Golf Insider With TJ Tomasi

Position No. 9

2012-02-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

Your Golf Swing Should Be A Two Wall Swing

Mental images, the pictures you draw in your mind, let your muscles know what needs to be done when you make a golf swing. In this way, what you see on your mental screen helps you to understand what you’re trying to do. An image that I often use involves the following: Picture a horse and rider moving away from a wall with one end of a 60 foot coil of rope tied to the saddle and the other end anchored securely to the wall. The horse gains speed and the rope rapidly uncoils until, in a bone jarring tug, the rope goes taught and the horse stops dead in its tracks. As you can imagine, the rider is flung [released] from the saddle, continuing alone in the direction that he and his horse were traveling only a fraction of a second before.

Now reverse the situation so that our horse and rider are approaching a six foot wall at full gallop and just as they get to the wall, the horse stops dead. Once again our helpless rider continues on alone as he's thrown over the wall.

In the first image the wall represents your right leg, in the second the wall is your left leg. The rider is your clubhead and his separation from the horse causes the release of your clubhead through the hitting zone. Model a player like Dustin Johnson

Johnson’s legs are in perfect opposition; the right resists the left and vice versa. You could fit a

small pony between them

At first exaggerate the move by taking some swings where it feels like your right heel stays on the ground until it’s pulled off by your body turning up and into your follow-through. Feel as if, for a fraction of a second, you’re sitting on your right knee to start the downswing. But there are two things to watch out for: Take care to keep both knees flexed and make sure you transfer your weight to your left hip. What you want is to let your weight empty into your left hip joint while keeping your right heel down

This is the result of a correct two wall swing i.e. the butt of the club points at the middle of her pelvis and both arms are straight with the toe of the club pointing skyward. She’s run her right side over a resisting left side.

Position #8

2012-02-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

Position: Both Arms Straight

There is only one time in the golf swing where both arms are straight and that occurs just after impact when the shaft is parallel to the target line. As you pose in the mirror this is what you should see: The right shoulder is under the chin, the spine reaches its maximum tilt away from the target and the left shoulder is even with the left ear. Almost all the weight is on the front leg with your head rotated so you look over the ball as it leaves. The back heel is off the ground and beginning to turn up onto the toe, but is still on its inner rim.

Sans excess rotation of his forearms, Lee Westwood has the toe toward the sky

Nick Watney demonstrates full extension of arms caused by momentum [MO] and non-manipulation. He’s not trying to ‘do anything’ during impact so MO will be his friend.

The guiding theme here is to allow momentum to straighten both arms; by doing so you minimize the destructive force of manipulation. This position is instructive even though the ball is gone because it testifies to either excellence or malfeasance at impact – get the swing right here and excellence reverberates back through impact.

Studies show that the average rate of rotation of a PGA Tour players lead forearm/wrist at impact is 2000 degrees/second a rate that allows the toe of the club to point toward the sky when both arms are straight. [see photo] This position is a signal that the correct amount of forearm rotation has occurred -- if the toe of the club points other than this something is wrong.

Position #7

2012-01-29T12:00:00.000-08:00

IMPACT

There are two swing centers, the upper, about half way down the sternum - the lower in the middle of the pelvis, just behind the navel. At the top of the swing the two swing centers are stacked, one on top of the other at impact. At impact the lower swing center has fired out from under the upper. Keeping the upper swing center on top of the ball while the lower moves out from under is called “covering the ball”. If the upper swing center is allowed to stack with the lower thru impact, the error is called a “slide”.

The shoulders are closed to the hips with the lead arm fully extended and the trail elbow slightly bent. The left wrist is in line with the forearm and slightly bowed towards the target, the right wrist is partially cupped. At impact the lead hip is higher than your trail hip and your pelvis faces just to the right of the target

Through impact the spine undergoes a rebound effect away from the target and as the pelvis releases its angle towards the target; the firing of this pelvic pistol occurs when the tailbone moves up and under the spine.

From this view you can see the weight distribution; predominately on the left foot while the rear foot is on its inside rim allowing the full release of his right thigh bone. Make sure to pose in this position using the mirror until you get it right.

PGA Tour star Johnny Vegas demonstrates perfect impact with his lead arm and shaft straight and the back of his lead hand pointing at the target—basically the hands “are” the clubface [see arrows]. Note how his right elbow points at his right hip so that his clubface remains square to the target line. Some of the shaft bend is camera artifact but not all of it – at these speeds the shaft actually flexes toward the target due to the transfer of energy through impact

Number 6

2012-01-08T13:52:00.000-08:00

Position 6:

This is the sixth in a series of key swing positions that allow you to match your swing to a pro swing model to see how it stacks up. The model assumes a right handed golfer who is hitting a straight shot.

The sequence that controls the transference of power is at the halfway point when the lead arm is parallel with the ground. Here the pelvis reaches its maximum rotational velocity by passing its energy to the thorax, then as the thorax (shoulders) picks up the core’s energy; the thorax reaches its own maximum velocity and in turn passes the energy along to the lead arm as shown below. In world class golfers, at the beginning of the downswing the pelvis tips forward toward the ground as the golfer “squats down” and arches the back slightly. This leg posture reminds of horseback riding without the horse.

When you are in a good position in # 6 [lead arm parallel] it is very difficult to screw up impact, so pose in the mirror until you have #6 perfect. Note that Matteson is on the inside rim of his right foot with the heel off the ground indicating that most of his weight has been shifted to his left foot. Both knees are flexed and the clubshaft is below his back shoulder and pointing at the target line, an indication that his swing is on the plane angle it’s supposed to be.

Our model has his pelvis cocked and ready to fire toward the target. His weight is left and his left knee is over the ball of his foot. At impact his left leg will snap straight as will his pelvis-- and that spells power.

Position Number 5

2012-01-02T10:20:00.000-08:00

The Transition Zone

The transition occurs at the top of your swing when the club changes directions – where it was moving away from the ball it now stops and begins to arc back toward the ball. It is here that golf’s smallest but most important movement takes place, i.e. the hip switch where pressure is transferred from the back hip to the front hip without actually rotating the hips – basically you simply step to the front leg. If there is one move that distinguishes a good player from a bad one it is this change of pressure applied to the front hip without any premature hip turn.

2:1

Your goal here is to increase body coil by a lateral bump or shuttle of the hips. Studies of the transition show that to create coil you should rotate your shoulders twice as much as your hips, a ratio known as the X Factor. However the most powerful hitters take advantage of a technique that ratchets up their power factor even more called the Stretch Factor.

The Stretch Factor

Most low handicaps start the bump as the clubhead reaches the end of the backswing arc, but to take advantage of the Stretch Factor like the pros do, you must start your hips moving before you complete your backswing i.e. while the club is still moving up on the backswing arc. It’s just physics not magic but you will think its magic when you see how far the ball goes using the Stretch Factor. It’s the technique used by those tiny bombers on the LPGA Tour – there is one, 4’ 11” (although she claims to be 5’1”) Japanese player, Ai Miyazato that hits it 260 using a driver that looks bigger than she is – such is the power of the stretch factor.

Power is one half of the game [the other is direction] and the transition zone is where the sequencing of power begins. Here is the key concept that escapes the less fortunate observer over-blessed with common sense. You would think that hitting a ball hard is simply a matter of speeding up the club by speeding up your body, but that is only half the story– and you can’t play good golf with only half a story. Not only do you speed up your hips but then they slow down to pass the power on to the shoulders which speed up then slow and so on until at impact the power is dumped into the ball. But we are getting too far ahead of ourselves by talking about impact, a topic that will be reviewed subsequently.

The X Factor: twice as much shoulder coil as hip coil

The Stretch Factor: the coil is now more than 2:1 by virtue of the hip bump.

