The oracle sayith and you payith

 

You often hear it said "there is no secret to golf" or put in a slightly different way "The secret to golf is there is no secret." Well there is a secret - many secrets in fact- if the true meaning of the word carries any sway. A secret, according to Webster is "known to only a few - something that is hidden from most." and if there is any sport that is "hidden from most" its golf with the myriad of swing theories festooning the learning landscape, the ever growing flock of swing oracles who with great regularity contradict each other much to the confusion of their subjects who don't realize that oracles are in the secrets business and business is good - very good.  

From Olympus to the Golf Channel

We have always paid our oracles well - with cash, high status and the ultimate respect due someone who has the "divine breath" the term describing the wisdom dispensed by the mother of all dispensers - the Delphi Oracle. Booked years in advance, priestesses in flowing white robes laid around all day answering questions of great import put to them by kings, warlords and the scions of industry -- answers that starting in 1400 BC markedly influenced the course of world events for over 1000 years.

The problem was they didn't just tell you straight-out stuff like "don't declare war on Rome" or "buy salt futures." When the oracle opined it was a stream of convoluted and arcane statements more confusing then an Enron audit. But not to worry - To make the information more user friendly there were priests who did nothing [at least during office hours] but translate the cryptic answers for their high paying clientele. But if you’re an oracle talk is not cheap – you are well paid, but in 67 AD, Emperor Nero, who was just 30 years old and had killed his own mother in 59 AD was told by the Oracle:

‘Your presence here outrages the god you seek. Go back, matricide! The number 73 marks the hour of your downfall!’

Nero never one to suffer bad news well, had her buried alive. His reign came to an end after a revolt by Galba who was 73 years of age at the time. I guess if you look hard enough for 73 to verify the prediction, the guys age will do but it’s a stretch.

Why did the babes babble so? The newest research confirms what had been speculated for centuries - the priestesses were stoned on the underground natural gases emanating from the ground at the foot of Mt. Parnassus, in Greece where the oracle was located. It was a good gig – find a mountain, get stoned, babble and get paid for it.

Today there are a growing number of oracles in golf - gurus who dispense their brand of the 'divine breath' wisdom. Instead of Mt. Olympus they are on the Golf Channel and on infomercials, CD’s and videos.

They form cult methods based on 'proprietary knowledge' which they defend with fanatical zeal. One such teaching method is based on 'physics' and the bible their use is so convoluted it needs priests to translate it, priests whose reason for being is based on the opaque nature of the material. Another uses a video tape of your swing explained to you by local operators located in strip malls who teach from a one-size fits all computer program based on dubious assumptions. Another guru does card tricks symbolic of his professionalism. Still another basis its entire marketing program on one golfer. His pronouncements about the golf swing rival the prattle from the ancient stoned-heads. The modern priests tell you that you need special high price clubs and a special swing - not like Ben Hogan's, winner of all four majors, unlike Tiger's,  and not even close to Sam Snead's who won more PGA tour titles than anyone. In this method everyone must swing exactly like a player who never won a tournament on the PGA Tour and that nobody who plays for a living has ever copied.

The moral of the oracle: if you want to play better golf beware of the 'divine breath' crew - they need you but you don't need them.

Dr. Gary Wiren wrote the book!

Dr. Gary Wiren, who literally wrote the book (The PGA Teaching Manual) paid a visit to Keiser University College of Golf and did a wonderful presentation to the student body. 

I have worked with Gary over the years and he is considered by all to be great teacher and one of the authorities on the History of Golf.

TJ on the left, Dr. Wiren and Dr. Eric Wilson, Head of the College

This is the teaching staff at the college with Dr. Wiren

TJ, Dr. Wilson, Dr. Wiren, Donna White (former LPGA player), Brian Hughes, Master Professional, David Wixson, PGA Professional and Frank Longabucco, PGA Professional



John McEnroe Was Correct!!!

Scientific Evidence that John McEnroe Was Correct ---------

                                    ‘You Can’t Be Serious’

     David Whitney, an associate professor at The Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California-Davis says that due to a phenomena called perceptual mis-location it’s good to challenge a call of ‘out’ in a tennis match because most mistakes by Wimbledon line judges are on balls ruled out that were actually in. The human brain often mis-judges objects moving at high speed so it guesses where they will end up – and it guesses long and wrong.

This comes from the way your brain works -- it simply assumes that things will continue as you last saw them -- unless you gather information to the contrary. Under normal circumstances you don’t study the ground to determine if it is still there as you take each step and so it is with all aspects of your visual field including your golf where gathering information to the contrary is exactly what you should do when you read a putt.

