Yes, I had an epiphany about my golf swing! Yes, I was at the range, and thinking hard about what the pro told me two weeks earlier about my swing. For a change, I didn't just bang through the bucket o'balls waiting for something to happen to improve the results. Read on at your own risk - what worked for me may royally screw you up...
I've always maintained that, no matter the sport, be it baseball, throwing darts, shooting pool, the basics rule. I gave lots of thought to my pro's guidance, and the guidance I've absorbed over the years that fits my game (and not all of it does...) I decided Sunday to apply my range time to grooving these lessons, and to avoid the trap of focusing on the instant gratification of desired ball-flight. We all know that it's possible to get reasonable ball-flight results from the crappiest swing - we've all done it at one time or another - but I'm after real improvement. Instead, I was looking for "swing" results. An odd thing happened - the better my swing, the better the resulting ball-flight. Hey.... That's how it's supposed to work!
So here's what I found worked for me: The pro said I was getting my hips out in front of my arms and standing up through impact. This pushed the club outside the swing plane causing pulls, pull hooks, and sometimes a frightening shank. It took some doing to un-groove this tendency, I'm sure because my middle-aged body finds it easier to NOT maintain spine angle through the swing... ("BAD body... BAD!")
Here's my little range secret - works only at ranges with some windows near each booth - I look at my own reflection at various stages of the swing. Let me tell you, these "mirrors" don't lie! The pro was right - I was flipping the club inside too soon on the back swing! My shoulders were tensed way up almost around my head! I was out over my toes!
Ben Hogan says in his famous "Five Lessons" to stay grounded - my interpretation of this is to keep your center of gravity as low as you can, which you can't do all tensed up shoulder high and out over your toes! The key move: at the top of the backswing, I wanted to feel almost as though I was sitting on my right hip.
The downswing began to feel nearly automatic - it was over in a wink. The sound of impact began to sound authoritative! The fall was flying straight!
Getting a little to bound up in the various positions, I tried to make the whole thing happen in a smooth rythmic back and forth. Good things continued to happen!
Today the real results: Only my second outing of the season, and at an unfamiliar course, I'm back in the 80's again. I parred 9 holes, bogeyed 4 more - the rest were a total mess, my having fallen victim to "range mat" syndrome. Plainly put, my short pitches were struck with a fatness rarely seen even on reality television. Sure, I'm "solid gold" off the astro-turf mat at my favority ball-beating-boutique, but (it turns out) fairways don't work like astro-turf. They don't forgive you when you let your club arc bottom out 6 inches behind the ball... Range mats will ruin your game (but that rant will be a separate blog entry...)
So, fellow floggers, I believe I am on my way to a career season here. My goals include breaking 40 on any front or back nine (my personal best is 41) and I'm looking to break 85. I'm working hard to get my unofficial 18 handicap to an offical 15 (or lower.) These goals suddenly feel within reach.
Stay tuned!
GF
Monday, April 21, 2008
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Season Opener, Flogger Style
The Blade and I made it out for our own season opener on Masters Sunday. Here in the Northeast, April has been a changeable month, and it changed for the worse Saturday night, giving us a cold, gray, breezy day for our maiden voyage of 2008. It wasn't all bad, but it wasn't all good either. The good news: The lesson I took the week before did me some good. The bad news: I didn't always do what the pro told me to. Just as in any human endeavor, from assembling a kid's bike to baking a cake, when the directions are followed, results are good; when not, they're not. When I leaned back on "feel," I made goofs that reminded me why I saw the pro in the first place.
Fairways and greens (as well as front and back lawns) have been slow to green up and fill in this Spring - the nights have been too cool - so the course was a little scruffy, but the rough was not yet up, so you could say it was playing "friendly." Of course, this is muni golf we're talking, so I was reminded a few times about needing practice from bare and hardpan lies. The bunkers here are a mix of sand, soil, and gravel - you wouldn't dare take a shiny new wedge into one of these! My new Nickent hybrid was put to use, it does the intended job for the most part, but I need use it a few more times before I really trust it. I did notice that in direct sunlight it has bit of a red sheen to it, which was kinda neat.
The Blade, who is nick-named for his putting prowess, didn't show a lot of that famed skill on Sunday - at no time did his Ping sing to it's potential. He's just getting warmed up... We played with two other walk-ons, Donnie and John, both friendly fellows, both playing well enough to elicit a few cheers, and we all kept a similar pace. In my many, many rounds of muni golf, I can count on one hand the number of times I've run into genuine jerks on the course. Virtually everyone I've played with has been a good playing companion, some have been memorable.