Position 4 in the series

2011-12-13T10:44:00.000-08:00

Swing Position 4: The Top

This is the fourth of a series of key swing positions that allow you to match your swing to the swing model to see how it stacks up. The model assumes a right handed golfer who is hitting a straight shot.

Swing to the top of your swing and pose in the mirror – this is what you should see: Your head in the center of the shoulders with the left shoulder under the chin and the right shoulder behind the neck. Check to make sure your left arm is across the shoulder line with hands extended away from the head. The face of the club is square to the back of the left hand which is square to the left forearm. The shoulders have coiled twice as much as the hips with the right knee flexed and the left knee turned in pointing toward the ball – both knees are level. The guiding thought here is coil with the goal of a 2 to 1 ratio, 90 degrees with the shoulders/ 45 degrees with the hips creating a ratio called the X FACTOR.

The club shaft with the longer club such as the driver is parallel with the heel line whereas with the shorter irons do not reach parallel. At the top your lead hip is lower than your trail hip and your spine is tilted a bit toward the target with the weight favoring the rear foot.

The role of the back swing is to put the angles of power in place while also keeping the clubface square to the swing arc. Coil results from spine rotation primarily in the middle of your back in an area called the thoracic spine. If you are to improve your coil it will come by maximizing your flexibility in this region. Here is a drill to help you maximize your # 4 position.

Drill: Take your address position using a driver then put the club behind you so it lies across your shoulders [see photo.] Then coil around your spine until your front shoulder is under your chin and your back shoulder is behind your head. This is a full “two-shoulder turn” initiated and controlled by the thoracic spine.

Be careful not to put pressure on the shaft or it might snap. You can use a broom in place of the club to protect the shaft if you need to. As always check with your Doctor before you do this.

Position 3 - Key Swing Positions

2011-12-04T07:18:00.000-08:00

This is the third of a series of key swing positions that allow you to match your own swing to the swing model to see how it stacks up. The model assumes a right handed golfer who is hitting a straight shot.

Position 3:

When your lead arm is parallel with the ground and across the middle of your chest you have reached the number three position just after the takeaway has been completed.

In position 3 your head has swiveled slightly, but still remains in the center of the shoulders. The Shoulders have rotated and tilted a bit as a result of the tug of your lead arm. The lead arm itself is straight and parallel with your heel line while the trail elbow has folded into a 90 degree angle. Your left wrist is flat [in line with your forearm] and cocked at a 90 degree angle.

In number three you must accomplish three important mechanics: [1] for the right-handed golfer the wrists are fully cocked with the left wrist cocking and the right wrist hinging [left side leverage]. [2] With the fold of the trail elbow, the right side leverage is in place. [3] The club is on the correct swing plane as evidenced when the shaft points at the target line

The controlling thought in position 3 is to correctly set the wrists so that the club remains on plane. [see photo] The wrists set the club up while the body rotates the club into the depth dimension.

Concept expansion: “Swing plane” is a general term used to describe the overall tilt of the arc of your swing. The plane changes with the club -- nine irons are swung on a more vertical arc and drivers on the flattest arc.

With all that’s happening you can see the importance of position three so take some time to work on this position in the mirror until you match the model without thinking about it – then you’re ready for Position 4.

POSITION 2- Takeaway

2011-11-29T03:56:00.000-08:00

This is the second of a series of key swing positions that allow you to match your own swing to the model to see how it stacks up. The model assumes a right handed golfer who is hitting a straight shot.

The takeaway begins the swing and it ends its short journey with three outstanding characteristics. 1) The hands and the clubhead are the same height. 2) The shaft is parallel to the target line, 3) The face of the club is square to the arc of the swing.

Note that the face is still square to the arc of the swing even though it’s open [pointing to the right] of the target line

The Head: It remains in the middle of the shoulders which are closed and tilted slightly towards the ground.

The lead arm is straight and the trail arm has folded just a bit. The right forearm is higher and on top of the left. The weight distribution has changed with more weight now flowing into the right hip. The spine retains its position as the hips begin their rotation. At this point the left wrist is flat and in line with the front forearm while the trail wrist has increased its cup. The left knee has turned in a fraction and it should feel as if your weight is on the inside rims of your feet.

Tour pro Robert Allenby demonstrates the end of a perfect takeaway as his front arm swings to a 45-degree angle with the ground. Stop your swing at this point and check in a mirror to make sure you have accomplished the three keys mentioned above both from the target line view and the face- on view as shown in the photos. And don’t forget to center to head ala Allenby.

A Key Concept: Slack Breeds Slap

At no time should there be any slack in your takeaway because slack breeds slap, i.e., looseness in the backswing causes a weak slapping action through impact due to a lack of coil. By swinging the lead arm to create maximum stretch, you keep tension on the muscles constant, which leads to a powerful release of this tension at impact. Also, the more stretch you create, the wider your swing arc will be which means more clubhead speed and power.

Now you don't consciously prevent your chest from moving, but you condition it to wait for the lead arm tug, a signal that comes as soon as you "run out of lead arm". The proper sequence of motion keeps stretch on the muscles of the lead side of your body, especially your triceps. This is the beginning of coil and to maximize it keep your shirt buttons even with the ball until the pull of your lead arm becomes irresistible.

How does your swing match up?

2011-11-12T12:40:00.000-08:00

11 Positions of a Model Swing: Position 1

This is the first of a series of key swing positions that allow you to match your own swing to the model to see how it stacks up. The model assumes a right handed golfer who is hitting a straight shot. Deviations are either [1] destructive and require immediate attention [2] minor and can be deferred or [3] idiosyncrasies that can be well tolerated.

POSITION 1: ADDRESS

In the model your head is in the middle of your shoulders with the chin up off the chest so your eyes peek at the ball. The eye-line is parallel to the target line.

Arrange your shoulders square to the target line: for the irons, the front shoulder and back are almost level and the foot pressure is 50/50; with the driver, the back shoulder is lower with a 70/30 distribution. It appears as if the golfer is attempting to touch shoulder blades. The spine has a neutral attitude.

With the irons the arms and hands hang directly under the shoulders with the driver the hands are under the chin. The distance from the ball is a ‘fist and a thumb’ with irons and a little more with the driver.

The hips with the irons are square [slight open] and level [or slight right tilt]. With the driver the lead hip is a bit higher. The spine also has a slight bias to the right with the driver. That bias disappears with the irons.

The knees are parallel to the target line and slightly flexed, about the same amount as when taking a step. The feet are flared the same amount between 10 to 20 degrees. The weight is distributed from the ball of the foot back thru the heel with the major pressure along the arch. The feet are parallel to the target line as determined by the heels, not the toes.

Aim and Alignment: Face is aimed directly down the target line; the body is aligned parallel to the target line and perpendicular to the clubface line. Ball position: It migrates depending on the club; in general with the irons it’s located off the front cheek of the face; with the fairway woods it is off the logo; with the driver off the front heel.

          The spine at address is tilted from vertical approximately 15 to 30
        degrees toward the ball while the pelvis is tilted forward at address
       about 20 degrees. When standing normally the pelvis in usually tilted
       forward about 12 to 14 degrees; so an additional 8 to 10 degrees is
       added in golf posture.

How to Trouble Shoot Your Swing

2011-11-09T11:03:00.000-08:00

To maximize your potential as a golfer you need to do three things: [1] figure out what you do best and preserve it, [2] know what you do poorly and get rid of it and [3] you must know what to ignore. This is important because there are so many things going on in a golf swing it’s easy to get side tracked.

In order to trouble shoot your swing you must set aside some time then with the help of your instructor and a video camera, progressively scan the 11 swing positions: 1] address, 2] take away – lead arm 45°, [3] lead arm parallel,[4] top of the swing, 5] the transition, 6] lead arm parallel returning, 7] lead arm 45°, 8] impact, 9] both arms straight, 10] the pre-finish and 11] the finish.