You’ve got to Look to See

Because of changes in slopes, when you read a green, you have to look or point your eyes at every section of your putt or else you brain fills in the part you skipped with a logical extension of what went before. If the putt starts with a left-to-right slope, flattens out, then breaks a little left at the end, you have to look at all three segments – if you skip the flat segment, your visual systems fills it in as a continuation of the left to right break.     

At the University of Rochester, Dana Ballard a Computer Science Professor, is studying the science of visual optics by learning the intricacies of how we perceive visual depth and gather information that is then relayed to the motor cortex for execution. This skill is automatic but understanding how your brain processes the information necessary to track your target can make you a better golfer especially when it comes to putting, pitching and chipping. As Dr. Ballard discovered, the eyes determine the distance and break to the hole by a series of "fixations" where, one at a time, they look at and evaluate portions of the route your ball should take.

 

I've used the golf balls to represent the segments. Information about each segment is stored in "working memory" a very short term brain function that lets you hold the information just long enough for it to be acted on.  If you fail to point your eyes, your brain will not have the information it needs to run its calculations. 



BIOMETRICS ARE THE NEW FINGERPRINTS!

It has often been said that each persons swing is unique like a snow flake so that no two golfers swings are the same. Now comes some evidence that this may in fact be true, at least when it comes to your swing and its footwork. Research done by Piotr Porwik etal, (http://zsk.tech.us.edu.pl/publikacje/08-Proksa.pdf ) has established a connection between how humans change their center of gravity and how you can identify the person by recording foot pressure profiles – how you stand is so unique that it reveals who you are.

Other biometrics are more common for example the iris of the eye or fingerprints used to identify people because they describe a unique characteristic either physiological or behavioral features that are exclusive to all but the person. Finger prints would be hard evidence, as is DNA — hard meaning that a jury of experts would accept such evidence as far as identification goes [unless of course it were the OJ Simpson jury.] 

    Modern biometric solutions have been introduced in which movement profiles such as the human gait, or handwriting, while still strong is not as ‘hard’ as physical biometrics. It is in this second category that the findings of the researches mentioned above take their place.

    The researchers asked subjects to stand on pressure sensitive pads in the form of a left and right foot. A computer recovered center of gravity changes as they stood without moving off the pads. The human body undergoes constant mini-movements most of which are related to balance requirements even when it appears as if the body is stock-still. Once these mini-movements were analyzed, a unique profile was constructed from which the individuals  could subsequently be identified by the pressure changes in their feet, a result of postural mini-movements.

     In my personal experience I have found that once learned the golf swing becomes a bio-metric so individualist that I can identify a person by their swing even though I can not see their face.  From a 100 yards away you are your swing -- and while the distance may wipe out the paunch and the facial features, a persons golf swing announces his or her presence.

     If OJ had left a picture of his swing at the crime scene rather than his DNA he would have been convicted for sure. 

THE GOLDEN TIGER

Remember the fairy tale where the villagers trying to steal the feathers of the Golden Goose became stuck to the goose and to each other forcing them to trail behind the goose wherever it went in a conga-line of the greedy, congealed together by their own self-interest.

And you can imagine the length of the conga-line behind the first billion dollar athlete so it’s not surprising that after the fall, Tigers management firm, IMG, set to work to re-invent their Golden Tiger. To watch his handlers work is a blueprint for marketers current and future, especially those that specialize in fallen angles. Just as the battle plans of Alexander the Great are studied at West Point so IMG’s plan which I have named “Back from Perdition” will be taught at Wharton.

In my opinion the plan is as follows:

Step one: Know the history of your public: "We are a society of second chances.” Says Tigers IMG agent “That's been proven over the years.”

Step 2:  Take the current temperature of your public.

Tiger's agent, Mark Steinberg took a poll that he says shows Tigers market appeal to be "very powerful, positive, positive results."

Step 3: Pound away at the concept of redemption to appeal to the religious population and emphasize ‘rehabilitation’ to those who either know someone who has problems or themselves have problems. These two cover about everyone in the world – a good place to start if you need to market your man.

Says his agent.. “We want to be part of the redemption, rehabilitation… And he [Tiger] knows that. He's comfortable with it. And he's going to do that."

Step 4: Exploit the element of transformation: change everything about Tiger so he’s not the same man who did the bad things – he’s been to therapy, he’s changed his swing, his personal life has radically changed with his divorce, he’s now friendly and open, he tweets, he has a new kid-coach his own age, he smiles – he even dresses differently giving him a new, trendy, more ‘in’ look. With this make-up team, Shaq O’Neal could be an undercover cop.

    Still the logic is forcing -- The general public was against the old Tiger, but here is the new Tiger. The ironic part is that, in the midst of all this newness, Tiger has to find a way to play like the old Tiger --- and this of course is the hair pin turn on the road back from perdition.

