Your Second Set of Eyes Should Be a Trusted Set

First, Happy Veterans Day to all.  A heartfelt thank you to everyone that has served.

Today I golfed with my friend, Jim Rush who is a retired U.S. Marine and is a trusted second set of eyes.  Last month, Jim and I were on our annual eastern shore golf trip and we were warming up for our round at Eagles Landing and I was struggling with my putting.  Everything was going right, even on the shortest of shorties and I had Jim take a look at me.  He immediately noticed that I was lining the putts up about an inch out on the toe of my Ping Answer (with the “CORP” in KARSTEN MFG. CORP).  The Answer has no markings on the top and I thought I was completely square on the blade.  I tried to change but moving your putting alignment an inch right before the start of a round is a significant change and I struggled to get comfortable and putted poorly that day.

In the month between then and today’s round, I had the opportunity to reflect on my putting over the years and definitely recalled many times when I would make a good stroke, but hit the putt on the toe.  It’s quite possible that this fault has been with me in perpetuity, and I have been working to correct the oversight in the last month.  Today I’m happy to report that I was banging my shorties and mid-range putts with confidence.  What a relief.

The lesson learned is not about putting alignment, but that when you solicit advice from someone (other than a professional) you had better trust that their observations will be sound and their recommendations useful.  I recall when I used to teach a long time ago, we had a saying that went, “Amateurs teach amateurs to play like amateurs.”  You may have heard it and we certainly had our work cut out for us undoing the damage that friendly advice had done to our student’s golf games.  If you seek friendly advice, it helps if your adviser has played with you, is familiar with your game and some of the faults and fixes you have worked on, and is a good player themselves.  Jim knows my swing well and sometimes I will also ask him to take a quick look at me before a round if I’m striking it poorly.  Usually all he has to mention is a little key that registers and I’m on my way.

Do you have a trusted second set of eyes?

Got The Teaching Bug

from wexhamparkgolfcentre.co.uk

Readers of this space may have noticed I’ve been somewhat missing in action over the last couple of months.  Work has kept me extremely busy; too busy, and I hate when that happens.  Earlier this month I did manage to make my way to the beach for my annual fall mini tour of the Delmarva and played three straight days in some of the best fall weather imaginable.  A course review for Ocean City Golf (Seaside course) will be coming.  But I also wanted to bring you up to date on a very rewarding experience I’ve undertaken.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of my wife asked me if I’d show her how to play golf.  She is a pure beginner and had never touched a ball, club, or tee.  I used to teach golf for a living back in the late 1980s, and the last actual golf lesson I gave was around 20 years ago to a fellow that used to supervise me at work.  Once or twice I’ve had requests from readers (complete strangers who live in the Washington DC area) to provide lessons but I politely refused because I didn’t feel right taking money for instruction.  Receiving compensation for lessons would violate my amateur status as well as funnel income away from the local professionals who make their living giving golf lessons.

But in this instance, I decided to work pro-Bono and agreed to help her because she was a friend and wanted a simple introduction to the game before deciding if professional instruction was worth an investment.  I tried to recall the most successful lesson I ever gave to a beginner and thought back to a time where I taught a Japanese lady who spoke no English and had never played the game.  I had to demonstrate and manipulate the fundamentals and movements to get my points across.  After several lessons, she got it and I remember the feeling of satisfaction having just taught someone to hit the ball who I could not verbally communicate with.

What I discovered this time was that I was a much better equipped to teach after having accumulated several decades of knowledge and experience, then I was in the 1980s when I was an apprentice fresh out of PGA Business school and armed only with the latest teaching techniques.  Instructing beginners hasn’t changed much over the years.  If you keep it simple and limit what your student has to think about, you can be successful.  I didn’t have the latest golf clubs to teach with, had no swing monitor to measure swing speed, launch angle, and a dozen other diagnostics, and no camera to record her swing, but at the end of an hour, I had her making a competent move and hitting it consistently about 100 yards with an old ladies 5-iron.  She was thrilled.

My approach was the same after many years.  I was taught to teach Grip, Aim, Setup (GAS) first, and that’s what I focused on.  I showed her how to grip it and told her the grip was the most important thing to focus on while she learned and that I would be correcting her, sometimes before every swing to ensure she got that right.  When we got to making the swing, I focused her on her making the biggest turn possible going back and turning her hips hard to the target on the downswing to get the most possible power out of her core.  This wasn’t how I was taught, but is more of a modern day approach of teaching power first, then finesse.

