Lag is like fire (natural lag vs. forced lag)

Fire is your friend. It helps you cook, it makes your house warm in the fireplace, it wards off angry spouses.

However, if you play with fire, you get burned.

Lag is the exact same way. Just like if you throw gasoline on the fire to create a bigger fire on your stove, barbecue or fireplace, it is going to run out of control. If you try to create more lag than you can control, you are going to get burned.

Natural lag, like fire, is your friend. False lag, is gasoline on the fire.

Ah, but centrifugal force is your friend too and trying to add or hold false lag, ruins the aid centrifugal force gives you in squaring the club and speeding it up..

The videos get a bit more technical than I like to get, but there is a large technically oriented crowd right now in golf. There are two videos, watch both parts.

The videos on lag

and the difference between natural lag and forced lag are done and will be up Monday.

Iron Byron and Perfie

(Today’s blog post will be succinct but helpful)

You have heard of both of these robots and we have been told they make perfect motions and we should copy them.

Science has yet to make a robot that works as wonderfully as the human body. These robots don’t have the same hinges or working parts as a human body. I want to yell several expletives at the people who want us to copy them.

I also want to fire curses at the people who want us to copy the swings of Ben Hogan and Moe Norman or some other system that is supposed to fit everyone(but you all know that already).

Let me say this loudly.

WE ARE ALL DIFFERENT, BOTH ANATOMICALLY AND MENTALLY. WE SHOULD NOT BE COPYING THE MOVEMENTS OF OTHER PEOPLE OR MACHINES.

FIND YOUR OWN GOLF SWING THAT MATCHES YOUR BODY AND SKILL LEVEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Let me take that back. I am going to get a bad hair piece, become as arrogant as possible, have my own show where I tell people how they are not as smart as me, name everything I own after myself, ruin a fledgling football league, build crappy golf courses and say they are better than Pebble Beach and lie about my handicap. Apparently that will make me the richest man on Earth. At least according to myself.

Really folks, we need to get out of this rut we are in about “the right way.” On this blog I suggest a lot of ways to improve that fit natural body motions. Balance, rhythm and getting out of your own way by eliminating things that don’t need to be there. Again, that is the “right way” of doing things.

My semantic mantra. It’s not about doing it the right way. There is no right way, just wrong ways. It’s about avoiding the bad things that get in your way.

OK, maybe not so succinct. Rant over.

To my new friends from spicygolfforum

Willkommen

I have no idea whether you like what I have to say or not, because I don’t understand German…other than in college a nice “fraulein” called me a “schwein”

Tiger, Tiger, Tiger

Don’t you know the cover up is always worse than the crime?

Didn’t you learn anything from the baseball steroid debacle? The guys who denied and covered up (McGwire, Bonds, Palmeiro, Clemons) are now pariahs. The guys who gave their mea culpas and admitted use are as popular as ever. In A-Rod’s case, maybe even more popular.

Kobe was accused of rape on top of adultery, everyone still loves him. His jersey is selling more than ever.

The tabloids and the internet don’t allow anyone to keep secrets for very long…not especially someone with the squeaky clean image of Tiger.

I am far from condoning what Tiger did, but if he had come clean immediately, after the story died down, people would be back to worshiping his great skill.

Now, guess what? He is no longer going to get a pass for his cursing (he leads the Tour in fines), his club throwing, his often refusals to sign autographs, his caddy confiscating and breaking cameras and anything else the media can drum up.

I still worship his great skill and I am flawed enough that I am not going to be self righteous about his infidelity (although I can be extremely frank and I say my fidelity to my wife is beyond reproach).

However, I will question his advisers and Tiger himself for trying to hide the unhideable. The sporting public forgives things as bad as murder. Just ask Ray Lewis and Leonard Little. The two things they don’t seem to forgive are denial of wrongdoing and sullying the game.

PS-We shouldn’t feel angry with Tiger, we should feel sorry for him. No matter what he did to bring the public ire upon him, he does not deserve to have the Wicked Witch of the North, South, East and West against him. He messed up BIG, he will pay a penalty none of us can imagine, so let’s just leave him alone and enjoy his great golf.

David Leadbetter had the shanks

This was one of the first dozen or so posts I put up. It was enjoyed by all who read it, even those who like what Leadbetter has to say. Dealing with a pregnant wife and an 11 month old 25 pound sack of potatoes tearing up the house is hard work and there isn’t always time for a poignant blog post. So here is a repeat for entertainment purposes and for those new to the blog…enjoy.
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I have seen David Leadbetter on TV many times talking about…well, nonsense.