Please remember that this is a general model and that because of variations between body types, there are variations among swing types, for e.g. to facilitate a better swing plane a player with a big chest bends over more at address than someone with a thin chest. Also there is much deviation from this model depending on the desired ball flight, i.e. a player who is drawing the ball will set up and swing differently than a player who is fading the ball. But for the serious student interested in systematically analyzing his or her golf swing, the 11 positions is a viable way of checking how well you are doing at each position.

The Bane of Consistency

As you will see as our weakly series unfolds, it is possible to have error in any particular swing even though there may not be error in the ball flight. This occurs when the compensating errors that infect your swing, match up and all is well for a while. Unfortunately swings that feature balancing errors are untrustworthy. This is why golfers periodically lose their swing – compensating errors are the bane of consistency. Here is an example: at the start of the downswing [position 5] you spin your shoulders too early and the club is pushed out toward the ball in an error called over-the-top, the result of which is a cut-across swing that creates a pulled shot. To stop the pull you hold the face open by jutting out your front elbow in position 9 [the chicken wing]. One error compensates for the other – and it works but since it’s so hard to time, it only works sometimes.

Thus there is a difference between a matchup that makes the swing stronger and a compensation that weakens it. The failure rate of compensations is why I say that ‘the best golf swings require the least timing’ and that the swings with the most compensations, require the most timing. Thus to max your performance it’s best to purge your golf swing of its error in order to assure that it will hold up under pressure -- and as we will see, this requires a competent analysis.

Do you hit it fat?

2011-10-18T07:15:00.000-07:00

Fat is NOT Where It’s At

Why doesn’t Tiger hit it fat when he drops down toward the ball at impact as is his habit – or perhaps of more importance – why do you hit it fat? The answer is most golfers hit it fat when their lead shoulder fails to do its job.

At address you establish the radius of your golf swing, the distance from the tip of your lead shoulder to the bottom of the clubface – let’s say its 60 inches. The rule is that at impact, no matter what else is different, you must return the radius to 60 inches. If you operate your shoulders correctly so they rotate at an angle to the ground, the back shoulder will be down at impact but the lead shoulder will be up. Since the lead shoulder controls the radius it must be high in order for your club to arrive with its radius restored to 60. Because you lower your back shoulder during the downswing you must raise your front shoulder by impact to prevent the club from becoming “too long’ and digging into the ground behind the ball, AKA a fat shot.

Cap: During the backswing Tigers left shoulder turns down under his chin while his right shoulder travels up to finish behind his ear. During the downswing the shoulders will reverse themselves i.e. the right goes down while the left raises up.

Cap: With Annika looking on Tiger demonstrates ‘lead shoulder high.” His spine may have dropped down but his radius stays the same because his left shoulder rotates not only up but behind him.

No Respect!!

2011-10-13T13:17:00.001-07:00

How about a Hot Dog with Your Fry’s

During the last round at the Fry’s a man rushed from the crowd, shouted something in what sounded like Latin, fired a hot dog at Tiger Woods then fell to the ground and surrendered. The hot dog was concealed in a bun which flew off during the attack. The police would not say if the perpetrator acted alone but Frank, a source close to the investigation who uses only one name as do many people in California, said that security had confiscated dangerous fruits a day earlier from several men before they entered the tournament grounds – among them were two large radishes and a Coco de Mer (Lodoicea maldivica).

Tiger remained calm and missed his 18 footer for a birdie.

The question is ‘was a crime committed?” A California state legislature said there was a law already on the books against hitting someone with a dangerous fruit but there was no law covering an attack with processed meat. The legislature plans a referendum that would cover all food no matter what its country of origin.

Are Gloves Necessary and The Surly Pro

2011-09-18T10:31:00.000-07:00

Should You Wear a Golf Glove?

What does science say about water and the human hand? You may have noticed that when your hands are soaked your fingers wrinkles. Wikipedia describes it as: “The wrinkles that occur in skin after prolonged exposure to water are sometimes referred to as ‘pruney fingers’ or water aging. This is a temporary skin condition where the skin on the palms of the hand or feet becomes wrinkly. Some researchers have proposed that this wrinkling response may have imparted an evolutionary benefit by providing improved traction in wet conditions.”

Human skin on the gripping surfaces of our hands and feet, furrows up creating tire tread-like traction certainly an “evolutionary benefit” but also in my experience a golf benefit: here is the rule of thumb for your golf game: When the water comes from the inside in the form of perspiration, the golf glove works well but when it comes from outside [rain] then a glove, unless its specially treated, probably doesn’t work as well as your own skin.

The Surly Pro has a Go at the Architects

Now its official – the guy who helped caused the problem is now part of the solution! No I’m not talking about Barney Frank and the housing industry collapse – I’m talking about Jack Nicklaus and the slow play crisis. When Jack was playing you could time him with a sundial; like Lots wife Nicklaus stood frozen over every shot – and millions copied him. But that wasn’t his biggest contribution to slow play; that is reserved for the almost impossible course layouts he built. The Nicklaus course design philosophy was recorded in an interview with Golf Week writer Bradley Klein a few years ago “I don’t take a lot of special consideration for women. Its like, “how do you design a course for a man who shoots 110?”

The Surly Pro answers that instead of shooting 110, and losing seven balls over five hours you could design the course so he shoots 80 and it only takes him two hours and one ball to do it. Granted that as Nicklaus aged and his ability to play his own courses diminished he softened his layouts but not so with other architects like Pete Dye who still builds courses that are so hard it takes five hours+ to play even if you’re an expert.

So what is the suggestion to ease slow play”? To speed up play, some including Nicklaus, are suggesting playing only 12 holes as was done last week in a golf tournament at a Nicklaus course in Ohio. Say what? That’s like wanting to shoot 72 and then ending your round when you get to 72 strokes – a solution that accomplishes the goal but destroys the process.

A tip from the Surly Pro: Never mind playing 12 holes --- instead, stop building such difficult golf courses.

The Surly Pro on Tiger and The Presidents Cup

2011-09-06T12:40:00.000-07:00

In his first competition in 2003 announcer Dan Hicks described the Presidents Cup sudden death playoff as “Two heavy weights of golf fighting it out to win the competition,” and he was right about one thing – the two players chosen to clash heads to decide the outcome of the event were heavyweights: Tiger Woods, The #1 player in the world for the USA vs. Ernie Els the homeland hero battling before 23,000 partisan fans watching live and millions on TV — just the kind of ending the fledgling Presidents Cup needed to establish its own identity.

But it was not to be because the golf world was robbed – it was the Showdown at the OK Corral only it wasn’t ok because there wasn’t really a showdown. Captains Conciliatory, Jack Nicklaus and Gary Player decided to change the rules after the combatants matched pars for three play-off holes. They said it was getting dark and there was too much pressure for any two people to shoulder, so they declared a tie. “Both Gary and I feel that both teams have won”, said Nicklaus. “What do you think this competition is all about? It’s about goodwill in international golf. It’s not about who wins and losses.”

Comments from the Surly Pro

Goodwill??? Golf is boring enough without throwing in goodwill. Who wants to watch Gandhi giving Mother Theresa a 20 footer to half the match while we all hum Kumbaya. In the game Paper/Rock/Goodwill, Everything tops Goodwill.

How do I know these things? Simple deduction: Who did Captain Fred Couples choose with a captain’s pick? Remember he could have chosen wholesome Keagan Bradley who [as we are told after every swing by TV announcers] is related to Pat Bradley a former ladies champion [much female goodwill here]; or an amateur like Patrick Cantlay who shot 60 at the Travelers Championship [much amateur goodwill here.] But Couples didn’t-- he chose Tiger Woods proving that Tiger tops Goodwill -- unless of course you count the goodwill of TV executives, advertisers and golf fans everywhere.

