When I write about tempo, I make it somewhat technical so you can work it out precisely at the range. But you can’t use technical methods when you play.
So try looking at tempo this way.
Swing at a pace that feels unhurried. Not too slow, though. For sure, the swing is not a horse race, but it’s not a mosey.
A Sunday afternoon, unhurried tempo will work wonders.
A legendary instructor passed away on April 24. Spanish-born player and coach Manuel de la Torre, based in Wisconsin, taught that the golfer should think about how the club moves and not about how the body moves.
If the club moves correctly, the result will be a good shot. There are many ways the body can move to get the club to move correctly.
Once a golfer understands what the club is supposed to do, that player’s unconscious mind will take over and guide the body to produce that result.
See him explain this concept here.
de la Torre was an accomplished golfer, finishing as runner-up in the 1942 NCAA final. He won the Wisconsin State Open five times and the Wisconsin PGA Professional Championship five times. He had top ten finishes in PGA Tour events, too.
He was inducted into both the World Golf Teachers Hall of Fame and the PGA Hall of Fame.
He loved teaching, and kept his fees low to expand his reach. He famously charged juniors just $3 a lesson. He often said, “I’d rather make $1,000 teaching 50 people than $1,000 teaching 10.”
The book, Understanding the Golf Swing, explains his golfing philosophy.
Par 3s are golf without the driver. As from the fairway, the key to a good score is choosing the right club to hit off the tee.
That means, first of all, you have the right club in your bag. I have room in my bag for either a 21-degree or a 19-degree hybrid. I look at the scorecard of the course I’m going to play and take along the one that suits the longest par 3 best.
Base your club selection on the listed yardage plus seven yards. That’s the yardage to play the hole at regardless of where the pin is, unless it’s a deep green. Say it’s a 148-yard hole. Your 150-yard club will be short. Take one more club to get hole high.
Tee up the ball. Never hit it off the ground. The height of the tee should be no more than a half inch. Less than that is better. All you’re trying to do is give yourself a good lie.
The green on some par-3 holes is surrounded by hazards – mounds, bunkers, high grass. Most of that will be in front of the hole or to the side. Forget the pin. Take enough club to land the ball on the green beyond the trouble.
Unless you hit the ball pretty straight, consider deliberately playing short and chipping on if it takes more than 5-iron to reach the green. Such a long par 3 is more likely to be a bogey hole than a par hole, and laying up like this could keep a double bogey off your card.
If the green you’re hitting into has no safe place to bail out to, hit a knockdown shot. Take one more club, and swing it back three-quarters. Think of keeping the clubhead low on the follow-through and continuing straight toward the target after contact. Finish with your hands in front of you.
If there is water in front of the green, find out exactly how long that carry is and take TWO more clubs from there. Grip down halfway and swing normally.
When you miss the green, think carefully about the chip. Start by finding a spot to chip to from where you can easily two-putt, and zero in from there.
Have an overall strategy for the round, too. You can break 90 by parring one par 4. You can break 80 by parring two. (In addition to what you do on par 4s and par 5s, (q.v.).
Don’t leave that to chance, though. Pick the ones you can handle and and go after those.
Final thought: the night before you play, spend some time with a pencil and paper and practice writing 2s. Nice, clear, florid 2s. This is mojo that will pay off the next day.
A few days ago, I was on a course which in one spot has the tee boxes for consecutive holes right next to each other. One is a par three, which you play, then walk back to where the next tee is, a par five.
There was a group on the tee of the par five, so when we got the other tee, we waited until they finished teeing off, sitting down on the bench to watch the show.
One guy tees off with a long iron (there’s a pond across the fairway such that if you have even moderate length, you’ll hit into it), takes a vicious swing, and cold tops a 40-yard dribbler. You have never seen so much effort deliver so little result. Well, maybe you have.
Anyway, he says, “I’m going to hit another one.” I think to myself, “Yes. Please. Hit another one.”
So he tees up another one, puts this graceful swing on the ball and just kills it. Beautiful, powerful shot, straight down there.
He picks up his tee and says to his buddies, “You know, it’s amazing how well you hit the ball if you just slow down your swing a little bit.”
Thus endeth the lesson.
Impact is the big thing these days. We have all learned that the bottom of the swing should take place somewhere in front of the ball.
How deep the bottom of the swing should be is another discussion — do you take a divot, or do you sweep the ball off the grass?
There is more to that subject, though.
First, a story.
Last summer when I had a playing lesson in which one of the shots was hitting an 80-yard pitch into a tight pin.
I took three rehearsal swings, each one of which felt good to me. The pro stopped me before I hit the ball and said each swing had been to different depths, which would send the ball to different distances.
