to tinker with my game.  Today I’m fighting the same urge after a good round yesterday at The Links of Gettysburg.  Tinkering usually happens when we’re playing well because we get the feeling that we can perfect a certain aspect of our game that would make things so much better.  Do we golfers ever learn?    

Try this quick mental exercise.  Who has the best swing on tour in terms of athleticism and technique?  Rory McIlroy gets my vote.  Why would he ever tinker with anything.  In 2011 he crushed the field in the U.S. Open at Congressional.  In 2012, he was the #1 player in the world, however he tinkered by abruptly switching equipment from Titleist to Nike.  I remember thinking, “What the hell is he doing?”  Predictably, the wheels came off and culminated in his on-course withdrawl at the 2013 Honda Classic.  He was defending champion and was hacking terribly and blamed it on a tooth ache, but we knew the real story.  Fast forward to March of 2021 where Rory was at it again.  This time tinkering with his swing in an attempt to copy the move of Bryson DeChambeau.  He twisted himself into a swing pretzel and was in a bad place for a while.

Rory The Tinkerer. Photo courtesy of The Golf Channel

Be on the lookout for tinkering temptations.  I have an affinity for Martin Hall on Golf Channel’s School of Golf.  Love the guy and he’s a very knowledgeable instructor and entertaining personality, but it seems he has three drills he wants you to try on every episode.  Imagine if you tried them all.  That would be hyper-tinkering.

Martin Hall – Master Tinkerer. Photo courtesy of NBC Sports

What happened to me?  On March 5, I reviewed a curation of lesson feedback from three years of sessions with my instructor.  A recurring drill emerged as we tried to get me to eliminate the pulled shot and effectively take the left side of the golf course out of play.  I put that drill into play and have struck the ball well ever since.  What’s different now is that I’m playing and practicing LESS, but am maintaining my good form.  Clearly this is no WOOD band-aid.  But a couple days ago, I reviewed a swing video my son took of me hitting some wedges in my back yard and didn’t like something in my takeaway.  Bang!  The urge to tinker!  I resisted because the last time I got in tinkering trouble was after watching swing video. 

Rory has started working with sports psychologist, Bob Rotella.  Good move to focus on the mental game and let his natural talent flow.  As for me, no tinkering so far, and I will continue the same simple swing keys that have yielded early season returns.

Are you tinkering?  Hope not but play well even if you do!  

What Has Experience Taught You?

Michael Breed, of The Golf Channel, expressed an interesting definition of experience. He said, “Experience is what you get when you don’t get what you want.” Last Sunday, Rickie Fowler got a good dose of experience. Fowler is a seasoned 27-year old professional with six wins world-wide (three on the PGA Tour) and top-5 finishes in all the majors. I’m a Rickie fan and expected him to manage his game better down the stretch, yet what happened on the 17^th hole at the TPC of Scottsdale saddened me and will get added to the bone yard of golf “experiences”.

The lesson that has to be learned over and over is that aggressive play under pressure rarely pays off. Rickie last week, Phil Mickelson’s epic collapse at the 2006 US Open, Jean van de Velde at The Open in 1999 at Carnoustie, are just a few examples. It’s fascinating why players don’t learn from those who have gone before them. Maybe the adrenaline release under pressure affects their thinking, but almost always these experiences can be directed to poor course management. In fact, rarely in golf will you get in trouble playing overly-conservative in clutch situations. When Zach Johnson won the 2007 Masters, he laid up on every par five and played them 11-under without making a bogey. You may think that’s a whacky strategy for a professional at Augusta, but Zach clearly understood his strengths and limitations, and played to them. Rickie had hit seven drives into the water on #17 at Phoenix in previous rounds! With a two-shot lead why not hit 5-iron-sand wedge and make an easy par or birdie?

Think back to an experience you’ve had. Did you have to experience it to learn or did you learn from someone else’s misfortune? Unfortunately, I’m a hands-on learner and got a lesson on course management under pressure. I was in a club championship match about 20 years ago and standing on the 18^th tee with a two-shot lead. This hole has water that stretches fully across the fairway about 320 yards off the tee. I had played the hole hundreds of times but had never hit the water. The day was hot, the wind was blowing hard from behind, and the ground was dry.  My drive trickled into the front bank of the hazard and I had to struggle to make bogey. Fortunately, my nearest competitor made par and I finished one stroke ahead but I will never forget the feeling I had looking at my ball sitting on the mud bank and thinking, “What were you thinking?”

Are you a risk taker under pressure or can you manage your game to your abilities? Please share a similar experience if you have one.

Thanks and play well!

Are you “Golfing” if you relax the rules?

A recent segment on The Golf Channel’s Morning Drive  broached the subject of playing golf with a relaxed set of rules, and it’s fostering a spirited debate.  The question:  Are you playing golf if you aren’t abiding by The Rules of Golf?  Golf is a unique sport because we referee ourselves, but I believe you can play golf by a different set of rules depending on the venue and type of competition.   The most important rule is that everyone in your group or the competition play by the same set, even if you are in technical violation of USGA or R&A standards.

The most common rule players break is rule 1-1 that states you must hole your ball with a stroke.  Essentially when we take putts, we are in violation.  Weekend golfers take putts.  The second rule most folks break is the various permutations for lost balls.  Most just drop  as close to where they lost it and count one penalty stroke.  I believe, if agreed upon, this is permissible, because it speeds the game up.  If you post a handicap round that included a lost ball that was played in this fashion, you are posting for a lower score than you actually shot, which is the opposite of sandbagging, and again, I have no problem.

Where it gets dicey is for folks who don’t play the ball down.  I play it down and many of my weekend partners do not.  You gain a huge advantage of improving your lies in the rough, as well as in the fairway.  If there’s no money on the line, I’m fine this transgression, but it’s where I draw the line for personal integrity.   The other relaxed rules about picking up after double par and limiting searches for two minutes make sense as well.

I have played in sanctioned Mid-Atlantic PGA events, Pro-Am competitions, club championships, member-guests, outings for charity, weekend money matches, and just for fun.  Each of these games was played by a different set of rules (some with a local rules sheets, others without).  Each time I believe I can state I was “playing golf” even though I may have been in technical violation of some USGA rules.  Generally, the  more serious the game, the more closer you’ll usually have to conform to the official Rules of Golf.

Do you believe in relaxing the rules?  If so, which ones to do you bend or break most often?