I find that the ball is going left but very straight flight. It seems to me that ball position plays a big part?? If I get it too far forward I hit left, back to right but again straight flight. Should it make that much difference?

Stinkler,

I don’t mind taking a quick look at your swing…

Ideally we would like to be hitting off a true low point… or just a tad prior.

But to really do this effectively, we need have a fairly late release, because if you throw your hands at the ball too early, you can end up with a low point that is actually back some in the stance, and I call this a “false low point”. This is not uncommon.

What most golfers do is they put the ball at their true low point because some “expert” tells them that is where they are supposed to have the ball… but because they don’t know how to release the club properly, they can’t get to the ball on the correct path as Dart mentioned.
Therefore, they come at the ball from the wrong line or “OTT”

With OTT, you can get to the ball first, and actually take a divot.
So you are now hitting the ball, then taking a divot, but this creates the classic problem… you’re now a slicer… So the next thing to do is to stop the slice by closing the face, or the strengthening the grip and now you have a straight ball going left, or your classic PULL!
Next logical step is to just aim farther right.. now you aim right and pull the ball straight at the hole. You now find that this kinda works, but because you are de lofting the club so much, it only works with the shorter irons… it does not work with the long irons at all, so you get rid of those and buy a hybrid so that does help.. the driver is a problem, but off a tee, or teed real high, you can occasionally hit one good,
so you think golf is now just a matter of practicing more so you can find and repeat that one in ten shot, or you might think it’s a mental
thing, and with just a little better concentration, you’ find it.. you go down this path for another year, and you refine your move and can now shoot the occasional 83 or 85.. but then you hit a wall, and no matter what you try, you just can’t seem to hit it better..

Does this sound familiar? Or to anyone for that matter?

Now, if you had just taken 10 or 12 weeks to learn to release the club properly, you’d likely be shooting in the 70’s now, instead of wasting a year or two, and a lot of money on gear or Anthony Robbins retreats!

You can send a swing file over to me at

lagpressure@yahoo.com

I’ll take a quick look…

Will aim to video my swing this week, thanks for the offer, though it sounds like you hit the nail on the head of my last year of golf till I discovered this site and some TGM principles this year.
I did have a very good lesson recently and he pointed out throw away and steering so have been working on that and will return to him when funds allow, but I believe he has me heading in the right direction which is along these lines you/Dart/Guru all seem to be similar too. Before this I was as you say, aiming all over to compensate and getting nowhere.
I now always aim straight unless of wind or angle lie and my errand shots are more 10/15 mtrs off rather than 30/40 or more and my straightest club after pitching is my 3 iron, so I’m on the way I think. But, and a big but, I realise I need to focus and improve on that club release so I can be confident in my low point, so, in your opinion then, what drills do you do recommend for that 10 weeks? Is it mainly impact bag? Is it best to actually stay away from balls to learn this club release? Maybe there is a thread already you can point me to for this? I’ll get my swing on tape, best way forward.
Thanks BTW.

I’ll need to take a look before I can write or suggest a prescription!
Sounds like things are improving.. nice to hear you can hit a 3 iron!

you’ll hate this though, it’s a Mizuno hemi-cog which is a very forgiving game improvement iron! Just got some old HG blades so will see what the truth is when I have the guts to hit them! Filming swing in next few days.

STINKLER,
i would like to view the swing video when you get it..

Lag said:
Sam Snead said.. ” I pull the club down with the back three fingers of my left hand, then I hit it as hard as I can with the right hand”

Would an accurate description of the last 3 fingers of the left hand pulling be downwards towards the ground, not outwards away from the body( towards the back of the hand)?
This is the only way I can see to achieve the “wipe the crumbs of your chest” feeling Dart spoke about otherwise the left arm is disconnected from the body.
If this pull happens down to P3, then I assume that’s when the “three right hands kick in”.
Guru has said the the left arm plays no muscular pull in the downswing as a “piece of string” which I can’t understand if Snead has said the above.

’Äúwipe the crumbs of your chest” feeling Dart spoke about..

that is an excellent description for the left arm action on the downswing.. because it give you an image of the arms moving dropping into the slot with the pivot feeling more passive until P3 then all hell breaks loose.. I really like that description Dart.

I think Snead was talking about a downward pull, then a firing of the right hand from P3.

A rare moment for me today, I caught a glimpse of the PGA Tour event at Doral..

Being an alumni of Fresno State (Bulldogs) the nephew of my old golf coach was right around the lead Nick Watney, so I thought I would take a look..

I was surprised that one of the tours new hottest “stars” was right in contention missing 17 greens in the first three rounds. Is this really the kind of ball striking being produced at the games highest level today?

I wouldn’t pay a dime to go watch it.

How could he be nipping at the lead though? A commentator mentioned that he had got up and down 16 out of 17 times..

Phil Micklson is averaging 11.3 greens a round for the week?
Hitting just over 50% of the fairways? This leads a golf tournament?

Really?

With all the high tech gear and Butch Harmon mentoring
your swing..?

If I go out and miss 7 greens, I feel I have really struck the ball very, very poorly.

Mickleson hit a couple drives 340 yards… I don’t believe for one second Phil would be hitting a persimmon and balata ball more than 280 max.

Johnny Miller was commenting on how long and tough the course used to be. He mentioned how even the long hitters used to hit long irons into many of these holes.. they used to call it the Blue Monster.

What do we get now? Mid irons into 5 pars.. I had to wonder what is a 5 par? Sound more like a par 68 to me.

16 under par? I’m not buying it for a second..

To me these guys are more like 4 under par.. this is not a par 72..
it’s a par 68. If they called these holes long par 4’s why would that be wrong? They are not 3 shot holes.. Who are we kidding? Not me.

Par 5’s used to be three shot holes and only the longest hitter’s could have a chance at a very risky shot with a fairway wood, 1 or
2 iron, into a very well guarded green surrounded by water or lots of
bunkering. Very risky shots.. but that added drama, and excitement.

Can someone shed some light here.. why are people going to watch these guys? Is watching a chipping and putting contest really that exciting? This is at best mediocre ball striking, even by the leaders.

If I were to pay money to go to an event and see the top golfers in the world, I would want to see top shelf ball striking, I would expect the leaders to be hitting 16 to 18 greens a round, and the driver landing in the fairway no less that 12 out of 14 times.

Now if I want to go see long drives, I would be much more interested in watching Junior/ AB, Zuback, and those guys just go at it with all that muscle and science can muster up together.. I think that would be fun… but that is really a different sport, sound a lot more exciting that the PGA Tour.

How about this comment:

Harmon estimated he spent about 20 minutes on the range with Mickelson, who held a two-stroke lead, and another 10 with Watney. Both were obviously hitting the ball well so no major adjustments were necessary.

Really?

50% of fairways is acceptable? 11 greens a round is acceptable?

How about this…

Padraig.. round #2

21 Putts? was that a typo?
He shot 57 right?

No he shot 71!
71 with 21 putts?

Was he playing left handed? what am I missing here…?

People pay money to see this?

Really?

Pay these guys millions of dollars on top of that?

I have no problem with great golfers making millions, but goodness,
what is this really?

P G A Tour or ….
Putting Gods Association.

I think pro’s today all hit it real far. Yes equipment helps, but I think they go after it more than pro’s of yesteryear????
In turn this would lead to more inaccuracy, hence the bad % of greens and fairways hit. It would also explain why courses have to get longer.
I truely have no idea if this is correct, just a thought. Maybe Lag and others who have been there, done that, can shed some light.

dcee

No need to strive for accuracy off the tee. Hitting from the rough is no real penalty when your 100 yards closer to the green with today’s grooves.

Steb said:
No need to strive for accuracy off the tee. Hitting from the rough is no real penalty when your 100 yards closer to the green with today's grooves.

I for one will be glad when they outlaw square grooves just because of this.
Restraint off the tee and more realistic distances to greens will be easier to relate to I reckon.

Hi John

You mentioned in a thread way back

The Flat left wrist,

This is a perfect example of confusion in TGM.

Although categorized as ’Äúimperative” I see the FLW as a true by- product of acceleration. If the pivot is accelerating through the hitting area, FLW just happens. Hogan and myself use ’Äúdouble wrist action”
so our left wrist is bent at the top, and on the way down, but as the wrists uncock and rotate into the impact area, the ’Äúhitters” acceleration flattens the left wrist by law. I don't think I could bring a bent left wrist into impact if I tried (assuming a state of acceleration)

A flat left wrist would limit the ’Äúfull” potential of accumulator #3 for a hitter.

So what this is REALLY saying is that acceleration is imperative, and to accelerate, you would have to be applying pressure on one or more of the pressure points from say 7 o clock to 5 o clock.

Imperatives #1 and #2 are essentially the same thing as described in 2-0 Statement of Principle.

Now with swinging, the FLW is more in a monitoring mode, and what is really IMPERATIVE is that the acceleration being applied on the downswing is ’Äústeady and even”. If the acceleration is steady and even, then the club is released properly through the forces that be,
in this case centrifugal force. The FLW is the by product again of acceleration, and the imperative here is really ’ÄúSTEADY AND EVEN”
because you obey SAE then you will hit the shot straight assuming you are delivering the club on plane which is the 3rd imperative.

For the swinger, if the acceleration is not SAE, you could still have a FLW but with no guarantee of a straight shot. I have brought many a FLW into impact and hit all kinds of crazy looking shots, due to acceleration problems. The FLW does not guarantee perfect clubface alignment at impact. I have plenty of high speed graph checks from Ben Doyle's range in the early 80's to prove that! lol

Should this not be opposite, swingers CAN have a bend left wrist and hitters cannot as longitudinal acc. will line up the wrist for swingers

Thanks

A FLW is an observation based “imperative”... It’s like looking into the sky and seeing the white vapor trail behind a fighter jet and then coming to the conclusion that it is imperative that high speed flying machines must have white vapor trails behind them to move through the air..

We’ll yes, but what is really happening is…..

A swinger needs a steady even acceleration down to P3, then longitudinal acceleration takes over, and FLW is created by the inline throw out action of CF.

A hitter’s FLW is created by radial acceleration (tangential) ...
If the pivot is working correctly, and accelerating through impact,
a hitter can actually feel a sense of resistance at the left wrist..

In other words, if the pivot is accelerating and pressure is being applied at pp #4 or the left armpit, and on the other end you have the weight of the club at the hand, there are two joints in between right?

We have the left elbow which could buckle on us, and also the left wrist socket.. both are capable of breaking down do to the forces of acceleration.

We have extensor action to aid us on the left elbow issue, giving us
support there, and we have the muscles in our hands and forearms to apply a structure there in the wrists.. Homer talks about how hitters need to use a stiff wristed slapping action through impact.

This is why you need to have strong firm wrists through impact as a hitter, because if you don’t, you’ll end up with too much forward shaft lean, and anytime you are dealing with too much forward shaft lean through impact from a true lowpoint protocol, you run the risk of pressure point #4 disconnect.. unless you really cut it hard left and maintain a lot of wrist cock through impact and beyond, which is good..

Getting back to the hands.. if the pivot is accelerating post impact,
as a hitter, you couldn’t bring in a bent left wrist if you tried.. I “feel” like my left wrist is trying to be bent at impact, and my right wrist flat!
As shocking as this sounds, and as against all TGM teaching on the planet!!! But, I am afforded this feeling BECAUSE I have a very good pivot action through impact, which puts a greater force on my hands than their ability to achieve a bent position, so the result?
FLW and Bent right wrist at impact.. but in reality I am trying to create the opposite..

BUT… WARNING! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!
This is advanced ball striking stuff, that can only be messed with once you have a wonderful accelerating pivot action through impact.

The good news is, it can be learned, with the proper training and guidance.. starting from the ground up..

Lag said:
FLW and Bent right wrist at impact.. but in reality I am trying to create the opposite..
BUT… WARNING! DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME!

Holy crap! How do you achieve this on anything other than a full shot. Having the confidence to drive your pivot hard on a half wedge shot must be nice.

Lag said:
Sam Snead said.. ” I pull the club down with the back three fingers of my left hand, then I hit it as hard as I can with the right hand”

Would an accurate description of the last 3 fingers of the left hand pulling be downwards towards the ground, not outwards away from the body( towards the back of the hand)?
This is the only way I can see to achieve the ’Äúwipe the crumbs of your chest” feeling Dart spoke about otherwise the left arm is disconnected from the body.
If this pull happens down to P3, then I assume that's when the ’Äúthree right hands kick in”.
Guru has said the the left arm plays no muscular pull in the downswing as a ’Äúpiece of string” which I can't understand if Snead has said the above.

’ÄúGolf is a ‘hit the ball to the target' sport, not a ‘hit the ball with the clubhead' sport”.
Percy Boomer

Snead was a swinger. Swingers use the left arms power to spin the flywheel to generate as much CF power as possible, with the right forearm on plane supporting that power. It feels like you belt it with your right hand as its your clamp. You have driving right forearm support.

Hitters have an inert left arm that is pushed through the ball.

Just finished watching the CA Championship. Saw Justin Leonard’s swing again with more info about swinging/htting from here.
He certainly looks like he’s trying to pull the club out of it’s orbit and keeps accelerating his pivot post-impact.
Is he the epitome of hitting because I reckon his swing is dog ugly, even if it is effective.

How is this for pivot action?

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

you can pause it at impact during the slow swings

Golfur66,

easy, just shorten the backswing.. if you shorten it enough, you can go at it with all your (pivot) might…

everyone’s backswing is much longer than they think it is..
If I asked you to hit a shot just taking your hand to hip high, then ripping it, you’d be surprised how “normal” that would actually look..

it’s amazing.. I do this to myself all the time.. I’ll say, I’m only going to move my hands 18 inches, and on video it looks like a 3/4 swing!

That last para is what 90% of players feel yet see the difference:)

Hitters have an inert left arm that is pushed through the ball.

Yes, this is correct in TGM…. UNLESS you are using Homer’s 2-M-3 version where the pivot is driving the primary lever assembly, and in this case you have 4 barrel hitter’s protocol, and this seemingly creates endless confusion in TGM circles..

2-M-3

“UNLESS Pivot Thrust actually drives the #4 accumulator THROUGH impact (this means BEYOND impact) it’s assignment is more clearly defined as delivery guidance and support of the power package..”

This more passive approach of guidance and support is fine for beginning golfers to learn some of the basics, but all the great ball strikers use a high pivot thrust through impact, the pivot is not just
guiding and supporting.. it’s powering, thrusting and driving the primary lever assembly THROUGH impact as Homer says so correctly.

Now if we remove the word “UNLESS”..

It reads like this..

Pivot Thrust DRIVES the #4 accumulator THROUGH impact and the pivot’s assignment is NOT only to lend delivery, guidance and support of the power package, it becomes THE MASTER ACCUMULATOR OF THE POWER PACKAGE!!!

Because Homer choose only to acknowledge and not expand upon this in greater detail, which he should have, we are left with a TGM legacy that for the most part favors swingers, and limits hitting to
secondary pivot involvement in favor of a thrusting and driving right arm only.. which is a very poor way to hit a golf ball, although it may be “geometrically correct”

Very interesting indeed, that sheds some light on things I’ve been wondering about.

If anyone is toying with the “Stack and Tilt” concept, have a look here,
Greg Norman was #1 in the world at this time, and possibly the greatest driver of a golf ball in history other than maybe Sam Snead..

Curtis Strange was the straightest driver in the game and proved this winning two US Opens.

Sandy Lyle won the Masters and The Open…

If anyone is interested I have the whole article online..

lagpressure@yahoo.com">

Hitters of course use pivot action as part of their power package. Otherwise those barrels would be unloaded.

So I’m not barking up the wrong tree using 3 fingers from left hand to pull down with as mentioned above without breaking any hitters rules after all?

For the initial part of the downswing no rules busted:)

Most hitters will be entirely right shouldered about the transition, getting the pivot of the right shoulder dropping down plane ahead of the hands to allow for gradual acceleration all the way through the ball.

Vs a swingers instant rip down and hang on for dear life.

Guru,

wow, isn’t that the truth! Yikes… !!!

On my third go at rereading the little yellow book. Homer could not have made it harder to read unless he wrote it in ‘Linear B’ (google that if you don’t know what that is!).

I’m going through Cpt 9 (7th Edition) “Zone#2”.
Para 3 starts and I quote;
“Study 3-B carefully: lool, look, LOOK.”

W.T.F is study 3-B?

Oh for a readable sequencial translation because the good stuff certainly is there!

Regards,

Pete

haha.

Read and inwardly digest 3B (chapter 3 section B) which is Practicing and Playing.

Look, look, LOOK refers simply to do things slowly enough to SEE what alignments are going on until they are falling correctly into place. Too hard to guess when you can use your eyes.

Hi Lag

I’ve been steadily reading through a lot of this thread. I am trying to learn the hitters technique. You talk a lot about accelarating thorugh impact. I have also heard from Dart recently to think about slowing down the downswing to float load (I may be misrepresenting Dart there, but that is how I am paraphrasing my understanding of his advice).

My question is whether the feeling of making the fastest part of the swing after impact is one to develop from the start while trying to learn to hit, or is it a more advanced technique?

I am also wondering if the secret to getting this feeling is the pivot driving the swing? What I understand this to mean is that the turning of the body drives the arms and hands (I suppose I should say the power package) throughout the downswing and follow through. If this is the case how, or maybe the right question is when, do you activate the right arm to straighten? Or will this just happen?

Hey Lag, thanks for the link to that article, very interesting, as was the rest of your site. I love seeing you hit you carpet filed impact bag too, just those few hits showed me so much. I know what my project is tomorrow, got some great old carpet in the shed that’ll be just right. Couple of days on that and I’ll video my swing now her indoors has agreed to shoot the video!

Weetbix,

Learning to accelerate is the most basic bare bones concept within the hitter protocol.. get on it right away.. why wait? Nothing will put you in better positions than great dynamics!

I’m not sure how many times Homer in TGM mentions “through the ball”

Or Hogan saying ” I reach maximum speed after impact”

Or how many times I would watch Moe Norman shake his head at the other tour pros and say, “Stop hitting at the ball, hit THROUGH the ball”

I don’t know how much more convincing one would need.. I certainly have said it enough times here that my skin is turning blue..

Pivot driven hitting is the way to go… for those who are tired of hit and hope or playing golf on hope and fear…

you can send over a vid of your swing if you like…

lagpressure@yahoo.com">

Understanding the right arm is so important..
Homer talked about how the mystery of golf disappears when right arm participation is understood..

Here’s some nice right arm participation!

LAG-

Pivot driven hitting

Is This concidered Pivot Driven by TGM standards?

I know my swing is not even close to being great, but I manage it very well. I really like your post, I sent you an email of my swing tonight just to gather you opinion. I really like the way I hit the ball as far as shot shape, I aim dead at the target the ball starts off about 1 to 3 yards right of target draws back and fades at the end. To me it is a push, pull effect, but thats on the range, on the course my lines an ball position get off sometimes and my miss becomes a strait shot or a small fade. I pasted my swing below, hell its just a swing I am not on tour but, I can hang! Any opinion’s welcome i’m all about learning….

http://www.v1golfacademy.co...

Or if that one don’t work..

http://www.v1golfacademy.co...

No. Hitting is right arm thrust delivered on a pivot in motion.

Only swinging can be pivot driven, ie dragged through.

Pivot controlled hands are at the whim of too many things to be precise often enough.

One of the controversial topics in TGM circles is …

can you push and pull at the same time?

Can you pull the club through impact with the pivot, but also
be pushing the club through with the right side, or right hand or even right arm? Can this be done at the same time?

The popular consensus is that you can’t …

I’ll see if I can get a video clip up to make my argument that yes indeed you can..

I think about this quite often – it’s also a question that comes up in martial art circles as I’m sure all other sports.

Pulling with left side and pushing with right side – I feel this is possible. Without a golf club in hand and any arm action, I feel I can coordinate the two into what feels a more stabilised and powerful turn.

Racing drivers use two hands on the steering wheel – one pushing and one pulling – for stabilisation and precision when turning. In fact two hands is recommended for road drivers so one doesn’t over-react when a cat runs out in front of the car.

Right arm thrusting off a pulling pivot – I feel this is like a group of people jumping in the air together whilst travelling upwards in an elevator. The equal and opposite reaction of jumping has to slow the elevator somewhat.

Maybe this happens also when one pulls with left side, pushes with the right?

So I don’t know but continue to ponder. Strobocopic photos, body motion graphs and even video tend to show the slowing of the previous power source in the chain as the next fires off it.

I’m not sure which is the trigger though – do we purposely slow our pivot so our arms can have a chance of powering off it, or does the pivot slow down automatically because the thrusting arms are causing it to?

I think it is very possible to push and pull, hell I said it because this is what I feel. Look how jacked up my down swing is!!! You hink aiming the club at the target and starting the ball 1 to 3 yards right having it draw back, and then fadr at the end is posible by a swipe…? “No” I am not a TGM guy and could not tell you the difference between 2-m-3 and R-2-D-2! ” “Joke”, but I know some of Lags TGM history and I am listening to every word he says… Truthfully I can not get enough, and some of you might have been to my website already and know that I work with players out on the PGA Tour, and for me to say that LAG knows his stuff is a bigdeal.. The funny part is we are not much different in our thinking proccess and the way we want to hit it. I would say what Lag has taught me in TGM terms I am a 2-M-3 pivot driven hitter, and in BurlyGolf terms I am a “MRP” Motion Relase Pivot! Boil that all together and you get a right sided pivot hitter like Hogan..

Burley,

I had a look at your website, looks great. Quick question, what is the name of the guy wearing the brim hat (think it is Ping) in your site video? Any info would be great, love the position he gets in at the top of his swing, looks like a tall golfer.

Cheers

OPTI

PS, apologies for hijack.

Push vs Pull – this is one of golf’s biggest myths or mis-perceptions. Here is one of my Top Ten best pieces of swing advice: Never pull or push with either arm, in the most commonly held understanding of those terms, ie in the forward, or “around” or sideways or horizontal dimension, during the forward swing. Doing so creates a host of swing flaws.

Ideally – there should be no independent muscle-powered arm motion EVER during the forward swing. No left arm pulling and no right arm pushing.