So this experience was very satisfying and we are set up for another session this weekend.  I’ve clearly got the bug again and volunteered yesterday with my local First Tee chapter to mentor youngsters on golf and hopefully give back a little to my community.

Feeling real good about the prospects of helping other people and will provide an update on how things are going shortly.

Play well!

2014 Lessons Learned

It’s been repeated many times on this blog and no doubt on several others that the old Albert Einstein adage about the definition of insanity definitely holds true in golf .  If you repeat the same behavior, you’re going to get a similar outcome.  Well, I was not guilty of repeating the same behavior in 2014 but still received essentially the same results as in 2013.

A quick review of  KPIs shows my stroke average dropped from 80.25 to 79.97.  Average GIR improved from 8.15 to 8.47, and putts per round dropped one tenth of a stroke from 32.35 to 32.25.  Amazingly consistent performance considering all the attempts I made at game improvements.  The logical conclusion is that my “game improvements” amounted to mostly WOOD band-aids.  I’m sure others have tried the many improvement route only to bathe in mediocrity.  It’s happened to me before and will probably happen again, so the overall body of work can be summed up as an average year with no surprises.

Three notable lessons were learned which is always a good thing.

Lesson One:  I fell in love with the 9-shot drill early in the season after reading Hank Haney’s The Big Miss.  Only problem was that it was hard to implement and when I finally figured it out, didn’t know what to do with it trying to take it from the range to the course.  Takeaway:  It’s best to not to make significant changes to your ball striking over the winter and focus more on conditioning.  This is the second year in a row I’ve made the same mistake (the previous year it was my pitching technique – aarrrggg!!!)

Lesson Two:  I fell in love with Tour Tempo by John Novosel in the summer and leveraged it to only one really good ball striking round and found it impacted my short game in a very negative way.  Truly a WOOD band-aid that took some skin off on the peel back.  Takeaway:  (and I’m going to partially steal this from Vet’s last couple of excellent posts): Don’t fall in love with a swing thought and think you can repeat it from day to day.

Lesson Three:  In mid summer, because of a job change and new daily routine, I started stopping off at the course for 10-15 minutes of chipping and putting on the way home.  Takeaway:  This worked extremely well in terms of getting a daily fix and feeling current and fresh with all short clubs. . .until the fruit was over-ripened.  Worked great for about a month until I lost interest and had to take a break from the game.  Lesson:  don’t get into too much of a routine.  Mix it up or your concentration will suffer and at worse, you risk burnout.

So there’s your tidbits for 2014.  I’m spending December and January focusing on conditioning and getting healthy.  Hopefully, by mid-February I’ll be ready to rock and roll.  How was your 2014?  Bullish on next year as well?

Tour Tempo – Book Review and Road Test

I checked out Tour Tempo by John Novosel from the community library a couple weeks ago and have been on a recent test drive.  Authored in 2004, I was completely unaware of the Tour Tempo series but after reading, am adding this to my golf library.

Many instruction books and tips espouse a secret or magic move to better ball striking which can be attributed to one tour pro or another.  Novosel’s “Last Secret Finally Revealed” is completely non-mechanical and is backed up by a solid investigative approach and detailed film analysis.  His premise is that tour players are in “The Zone” much more often than amateur golfers and what’s consistent about Zone ball striking is rhythm.  If you can duplicate a tour player’s rhythm, not his swing speed, you can dramatically improve your ball striking.  Think about which tour player has the smoothest, slowest, and most effortless swing.  Many would say Ernie Els.  Novosel shows that Els’ swing is actually faster than Greg Norman’s, but the key to Els’ smooth appearance is timing.  He compares and times swings of top pros from Sam Snead to Tiger Woods and finds that almost everyone has a 3:1 ratio of backswing to downswing.  Yes, some pros swing faster than others, but the ratio is always the same.  If amateurs can duplicate the ratio, their rhythm and balance will improve dramatically, even if their strength and fundamentals don’t approach tour standards.