The Last of the Great Players?

I have never seen a great player so dependent on others as Tiger Woods. The really Great ones in the past like Hogan and Snead didn’t need to be continually shored up like a rickety house that fears the next gust of wind. They learned what they needed to early on, and then relied on themselves. Golf history is filled with a lot of good players but only a few Great ones and no coach makes a player Great. Great is special and nobody can give you ‘special.’

 But I am afraid for Tiger because you can fritter ‘special’ away – I hope he hasn’t but I fear he has. He’ll be very good again, he will, of course, win again but he may not be Great again – and Tiger-2000 was Great.

Michael Wie might have been Great but spent way too much time being shaped by her handlers. She is still young with gobs of talent, but can she shake herself free?  

And what in the world could be so wrong with Phil Mickelson’s game that he needs 24/7 care from a short game guru, two different putting coaches with different theories and a full time swing coach the name of which has changed three or four times since Mickelson came out of college. Unfortunately over-coaching and micro management have dimmed Michelson’s Great promise. I do think that his current coach, Butch Harmon, is good for him because he understands the game. When Tiger turned pro he wisely chose Harmon as a coach. The wrong coach could have ruined Tiger but instead Harmon made him better. Why? I think Harmon is old enough to have been around the Greats including his father – if Mickelson had gone to Harmon first I think he would have been better off..  

Follow the Money

There is so much money at stake now -- and I’m not talking just about prize money that makes a player aim for the center of the green [no pun intended], I’m talking about the money that is spun off  by the system of modern big time golf – the agents, corporations, college recruiters, the PGA Tour, TV, teachers – an entire industry of ‘developers’ searching for the next project. Greatness isn’t allowed to grow anymore; it’s forced through an IV feed. The parents see a condo in Fla. The agent sees two condos, one in Florida and one in Scottsdale; the coach sees his name in headlines with his own TV show and the corporate alchemists, they see their paper turned into gold.

Because of the money Tiger-2000 may be the last of golf’s Great players.

HOW IS YOUR SWING?

Looks like I will have the honor of fixing the World's Worst Swing.

 

 

 " Golf.com is having a contest and we want to see your worst shot.  We're guessing that the champion will be able to benefit from a few swing tips, so the winner will have his or her swing, video analyzed by GOLF Magazine Top 100 Teacher T. J. Tomasi"

Click or paste this link to read more and to see the video:

 

 

Golf.com wants to see your worst golf shot


Read more: http://search.golf.com/site/results.html?Ntt=worst+shot#ixzz15AQFi5T2

BIRTHDAY BOY

TJ's birthday (which is today) was surprised by a combination celebration.  He has written his syndicated newspaper golf page for over 11 years and as you can see by the cake, that is a lot of pages to come up with new ideas on a weekly basis.

Happy Birthday and congratulations

I love you,  June and the kids (Billy, Willie, Tillie and Heidi

Greenside Bunker Shot

 

Your ball is in the middle of a greenside bunker.

Assuming that you have a decent lie in the sand it’s time for a good old garden-variety sand shot where you open your stance, aim the clubface at the target then swing down your open shoulder line and ---- most of the time the average player who knows all this pulls the ball way left of the pin. Why is this mistake so common and how can you correct it?

A lot of golf instruction either glosses over or completely ignores the one thing that you really have to remember when you’re trying to hit a ball out of the sand: always open the club face before you finalize your grip on the club. If you take your grip first and then just roll your arms to the right to open the clubface to the ball, your arms will simply roll back to the left through impact, which will return the clubface to square, or, even worse, close the face – hence the pull.

Here’s how to avoid this problem. When you first grip your club in the bunker assuming you are right handed, turn your hands well to the left on the handle of your sand wedge. You literally want the thumb on your left hand to be sitting on the left side of the grip; then your right hand should come over the top of the handle and join the left as it normally would. Now, just turn your left thumb (and the handle of the club) back to the right so that it’s sitting in a normal position on the top of the club.  

With your weight anchored on your left foot throughout the swing, use only upper-body rotation to move the club—don’t allow your right forearm to finish on top of your left forearm, as you would in a normal swing. Let your chest swing the club back along your shoulder line and then simply continue this rotation through impact to a full, high finish. The key, once again, is to not allow your forearms to rotate.  The ball should ride up and out of the bunker on a wave of sand.

                 The clubface is open with the right hand in a weak position but his forearms arms haven’t been rotated at address to get this done. Because he’s opened the face the correct way, it will stay open at impact allowing him to spin the ball.  

Now all he has to do is cock his wrists and keep

his knee flex.