DO YOU NEED TO REMEMBER OR FORGET!

2011-08-24T10:57:00.001-07:00

Selective Amnesia: Tiger Needs to Remember to Forget.

Great players such as Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson and Hale Irwin have learned the secret to golf: Golf is not played the way it’s learned. Once you’ve learned golf swing you’ve got to forget it and go play a target game called ‘golf’. One of the major reasons golf is so hard is that golfers are thinking about their right elbow, their weight shift or what their hands are doing, trying to remember everything in the half a second it takes to make a downswing. To insure this doesn’t happen great players have what I call selective amnesia – they are great at forgetting.

But now Tiger is making the same mistake as any weekend hacker -- he blames his collapse in the PGA Championship on thinking too little about swing mechanics – yes too little. “I went ahead and played by feel," Tiger said. "It cost me the whole round."

Here is how eye-witness golf writer Bill Pennington describes Tiger: “On the range warming up, he [Tiger] was hitting balls with his swing coach, Sean Foley, standing behind him. Every one or two swings, Foley would step forward and the two would discuss some portion of Woods’s technique, with Foley sometimes mimicking a position and Woods trying to recreate it as he nodded his head. It might all be part of the process of changing his swing, which is what Woods likes to say, but an animated discussion about hand and body positions 20 minutes before he was about to tee off in a major championship hardly seemed reassuring, or commonplace.”

Tiger doesn’t need to remember all of the swing stuff -- he needs to forget it.

Self Confidence is Needed!

2011-08-15T11:45:00.000-07:00

The Excalibur Effect

Tiger has fired his long time caddy Steve Williams who many see as a major contributor to Tiger’s success – and that is exactly the reason why Tiger fired him. Tiger is smart enough to realize that power and self-confidence must come from within. External power can be cut off and this means you are under someone else’s control. This is dangerous in a sport like golf where even small flutters on your internal power grid can mean the difference between dominating and being just a good player.

I call this the Excalibur Effect named for the magical powers of King Arthur’s famous sword. If your ability comes from a magical putter and you lose that putter, then you lose your ability. In my opinion too many tour players use external props to shore up their weaknesses - remove the prop, [a valued caddy, a favorite driver, a swing guru] and their golfing world spins out of control. If their shrink's phone is busy after a bad round, panic sets in. It's a fragile world when your power comes from without.

This is not to say that Tiger doesn't learn from experts but he uses them as a resource not a crutch. Their knowledge is nourishment that, once digested, becomes part of the inner power grid. Of course it is true that Tiger wears red the last day, but this is more to influence his opponents than to shore up his self-confidence.

A case-in-point is Tiger-2000. The power in Tigers world came from only one source - himself and while no one is perfect, Tiger Woods was about as close as anyone can come. His strength was that there were no Excalibur’s in his arsenal—everything was expendable and if he lost them it would not render him vulnerable. His father trained him for toughness using techniques from military interrogation which is just the ticket for a game like golf that has a way of kicking all the props out from under you at just the wrong time. His mother guided him in a philosophy that counseled not to become attached to the things you acquire or to the process of acquiring. Tiger sacking Williams was SOP when it comes to protecting his self-generated power grid.

And there was another more simplistic reason – Tiger was mad that Stevie caddied for Adam Scott.

The Takeaway

What can you learn from the Excalibur effect? Buy that new driver and hold on to your favorite putter ‘Lucky Loretta” but remember that standing over your ball on the 18th tee come Sunday, sans your instructor, your caddy and your mental coach – it’s you and you alone that has to pull the trigger so you better have a fully stocked larder of internal power to carry you though.

More on losing your game!

2011-07-26T09:47:00.000-07:00

Stress, Geometry, Chaos Theory

I proposed last week that there is a scientific explanation for the mysterious disappearance that you experience when – for no apparent reason – you lose your game.

Golf Geometry

The disintegration process involves tiny micro-changes that at some point sum up to ruin your swing. This process centers around the original conditions that exist before each swing such as the aim of the clubface and alignment of your body. Based on the laws of motion when the clubface is perpendicular to the path of the club at impact [given center contact] the ball will leave the face with only backspin i.e. a straight shot. And of course if you are going to hit it straight you must aim it straight. But if there is a small difference between face and path the ball will curve off line, too often finding an unhappy resting place. It doesn’t feel any different but at 200 meters a ball with a titled axis of a mere 10 degrees ends up 14m [15.3 yards] off line.

Golf Chaos

Thus mistakes at impact arise from small mistakes at the top of the swing which in turn come from even smaller mistakes at address. As in chaos theory where a butterfly flapping its wings causes a hurricane, tiny flutters at address lead to a game that slowly slips away. Golf whatever else it is, is a game of precise geometry where the initial conditions although small in increment, are very large when you total up your score for the hole - the round – the year – and in the long run, over your golf career

Golf Stress

But there are other tiny flutters that can ruin your swing and strangely enough, they come from your stomach. Research by Professor Mark Lyte and associates at Texas Tech University support the notion that controlling your body’s response to stress is influenced by the correct mix of bacteria in your stomach and intestines – bugs in your stomach cause bugs in your swing. Of course it is no big news that many of the mistakes you make in golf are stress-related and it is these mistakes that throw your ‘first brain’ out of sync. But did you know that you have a ‘second brain’ composed of 100 million neurons embedded in the walls of the long digestion tube known as the gut? These two brains are connected by a direct pathway --a crowded highway crammed with messages. Thus what is happening in your digestive track affects your perception of your world and vice versa.

Byron Nelson threw up before every round and it drove him from the game at the early age of 34. NBA great Bill Russell threw up before games as did NHL goalie Glenn Hall. Stress rules us all and its not always throwing up -- Tiger Woods even when he was in top form often hit terrible shots of the first tee due to ‘nerves’ – and he was the best player in the world.

Conclusion

In golf, small can be very big. When you are playing poorly you may be only one tip away from getting it back again and when you’re playing well it can slip away due to micro changes that you are not even aware of. Stress, geometry, chaos theory – no wonder golf is a mysterious game of a lifetime.

WHERE DID YOUR GAME GO?????

2011-07-15T07:51:00.000-07:00

A Mysterious Disappearance

I contend there is a scientific explanation for the mysterious disappearance of performance that golfers experience when – for no apparent reason – they lose their game. The disintegration process involves tiny micro-changes that at some point sum up to ruin your swing.

Small increments that destroy us are well known. Before it was outlawed in England there was a penalty called "pressing" that was carried out by piling small stones, one at a time, on the victim’s chest until s/he was crushed to death. Brutal yes but had you stumbled on a ‘pressing’ you could have figured out quickly the ultimate result. But stumble on the beginnings of a hurricane and you would not know it because the causes of a hurricane in no way resemble the final effect i.e. small, micro flutters in the atmosphere in South America producing 100 mph winds in Miami. And here-in lays the reason why it is so difficult to predict a hurricane more than two weeks out -- because the cause [the initial system condition] doesn’t look much like the end result.

And as difficult as it is to predict hurricanes it is even more difficult to predict when your golf game is going south. Suppose your game was like a hurricane where the destructive force began with small flutters. You pay no real attention to these harbingers even though some are things you have been told many times. Still you ignore them because they are not directly related to ‘the Big Dog’ -- your golf swing. Proper breathing, slowing everything you do under pressure, focusing on the target, and things like a correct pre-game practice session are mere pre-swing flutters that most golfers give only lip service. And what of aim? Another lip service item -- 95% of golfers screw up aim -- the same with ball position, weight distribution, and shoulder alignment. If you are like most golfers The Swing is the Thing – just get up there any old way and hit it – but you’d better hurry just a bit more than usual because there is a hurricane coming.

More next week on the flutters that precede the storm including one you probably don’t know about because it comes directly from your gut rather than your brain.