That’s because one of the brushed the top of the grass, one of them struck the ground with a heavy thump, and the third one thumped the grand lightly.
He said if I wanted to master this shot I had to learn how to come through the ball at the same depth every time. Here’s how I’m doing it.
I have a piece thick-pile carpet and practice swinging across it with a half swing, making the same sound each time the sole of the club brushes the carpet. That means the club swung down to the same depth.
Here’s a way you might go about feeling your swing so this happens.
As you stand over the ball, feel like your arms are hanging from your shoulders like a shirt would hang down on a coat hanger — no tension, very relaxed.
Now swing the club from the point where the coat hanger is suspended, on your spine at the spot level with the top of your shoulders. Just swing back and forth with that spot as the pivot, with a good rhythm and an easy tempo, and let your arms and hands follow.
Keep a relaxed feeling in your arms the entire time. All you want in them is enough muscle power to move the club and be in control of the clubhead — no more. Don’t try to control your stroke consistently with your arms. You can’t do it, and it all gets frustrating pretty quickly.
As you repeat your swings, key in on that consistent sound of the sole of the club brushing the carpet.
Admittedly, this is all fine tuning that you don’t need if you just want to get the ball around the course. If you want to get GOOD, though, start attending to this detail.
Not to mention, after a month or so you should have a new and effective pitching stroke that will bleed over into your full swing as well.
Every time I write about the Masters I get in trouble. One time at The Sand Trap I tried to defend my contention that the Masters does not deserve to be considered as a major championship. After politely brushing aside one irrelevant invective after another, the forum owner locked down the thread.
Last year, when I wrote in this space that Augusta could become obsolete within a decade or so, people at The Hackers Paradise responded as if I were advocating kicking stray dogs and knocking down old ladies.
I just don’t get it. For so many people this tournament sits at the right hand of their supreme being of choice. So if I haven’t stepped in a big enough cow pies already, let me move onto this year’s tournament and try to offend people in newer ways.
Right off the top, it does no good to predict a winner. Bubba Watson is halfway though Arnold Palmer’s run of winning four times in consecutive even-numbered years, but Bubba has too much competition now. And Bubba is not Arnold Palmer.
Jason Day? Probably not, especially if the tournament committee has the cajones to give him slow play penalties like they did to some kid from Asia three years ago.
But since they didn’t flinch when Tiger Woods took an illegal drop on the 15th hole several years ago, Jason can take all the time he wants to visualize his shot.
Jordan Spieth? He’s enough off his game right now that he can contend, but not quite get there.
Rickie Fowler? Really.
How about Phil? Will Tiger show up and try to play? Arnie won’t make a ceremonial first tee shot. Gary will hit one and then do 400 crunches on the spot. Jack will split the fairway without even trying hard.
But what I really want to talk about is the thuggery that lurks behind The Perfect Tournament.
We all know that the Committee puts up with no nonsense. Gary McCord and Jack Whitaker were bounced from the premises permanently after using phrases like “bikini wax” and “mob” on the air.
Then there is the tournament’s own brand of Sharia law.
Golf writer John Hawkins said he was almost removed from the premises once when he stood on a golf cart to try to see above the mob. Sorry, gathering of fans. Sorry, patrons. What he was removed from, physically, was the golf cart.
This month’s Golf Digest has a column by The Undercover Pro about all this. About players. Cell phones on the practice tee? “…it’s not worth the potential aggravation.”
His coach took a video of TUP’s swing with a Blackberry and spent the rest of the day enjoying the sights of downtown Augusta.
To make a long story short, TUP’s Dad tried to use his phone on premises to check on a credit card that had been declined. “…two guards [!] grab him by the shoulders and usher him out…into a small room and I have to go and get him…there’s no sense of sorry for any misunderstanding.”
Then there’s the killer finish. “Tons of players have stories just like mine, I’m sure. Nobody talks about them because life’s easier when those stories don’t get out.”
As long as I’m digging myself a hole here, I might as well dig all the way. I would love to see the numbers on how many people attending the tournament are ejected and for what transgressions. But that’s a more closely guarded secret than which Tour players have been fined for profanity.
What I would also like to see is, just once, for the USGA to set up the course in U.S. Open style and see how it would hold up. I mean, it no longer plays as it was designed, so why not? You know. Rough? Narrow fairways? Pins you don’t dare shoot at?
As for me, I’ll watch the final few hours of the broadcast on Sunday afternoon. Something historical could happen. But on the other days, I’m going to worship at the golf course of my choice, and it ain’t Augusta.
Can’t hardly wait for the U.S. Open in June.
Does this happen to you? You go to the range and get loose. You hit a few balls and they’re perfect. Or you go to the practice green and the first few chips you hit end up right next to the hole, or the first few putts go right in.