IMO, he ruined the tail end of Nick Faldo’s prime with that stupid yellow bean bag with his name on it that you see at every driving range. If you swing into it too many times, it throws off the rhythm of your golf swing. Ask Nick what he thinks of the yellow bean bag if you ever see him.

Impact Bag? The only impact it has is to sprain your wrists and give you lumbago.

IMO, it is no coincidence that after Ernie Els started working with him, he was not seen on the top of the leader board in any majors. No more DL for Ernie, he is back on the leaderboard.

It is also my opinion that it is no coincidence that after Michelle Wie started working with him, she went from almost winning majors on the LPGA Tour, to not being able to break 80 for a while. No more DL, she gets her first win.

Several years ago, I used to live at PGA West where they have played the Skins game, The Bob Hope and Q-school.

I was playing the Palmer course one day and there was a film crew and several carts in the middle of the fourth fairway. I decided to go watch and found DL shooting an instructional video. I decided to listen along with 10 or 12 of my fellow members.

I won’t going into the specific technical nonsense he was spouting because I don’t want to expose you to what can only be considered the golf version of pornography. Needless to say, I disagreed with it, but I want to tell you what happened.

He spouted his nonsense, tried to implement it by hitting a shot to the green…dead 90 degree shank.

Take 2…same nonsense verbally, tried to swing that way…El Hozel about 4 feet from the first one.

Take 3…same nonsense into the camera…I would like to tell you he holed out door #3, but alas, it was another right turn special.

He slammed his club on the cart and it broke.

I would like to tell you what happened next, but I couldn’t contain my laughter and had to drive away.

Moral to the story. Why is much of the world trying to improve their golf game by listening to a guy who gives out info so bad, it gives himself the shanks?

Course strategy/management

The biggest problem I see with course management is people not understanding their limitations. Again, I include myself in this.

Understanding your limitations is not just understanding your skill level. It is understanding your normal shot pattern. In addition, and most importantly, it is about understanding what your limitations are TODAY.

I cannot illustrate examples for every conceivable scenario for every golfer, but here is an example that you can adapt to your game.

I was playing with a friend who is about an 18 handicap. He plays a big fade, bordering on a slice some days. We come to a 180 yard par 3 with a pin tucked back right behind a bunker and short siding to the right was going to be a difficult up and down for me…never mind him. I took a 7-iron at the middle of the green and tried to fade it…it went straight and I had about a 25 footer for birdie, from pin high. Not Tigeresque, but I was satisfied with my shot.

My friend gets up there, aims right at the pin, starts it at the pin, hits his patented fade and misses it short side. I asked him…”Jim, why did you aim at the pin?”

“Isn’t that the object of the game, to aim at the pin,” he said.

I replied, “no, the object of the game is to have the ball finish at the pin. You hit a big fade, so you need to be aiming at the far left hand side of the green.”

He hit another one, and of course, hit it dead straight. “See, that’s why I aimed at the pin.”

It didn’t dawn on him there was an error in his thinking on both shots. He played for the perfect shot on the first one and got in trouble when he hit his baseline shot. On the second one, he played for his baseline shot, hit a perfect shot and ended up in an easy up and down position, even for an 18 handicap.

You want to play every shot where you get the best combo of a good shot being good and your regular miss being playable.

I think every person reading this would absolutely be on my side of the debate. However, over 50% of the people reading this would be on my friend’s side of the debate when they have a club in their hand.

I have a theory. 73.485% of the brain that we use goes dormant when we have a golf club in our hands. Since we only use 5% of our brains, that means we are using barely over 1% of our brains when we play golf…it looks like it and the results support it.

I used to struggle at Q-school, because when I didn’t have my A or B game, I didn’t know how to wipe it in the fairway, blade it in the middle of the green, top a putt to within 3 feet and wish the 3-footer in. That is why Tiger is so great. He doesn’t shoot lower scores on his good days than everyone else on tour. He rarely has the low round of the week even when he wins by 15.

He shoots the lowest rounds in the field on bad days when his game is off because he knows how to manage his limitations on his bad days.

Trust me on this. You all need to learn what you do on your bad days, learn how to manage it and you will see your bad scores come way down.

Let me be clear. I am not saying you must be more conservative. That got me in trouble. I am saying learn your shot pattern on good days and bad…and learn how to play to their strengths and weaknesses.