Aside from the birdie on the par 4 10th, my shining moment was on 11, a short par 5, where I hit a bullet of a drive (following my pro's instructions) that cut the corner and bounced and rolled to 155 yards. My low moment: Hitting my second shot on 11 so fat that the chunk of half-dormant sod flew about 40 yards, or half the distance that the ball travelled before resting in a fairway bunker.
The tally: A handful of "others," a handful of bogeys, a handful of pars, and the season's first birdie. The actual score? Well, let's just say that a season's scores are like waffles, the first one's never quite right, and ought to be thrown away (or fed to the dog..)
The other good news: The Blade and I joined with our other golf buds at the home of The Commish that afternoon to watch The Masters final round while imbibing from one of those little Heineken kegs, and scarfing down sausage, peppers, and onions on Italian bread. The perfect start to the 2008 season.
GF
Fairways and greens (as well as front and back lawns) have been slow to green up and fill in this Spring - the nights have been too cool - so the course was a little scruffy, but the rough was not yet up, so you could say it was playing "friendly." Of course, this is muni golf we're talking, so I was reminded a few times about needing practice from bare and hardpan lies. The bunkers here are a mix of sand, soil, and gravel - you wouldn't dare take a shiny new wedge into one of these! My new Nickent hybrid was put to use, it does the intended job for the most part, but I need use it a few more times before I really trust it. I did notice that in direct sunlight it has bit of a red sheen to it, which was kinda neat.
The Blade, who is nick-named for his putting prowess, didn't show a lot of that famed skill on Sunday - at no time did his Ping sing to it's potential. He's just getting warmed up... We played with two other walk-ons, Donnie and John, both friendly fellows, both playing well enough to elicit a few cheers, and we all kept a similar pace. In my many, many rounds of muni golf, I can count on one hand the number of times I've run into genuine jerks on the course. Virtually everyone I've played with has been a good playing companion, some have been memorable.
Aside from the birdie on the par 4 10th, my shining moment was on 11, a short par 5, where I hit a bullet of a drive (following my pro's instructions) that cut the corner and bounced and rolled to 155 yards. My low moment: Hitting my second shot on 11 so fat that the chunk of half-dormant sod flew about 40 yards, or half the distance that the ball travelled before resting in a fairway bunker.
The tally: A handful of "others," a handful of bogeys, a handful of pars, and the season's first birdie. The actual score? Well, let's just say that a season's scores are like waffles, the first one's never quite right, and ought to be thrown away (or fed to the dog..)
The other good news: The Blade and I joined with our other golf buds at the home of The Commish that afternoon to watch The Masters final round while imbibing from one of those little Heineken kegs, and scarfing down sausage, peppers, and onions on Italian bread. The perfect start to the 2008 season.
GF
Reflections on The 2008 Masters
That grand Spring ritual that heralds the beginning of the golf season for us northeast floggers - The Masters - has come and gone for 2008. All the tradition and ceremony remained intact, like the schmaltzy theme song, like Nantz' schmaltzy commentary, like the tributes to the past and the connecting threads woven to the future (does it get any better than Player passing the torch to Immelman? You couldn't write a script like that...)
The Masters looks a little different than in the past - it was my first Masters in high definition, and it looked fantastic. CBS, by the way, clearly has the best quality hi def of any network. The pictures on my 42" LCD looked almost three dimensional. How about that computer-generated ball-flight tracker, which shows the curvature of the shot from the player's perspective? Pretty edgy stuff for a tournament that won't allow a blimp (a rule I am strongly in favor of.)
There were new players and plot twists added to the continuing story of The Masters, but here's the rub: Most of the key moments were disappointments of one kind or another. Couples misses the cut. Tiger's hopes (and ours) for a modern, single-season grand slam are dashed. Heroics are few and far between - Tiger's pitch from the 10th fairway to the 18th green on Friday was about as good as it got. This Masters Sunday back nine was all about failure, and failure is an ingredient used only sparingly in the recipe for memorable competition. If failure were salt, this tourney left us parched (to stretch the metaphor...)
We seem to have entered a chapter in The Masters' story in which this grand old tournament comes to resemble the U.S. Open - and that's a bad thing. The thrilling Sunday back nine has looked more like an episode of Survivor; "Who will make it through the wind and water challenge?" Instead of the roars for which this tournament is known, we heard hushed moans when Sneds dunked it on 13, when Flesch splashed down on 12 before imploding, when Immelman fell short and wet on 16. There were no smiling faces coming up the 18th fairway, even from the leader! Following his tee shot on 18, Immelman let out a sigh of relief. After making his final, winning par, instead of jumping for joy, he had the look of a man who just got a repreive from the Governor! Hats off to Trevor, he played great, withstood the pressure, and earned his first major, but he and a few others might need a little counseling to avoid any PMTSD: Post Masters Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Perhaps this will change with the weather, and even Augusta National's management can't dictate that, but we already have a golf-war-of-attrition every June, ending on Father's Day. The folks at Augusta need to pay a little more attention to how The Open is set up (British, that is) where they seem to continually strike a balance between challenge and reward. Come Spring and the daffodils, the azaleas, that music, and the green jacket, we want to be thrilled! We want to be reminded of what makes The Masters the premiere golf event of the year! We want to be reminded of why we are anxious to make our first tee time of the season! We want to be reminded of how good it can get!