The book comes with a CD containing video and audio tracks.  The audio files provide three different swing speed mantras which you can listen to before hitting balls or warming up for play.  You use the mantras to adjust your timing and get to the 3:1 ratio.  For most, it will feel like you are moving incredibly faster than your normal swing, but the adjustment period is short.  I tried it and needed to speed up my downswing a bit, but saw immediate positive results with my driver last weekend, and got a feeling of rhythm and balance I hadn’t felt in about 20 years (when I used to drive the ball much better.)  Imagine my excitement!   At the range today, I warmed up with Tour Tempo and was hitting it pure.  I did not have as good a round as the previous week, but did hit some very good shots.  The best part has been my non-reliance on swing keys or mechanics.  For the last 36 holes, I’ve played with one swing thought; the Tour Tempo mantra, and love the simplicity of the approach.

There are tips and WOOD band-aids that we golfers play with all the time, and true to form, they usually only do Work Only One Day.  But when you are on to something fundamentally correct that is consistent from day-to-day, round-to-round, and practice session-to-practice session, you need to grab hold of it and go.  Tour Tempo feels like that fundamental change.  It’s simple, easy, and it works first time out of the box, and since you are making no mechanical changes, is very low risk.  I highly recommend you give it a try and let me know how it works for you!

When You Are In “The Zone” How Did You Get There?

Try to think back to the last time you were in “The Zone.”  What was common about your time in with previous times?  Is it possible to recapture it on demand?  In golf, as in all of sports, most athletes have been in The Zone at least once, and the experience is fabulous.  I haven’t been in the zone since a round in September of 2013.  Not that I haven’t played well since then, but being in The Zone is a level above playing well.

Identifying the characteristics of Zone play and duplicating seems like the key to trying to get back with more frequency.  Personally, there are three factors consistent with Zone play.

Excellent ball striking warm-up.  This is probably unique to me because some folks can warm-up poorly and play great.  More common is a good warm-up followed by the inability to take your range swing to the course.  I get a clue that Zone play is possible when I strike it pure during warm ups.  I have never been in The Zone without a great warm-up and rarely play well when warming up poorly.

Supreme confidence with the driver.  Every time I’ve been in The Zone, I’ve been able to stand over every tee shot with the driver and know with complete confidence that I’m going to pound the ball dead straight.  For me, good play, great play, and Zone play all starts with the driver.  Lately, this has been the biggest Zone inhibitor.

Birdie the first hole then relax.  I know it’s just one hole, but when I birdie #1, I feel like I’m playing with house money and it relaxes me.  Being in the zone is usually accompanied by a great feeling of relaxation and calm during the whole round.  I feel totally in control of my game and can play worry free.

I got to thinking about this today because I touched The Zone but did not enter.  Josh at Golf Is Mental wrote a post on going low which resonated and put me in a very good frame of mind.  I took his advice, set a very low target number, warmed up well, birdied my first hole and shot 1-under on the front nine.

A second helper has been this video from Hank Haney.

Hank recommended that for time challenged players such as myself, we commit to taking 100 practice swings every day, which I did all week (with a 5-iron).  My mid-iron game was on the money today and I felt the extra work definitely helped.  Give this a try!  Inconsistency off the tee on the inward half of my round slammed the door on Zone entry, but the 4-over 74 is a good round for me.

This week I’ll split the 100 daily swings between driver and 5-iron in an effort to get more confidence off the tee.  Not saying I’ll get back to The Zone immediately, but the taste today was nice and I feel like I have a plan going forward.

When was the last time you were in the zone and what advice do you have for getting back?

 

Better Late Than Never?

Has this ever happened to you?  You are in the throws of a terrible range session leaving yourself physically and mentally spent and then you find something on the last ball?  What do you do?

It happened to me last Saturday.  I was looking at dead yanks with everything from the short irons to the driver.  I had started out working the Nine-Shot drill but had to abandon as the controlled fades became straight yanks and the draws were pull hooks.  Finally at my wits end, I tried something that worked and nutted a driver dead straight on the last ball.  How many of you would chalk it up to a random cosmic accident and head for the parking lot and how many would go buy another bucket?  As it turned out, I was exhausted but with the prospect of teeing it up the following morning and having to sleep on such an awful session, my curiosity got the best of me.  I went up and down the line scarfing a couple balls here and there from my fellow range rats; just enough to validate.  Turns out the swing fix straightened out the driver but not the irons.  Better late than never?  Absolutely!  I feel it’s essential to leave the course after play or practice with some form of hope that tomorrow will be better than today and it worked.  My round the following day was a solid ball striking one propped up by a mix of drivers, 3WD, and 3-irons off the tee.  Definitely a more conservative approach than normal, but there’s a lot to be said for getting the ball in play when you’ve got swing foibles as serious as I had lurking just beneath the surface.