Big muscles of Core, Hips and Torso – entirely another matter. From a purely semantic standpoint, “pulling” means source of power ahead of object being moved, “pushing” means power source behind it. We need to define what is the object being pulled or pushed. From that viewpoint – during the forward swing, the right side and the left side are both creating a pulling motion on the clubhead, until the clubhead is in line with the spine, right around impact. At that point – the right side of the torso, core and hip girdle becomes a pushing force all the way to the Finish. Left side stays a pulling force throughout.

If you define the shoulder extremity as the sole source of power, then the right shoulder becomes a pushing force much earlier in the forward swing. If you change the object being moved from clubhead to hands, that also creates an earlier onset of pushing.

However – due to the bi-cameral or two halves nature of our brains, and our two eyes, and the fact that our spine is at mid-line of the body, and a golf ball in front of us on the ground, more or less in line with the spine, we are hard-wired to perceive/feel that the left side of the torso is pushing to the right on the backswing while the right side pulls, and this feeling is reversed for the forward swing, left side pulls and right side pushes. Not in the strictest terms semantically as I defined above, but in terms of feel or subjective perception. We are relating the force to the ball position and/or to our mid-line of our body or spine.

Homer got it wrong on the swinging vs hitting concept as far as pulling and pushing – but so did everyone else. All due to the biggest illusion in golf – the Arm Swing Illusion.

You can certainly push the right arm angle (at elbow joint) straight in a “hitting action” or “hammering action” on the downswing, but that should only be in the down and out dimensions – never in the horizontal or forward dimension. Most TGM discussions of “hitting” seem to be grounded in this third dimension as well – big mistake in my opinion.

You do need to push both arms away from your body on the backswing.

I feel like I can but I can’t explain the push&pull why I don’t think it can really be taught.

I feel like the more right arm extension in a direction that increases the pull on my left arm and puts more pressure on #4, the harder I feel I can drive my pivot through. By the time my pivot kicks in, its moving my arm assembly which is now heavier because its longer.

Since working on the impact bag, my left pec is sore after the workout.

BP has described a Swingers motion pretty well there.

Optimalcadence-

That would be Chris Stroud…

---

BP-

I feel that I am pulling across the ball from an inside approach with the hard rotary pull/turn and pushing/hitting the ball down the line with the club at impact, then the club continues up and around the arc. Which all happens on a strait line of an 1/2 inch.

---

Slicermcgolf-

I think the feel you might get is the same feel I am getting, and if you are rolling the club open all the way to the top as much as you can, then on the down swing the right wrist will bow opening the face to the sky creating laided off lag, and this will force the left arm CF to leave the chest, from behind it looks like created seperation, But! it will still be connected at the arm pit, and swinging like an axe chopping/hitting and upward blow at a tree.

Take note the grip is on the side if the hands were on top the right wrist would be full bowed, and the left would be a reaction to the right.

The axe attack on the stump is a pure hitters motion. Pivot starts things off slowly then the thump of the right arm drives the axe. Note the amount of right arm bend in the photo above. That shows there is still thump going on. If there were no bend and all that would be left is pivot turn.

In a hitters action the thrust throws the left arm off the chest. In a swingers action CF is more a dragging force that finally lets it fly off the chest as the pivot turns and the right arm is still supporting the left arm, traveling down plane. Or you can add left arm pull to blast it off your chest. It is the weakest power accumulator but its timing makes it the Master Accumulator.

Throw it too soon and you are off plane into the strike zone.

Burley – yes, you are describing your swing in the same way that Lag calls Hitting, not same as Hitting as described in the Yellow Book and certainly not the same as most TGM descriptions. I call it a Body Thrust or extreme Pivot Thrust method with SuperConnected upper arms, the preffered pivot thrust option of the Spinning swing style. I’m sure Lag can elaborate on this as this idea is one of his favorite topics.

I think that any depiction of different possible swing styles should be founded solely in terms of the pivot: body type range of motion differences due to flexibilty differences first, then range of shoulder and hip rotation for both back and forward swings, forward spine angle, side spine angles, amount of lateral weight shift, overall swing tempo, and pivot thrust type and trigger location.

Homer’s idea of swinging and hitting is NOT based on these concepts. But rather one of his basic premises seems to be the notion of right arm driving or pushing for Hitting and left arm swinging for Swinging. He uses a kind of Algebraic logic, like much of the book, wherein if X = a certain value, then all kinds of ramifications result logically. The problem is – I think he got the value of X wrong on certain issues. Swinging vs Hitting being one example.

Brian Manzella – to his credit – has come around to this same view in the past year or so, due to his exposure to Physics from Mandrin, Dave Tutelman, who is a regular poster on his site, and another physicist whose name escapes me right now. But if you go to his site, you can find a very rewarding discussion about how one can in fact – most good ballstrikers do – Hit and Swing in the same swing motion.

I am amazed at the lack of congruency about Hitting vs Swinging elements even within TGM circles. In the wider golf world, I can’t tell you how many experts who have described what they see in Moe Normans swing as the ultimate example of either Swinging or Hitting – depending on the expert! By that I mean Hitting being more of an arms/hands dominate motion and Swinging being more of a body or big muscle motion. Leadbetter has commented for example that Moe is the ultimate Swinger or big muscle motion guy.

If anybody would like a much more accurate model for describing different swing styles, I strongly recommend the book “The Laws of Golf” by Mike Adams, TJ Tomasi and Jim Suttie. I do not recommend the Jim Hardy model – 1 vs 2 plane swings – at all, way too simplistic and lacking in coherent reasoning and real world empirical evidence.

Sorry, to ask but can you explain “THUMP”?

Thump = Powerful thrust as in a strong throwing motion.

Hitter: boxer
Swinger: sling shot

BP-

I think that for most people simplistic is good, I was a Hardy One Plane guy for a long time, and was the ginny pig for most of the drills in the beging. I think Jim is very knowledgable in the golf swing, but I do not agree with everything now, for example the One Plane back swing or take away to be exact! The book I have written is called the One Plane Cut and it will be out next month, I made it very easy to read for the avarage golfer who most; do not know the difference between terms such as Pronate, and Underneath. You tell most golfers that an there like what! I agree as a teacher and learner of the game that I want more, but like I said we are the MINORITY! This is one reason I have been drawn to TGM stuff I like the complex out look of Homer, but what i do not like is the fact Homer did not play golf.

To be correct and not critical I am not a big Brian Manzella fan, he has some good ideas that he has borrowed from others to call his own, but his approach of poor me, this is why you should listen to what I have to say is a turn off. Not that he is a bad teacher but being as close to Louisana as I am I have not heard many kind word from other teachers about his caractor, or approach of unique idea’s.

Someone like a Ben Dole who LAG worked with and was the original TGM teacher is the one person that might have the best out look on the original teachings of Homer. Through the grape vine checking out LAG, I hear that LAG was the real deal and should have been the model for the TGM instead of Bobby C. An to bring Bobby up who in there right mind would tell and one that you need to take a divot starting 4 inches infront of a golf ball? What are you going to feel when you have driver in hand, a downward hit, that is being pulled/tugged up at impact so you are not going to burry the driver in the ground?

Thump = Powerful thrust as in a strong throwing motion.

Hitter: boxer
Swinger: sling shot

---

Thank you…

Not to be arguminative but just an example, if I hit you on the head that would be a thump and the sound would be a thump, but if I threw my hand at you it would be a slap, and would sound like a slap. May be they got Thump wrong int he book as well…LoL

A slap is a hand and wrist motion. A punch is right arm straightening.

I know which has more energy behind it :)

Bobby’s examples are about most players having no clue as to where the low point of the arc of their swing is. I did not like the standard 4” in front of the ball either but it is forward of the ball.

His downward strike with the driver has to be taken in context of the fact that the ball is teed up AND that the ball is pretty much at the low point, and you are swinging down plane. Past low point, the club is traveling up, even though its down plane, and back in.

So if Hogan was a 2-M-3, then what is 4 barrel and why is it taught in TGM and not Hogans swing? Is it because Hogan sweep the ball on his arc, hitting down an through with his pivot creating a divot with his tilted right side and then letting CF release his folded right arm to stay on the arc so he did not dig down to China?

I loved Bobby’s book “The Impact Zone” and it is required reading for our new students, but I totally agree – four inches in front for Low Point for a driver is just crazy. That’s the only thing however that he got wrong in the entire book in my opinion.

The problem with the Hitting vs Swinging or the One vs Two Plane debate is – once you accept the basic premise, you are locked into that paradigm – and alternative views, even ones that are much closer to real 3d reality, get blocked out. I try to see the swing in 3d and to always try to understand what a particular body part is doing in in terms of how it moves, in both independent motion, ie how it moves itself with muscle-power, and dependently, how it is moved by another body part. I think TGM in general falls way short of the mark from this kind of viewpoint. Like a lot of traditional instruction, it is mostly 2d based. Not seeing the entire picture.

I am sometimes turned off by Brian Manzella’s personality as well, like most folks I think. He comes across as a narcissist to say the least. But – I think he runs a great forum and he has some knowledgeable people posting there. You got to give the guy credit for acknowledging he was wrong with his extreme TGM bias in his teaching.

My problem with the one plane vs two plane is really just this: about 90% of the top ballstrikers on all the major tours are an almost perfect hybrid of Hardy’s one and two plane models. I think Hardy’s theory is the ultimate example of the total absurdity of the Fallacy of the Extremes in golf instruction,.

So if Hogan was a 2-M-3, then what is 4 barrel and why is it taught in TGM and not Hogans swing?

Section 2-M is on application of Power. The paragraph headings are 1-Basic (kinetic energy), 2-Power Regulation, 3-Muscles and 4-Body power.

2-M-3 is Muscle power. The key graph says “Muscle Power is almost entirely right triceps thrust straightening the right elbow. The right triceps and pectorals (pull the shoulders and arms forward) can handle all the muscle requirements of the downstroke and need no help from those on the left.”

So to say “2-M-3 is Hogan” doesn’t make grammatical sense.
Hogan is a pattern of variations in the 24 components comprising the golf swing (according to TGM), the characteristics of which are moot (for Hogan).

2-M-4 is Body Power. The key graph is “Consider pivot thrust as body power blasting a swinger’s essentially inert left arm into orbit toward impact, or as supplying the initial acceleration of the Hitter’s loaded power package so the clubhead can be endowed with pivot speed PLUS right triceps speed.”
That would be 4-barrel for a hitter.

A few other interesting statements in 2-M-3:
“The pattern of the stroke being used designates where thrust is to originate and that is completely the player’s option.”
“Only with the driver must you use both pivot thrust (body) and Power Package thrust (right triceps) for lack of a longer club.”
Paraphrasing those possibilities: The swinger could add muscle power (triceps), the hitter could add pivot power (the shoulder turn, or body power).

And, “The greatest hazard this component faces is the belief that Effort is Power. No amount of effort will produce more than a player’s maximum turning speed. Regardless of effort, you simply cannot push anything faster than you can run. Mechanical advantage must be utilized, making clubhead acceleration an Overtaking process.”

Now, I’m not saying any of this is correct. I’m just saying that’s what section 2-M says in order to clarify what we’re talking about.
2-M-3 is merely a description of Muscle Power.

4-barrel is in a different section and just says it’s possible to use ‘em all, basically, if that’s what you want to do. Player’s choice.
But it also says “This combination can produce many problems during its mastery, but it also can make the difference in top competition. Well-controlled double or triple barrel combinations have little to fear from the Four barrel combination that is less than fully mastered.”

For all I know, all competitive pros, or at least great strikers of the ball, might be 4-barrel.

TGM doesn’t actually “teach” any method. It’s a component variations catalog, a description of the geometry, apparently arguable physics, some mental advice and recommendations for play versus practice. It’s an instructor’s reference book, with a basic recommended course outline.

That last paragraph is a very good (as were the rest of course)
reminder that TGM is not a method.

Yes, not a method, but not purely a “catalog” either. Homer clearly had his biases and his preferences, just like any golf teacher has. It’s just not accurate to state this the book is in any way a 100% accurate or 100% complete way of describing how to hit a golf ball effectively. Homer had his own filters – no doubt unconscious as most filters are. If Homer was alive today, and had made use of current technology, and debates like we see here and other golf forums, and studying other golf researchers and teachers books, and long hours on Youtube looking at video of great golf swings – I think you would see a very, very different book.

Moe was a pure bacon strip divot guy… I never saw Moe take a deep divot..

Hogan from the best that I know, also took fairly shallow divots, because he for the most part played off true lowpoint (just prior)

One thing people forget is that true lowpoint ball position is poorly
defined by address position, and even foot placement. Stance width and axis tilt have a great effect upon ball placement also… and how your rotate through impact with the pivot effects ball placement.
The angle of the left arm, clubshaft (primary lever assembly) affect the divot and lowpoint. Whether you hit or swing will affect it as well…even intent can change ball position..

There is a great science to ball position, we have a lot of options, but I believe there are great advantages to learning to play off a true low point protocol for the majority of golf shots… but to do this, you need to have a proper golf swing.

I believe the ability to utilize proper ball position can only be the result of a good golf swing.

I have great doubt that putting a high handicapper into a tour pros ball position will easily aid them in creating a proper golf swing.. the hands have to know what to do from P3 to P4 first….or you will not find proper low point easily.

I carefully examine the divot of every shot I take on a golf course.
There is great information there, very valuable information there.
Always look at your divot, even if you don’t know what it means..
It tells you the past, but also the future, much like a palm reader!

Burley,

Thanks for that, found the images of his swing on gettyimages. Awesome.

Thanks again

OC

Hey Lag, on the divot subject, here in Melbourne at the moment the grass is only just coming back and most of it is pretty tough. Yesterday I was hitting a couple of 7 irons into a green and thinking of divot. When I hit down on the ball in a desired fashion (judged by good ball flight and direction) the club almost ripped out of my hands getting stuck in the turf, felt more like an impact bag. The grasses they’re using are tough as and don’t seem divot friendly in the normal sense, more clumpy. Must admit the shots looked great though. Now on a couple of tees where the grass was very lush and soft I could get a divot going but it’s not often as I play on cheaper public courses. Do you think that getting stuck is an ok feeling or is that too extreme or too deep?
Still working on filming my swing too, might get to do it tomorrow.

Yes, not a method, but not purely a ’Äúcatalog” either. Homer clearly had his biases and his preferences, just like any golf teacher has. It's just not accurate to state this the book is in any way a 100% accurate or 100% complete way of describing how to hit a golf ball effectively. Homer had his own filters – no doubt unconscious as most filters are. If Homer was alive today, and had made use of current technology, and debates like we see here and other golf forums, and studying other golf researchers and teachers books, and long hours on Youtube looking at video of great golf swings – I think you would see a very, very different book.

Homer was just a golfnut in a garage but in real life could not bust eggs , however he was good at solving puzzles. The Dark side of the force is much stronger because they took the good stuff, added some better stuff and ditched the crud.
Now some may get upset but FFS its the 21st century and time and technology has moved forward as it always does

BTW the suggestion that Hogan was 2-M-3 is amusing, Hang on ,
Is it 3 Right Triceps He Wished For Now,
Whats the next Hogan BS story

Chuck Evans says Moe is the ultimate hitter, Lag and Lead say he’s the ultimate swinger…..

Personally, and note how much his setup seems to emphasise getting the most out of centrifugal force with those arms extended as far from the body as possible, I agree with Lag and Lead.

I love those Youtube videos of Moe talking about what he calls the ‘pendulum’ swing, taking the club between two fingers, moving it back and forth and saying “it can’t get off plane if it wants to!!!!!!”

To me, that’s your answer right there on what he’s about…..

BPSG1 – is what your saying re: the arms a more sophisticated version of the old golfing advice to ‘keep the elbows in front of the body’?

Lag,

I've got two questions for you based on pictures from Ben's Power Golf. The intent of these questions is just for clarification and not meant to undermine anything.

In the first picture if Ben's weight is truly 85% on the left side, does his weight (right foot pressure) transfer back to his right foot at impact like the GD experiment?

Also I've always have been bothered by the droop of the shaft in both of these pictures. Is Ben trying to tell us that there's no pressure (pre-stressed) on the shaft this late into the downswing?

As always, I appreciate your thoughts

Fascinating pics Mashie.

Wonder if the type of shafts used in the Power Golf days are worth thinking about re: these pics? (1938?)

Thanks for all the information, like I said I know very little about TGM and its terms. I feel comfortable asking and questioning different suggestions you guys make, as a learning experience. I hope you all do not get to bored with my lack of knowledge of TGM, as I increase my knowledge of TGM through reading post and the yellow book. In time I will be able to understand all the difference between 2-M-3, 4barrel, 3-C-P-O, and R-2-D-2. Lol “Joke”!

“Never try to take a divot. It must be a natural result.”
Who said that?

Beez,

My book says 1948 and has similar shaft flex illustrations for the iron shots…So they probably are the XXX Stiff steel shafts. There are other pictures post impact that show a stressed shaft as Lag advocates

Beez – yes, elbows in front of chest until Finish is part of our model, but that is only one small part of the story. I am simply stating that an efficient swing has the right elbow angle opening up ONLY in the down toward the ground and out toward the target line dimension, it should never open up as well in the forward or toward the target dimension. That in fact is a fatal swing flaw. Same thing applies to wrist cock angle opening up.

One can actively open up this right arm angle with tricep contraction or can let it happen passively from COAM, CF and pivot rotary force.

The right upper arm CAN be thrust off the chest during Release in a sideways motion, but I almost never recommend this, since it is a very difficult move to do in Balance and takes a tremendous amount of timing to do well. It also requires well above average hand-eye coordination to do well. The amount of clubhead speed generated is rather small, compared to the Pivot, so its just not worth it for most golfers. Extreme endomorph golfers – very inflexible but very strong upper body – who are seeking maximum distance can use this method.

Far better for most golfers to let the right and left upper arms to also move ONLY in the down and out dimensions during the downswing to just past impact. Improves every aspect of the swing.

Darth – you never ever tell us what this Dark Side you keeping talking about it is. Is it MORAD by any chance?

Also I've always have been bothered by the droop of the shaft in both of these pictures. Is Ben trying to tell us that there's no pressure (pre-stressed) on the shaft this late into the downswing?

As always, I appreciate your thoughts

It’s just a 3d illusion – you can see the droop is predominantly toe-droop, not bend in the direction of thrust. It is exaggerated however.

Found this browsing on LBG. Does that look like he is holding the stress post impact to you?!!

Nice large picture there Styles :)

That could easily be contact with the ground bending the shaft.

yeah not the largest, however maybe someone techie could do the needful and enlarge it.

The resolution is not big enough to do it justice. The club looks as if it’s no longer in contact with the turf and is ahead of the feet, the hands are ahead of the club too. Hard to tell if club is stressed or it’s the old photo. Lovely shot though.

you can view it much larger on Lynn Blakes site.

LBG Gallery

You may need to register to view it, but its worthwhile as they have a great forum there and tons of excellent free stuff.

there is a great shot of Gary Player in there too!

Also I've always have been bothered by the droop of the shaft in both of these pictures. Is Ben trying to tell us that there's no pressure (pre-stressed) on the shaft this late into the downswing?

As always, I appreciate your thoughts

It's just a 3d illusion – you can see the droop is predominantly toe-droop, not bend in the direction of thrust. It is exaggerated however.

i think the bend in the shaft was created by the camera shutter moving horizontaly unlike todays cameras which open up.

The difference between a focal plane shutter and an octopus eye shutter.

If the camers was turned upside down the shaft would appear bent the other way.

What is P3 and P4? Just wanted to know someone that is a TGM guy told me that my address back swing looked money and could not unerstand why my P3 and P4 was not, since I was in such great positions on the way back…

Thanks,

Burley-

Thanks for shutter info..I’ll buy that…and yes LBG is a nice site too especially if you want to get your fill of Jeffman

Has anyone considered the possibility that the photo was of a low punch shot? Much different from a standard release. That’s the trouble with impact photos – they almost never tell us with a caption or text what the actual ball flight was, can lead to some erroneous conclusions.

Burley,

P3 & P4 refer to when your swing is parallel to the ground for the third and fourth times

Jeff is not there often at all now.

Thanks for the answer,..

I just found a tresure chest of Ben dole video’s talking about throw away and educated hands and the chip, pitch, and punch to the tire were the hands go to the amining point, with no double dribble..LoL That is some great stuff, this might be the key for me to fix my down swing. I guess I will start slow with 1/3 pivot to bring hands to aiming point. Its weird I would asscoiate this with a trap knock down, but the whole aiming point and not trying to use the club but rather the hands and pivot is kinda more simple as Ben explains it… Good Stuff!

Burley-

LynnBs Basic Motion explanation videos are even better.

I have not finished yet, give me time.. A man can only watch so many golf videos at one time.. and post on a forum between videos,,LoL

ain’t that the truth:)

Ben’s are great for pure swinging. LBs show both swinging and hitting.

Yah, I watch some of each now I really like Ben he reminds me of Moe Norman.. But, Lynn Blake is full of entergy and makes it fun hard call on whats best but so far Ben has been a better explainer.. Thats how golf is you can tell a guy 99 different things that are the same and on the 100th he gets that on.. I just get Ben better I think, but I like both of them.

LynnBs Basic Motion explanation videos are even better.

Can’t seem to find the title for the above basic motion..?

Bobby Clampett and I talked about the Hogan Power golf photos, and he agreed that this was an issue with the camera as Dart suggested,
and the lens…

I once owned a video camera in the 80’s that did the same thing to the shaft, I switched cameras and the shaft went the other way..

As one might guess for those who follow this thread….. NIGHTMARISH images for me! lol

Tonight was an amazing evening having dinner with golf’s legendary journalist Al Barkow..

My head is still spinning, and we only had Chinese food in Berkeley!

He knew Snead well enough to write his Biography, and he was telling us about badgering Hogan for his secret, and how it went down in Fort Worth at Shady Oaks.. classic stuff..

Just one amazing story after another.. one of the great historians on the game…

Here are a few of

Al’s books..

Lag said (back in May ‘08)
We'll, I must say that swinging and the use of longitudinal acceleration
I believe to be the superior method of all things feel. Dumping the power package on the ball with soft hands is just a beautiful thing around the greens for all the chips, flops and around the green wedges.

Do you think that the brain/senses can cope with both swing and hitter styles? The brain and body has to be trained hard to learn one or the other styles of moving through the ball.
Is it a case of treating the long and short games as separate compartments so you can be proficient at them both?
I know that just moving from being a swinger to a hitter has had a profound impact on my long game so far. It has effected many parts of my short game too which I’m still adjusting to.
I just don’t ever want to lose that sweet soft hands feel I can hit out of a bunker with etc.