New York Times at it again!

And So It Begins

  “Mr. Boehner is known as an avid golfer, a sharp dresser and a regular smoker.”

The caption under a photo of John Boehner in the NYT. The NYT is very subtle using well chosen captions and pictures knowing that few people actually read the article. Code words like ‘golfer’, sharp dresser, and smoker, freeze-frame the persona they wish to project onto the next Speaker of the House, hoping that the ‘small people’ will view Boehner as a showy, shallow conservative who smokes and plays an elitist game while the poor people struggle.

Your Electric Golf Brain

Tiger is electrifying even when he plays badly but do the great players literally find a way to give themselves a jolt when they need it most? In February 2009 John Krakauer and Pablo Celnik of Johns Hopkins found that noninvasive electrical stimulation enhanced motor skill acquisition. Basically they performed an experiment where electricity was applied to the subject’s brain.  

A small but very important strip of brain neurons called M1 plays a major role in learning golf or any sport. Access to M1 in the experiment was obtained by placing a current producing device on the top of the subjects head directly over M1.

The group trained 45 minutes a day for five days performing a new motor activity that they had never done before. They tested three differently configured groups and found that the best performance belonged to the group that along with training in the new motor activity was also given a jolt of electricity.

The results of the study have a basis in how the brain normally functions. Since the brain is composed of neural networks which communicate with one another through electrical-chemical events, it might be possible to enhance the signals or even discover the code that allows information to be shuttled back and forth between the brain areas responsible for learning movement. Neurons are brain units whose many branches form highways where electrical flow lights up the brain like a Christmas tree. This Electrochemical event called depolarization is regulated by the speed and strength of the impulse

First your brain turns all information that strikes the senses [sound, heat, light etc.] into electricity then that electricity is routed to the proper brain areas for decoding This process helps your brain answer some key questions --what is this sensation I am experiencing and what do I do with it? Once a decision is made a second electrical code is sent out of the brain and down the spine to the muscles telling them how to respond – thus I run, fight, or make a golf swing.

A surmise: If properly coded currents of electricity enable you to learn a golf swing, it might also be that well timed jolts of electricity enhance the speed and quality of your swing. Electricity as an intervention is hardly new as anyone who wears a pace-maker can attest. Deep brain stimulation (DBS) surgery is common where an electrode is implanted deep in the brain to treat Parkinson’s disease and other movement disorders. And of course the technology known as TENS is routinely prescribed for pain relief. 

If it proves to be efficacious it might be possible to strategically place a small device located directly over M1 that was programmed to deliver jolts of energy to foster both motor learning and golf performance. Currently the big issue in competitive sports is doping but as our intervention capacity expands we’ll face some knotty questions about how much athletes should be allowed to take advantage of neuroscience.

DO YOU HUNCH YOUR SHOULDERS???

          Hunch-Flip Syndrome

Hunching your shoulders during your downswing ruins impact. When you hunch you in effect slam on the shoulder brakes and this “stopping to hit” causes the club to flip and the ball to squirt off line. The young player in the photo has failed to keep her swing pace in good order and thus falls victim to what I call the Hunch – Flip syndrome. Here is how it works.

Bio mechanically for every 1° of hunch you lose 2° of thoracic rotation and according to the conservation of momentum when you short-circuit your rotary capability the club will flip past you because your trail arm is only so long and it effectively shortens when you stop your back shoulder so it loses pace during the race to impact. Held back by the retarded shoulder your back arm will reach its full extension too early transferring so much force to the front wrist that it must collapse resulting in a weak flip at the ball.

In the correct swing the trail shoulder keeps moving allowing your arm to “stay long” thereby keeping the pressure off shaft.

    The tour pro in this photo has used his shoulders beautifully – – note how the shaft of

    the club is pointing directly at the midline of his body with no flip and no lagging back

    shoulder. Even though his right foot is still on the ground there is little weight on his

    right side -- he has no crease in his shoe.

    This young player shows what happens when you stop the

    rotation of the shoulders through impact. Notice how hunched

    her back is and how her core has failed to keep pace. This

    causes the right-hand and arm to overpressure the left and

    flip the clubface shut. The shaft of her club is not pointing to

    the midline of the body because she has put so much pressure

    on it. She looks like she's trying hard to stay behind the golf ball 

    and unfortunately she is succeeding. There is so much weight

    on the back foot that you can see a crease in her shoe. She needs

    to get up on her left side and allow her shoulders and core to

    fire through the ball.



 

USE JACK'S PHILOSOPHY

Average in Most, Exceptional in a Few.