What’s your strategy for playing after a shaky range session?

Book Review: The Big Miss by Hank Haney

Just finished The Big Miss by Hank Haney (Crown Archetype Publishing – 2012) and readers who are looking for an inside look at the world of Tiger Woods need to get this book.  Haney has been criticized for writing a kiss and tell book but I found the insights into the inner workings of Tiger Woods profoundly interesting.  After the well reported sex scandal broke in 2009, Tiger has been so reclusive and withdrawn it’s almost maddening to watch an interview with him and try to learn anything of substance.  His guard is always up and the book digs into some very good detail behind the scenes.  Strangely enough, even Haney admitted that while Tiger often referred to him as his close friend, he often felt shut out as Tiger rarely opened up to him.  But for the casual golf fan, the insights go way beyond what we are fed by the mainstream media.

I had always thought the title of the book referred to the concept of what went wrong (Big Miss) with Tiger’s career after the scandal broke, but the term “Big Miss” is used by both Haney and Tiger to describe a golfer’s worst shot.  That Haney used the term for the book is interesting because it may be prophetic in the higher sense when Tiger’s career is eventually summed up.  Haney doesn’t actually focus much on the scandal and thankfully keeps golf as the subject.

Some of the content I found most interesting:  The work Haney and Tiger did to avoid the ‘Big Miss’ off the tee and how Tiger actually feared using his driver in clutch situations.  It was great to get inside the brain of one of the world’s best golf coaches.  I also found Tiger’s fascination with Navy Seal training interesting and how detrimental it may have been to his career and health at the time.  The section on how his team prepped him for play while on a broken leg at the U.S. Open at Torrey Pines in 2008 was fascinating.  A lot went on behind the scenes to make that victory possible that the general public is completely unaware of.  I also found it interesting that Tiger, and many other tour players work on their swing mechanics right up to tournament time, and then between tournament rounds as well.  This is diametrically opposed to the theories of Dr. Bob Rotella, where he espouses removal of as many mechanical thoughts the closer one gets to competition.  I’ve never found it beneficial to work on my swing, or think mechanics that close to playing on the course, but heck, I’m not a touring pro.  Still, you would think that as human beings, we’d be more effective without mechanical approaches at game time.

The only part I didn’t enjoy was the book’s ending where Haney compares his record to that of Butch Harmon as Tiger’s swing coach.  It seems he’s trying to justify the approach he took and the decision to quit when he did.  His analysis of Tiger’s “Big Miss” with his driving is way off too.  At the time the book was written, Tiger had just started working with Sean Foley in 2011 and Haney points to Tiger’s ranking of 186th in Total Driving in 2011 as proof that Foley’s swing changes will not work.  Now I’m no Sean Foley fan because I think his approach is too mechanical, but Tiger’s Total Driving stats were 5th in 2012 and 17th in 2013 which speaks for themselves.

Most of all, we learn in the Big Miss that Tiger has made many significant sacrifices in his life to achieve his level of greatness.  What will be interesting to see when his career is over is if those sacrifices are judged to be worth the ultimate record of accomplishment.  Get the book; it’s a good one.

2014 Winter Golf Tune-Up Plan

Winter Golf
From pga.com

One of my favorite pastimes is reading golf books over the winter and trying to find a nugget to put into play the following season, and this year is no exception.  Two years ago, I made the mistake of reading both the Stan Utley short game book and putting book and putting mechanical changes in place without sufficient runway to practice before implementing in the spring.  Come March, my short game was in ruins.

This year, I am determined not to make mechanical changes but have landed on a practice tip I just love and think will be very beneficial.  Has anyone heard of the 9-shot?  I’m currently reading The Big Miss by Hank Haney, and 9-shot is the drill that he introduced to Tiger Woods to improve his confidence in ball striking.  The drill is to take nine shots with each club in the bag and vary the curve and height pattern on every ball.  Basically, you hit three fades, three draws, and three straight shots and try to hit them with a low, medium, and high trajectory.  My driving range sells buckets of about 50 balls and the thought is to try the drill by warming up with five balls, then hit the remaining 45 in five groups of nine using a PW, 8-iron, 6-iron, 4-iron, and Driver.  I’ve noticed that on days when I warm up well, I’ll try to work the ball on the last few shots and it infuses me with tremendous confidence to be able to curve it on demand.  This drill seems like it will help with concentration and focus on every club in the bag.  Anyone tried the 9-shot?