There are no quick fixes in golf

This is a big reason golfers don’t get better. The insane desire for immediate gratification. There is no such thing as making a change and going from shooting 90 to shooting 80 in one day…at least not permanently.

Let me explain a few things to all of you that will help immensely.

1. If you make a change and it doesn’t feel a little uncomfortable or at least different…guess what? You didn’t change anything. By definition if you make a change, your feel won’t be the same and that will feel odd, or at the very least, different.

2. It takes time for your body to acclimate itself to the change where it does it automatically. If it takes Tiger 18 months to change his swing practicing 8 hours a day, how are we supposed to make a change and have it be ingrained in our swing from one day to the next after hitting a bucket of balls or playing one round?

3. Improvement in golf is not linear. If you make a proper change in your game you aren’t going to play better ever day until you shoot 32 (a perfect score for 18 holes). The biggest problem I see with people I give advice to is they let one bad day discourage them and they go back to their old way after one bad round. The one bad round is not because of the change you made, it’s because golfers have bad days. Did Tiger go back to his 2000 swing because he missed the cut at the British Open?…wait bad example…he should actually do that and that leads me to #4.

4. MAKE DANG SURE what you change is a good change. There are two slippery slopes here. Since I advocate being patient with changes and doing things that will make you better six months from now, you want to be careful about adopting something complicated that will lead you to a place of confusion. That is my problem with swing systems.

The other slope is adapting a rotating montage of quick fix tips you get from the golf media, your buddies or the know it alls at the range willing to offer them to anyone who will listen.

This is the most dangerous thing going on in golf right now. Because golf scores are not linear, sometimes we can implement a quick fix tip and it coincides with a good short game day…or a short game tip that coincides with a great ball striking day…or maybe it was just our day to shoot a low score and we equate the low score with the quick fix tip and that leads us down a road to multiple quick fix compensations…and a higher handicap.

DO NOT MEASURE YOUR IMPROVEMENT BY ONE SCORE, GOOD OR BAD. You measure your improvement over weeks and months, because that is how long it takes for improvements in your technique and/or course management to take hold.

My take on Tiger and his accident.

For those of you who question, “who crashes their car at 2 AM without it being alcohol related?”

I have a pretty young wife, a baby and another on the way. I don’t drink and I have never crashed into a fire hydrant at 2 AM, but I understand how…and those of you with wives and/or small children…you understand how as well.

I have to fly to see the in-laws today and I want to crash into a fire hydrant so I can be treated for lacerations of the groin…so I won’t have to go and so I can’t have any more kids.

Just so you guys know how brave I am…my wife and my mother-in-law read my blog on occasion.

I am so excited

I apologize this isn’t the exciting news that I told you about a few days ago, but it is a sign I am gaining some relevance. I got my first piece of hate mail. I can only discern three things from this correspondence. This individual is a proponent of Natural Golf, his reading comprehension is as sharp as a cue ball and I shan’t be receiving a Christmas Card from him. Below is a comment that was posted under the Moe Norman swing analysis and if you wish to agree or disagree, here is the link.

LINK

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Yes, Mr. Scheinblum, we have our opinions. But, maybe you should consider the science/physics of the golf swing before you attempt to shut off “debate” because no one wins. I believe that you don’t know as much as you would have us believe. Moe was the greatest (straightest, pure backspin) ball striker ever by age 19, winning the Canadian Amateur Championship twice in his mid-twenties. As Lee Trevino said, “he would have won them all (majors).” He was the only golfer ever tested by Titleist whose shots had no sidespin. Now well past your prime, I submit that you could only wish to have been as good a ball striker. Moe’s swing well into his thirties was longer than the video(at about age 60) you have and above his right shoulder at the top of the backswing. You state that we should copy what all the great players have in common. So you are not against teaching others what great players do. So why can’t I copy Moe? Because he doesn’t look like other great players, NONE of whom hit it straight as Moe? Maybe I should copy what these great players have in common: Furyk, Couples, Hubert Green, Trevino, Gay Brewer, Miller Barber, Hogan, Palmer, Nicklaus, Snead, Nelson and all of those guys who have so much in common. By the way, Moe also held the club better than anyone, in what is the optimum way to hit a ball resting on the ground with a stick, because there is PROVABLE less rotation of the club head through the impact zone. But, that might be too complicated you to understand, Mr. S, as you continue to copy that great golfing scientist of 125 years ago, Harry Vardon. His finger grip must be the best, since everyone (except Moe) has copied him for the last 125 years. And, Mr. Lavery, there are many who use Moe’s grip and hit it farther than he ever did.