Mashie – my bad…..1948 of course (what was I thinking!)

BPSG1 – thanks – enlightenment bulbs…..

Lag,

Any particular story you’d like to share with us? Something must have stuck out…. Did Hogan ever ‘spill the beans’?

Food for thought..looks like Ernest Jones was able to get the camera shot correct and some very nice acceleration from a chair in 1952!

Hey Burley,

No offense, but can we cool it with the lame “section number” jokes about TGM….. at least until you put in a few hours studying the book? Or maybe put the Starwars/TGM humor in a new thread.

Also… you say you have a “money” backswing that produces (if I understand correctly) a ballflight that starts right, draws left, and then fades right again. What the heck is that about? Is this in a left-to-right wind? Did you teach your tour pro’s this same ballflight? I guess I don’t understand the physics behind a ball that actually curves 2 different directions, but I’m open to learning about it.

Robbo

Al talked about how Hogan was very secretive about everything he was doing.. he didn’t believe Hogan was going to give away any secrets to any of his competitors, especially during his playing years..
Hogan reveled in the mystique of it all, and loved to play games with people.. that was his thing. There are countless accounts of people whom claim to have been told the secret directly by Hogan, and for every person, it is a different secret. Even Al was told the secret!
A very different secret indeed!

Let’s just say this… anytime Ben gave someone a swing tip, he would shroud it in “pssst.. ok…sshhhhhhh, I’m going to tell you the secret… it’s ^&$&((&$&(#&&(@&x%x#))x%x%$x%x)(&%

and that would be the secret…

Al talked about how the clubs back then were all extremely customized, and no one was playing with stock stuff off the shelves.. There was a whole art to the crafting of clubs, to the tailoring of them to the pro players,
the whole thing was a lot more secretive then, for everyone.

He talked about how long Snead was.. he was the John Daly of his time, but a much better player. Snead still is the all time record holder for PGA Tour wins.

We talked about the mental side of the game, and he talked about how the greats just have a unique ability to literally “will” the ball into the cup on the greens when they really need to make a putt. All the greats did it, the miracle putts on the last three holes, defying statistical probabilities, and Tiger is maybe the best at doing it ever.

We went into a lot of great stuff about the mental game of golf..
very interesting really..

Mashie72,

where did you dig that pic up?

great photo..
can’t argue about the function of the hands!

Golfur66,

The problem.. the problem, the problem…
I really believe it is dangerous ground to try to combine the two procedures into your game at once… I tried to do this for years…
and it felt like I was walking a tightrope of feel..

What happens is, if you are cultivating a feeling of heavy and deliberate, long and slow on one end, but firm quick and sharp on the other… at some point they will collide into one another.. for me it would happen around 80 to 110 yards with wedges.. and the brain will sometimes just jamb up, at least mine would, and I would hit some of the worst shots imaginable..

The feels, sensations, and intentions are so polar opposite, that at some point they just have to overlap one another, and this is the danger zone.

I suspect the real greats of the game can do it … I really think they can, but, I am speaking upon a platform of speculation because unless I can do it, then I really don’t know with 100% certainty.

I like to walk my talk, and although I have had days where I feel I can do both, it’s always been more the rarity than the rule..

Lag said:
I really believe it is dangerous ground to try to combine the two procedures into your game at once… I tried to do this for years…
So…....does a hitter not have the nice soft hands for the excellence around the greens?
Good at at the vanilla shots: chipping, pitching etc, but high flops, short side bunker shots etc are against the grain so to speak?

It’s a different kind of feel..

I think they both have their advantages both ways… the little soft hand flop shot up over a knoll or a bunker I like the soft hands… but at the same time, a ball down in the grass in some greenside rough comes out a lot more consistent with a firm little pop, or hit..

I don’t practice anymore, but I remember when I did grind a lot around the greens shagging balls, I would often go out and just strike it like garbage.. because I would start swinging, or switting..

Conversely if I was just piping shots on the range firm and aggressive,
I would often not have the touch around the greens as I would with the slow heavy hands thing..

I’m not sure a casual onlooker would notice, but I would notice..
when the two worlds would find a happy medium, I would really play well.. it was a push and pull for me.. too much of one, or the other, didn’t seem to do me best..

Now, I just just hit everything, chips, wedges, flops, and my short game is very good considering I have completely eliminated practicing from my game. I even hit putts. I can still get the hole to open up once in a while on a good day without practicing, enough to keep the game exciting.. I still like shooting 67’s with persimmon and blades and an old bullseye putter from the 60’s!
I shot 65 last year, so my goal is to shoot 64 this year!

Thanks Lag. Sorry I took so long to acknowledge your invitation. If I get hold of a video and organise to tape my swing I’ll shoot it to you.

Until then I’ll keep working on accelarating through the ball.

Thanks
Brendan

There was a series of books that were reprinted by Golf Digest that my great uncle passed on to me. Harry Vardon's book was reprinted too but I don't have that one in the collection

Lag, your comments about “collision” between heavy and deliberate and quick and sharp leads me to ask whether Peter Senior suffered from this as well. From memory, he chipped left hand low during his best years on tour (from memory) and putted with the broom stick. What I am trying to say is that from armchair fan’s perspective, he looked to be suffering with his short shots and putting compared to say his hot ball striking.

Just a quick acknowledgment of a great addition to this forum.

Showmethemoney,

We just found out that we know each other from way back in my touring days, and I just want to make it loud and clear, this guy
can play! So, listen closely when he talks about the game, the swing, how to think, how to not think, and so forth.. Hats of too ya mate!

These are some of my favorite quotes from Showme…

Every flusher of the ball in every era has swung the club by bracing the right leg and turning the torso back and behind the ball building up power like a corkscrew and then unleashing that power into the downswing by initiating with the hips and dropping the club down to create lag and more power and never letting their body to get too far ahead of the ball at impact.

Moe Norman taught me exactly this about the right leg being a post..

Turning the TORSO back as far as possible is the way to build power, absolutely… never letting the body get too far ahead of the ball at impact will ring true with anyone following my ideals here..

When someone who s&t's actually breaks into the top 50 in driving stats and GIR for an entire season…then I may have a fairer view of it but that is a long way off because that move is only beneficial to short irons, not longer shafted clubs

amen… but I would add, even if they do, I doubt they could go back
and play the great courses of the past having to hit small blade long irons off the deck into postage stamp greens.

Gary Player certainly a swing that has never received much praise at all…you don't win 9 majors by chance or just by having determination

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Yes, another Player fan.. If you don’t think this swing is pureness
you don’t know the golfswing..

I love this old stuff…..persimmon woods, small headed irons, crappy balls……the real art of playing has definitely been lost over the years after viewing the old footage
Will have to get my old tapes out again and watch them

Isn’t that the truth, but I suppose these words could only come from a great player who mastered the game, in the persimmon age.

I love those old softer balls though… I found an old Golden Ram ball on a ball hunt one day, and played it for nine holes, it felt like I was hitting a marsh-mellow around the course, but I could work that thing
into any pin placement…!

all great strikers keep the true loft on the club around the impact position with their head behind the ball or level with the ball (but never ahead of it) and they have their weight moving from right side to left side in a slightly lateral motion thru the ball and into their follow thru for maximum acceleration and for maximum direction control…

Isn’t that the truth, and I am on the side too that big forward shaft lean is very overrated and misunderstood.

the golfers of yesteryear, who had no video cameras, had little tuition and had little pyscho help were much more complete golfers than those of today.

I don’t think the modern players would have a chance against the greats of the past if they had to play the old gear on the great old tracks.. I’m sure Peter Thomson would agree too. So much has been lost really.. it saddens me in many ways..

There is no quick fix to being a good golfer. It takes, time, It takes patience and perseverance

We really had to grind to find this game years ago, and I think
the modern gear just handing a 280 yard drive to a beginner
with a 48 inch shaft, 10 ounce giant head, cheapens what we had to learn through years of technique. We can now hit it 310 with the new gear, but then the golf courses get silly short, and that cheapens the game. Not for me..

On stack and tilt…
If they all swung the long clubs like we are supposedly shown in articles about S/T they wouldn't be able to hit those longer clubs at all and going by the fairways and green stats of some of them it bears true already.

sure does….

watch your divot pattern..(deep or thin)..watch the direction your ball starts on..(club path).......and watch your ball flight…(if it draws or fades).. those 3 things will tell you all you want to know about how you are delivering the club into the ball

I examine every divot I take on the course, so much to learn from our divots..

I once also had a set of old blades I loved and had another manufacturer match a set of their clubs to the same specs…….he couldn't do it……. because the irons I loved were all over the place…..the lofts and lie angles didn't match up flowing thru the set……yet I loved them and could hit any shot to any distance that I wanted…..they suited my eye and I knew how they performed..

What were you playing back when we were both on tour?
I was using a Maxfli factory grind which was a bit like the first edition
Australian Blades.. so much feel in those things..

Were you hitting those early Mizunos?

Numbers,

Regarding Peter Senior…
I would certainly think that is a fair assessment.

I’d love to talk to him about it sometime..

Lag,
I think the set in question was Dunlop DP 30’s… I had used them to death but they were my babies for quite some time
They were similar to maxfli’s but were an even softer material and came from Japan and had an incredible feel…. I had to give them up once the sweet spot and face became a blurr and had not much left on them to hit the ball with
In those days we didn’t really have much in the way of loft lie machines or nothing…..you picked clubs up….waggled them…. felt them…swung them….hit them…..and just knew they were right
Mine were a little messed up in lies and lofts…but I didn’t know that at the time and who cared. I knew what I could do with each one of them….and the heads were so small the ball barely fitted between the grooves….. now they make shovels and put shafts in them for everyone to play with and call them clubs

I have an idea about Peter Senior and his short game I will throw around …..Just my observation as I did see him play in his early days when he putted cross handed (pre broomstick) and chipped regular.
Peter Senior has always hit the ball very straight….he has had low scores by attacking any flag. His swing may look ungainly at times and difficult for anyone to copy but works exceptionally well.
He is not particularly tall….so I think he always used a lot of shoulder turn and lifted himself thru the ball into a full finish… looks like he stands up going thru the shot….works a treat for him.
Now I think in his early days this technique carried over into his short shorts and he would raise his axis and hit mishits around the green and lost confidence.
So he started chipping cross handed and it held his head in a more stable position and it worked…for him
I might add he still plays flop shots and bunker shots the regular way and hits them superbly well…. no loss of his senses or confidence on those ones to alter that part
He used to putt cross handed with an old bulls eye I think….. he wasn’t awful….but he was striping the ball so well so often he felt he wasn’t getting the scores he should have been getting by not holing enough putts…..sam Torrance showed him the long putter one day in Europe….he tried it and the rest is history..
He wields that long putter better than you can imagine….. very rarely misses from inside 10 feet…..even if he won’t admit to that !! because he still thinks he can’t putt!!!

I took a golf machine lesson recently and I was intrigued, but came away with a couple of problems. First, though I picked most of it up pretty fast, I really can’t get the feel of a flat left wrist after impact. I’ve tried stuffing a flat comb into my watch but it’s not that useful, slides around, etc. It seems like it would be easy to make a training aid for this. Is there a good one out there anyone can recommend?

Second, I can hit pretty well off a short swing with the club loaded, but I haven’t got the feel of how to translate that to a full swing. I can’t afford a lot of lessons, is there a plain english book out there that goes through the TGM concepts for players?

I loved this shot of him piping one out of a fairway bunker on the back nine at Royal Melbourne in his prime, with a long iron to boot.

Peter in particular caught my eye as a bright eyed youth in 1987. Being an American, I didn’t know who he was, but I kept seeing this name pop up on the leader boards, and it seemed he would shoot 64 at least one round every week on these diabolical golf courses down there. It wasn’t like the States where you could miss a drive and find your ball in a second cut of rough, and maybe have a tree in your way.
The tour courses in Oz back then were fairway, some scraggly grass, then you’re in bushes or brush. I found myself playing very conservatively
concentrating on hitting fairways and playing more conservative shots into the fast hard greens every week. I just had a hard time understanding how you could play that aggressive down there to make that many birdies. The bottom line is, if you’re good enough, you can do it..

I’d watch Senior play when I could and it was just a clinic in shot making.. and I would watch him hit balls and you could hear the compression, and when I saw his swing in slow motion it looked about as good as a swing can look through impact.

The commentators on TV used to rat on his swing and they couldn’t understand how he did it…

The problem with looking at a players golf swing is that you really only see their set up, their backswing to the top, and the finish,
the rest is really a blur.. so you see a lot of pretty set ups, and backswings, and post card finishes, but often the impact dynamics are not there as they should be..

I think it was a flawless golf swing.. I even loved his finish, the whole thing, just pureness.. I didn’t really see it after 92.

Who does a guy like Peter Senior take lessons from? Peter Thomson maybe? Billy Dunk?

I’ll try to dig up some DTL shots of him from that era, I have some somewhere.. the best thing about his swing in my eyes is how he
released the club post impact, I think it is the only swing that looks to me as good as Hogan post impact… and I don’t give away compliments like that often. I really mean it, but you have to know
what to look for.. it’s pureness.

I am really glad I got to see it close up back then, Norman, all those guys.. what an education.

DENIAL,

You are not alone in your confusion of TGM.. I think many of the instructors are also in the dark with it..

Let me just say one thing here about the flat left wrist..

The Flat left wrist is a by product of other things working properly in the golf swing.. YOU CANNOT FORCE IT!

If your pivot is accelerating through impact, FLW happens by law.
If you stick things in your watch you might literally break you wrist.

Think of a jet going across the sky, the white vapor trail behind the jet, that is the FLW… it is the result of a properly working engine..

FLW is an observation based imperative, it is not actually the root of the imperative.. acceleration of the pivot through impact is the real imperative…

Homer is correct in an observing kind of way, because all great players do this, but FLW is not the cause, it is the effect.

An impact bag is the best way to train the wrists and body to learn the proper protocol.

If your interested, shoot me an email,

www.lagpressure@yahoo.com">

Lag, set up a bag and have been working on it, got some questions. Do you vary how hard you hit the thing, warm up etc? Been using a 4 iron and find that when I hit hardest my back swing seems quite contained or short, this along the lines? Due to the nature of the bag holding back the club face it seems quite open at the end, is this just as it’s held back and not to be worried about? Or can you put the bag on an angle so the face can close a bit?

Lag, thought you might be interested in this. Played match play yesterday against a 4 HCer and on the first tee he pulled out this beautiful persimmon 5W. Apparently it was his mothers when she played. Man he hit that thing so well, really high you’d swear he’d skied it and it would be short, but no, he consistently hit it 220 and on the fairway every time! Great to watch and the sound was sweet.

I would love to say that just setting up a bag and smacking it would be the answer, and it might be better than bobbing for apples, but what I teach is a very isolated motion, that is extremely calculating in involving all the parts of the pivot and hands… working to sync them properly and in perfect unison. Direction, geometry, intent, firing orders.

My students need almost daily supervision, as it is not as easy as it looks…

If not done properly, it can lead to over acceleration problems which can make things even more difficult to undo later..

If you are going to venture out on your own, the best advice I could give would be to reconsider..

Having a good bag is a great start however. I can’t imagine training the golf swing efficiently without it… unless you have time to grind 500 balls a day for the next 5 years.

The golf swing is a high impact velocity sport, and in that sense not so much different than boxing. Could you imagine a boxer training by just fisting the air? Training is in a lot of short little jabs and specific timing drills…. combined with heavy medicine bag workouts for the bigger muscles…Golf can be the same.

I bet it was nice to hear the sound of persimmon…
The two things I miss the most, the crack of the wood, and the clicking
of metal spikes…

Hope they come back into vogue..

The metal spikes helped get air into the soil.. it was good for the greens.. they should have just allowed us to tap down spike marks..
I despise that the rules are now interfering with my golf swing’s footwork and ground pressures… not good..

Let me guess… profits? so they can sell more spikes, and the plastic ones are certainly cheaper to make but the price went up? Sounds all to familiar.

AIG?

AGGRAVATING the INTEGRITY of GOLF

I see what you’re saying, and I am getting lessons in a TGM direction, albeit a flexible approach. Hope to hit the Dart up when in Sydney in May too.
I’m guessing then that the bag can/is used then for all motions, ie 2 feet back, pitch, punch etc and is best to build carefully and avoid the bashing?
I don’t expect you to give away too much as I understand it’s your living etc but appreciate the gems you do let slip on here.

It’s not so much about keeping any secrets, but
to ensure improvement… supervision is needed,
I just don’t see any way around it.. a good set of eyes
making refinements is just part of the process.

A while back I made the mistake of putting up some drills,
and I after viewing some of the vids that came back, they
were so far off of what I was trying to communicate I realized
quickly that players need more personal guidance.

There is a lot of good stuff here, and if you can figure out a new
way to accelerate the club through and beyond impact, please
let me know!

lag….. do you think the club can actually accelerate after it has hit the ball?
I know the idea is to have the clubhead moving at it’s max velocity right around impact…...can it continue to speed up if the body moves fast enough after that impact spot? .....or do you think that the force needed for the clubhead to connect to the ball will slow the clubhead down just enough so the chance to increase club speed after contact becomes slim?
I have heard some people say they can and I don’t know about that because of what I said above about the clubhead meeting the ball. I would think that would slow the club speed ever so slightly…. I may be wrong as i am not a scientist

The collision of the club and the ball is quite dramatic, and the weight of the ball does slow the clubhead down… I have heard it claimed that Mike Austin was able to accelerate the club through and past the ball back in the 60’s when he was hitting 400 plus yard drives with persimmon.

Regardless, the less the club slows down due to the forces of impact the better..

Hogan told us in is five lessons that maximum clubhead speed is reached after impact, not before..

Now whether or not this is reality, I think Hogan certainly tells us his
INTENTION..

We have beat this topic to death in the past on this forum to the point that my head is about to explode! But, no really, since it is really the most important
concept in the golf swing I believe, we just can’t ever lose sight of the intention to do this..

The pivot certainly can accelerate post impact, and it really needs to do so..

I like to feel my maximum speed happens all the way out to P4 (the parallel past impact)

Showme…
I remember your swing being one of those super accelerator swings through the ball…

I assume you still swing like that..
Where do you feel you reach maximum speed?

Showme, I don’t ever remember being beat at this game by a
scientist or a physicist… how about you? lol..

I think what we need to focus on is intention and how things should feel..

I think a lot of the geometry and physics talked about in TGM and other more brainiac approaches to the game are well taken care of if we drive our swings with the pivot, and fire through the impact arena with strong and committed intentions..

It's not so much about keeping any secrets, but
to ensure improvement… supervision is needed,
I just don't see any way around it.. a good set of eyes
making refinements is just part of the process.

A while back I made the mistake of putting up some drills,
and I after viewing some of the vids that came back, they
were so far off of what I was trying to communicate I realized
quickly that players need more personal guidance.

There is a lot of good stuff here, and if you can figure out a new
way to accelerate the club through and beyond impact, please
let me know!

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf's evils

Lag, my most recent lesson was simply “move the left hip out and up during the swing”. Results were instant – no more hooks, higher trajectory, much more consistent, extra 10 yards with an 8 iron. Such a simple instruction which could have been delivered by text message … but my pro knows my swing and how to motivate me to change. I have seen this sort of thing 100’s of times in books and in videos but could not for the life of me work out how to get it into my swing – and I probably wasn’t ready for this bit until now.

I love to watch the great swings, past and present, and try to work out what they do. But to get propper results IMHO you just can’t beat a quality coach on a regular basis.

We have beat this topic to death in the past on this forum to the point that my head is about to explode!

---

Thanks Lag,

You are saving our heads. Someone has to keep saying it ‘till it hits Homer, I mean home.

I like that!

Sooner or later it’s got to hit HOMER! lol

Showme brought up the point about using all of the loft of the club at impact.. and I really agree, because people can get so concerned about lag, and late releases, and holding all these angles, then end up shut and trapped or open and right…

I took this sequence out back the other day while I was working on holding shaft flex through impact, and Showme’s comment reminded me of how important it is THAT WE DO RELEASE IT!

I have a late release, and can only do this because my hands are trained properly on the bag to be able to release at the last split second actively… and this is MY SECRET!! lol

Also like Sevam said a while back, how he is always trying to get rid of the big angles..

It’s become more of an issue for me of late because I have recently flattened out my irons 6 degrees! Something I have alway wanted to do, and it wasn’t until recently studying George Knudson, that a guy 6 feet tall can actually go that flat and deep. The angles do get sharper off the flatter plane, but the transition has been pretty effortless because I have the hand speed now after being back on the bag for the last 8 months after a 15 year layoff. I wish I would have had this epiphany years ago while I was playing, I might be typing this from my castle rather than my little house on the hill! lol

Lag, Is the secret releasing the club while retaining lagpressure?

I bet it was nice to hear the sound of persimmon…
The two things I miss the most, the crack of the wood, and the clicking
of metal spikes…

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf's evils

Lag, You know I don’t use the persimmon, but when playing with me you will be happy to hear the click clack from my steel spikes!

Showmetamoney, that’s a very interesting take on Peter Senior’s short game. Could you elaborate on why he hits sand shots and flops conventionally and hits them well versus chips and pitches reverse handed? I know these are purely your own observations but I would love to hear what you have to say about them as I have similar problems at the moment. I get the sand shots OK but short pitches and chips are killing me. I don’t want to say the Y word at all :).

I took a golf machine lesson recently and I was intrigued, but came away with a couple of problems. First, though I picked most of it up pretty fast, I really can't get the feel of a flat left wrist after impact. I've tried stuffing a flat comb into my watch but it's not that useful, slides around, etc. It seems like it would be easy to make a training aid for this. Is there a good one out there anyone can recommend?

Second, I can hit pretty well off a short swing with the club loaded, but I haven't got the feel of how to translate that to a full swing. I can't afford a lot of lessons, is there a plain english book out there that goes through the TGM concepts for players?

Hit the advert link to the TALY device. You can learn your Flat Left Wrist with one of these puppies.

If it was your first lesson, you are now aware you have an issue to fix. That is a huge step.

Hit up the Golf School articles and you will find some easier TGM based stuff to digest.

Showmetamoney, that's a very interesting take on Peter Senior's short game. Could you elaborate on why he hits sand shots and flops conventionally and hits them well versus chips and pitches reverse handed? I know these are purely your own observations but I would love to hear what you have to say about them as I have similar problems at the moment. I get the sand shots OK but short pitches and chips are killing me. I don't want to say the Y word at all :).

