What I've learned from 55 years of playing the game and working in the industry that might be helpful to average players. Sort of my humble version of Harvey Penick's [U]Little Red Book[/U].
Some basics for average golfers
There are three things I actually know a fair amount about: Christianity (47 years of experience), the law (35 years) and golf (55 years).
I've already pissed off everyone at the Religion & Spirituality forum; a legal blog would be boring as hell for me as for you; and thus I am going to blog about golf whether the world needs another golf blog or not.
Golf has been the one constant in my life. My dad, a hopeless alcoholic, was a scratch golfer. One brother, now dead, owned a golf course. I was so obsessed with beating balls when I was 13 and 14 my mother feared I might have mental problems.
When my older brother announced he had no interest in golf, my dad was literally staggered. "But everyone in this family plays golf," he stammered, as though he simply were not comprehending what he was hearing.
Both of my wives (the first died of breast cancer) have simply had to learn that golf is what I do. The quest for the perfect driver will never end, I don't care how much it costs. I will never stop beating 150 balls a day into my backyard net in search of my version of Hogan's secret. My 63-year-old wife, a Russian who didn't even know what a golf club was, now caddies for me (hey, she [U]volunteered[/U] and insists she enjoys it!).
(Greatest golfer who ever lived? Ben Hogan. Pick anyone you want as second greatest, but I am inflexible on Hogan.)
My own credentials are meager. I did work at Ping in the early days, directly with Karsten himself. My index has always been between 7 and 10, nothing special. I've shot even par in competition. Last year, at age 66, I played each of the nines at my home course in -3. I've had two holes in one, 29 years apart and playing in a twosome with the same friend each time. But if everything goes haywire, I can and do shoot 90. If everything goes more haywire than that, I stop keeping score.
If only through 55 years of exposure to the game, I have learned a few things. That's really all this blog is about - the few things I've learned that might be helpful to the average golfer. If no one reads it, which I sort of assume will be the case, it at least will help me organize my thoughts.
I'll just include a few general thoughts in this first entry.
[B][U]Face reality[/U][/B]
A teaching pro once said to me that if you gave him 100 six-year-olds who had never played golf, he could tell you at the end of a month which ones had any potential to play professional golf. This is especially true today, when a clubhead speed of 112+ mph is mandatory (that's the lower end for a Tour pro). The ability to swing the club at 112+ mph is largely genetic.
No one thinks that if he could study films or photographs of Nolan Ryan's pitching motion and duplicate Ryan's positions, he could throw a fastball 102 mph. No one thinks that if he could study films or photographs of John Elway's passing motion and duplicate Elway's positions, he could fling the pigskin 80 yards.
But almost everyone thinks 300-yard drives are somewhere inside of him, waiting to be unleashed if he can just find the right tips, make the right moves. Partly this is because, until recent years, professional golfers looked like such average slobs. Even today, surely most of us look more athletic than Kevin Na?
It's genetic, just as all sports at the highest levels are genetic. Kevin Na's genetics are better than yours - or mine, anyway. A friend of mine just retired from Ping after many years and said that, even after decades of watching top pros hit balls, it still looks largely like "magic" to him. If you don't have those genetics, face reality and just attempt to become the best player you can be. Which brings me to ...
[B][U]Find your swing model[/U][/B]
Many people don't realize that there are several distinct swing models. If you read golf books and magazines and fail to realize this, you will turn yourself into a basket-case. The address position for Model A, combined with the backswing for Model B and the downswing for Model C will have you hitting shanks into the parking lot.
Probably the easiest and least-technical route is to find a professional whose body type closely matches yours and use him or her as your model. I'm 67 years old, 6', 160 pounds - my best swing models are some of the LPGA pros. Whatever the hell Bubba Watson is doing, it has nothing to do with me or my golf game. For that matter, whatever Lexi Thompson is doing has no relevance to my golf game.
Many young players, of course, are obsessed with the modern power game and dream they either have the potential to play professional golf or at least fly the ball 50 yards past anyone at their home course. That's fine - I'm not really talking to them. (I'll describe my own experience with this mindset in another entry.)
As we're seeing with many of the young Tour players, the modern power game takes a tremendous toll on the body. It's what they have to do to compete for the mega-bucks, but it's not really a model for the rest of us.
Way back when, when I was a raw beginner, I went from a typical left-to-right slicer to someone who never sliced another ball in his life - and I mean that literally - almost overnight simply by studying Tommy Armour's [U]How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time[/U]. (I went through a phase of having to start the ball 75 yards to the right to find the middle of the fairway, but that wasn't Tommy's fault.)
As much of a fuddy-duddy as it might make me sound, I really believe most average players even in their 30's would do better not to take their cues from Rory, Tiger and the Golf Channel but from the old-timers like Sam Snead or even Bobby Jones. Taking your cues from Rory, Tiger and the Golf Channel, in my humble opinion, is likely to make you worse rather than better and certainly way more confused.
[B][U]It's not how good your best shots are ...[/U][/B]
It's how bad your bad shots are. I'll close this entry with that old truism because it is so true. We all love to hit pure shots, but one of the keys to the game is to make your bad shots "serviceable" rather than "terrible." That's easier said than done, but to some extent it's a matter of using your head. A bad hybrid is likely to be a lot better than a bad long-iron. for example. Two of Tommy Armour's maxims that I still remember, even though I haven't looked at his books in decades, are: "Think [U]what to do[/U] - that's concentration in golf" and "Play the shot you think you have the best chance of playing well."