It’s going to be in the high 50s on Friday and I’ll give it a go and report back.  Gotta love the opportunity to bang some balls outside in the winter.  By the way, a full book review is coming on The Big Miss so don’t miss it!

Do Tips in Golf Magazines Work?

Ever benefit from a tip in a golf magazine?  Usually you can find so many tips and instructional articles, your brain will explode if you try them all.  Normally I consume for the human interest stories, interviews, and full swing sequence pictures, as well as the “Get Fit”articles 😉 but on a recent flight home I found a tip from Graeme McDowell in this month’s Golf Magazine that really helped.

I’ve been in the worst slump in recent memory and have not played even decent since last September.  No doubt the inactivity associated with my large remodeling project put the kibosh on any regular cadence, and it had the doubling effect of forcing the feeling of relearning the game every time out.  My ball striking had become a spaghetti plate of swing thoughts and the downstream artifacts were ugly.  At that point, you’ll take any help you can get, so magazine tips at 31,000 feet were not out of order.

The fix was quite simple and made a ton of sense after I analyzed, but was probably just stupid luck that I found it.  G-Mac had you keep your left upper arm tight to your chest throughout the back swing and downswing – that’s it.  My off-season back swing drills were attempting to get the club more out in front of me and had clearly disconnected my arms from my torso.  While I thought I looked good in my positions, I had in effect taken the club back with all hands; hence the awful ball striking.  I went out Saturday on my local par-3 course for a quick nine to test this theory and was nutting it all the way around.  Really solid strikes in a stiff breeze with cold temps and I was sky high at the finish.

Been around long enough to understand that momentum in golf is fleeting.  But what’s wrong with thinking, “I finally got it!”  Have you ever “got it” from a golf magazine tip?

The carnage of improvement

Sometimes trying to improve my golf feels like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic.  Today was one of those days.

I started off by filming my latest training drill (swinging a weighted club with my backside touching a lawn chair on the backswing and downswing to ensure proper spine angle retention.)  All positions looked good – check.  I then headed out to the driving range to film some live contact.  The bad news is that every shot was a push cut.  The good news is that the same miss indicates consistency and the repeatability should be easy to fix, right?  Wrong.  The film review showed the mistake was the same loss of spine angle I’ve been working all winter to fix.  How frustrating.   Throw in a throbbing right elbow (tendonitis) and you begin to see the ugliness of this picture.

Next, I moved to the short game area for some work on chipping and pitching technique.  Oddly enough, the pain in the elbow was actually worse on these short shots as I tried to keep my hands soft and feel the weight of the club head on the back swing.  It even hurt to putt.  😦

So, I’m not giving up by any stretch, but am starting to question what is reasonable with regard to improvement.  How much can a guy with a bad elbow and only enough time to hit balls and play on the weekend expect to improve?  Any thoughts on this or remedies for golfer’s elbow (I haven’t tried drinking baking soda dissolved in water yet but am close to trying anything), please send them along.  Thanks!

What can you learn from one round of golf?

Opened the 2013 golf season yesterday at the local muni and was reminded of several truths:

• Don’t play on a sunny weekend day after 12:00 noon with hundreds of other cabin fever stricken hacks in the same vicinity.
• Don’t expect miracles after working all winter indoors on your golf swing.  Nothing like real ball contact on a real golf course under game conditions.
• In order to train it on the range and trust it on the course, you must first build the trust.
• Don’t worry about your hands of stone on the greens.  Short game is the last thing to come around after a layoff.
• Yes you can learn more about your golfing partner’s personality in one round than in ten years of socializing at dinner parties.
• And finally, a bad day on the golf course is still better than a good day at work. 🙂

How was your opening round this year?

What are the Do’s and Don’ts of golf practice?