Of course these are my guesses from what I witness…..so don’t take them as gospel
I think he can play the flop and the longer pitch and the bunker shots because the swing is longer and more flowing and smoother
However the shorter ones that needed more abbreviated backswings and thruswings and only a short distance to carry the ball caused him problems at some point in time and he lost confidence with those…... be it for the reason I stated in my earlier post? I don’t know …..but he lost his train of thought with those shots so he found a solution that aided him and it was chipping cross handed.
I for one have tried it fooling around and can’t do it to save myself….but whatever works is what you have to go with…... the whole idea is to turn 4 shots into 3 shots and 3 shots into 2 shots…. so if you have to stand on your head to save shots…do it

Chipping and pitching is very confidence driven….. my advice however is this….. there is bounce on the sole of your club for a reason…...USE IT….open your stance a bit…..open the clubface a bit…..play the ball at least behind the middle of your stance…..lean the shaft slightly forward and learn to swing the grip (the handle)... do not get too involved with the clubface…..that will cause flicking and de-acceleration and all kinds of bad things….... swing the handle or the grip and be aggressive on the body line you have in place with your open stance and use the bounce of the sole to help you. You will be surprised to the point that the more you open the face and the more aggressively you swing the handle (grip end) through on a similar line to your open stance the more you can open the face and the more height and shorter the distance the ball will go. It takes confidence and a bit of practice but the real key to the short game is to get the ball to react the same way from the clubface each time…..so you are never guessing…will it stop? ...will it run?..... get a point that works each time consistently and then open or square the face slightly to alter the trajectory ….if need be after you have succeeded with having one regular shot you can trust and turn to.
Hope that works…..it is obviously harder to put into words what is easier to show in person…......but I think you will get the idea…try it and see how you go….any questions… post again and I will see if I can help farther…. remember the sand wedge and lob wedge have bounce for a reason…use it to your advantage and don’t be scared to take a divot…...it won’t hurt

Showme … bounce I can understand in the bunker. Like the common bunker drill where you make practice swings without a ball to get the right “noise and feel” of the bounce hitting the sand before the blade. It’s easy to make a divot in the sand and I assume the bigger bounce helps prevent the blade going too deep.

Is this the same sort of action you are implying for greenside shots? Where the bounce may deflect off the turf, does this introduce much less margin for error given the limited available practice time for weekend warriors? Or have you “turned on a light”?

SMT$- that’s gold in them words there.
Stan Utley is also big on using the bounce.

I never got into the 5 wedge thing, always just carried two and on rare occasion three.

My pitching wedge is an MT split sole, which they don’t make anything like that anymore.. it is really lost and forgotten technology. Just an amazing club around the greens, and really fantastic off hard pan and tight lies.

I have never been a big fan of a wide flange, but prefer narrower with more bounce.

If I throw in an extra wedge in my bag, it is for the bounce reason, not loft.. I have never carried a 60 wedge, because I have never been afraid of opening up the face… It I am in a situation where I need to hit one really high, I just open it up pop it up.. if I need more than that, I’ll just remind myself not to hit it there again! lol

My wedge play really improved this year by throwing away all the yardage stuff, and just concentrating on the feel of the shot. Anytime we are backing off a shot, it becomes a feel shot…and anything that takes me out of that feel for me is counter productive and counter intuitive.

Moe told me how he liked the ball to just drop soft onto the green and he never liked putting Mac O Grady type spin on it..
There are a couple false fronts at my course, and pulling it back would not be something desirable or you might find the ball right back at your feet.. it may look cool but….

The square groove thing certainly helps from the rough.. but I doubt the tour will be affected much by it.. I’m sure “technology” will find some way to get around it.. I was shocked this year to see all these
textured milled faces on wedges.. what is next..

When will they stop trying to “dumb down” the game?

Getting rid of grooves all together and going back to dots or
fish scales would be fine with me.. lol

Showme … bounce I can understand in the bunker. Like the common bunker drill where you make practice swings without a ball to get the right ’Äúnoise and feel” of the bounce hitting the sand before the blade. It's easy to make a divot in the sand and I assume the bigger bounce helps prevent the blade going too deep.

Is this the same sort of action you are implying for greenside shots? Where the bounce may deflect off the turf, does this introduce much less margin for error given the limited available practice time for weekend warriors? Or have you ’Äúturned on a light”?

Bounce still works on grass….once you understand how bounce works it can be used to your advantage….it can stop the fat chunks and also help even a slightly mishit shot
If you have a square clubface and use no bounce of the club….more often than not it means you are just digging the leading edge into the turf…...what happens? the ball chunks and goes about 2 feet in front of you
If you are able to open the face and swing the grip/handle on a slight descending and out to in line you get to use the rear of the sole…(the bounce)....and you won’t chunk and the club will work how it is designed to work
In fact similar to a bunker…..however you are hitting closer to the ball than a bunker shot and using a smaller swing more often than not…..so you are using the turf and the face to propel the ball….........bunker shots it is all sand and no face on the ball
the only time I wouldn’t open the club to a large degree is when faced with really firm turf as the sole/bounce will accelerate off this type of ground when the club strikes it and the blade shot will appear as the leading edge will bounce off the ground and connect the ball near middle instead of working it’s way down and underneath the ball

Yep, see that. Your last sentence is most relevent to me – as winter looms, our tropical tracks tend to become rather dry and hard with tight lies the norm. Have a look at our rainfall pattern here to see what I mean about the wet/dry differnce up my way … http://www.bbbalc.com/image...

I will put some time into your suggestion and see what I get from “swinging the handle”. Whenever I concentrate on what the clubface is doing it brings the dreaded shank into play.

Lag….I think I have one of those split level sole sand wedges….... It’s a MacGregor…..someone gave it to me a couple of months ago…... I tried one shot with it when I was out practicing with friends…..and would you believe it… I holed it from about 85 yards so he said I had better keep it and see how it goes…
Didn’t use it again…...as i was preparing for events and didn’t want to sidetrack my thoughts and change wedges so close to tournament play…. but would like to get out and try it again soon when I have some more time and see how it works closer to the green and from bunkers….it certainly passed the full pitch test! 100% success rate with it so far

The square groove thing certainly helps from the rough.. but I doubt the tour will be affected much by it.. I'm sure ’Äútechnology” will find some way to get around it.. I was shocked this year to see all these
textured milled faces on wedges.. what is next..

When will they stop trying to ’Äúdumb down” the game?

Getting rid of grooves all together and going back to dots or
fish scales would be fine with me.. lol

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf's evils

Lag,

A friend of mine was in my group today and he had just put 3 of the new Nike “V” wedges in play today. He was also experimenting with the Titleist NXT Tour ball (for some comparison the prov1 he usually plays). He was literally cutting a surlyn “flap” on the ball each time he used one of those wedges. It wasn’t just score-line indentations in the ball that you see frequently …... it was a 3/8 inch square hunk of cover just flapping around but still attached to the ball!

Shomethamoney,

I was interested by your comments on using bounce and it got me thinking that it may be applicable for all clubs through the bag not just little pitches.

It got me thinking that I do everything in my power to stop the bounce of the club hitting the deck because I am so intent on actually hitting the ball with the clubface first.

Anyway, because presenting the bounce first seemed to work astonishingly well with wedges even off hard surfaces, I tried presenting the bounce first prior to impact with normal mid irons and then long irons. I was astonished at the purity of strike, clean, high solid trajectory, and amazingly no fat shots which I thought was very likely to happen.

This seems totally counterintuitive to me as we hear so often how important it is to get ball first, turf second.

Can you explain whats happening?

That’s why clubs have bounce on them…..so you can use it to help with the strike..
If you lead your hands too far ahead of the clubface at impact you aren’t using the bounce of the club….you are using the leading edge to dig into the ground and these results in fat shots and shots where you go under the ball. That’s why I have said in past posts you HAVE to use the actual loft of the club when hitting….it’s designed a certain way so why not use all it’s benefits
Of course the longer the club gets, the less loft it has and the less bounce it has but it is still there to some degree and as you found out can help not hinder you when striking the ball.
Ever hit balls off a mat at a driving range?...........most of us have at some point…......what happens when hitting from a mat and you mishit a ball?......... the clubs bounce comes into play and your bad mishits on a mat are nowhere near as bad as they would be from regular turf…...agreed…...... that’s how bounce works and to use it is something you just worked out that may help you a great deal.
You should now start to see thinner divots and no digging into the ground. What happens in a bunker?....you use the bounce and the ball explodes out with the sand. What happens when you don’t open the face and use the bounce in a bunker?..... the club digs in and the ball just plops in front of you…..very same principle on the course just without the open face…....
Isn’t it great to work out something for ourselves!! you had an idea and worked out a way to do it and saw the results…. Congrats and keep at it

Good stuff Showme, especially on delivering true loft and not trying to get hands too far ahead.

So what you’re saying is we should build the golf courses of the future from the same stuff they use to make the mats!!!!?.........lol

what happens when hitting from a mat and you mishit a ball?......... the clubs bounce comes into play and your bad mishits on a mat are nowhere near as bad as they would be from regular turf……

Shomethamoney,

I must say though that the concept of using the bounce on a three iron to help hit crisper shots has really amazed me. No premature digging or thinning the ball, just a really crisp contact. Its almost like the bounce is presented then a split second later the prestressed shaft catapults and compresses the ball with the true loft of the club.

Thanks!

gb, surely you are not making contact with the ground first? Even if you feel the bounce is helping, long term it will lead to disaster. Ball then turf, by all means use the bounce (lets not get carried away, how much bounce does a 3 iron have? Certainly my mizuno tp9 3 iron has very little bounce!) after you have struck the ball to prevent too much digging in, but don’t feel you are hitting the ground first then allowing the bounce to stop you digging in too much. You’re not in a bunker amigo!

Good stuff Showme, especially on delivering true loft and not trying to get hands too far ahead.

So what you're saying is we should build the golf courses of the future from the same stuff they use to make the mats!!!!?.........lol

what happens when hitting from a mat and you mishit a ball?......... the clubs bounce comes into play and your bad mishits on a mat are nowhere near as bad as they would be from regular turf……

I think in another post somewhere on this site they talk about futuristics courses and there is in fact a course made of that mat material.
that will help eliminate some duffed shots for sure playing off that ‘astro turf’

He is saying he is feeling the entire sole of the club hit the turf….. not just the leading edge ….so he isn’t digging into the ball at impact …he is using the entire sole of the club to his advantage as it was designed to be used….it won’t spell disaster…. he is certainly onto something that will only benefit him in the long run
I stated long irons don’t have much bounce but they certainly aren’t designed to go chopping into the ground either…...and that’s why shorter clubs with more bounce and larger soles should take bigger divots…because the entire sole can be used and can be helpful

not having a go showme, too much respect for you to do that.

I was worried that gb was taking it to extremes.

Trying to hit the ball with the 4th or 5th groove is probably how I would describe it. I agree that too many people are using the leading edge to get them round the field.

I know that…... I was trying to say I don’t think the idea is to hit it fat and then let the club work for you…... the idea was to use the entire club to help you…..same principle…ball first and then turf…. but by using the entire sole and not just the leading edge
I think that is what “gettingbetter” figured out on his own accord and now has the feeling of and found success with it

I was trying to say I don't think the idea is to hit it fat and then let the club work for you

Cool, I was worried gb was doing exactly that and thinking it was a method that could work consistently

‘He is saying he is feeling the entire sole of the club hit the turf….. not just the leading edge ….’

Thank you, shomethamoney, thats exactly what I mean, and in so doing, it seems the fifth groove is presented, certainly I was able to strike crisp shots with this idea using the Tourstriker. This is what Martin Chuck, theTourstriker inventor had to say when I asked him the same question,

’’Before a golfer can “present the bounce” they have to have a reasonable amount of club shaft control that still agrees with what the golf ball desires; compression. When you look at players that can vary the amount of shaft lean and control their distance and trajectory, they fall into a pretty skilled category. The TS can be hit with excessive lean or marginal lean. With some green side shots, Utley is teaching a “marginal” condition which still presents FORWARD lean just not excessive forward lean.

I’m glad you are able to feel the difference. This stuff goes WAY over most players heads.

You’ll find that you will vary how you present the club to the ball based on the conditions and what suits your eye.

As an example: I present the bounce on shortish, greeenside shots and if I need to hit a full shot high on special occaision. While I get the height, I have some distance control issues.

My normal ball ground, leading edge divot produces a more consistent trajectory and distance on my iron shots.

This is an excellent question and thanks for sending. If you can maneuver the shaft you are getting pretty darn good, but remember, the shaft is forward leaning even to a small degree.’‘

Anyway, I am not claiming to be a great ball striker, I am just steadily working at my game. Thanks for the input guys.

Lag….sorry for high jacking your thread ever so slightly
i have made my point with many things including that S/T thread….. I will lay low for a while and let people make their own minds up for a while
I have said my piece on things and tried to explain the why’s and why nots…....if people put them to use I think they will be pleasantly surprised and understand their actions much better
Everything has a cause and effect….throw out the junk that doesn’t work and play around with the gold that does work
I shall talk to you soon Lag….BTW…. that swing you posted looks colossal coming into impact
I’m heading off to the old equipment topic to post you something…. Thanks

Showme…

No highjacking! seriously, do stick around here and post all you want..
it’s not often we get a player of your caliber here for us all to learn from including myself..!!

I think it is an amazing opportunity for us to both bounce ideas of one another, and give insights into the swing, the game, on any level not just for the benefit of the forum, but also ourselves.. I will never stop learning about this game until my stroke average is 62!

There is a guy who posts here called Sevam1, a fine amateur player in his own right, and a very knowledgeable bloke on Hogan and Moe,
and George Knudson. He has written an excellent book on Hoganomics and such..

He was telling me how he picked up a set of vintage Hogan blades and had the loft and lies done, and he had his guy ADD LOFT! why?
TO GET MORE BOUNCE!!

I thought that was great… because just the point you are saying..
You really have to go that route because you can’t add bounce by grinding..

I don’t think I have ever seen a a set off the shelf that was made with this in mind.. thin sole with extra bounce on a blade..

Have you come across a set like this ever?

Hmm, triple cut Mizuno’s?

It’s a nice take on the idea that you can have a thin sole but do some neat stuff with the sole grinds.

I haven’t tried much of the new blades. I kinda fell in love with my ‘new’ Hogan PCs… but I hear good things about the Nike VR blades, but Tiger’s iron play since he’s been back has been suspect.

BTW: I’m enjoying your posts Showme, so hang around!

I don’t recall having a thin sole iron with bounce…....of course I may be wrong because back in the days pre loft lie machines etc we didn’t have the opportunity to know as much info about our clubs as we do now….we just played them because they felt right, with little hindsight as to their makeup…..
i will say this however…....over the past decade my iron play hasn’t been as good as it once once….swing? I doubt it….my swing has changed little…...ball?... certainly…much harder to shape and feel now than in the past….....clubs?...probably….the newer clubs are all designed in a way that helps the average to poor player and not in a way that helps the shotmaker…...so maybe just maybe my older clubs were of more benefit for me even though they are ancient by todays standards….makes me want to get the old stuff out all the more now and give them another try
You may well have another person sign up for your nostalgia golf series in the making !!!!!

Well,

I may be wrong, but I believe that the modern gear is slowly destroying the golf swing.. because the swing itself will evolve from the gear you use.

Lightweight drivers do not put the proper muscle load into the bigger muscles of the body.. and we know that the best golf swings are pivot driven.. so if you don’t load the muscles properly with some weight, the muscles don’t respond and adapt as they should.

In Hogan’s era… he used much heavier clubs than the era preceding his. I have a couple sets from the 1930’s I go out and play sometimes,
and they are very light, not just in dead weight, but in swing weight also.

My point is that Hogan had the option for lighter clubs but chose heavier for good reasons.. and we can’t forget physics either that
Momentum equals mass times velocity.

The modern idea is that if you take away mass you can increase velocity, and this is true, but by decreasing the mass, you lose some momentum in the strike .. just basic physics stuff..

If we are talking about actually accelerating the club into impact for the better ball strikers, then momentum becomes force

f=ma so mass is very important.. and Hogan knew this either way,
logically, or just flat out as a player of the game through feel.

It doesn’t take a genius to understand that mass helps in off center hits.. why would they be offering all these perimeter weighted clubs?

Distance is easier to “market” than accuracy. A ball that flies straighter is easier to market than one that offers great feel, and workability for the better players..

The manufactures know this, and push this garbage on the tour players because if they do well, it helps them sell the clubs to the average golfer that shoots in the 90’s. Thats why they give us this stuff every week on tour.. they don’t care about us… they don’t make money selling balls or clubs to good players…

The tour players put up with it because of contracts, and bonus money and nobody says anything because you don’t dare bite the hand that feeds you… and the courses are getting so long that you’re just forced into it.. you have no choice but to use a long, lightweight head, because you can’t afford to give up 40 yards to your competitors, so you have to swing harder, therefore you need a giant headed driver to allow you to do so, because your swing is not going to be as precise as with a small persimmon block when swinging that hard at it…. and the longer courses have more home lots along the perimeter of the fairways, and they only design golf courses now to sell real estate…
and they are going to make sure that all our classic historical layouts are soon obsolete, and not desirable so everyone will want to live on the latest 8500 yard layout that is a real TOUR course.. it’s all a bunch of garbage, decisions are being made for profit only, by people that are not golfers, not knowledgeable about the game, it’s beautiful history and traditions..

I’ve told this story before, but I was playing with Todd Hamilton at Q school one year and he had just come back from Japan with some giant headed (for that time) super light, titanium graphite monster,
and he was not a long hitter, I was always 20 by him off the tee, and now is out past me on every hole.. and I couldn’t believe this thing was legal with the USGA, and I knew right then that if they didn’t ban that thing, the persimmon age was over.. 150 years of history was going to be washed away… I saw it coming a mile away, and I was right. Within two years, I never saw another persimmon driver on tour.

Too right…...I used persimmon pretty much through the end of ‘95 then had to switch because once regarded as a long hitter i was becoming shorter by the minute with all these guys mishits and good hits being carried away by technology…..
I was at a tournament once and someone (can’t remember who now) had a persimmon driver and was messing around with it…. Lee Westwood came up and asked to try it as he had never hit a persimmon driver !!!!! not hadn’t hit one for a while… HAD NEVER HIT ONE!!!!!
I don’t think he liked hitting it either !!!! he wasn’t all that old at the time and I thought that was bizarre and definitely showed the world we now lived in

It certainly takes the precision out of it.. and the beauty of the art form of swinging the club..

With the persimmon, we had to swing powerfully, but also within ourselves.. in good balance..

I was shocked to see the kid who won the US Amateur last August, I think there are some clips out there if someone would care to search for it..

but he was swinging so hard he was literally almost falling over after hitting his drives… I just couldn’t believe that a swing that was so out of balance could even qualify for such an event let alone win it.

However, the heads are so big now, that you CAN take that kind of rip at it, and in reality, you really need to to play the “bomb and gouge” game of today.

My guess is Showme.. that when you were forced to go to the lightweight clubs, your beautiful pivot driven swing became less engaged, not just the weight, but the added length, and swinging more with your arms felt uncomfortable, and instinctively incorrect..
so a fine ball striker sometimes takes a step back, yet a not so precise striker now gets a chance do to the forgiving clubs, and if they can putt the lights out as many poor strikers do, it works as
an equalizer, and not a separator as it should.

I still believe golf should be based upon skill and not technology, like playing chess..

If I have an ipod on my lap telling me chess moves, does that make me a better player? I think not.. but many would disagree.

Here’s Danny Lee in the semi-finals of the US Amateur. 25 seconds in he certainly launches at it…...

Stop the clip at 27 seconds…quite amazing that his feet appear to be flat on the ground and look where the club/upper torso is. Not surprised it hurt!

Okay, I think the comments on Danny Lee are rather stupid! (IMHO) Yes in the US Amateur he looked terrible but has anybody swung with an injured shoulder? It friggin hurts and he was doing what it took to get the job done…

Maybe we should look at Danny healthy???

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Perhaps we should bag tiger for his swing when injured?

http://www.youtube.com/watc...;feature=related

Come on guys true champions do what needs to be done, hurt or not…

Sorry I just dont think swing critquing is not right when someone is playing hurt! Unless you can experience the pain they are in you cant really comment can you?

Junior

His swing does look pretty solid there Junior, very fair comments too.

Hi Junior,

I am typing this on a phone so can’t see those clips but I am happy to accept your word
that he is swinging wonderfully in balance. So lets not concentrate on danny lee so we
don’t go down a blind ally. What do you say to the general point that lag is making which
is that the advent of the lightweight titanium 460 cc head tips the balance towards velocity
at the expense of precision in the development of the modern
golf swing?

Arnie

It’s also interesting to hear and read that some of the pro’s are tappering back their driver size to rediscover the ability to work the ball….. I know it’s not quite persimmon size, but they are going back to 380cc or so to gain more control.

dcee

Anyone tell us why he was hurt?
I may suggest from swinging 1 million miles an hour at each shot?
I don’t know….I never saw the event in question and how he was actually injured.
I did see him hit a few shots at Johnnie Walker that he won recently and at New Zealand events and he nearly jumped out of his shoes on many of those also….so I assume an injury is just around the corner many times when you go so hard at it day in day out on every shot from every type of lie that confronts you during the course of a round

Hi Junior,

I am typing this on a phone so can't see those clips but I am happy to accept your word
that he is swinging wonderfully in balance. So lets not concentrate on danny lee so we
don't go down a blind ally. What do you say to the general point that lag is making which
is that the advent of the lightweight titanium 460 cc head tips the balance towards velocity
at the expense of precision in the development of the modern
golf swing?

Arnie

Ever see an advertisement from a golf company saying…....
“The straightest most fairways hit driver in golf”

NEVER

All they crap on about is distance

thanks for the Clips on Danny Lee at the US Am..

My comment was regarding his driver swings, not the iron shots..
Because driver heads now are 3 times as big as they used to be,
a golfer can take a rip at it with all their might as if they were competing
in a long drive championship with much less concern for accuracy of the shot.

Tournament golf and long drive championships are different sports.