And after that, you can’t do a thing right. You hit ball after ball, trying to get back the magic you had at the start, and you never quite get there. Well, maybe you shouldn’t try.
James Sieckmann has a new book out, titled, Your Short Game Solution. In addition to invaluable short game advice, Sieckmann spends a little time talking about the difference between block practice, which you do a lot of, and random practice, which you probably don’t do at all.
Block practice is hitting the same shot over and over again. Random practice is where you have a shot for the first time, and you hit it. Then you pick a different shot and hit that one.
Sieckmann suggest that you spend a only few minutes in block practice, then the rest of the time in random practice – hitting different shots to different targets with different clubs. The reason is that you train your brain much better that way.
He refers to an article in the blog, The Bulletproof Musician, that says our brain is wired to respond to change. It gets dulled by repetition.
What about practicing to perfection? Again, that’s not how our brain works. It was designed to improvise, not do the same thing over and over again, according to the work of Stanford engineer Dr. Krishna Shenoy.
Sure, you do have to practice a golf technique (the RIGHT technique) enough to have learned how to do it. That means a lot of repetitions. But you don’t pile up those repetitions. You do them over time, along with other techniques you’re learning.
Along the way you spend lots of time giving yourself problems to solve with each technique, even as you’re learning it.
So here’s what I would recommend. It’s how a practice session goes for me.
I get a small bucket of balls, 33. I’ll warm up with dry swings (no ball), then hit a few 9-irons, a few 7-irons, a few 5-irons, a few hybrids, and a few drivers. Back to the 7 or 5 and hit few fades and a few draws. I’ve hit about half the bucket.
This part is just to remind me how my swing works, to keep the feelings fresh.
Then I take out my wedges and hit to random distances. I’ll play with trajectory next. When maybe three or four balls are left, I’ll go back to the long clubs and hit a driver and a few irons. Done.
At the practice green, I’ll drop four balls and chip them to different holes. Or, I’ll pick one hole and chip to it from four balls different places around the green. This goes on, hitting different shots all the time, until I’ve gotten all four balls up and down twice in a row.
Finally, putting. Eight three-footers in a circle drill to a cup that is on slanted ground. Then a dozen or so 20-footers to different holes and from different directions — never hitting the same putt twice. Four balls to the same hole on the same line from 35, 15, 45, and 25 feet (in that order) until all of them go down in two. End with five straight-in two-foot putts, to go home with success in mind.
This is a post I was going to have to write sooner or later. I thought I would wait until I had some idea of what The Golfing Machine says instead of none. The “none” meant trying three ties to read it and getting nowhere.
But with help from a few online blogs, and a careful re-reading, I can finally talk to you about the book without being completely ignorant. Just unignorant enough.
A comprehensive overview would take the length of three blog posts, so I’ll just allude to a few highlights, and hope you’ll hunt up a copy and see what you make of it.
The Golfing Machine (TGM), by Homer Kelley, is not really an instruction book. It’s a compendium of swing features and components, broken down in a way that allows a golfer to build a swing from the very start, based on the particular physical characteristics and movement preferences of that individual.
It does not teach one swing. Someone calculated that if all the possible combinations of catalogued features were considered, TGM offers 446 quadrillion possible swings. One of them is right for you.
Actually, that’s not where the book goes. All the book is meant to do is take the way you swing, eliminate the parts of your swing that work against you, and substitute a different part at that same point that is compatible with what you do in the rest of your swing.
Instead of learning a new swing, you take the swing you have and make a few changes here and there so the whole thing works together. Who could argue with that?
It sounds so good that you want to pitch right in, but the problem is first you have to know what those parts are that need altering, and then you have to know which alteration to make with anywhere from three to fifteen variations per part, and after you have figured all that out, it really gets complicated.
You might need professional help with that, and there are certified TGM instructors if you want to go that route. But you can do it yourself if you consider matters carefully.
My swing is now emphasizing a matter I have brought up in the blog, the hands leading the clubhead, too much. My right arm and hand are now almost completely out of the swing. TGM is helping me put the right side back in without disturbing what I have accomplished with the left. That’s what this book can do for you.
Jim McLean wrote a article on TGM, praising it in general, but saying this about it. It is good for beginners and intermediate golfers, but Tour pros who latched onto it regressed. That would mean TGM is ideal for recreational golfers, but the problem with that is the book is so hard to read that you need to have a fair grounding in swing theory already to understand it and pick out the parts that might apply to your swing.
TGM is something of a cult book. If it was the be all and end all, every teacher would be using it and every pro would be teaching out of it. Clearly, that’s not the case.