Lately, I’ve been getting quite a few inquiries on what to do and not do while practicing golf.  Here we go:

• Do find a PGA professional for lessons.  Make sure you trust him/her and that their teaching style melds with the way you learn.
• Do work on your short game.    Dedicate 75% of your practice time to see the quickest improvement.
• Do simulate game conditions.  This will help you transition your practice to the course.  
• Do develop a pre-shot routine for every club in the bag and repeat it for each practice shot you hit.
• Do use alignment sticks as an aid for correct setup and for dialing your mind into the target on short game shots (and putts).
• Do film your swing and review it regularly.  What you think you are doing often is not what you are doing.
• Don’t become a range robot and rake ball after ball into the same position shooting at the same target.  
• Don’t confuse practice with warm-up before a round.  Never work on swing mechanics right before you play; it will screw your head up on the course.  Just get loose and relax.
• Don’t practice extraordinarily long putts.  You want to see your lags get close and expunge any visions of three-putting.  30-40 footers should be the max.
• Don’t accept swing instruction from well-meaning friends.  Amateurs teach amateurs to play like amateurs.  (See #1 Do above.)
• Don’t work on more than one mechanical change at a time.  You’ll become a swing pretzel if you do.

There you have them, now Do get to work.  Good luck!

New equipment debut: The Good, Bad, and Ugly

Christmas came early this year as I put my new set of irons and wedges through a full game practice yesterday and battle tested with a round at Poolsville this morning.  Let’s look at the Good, Bad, and Ugly.

The Good:

Most noticeable change with the JPX 825 Pro irons and the H4 hybrid irons is the ability to attack the ball with confidence.  I was able to swing hard and not have to worry about hitting the big push.  I love hitting knock down shots into the wind and pulled off a beauty with the 6-iron from light rough on my third hole today.  Then I played an awesome 3/4 recovery swing from under a tree with the 3-hybrid from about 175 yards on #4.  These clubs hit the ball where you aim them and that is huge for me.

Big plus on the new 50, 54, and 58 degree Cleveland wedges especially around the green.  I hit the 54 and 58 from the practice bunker yesterday and both proved more than capable.  I’m looking forward to controlling distance out of the bunkers by having two go-to clubs.  Today I tried a lower running pitch with the 54 and got plenty of check on the ball.  Previously I would have played that shot with my old 56 and tried to carry it farther which is harder to judge because of the added air time.  Another plus is the crisp contact and straight direction chipping with the JPX 8-iron.  The low leading edge and classic look builds confidence and promotes crisp contact.  I’m absolutely giddy about building a new short shot repertoire with the Cleveland trio.

The bad:

Absolutely no complaints with any of the new equipment.  I will need to get used to the Cleveland 50 on full swings.  I reliably hit my old Cleveland 49 gap wedge 100 yards and the new 50 seemed a little hard to control trajectory and distance reliably.  Again, the sample size was limited to 15 swings on the range and one shot in play today so no worries other than the obvious lack of available practice time with winter fast approaching.

The ugly:

The dirty little secret about good scoring is that it’s set up by good driving and mine is a mess.  Over Thanksgiving and again yesterday, I spent time on the range trying to straighten out my driver and couldn’t.  I was all over the place today and finally pulled three wood on my last five tee shots to keep the ball in play.  The iron club fitting has opened my eyes about playing with properly fit equipment.  Everyone has got swing deficiencies but mine cannot be as bad as the results I was getting with the driver.  To capitalize on these new irons I need to be straighter off the tee and am going to get fit for a driver during the winter and make the purchase before the 2013 season starts.

Final verdict:

The jury is still out on full swing distances and yardage adjustments as one round in moderately cold weather is not enough time to make a judgement.  But playing any golf in December is a big plus 🙂

2012 Golf Improvement Plan and mid-season layoff

My golf season has come to a screeching halt with the onset of our summer kitchen/living room remodeling project and I’ve been forced to take the month of August, and maybe longer, off.  Other than eating tons of restaurant food, breathing in plenty of dust, getting little rest, no play, and very little practice or exercise, I have not much to look forward to.

So this is a great opportunity to step back and evaluate the goals and KPIs for my 2012 Golf Improvement Plan,  and see if I’m on target.  The primary objective was better ball striking achieved through a new conditioning program.  The numbers through 26 rounds this year and 35 in 2011:

Year	Stroke Average	Relation to Par	GIR	Putts per round
2012	77.96	6.77	9.35	32.12
2011	79.60	8.51	8.74	32.86

Analysis:  The big winner has been my physical conditioning and that I feel great.  Walking 18 holes in the most adverse conditions has not been a problem.  Playing 198 holes in six days at Myrtle Beach was not a problem.  I attribute this to the exercises for back, shoulders, and legs.  I’ve also enjoyed a significant increase in distance with the driver.  One drill I do with every workout is to swing a club upside down and fast.  I think this has made a huge difference in my balance and timing, which corresponds to better swing speed.