He may have been injured, although I didn’t see anything about that..
he certainly wasn’t grimacing like Tiger did in the US Open last year..
you could almost see tears in his eyes from the pain. I don’t think Danny Lee was in that kind of pain… although I could be wrong.

Showme and I were really just discussing how the game has changed, from artful shotmaking to bomb and gouge and what are the pros and cons of the game radically changing in such a short time frame.

The game of golf didn’t change much from 1935 to 1990. It did change some, but subtly, and those changes happened very slowly, and with much debate and consideration.

I think it is interesting to get Showme’s take, because when I retired in 1993, both our careers were in a similar place, we were playing on the various world tours, and had similar backgrounds coming out of the US Collegiate program. I came out of a 15 year time capsule, while Showme has lived and played right through the changes up until this day..

Either way I find it interesting if our opinions are different, not different or indifferent.

Danny Lee is just an observation from a guy like me where if you swung like that in the past with a driver, you would be lucky to even contact the ball anywhere on the clubhead, yet alone hit a fairway.

Dart, could you imaging taking a cut at it like that back when you had to be beat radar guys like Billy Dunk?

Hitting less thant 50% of your fairways is good enough these days to put you at the top of the money list or world rankings. Why has accuracy with the driver been so abruptly deemphasized?

I can’t help but wonder, would the stars of today be able to compete on tour 20 years ago or longer? I don’t see the Cory Pavin of today,
or the Tom Kite.. are these types of players still around in the new game but have no chance of being competitive?

Is it the ball? the clubs? the courses? a little of everything? is this good? is this bad? does anyone care? where do we go from here?
What will historians say 30 years from now? Should golf split into two or three games?

Regardless of what anyone thinks personally, I am surprised actually at how little debate there is about it…

Lag said:
Regardless of what anyone thinks personally, I am surprised actually at how little debate there is about it…
Well, I think the pro’s get sponsorship money for keeping their mouth shut, so there’s one factor gone.
The average amateur wants to hit the ball further for ego/bragging rights and to emulate the pro’s, so there’s another factor gone.
Who’s left except for the people pining for the old days when golf was a purer form of the sport, and they must surely be in the minority, no offence intended Lag.
I play with 5 or 6 different people every week and regardless of age, nearly all of them are impressed more by more distance than great putting, sand shots etc.
It is sad really, especially if you pull out a long iron for positional play and you don’t hear “nice play”, you hear silence or words to the effect of “wussbag, get the driver out”.

Good points..

Then who is really running the show? Not the pros, they are silenced by money… the amateurs just want to hit it far, so they are happy..

The USGA and R and A are supposed to be upholding the tradition and integrity of the game.. they don’t seem to be running it..

Who is running golf?

It’s a very interesting debate I think. Texas has a very competitive amateur circuit, but it seemed to stagnate some in the late 90’s and early 00’s. There were a lot of us 40 somethings playing the big events at that time and it seemed that the 20 year olds were hard to find.

Call it the Tiger-effect or whatever you want, but there are many more 20 y/o’s playing these events now (or so it seems)..... and they all hit it miles!!! I too was considered long back in the day (my first hole in one was a 175 yard 9-iron in 1988), but I wasn’t real accurate/consistent. 20 years later all I know is that I’m 30 to 100 yards shorter off the tee than most of these “kids”. I’m learning to accept it, but it is a hard pill to swallow and it nags at me. I can’t believe the technique is that much better, but I think when you grow up wailing away with a 460 cc head, you develop a certain “abandon” that is hard to come by if you had to hit a small persimmon head on the screws to get any distance (and direction) out of it.

Whatever it is I lament the way things have/are headed, but I suspect the horses are out of the barn. As showmethemoney said, we’re now into a generation of golfers that can’t even spell “persimmon”, much less hit it. It’s too bad….. I think they missed out.

Robbo

Addington Arnie:

I can totally agree with Lag in one respect that the modern day player nor swing is as accurate as the yester years one. However the game of golf has certainly changed (and I am in no ways saying for the better!). Golf is now dominated by the power athlete, like it or not the vast majority of golfers now who are on top of the game hit the ball a ton – well when compared to other “normal” golfers (I say “normal” as my sport is obviously long drive and we are more a “circus act” or an extreme human endeavour rather than golf).

Look at the top 10s driving distance average:

Woods (303.3), Mickelson (294.5), Garcia (302.1), Olgilvy (289.0), Harrington (280.9), Singh (284.0), Villegas (293.1), Karlsson (287.9), Stenson (284.9) and Perry (293.6)

Now think about the physiques in the top 10? With the exceptions of Perry and Mickelson (poor old phil) most of them are great athletes also. Far better athletes than we have seen in the past but they will continue to get bigger faster and stronger in the future, I can guarantee you.

With all due respect to Lag who knows I respect him, the game of golf has changed, right or wrong, it is a different ball game. Gone are the days of the majestic ball strikers and guys who worked the ball around the course. The guys now days play a different brand of golf… The smash it off the tee, hit the shortest club they can into a hole and scramble when they have to.

Im sorry to the traditionalists but things change! That was then, this is now. The days of puring around a golf course is long gone, if you want to watch that, go watch ladies golf! (I say that with all due respect to ladies golf and to the traditionalists… Ladies are the artists now in golf). Power golf is here to stay and you dont see the fans, the sponsors or the players complaining. Like it or hate it, it is the way it is and like everything in life, things evolve (perhaps not for the best.)

With that being said, I would love to take a young kid who has the short game and putting skills as well as the winning mentality and teach him how to hit the long ball off the tee – not 300 long, 350-400 long.. I think this is what we will see in the future and the first to do it will make a lot of money!!!!

Just my opinion though guys…

Junior

PS: Danny Lee was in so much pain he contemplated a trip to the hospital. If you have never had a shoulder injury to the point that it feels like a knife sticking into the point of the shoulder, dont comment on how much pain he was in! He was in pain, period end of story! Good on him for getting the job done anyway he could. Last time I checked they didnt paint pictures of how you got it done, just what number you got it done in! And he certainly had the best numbers which is why he won!

I would suppose the greatness of a game has a lot to do with the parameters that define it.

I think there are many who would think that chess is the greatest board game. Others maybe backgammon. But I play chess, and I can see how one could be drawn into it’s deep complexities and underlaying form. There have been changes, but few and far between. The Castling move I think might have been accepted in the 1800’s. Not much has changed since.

I always held golf in the same regard. A very noble game, of tradition and honor, played outdoors on a large playing field and exposed to the elements. A game comprised of an endless array of shot making possibilities. The sensitive balata ball was a nightmare for bad golfers and a blessing for the good players who would use it’s workable spin options to their advantage rather than their detriment.

I have sensed showme’s sense that a lot of the articulations that made the game great have been removed..

I recently watched a classic Shell’s match with Billy Casper vs. Doug Sanders in 1966. (Thanks Arnie!) They were playing The Country Club at Brookline, which is one of America’s legendary courses, steep in tradition and history, and an insanely tough course.

On the first hole of the match, a long par 4, both pros had to hit fairway woods for their second shots into the green. Casper drills a four wood into the green about 20 feet. THIS IS A PAR 4!

There was a four par on the back nine that neither of them could even reach in two with fairway woods, due to a slight wind, and they were pitching from 50 yards trying to get up and down for par.

Casper hits a drive on the next hole and has to hit a 2 iron into the green for his second on a par four, and if that is not enough, he has to carry it over a lake that is right in front of the green. He stiffs it in there and makes birdie!

This is the kind of golf I grew up watching. True professionals of their craft, masters of all aspects of the great game. These guys would have to hit 4 woods, 2 irons, 3 irons into small well guarded greens several times a round, par 5’s that were almost always 3 shot holes, and several long iron par threes or even woods into these greens. Par was as respected score, yet they would still post amazing scores like 66, 64 or 62 on these kind of courses. There was a premium on hitting fairways, to set up the second shot. The rough was often not well kept, lots of unsavory lies, and difficult if not impossible to stop the ball on the green with the V grooves. It was a penalty to be in the rough as it should be.. Why should it not be a penalty to hit crooked drives? I can’t seem to wrap my head around this concept.

The next match I watched was George Knudson wiping out Lee Elder and Master’s Champion George Archer.

Knudson hits 17 greens, misses only one fairway and not by much, and literally hits it stiff like 14 times. It’s almost unbelievable. Just at the pin all day.
Three jacks on the greens 3 times and still shoots a course record 67. If you have never seen this film, you have to see it. I’ll see if I can upload the shots Knudson hits on Youtube in the next couple of days.. but it is just awesome. I have not seen any of the modern guys on the PGA Tour put on a ball striking exhibition like that ever. I don’t think I have ever played with anyone that ever hit it that close that many times in one round. It looks like a highlight film from the week, not just one walk around the course.

Moe always told me only Hogan, Trevino, and Knudson could strike the ball as good as he did.. I believe him. Most have seen Hogan’s great exhibition at Houston, 12 years really past his prime. You can only imagine how good he was in 1953. Knudson’s striking in this film is every bit as good as Hogan’s display.

With all the genius’s, the technology, the Tom Wishon’s and so forth, I really think we deserve better.. If these pros from the past could stick em in there with 4 woods, and long irons with almost certainty,
we should be witnessing golf at a far superior level of ball striking than what we are witnessing now.

This last week? Goosen, we get 12 greens a round average is good enough for a win. This is world class ball striking? Last week Phil 11 greens a round. Impressive? Take away the square grooves? 10 greens a round? 9?

We are paying these guys a lot of money for mediocrity.

After seeing those greats of the past, I hope history doesn’t forget them, because if you consider the tough to hit clubs, inferior golf balls, and tiny persimmon drivers, yet alone the waffle iron greens they putted on.. what we get now is not even remotely as impressive.

That is your opinion of course though Lag and you are entitled to it, but this does not mean that the game the way it is now is not as entertaining or loved by those who prefer and grew up with the modern day game.

Yes Lag you quote stats about how poor today’s pros are but Goosen still fired 69 68 69 70 to win, good shooting considering his ball striking apparently stinks!

Yes the guys of history were fantastic for the elements and conditions they played in. Had there been the technology around then would they have used it? Of course they would, they were using the best of what was available to them at the time. Had they been “true traditionalists” they would have been using hickory and a golf ball made of 3 pieces of leather and filled with a top hat full of feathers. Would have loved to have seen what they would have shot then or how good their ball striking was. The point is the champions of the time do the best with the best equipment that is available at the time! This does not make them any less or any more of a champion!

Yes you might sense some angst in my tone here and you would be correct. Lag I love your commentary on technique, mechanics, the golf swing etc etc… But for you to constantly denograte the modern game makes me quite infuriated, in fact it down right annoys me!

Compare apples with apples, not apples with oranges. Yes today’s modern player does not strike the ball with the precision of yesterday’s champions, but they dont need to! Yesterday’s champions also do not have the supreme power and athletiscm of today’s champions. Who cares? They are all still champions irrelevant of when or how they did it or are doing it.

If you are happy to stick in a time warp that is up to you, but having constant digs at today’s equipment and today’s golfers is not appreciated nor is it necessary! Society and the game of golf have moved on, even if you choose not to!! I have no problem if you wish to remember the way things were and relive the glory days when you play! More power to you, some of us chose to move forward, adapt and appreciate!

No body will forget how good yesterday’s champions were, that is the beauty of the TRUE modern day golf fan compared to the traditionalist Lag, we respect all champions not just the ones of our era!

I go back and forth on this topic. I wonder if someone playing before Lag’s era would be sickened by the lack of hickory in his bag? Is it possible we can get stuck in our own era? Stuck on who we looked up to in our own developing days?

Some of the technology arguments just don’t work for me. Tiger is the prime example. Rumour has it, he was refusing to play a lot of the newer Nike drivers, and that’s why they came up with a 380cc. It is a fact, that a couple of years ago, Tom Pernice Jr. called up officials and wanted them to test the COR of Tiger’s driver head, claiming he was just hitting it too far to be legal. When the PGA tested Tiger’s driver COR rating, not only was it legal, it was so far below the legal limit, the asked him why or if he knew how low the COR was. His answer was that he felt he had less control of the ball with a modern COR.

His driver length is 43”, 2+ inches below modern standard. He played (up until this year) with a blade that mimicked his mizuno blades from 20 years ago.

You could say, aside from his ball, Tiger plays a bag that ‘looks’ modern, but is actually quite old. I really believe Tiger would be quite comfortable with ‘old’ gear.

This past weekend’s tournament, the ‘Transitions Championship’ featured the kind of course, and tournament I assumed someone like Lag would like. Tom Lehman held the lead for a good while. Many players in the lead were considered the ‘ball striking’ crowd. “Long and wrong” really never stood a chance at that tournament, did it? The announcers chuckled at Tom’s blades, saying the soles were the thinnest in the field, and extremely unforgiving. Yet here is a guy, who is now officially old enough to play in the Champions Tour, holding the lead.

I think the game offers more diversity. To categorize it as one type or another, well I just refuse to do it.

There are tournaments that demand a shot maker, and others that advocate the bomb and gouge game. They both seem to co-exist right now.

The only thing that bothers me is I do agree, it is very scary that Golf appears to have equipment manufacturer’s dictating the way things are going. I can’t think of another sport where the equipment manufacturers can do this. I can’t imagine how hockey would be for instance, if a net manufacturer decided they could sell more nets if they were an extra 3 feet wide. No other sport does this.

I am torn on this subject. I see both sides. Personally I am more impressed by any player that can actually manipulate, and aim his shots more accurately than say someone that can out bomb the field….

Agree with you totally Junior, even though I too personally hate the way the game has changed. But that’s what the majority want after all. Manufacturers just give people what they want, even if they have to create that want.

I still have the choice of playing the equipment I wish – at least they haven’t outlawed drivers under 300cc or iron heads over 250g. But golf is still against the course for me so I don’t care if I’m beaten by a worse player with 450cc driver, a set of hybrids and a putter with a 6 inch aiming line. I’d assume the more competitive person would do what it takes to beat others.

But professionally it seems it is no longer man versus the course. The course is just something to get out of the way until you reach the greens – where the battle starts. I find I only have interest to watch the final day of a tournament now (for the man against man battle) rather than watch the first 3 days watching man play the course.

Corey’s 4 wood shot still lives fresh in my mind. Sarazen’s 3-wood shot I can’t even tell you if I’ve seen footage of it or I’ve created it in my mind from descriptions. There’s just something magical about long approach shots that is now lost forever on the men’s tour.

I still love the game however.

Here’s a scenario…..
I go play 18 holes…..I tee off on number 1 and smack my 460CC driver with little feel or playability because the new 4 piece ball just jumps off the face with no control….....It goes well into the rough but way down the hole where I only have a short iron to the green…...I pull out my square grooved 46 degree pitching wedge and smash that thing onto the green over a bunker where it stops abruptly and gives me a 10 footer for birdie.
I do this all day…..manage to hit a few fairways along the way and never have to then shape an iron into a tight pin position because the perimeter weighted clubs and go straight ball I use allow me to do this…....
i hit a bunch of mishits along the way but no-one knows this because my technology in my hand hides the mishits and still makes the ball go somewhere near the distance and direction I intended
I shoot 70…....I play like crap….yet people think I am awesome
IS THAT GOLF? Am I really a good golfer?

NO.NO….It’s like the guy who has to take Viagra…is he a better lover?
No….we just use technology to hide the real mistakes and short comings and are lulled into a sense of being better at something than we actually are
I guess that’s how it is today unfortunately….mediocrity has become the norm by using better tools to hide it

Regardless of which side of the fence you fall on, I disagree with you Junior, because I do believe it is a topic worthy of debate. You are certainly a lover of technology because you have to rely on it to compete in the long drive world.. but that is a different sport. It is not golf. Long drive contests, there is no hole. You only use one club.
It is not golf. I am talking about the game of golf. However, I do respect your sport, and to be honest, if I want to see the spectacle of technology, and extreme athleticism, I would much rather go watch a long drive contest, and I really mean this. I find it much more exciting than what golf has turned into.

I don’t think anyone is in a better position to talk about this here than Showme, because he is still actively playing and has lived through golf the old way as I knew it, and golf the new way as you know it, or most of the rest here..

This thread is really more about the golf swing, ball striking, technique
and of course equipment, but anything that pertains to striking a golf ball properly.

I do this all day….. I manage to hit a few fairways along the way and never have to then shape an iron into a tight pin position because the perimeter weighted clubs and go straight ball I use allow me to do this…….
i hit a bunch of mishits along the way but no-one knows this because my technology in my hand hides the mishits and still makes the ball go somewhere near the distance and direction I intended
I shoot 70…….I play like crap….yet people think I am awesome
IS THAT GOLF? Am I really a good golfer?
I guess that's how it is today unfortunately….mediocrity has become the norm by using better tools to hide it

This is certainly an interesting statement from a fine player that I know personally, and have competed with and against during my years on tour. Who better to speak? I have never played the new
stuff, so I have only speculated upon what he is saying here.

Showme, let me ask you this if you don’ mind…

1. Do you think golf is a better game now or 15 years ago?

2. Are you surprised at the direction the game has taken?

3. What is the general consensus among the older players who
played it both ways?

4. Do you think the younger players would get as good as quickly
as they do, if they had to learn golf with older gear?
Or in other words, do you think it took more years of experience
to learn a game that was more multi dimensional?

5. Would you say the shift in equipment has hurt some players
but helped others?

6. What type of players has it hurt, and what type has it helped?

7. Do you feel your own swing has become a bit sloppy from not
getting the pure feedback from the forged thin blades and
persimmon?

8. If right now, everyone had to play gear from the 70’s who would
be the top five or ten golfers in the world?

9. Why aren’t we seeing another Ben Hogan evolve (meaning a
a supremely accurate ball striker that is clearly above and beyond
the rest)

10. It appears statistically Joe Durant is the games best all around
striker, yet most people don’t know who he is.. thoughts on that?

The ‘Tech’ thing is a weird debate. I had to think this over, but I reflected back to a short time ago… last year, my 3rd season of golf.

I used every bloody piece of ‘game improvement’ technology available to me. Super GI, Irons, Super GI driver, Super low spin ball… and I still sucked. All I could do was get that one driver per 2-3 holes that just bombed. And the best score I could get all year was 87 (did it about 15 times).

Lag, you know what irons I’m using now. I now hit the ball better than I ever have, but yet I’m now using pure blades. Why is this true?

I went away from technology utterly in my irons, and took hybrids out of the bag, and also got forged wedges. So how did this result in better ball striking???

If the argument holds water, I should be worse, shouldn’t I?

Lag, you change JUST your driver, and you could be out there with the best of them, and I believe it. (Just leave the wound balatas at home!) Sure, you’d have to pick and chose your tournaments (some are no brainer bomber course layouts) but you could do it.

Prot,

You are a living example of what I have been saying..
You were a hopeless hacker, and no amount of gear technology could ever have saved you. How many hundreds or thousands of dollars could be spent on gear if you believed everything the ads say?

You are now striking a golf ball much better because we have changed your technique. As you have learned to strike the ball better, you are realizing the importance of getting good true positive feedback from your clubs.. Your are realizing that your gear itself will be a great teacher for you, so that you can properly FEEL the changes I have made to your swing.

You are now hitting Hogan blades, one of the toughest purest models ever released from Hogan’s company. And they feel great right?

I don’t believe that newer is necessarily better. Newer ideas are not always better ideas. Sometimes, but not always.

Ben Hogan is regarded as the best ball striker of all time.. and when he was done playing, he became a club crafter.

Why would you not listen to the greatest ball striker of all time?
Do you not think that Hogan did not ponder every conceivable
way to make a golf club? Why did he promote heavier clubs?
Is there a reason?

Has Tom Wishon ever shot 62 at Colonial? Who are you going to
believe? Karstein Solheim? or Ben Hogan? I know where my money is at.

Like Showme said, technology is like a mask, masking your flaws.

How can an instructor teach properly if they don’t see what is really happening?

If you are having a problem hitting shots of the toe, I need you to show me or tell me.. so we can take a look at your delivery path
or firing patterns. If you are using a masking technology club, and you don’t or can’t feel that feedback, how can you diagnose the problem correctly if you can’t feel the toe shot?

Prot, you are going to become a fine golfer, a low handicapper I have no doubt, because you are not thinking like a hacker anymore.

You are saying, hey, I don’t need to hide behind anything, I am starting to shape my shots like a good player, and I need clubs
that will allow me to do that. You are welcoming the feedback, you are hitting irons designed by the greatest ball striker of all time,
not some tech geek that can’t break 80 themselves, and only base
club theory upon what happens in a wind tunnel in a lab in Fresno.

You are waking from a bad dream into a good one, where you now control the golf ball.. you have realized that the equipment myth is just that, a myth, and that to play good golf, you need good technique. And as your technique gets better, you realize that your equipment needs are going to be more along the lines of great ball strikers, and not hackers… and this leads you to classic Hogan gear.. how ironic!

Lag and Show me,

I guess we can have this debate all day long… Is any sport in the modern day era the same as it was in the classical days? Advancement in technology, advancement in athlete conditioning, changes in strategy and ideals of how the game is played to achieve the results necessary to win all happens. Whether it is for the good or the bad of the sport it happens. Football becomes strategically ugly, baseball games are won ugly, golf is now played with power over precision – this might be ugly to you classical technicians but can you (personally) stop it? TRUTHFULLY think about it before you answer…

Do you seriously think with all the money tied up in golf now that change will ever occur back to the “good old days”?

ACCEPTANCE of what is, is a strength too, so lag when you say it is an important debate, I truely dont think it is – I dont really care to be honest (and for your information I was looking at this from the perspective as a fan of modern golf and classical golf for that matter!! Not as a Long Driver, dismiss my opinion if it makes you feel better!) Nothing you ever say or do will bring back the “good old days”, so I dont see the point.

Like I said before, your “classical technicians” used the most up to date, cutting edge equipment that was available for their time, did they not? They moved on from what was traditionally known as golf. What is the difference now? If what is available now had of been available back then, they would have used it too! You are not being objective, you are being hypocritical!!

But that is just my opinion…

Junior

I don’t think that Lag is being hypocritical. He is voicing a valid concern about the direction that golf has taken. He wishes to see a game that rewards skill, precision, accuracy, ballstriking over gouge, find, wedge, putt.

Anyway, Lag, I would like to ask you a question.

If you can figure out a way to reach maximum velocity at the 4rth parallel (after impact)...... than the 3rd parallel (before impact) you have solved the mystery.
You will soon become one of golfs great ball strikers, and have the world shivering in their boots.

