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.