IS IT TOO MUCH

2011-07-13T06:50:00.000-07:00

Hogan Rolls Over in His Grave

“All I did is get on each tee and wait until (Edmondson – his caddy) told me what to do,” said PGA TOUR player Ryan Palmer. “He told me what side of the tee box to get on, and what side he wanted me to be on, what target he wanted me to hit, and it was my job to hit the shot.”

Palmer played well at the Byron Nelson Championship using this approach losing in a playoff but in my opinion being so other-directed is not good in golf.

Takeaway: Self-reliance is a mindset and under pressure you gather information rather than ask for advice.

Jack Burke Jr. –

“A lot of the kids on the tour nowadays hire instructors, so they aren't really thinking for themselves about their technique and how to improve. They don't trust themselves and when things start going badly, they have nowhere to turn. In the middle of a round, they can't call their coach to come over and give them a tip.

But they can ask their caddy

Fitness and It's Effects

2011-07-05T13:16:00.000-07:00

On the Other Side of Fitness

It seems puzzling that Johnny Miller who won the US Open in 1973 beat everyone including Jack Nicklaus for three years and then disappeared. David Duvall rose to number one then poof, he was gone. Sergio Garcia was a wonder kin but now shows only flashes of his former brilliance. Ernie Els and Phil Mickelson fought for second best for years but now are random performers given their prodigious talent. And of course Tiger dominated for nine years and now he’s abdicated his place at the top.

What is the connecting thread here? Each of these players changed their body drastically – some through injury, and some through intent in the mistaken view that they were providing themselves with an upgrade.

Changed Body = Changed Game

Els injured his knee, put on weight and lost his touch; Mickelson contracted psoriatic arthritis which can affect your sense of how your body is arranged in space while Garcia, Duval and Miller worked out hard and changed their body distribution of balance – Duval went from schmoo to svelte and lost his feel. And Woods of course changed his body with an intense body building routine that made him look buff at the beach but buff is only good at an ‘after-majors-win’ party. In a counter-intuitive slam life often tosses out, Tigers new upper body strength tore up his knee. And in this ‘muscle is good’ world the Kenny Perry story is not unique. He dropped forty pounds and put on some muscle looking for an upgrade to first class -- instead he lost his game – and he admits it!

"I hired a personal trainer. I actually did last year go from 235 to 199 in weight. I was working out diligently six days week. Went to a nutritionist and really watched my diet. I actually played worse…I was lifting heavy bulk weight and getter heavy. I should have been working on lengthening my muscles, getting longer, looser, more flexible."

This first-class-to-coach downgrade Perry suffered seems to defy a common sense that says working out is good and all things being equal ‘strongest machine wins” until you revisit the old, but very true adage, ‘if it aint’ broke don’t fix it.” You design your work out/diet to keep what you have once you have it.

Gary Player, the father of the fitness in golf revolution, stayed in shape to keep what he already had. His goal was longevity. Most have to work to keep it while some like Sam Snead were naturally fit for golf. Snead’s famous comment on working out was “I never lifted anything heavier than a petticoat” but he could still kick the top of a door frame with his foot at 70 years old. Tom Weiskopf at 6’3” 190 pounds admitted he couldn’t bench 100 lbs. yet he was one of golf’s longest hitters in the day of mega-long Jack Nicklaus. And the longevity of ‘paunchy’ Ray Floyd as the press called him [even in his 20ties] is the gold standard – from 1961 to 1992 [31 years.] Paunchy Ray won 22 tournaments with his final win in 1992 at the age of 49. He also won on the Senior Tour later that season to become the first player to win on both tours in the same year.

The Takeaway: There are three things your work out should provide 1] you feel better 2] you look better 3] you play better and if you’re a golfer don’t leave out #3.

Next: what actually happens when you change your body.

How is your putting?

2011-06-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

A few years ago Dr. Ralph Mann at Grand Cypress resort in Fla. studied a number of the world's best putters and found some interesting things.

Here is a summary:

Regardless of the length of the putt [they measured four foot, eight foot, 16 foot and 32 foot putts] the completion time of the strokes are exactly the same.

The down swing time is roughly half of the back swing time, showing that the player is accelerating the blade through impact.

As an example, on a four foot putt by Greg Norman the back swing took .62 seconds, the down swing .3 seconds, the total completion time .92 seconds. For the 32 foot putt, the back swing took .63 seconds, the down swing .29 seconds, for a .92 completion time.

All of the professionals measured consistently produced a follow-through distance almost twice as large as the back swing distance again due to acceleration.

The Model set-up:

The feet were about 12 inches apart at the toes with the front foot drawn back an inch from the target line; the ball is two inches inside the front big toe and 10 inches out from the foot; the eyes are positioned about two inches inside the ball, contradicting instruction that tells you to have your eyes directly over the ball; the weight is toward the heels and evenly distributed, again contradicting that most of the weight should be on the front side.

Please remember that these are averages so individuals differ.

The Model Putting Stroke:

Is predominantly straight back and straight through, a pendulum-type motion that stays on the line as long as possible. The recommendation is to putt with the arms and the shoulders [not the wrists] thereby creating the motion of the club by using a tilting of the shoulders. Over-using the wrists open and closes the clubface and this leads to slapping at the ball. The lower body does not move much at all.

The key is returning the putter face to its address position at impact with the putter face perpendicular to the arc of the stroke. This makes the stroke as simple as possible with fewer chances for error.

A Drill

Stroke the putt by taking the putter back to your right toe, and then through the ball, to actually twice the distance. Use tees to create gates to guide the putter. Do this for all distances until you develop a feel of how much back swing you need for each length putt. Then practice putting to the hole, focusing only on the right distance. You can actually learn to putt this way out on the golf course. It's a great way to get your backswing under control and to get the relationships between the backswing and the follow through correct every time.

IS THIS FOR YOU??????

2011-06-10T09:36:00.001-07:00

What Will the USGA Say About Elective Amputation?

Dr. Yoseph Bar-Cohen of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA, has developed the technology of "artificial muscles" on robots for use in a NASA rover that may be sent to an asteroid. The muscles are composed of layers of flexible plastic strips that work in waves like human fingers when the current is turned on. Bar-Cohen thinks that in the future artificial muscles will be used in humans here on earth. Similar technology is growing at a rapid pace.

Suppose a brain chip could be implanted that would allow you to play better golf. You could get a sharper set of eyes, or swallow a device made with nano technology that lives in your blood stream and perfectly controls your stress level, flooding you with adrenaline for long drives and steadying your nerves for the three footers. Steroids, testosterone and other drugs are on the ‘do not do’ list but how about these technologies – and what about artificial limbs?

Fast-forward to the year 2016 when golf is in the Olympics and countries worldwide have spent years pulling out all the stops. And suppose there is a prosthetic golf leg available that the owner could alternatively program for a golf swing followed by a natural stride. What about a pair of bionic hands that produce an always perfect, vice-like hold on the club? Here is the question: If the artificial prosthesis forces the golfer to swing correctly but there is no medical reason for the operation --would the golfer be allowed to play? Think all of this is just science fiction - think again!

An Austrian man voluntarily had his hand amputated so he could be fitted with a bionic limb. The surgery is the second elective amputation to be performed by Viennese surgeon Professor Oskar Aszmann. Bionic hands move in response to signals from the brain modulated by sensors in the forearm.

Would a golfer go as far as ‘elective amputation” to improve a golf game? It’s not out of the question. I know of a 32 year old woman golfer who underwent breast reduction surgery because her instructor mentioned that her chest caused her to pick the club up.

My sense is that the important issue in golf in the years to come will not be about nonconforming equipment but nonconforming players. From the dart throwing constable in the movie "Young Frankenstein" to the 70ties TV series, the Six Million Dollar Man” we've had a love affair with our bionic hero's. But the question is when they become real -- will the USGA/PGA let them play golf?