Bring back the roars!
GF
The Masters looks a little different than in the past - it was my first Masters in high definition, and it looked fantastic. CBS, by the way, clearly has the best quality hi def of any network. The pictures on my 42" LCD looked almost three dimensional. How about that computer-generated ball-flight tracker, which shows the curvature of the shot from the player's perspective? Pretty edgy stuff for a tournament that won't allow a blimp (a rule I am strongly in favor of.)
There were new players and plot twists added to the continuing story of The Masters, but here's the rub: Most of the key moments were disappointments of one kind or another. Couples misses the cut. Tiger's hopes (and ours) for a modern, single-season grand slam are dashed. Heroics are few and far between - Tiger's pitch from the 10th fairway to the 18th green on Friday was about as good as it got. This Masters Sunday back nine was all about failure, and failure is an ingredient used only sparingly in the recipe for memorable competition. If failure were salt, this tourney left us parched (to stretch the metaphor...)
We seem to have entered a chapter in The Masters' story in which this grand old tournament comes to resemble the U.S. Open - and that's a bad thing. The thrilling Sunday back nine has looked more like an episode of Survivor; "Who will make it through the wind and water challenge?" Instead of the roars for which this tournament is known, we heard hushed moans when Sneds dunked it on 13, when Flesch splashed down on 12 before imploding, when Immelman fell short and wet on 16. There were no smiling faces coming up the 18th fairway, even from the leader! Following his tee shot on 18, Immelman let out a sigh of relief. After making his final, winning par, instead of jumping for joy, he had the look of a man who just got a repreive from the Governor! Hats off to Trevor, he played great, withstood the pressure, and earned his first major, but he and a few others might need a little counseling to avoid any PMTSD: Post Masters Traumatic Stress Disorder.
Perhaps this will change with the weather, and even Augusta National's management can't dictate that, but we already have a golf-war-of-attrition every June, ending on Father's Day. The folks at Augusta need to pay a little more attention to how The Open is set up (British, that is) where they seem to continually strike a balance between challenge and reward. Come Spring and the daffodils, the azaleas, that music, and the green jacket, we want to be thrilled! We want to be reminded of what makes The Masters the premiere golf event of the year! We want to be reminded of why we are anxious to make our first tee time of the season! We want to be reminded of how good it can get!
Bring back the roars!
GF
Friday, April 4, 2008
The Masters
The sensory cues are all in place: I can see the sun setting later each day, the birds, the local rabbits and other critters are active, and tufts of green grass are starting to show here and there in lawns that are still mostly dormant. I've got a tasty mouthful of remnants of my kids' chocolate bunnies from the fridge. In my hands are the winter's editions of golf mags as I scan them for season-starting tips; I'm holding my 5 iron, practicing my swing in the living room (when the Boss isn't around) and debating whether my first lesson of the year should come before my first tee time.
Then my aural radar picks up the song - "Augusta" - the song they play during Masters coverage. It's a promo for CBS or ESPN, and Master's week is still a week or two away, but those first few notes trigger Masters fever in me in a way that few other things trigger any kind of reaction. Of course, there's that cologne that an old girlfriend used to wear that triggers some pretty strong reactions, but this is a "golf" blog.
The (British) Open Championship, and the U.S. Open have longer histories, and may indeed be more difficult to win, but I would argue that The Masters is the premiere golf championship of the year. I'm still learning about the origins of all the tradition and ceremony that make it so special and so familiar. Start with its heritage as Bobby Jones' August Invitational.... Bobby Jones! Is any other tournament so closely identified with a particular person, any person, and a legend no less? I may never go to Augusta National, but I know all about Magnolia Lane, and the Champions locker room. I know that each hole has a name, I know about Rae's creek, Hogan's Bridge, Butler Cabin, Eisenhower's tree, and the countless other landmarks - it seems there's one visible in almost every shot shown on TV. If there are other tournaments that begin with a contest on their par 3 course, I've never heard about it. Two words: "Amen Corner." Who wouldn't agree that the 12th hole is the most famous par 3 in all of golf? Azaleas, and more azaleas.