Jack Nicholas didn't waste time during his career chasing the perfect swing or for that matter the perfect all around stat game. Once he learned the basic swing from Jack Grout he received very little substantive instruction – yearly tune ups he called them. His focus was on golf, not golf swing. After Grout died Nicklaus visited another teacher but in essence it was a business relationship to endorse their golf schools – Nicklaus wasn’t taking lessons.

The Nicklaus game plan was built around his strengths. He used a three-wood off the tee for most of his career, and like Tiger, he excelled with the long and medium irons. He was also a great putter from 10 feet and one of the best lag putters of all time. This combination of skills allowed him to have an inferior short game and still become the greatest player ever.

Nicklaus didn’t waste years trying to perfect every phase of his game like Tiger has. Golfers don’t run out of talent, they run out of time thus it depends on your focus during your peak years – and you can waste a lot of time trying to be perfect. It’s hard for a 25 year old to understand that in a blink of an eye they’ll be 50.

To be a good player you must digitize your performance, create a skills package then bring your weaknesses up to average. Find out what you do well and then construct your approach to playing the game around your edge.

While it goes against all the hype talk, the winning formula is average in most, exceptional in a few.

ARE YOU LUCKY????

On Luck

 When the average golfer hits one into trouble they usually pay dearly but it seems like every time Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods hits the ball in the bushes they have a shot – a little opening and a good lie in the midst of trouble all around. Are the pros really this lucky or does it just appear that way?

According to research by Robert A. Connolly and Richard J. Rendleman, Jr., Univ. of NC at Chapel Hill not only are the pros lucky but their luck is a key element of winning the tournament. In fact there are only a few players such as Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods skillful enough to win with only a little luck.

Of course when great players get a break they are skillful enough to convert the advantage. Too often the average player catches the one over-hanging tree limb and bounces back deeper into the forest while the tour pros can thread it through an opening the width of a cheerleader then bend it to the green and stop it dead. Basically it doesn’t do you much good if you’re lucky without the skill to convert the luck to a lower score.

The researchers found that during the years they studied the PGA Tour winners they attributed 9.6 strokes to good luck. The No. Carolina team put it this way:

‘We find that mean skill alone is insufficient to win a golf tournament; a little luck (i.e., unusually favorable outcomes and/or skilled play) is required for the most highly skilled players such as Tiger Woods, and lots of luck is required for more average players to win.”

What kind of luck are the experts talking about? It’s lucky when the golf course fits your game so that pin positions, tees and lines of play support your game. It’s lucky when they hold the tournament at the golf course you are familiar with, which may be why rookies have such difficulty in winning on the PGA Tour -- the courses are all new to them. Celtic Manor was very familiar to the European Ryder Cup team but not to the Americans and simply knowing where to miss can be a key to the amount of luck you have. As Gary Player said “the harder you work, the luckier you get!”

It’s lucky having a starting time when the weather is nice versus four hours later when the winds are up and the rain is pelting. And of course the more traditional concept of luck -- good bounces, landing on a sprinkler head and ending up next to the flag, hitting the pin and going in the hole, a perfect lie in deep rough and a free drop because of some sort of interference, are all examples of good luck. Ernie Els hooked it 50 yards into the left woods on the 11^th hole at the Masters one year, so deep that the maintenance staff though it safe to pile some bushes there. Els legally dropped it so he had a narrow opening back to the fairway and pulled off the shot. In the most incredible bit of luck I have ever seen, Tiger Woods hit his ball onto the roof of the clubhouse and received a free drop next to the green – it was so far out of bounds that the tournament staff neglected to mark it OB – Tiger sheepishly made par and shrugged his shoulders as if to say – ‘hey I’m not only great but I’m lucky, which makes me really great!”

These are all a matter of luck but its part of a player’s skill package how they respond to both bad and good breaks. The takeaway is that your game must be good enough so that luck becomes the deciding factor – then the key is to hang in there until your turn comes!!

A Water-Logged Cup

And it rained and rained at this year's Ryder Cup giving Judy Rankin an opportunity to explain something that has always puzzled the American golfing public --- the squeegee rule -- at seven o'clock in the morning.

It took 27 hours to complete the first day’s matches, long enough for our national debt to go up another 3,240,000,000 [2 million a minute]. At one point there was a better ball, a best ball and I think a butterball going on at the same time -- all with different formats.

To add to the confusion the US team [and their caddies] had to buy rain suits in the pro shop because the ones furnished by Captain Pavin weren’t water proof – thus there was no US insignia or colors to distinguish them. Did I mention it was seven o'clock in the morning?

  

Why were they trying to play golf in October in Wales? Part of the problem was the PGA tours Commissioner's office, who in order to promote their own cup -- the FedEx Cup [fondly know as The Finchem Cup] -- pushed the Ryder Cup back so the weather was bad enough to force the Monday finish.