I’m clearly not going to hit my goal of 11 GIR per round and one thing has remained quite apparent is that old habits are hard to break.  I still come up and out of my spine angle and that remains a major obstacle to consistent contact.  Several rounds I’ve felt very close to having a great ball striking day only to be undone by one or two bad swings with my standard miss (big push).  The modest increase in .61 GIR per round makes me wonder if all the effort was worth it but the 1.64 stroke average improvement for someone at my handicap level (5) tells me it was.

Playing 26 rounds in seven months and the limited time I have to practice and play have certainly been a constraint.  I’ve also recognized that correct short game practice is more important than amount of short game practice.  I’ve reduced the amount of short game practice by about 50% and it hasn’t hurt my game.  I’ve also found that unless you have a plan, remain focused, and can avoid distractions, short game practice is difficult.  The last two weeks my play has reflected the effectiveness of my short game practice the day before ( some good and some bad), and I’m one of the lucky ones who usually plays like he practices.

So we hang ‘em up until the fall and make a final push for improvement.  How’s your game coming?

Need help with my golf swing! Any takers?

I developed a push-cut with my golf swing on my recent Myrtle Beach golf trip.  Here’s two videos of me face on and down the line with the driver (post-trip).  I’m willing to try something new and give the readers of this blog a crack at providing suggestions for my improvement so please add a comment on what you think is the source of the push-cut and / or provide any drills or swing changes you think might help.  Thanks for your willingness to participate; let’s get at it!

Driver Face On:

Driver Down The Line:

Golf tips – what’s the best and worst?

On a recent business trip, I pulled out the latest Golf Tips magazine and scoured cover-to-cover looking for that elusive nugget to give me an edge.  This being their “100 best” issue, I was certain I would find the treasure I was seeking but quickly realized how insanely conflicting the information in a single magazine can be.  Anyone without a serious understanding of the fundamentals can get terribly confused by the plethora of opposing opinions and methods.  Consider the best and worst of what I found.

The best:  🙂

John Stahlschmidt, PGA professional at the Tour Academy in Scottsdale, AZ advises on improving feel for speed on lag putts:  “Take one or two practice strokes and hold your finish for the amount of time you think it’ll take the ball to arrive at the hole.”  Great simple tip for improving feel, eliminating a jerky stabbing motion and promoting an accelerating move; all key essentials.  I’ve been putting scared lately and am certain I’m having troubles with trusting my feel for distance.  Rather than trying to make everything, I’m thinking about avoiding the three-putt.  I implemented this drill today on the practice green and got that refreshing boost of confidence you enjoy when a missing fundamental clicks; you know the feeling.

The worst:

WARNING:  MAY BE DANGEROUS TO YOUR GAME

The recoil bunker shot.    Open the blade, make contact, and recoil for buried lies in a bunker, with a tight pin; are you kidding?  I don’t care that this was recommended by Briny Baird, you don’t publish this in a magazine for the general public and I’m surprised a teaching pro (Jon Paupore) from a Jim McLean golf school is advocating.  Even the video is contradictory as he hits toward a pin with plenty of room to run the shot out- just awful.

Can Tiger break Jack’s record? No way.

Many opinions have been rendered by players, writers, and prognosticators across the spectrum, including Nicklaus himself, so I’ll weigh in with an emphatic “No”, Tiger cannot break the record.   Consider the insurmountable evidence:

• Only 18 players in the history of golf have won at least five majors, and only one of them is still active, Woods.  It took the rest their entire careers to amass the five victories and Tiger is starting at age 35.
• Balance of power is too great.  For the first time since 1991, no player in the top 25 money list has more than two wins.
• Strength of global competition.  In 1991, 22 of the top 25 money winners were American.  In 2011, just 17 are.  Go a little deeper and there’s only one American in spots 26-30.  The world’s top players are younger, hungrier, and in the game.
• Tiger is reworking his swing after winning 14 majors.  Are you kidding?  His head drops 3-4 inches on his downswing making consistent ball striking difficult (a must for major contention.)  Now his stance has mysteriously narrowed on full shots.
• Constant battle with his putter.  Not a good sign when he’s continually changing putters, adding lead tape, etc.  Look at Mickelson’s performance in the big events since he’s been struggling with his putting – not good.
• Age and propensity to suffer lower body injuries.
• Ultimately, Tiger is fighting his biggest battle on the course between his ears.  You must be of single mind and purpose to win majors.  It’s not going to happen with all the distractions.

