FIX IT NOW!!!

  

Fix It Now

What your club is doing at impact (its face position, angle of attack, club path, the squareness of contact and the speed of the clubhead), determines the spin, speed and trajectory of your golf ball.

For example, if the face of your club is in the process of closing relative to the path of your club at impact, your ball will curve [draw]. When the angle of approach of your club is too steep the tendency is for the face of your club to open causing a high slicing shot. If the path of your club is across the target line, outside to in with the face of your club square to your path, you'll hit a straight pull shot. When you contact the golf ball one quarter of an inch off the sweet spot of your clubface, you'll lose about 10 % in distance.

From these examples you can see that there are many combinations of these four conditions [plus the speed with which your clubhead is moving] when you contact the ball. Mis-matches cause bad shots but when these five are correctly matched you’ll hit the perfect shot.

Thus not only can you use the flight characteristics of your ball to figure out what was going on at impact between your face and the ball, but you can also infer the swing mechanics involved. This helps you to trouble shoot and then repair your home base swing without resorting to the laborious trial and error method that has lead golfers down so many blind alleys. Understanding ‘what causes what’ by using the ball flight as feedback also provides you with a skill that is essential to any golfer – you can fix your golf swing on the golf course while you play!

There are three stages to this skill: [1] Identifying a poor shot – this is easy when the shot is really bad, like a top or a shank, but not so easy when the shot is just a little off. The question is, is this mini-miss a harbinger of a bad day and therefore something that must be fixed before it gets out of control or is it just a loose shot with no long term consequences [2] Understanding what is going on at impact to produce the unwanted ball flight i.e. what is the mismatch between club and ball   [3] being able to intervene by making a correction in your swing that fixes the ball flight so you don’t have to write off the rest of the round – you can fix it immediately rather than waiting for your next lesson or practice session.

In golf your goal is to be part of the “Fix It Now’ generation so don’t miss next weeks column where I show you how to add this skill to your play kit

Gage was No Longer Gage

 

 I have recounted the story of Phineas T. Gage before and even though it happened in 1848 it was an important event in that it was the first case suggesting that damage to specific regions of the brain might affect personality and behavior. Some of the best clues to how the normal brain operates come from studying the results of injuries to various locations in the brain and the Gage case was a benchmark. In 1848, Phineas T. Gage, a railway worker, suffered a horrific injury when an explosion sent an iron rod slicing through the left frontal lobe of his brain.  Miraculously, Gage, a kind and well liked person before the accident, regained his health and well being -- with only one major exception.  After his recovery Gage's personality changed so dramatically that, as his close friends said, "Gage was No longer Gage."  He went from friendly and helpful to angry and quarrelsome; a person who was once reliable, trustworthy, and socially gracious became unreliable, vulgar and an all-together belligerent man with nothing to be belligerent about. In 1860, 12 years later he died of a seizure at the age of 37.

For Gage, the normal system of checks and balances, the finely tuned No / Go System that allows us to make our way though this world was shredded.  But this was just one early case.  Since then, a bulk of research [see Antonio Damasio's book Descartes Error] supports the fact that "something in the brain was concerned specifically with unique human properties, among them the ability to anticipate the future and plan accordingly..."

Thus part of your brains planning mechanism is the system of signals used by your subconscious to endorse or nullify a particular plan. Take for example a plan that involves hitting a high, 220 yard hook over water. Even though your conscious mind wants to do it, your subconscious mind can cast a veto in the form of a NO signal if you don’t have that shot in your repertory–  the NO/GO is not in words but in feelings. You may feel unsure or decisive, uneasy or calm, worried or confident, distressed or relaxed about the plan you are about to execute.  This message system, an important skill of a healthy brain, modifies your plans enough so they become effective in reaching your goals – it’s an important skill to be able to turn NO’s into Go’s. In the example above you’d put away your three metal and lay up with a nine iron.