Who Is Godot?

When Godot Doesn’t Show

In a web article titled Why most golf statistics whiff and how to fix them, Michael Agger describes the work of Mark Broadie, a professor at the Graduate School of Business at Columbia. Dr. Broadie concludes that golf statistics are faulty because they don't factor in the concept of shot value. In his schemata he calculates how many strokes it takes a scratch player to hole out from any particular position on the golf course. So instead of painting 150 yards on the sprinkler head it might read 2.3 meaning that the benchmark is two strokes plus the fraction. If you were on the tee box of a long hard par 4 the shot value might read 4.9, while the three foot putt might be at 1.

Your job is to maneuver the golf ball around the golf course so that you maximize your fractions i.e. you don't have to be perfect just fractionally better, so that over a round, a year, or a career, your fractions cumulate into advantage.  

The knack of scoring means maximizing your fractional advantages on each swing, a general pattern of play characteristic of players who have learned ‘it’ – – how to get the ball in the hole. These players have stored the pattern in their subconscious through experience yet this skill is so hard to identify that those who have ‘it’ don’t even know what they have. Jack Nicklaus gave his sons everything they needed (lessons, equipment, money etc.) but he could not give them ‘it’.

When a dominant player like David Duval or Ian Baker Finch looses ‘it’ [i.e. knack of scoring] they are bewildered and invariably look to their swing as the problem. They look at their stats, and conclude that their swing needs to be more perfect, so they find a new teacher then wait. They are in effect “Waiting for Godot’ – and sometimes Godot doesn’t show.

A GENDER BENDER?

In a recent article in Golf Digest, the case was made that female LPGA pros don’t putt as well as male PGA pros.

Here are a few of the more interesting quotes:

"I've seen only a couple of women who were as good as the bottom male tour player," "The skill set just isn't there." short-game teacher Stan Utley.

Dave Stockton a former tour player: "Emotionally, I think the women are smarter and more honest, but they're also more fragile … "Women remember."

Former USGA Technical Director Frank Thomas "You're just looking at two populations with different skill sets, and one is more skilled than the other… The women have to catch up, and I think they will, soon."

"There are a lot more jobs for men.. .Women almost can't afford to put in the same effort, because the industry doesn't afford them the time it takes to try that hard."    Stan Utley

 "The caliber of instruction out on the LPGA isn't as good because it can't be. It's just that the average PGA Tour player can have his choice of teachers and fly him around week to week if he wants."  ----Hank Haney

Pia Nilsson, a female teacher: “If the women tour players were able to putt consistently on the quality of surfaces the men play on, their stats would look very similar".  (Pia -- actually as greens get faster, putting is more difficult) 

One explanation not considered in the article is the scientific research in the field of man/women differences. Professor Doreen Kimura of the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario outlined her research as follows:

“A very large advantage for men is found on tasks that require hitting a target with a missile, or intercepting a moving target. This advantage does not appear to depend simply on men’s greater strength, nor on their more active sports history. It appears to depend on the accurate co-ordination of spatial targets with large-amplitude aiming movements.. [Sex Hormones Influence Human Cognitive Pattern Neuroendocrinology Letters 2002.   Doreen Kimura]   

Other sources agree that gender is involved:

 “…a women’s cognitive abilities and motor skills fluctuate in a reciprocal fashion across the menstrual cycle” says the Encyclopedia of women and gender: sex similarities and differences ..., Volume 1by Judith Worell  

The Takeaway:

   

Much of the science suggests that women have higher skills sets then men in other areas but not in hitting targets. It also is very clear that the results describe gender generalizations and can not be used to predict any particular individual’s performance [man or women]. 

In an opinion driven presentation such as the golf article cited above, to leave out the possibility that the differences are gender related does an injustice to the topic. Unless you’re into hype or political correctness, you don’t leave out the research on gravity when you are searching for clues as to why objects fall to earth --- or into a cup.

On a final note:  Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa, an evolutionary psychologist at the London School of Economics says that "Men are hard wired to want to win any competition there is."  "Golf is evolutionarily novel, but it tricks men's minds in a deep seated way.  Throughout evolutionary history, women have been attracted to winners of competitions.  A man believes that if he wins, he's going to get laid."

What do you think?

FINDING THE PERFECT SWING!

CHECK OUT THE OCTOBER ISSUED OF GOLF MAGAZINE FOR MY ARTICLE ON

"FINDING THE PERFECT SWING"  I THINK YOU WILL ENJOY IT.