Would Hogan Approve?

2011-06-04T10:45:00.000-07:00

Hogan Rolls Over in His Grave

Palmer played well at the Byron Nelson Championship using this approach losing in a playoff but in my opinion being so other-directed is not good in golf.

Takeaway: Self-reliance is a mindset and under pressure you gather information rather than ask for advice.

Jack Burke Jr. –

But they can ask their caddy

DO YOU HAVE GEOMETRY?

2011-05-31T12:23:00.000-07:00

Geometry

Think you don’t know a lot about geometry? Then think again because the human brain has been using geometry to figure things out for 1.4 million years. Research by Véronique Izard, a psychologist at the Descartes campus of the University of Paris says geometry is an intuitive as part of our DNA. The skill of figuring out every day geometry requires no formal training and it is cross-cultural -- both modern and primitive.

“I would say that this means Euclidean geometry is probably universal to all human beings,” she said. “We find people grasping concepts of geometry that go beyond the perceivable.”

Takeaway: Golf, whatever else it is, is a game of geometry – the relationship of lines and arcs. So what makes golf so hard if golfers have an intuited sense of Euclidian geometry? That’s an easy one – most golfers are so tied up in swing mechanics that they can’t possibly let their brain work out the Point A to Point B geometry problems. If you’re playing ‘golf swing’ instead of ‘golf’ you’re bound to flunk golf geometry 101 every time you tee it up.

2011-05-16T07:10:00.000-07:00

Tigers injury flare up is not surprising. For a right handed player, injuries to the left side, especially the left knee that absorbs much of the shock of a hi-powered release, could be career ending.

According to Bob Prichard, a sports biomechanics expert, it’s the new Foley swing that is causing the problems: “His swing is measurably worse in every way and is putting extra strain of his left knee. More than ever, he is pushing his hip toward the target, outside his left foot, and the stress is going into his left knee, actually pushing the femur down on to the tibial plate.”

Tiger in a Bind

Now Tiger is in a bind – hitting balls with his new swing aggravates his knee but in order to prepare for the US Open he must hit balls -- but hitting too many balls makes it improbable that he will be able to walk the five miles or so a player walks per round so he may not be able to play in any prep- tournaments.

Here’s what I’d recommend: Tiger should step away for a year and change his swing back to Tiger-2000. He can say it’s to rest his knee but he can use the hiatus to also ditch Foley just as Sean O’Hair has done.

Summary:

Tiger should take 2011 off and get rid of

[1] His new swing

[2] Foley, a huge mistake and

[3] His knee problems.

The key is to match up his body and his swing mechanics – Tiger needs to rotate his hips rather than slide them. With his Foley swing the weight stays on his front leg and as soon as the downswing begins even more pressure is dumped into the joint. The first move biomechanically must be a lateral shift moving his left hip outside his left heel. While only momentary, instead of pressure [address]– no pressure [top] then pressure again [impact], the profile is pressure, pressure then more pressure. While the amount of pounds per square inch on the joint is key also important is the time over which the force is applied -- Increase the time and you increase the injury.

So to avoid further injury Tiger needs to do several things to change his swing [1] he needs to ‘melt’ meaning that his front foot is extensively flared and he keeps the left knee from hyperextending through impact i.e. he hits the ball with a flexed left leg instead of a hyper-extended one. Biomechanically the human knee works over the foot so the flare is essential to relieve pressure.

[2] He needs to weaken his grip, move the ball forward and aim left then take the club away so it’s more vertical and in front of him -- in other words set up and play a fade ala the guy he’s chasing, Jack Nicklaus. Tiger has always been a much better fader of the ball then drawer so it should fit his eye.

3] He needs to increase the rotation of his hips, turning them sooner [not faster]. By rotating his hips sooner he’ll keep the face open and by swinging more upright the club won’t be buried behind him.

4] “How I release the putter, how I release the short game, how I release irons, drivers — they're all related," says Woods by way of Foley. "You just can't have one swing (for one segment) and then have another — they're all interrelated."

Bad concept: Tiger needs to abandon the idea that all swings from chipping and sand to the full swing and putting are the same. It sounds good but it is false. First of all the swing planes for the various parts of the game are different. The wrist set is different, the pressure transfers are different, the shoulder action is different, the ball positions differ, the clubface positions at address and throughout the swing are different and it has been documented using radar testing that in general you need two different golf swings, one with the driver and a different one with the irons with the ball on the ground

It’s no wonder that neither Butch Harmon nor Hank Haney tried to change Tigers’ short game which would be like painting a grin on the Mona Lisa.

Now stripped of his greatest weapon – his short game – Tiger no longer strikes fear into the hearts of his opponents. He used to be able to beat them with his C game, now he can’t beat them with his A game. Here is Martin Kaymer’s evaluation of Tiger-2011:

“..Obviously you still have a lot of respect for him but you're not scared anymore."

5] The last thing he should do is learn how to walk like Sasquatch!! There are several ways to walk and you can take the stress of your knees by keeping your plant knee flexed all the way through the stride. It takes practice but you learn to use your thigh muscles to plant the leg and control the motion. Most people over-use their hips and shoulders causing hyper-extension of the knees. The Sasquatch style looks funny but can save an injured knee.

Following my suggestions Tiger won’t hit it as far and won’t be able to play as many shots but he will be able to play and at this point that will be an improvement!

The knees are bent all the time as you walk – prevents hype-extension – no locking out the knee. Walking is not innate and since you must learn it, you can relearn it.

For the video see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ZlBUglE6Hc. Finally Monte Python is vindicated – Ministry of Silly Walks

MIND WANDERING IN GOLF

2011-05-11T13:22:00.000-07:00

Your brain is trained to wonder [scan] by a million years of evolution and that’s not good for ether your happiness or your golf game. The architect sets up the course so your mind is forced to scan to the trouble in an attempt to distract you from getting to the target – it’s part of what makes the game so challenging. The designer uses mind-wandering attractions like water hazards and optical illusions so that you see the trouble on the first hole and your brain scans for more trouble the rest of the day.

Mind Wondering in General

Mind wondering in general gets a bad rap especially in a recent study where psychologists compared each person’s moods and thoughts as the day went on. They found that if someone’s mind wandered at say, ten in the morning, then at 10:15 that person was likely to be less happy than they were at ten. It seems that when your mind wonders or goes on scan you visit “unpleasant” topics that effect your happiness but – and here is the key --enhance your safety. Please remember it was a very dangerous world 100,000 years ago and, not withstanding songwriter Bobby McFerrin: “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” our modern brain still worries about survival.

Insider Take: Humans are not structured to be happy; we are structured to survive and this makes mind wandering a real plus. Your eyes are constantly scanning the environment looking for threats – the best threat-finders are the best survivors and therefore get to pass on their genes. The will to survive is a primary urge while the will to happiness is a secondary level state, helpful in shaping your responses but not a primary goal.

Next Week: What you can do to focus on golf for just the right amount of time and with just the correct amount of mind wandering.

2011-05-05T14:51:00.001-07:00

Tiger Should have Stayed the Same.

The stats show that Tiger was incredible under Coach Harmon and great under Coach Haney -- under both coaches Tiger was feared by his fellow competitors. He set the record for the highest Points Average on June 3, 2001, when he ended the week with an average of 32.44. Woods also achieved the largest ever lead of 19.40 average points in the rankings on May 20, 2001. Woods held the number one rank for a record 623 weeks. To give you a sense of proportion the worlds’ current number one ranked golfer, Martin Kaymer, has been the world No. 1 for eight weeks and as of this writing has 7.65 points.

But after completely dominating world golf, Tiger changed his Butch Harmon golf swing. And still he was feared until in 2010 he changed his swing again, but this time with a critical difference -- he changed his short game as well as his full swing.