Add it all up and Jack’s record is safe.  Count on it.

FixYourGame.com – review

Brant Kasbohm, Director of Instruction for FixYourGame.com is on to something.  I first learned about this great on-line golf lesson service from reading TheBirdieHunt’s review and watching his lesson artifact, and was impressed.  For $19.95, Brant will review video you take of your golf swing and within 48 hours, return a detailed written report and video lesson of the highest quality.  Here’s mine:

Brant’s eye for faults and his ability to articulate the reason you swing the way you do are enlightening.  His use of a telestrator-like tool to demonstrate angles and positions is very helpful.

I am a big proponent of filming my own golf swing especially after a mediocre ball striking day.  But everyone needs another set of eyes from time to time and after my last film session I knew I was in trouble because I had a laundry list of things to work on.  Which ones were the true faults and which were cascading behaviors of the faults?  Brant found a problem I hadn’t even considered and provided the clarity and direction to help me improve.

FixYourGame.com is high quality, affordable golf instruction, and has my full recommendation.  Thanks Brant.  Now, off to work on my swing!

The backyard range is open!

I’m finally set up with my new Callaway driving net and Dura Pro range mat. Construction of my hitting platform is done and the backyard range is open! Check out this video snippet of the first shot. Now my family of non-golfers are whacking balls with growing regularity and all of a sudden, I’m in the market for some women’s clubs.

Usually I get my off-range work in up at the adjacent school field, but can only hit pitching wedges due to space limitations.  Now that the school year has started, the field is no longer available but this get up is great!  I’ve banged over 100 balls over two days and mostly with driver.  Not one has gotten through (won’t discuss the few hosel hits from the non-golfers that went a bit wide.)

Total cost for the mat, net, and wood to build the platform was about $300 and should easily pay for itself in terms of better ball striking satisfaction and lower practice costs.  Last item in my shopping cart is a floodlight and I’ll be setup for night action deep into November – December.  The truly great benefit is the convenience.  You belt a couple dozen, come in for dinner and head back out.  The AC, TV, and refrigerator are just steps away.  Commercial during a football game – half a dozen drivers are in order.  This Fall is going to be fun!

Copying Tiger’s power move

Look closely at the swings of these young guns next to Tiger and notice what they all have in common except for the last (Luke Donald).  They finish with the club nearly pointing at the target which indicates a tremendous amount of power released through significant torque build up.  Is the human back designed to take this much stress over time?  From left to right and top to bottom, Adam Scott, Rory McIlroy, Ryo Ishikawa, Martin Kaymer, and Nick Watney have clearly modeled their swings off Woods and have developed their bodies to permit the extraordinary ability to twist and finish in balance.  Scott and McIlroy are amazingly close in position and are perfectly in balance; just beautiful.  It’s no surprise that so many young players would copy Tiger and adopt his commitment level to physical training to squeeze every ounce of power out of their bodies.  Unfortunately, Tiger has lost his power advantage over “the field” and is just another pro with a high torque move who used to awe fans and competitors alike.  Sergio Garcia, Geoff Ogilvy, and Hunter Mahan also have the same extended finish.  Luke Donald is the exception, with a more classic finish with hands held high and the club appearing to run neatly through his ears.  His restricted follow through by today’s standards provides better control and accuracy, but doesn’t offer up the length off the tee enjoyed by the others.  These young gun moves are very violent and the significant torquing puts a lot of stress on the back and hips.  In short, it’s not natural.  I’m not surprised that Tiger’s body is breaking down from the foundation up.  Players with more unconventional moves like Dustin Johnson and Bubba Watson still clobber the ball but don’t finish with the full twist and I’d suspect will be more resistant to injury over the years.  Let’s watch these other power hitters to see if they can sustain under the physical demands over a 15-20 year period, or if they break down in their early- mid 30s like Tiger.