TJ

Mathematics for Golfers

There are two things about Stephen Leacock a Canadian economist, writer and humorist. [1] he has a sense of humor and [2] he has played golf with the same guy [Jones] that you and I have. Leacock chronicles his golfing experiences in a piece titled “Mathematics for Golfers.” Here are some excepts. 

  

“It is only quite recently that I have taken up golf. In fact, I have played for only three or four years, and seldom more than ten games in a week, or at most four in a day. I have had a proper golf vest for only two years. I bought a "spoon" only this year, and I am not going to get Scottish socks till next year.
In short, I am still a beginner…
Now an ordinary player… wonders whether it will ever be his fate to do all the nine holes of the course in bogey [par]. .. The thing is a simple instance of what is called the mathematical theory of probability… a players… chance of making any one particular hole in par, is one in nine… When he makes it, his chance of doing the same with the next hole is [for ease of calculation] one in ten; therefore, taken from the start, his chance of making the two holes successively in par is one tenth of a tenth chance. In other words, it is one in a hundred.
The reader sees already how encouraging the calculation is. Here is at last something definite about his progress… His chance of making three holes in par, one after the other will be one in 1,000, his chance of four, one in 10,000, and his chance of making the whole round in par will be exactly one in 1,000,000,000--that is, one in a billion games. In other words, all he has to do is to keep right on. But how long will it take to play a billion, playing the ordinary number of games in a month,? Will it take several years? Yes, it will.
… Reckoning four games to the week, and allowing for leap years and solar eclipses, it comes to about once in 2,930,000 years. And from watching Jones play I think that this is about right.
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Stephen Leacock concludes his essay on golf with a description of his playing partner Amphibious Jones:

    “I take the case of Amphibius Jones. There are certain days when he is, as he admits himself, "put off his game" by not having on his proper golf vest. On other days the light puts him off his game; at other times the dark; so, to, the heat, or again the cold. He is often put off his game because he has been up late the night before; or similarly because he has been to bed too early the night before; the barking of a dog always puts him off his game; so do children, or adults, or women. Bad news disturbs his game; so does good; so also does the absence of news… All of this may be expressed mathematically by a very simple application of the theory of permutations and probability..”

     However there is no need for the Leacock formula -- I showed a friend this essay and jokingly asked him if he “knew Jones?” Know Jones”, he said “I am Jones.” All golfers have a little bit of Jones in them.

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 "Trying to go back to that would be a huge mistake"

Shawn Foley on the idea of Tiger going back to the Tiger-2000 Butch Harmon swing-type that led the tour in almost every category.

Hey after his association with Tiger, Hank Haney now charges $25,000 for a playing lesson which ranks him right up there on Americas Most Over-paid list just ahead of the Pentagons $435 hammer and Oprah’s billion dollar’s worth of stealth-talent. $25,000? I can hear the contractor now: “Gentlemen if Hank Haney can get $25,000 for a playing lesson, we can get $400 for our hammer.”

But wait on here – Haney taught the best player in the world for six years so he must be worth it, right? Here is Shawn Foley again on Woods's form under Hank Haney's watch "Let’s be honest about this, it’s not like he was flushing it with Hank." Foley is just a youngster who hasn’t been in the limelight enough to handle the press questions– he needs to copy Tigers style where he talks but says practically nothing. Rule number one is never start a sentence with "Let's be honest about this."

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GIS: As in “he led in greens in speculation”

A derogatory play on words [Greens in Regulation] used to describe a golfer who exaggerates his golfing prowess.

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Miller is on the Case   

  

One of the reasons why Johnny Miller is such a good announcer is that he's not afraid to tell it like it is. With Paul Casey leading the BMW Championship by three shots, the other announcers were bemoaning the fact that Paul Casey was not chosen as a captain's pick for the European Ryder Cup team. Miller went against the flow:  “There is a reason why he has only won 1 time in the US, and we are going to see if it is manifested in the next hour.” Casey ended up frittering the tournament away just as JM predicted.

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Who is the most dis-liked athlete?

That’s easy -- according to the Q “likeability” [or dislikeability] measurement rating system it’s Mike Vick, who served time in prison after he was caught torturing and killing helpless dogs. But in a somewhat surprising # 2 ranking is Tiger Woods who even though he had some personal problems, never broke the law and left millionaires in his wake. To name a few -- his caddies, Fluff,  and Steve Williams, his manager, his lawyers, Nike and his ex-wife who is reported to have received $100 million to $500 million after their six year marriage ended.

 But with tabloids screaming ‘bad Tiger’ for months it easy to forget all the good he has done via his foundation for kids. Since its inception in 1996 by Tiger and his father, Earl, the Tiger Woods Foundation “has reached millions of young people by delivering unique experiences and innovative educational opportunities for youth worldwide.”