Can you pull the sword from the stone?

You stated this way back on page 26, it strikes me that the best way to do this would be to take the minimum backswing , maybe even start at P3 or just before?

Hey Lag…...been out practicing…..stuck a bunch of lead tape on my irons like you suggested to get them up to D4 swingweight….Holy Crap….what a difference…. actually found out there was a head on the end of the shaft somewhere again….thanks…it was like night and day….accuracy…feel…and distance….. I almost felt like I could hit an iron properly again
saw your post with the questions….I’ll run through it later and get back to you….some good things there

Hi Lag,

I pop on this thread most days and have a read, I love the enthusiasm, perspective and history that you guys smack into golf….

Just wondering if you could respond to a couple of ponderings really….

Junior made a great point about the condition of the players now, a truly night and day situation when compared with even 10 years ago. What sort of impact has this had? Showme could probably shine some light on this one as he has toured throughout the transformation you discuss. Athletes like Tiger, Villegas, Sergio have popped up and changed the level of physicality of golfers…. Saying that, Gary Player would have a fair argument for membership in that group then and now! Like I say just would love to know your opinions.

Second thing, Tiger gets some bad press on here considering!

http://www.dogschasingcars....

This article I think has been shown before, but it makes some great points. Plus, Tiger is using the bladiest of blades (available now – I know this as I put the 3-iron on the floor the other day and nearly feinted) with X100 shafts. Taken his driver is 10 times the size of the old Persimmons, but he grew up using pea headed drivers, he was still flushing back then!

To add a great story about Tiger’s ball-striking, I heard a wicked story about Andrew Coltart, who was leading into the final day of tournament in Europe, where Woods was playing…. He was asked on Saturday, what he would do to fight the “Woods syndrome” which seems to melt players that face off with Tiger in the final group…. Coltart said he wouldn’t look at him for the 18 holes and imagine he was playing with someone else!

Anyway, after ignoring Tiger for the 18 holes, Coltart shot mid 70’s lost the tournament and Tiger won. The same pundit asked Coltart why his strategy of not looking at Woods had failed…. He replied “When I heard him hit the ball I froze!” Apparently from the first time he heard Tiger strike the ball he went cold and buckled. The compression, the flush, the noise. A great tale and a story that underlines the sort of contact Tiger makes.

His driving gets some bad press, that has been done to death, but the points his caddy made underline some key points, which explain the low percentages…. The course designs you so rightly disagree with Lag only add to these figures as he has the tools to bosh the ball on to or near a couple of greens each round and cheat dog legs by going over them on Par 5’s…. His performance at the British Open at Royal Liverpool a few years back showed how disciplined and straight he CAN hit it when the course dictates.

I’d just love your opinion on these two things. Like i say they are ponderings more than questions. I think Junior makes some great points above, but I also think your arguments regarding equipment are important, especially given the role of feedback plays as response to skill performance.

After this post, I’m off to sit back and read again.

OPTI

Apologies for the bold last paragraph. Not sure what happened.

Hey Lag, saw that post about lead tape and got me thinking. I like the weight of my irons but my 3/5 woods (light metals) feel too light in comparison, is/would it be that easy to just put some tape on the bottom of the shaft to get that feel? Will this stuff up the toe weight etc? Might be cheaper than buying new sticks.

lag…..lots of questions!! i will work down the list

1) Do you think golf is a better game now or 15 years ago?

I would say professional golf has improved only in the amount of players that are capable of winning each week….you can see that by running down the list of PGA tournament winners and see the huge variance in players.
I do think this has come about because the playing field has been leveled by technology.
Technology has allowed the not so solid hitters better distance and yardage and accuracy for unsolid shots giving them the opportunity to figure in the finish of an event if they have a decent week with the short game.
On the flipside technology has also not advanced the abilities of the genuine flush ballstriker as the equipment is much more centered towards helping mishits than rewarding solid hits…. perimeter weighting…. square grooves…..lightweight shafts….. huge heads on woods…..all with the purpose of making the average golfer better not the good player better.
The courses that are played are for the majority on an ‘arranged course’....the PGA or the sponsor have a vested interest in the venue and use the facility regardless of it’s test to the golfer. they are interested in $$$ and they save and make the green backs by using supportive venues as the host for their events.
The courses are geared towards spectators….house sales… and future revenue…..not for playing as a test of golf. Most have few trees…..little trouble to play your way into…....only slight rough on most occasions that square grooves plow thru anyhow and it means nothing. They all have high grass around the greens that trap the ball near the green edge instead of it being repelled down hills and 15 yards from the green like the closely mown courses in Melbourne or Scotland…. the pros are great at that short shot from the rough….they flop it to a foot, tap in and move on to the next hole, with their round intact.
Courses are made longer to try and offset the distance revolution and it is a mistake…. the Masters is a boring par and bogey fest of recent years…. a great course like Riviera has been crapped out by adding 50-60 yards to holes that were designed to be hit with a shortish club…. 12th hole for example…perfect design for a 9 iron…crap design for a 4 or 5 iron…same as 6th hole …the par 3 with the bunker in the middle of the green.. great hole with a 7 iron…stupid hole with a 3 iron…
So I would say like we have said in past posts professional golf is no better because of technology or the courses that are played on most weeks.
Golf as a whole is however in better shape as can be supported by the interest in Tiger Woods. It has become a more worldwide interest with a huge influx of new golfers to the game. I can’t ever remember the number 1 sporting identity in the world being a golfer….so interest level is high.
As for amateur golfers? I would need figures to back it up, however even with all this new technology that is meant to bomb the ball and improve accuracy…..with my playing of wednesday pro-ams and other games with friends etc….I have seen little improvement in the overall game of the amateur golfer. I think many people believe they can buy a good game by buying the latest and greatest equipment but it doesn’t work that way….. you still have to have mechanics to take full advantage of what is out there and people would rather spend $500 on a driver than $500 in lessons….which would be much more beneficial in the long run.
Hope that answers that for you….....

Enjoyable story optimalcadence.

question 2) Are you surprised at the direction the game has taken?

NO…. not really…..Golf is a business….. In the past 15 years we now have cell phones…..internet running through a wire to a computer…...home video games have grown from pacman and galaga….....portable computers that run info in milliseconds….. IPODS with huge memory…..etc etc
Everything has advanced…....not for the better in many situations but overall society has tried to advance…..1) for profit….to make new ideas come to live is big bucks in the making and 2) because people have become too lazy to do mundane things they used to do.
Everyone is in a hurry and needs to be contacted and has to do something right this instant and society now caters to that ideal.
So it is no surprise that golf took this path too….... making persimmon woods was time consuming so they went to laminate. that became too hard so we went to metal…...that seemed to aid golfers, so why not stick graphite in the metal head….now we’ll make it lighter so it is comparable….now we’ll make it bigger and lighter again… now we’ll make it forgiving with weight and inertia…..now we’ll make it go as far as we can because people love that to stroke their ego with…. and voila… here we are….companies are making $$$$$$......players are hitting more mishits than ever yet think they are getting better because the ball flies straighter because of the technology of the ball and the club they use and the governors of the game have let it go to the point of no return…..
I myself can’t even bear the thought of being allowed to anchor a long putter or a belly putter to your stomach and call that a golf swing…..I don’t know….it doesn’t seem right. A two handed stroke or swing or movement is a shot…not a one handed push….but that has been around too long to alter now also.
Golf used to be an art, now it is a techno mess of god knows what all for the good of $$$.

Question 3) What is the general consensus among the older players who played it both ways?

Deep down i would say discontent…....but up front… not many say much because they are being paid big bucks to promote the latest and greatest golfing tool from the equipment companies
It has basically taken a bunch of players out of the mix. The strikers of the past just got steamrolled by technology as shotmaking became obsolete. The ball hardly moves in the air…... remember making a bad swing with a persimmon driver and catching it towards the toe of the club?...........the ball would go straight right and I mean straight right…..or if your hands just caught up in time you would hook it off the planet with a toe shot…..... now what happens with the big 460 cc’s when you hit them off the toe…..... some of them actually go FARTHER because it takes the spin off the ball and it still flies somewhere near the fairway….. That’s outrageous and exactly why people have been dumbed into thinking they are better than they are.
The shotmakers of days past …..look at them all….... they all can’t wait to make 50 and hit the Champions Tour…..... guys like Weibe and Allem couldn’t compete on the PGA Tour the past 8-10 years. They are now kicking A on the Champions Tour because the courses are more within their reach and it isn’t all about bombing it off the planet and then make some putts.
Corey Pavin….what a prime example….what a player and GOLFER…. did more with the ball than anyone I have played with. Shaped the shot to whatever the situation with ease. Now he never figures in the finish….because technology went by him. It didn’t help much with his distance compared to everyone else…. the ball advances didn’t help because he can’t maneuver it like he used to with it’s go straight technology….... they made the courses 100’s of yards longer which helped the long bombers and not him. he has 1 win in the last however many years which was at Milwaukee… a course that favors no-one because most holes are lay ups from the tee short of creeks and the fairways are well tree lined and the rough is normally up and with greens that slope a lot…........ it makes accuracy and control the premium there…..it was absolutely no surprise he won there but alas he has little chance at just about any other venue unless he has 20 putts per round
So I think most players would prefer it the old way but have accepted it to be too late to change anything now so they may as well go with it and get their mulligan on the Champions Tour.

Shomethamoney,

I think it’s interesting you mention Corey Pavin as he just switched to Plummer & Bennett and Stack & Tilt this year. :-)

I agree with you guys 100% on how much easier technology has made the game…

Kevin

....gets out violin!!

KevCarter…...
ever see Corey Pavin swing in 1991…1995…1999…2003…2009
Same swing…....... he always stayed somewhere around the ball without moving his center of gravity back and thru much…. I hazard a guess not much has changed
Junior….go pop some roids so you can calm down and be rational for a change

I am answering some questions for the benefit of someone who is interested….you don’t have to listen or give smart ass comments because you can hit the ball from a tee

I do think Lag, shome, junior/ab made very valid points from their respective perspectives
and I enjoyed reading your views and experience

In the end , it may be a situation of agree to disagree….

The problem is the ‘cat is already (and too far) out of the bag’ now.

Just wondering if you drive while looking in the rear vision mirror too… Just sick of the denegration of what is for what once what was. Also sick of the same old broken record playing in what was the greatest thread ever to hit iseekgolf.

Some of us chose to move on with our lives and embrace the present not reminisce about the good old days or how good we once were. Some of us embrace the challenge and try to be the best we can be for today with no whinging or whining or what was and what could have been.

Funny that the true champions of the past dont begrudge the champions of current times and the future. It is only the ones that didnt make it, the ones that are bitter that cant let go of what was for what is.

Instead of complaining why dont you continue to educate on the relevant points like the mechanics of a great swing, that is after all what made this thread great for the true “seekers” of this site.

I agree KYC, that is why I am hoping the most experienced guys here, who have the most to teach will realise that we want to learn to prosper and improve ourselves for the now and the future. Not listen to great players sound like a bunch of “has beens” who cant let go.

I am over the good old days and would like to hear some more instruction so we can all move forward not get stuck in the loathing of how good things once were. The time is over and there is nothing that any of us can do to change it.

Funny thing is I actually agreed in the first place the the quality is now gone compared to the technicians of the past. I just also know that things are not going to change due to the financial investments in the modern game, so let’s make the best of what we have now.

But what do I know. I am just a roid munching long driver who possesses no skill in what I do. It is all equipment that allows me to hit it long, I just grab any old 460cc head, swing it violently out of control, hit it anywhere on the face and hope for the best. ;)

It’s not all total equipment for the extreme long ball too…ala Mike Austin !! and you know what…with the Persimmon driver at 43”

envisage him using one of todays LD drivers fitted to his specs….wow ! ??

If the new gear is that good surely a good ball striker with a happening swing could belt a techy 460cc pretty well?
Lag mentioned he’d give Tiger a go with old gear, couldn’t it work the other way too? Not dissing here, just wondering?
I know for sure the new gear does help thousands of otherwise very frustrated golfers have a chance of at least getting around the course under 100.
On the other side, I just got some older blades and look forward to them improving my ball striking, though probably not my score in the short term.

Apparently Tiger Still Trains with a Persimmon Driver during his off / silly season(made by Lousville Golf)

Lag did mentioned (hope I am not too wrong) that using too much of the high tech monster and cavity backed clubs is this has the potential to make those ball shaping muscles ‘lazy’....and so one becomes more and more dependent and reliant on these gizmo and then find it harder n harder to actually go back to the more traditional old tech stuff…..

Junior,

Let me ask you this..

Should we burn down all the old art museums, Leonardo da Vinci, Renoir, Rembrandt because those painting were outdated by Jackson Pollock 50 years ago? Picasso certainly looks beyond retro now.. Andy Warhol was the rage of contemporary art in the 70’s.. but was he a better painter than Rafael? Are today’s painters, better than the masters of the past? Computer art is here right? Why should anyone paint anymore if you have photoshop?
Right?

I listened to Miles Davis last night “A Kind of Blue” should I toss it in the garbage because of the advancement of techno music?

How about Guitar Hero? Now technology can make you play like Eddie Van Halen or Ritchie Blackmore? with a plastic stick and a computer screen? Should we do away with actually learning to play a guitar because there is no money in it anymore?

Should a fisherman give up baiting a hook because it would be easier to jump into the water with scuba gear and a high tech underwater rifle that can shoot a Salmon from 100 meters away with a laser scope?

I look at golf as a high art form similar to a martial art form of extreme skill and mastery.. I prefer to honor, celebrate, and embrace the amazing legacy they have left for us to learn from discuss, and debate their significance. In my opinion I believe
the ball strikers of the past were far superior to what we are seeing today. We have proof of this with the few amazing films that were created and archived for future generation to learn from…

Junior,

You wouldn’t dare watch or learn from Mike Austin would you?
Has anyone ever hit it farther than he did? He still has the record right? Longest recorded drive ever? And with Persimmon?
But you negate him even in your arena?

Junior,

Let me ask you this..

Should we burn down all the old art museums, Leonardo da Vinci, Renoir, Rembrandt because those painting were outdated by Jackson Pollock 50 years ago? Picasso certainly looks beyond retro now.. Andy Warhol was the rage of contemporary art in the 70's.. but was he a better painter than Rafael? Are today's painters, better than the masters of the past? Computer art is here right? Why should anyone paint anymore if you have photoshop?
Right?

I listened to Miles Davis last night ’ÄúA Kind of Blue” should I toss it in the garbage because of the advancement of techno music?

How about Guitar Hero? Now technology can make you play like Eddie Van Halen or Ritchie Blackmore? with a plastic stick and a computer screen? Should we do away with actually learning to play a guitar because there is no money in it anymore?

Should a fisherman give up baiting a hook because it would be easier to jump into the water with scuba gear and a high tech underwater rifle that can shoot a Salmon from 100 meters away with a laser scope?

I look at golf as a high art form similar to a martial art form of extreme skill and mastery.. I prefer to honor, celebrate, and embrace the amazing legacy they have left for us to learn from discuss, and debate their significance. In my opinion I believe
the ball strikers of the past were far superior to what we are seeing today. We have proof of this with the few amazing films that were created and archived for future generation to learn from…

Junior,

You wouldn't dare watch or learn from Mike Austin would you?
Has anyone ever hit it farther than he did? He still has the record right? Longest recorded drive ever? And with Persimmon?
But you negate him even in your arena?

Lag Pressure throwaway is the root of all golf's evils

Time for the governing bodies to wake up and smell the coffee about the direction of this game. I have had an uneasy feeling for a while about some of the tracks many of the game’s premier tournaments are played on. Bland, long, uninspiring surfaces but with plenty of commercial kickbacks.

All I can do is share what I know here, I observe things, as a former tour player, I see what is going on now.. as I said, Showme is much more in a position to comment on the modern game’s evolution and state.. I trust him as we know each other from way back..

Isn’t it interesting that we both come to the same conclusion more or less? I think it is interesting..

The skill of the game has been watered down considerably, and we are not the only ones who think so.

Complain? No… I am more proactive, so I have been involved in change… I helped put on an event in Las Vegas where pros had to go back and play 70’s or older stuff.. Lots of good players, it was fun, and there was money in it too. Did it change the world? A little.. one of your magazines “Inside Social Golf” thought it was cool.. enough to make it a cover story. I am involved in a TRGA event next month and we now have another one on the block for September in Arkansas. So, it is growing.. all it takes is one person to change it all and write the check.

Have 10 events a year or maybe around the world, and we play for 100,000 a week, and money will draw the players.. and a purist game can be saved.. and if it grows from there, history could make the giant clubs look pretty silly and retro in a hurry. I think more positively than some, and I think it could happen.

Just a signature on a check and the game is saved… that simple.. could be a reader on this forum that thinks it’s a great idea. You can’t pull all your money into grave with you.. People have done stranger things like donate 50 million to an church or an animal shelter.. 5 million puts up 10 events for 5 years. Player entry fees cover the course and logistics and staffing. Easy.. Every great movement starts grass roots. I think it will happen, with or without me.. At some point history will clear the fog.

I did two radio shows last week, and another one Friday. The media thinks it’s interesting. I am a good ambassador for such a cause
because I don’t bow to the almighty dollar. Never have.. choose to play the Australian Tour over the US Tour because I liked the courses, and I liked playing in international fields. Very professionally run tour, and they treated us great. I loved Australia,
and Canada too. Great Tours. I never wore a hat with advertising on it.. never did .. not on my head, can’t pay me enough.. nope.. never. Turned down a lot of money.. no regrets. I choose to play Maxfi irons and their ball, because I liked them .. I called them.. they were happy to have me. Turned down a big deal from Ping… Why?
I don’t like their gear, couldn’t pay me enough.

Not everything is about the dollar.. I love golf, and don’t like seeing it being used like a piece of toilet paper. I liked it better when the rich played golf for their love of the game, and made their loot elsewhere rather than outsiders exploiting it endlessly.

Just my rant for the day..

Had lunch with Al Barkow today, and went to his house and checked out his great classic gear, and we watched the Hogan Snead match that he was involved in, walking the fairways with Hogan, and telling me all the amazing behind the scenes stories about what actually went on..

amazing..

Gettingbetter,

On an up note, I understand the Australian Open will be played this year at The New South Wales Golf Club…

Can’t say I haven’t though about making the trip down to play in it..

One of my favorite courses.. golf doesn’t get better than that..
Would love to drill the persimmon into that afternoon wind one more time!

Lag,

You should do it! Might even take a trip over to caddy for you…I am good at reading lines on the greens, lol!

Its interesting that no other sport has succumbed to commercialism in quite the way that golf has.

Part of the reason is that amateurs in general still can’t play the game because they simply don’t have the right technique.

Therefore we don’t fully appreciate what is going on. Your thread has really opened my eyes about the technical and the philosophical aspect of the game.

Lag:

Suggest you re-read the postings, it is us the modern day sports fans that truely appreciate all athletes and even though we support the advancements in the game, we NEVER forget the past champions!

We learn from the past and apply it to being the best we can now and in the future. NOT ONCE have I ever said any of the following:

The old time players were inferior to the current day players

In fact I do believe I have said the opposite a few times now? It is you that is making this comparison, not me. I just find it hypocritical when you used the equipment that was “cutting edge” for your time and now that the modern day player does like wise you degrade their efforts and accomplishments. Perhaps Harry Vardon and Bobby Jones could degrade your performances also as your gear was far more advanced then what they had?

My point was and is still that no matter what you do the game is where it is. For better or worse, no amount of whinging, complaining and reminiscing will alter it. You make a choice not to embrace the technological advancements available and I commend you for that – more power to you enjoy the sound of wood. Some of us have been born in an era where it is purely metal and titanium, I wont stand for a traditionalist like yourself (even though I truely respect your knowledge and who you are as a person) bagging our efforts as being any less inferior to yours in your day. The game is different now.

By the way your assumption of me is actually also offensive! Yes I have heavily reviewed Mike Austin’s swing technique and work. For your information I am also a student of the game. You might place me in a “steriod eating gorilla box” but I can tell you I seek and refine every aspect of myself as a professional athlete. I research not only golf but every single sport that could have a carry over effect to golf. I talk to traditional golf coaches, I go to biomechanical instructors, I perform weekly strength and conditioning programs, I drill ever single night, I hit balls every single day, I research and refine my equipment (which involves me talking to clubfitters, former NASA engineers and sports physicists). I seek sessions with mental sports conditioning experts, I stretch my body to gain flexibility. I go to weekly physical therapy sessions to put the aches, pains, joints back into optimal condition. I review the past, I seek advancements for the future, my hands bleed on a daily basis. WTF do you do or did you ever do to become the best you could be?

How dare you treat me like a simpleton! I am far more a professional athlete than you will every be as I respect every athletes achievement, past present and future! I live in the real world not a world of I wish it was still like this.

For your information… Mike Austin holds the record for the longest drive in a PGA sanctioned event 515 yards, the longest drive in an LDA sanctioned event is 529 yards by Scott Smith. The longest sanctioned drive in the world is 551 yards by Mike Dobbyn in a Harmon Tour Event. The Longest carry of a golf ball according to Guinness is by Jack Hamm of 458 yards and the longest ever recorded drive was hit by Paul Slater on an airport runway which travelled 720 yards eclipsing Stuart Appleby’s record of 696 yards.

Just so we dont mislead readers let’s inform them that Mike Austin’s drive was hit with a persimmon driver, with a 35+mph tail wind!!! (60 km/h) and it rolled 65 yards!!... I can also research…

By the way a persimmon driver has a COR rating of 0.78 so it is not that far behind the standard of 0.83 of the titanium drivers now. You like to make out that you hit it with something equivalent of a dead fish!!

Dont believe it, Have a listen to the man himself!!

http://www.youtube.com/watc...

Showme,

thanks for the contemporary insight.. lots of questions, but also lots to learn, understand and talk about.. hope to hear more..

stinkler,

putting some weight on your clubs is a good idea, and I think it is really a good idea if you don’t play a lot, so you can feel the club in your hands. Don’t rule out a heavy putter either… Watson, and Seve, were known to put sugar in the shaft to increase the weight of their putters.

optimalcadence,

Conditioning for golf? We’ll since golf is now smash it and wedge it, it is more important than ever.. but I would like to see golf be more of a shotmakers game, and keep the long drive obsession over on Juniors stage.. The fans who want to see the long ball should go see the long drive contests.. they are exciting.. I have always enjoyed watching and even competing in them.. I finished 7th in the NCAA long drive championship when I was in college. 297 with persimmon up a slight hill.