You might want to hunt down a copy, though, to find out what all the fuss is about. You might find some bits of wisdom that help you tremendously. The rest of it you can forget about, and that’s all right, because that would be just what the author intended.
In last week’s post, I wrote, “It is one thing for your grip to be identical for every shot. That takes lot of practice, and is a good subject for another post.”
I use the phrase, “a good subject for another post” without following through more often than I should, but this week I’m following through.
My topic is what your hands are supposed to feel like as you take your grip — again, something you read very little about in discussions of the grip.
Most of what is written describes what the grip is supposed to look like. What it feels like is just as important in having your grip be identical every time you pick up a club. Your grip can look right, but still be off. It has to feel right, too.
Let’s begin without a club in our hand. We’ll take an air grip, so the feel of the club in our hands does not distract us from the main points of how the hands should feel when they come together.
The key feeling of the hands working as one lies where the side of the left thumb rests in the pocket of the right palm. It is not enough for the left thumb just to be placed there.
There needs to be a feeling that the thumb is locked into that place, and there is only one placement that will give you that feeling. A shift of even a quarter-inch either way, by sliding the thumb in the pocket, is enough to destroy that connection.
I have written that there needs to be a slight bit of pressure in this spot so the hands stay together, but that is not what I’m talking about now.
I mean a feeling that the left thumb and right palm touch each other, fitting so neatly together, that you feel as if someone who tried to pull your hands apart couldn’t do it.
The second feel is of the right little finger interacting with the back of the left forefinger and middle finger.
There are lots of places this little finger can go. Wherever that is for you, it needs to have the same feeling as the left thumb does — it’s comfortably in place, but fitting in with the other hand, in this case, the left, in an inseparable way.
Those two fingers, the left thumb and the right little finger, are what lock the hands together — not because they are fixed in place by pressure, but because they are in the right place.
Now we can pick up a club and work with the fingers that actually hold it. They are the last three fingers of the left hand and the first three fingers of the right hand.
The feeling in the last three fingers of the left hand is that they, and no others, are holding the club. That doesn’t mean to squeeze those fingers, just hold on with them.
The feeling in the first three fingers of the right hand is of stability. They support the action of the last three fingers of the left hand, but do not take over their function.
The segment of the right forefinger closest to the palm presses gently against the handle of the club. That pressing action keeps the right hand rotated inward a bit, in support of the left thumb resting against the right palm, to keep the hands from coming apart.
In all, none of these feelings should be pronounced. There should be firmness, but light firmness and not heavy or tense firmness.
Finally, regarding grip pressure, you know how Sam Snead said you should hold the club as if it were a little bird? Sam Snead had large hands and very strong hands. You might not be able to get away with holding a club that lightly.
If you feel the handle pressing against, but not compressing, the soft pads of your palm and the underside of your fingers, that is about right.
The tagline for my advice on how to help you play better golf is, “Little Things That Make A Big Difference.” Today’s post is about a thing so tiny you can hardly see it, and which I have never read or heard about before.
It’s about the way in which you place your hands on the handle, no matter what kind of grip you have or what it looks like.
Go get a golf club and I’ll show you exactly what I mean. A 5-iron will do nicely. I’ll wait.
[wait] [wait] [wait]
Got one? Good. Now. Hold the club out in front of you, in your right hand, so the shaft is inclined a bit above parallel to the ground. Turn the club until the leading edge of the clubhead is exactly vertical.
While watching the leading edge, don’t take your eyes off it, put your left hand on the handle in its grip position. The bottom line of the clubhead must not get disturbed as you’re doing this. If it got turned slightly to the right or left, the clubface is now out of alignment and, guess what, the ball won’t go where you want it to go.
We’re not finished. Assuming you passed the left hand test, now add your right hand to complete your grip. Do not take your eyes off the leading edge as you do this. If the leading edge turned, even just a bit, you blew it. You haven’t even put the club on the ground and taken your stance, and the shot has been ruined.
Cary Middlecoff said in his book, The Golf Swing,
“… it is quite easy to vary the grip slightly without being aware of it, and just a slight variance can make a vast difference in how the shot comes off.”
And again,
“So many golfers do not relate their bad shots to a basically bad grip, or to slight but relevant changes in their grip from one shot to the next.”
It is one thing for your grip to be identical for every shot. That takes lot of practice, and is a good subject for another post.
But the way you place your grip on the handle is part of it. Doing that haphazardly can make a grip that is perfect in every way ineffective because you did not relate the grip to the clubface when you placed your hands on the handle.
The clubface acts as a surrogate for your hands. They must be coordinated from the very start. Practice this deliberately, and when you play, be that much deliberate when you take your grip. It’s a little thing that makes a big difference.