It’s no wonder that neither Butch Harmon nor Hank Haney tried to change Tigers’ short game which would be like painting a grin on the Mona Lisa. But his new teacher, Sean Foley in a burst of hubris didn’t hesitate to change it, introducing a new release in Tigers chipping, pitching and yes -- even changing his putting. That would be like a bakers apprentice telling Michael Angelo how to hold the brush.

Who would you choose to putt the ball if your life depended on it, Nicklaus, Tiger-Harmon, Tiger-Haney or the new Tiger, Tiger-2011? Before you choose think back to this years Masters where on Sunday after shooting 31 on the front Tiger had muscled his way back into the tournament – then he three putted #12 and took three to get up/down from the fringe at the 15th after hitting a horrendous chip that forced him to settle for a momentum busting par.

Stripped of his greatest weapon – his short game – Tiger no longer strikes fear into the hearts of his opponents. He used to be able to beat them with his C game, now he can’t beat them with his A game. Here is Kaymer’s evaluation of

Tiger-2011:

"You could see it a couple of weeks ago at the Masters. Tiger was playing fantastic the first nine on Sunday but there wasn't really somebody who was scared of him any more. In the last round they were playing fantastic golf - Adam Scott, Charl Schwartzel and Jason Day - so the fear has gone. Obviously you still have a lot of respect for him but you're not scared any more."

As Hank Haney use to say "The mind-set of a great player is that you're either getting better or you are getting worse. There's no such thing as staying the same.” This ‘coach’ talk sounds like wisdom but it isn’t.

Tiger --- you should have stayed the same.

Is Tiger like Vlad?

2011-04-22T04:34:00.001-07:00

What Makes Them So Prickly?

Do famous people have an innate right to be prickly? Let me define by way of an example: When an average citizen attending a town hall meeting asked powerful Barney Frank chair of the House Financial Services Committee how he thought it possible to add 30 million people or so to the health care roles and not increase the cost or decrease the service, he responded “what planet do you spend most of your time on?” That’s prickly -- and it usually happens when the big deal who is suppose to be the expert gets a question they don’t want to answer. It’s known on the street as “copping a-tude.”

Some Other Famous Pricklers

Donald Rumsfeld coped-a-tude about almost everything during his tenure as Secretary of Defense including how he let Osama Bin Laden escape from Tora Bora.

Alan Greenspan copped-a-tude when asked if it was his policy of deregulation that made possible the out-of-control trading of toxic assets that almost ruined our country.

And of course there is the most prickly interview perhaps of all -- Vladimir the Impaler who lined the road leading to his castle in the mountains of Transylvania with impaled bodies so that by the time you arrived for the audience all the questions you had about taxes etc. dissolved into “I just came up to tell you what a great job you’re doing.”

Vladimir was a tough interview

In golf Tiger Woods can be a prickly interview. A few years ago a TV commentator who had a reputation of ‘I calls ‘em like I sees ‘em’ made some comments on Tiger’s new swing and to teach him a lesson Woods refused to give interviews with the announcer, a big time threat to his career. Shortly thereafter the announcer fell into line with all the other “speak not a word of evil about Tiger” and the Tiger Correct interviews now composed of “softball questions” resumed. Vlad would have been proud of Tiger.

Now that Tiger has some non-golf problems it will be interesting to see how prickly he remains.

Golf's Greatest

2011-04-20T14:50:00.000-07:00

From the Mind of Golf’s Greatest Player

A few years ago I asked a number of PGA tour players what they thought about while they swing and their responses ranked all the way from ‘nothing’ to four swing keys -- one during the takeaway, one at the top, one at impact, and one at the finish—a lot of thinking for a second and a half. The majority had two thoughts or guides, one during the backswing and one through impact.

Its always been known that the best player ever, Jack Nicklaus, saw a video in his mind of the shot before he hit it – he called it going to the movies. But recently he’s expanded on his thinking. Here is what he said about how he almost holed his tee shot on 16, the year he won his 18^th Major at age 46.

‘My [thought pattern] was, I've got 175 yards, I've got to hit the ball high in the air, I need to hit it softly. Make that swing. Some people think about what they're mechanically doing through the ball. I think about what I want the clubhead to do through the ball to make the ball do what I want. People look at things differently. … I didn't play by swing mechanics; I played by feeling things that would make the mechanics happen."

So first you learn the swing mechanics such as left elbow or right knee then on the golf course you focus, not on those mechanics, but on what has to happen at impact to make the shot you just saw in the your mental video.

RAY'S CREEK

2011-04-11T09:50:00.000-07:00

The Pull of Ray’s Creek

Winning any tournament takes a combination of skill and good luck and that was the case when Phil Mickelson won his first Masters in 2004. Phil played great golf but came to the last hole needing a par to tie Ernie Els and a birdie to beat him. Mickelson knocked it on the green about 18 feet behind the pin leaving him a tricky downhill putt. Chris DiMarco was in the front bunker and blasted out about 12 inches farther than Mickelson but exactly on his line to the hole. It’s well known that putts break to Rays Creek, the lowest point at Augusta, but the question of course was how much?

DiMarco shows the way

DiMarco’s putt was almost perfect, missing a fraction on the low side by virtue of the pull of the creek. As soon as DiMarco hit the ball Mickelson positioned himself directly behind the line of the rolling putt to spot the break. He factored in what he had learned from DiMarco’s attempt and calmly rolled his putt down a slightly higher line and into the cup.

Luck had opened the door by giving him a “teach” but it was skill that allowed Mickelson to walk though that door to his first Major.

THE PULL

2011-04-05T11:17:00.000-07:00

Ball Flight and Your Swing: The Pull

A shot that flies left of the target [to the right for lefties] with no curve is called a pull. It is a very powerful shot and there are a number of tour players, past and present that play this way, most notably Sam Sneed who in his hay day was one of the longest drivers of the ball especially into the wind. But to be successful you must aim to the right of target and then pull the ball just the exact amount to hit the target. This can be a dangerous way to play if you don't know what you’re doing so it’s usually best to rid yourself of the pull.

What Causes The Pull

When you pull the ball the face of your club is square to your club path at impact but the path points to the left of target. There are many causes of an out-to-in path but a bad path most often comes from a problem with synchronizing your body and your hands. If you’re pulling the ball start with your hips because the odds are they are not operating correctly.

Since the ball is going to the left it may be that your hips have turned too late during the downswing. This most often comes from a failure to keep the right side rotating through the shot. When you stop or slow your hips too much, your upper body turns back to the ball too soon and the club is routed on an out-to-in approach path where the hands get to the ball too early.

To cure this there are several adjustments you can try. The first of which makes your hips rotate earlier so the clubhead can come directly onto the target line. Increase the flare in your back foot and move the ball back one ball width to make impact sooner. If that doesn’t work, put the things you changed back in place and work on the other partner in the hips/hands package, your hands.

Since, for the pull shot, the clubhead gets to the ball too early, let your hands swing up higher and position them a bit deeper at the top of the swing by using more of a one piece takeaway with more shoulder turn. This in effect, makes your arms/hands slower because they have to travel farther and this gives your body more time to get into position. When your hips turn properly from this ‘high-handed’ position, your clubhead should arrive at impact on the correct path.

BALL FLIGHT AND YOUR SWING CONTINUED!

2011-03-30T04:25:00.001-07:00

Ball Flight and Your Swing - Part 4: The Pull-Slice

Probably the most common mistake in golf, the one you'll see the most on the first tee of most golf courses, is the pull-slice where the ball starts wide of the target and curves back toward the target. However rather than a total error with no redeeming feature, it's a tribute to the average players ability to adjust from a very bad position at the start of the downswing.