I've already pissed off everyone at the Religion & Spirituality forum; a legal blog would be boring as hell for me as for you; and thus I am going to blog about golf whether the world needs another golf blog or not.
Golf has been the one constant in my life. My dad, a hopeless alcoholic, was a scratch golfer. One brother, now dead, owned a golf course. I was so obsessed with beating balls when I was 13 and 14 my mother feared I might have mental problems.
When my older brother announced he had no interest in golf, my dad was literally staggered. "But everyone in this family plays golf," he stammered, as though he simply were not comprehending what he was hearing.
Both of my wives (the first died of breast cancer) have simply had to learn that golf is what I do. The quest for the perfect driver will never end, I don't care how much it costs. I will never stop beating 150 balls a day into my backyard net in search of my version of Hogan's secret. My 63-year-old wife, a Russian who didn't even know what a golf club was, now caddies for me (hey, she [U]volunteered[/U] and insists she enjoys it!).
(Greatest golfer who ever lived? Ben Hogan. Pick anyone you want as second greatest, but I am inflexible on Hogan.)
My own credentials are meager. I did work at Ping in the early days, directly with Karsten himself. My index has always been between 7 and 10, nothing special. I've shot even par in competition. Last year, at age 66, I played each of the nines at my home course in -3. I've had two holes in one, 29 years apart and playing in a twosome with the same friend each time. But if everything goes haywire, I can and do shoot 90. If everything goes more haywire than that, I stop keeping score.
If only through 55 years of exposure to the game, I have learned a few things. That's really all this blog is about - the few things I've learned that might be helpful to the average golfer. If no one reads it, which I sort of assume will be the case, it at least will help me organize my thoughts.
I'll just include a few general thoughts in this first entry.
[B][U]Face reality[/U][/B]
A teaching pro once said to me that if you gave him 100 six-year-olds who had never played golf, he could tell you at the end of a month which ones had any potential to play professional golf. This is especially true today, when a clubhead speed of 112+ mph is mandatory (that's the lower end for a Tour pro). The ability to swing the club at 112+ mph is largely genetic.
No one thinks that if he could study films or photographs of Nolan Ryan's pitching motion and duplicate Ryan's positions, he could throw a fastball 102 mph. No one thinks that if he could study films or photographs of John Elway's passing motion and duplicate Elway's positions, he could fling the pigskin 80 yards.
But almost everyone thinks 300-yard drives are somewhere inside of him, waiting to be unleashed if he can just find the right tips, make the right moves. Partly this is because, until recent years, professional golfers looked like such average slobs. Even today, surely most of us look more athletic than Kevin Na?
It's genetic, just as all sports at the highest levels are genetic. Kevin Na's genetics are better than yours - or mine, anyway. A friend of mine just retired from Ping after many years and said that, even after decades of watching top pros hit balls, it still looks largely like "magic" to him. If you don't have those genetics, face reality and just attempt to become the best player you can be. Which brings me to ...
[B][U]Find your swing model[/U][/B]
Many people don't realize that there are several distinct swing models. If you read golf books and magazines and fail to realize this, you will turn yourself into a basket-case. The address position for Model A, combined with the backswing for Model B and the downswing for Model C will have you hitting shanks into the parking lot.
Probably the easiest and least-technical route is to find a professional whose body type closely matches yours and use him or her as your model. I'm 67 years old, 6', 160 pounds - my best swing models are some of the LPGA pros. Whatever the hell Bubba Watson is doing, it has nothing to do with me or my golf game. For that matter, whatever Lexi Thompson is doing has no relevance to my golf game.
Many young players, of course, are obsessed with the modern power game and dream they either have the potential to play professional golf or at least fly the ball 50 yards past anyone at their home course. That's fine - I'm not really talking to them. (I'll describe my own experience with this mindset in another entry.)
As we're seeing with many of the young Tour players, the modern power game takes a tremendous toll on the body. It's what they have to do to compete for the mega-bucks, but it's not really a model for the rest of us.
Way back when, when I was a raw beginner, I went from a typical left-to-right slicer to someone who never sliced another ball in his life - and I mean that literally - almost overnight simply by studying Tommy Armour's [U]How to Play Your Best Golf All the Time[/U]. (I went through a phase of having to start the ball 75 yards to the right to find the middle of the fairway, but that wasn't Tommy's fault.)
As much of a fuddy-duddy as it might make me sound, I really believe most average players even in their 30's would do better not to take their cues from Rory, Tiger and the Golf Channel but from the old-timers like Sam Snead or even Bobby Jones. Taking your cues from Rory, Tiger and the Golf Channel, in my humble opinion, is likely to make you worse rather than better and certainly way more confused.
[B][U]It's not how good your best shots are ...[/U][/B]
It's how bad your bad shots are. I'll close this entry with that old truism because it is so true. We all love to hit pure shots, but one of the keys to the game is to make your bad shots "serviceable" rather than "terrible." That's easier said than done, but to some extent it's a matter of using your head. A bad hybrid is likely to be a lot better than a bad long-iron. for example. Two of Tommy Armour's maxims that I still remember, even though I haven't looked at his books in decades, are: "Think [U]what to do[/U] - that's concentration in golf" and "Play the shot you think you have the best chance of playing well."
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