Doesn't everyone know that once you put on a green jacket, you're "in" for every Masters for life until you use your own good judgment to walk away? To underscore how important tradition is, just look at what happened when they tried to take those lifetime privileges away.... Tradition is what makes this championship unique - the only major that's played in the same place year after year. When you watch The Masters, you're not just watching a round of golf, you are watching The Continuing Story of The Masters being told, re-told, and appended.
All that tradition provides the strong, reliable, foundation, but what really makes this the premiere golf event is the competition. Think of the most famous rounds, the most famous shots, the most famous wins in golfdom. Think of those moments that keep us coming back, those moments where the unbelievable occurred, where magic happened. Tally'em up, and tell me if you don't find that more of these incredible moments happened at The Masters than all of the other tournaments (not just majors) combined. Who won't be watching this coming week, hoping, even expecting, to see a moment like Nicklaus winning his final major? Like Tiger's unforgettable chip-in on 16? Like the incredible Sunday duel between Ernie and Phil on Easter Sunday before hearing Jim Nance ask, "Is it his time?"
The caddies shall wear white coveralls. CBS shall play that theme song, and there shall be limited commercial interruption. There shall be expanding, but still limited TV coverage. The attendees in the gallery shall be called "patrons." The greens shall be fast, the sand white, the fairways impeccably groomed, and the azaleas almost ridiculously colorful. These, my friends, are among The Standards. Violate them at your peril. They seem a little silly at times, but The Standards combine with the tradition and history to set the stage for the event that unfolds each Spring. The first few notes of "Augusta," like the dimming of a theater's house lights, cue us to sit back and lose ourselves for a little while.
This coming week, I'll be lost, somewhere down Magnolia Lane.
GF
Then my aural radar picks up the song - "Augusta" - the song they play during Masters coverage. It's a promo for CBS or ESPN, and Master's week is still a week or two away, but those first few notes trigger Masters fever in me in a way that few other things trigger any kind of reaction. Of course, there's that cologne that an old girlfriend used to wear that triggers some pretty strong reactions, but this is a "golf" blog.
The (British) Open Championship, and the U.S. Open have longer histories, and may indeed be more difficult to win, but I would argue that The Masters is the premiere golf championship of the year. I'm still learning about the origins of all the tradition and ceremony that make it so special and so familiar. Start with its heritage as Bobby Jones' August Invitational.... Bobby Jones! Is any other tournament so closely identified with a particular person, any person, and a legend no less? I may never go to Augusta National, but I know all about Magnolia Lane, and the Champions locker room. I know that each hole has a name, I know about Rae's creek, Hogan's Bridge, Butler Cabin, Eisenhower's tree, and the countless other landmarks - it seems there's one visible in almost every shot shown on TV. If there are other tournaments that begin with a contest on their par 3 course, I've never heard about it. Two words: "Amen Corner." Who wouldn't agree that the 12th hole is the most famous par 3 in all of golf? Azaleas, and more azaleas.
Doesn't everyone know that once you put on a green jacket, you're "in" for every Masters for life until you use your own good judgment to walk away? To underscore how important tradition is, just look at what happened when they tried to take those lifetime privileges away.... Tradition is what makes this championship unique - the only major that's played in the same place year after year. When you watch The Masters, you're not just watching a round of golf, you are watching The Continuing Story of The Masters being told, re-told, and appended.
All that tradition provides the strong, reliable, foundation, but what really makes this the premiere golf event is the competition. Think of the most famous rounds, the most famous shots, the most famous wins in golfdom. Think of those moments that keep us coming back, those moments where the unbelievable occurred, where magic happened. Tally'em up, and tell me if you don't find that more of these incredible moments happened at The Masters than all of the other tournaments (not just majors) combined. Who won't be watching this coming week, hoping, even expecting, to see a moment like Nicklaus winning his final major? Like Tiger's unforgettable chip-in on 16? Like the incredible Sunday duel between Ernie and Phil on Easter Sunday before hearing Jim Nance ask, "Is it his time?"
The caddies shall wear white coveralls. CBS shall play that theme song, and there shall be limited commercial interruption. There shall be expanding, but still limited TV coverage. The attendees in the gallery shall be called "patrons." The greens shall be fast, the sand white, the fairways impeccably groomed, and the azaleas almost ridiculously colorful. These, my friends, are among The Standards. Violate them at your peril. They seem a little silly at times, but The Standards combine with the tradition and history to set the stage for the event that unfolds each Spring. The first few notes of "Augusta," like the dimming of a theater's house lights, cue us to sit back and lose ourselves for a little while.
This coming week, I'll be lost, somewhere down Magnolia Lane.
GF
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