The pull part of the pull slice is caused when the back shoulder pushes out towards the target line and the chest spins around to start the club back to the ball. Whether this is due to impatience or simply bad mechanics, it sends the club on an outside-to-in path that's on course to start the ball wide of the target [to the left for right handers]. Now comes the admirable part of the pull-slice; the slice part. This is caused when the face of the club is open to the path i.e. the face is pointing toward the target, a situation that puts side spin on the shot, curving the ball back toward the target.

Now because it curves it finishes somewhere around the target and herein lies a benefit laced with a bit of danger - yes it's in play but the slice costs you distance and in the wind it becomes unmanageable. Here is a scenario to rid yourself of the pull-slice.

Fix the path first. Take your address position using a five iron and then place a ball on the ground opposite your back foot approximately three clubheads away. This is your guide ball. Now hit a bunch of balls and practice bringing the path of your clubhead in over the guide ball. This will give you the correct path. Using the correct path your ball should start at the target and as soon as it does a high percentage of the time then you go to work on the face.

To learn to square up the face of your club at impact do this drill: address the ball as you normally do and then pull your back foot away from its regular position so that your back toe is in line with your front heel. Now flare your back foot about 45 degrees. Hit balls from this stance and feel your forearms turn over through impact. Granted it’s an awkward position but it will teach you to release the club, something you didn't do when you were a slicer.

BALL FLIGHT AND YOUR SWING - PART 3

2011-03-14T06:15:00.000-07:00

How to Fix Your Push Slice

When you put curve on the ball it’s due to side spin produced when the clubface looks in one direction while the clubhead path looks in another. For example for a right hander when the path of the club is pointing to the right of the target at impact and the face of the club aims to the right of where the path is pointing, then the ball starts to the right and spins or curves even father right - its called a push slice and its one of the worst errors you can have.

Please note that the actual path of your clubhead and the target line at impact are not always the same. If you think you are swinging along the target line but you are actually swinging across it from inside-to-out then your mis-understanding will make it difficult to choose the correct fix.

Ball Flight: Push Slice

Some ball flight mistakes are ‘better’ than others - like the push hook where the ball ends up moving back toward the target. But the push slice is the one of the worst errors in golf, [right along side the dreaded pull hook] because the spin carries the ball away from the target. With the push slice if your clubface is 30 yards off line and the slice spin carries the shot another 40 yards off line then the combined error is 70 yards. This is the infamous right-to-right shot that few golf courses can contain -- especially when the wind blows making the error even greater.

Where to Begin

You have two problems with the push slice i.e. [1] the path of your club is too much inside-to-out and [2] the clubface is open to the path. There are far too many causes of path and face problems to deal with them all here, but below is an example of how to proceed.

Fixing the path: Delay or slow your body turn during the downswing to give your clubhead the time it needs to move out from behind you and onto the target line. One way to do this is to make a setup change by increasing the flare in both feet. The more flare, the more hip turn and more hip turn makes your hips "effectively" slower because they have to travel farther.

Once the path is repaired its time to focus on the face using match ups that affect release. A video tape or a friend is handy to check if your clubface is open [toe pointing towards the ground] at the top of your swing. If it is, strengthen your top hand grip until you can swing to the top with the face pointing between the horizon and the sky [a square face]. If your face is correct and you are still slicing increase the amount of forearm rotation through impact – a little at first and then more if needed. And lighten your grip pressure a bit to make sure you’re letting your forearms rotate as they should.

BALL FLIGHT AND YOUR SWING -- PART 2

2011-03-06T04:41:00.000-08:00

In the past it was commonly believed that path is related to the direction the ball starts in while the clubface position at impact determines the curve of the ball, but the newest research shows that clubface has a much greater influence on overall ball flight than does path by a 85%/15% ratio. Even with this departure from accepted belief, the flight of the ball is most helpful as a general diagnostic tool since it requires no special equipment and is present in every shot, except the whiff. The ball flight under analysis here is the push hook where the ball starts to the right of target [left for left-handers] and somewhere in the last third of its flight it bends toward the target.

The fact that your ball is going to the right then hooking suggests that you have two problems: your clubface is closed to the path, and the path is to the right of target. It is my recommendation that you fix the path first because the brain "understands" path better than it does face. It is my experience that sometimes when you fix the path so that the ball starts at the target and then hooks to the left, the face will fix itself after a few swings. You can live with a push hook because the ball eventually moves toward the target but since you can't live with a ball that hooks away from the target, you brain tries to find a way to fix it.

Where To Begin

First fix the path as described last week: turn your hips later which will delay impact giving your clubhead the time it needs to get out from behind you and onto the target line. The best way to do this is to make a setup change by increasing the flare in both feet. The more flare, the more hip turn and more hip turn will make your hips "effectively" slower because they have to travel farther. And make sure to check your ball position – you may have to move the ball forward to stop it from starting to the right.

Next focus on the clubface. The closed face problem could be caused by several factors. To cut down on the hook make sure you have enough flare in your front foot. Then check your grip: if your top hand is too strong [three knuckles showing at address] you'll hook it; if both hands are too strong, you'll push hook it, so weaken both hands. The other common cause of a closed face occurs when you lose your posture at the top of the swing by straightening your spine. This flattens your shoulder turn and shuts the clubface. The answer to this one is to keep the spine angle you started with at address all the way to impact.

Series -- How To Trouble Shoot Your Golf Swing

2011-02-17T06:35:00.001-08:00

This is the first article in a series on how to trouble shoot your golf swing using the flight of the ball. This way the ball becomes your teacher, first on the practice tee, and then on the golf course where you can fix your swing while you're playing. Note: that to trouble shoot effectively you must first make sure your aim and alignment are correct. In addition what follows assumes that your contact is in the middle of the clubface.

The Ball Flight Laws

It has been said that the "ball only knows impact" meaning that its flight characteristics are produced by five physical parameters of your golf shot: the path of the clubhead; the angle of approach the clubhead takes to the ball; the velocity of the clubhead; where on the clubface the collision takes place; and where your clubface is looking at impact.

The Straight Push

The first shot I'll describe is the straight push, the shot that goes to the right [straight left for left-handers]. When the ball is pushed off line with no curve to the ball, the implication is that the path of your club is moving in-to-out in relation to the target line and the clubface is square to the path. Now there are several reasons why a ball is pushed but I will deal with one of the most common to demonstrate how to trouble shoot the problem.

When your hips rotate too early during the downswing, your right elbow doesn’t have the time to get in front of your right hip and therefore your club is prevented from getting into the correct downswing slot. You’ve got a path problem that pushes the ball off line because your hips turn early making your hands and the clubface late for impact.

The adjustment is to turn your hips later which will delay impact giving your clubhead the time it needs to get out from behind you and onto the target line. The best way to do this is to make a setup change by increasing the flare in both feet. The more flare the more hip turn and more hip turn effectively" slows your hips " because they have to travel farther.

Takeaway: The block is fixed by the flair

FIX IT NOW!!!

2011-01-27T14:23:00.000-08:00

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

2011-01-13T11:05:00.000-08:00

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.

The oracle sayith and you payith

2010-12-26T12:45:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-12-18T13:34:00.000-08:00

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!!!

2010-12-14T13:53:00.000-08:00

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!

2010-12-08T14:54:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-30T03:49:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-11-25T09:30:00.000-08:00

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?

2010-11-13T05:06:00.001-08:00

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

2010-11-05T05:19:00.000-07:00

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

2010-11-01T10:11:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-10-24T11:18:00.000-07:00

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.

2010-10-21T07:10:00.001-07:00

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???

2010-10-19T05:35:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-15T14:37:00.001-07:00

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????

2010-10-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

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

2010-10-07T07:10:00.000-07:00

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

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?

2010-10-05T13:41:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-09-28T10:00:00.000-07:00

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!

2010-09-25T13:38:00.000-07:00

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

2010-09-21T07:37:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-09-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

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?

2010-09-14T12:29:00.000-07:00

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.