Series -- How To Trouble Shoot Your Golf Swing

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!!!

  

Fix It Now

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

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

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

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

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

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

Gage was No Longer Gage

 

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

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

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

The oracle sayith and you payith

 

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

From Olympus to the Golf Channel

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dr. Gary Wiren wrote the book!

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

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

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

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

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



John McEnroe Was Correct!!!

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

                                    ‘You Can’t Be Serious’

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

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

You’ve got to Look to See

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

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

 

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



BIOMETRICS ARE THE NEW FINGERPRINTS!

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

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

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

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

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

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