However, the best golf I ever witnessed was Chris Patton shooting 34 under par for 4 rounds in the Winnipeg Open. Chris weighed about 280 pounds, and it wasn’t all muscle. Guy Boros won the Order of Merit one year in Canada, and certainly broke all the rules of fitness and what you are “supposed” to do.. so for golf in my era being in shape would only be a concern as you approached the senior tour..

In my teaching I do teach a very athletic move but I train very unusual muscles, not the stuff that wins a bar fight. Strength and a flow and sequence of that strength.

gettingbetter,

Reaching maximum speed post impact should be your greatest intention.. like you said a shorter backswing, and just going at it from there is not a bad idea.. but remember to really turn your shoulders if you do that…... ideally I like a huge turn but minimal hand travel…
mess with that and get back to me..

Junior,

Settle down.

With the greatest of respect, I am sure that you drill every night etc… but thats not what we are here to discuss.

We are here primarily to learn how Lag can teach us to be better golfers by applying better technique and I for one, am much better than before.

The thing that separates us humans from other animals is that we CAN modify our environment if we don’t like it. Lag doesn’t like the direction golf has taken, he is doing something to change that. He is voicing a valid concern and it may well be that things will change.

You may not agree and thats fine too, but there is no need for you to attack the author of this thread, just agree to disagree and allow us to continue to enjoy Lag’s insight into the game.

Hang on getting better… re read the posts. I attacked no one, I simply stated my point, I have been asked to clarify things and I did. To be honest it is a pointless topic as things will never change or go backward only control measures will ever be in place from now. The horse bolted long ago. I actually agree with Lag that the art is lost, but complaining about it and bagging the guys who play the game now for the skills the game requires does is wrong. They do what they need to do in the modern game to win. It is all any athlete can do.

Where I draw the line with Lag and Show Me is when they make assumptions about my character and ethics just because I enjoy Long Drive is uncalled for and yes they will receive the response they deserve.

I would actually like Lag to get back to what he is good at, discussing golf swing mechanics and unlocking the idiosynchracies that most of us never find. I know that whether your goals are to hit the ball out of sight or to flush it every time you go out for a round, his knowledge is second to none.

I believe he is doing himself a disservice by focussing on the right and wrong of the game of golf. I give him far more credit than that and I too look forward to him getting on with business!

The modern game, ok in drivers have changed although, blade irons haven’t changed that much, maybe they are longer in length although man is taller these days.
I love old prossimon drives although if your to compete you have no choice to step up to modern drivers or you simply can’t be competitive.

It’s not the players choice to use them and I know myself I miss using a prossimon to be able to shape the ball amongst other players who feel the same, although if your sponsor waves 10 million under your nose you will use a broom handle if need be.

Sure the art of hitting has gone but there is a new art is to chip and putt. It’s still an art in the game.
As they say drive for show and putt for dough.
I still see guys hit the ball 300 and tap it on, they still make par cause they can’t putt.

hogan was good in his era although considering hogan’s putting ability would he had been good in this era.
As great of a ball striker hogan was ,if he could have putted would have won tons more tournaments as well.
Bernard Langer was one of the best ball strikers although he couldn’t putt if only he could putt
Era’s shouldn’t be compared to other era’s.

Ball striking only makes up 40% of the game, other 60% is scoring putting and chipping/short game.
The problem with golfers of today is they are so obsessed with striking and forget about the rest like being able to actually score.
Golf is a scoring game and no one gives a dam how you did it, all that counts at the end of the day is the score on the card you hand in at the end of the round

Junior…..not once did anyone call you dumb or without character and without ethics..
I said technology has “dumbed” the game…..not that you are dumb…..you yourself tend to have a good grasp of conditioning and strength and what that can achieve to help you with your path in golf and I commend you for that.
However from what you say you never hit or grew up with playing persimmon…..you only know golf by today’s standards so you shouldn’t go off telling us we don;’t know something when we grew up in that era. I would say that actually hitting a persimmon club now and then would be of benefit for you. It will teach you more about your swing and dynamics than swinging a 47 inch driver at 400 miles an hour day in and day out.
It is actually fun to see irons being worked back to a smaller shaped head instead of the monstrosities they made not that long ago. I think they understood that the iron head needs to be smaller for better control…...they still make big iron heads but at least have a small head for the good players who want the control and a big head for the worse golfer who needs a larger area to hit with.
Tiger never switched to a large head driver for a long time and now he has actually started switching back to a smaller one again for more control

Shome, good to hear your thoughts on how golf has changed. I think you are right on the money with your thoughts that there are many of the guys on tour who are not happy with the game golf has become but cannot complain or bite the hand that feeds them. When you can earn over a million dollars a year just teeing it up, not even winning, you are unlikely to want change!

That there are different winners every week these days, I think, reinforces the idea that the game is now about who putts well, not who hits the most fairways or greens.

Junior,

You are excellent in your own field and no one can fault your efforts. Coming on to Lag’s thread though and behaving like a kid doesn’t do you any favours. If the conversation is taking a direction that you don’t enjoy, then leave it. No one is forcing you to contribute or read posts. Lag and plenty of the rest of us are entitled to our opinions, just as you are. The difference is we are not shouting you down.

I’ll also correct you on two points.
1) Lag never called you a roid popper, that was shome and (I would suggest) it was done tongue in cheek, no need to fly off the handle.

2) Irons have not changed very much since the turn of the 20th Century. There have been some changes in recent years with shafts and perimiter heads but the irons that Lag plays would not have been different at all from what Bobby Jones or Hogan played.

Your ‘rant’ on the previous page screamed “Look at me!”. I have stated before that whilst I commend you for your efforts, the game of long drive has zero interest to me. Hitting balls through water melons may be a lot of fun but it ain’t golf kiddo! On the other hand Lag, Shome and The Dart have played golf at the very top level. Their opinions on the game are what I want to hear. if you don’t like it, perhaps another self imposed sojourn is in order.

KevCarter……
ever see Corey Pavin swing in 1991…1995…1999…2003…2009
Same swing…….... he always stayed somewhere around the ball without moving his center of gravity back and thru much…. I hazard a guess not much has changed

’ÄúA flute with no holes is not a flute…a donut without a hole is Danish”

EXACTLY. Thank you for making my point. :-)

Kevin

for the people who have talked about golfers being athletes and in better shape and injuries etc…..
Anyone ever watch ANY old golf film?....a tournament, a major, as Shell’s Wonderful World…....EVERY golfer to the man was as thin as a slice of bread
Nicklaus was at one point larger…..but certainly an athlete as he did track and field and basketball besides golf and was not just a ball of blubber
I would say today’s golfer has better info and more access to the physical side and workout equipment than before…..but there are really only a few who’s physique really stands out as a true muscle bound, flexible, sand eating, no holds barred athlete….. Still plenty of bellies out there who still get the job done no matter what their physique
As for injuries….I think more players get injured or have been injured in the past 10 years than ever. How can that be if they have access to the best of everything to prevent all that? Is it because technically they aren’t sound? Many have their own jets to fly in non stop to anywhere so travel is easier for them….Is it because they have been given the option of bashing the ball to kingdom come on nearly every shot with this new technology and the body can’t take it after a while?
I know Junior mentioned Danny Lee was injured in that US Am. How can a 17 year old be that injured? It has to be from smashing the crap out of the ball. I know when i was 17 I could run through shields of glass and never got hurt. I have never had an injury that has cost me missing an event…. am I a supreme athlete…No… do I beat the living daylights out of each shot….No
I don’t know just throwing some thoughts out there.
There used to play heavier clubs….. had longer travel to events in planes and cars…..had less physical fitness opportunities unless you count raising a beer glass a workout…....there were more reverse C’s and funky looking swings than you can imagine…...... and yet no-one lost time to injury.. the only one I can really think of is Trevino and that was only because he was struck by lightning and had back trouble because of that.

KevCarter……
ever see Corey Pavin swing in 1991…1995…1999…2003…2009
Same swing………. he always stayed somewhere around the ball without moving his center of gravity back and thru much…. I hazard a guess not much has changed

’ÄúA flute with no holes is not a flute…a donut without a hole is Danish”

EXACTLY. Thank you for making my point. :-)

Kevin

Find a pattern that makes you happy, and have fun!

Kev…..exactly I agree… but in a different way…....he won’t be stack and tilting left… he will be using his same swing with the vision in his head of staying left in his swing (even though he won’t actually do this)....and everyone will say he’s Stack and tilting because he is now on the books
I have said my piece at the stack and tilt thread and it is done….don’t drag it over here….. Come write back to me in a year when all that S/T theory goes down the gurgler and you can say I was right then

Styles…..thanks for your remarks. I did have tongue in cheek with my remark as it was all coming across a bit gung-ho.
I can also take offence to Junior calling me a has been or a never was….. I did a little bio of myself on S/T thread to show that I do have a mouth and don’t speak from my rear end. But I am done with that thread because everyone reading quotes from their instruction books can’t see what I can see down the road with that style.
I have grossed over 10 mill from playing golf so certainly not a has been or a never was and lag was/is a terrific player and teacher and student of golf and certainly not a has been or a never was. I played with him, know him and he won events. I beat him, he beat me… one big happy golfing family. He travelled for a while but then diverted his attention to other interests and am glad he has the golf bug back again.
People take stuff personal and can’t see the big picture at times.
Anyhow not here for all that…this is about Lagpressure and golf improvement…. How are you hitting them?..... I will read your thread and see what’s transpiring

Spot on Bio.

Best example is Padraig Harrington…..

Excellent ball-striker but admits to sometimes scoring better/winning better in his ‘off’ weeks with the striking.

Man knows how to get it done.

Get a little ball into a little hole…...

Totally agree on the point made about PGA courses having no run-off areas – vastly limits the short game even compared to the Euro Tour, which I usually much prefer to watch.

Shome,

No sweat bud, I hadn’t spotted your bio on the S&T thread but have to say that I am blown away by it.

I’d be honoured if you read my thread! I’m hitting it really good just now. I am transitioning from swinging to a hitting and it will be a long process, probably two years, however at the end of those two years I fully expect to have realised my dream of playing off scratch.

Right now I’m drilling every day to try and ingrain the new habits that will get me there, but already I feel like I am taking more control of the golf ball than I have ever had.

I’m not a junior, so grew up playing the old stuff. I’m trying to get a new driver sorted at the minute and working with the guy who is building it for me, I realised that I haven’t ‘felt’ the driver head for years because they are all just so damned light! He had a driver that I tried that had a too heavy shaft for me and not enough loft, but I hit the thing better than anything I have tried in years – all because I could feel and sense where the head was during the swing!

I think this topic needs to be put to rest by both sides.

I can’t agree 100% with either side, but then I realized I don’t have to. This thread was MUCH bigger than ‘what’s wrong with today’s game’.

It’s really too bad it got dragged down in this, and I’m somewhat guilty as well.

Lag has sincerely showed me more in 6 months, than I have learned in 3 years from some “successful” instructors, and very accomplished pro’s. That is 100% truth. I’d like to see this thread get back to that sort of positive momentum. At the very least, I’d like to see the equipment debates go into a different thread.

I am going to be 100% honest here. I have had a lot of negative feedback from locals here for picking up blades. I have had a lot of positive feedback from using them though. I am still very much enjoying my ‘old’ gear, and I understand entirely what Lag means when he recites the advantages of old gear. This is 100% valid advice and I’m living proof. As Clampett has said, ‘blades ARE game improvement irons’.

The truth is anything that can make us better is worth talking about. So getting stuck in a rut about about where the game is going doesn’t belong here IMHO. Let’s move on… please.

Gettingbetter,

I believe you're on the right track by focusing on just P3 through P4. Below is a drill that I came up with last week not knowing you were thinking with the same thing. Maybe Lag will endorse it..We'll see. Obviously it is a lot like the impact bag drill but I'm getting some fun out of it. Hope it helps someone..

P3 Drill

A few days ago I experimented with this P3 Drill with an old D5 swing weighted PW. The drill is to start from P3 with a feeling of 90% of your weight on your right or back foot. Then think minimum hand travel and try to feel some lag as though P3 is impact before you start. Think of leaving your hands right there @ P3 and just accelerate your body (pivot) as fast as you can over to P4 and your weight will naturally shift forward as you hit a ball. Earlier Lag (maybe 40 pages ago) showed some pictures of Peter Senior not moving his hands much between frames but you could tell his body pivot was picking up speed.

To my delighted surprise, I would hit the ball with this drill 10 yards farther than my normal 85% PW effort. I've traditionally always loaded my lead left foot early in the downswing and this drill helps me find this 2-stage rocket that Lag describes. Also the feeling at impact through P4 has more cohesive tension and is more powerful for me.

I have a possible new direction for the thread – all the following is with the greatest of respect by the way! Sometimes the best insights etc can emerge from unusual taking off points.

Here goes:

I propose that Lagpressure is, in strict TGM terms, actually a Swinger who…..for a variety of reasons doesn’t hit it all that far but is very accurate.

Evidence is this:

The burst of speed he says he applies in the impact zone is described by most great ball strikers, including confirmed ‘Swingers’.

Not all ‘swingers’ have that sense of “hanging on for dear life” all the way through.

As the clubhead speeds it’s way through impact, it is natural for a swinger to feel as though the right hand is adding speed, even though it is simply maintaining LagPressure (sensed via right index finger).

Jack Nicklaus (a swinger in Lag’s opinion) talks about doing it on P 74 of ‘Golf My Way’, and Ben Hogan, who ‘wished he had three right hands’ also did it.

So, while Lag has a a tighter pivot driven swing than he used to, it’s basically a swinger’s action all the same…..and not a hitter’s action.

He’s using a piece of string, not an axe…..

What would this mean for when Lag talks about hitting being superior to swinging?

I’m pretty sure Lag will totally disagree, but….well, I’m interested to see exactly how he will do so!

Gettingbetter,

I believe you're on the right track by focusing on just P3 through P4. Below is a drill that I came up with last week not knowing you were thinking with the same thing. Maybe Lag will endorse it..We'll see. Obviously it is a lot like the impact bag drill but I'm getting some fun out of it. Hope it helps someone..

P3 Drill

A few days ago I experimented with this P3 Drill with an old D5 swing weighted PW. The drill is to start from P3 with a feeling of 90% of your weight on your right or back foot. Then think minimum hand travel and try to feel some lag as though P3 is impact before you start. Think of leaving your hands right there @ P3 and just accelerate your body (pivot) as fast as you can over to P4 and your weight will naturally shift forward as you hit a ball. Earlier Lag (maybe 40 pages ago) showed some pictures of Peter Senior not moving his hands much between frames but you could tell his body pivot was picking up speed.

To my delighted surprise, I would hit the ball with this drill 10 yards farther than my normal 85% PW effort. I've traditionally always loaded my lead left foot early in the downswing and this drill helps me find this 2-stage rocket that Lag describes. Also the feeling at impact through P4 has more cohesive tension and is more powerful for me.

Thanks, Mashie, would you be kind enough to direct me to those Peter Senior pics, I did search 40 pages back and then 4/5 on either side but no luck. Thanks for your advice, will give it a try!

gb,

You’re welcome. Like I said I was really surprised with how far you could hit it starting from a static P3

I’ve got Lag’s comments but cant’t find the exact page yet either with the photo sequence

Lag said:
The right arm gets straightened down to P-3, hips and shoulders are saved, still quite closed, then from P-3 it's just ’Äúall out” with the rotation of the pivot, hands get super active and that shaft gets nowhere near releasing, just continues to load pressure into it, stressing and flexing back all the way down to the bag, and the bag take a hard tough hit, just like the ball should. This is radial acceleration, the hitter lifeblood
If you watch the hips from P-3 or parallel before impact, you'll see the hips pick up speed very quickly right into impact.
It's not just hitting the bag, it's how you hit the bag..
This is what Moe Norman taught me in 1987
The positioning of the right arm on the downswing has more to do with your swing plane than just about anything. Where it is at address is not nearly as important

Here is Peter Senior from just last week. One of my favorite swings of all time. He just does everything right. He's still beating up on all the young guys at 50? There is a reason why. He holds the flex of the shaft, and he has one of the best pure shoulder rotations ever.
In these pictures notice how he straightens the right arm on the downswing, look how much the right arm has straightened from frames 2 to 3, yet the shoulders have not really started to rotate hard yet.
If you look at frames 3 to 4, his hands have not traveled very far, but his torso has really moved a lot. From 4 to 5 it's great rotation, and he finishes nice and level, no back problems for Peter.

Thats a wonderful decription by Lag, thank you Mashie, let me know if you find those pics!

I will look too.

Maybe Lag will post them again for us if we ask kindly!

I am working on a video that I will post on youtube soon for public viewing that will explain my take on hitting vs swinging..

it will address longitudinal acceleration vs radial or tangential.

it will show the two different protocols of rt arm participation

it will show the different between the arms coming off the body,
and staying on the body, and how that affects swing plane.

It will show how a swingers right arm is pulled straight, and how a hitters right arm is driven straight..

It will explain how a hitters saves his right arm and how it is better to fire it into P4 not into impact.

It will show how swingers create an off plane equal angular spiral effect regarding swing plane, and how hitters actually have better geometry through impact than swingers.

It will show the proper hinging action for both methods.

I will discuss the pros and cons of both..

The video is actually already shot, I just have to work on the audio commentary.. so it shouldn’t be too far off.. also a book in the works
and a fairly detailed dissertation on my views of Homer’s epic book “The Golfing Machine”

As far as playing, I will be competing in the San Francisco Persimmon Open next month going for two TGRA titles in a row.
and I am going to attempt to become the first player in 15 years to qualify for the US Open with a persimmon driver.. lots of fun stuff!

Beezneeds,

I am not a short hitter…
If I hit a modern driver on the PGA tour I would be about 71rst on the rank… about 291.

I base this on two things.. one, I hit a modern driver 40 yards farther than my persimmon.

Second, I played with Kevin Sutherland for 4 years (we were college teammates) and I know how he hits it.. I was always slightly longer than him. Maybe he has beefed up some but so have I.. He’s not going to blow it by me.

When I nail my persimmon I can get it out there 280 which is 320 with a modern club. so no I am not short. That is like saying I hit it longer than someone else because I am holding a 4 iron and they are hitting a 8 iron.

Hey Lag, all the best for your games next month. Would love to see you make the open, you certainly have the passion and drive let alone the skills! Go hard mate,,,,

Showme: I never called you a has been either… I said you are acting like a has been by complaining about something that will never change and by constantly remaining stuck on the “glory” days of the passed it is doing nobody any favours as all I want to know what we can do now to improve, in the current climate of golf. I will accept that your roid comment was tongue in cheek even though I dont think it truly was. My whole point was to just move on. If you actually read my posts I was agreeing with you. The technician side from yester year is gone and I think it is a shame however no amount of wishing for past times will ever bring it back.

Bio: As usual you are spot on. Anyone can punt it down to the green thats not where the skill in golf lies. A person who can chip and putt and score will always make it competitively, thats where the game of golf truly lies.

Styles: A bit rich coming from you! You have actually created your own thread to give us a personal commentary of your exploits, how much more look at me can you get? What are you playing off again?

Same goes for you buddy, if you dont like what I have written feel free to ignore it.

Acting like a has been?....sounds eerily similar to being a has been Junior….anyhow
Myself and Lag were actually talking about how to improve a player in todays current climate like you suggest…...and that was to use blades….and older style clubs that gave feedback and didn’t make your mishits seem like you were on the road to superior golf….which is what we said was covering up just how good a player really was.
Lag asked me some pertinent questions about how the pro game has changed….. I answered it with my violin in my hand according to you …. I don’t care mate. I will give advice to all and sundry knowing I have the experience and knowledge from my career to possibly help others in their quest for a better game
I will more than likely go ahead and answer the rest of lag’s questions at some point in time so if you don’t want to tune into the response…that’s great….. do a “no comment” and read something else and save yourself some embarrassment . Golf is about many facets not just long driving and growing some muscles and I thought and Lag thought I may have something to offer to those who were interested…...you weren’t…no skin off my back…. just don’t be arrogant in your response and all would have been fine.
And I did say my remark in jest…... in other words I meant take a chill pill
Moved on….great

Lag – Shome,

Cheers for the replies. So Shome, what’s your take on Tiger’s striking? Flusher?

Also, Shome, I’d add one other thing into you not missing one tournament through injury, which doesn’t relate to conditioning…...

You are one of the lucky ones with a solid, well put together body.

Would love one of those!

OPTI

Lag – Shome,

Cheers for the replies. So Shome, what's your take on Tiger's striking? Flusher?

Also, Shome, I'd add one other thing into you not missing one tournament through injury, which doesn't relate to conditioning……

You are one of the lucky ones with a solid, well put together body.

Would love one of those!

OPTI

I have been lucky enough to play with Tiger during tournament rounds when something is on the line and also practicing….so I have seen both sides, as you know some people are range pros and lose their nerve or feel during a proper tournament round.
As far as Tiger flushing the ball…..it is very flush. The club makes solid contact every time. You can see it and you can hear it. We all know when we hit one right in the screws ourselves the noise it makes….well multiply that by every shot and you will feel how well Tiger connects with the ball.
I was impressed with his ball control. he didn’t move the ball around a lot ….not a lot of big curvature to his shots, but was always trying to shape it slightly one way or the other. My impression was that when he hit it, it stayed hit….no wind was going to fool with it
He has great control of his trajectory…...low ones to back pins and skipping them up….high soft ones when required…. an art that has been forgotten.
When you throw in the fact that he chips it and putts it as good as anyone out there….it is hard to see him getting beat at all any week when compared to some of the other games that pop up from time to time and beat him.
It is very impressive all around. I know people make light of his driving stats sometimes….but put it this way. If he wanted to hit every fairway he would tone down his swing and do it with absolute ease….he has a stinger 3 wood that can split every fairway and plus the courses don’t dictate a straight drive on many given weeks. It is more about length the way courses are set up. Tiger however isn’t overly concerned about length as he doesn’t use all the brand new hi tech stuff….he wants feel.
He hits driver through doglegs sometimes to get the angle to the pin and doesn’t mind if he is in the rough for those shots.
the key stat is he has lead the G.I.R category the last few years…..so that shows just how well he hits it and how well he controls his ball even from some of the predicaments he may get himself into at times.
Everyone who has never seen him play needs to get at least one days worth of viewing at The Masters at Kingston Heath later in the year. It is well worth it

Shome,

That’s the run down I was looking for. Thank you so much for that, you are one of the lucky ones to have seen it first hand as a playing partner!

