DO YOU HAVE GEOMETRY?

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.

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

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.

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?

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

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

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.