I think we [the golf world] lost more than we realized when Earl Woods passed away.

The Takeaway: I wouldn’t be surprised if Tiger loses his number one world ranking in golf but I’d be really surprised if ever again he was Q rated anywhere close to Michael Vick.    

 

Does Your Weight Transfer In Stack and Tilt?

In the previous blog I wrote an answer to a readers question about Stack & Tilt.  Below is the rest of my answer.

“I read an article in the NYT about the Stack and Tilt. Is there anything to this? I see the ads of all the tour players’ switching.” 

Force plate recordings of Stack &Tilters who claim there is no weight transfer show just the opposite. Scientist Rob Neal who holds a Ph.D. in Bio Mechanics sums his heavily documented research on S&T: “… I hope that I have provided evidence to question the statements in the P&B [S&T] articles and at least awaken the consciousness of golf coaches. There is a large chasm between “feel” and “real”. Thus, while it might, for example, feel as though weight is not transferred, the real data show that not to be true.”

A Straw Golfer

S&T has created a bit of a straw man, claiming that traditional instruction teaches a lateral move away from the target.  I think the majority of teachers understand that it is possible to coil into your trail side without this big lateral sway.  Most of us teach coiling than “covering the golf ball” so the S&T bogie man RE the lateral slide is just not the problem. What is a problem, however, is a twenty handicapper trying to recover from what is basically a reverse weight shift by flinging the upper part of the body back away from the target and timing it perfectly in the mere ½ second from the top to impact.  They perform this stack, tilt and fling because they feel reduced power and are trying to make up for it.  Of course some golfers have a lateral sway -- what I am saying is that we do not teach the lateral sway.

Perfect is the Enemy of the Good

There are 26 million golfers who don’t have the time for “Perfect” i.e. a complicated method where everything must fit perfectly or it’s a disaster. As Baddeley said when asked why he switched away from the Stack and Tilt: “because it just got too mechanical and technical for me. Things got a little crowded in my head, and I lost my feel.”

If you devise a method that takes perfect coherence or it doesn’t work then in all practically ‘it doesn’t work.’

FOLEY CAN'T LOSE!!! ---- ARE YOU USING STACK AND TILT?

Right now Tigers new coach Sean Foley is in a perfect position just like Barack Obama was when he took over for George Bush. All bad news is Bushes fault – all good news is the current administrations doing. Doing it this way there is no line where the ‘Bush Stops Here.’ I see no mendacity in this purely human trait -- it is simply part of the Inheritance Syndrome [IS.]

How does it work in golf? Any time Woods plays badly it can be attributed to Hank Haney.  Anytime Woods hits good shots, it’s due to Sean Foley.  If Tiger never gets it back, it will be Hank Haney's fault -- if he does get it back it will be due to Sean Foley. 

Hence the rule about how to become a great teacher: teach great players who are currently down on their luck, but are a lock to recover their game independent of your teaching. Tiger is a lock to recover so get ready for the Sean Foley era.

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This is a question from a reader of my golf page Golf Insider, published nationally on a weekly basis.

Q: I read an article in the NYT about the Stack and Tilt. Is there anything to this? I see the ads of all the tour players’ switching.

A:  As you might imagine their ads don’t tell about the players switching out of Stack and Tilt like Aaron Baddeley and Mike Wier.

The NYT article quoted the founders of Stack and Tilt as follows: “…[Aaron] Baddeley was currently ranked 198th in the world and Weir 101st. At the end of 2008, Baddeley was ranked 37th, Weir 21st. …We don’t have to defend ourselves… Anybody who entered our system improved, and the players that left the system have gotten worse.”

This implies that the dismal rankings of these two stars are due to the fact that they left Stack and Tilt, but let’s put it in a more complete historical prospective. Prior to S&T Baddeley was one of the great young talents who won 2 Australian Opens before he was 24. And of course Mike Weir, one of the greatest players to ever come out of Canada, won the Masters in 2003 and was #5 in the world, before S&T. So another way to look at it is they took the number 5 player in the world and turned him into #21.

And changing Baddeley’s pure swing was like adding a scowl to the Mona Lisa.  He was young and against all advice he scrapped his Mercedes for a go-cart then sputtered all the way to #198 ranking.

So it could be argued that S&T’s former poster boys got much worse and are now struggling to recover from S&T. In general you walk a slippery slope when you base your methods’ effectiveness on a few tour players.  What are you going to say when they leave-- it’s the players fault?

I think the best answer to a player leaving a coach was how Butch Harmon answered Tiger Woods. Classy as always, Harmon had no public criticism of Woods while privately building rival Phil Michelson into a great player.