I’m in the process of sorting the trip to Melbourne next year, I’ve just got my fingers crossed that the NSW government gets its arse into gear so that he plays the Aussie Open. Imagine that, Lag and Tiger dueling at NSW Golf Club. I’d love to see Tiger taking on NSW if the wind decides to blow…..

I agree with Lag, NSW is one of the best golf courses on the face of the Earth. That tee shot at 15 is one of the most visually intimidating I have witnessed. All round mint track….

Thanks again shome

OPTI

NSW is certainly a challenging course if the wind blows in the correct direction. Same ocean views as Pebble in many respects but a much tidier nicer put together course design and blend of holes.
I remember years ago hitting 7 iron into 17 in the morning with no wind and 3 iron in the afternoon when the wind was up…....same on the 6th par 3 from the rocks…..totally different course depending on the direction.
Don’t think if it’s gonna happen but Tiger would enjoy that place also

I think one of the points we have been making is that it would be nice if the tour courses required players to hit fairways, and not just bomb it long.. If the courses are tight with a lot of trees or bushes, you really have to drive it straight..

I don’t remember a lot of the US Tour players doing all that well down in Australia when I played.. although Calc won the Australian Open one year.. and John Morse, who was not a PGA Tour player at the time, took down the Australian Open one year.. but he really hit straight.. and talk about heavy clubs.. Morse’s irons were E-5! it was like he had lead in the shafts.. maybe he did.. we used to hang out a lot and he told me he liked to always be able to feel the head of the club, even if he hadn’t played in a while.. he wasn’t much of a ball beater.. just a guy who really controlled the ball well.

Is the Australian Tour still playing all those tricky classic courses or are most of the events now on newer courses with the more open feel to them?

If we get back to the golf swing, I think it is the driver that is really a different animal.. Certainly we can gear the driver swing for accuracy, or distance, however, it is not easy to do both. There have been very few drivers of a golf ball that have combined the two extremely well.

Iron shots will always be about accuracy, regardless of technology.
Having proper distance control and trajectory control, working it left and right.. all require a proper golf swing.

The modern driver is somewhat foreign compared to the rest of the set.. In a traditional set, clubs were set up about a 1/2 inch difference in length, and if you went from a 1 or 2 iron to a three wood, to a driver you only added an inch and a half..

WIth the modern driver, I see a lot of 45 and 46 inch drivers, and it is a big leap from a player’s irons, to take that feel and apply it to such a long club. The materials are often totally different, both the heads and shaft, the size is very different obviously. Proportionally extremely light in weight. You almost have to have a separate swing feel for the club.

I think it’s a tricky paradox..
because if you groove the right kind of swing to hit a long light driver, that swing will be quite different than a good precision iron swing. This kind of lack of compatibility I don’t think has been really assessed yet completely.

Lag Said:
because if you groove the right kind of swing to hit a long light driver, that swing will be quite different than a good precision iron swing. This kind of lack of compatibility I don't think has been really assessed yet completely.

I agree completely with that statement! My driver swing is way off and feels entirely different. I dug up and old (still steel headed) driver and swung it. It felt so much better because I could actually lag the head easier. Same with an old Warbird 3W I’ve got.

Lag Said:
because if you groove the right kind of swing to hit a long light driver, that swing will be quite different than a good precision iron swing. This kind of lack of compatibility I don't think has been really assessed yet completely

I’m not qaulified to say a lot in this illustrius company… but any way, course design ie more dog leg holes that force you to use irons shape shots etc… mixed in with long drive holes, and some interesting tricky greens wouldn’t that test all three skills required in the moddern game of golf ?
I’m pretty sure the swing of a putter is every bit and more different to that of a modern day driver ???
So my point being, Isn’t a good thing to involve all three skills in to this great game that we play?

Lag,

On the driver swing, I agree it’s totally different, but can’t the same be said of the short game (chipping)?

I started understanding this swing with the blades first, then it took a gross amount of effort but the driver has finally come, and yes it is different, but this swing does translate into better driving mechanics IMHO. I mean as you well know, I was no where near ‘shaping’ drives last year.

My stance is different, and I save more right arm, but the pivot is identical IMHO (just timing is delayed perhaps a millisecond more). But I think I am more understanding your teaching in relation to the driver MORE so than the short game.

When I practice chipping, I had a very straight through kind of swing, straight back, and through. Now that my iron swing is SO pivot based, I find this is a very different animal for short game. Do you recommend swinging around your body as much for short game? Or is it more arms based for yourself?

P.S.
I’m looking very forward to your video on swing vs hit, as I have developed from your instruction my own mental list of differences. I want to see how accurate my own understandings are compared to yours based on what I’ve learned in the last 6 months.

I think one of the points we have been making is that it would be nice if the tour courses required players to hit fairways, and not just bomb it long.. If the courses are tight with a lot of trees or bushes, you really have to drive it straight..

I don't remember a lot of the US Tour players doing all that well down in Australia when I played.. .............

Is the Australian Tour still playing all those tricky classic courses or are most of the events now on newer courses with the more open feel to them?

Lag…... I made a point about this in the golf architecture thread and Royal Melb….. didn’t want to bring it up here…. have a read
Gotta try get this skype thing up and running so we can talk face to face soon…..

Lag -

Sorry, I didn’t mean ‘short hitter’ per se…..

What I should have said was that you prize accuracy and purity of strike over sloppy, uncontrolled distance…...

Thanks for the answer – video sounds fascinating and I also look forward with great interest to the book.

Quoting Lag:

“There are 20 handicappers that can hit the ball farther than I do…

“I trade some of my potential velocity for accleration, in other words, I'd gladly give up some mph for an increase in acceleration, because acceleration is the secret to golf, not velocity.”

Lag/Showme,

What’s your opinion on shaft flex? I know you’ve talked about going heavy with the irons….. do you like to go as stiff as possible? It seems like if we want to maintain shaft flex post impact, it would be easier accomplished with a “less-stiff” shaft. Were most of the guys on tour using S and X? Anyone in regular flex?

Is there a torque/accuracy trade-off compared with flex? I get the impression that most manufacturers (and some fitters) dial in shaft flex purely as a function of max clubhead speed, but it seems there is a thrust/loading profile that should be considered. When True Temper was doing their “shaft lab thing” years ago, we had one in the area. I knew more than one good player with plenty of clubhead speed being told they should be in a “regular” flex as a result of the testing. (They usually didn’t believe it and wouldn’t change).

Robbo

I know the question was for Lag and Show me Robbo and I am actually interested in their opinions but this is my current gripe also. I believe you are spot on mate and the loading/unloading profile is far more important than the max speed readings they are currently fitting on. If a shaft company pushes a system for amateurs where they measure the loading/unloading profiles to fit shafts rather than the stereotypical one that most have now, they will make a fortune!

And save me a hell of a lot of money!! hahaha

I have just recently been “playing” with my driver shaft flex – which resulted as an accident doing a demo for my exhibitions, where I began hitting a regular shafted 45” 10.5 degree driver to show that long drive equipment did not influence distance.

Would also be interested in hearing Lag, Show Me, BPGS1 and RT1’s thoughts on swingweight and its effect on distance, control and playability?

Great topic raised mate

Junior

Lag, do you think that your approach effectively increase the size of the sweet spot?

Basically, by doing things as you do you – maintain the flex in the shaft all the way down – you increase the distance gained and accuracy on off center hits…..

Not saying you’re not a pure striker – far from it! – but is this a major benefit you get from it?

Good stuff…...I agree swingweight is highly important…. I sort of lost track of that because companies have kept on bringing out lighter stuff and bigger heads saying it was the latest and greatest so I went with it and kept on playing with it even though many of them never felt entirely comfortable in my hands…
Something Lag said blew a light bulb in my head and I have now heavied up my irons….and in fact today took out my ‘old’ driver heads (circa 1997-1998) and hit them…..some even with steel shafts in them and obviously shorter in length than graphite….... I also took me recent drivers I have used to compare
While the majority of the steel shafted ones only went approx 5-7 yards shorter for me than the longer graphite I felt more control with the heavier overall club weight. I actually felt the head throughout my swing and had a sense of where it was again and didn’t feel like I was swinging a toothpick
The last driver I tried actually went straightest and the farthest… It was an old Titleist 975 J-VS 44 inch maybe (didn’t measure it) with a steel Dyn Gold X shaft….. but I had tipped it way down so the last step was just above the ferrule. Went father, straighter and had more shots solid and in the center of the face than I have been getting with my techno drivers over the past how ever many years
Interesting food for thought. Obviously not everyone’s cup of tea but seemed to work well for me.
Junior and robbo65
Absolutely….. the fitting process sounds great but certainly is lacking. Especially when there are so many shafts to choose from. Many van guys on tour didn’t even know half the shafts that kept popping up. They would try to tell you the logic behind the shaft but they all react differently to different heads and different swings.so nothing was gospel….......shaft fitting is more important to a club than the head or the supposed setup and logic of the shaft as it was designed and many times I have been told to use such and such a shaft …(as they go by my launch and spin etc) and it has been total BS….. For me that is…. for some it may work
I have been suggested by club companies to try a weaker shaft S instead of X but it always ups my spin rate…. I have been told to use more loft for a higher launch but that always upped my spin rate….I tried different balls and that did nothing either….so all that info did me no good and in the end I didn’t know what the hell to use . I tried to change my swing a bit but that did nothing except make me more inconsistent from the tee?
It’s all a whacky world…the club stuff. In theory numbers from monitors are great learning tools….I do however think trial and error by taking clubs out on the course is the best scenario…. I was lucky in that regard that I can get my stuff for free and that project would be costly to the amateur….so it’s sort of being between a rock and a hard place

I know the question was for Lag and Show me Robbo and I am actually interested in their opinions but this is my current gripe also. I believe you are spot on mate and the loading/unloading profile is far more important than the max speed readings they are currently fitting on. If a shaft company pushes a system for amateurs where they measure the loading/unloading profiles to fit shafts rather than the stereotypical one that most have now, they will make a fortune!

And save me a hell of a lot of money!! hahaha

I have just recently been ’Äúplaying” with my driver shaft flex – which resulted as an accident doing a demo for my exhibitions, where I began hitting a regular shafted 45” 10.5 degree driver to show that long drive equipment did not influence distance.

Would also be interested in hearing Lag, Show Me, BPGS1 and RT1's thoughts on swingweight and its effect on distance, control and playability?

Great topic raised mate

Junior

It is quite possible that your sole purpose in life is simply to serve as a warning to others.

jr,

interesting….. are you saying you were hitting it nearly as far with a 45” R as with a 48” XX?? (I believe 48 is the limit in the LD world, and it seems most of you guys are in some really stiff stuff).

robbo

showme,

Very interesting info. Coincidentally I went back to my old 975D (with that stock EI-70 shaft) a few weeks ago (from my 905R with a very “high-tone” counter-balanced UST shaft in it). I might give up a few yards, but to be able to feel the head again is a glorious thing. It has what I would describe as a “meaty” feel vs the “airy” feel of the 460cc titanium heads. I also try to mix in some persimmon driver work during my practice time now….. it’s a good feedback tool.

My problem is high-spin (sounds like you deal with that as well). I think with Lag’s help, my spin rate is getting lower. I was on Trackman last week, and (on solid hits) it had dropped from around 3200 to 2800 or so….... something I had not been able to achieve despite my valiant efforts.

Thanks for all your insight and posts. I really enjoy hearing from those who participate on the “big stage” and who aren’t afraid to talk about the swing. Sometimes I think half the pro’s out there are terrified to talk mechanics…..perpetuating the idea that you have to be “born with it” to play high-level golf.

robbo

robbo65
I don’t regard myself as a great ‘talker’ of the swing like some are… i just try and keep it reasonably simple so it can be understood by the masses….. I know I probably swing according to the golf machine ideals…but to put it bluntly it was the swing i learned from a few lessons when i was young and from reading and imitating others as a youngster…...so I guess I was lucky, I could do that stuff without thinking much about it or having to think about it….....
I don’t know ANY of the golf machine thoughts….. never seen the book let alone read it, and I love golf books. I have about 400 books of all varieties and love flicking thru them from time to time
But I think I am near the mark with most regards that I talk about, as I do know from playing with the world’s best and picking their brains what works and what doesn’t work and what it is meant to look like and the angles and fundamentals we need to reproduce good shots.
So forgive me if I don’t know what PP3 is and all that…... I will leave the ultra technical stuff to Dart, Guru, Lag etc
I think lag’s ideas will certainly help the spin rate like you suggest….he switched on a light in my head about how I used to play when I was younger. Can’t wait to get that groove back again.
Gotta remember technology is designed to make mishits better, not a good strike better, so if you can middle it with the correct technique you could probably use a tin can with a stick for a shaft…. it works for some and not for others.
Glad you find some of my insight intriguing….

SMTM and others …. please tell me a little more about spin rates. I have been brought up thinking I should aspire to a high spin rate to get better lift and control once the ball hit the dance floor. I know that more spin laterally can overcook fades and draws. So what is the difference of optimal spin rates for a tour pro and a weekend warrior? How much does the ball brand influence spin rates vs club contact?

Whitednj
I am not a great supplier of this answer so someone else chime in also as I have hated getting into the too technical side of things with equipment…... the best way for me was to try something and see how it reacted for me….not what “facts” they wrote on the box or the review of a ball or a club…....... all I know is most (not all) balls today are designed to come off the driver with less spin….they say for distance reasons but you lose control too IMO when a ball plays that way
Too much RPM spin lifts the ball into the air like you said and distance is lost….Fair enough
But if the ball doesn’t spin much as they design it to play…..how do you then stop the ball on the greens…... and that’s why golfers who can…..play with a softer ball that doesn’t make a clicking sound when hit…..and feels softer and compresses on the club so they can actually get the spin around the greens and have some nice feeling touch….but by doing that do you then give up something with the tee shot by getting the ball and feel you want for your irons…... on the flip do you get what you want with the driver but then lose out on the irons?
To me the greatest sound is the ball compressing on the clubface….not one that just jumps off and I don’t know or feel where it is going.
I have always found that you sacrifice one for the other
I do know most pros aspire to have their driver RPM somewhere in the mid 2000’s I believe….but that is with a driver and all related to distance… I have no idea what they are after with an iron as the RPM would alter with each club hit depending on the loft..
That’s my take….but I steered clear of a lot of this crap because one persons take by looking at numbers on a machine didn’t always hold true with what occurred on the course during play

Junior,
Would also be interested in hearing Lag, Show Me, BPGS1 and RT1's thoughts on swingweight and its effect on distance, control and playability?

Great topic raised mate

Junior

You need weight to have feel, and you need light to create speed. I am not telling you anything you don’t know !! I believe the perfect combination is heavy as you can go without sacrificing clubhead speed. Mass is important in the equation but if it is too heavy speed will be lost..do you agree? This is probably up your alley mate..

The unique thing about today’s driver is they make the head lighter so the shaft can be longer and create more lag on the shaft without jacking the weight up.

OK. So a ball like the Pro V1 gives high spin rates? It sure stops well and is a soft feel. So why do I hit this ball further than the “max distance” rocks? Maybe because it is so expensive I put my best swing to use? Maybe I get better compression? Why can I bend this ball better than any others I have tried? And I have tried PLENTY!

So, trying to steer clear of the crap as you say (and I agree) does the ball played by a pro make a lot of differnce to a season’s averages? IE, can you play the same level of golf with any brand’s “made for the tour” ball?

OK. So a ball like the Pro V1 gives high spin rates? It sure stops well and is a soft feel. So why do I hit this ball further than the ’Äúmax distance” rocks? Maybe because it is so expensive I put my best swing to use? Maybe I get better compression? Why can I bend this ball better than any others I have tried? And I have tried PLENTY!

So, trying to steer clear of the crap as you say (and I agree) does the ball played by a pro make a lot of differnce to a season's averages? IE, can you play the same level of golf with any brand's ’Äúmade for the tour” ball?

They say it gives higher spin rates when compared to the ProV1x… and that is why i never read or believe what they write on the box about what the ball is ‘meant’ to do…....and why I never listen to a review by ‘Joe Blow” in a magazine
Your swing arc into the ball may be just right for that ball to compress well and have a great trajectory and control and distance…so don’t question that just run with it…..you have stated that is the one for you so keep doing it….like I said “trial and error”

As for tour balls….. In my opinion most balls on the market are the same….almost to a tee…..same construction , same thickness of covers and layers…...etc…. some may spin slightly more, some less, some feel slightly softer, some harder….. but absolutely minute differences as far as I can tell
I know not that long ago Nike were made at the Bridgestone factory and I am sure other companies had similar agreements, so with that in mind…..would the ball be similar if it was made in the same factory as a competitor’s ball? probably

You get enough clubhead speed and compression for a rock to feel like just that.. a rock and it does nothing for you…. just like pros don’t use rocks for balls…. although all these new extra layers do make today’s ball more durable and harder feeling than 15 years or farther back

where I began hitting a regular shafted 45” 10.5 degree driver to show that long drive equipment did not influence distance.

Junior sweet reassurance to hear that, thanks !

Shome, out of interest are you still active playing on tour ?
and which Tour if that’s the case…...

any hint who you are :) ??

I’m not going to say who I am…. not ready for that yet, because that would just raise too many other things that I am not here for.
More interested in trying to help and give some insight.
I could obviously tell you some tournaments I won but that would give it away….sorry…I’m not much help am I.
I do still play on tour….not as often as I would like….but all the years of travel and family commitments have me enjoying spending some more time at home….. plus I get to watch this site a lot now which has been entertaining
Maybe down the road when I feel comfortable I will give the answer but not quite ready yet….don’t want any ISG’s yelling at me while I am out playing
Some may have a clue…..I have been around a while …...but no guessing please yet as I will be using the cone of silence

In fact if I have time and courtesy and nothing gets too personal I may do my own thread someday, like Lag has done here…. more for tour life I presume….....and NO…. I can’t tell anyone who are the dickheads on tour!!!!!! that would spell too much trouble!!!

SMTM and others …. please tell me a little more about spin rates. I have been brought up thinking I should aspire to a high spin rate to get better lift and control once the ball hit the dance floor. I know that more spin laterally can overcook fades and draws. So what is the difference of optimal spin rates for a tour pro and a weekend warrior? How much does the ball brand influence spin rates vs club contact?

White,

I’m not an expert, but I do have an idea about the ball thing.

When talking spin rates, I think it is usually in regards to the driver…....which is indcative of today’s game. Distance is “king”, so it seems they go about optimizing the driver first.

As showme said, too much spin off the driver and the ball baloons….reducing distance (assuming clubhead speeds in excess of 100 mph). Too little spin and the ball doesn’t stay in the air long enough….. reducing distance (particularly at lower clubhead speeds). There is an “optimum” combo of spin, launch angle, and club/ball speed which will vary for the 3 different values. I’m trying to get to something like 105-110 clubhead speed, launch around 11 degrees, and spin around 2400 rpm (those would produce optimum distance for me). I can get near the first 2 numbers, but my spin tends to be much higher which costs me several yards. All of these numbers are a function of how you swing the club. The ball and the clubhead/shaft have an effect, but as showme says, I think some of it is a crapshoot.

As far as spin off the irons…. that too is a function of equipment and swing, but I don’t know what the optimums are for each iron.

I think ball selection becomes very personal based on how it feels and how it performs. For instance, I used to spin the Prov1X like crazy with my wedges, yet it was supposed to be “harder and less spinny” than the Prov1. The X feels harder to me but I don’t know why it reacted like it did.

Lot’s of good balls out there. I think you need to experiment and don’t get too hung up on whether tour pro’s play them.

robbo

Getting back to lag’s questions from a few pages back…..

4) Do you think the younger players would get as good as quickly as they do, if they had to learn golf with older gear? or in other words do you think it took longer to learn the game before?
.
This is a bit of a two edged sword…....
Players today certainly have overall more technically sound or more classical looking swings due to video and more information. It used to be possible to look 3 fairways away or look down the range and pick out a person just by their swing….....now that is a much harder task because nearly everyone has similar technique
So swingwise they are all in better shape now than the past players who were basically learning the game themselves by swinging in a mirror or watching their divot patterns and trying everything they could to make that ball work for them. Trevino, Wadkins, Peete, Moe Norman, Hubert Green, david Graham….... all non classical looking swings and vastly different looking swings to the naked eye….but they all got that club where it had to be at impact to hit the shot at hand
Now…equipment wise because of this “better” tuition of the younger player they should in hindsight be better golfers earlier even by using the old equipment….... but in my mind I don’t think that would be the truth….... because the modern golf swing wouldn’t fit as well with the older equipment…... heavier clubs, shorter shafts, smaller heads, marshmallow for a ball…... they all swing in a way that promotes the new technology and may well be found lacking because of it….. Not all but many of them
The players of yesterday had the distinct advantage of knowing their own swing inside out and being able to get out of a funk straight away because they knew what the problem was because they pretty much coached themselves and knew what worked and what didn’t for them. They didn’t see video analysis of their swing or other’s swings to compate themselves with so they based their opinion and swing on feel and flight and divot pattern and trajectory… today’s player smacks the crap out of it, gets his square groove wedge out and stops it on the green…...if he loses his way he gets on the phone to his guru straight away and flies him in for a tune up or e-mails him a swing …. he listens to his coach without understanding his own swing enough and has much inconsistency in his game. It is interesting to note that the more consistent players and weekly contenders….Furyk, Vijay, Garcia all have ‘home made’ sort of swings….they know them and use them and have little concern about them other than doing the same thing that works for them and repeats over and over
It took longer to learn the game previously because of the less information at hand in an instant that we have today….. which is why today we have 19 and 20 year old kids on tour where previously that was left to tennis and unheard of in golf

SMTM … I reckon it’s because the young guys can afford a full set of weapons much younger than in my day when we had to make a 3-iron (blade) do the work of a sand wedge, 7-iron, 3-iron (of course) and driver. Not forgetting learning to putt with a 3-iron. I recently had a 12 year lay off from golf and when I came back I went into Golf World and spent hours trying to find a box of balatas. I felt like I’d woken from a coma when I saw the new drivers!