2015 U.S. Open Preview

June 14, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

Winner: Jordan Spieth by one stroke over Dustin Johnson and Louis Oosthuizen

In 1971, Alan Shepard hit a specially prepared 6-iron while on the moon. If you want to know what a golf course in the moon would look like, I give you Chambers Bay, site of this week’s U.S. Open.

Amidst sandy areas, dunes, and steep hills, you can actually find fairways, greens, and trees (well, just one tree).

Getting the ball around the course is not straightforward. The fairways, which instead of being shaped like elongated sausages, look more like ruptured appendixes, offer several lines of play depending how much of the fairway you want to bite into.

As for the greens, they are not the slightest bit simple. If the USGA miscalculates, a pin position could be anywhere from embarrassing to impossible.

This photo shows the 1st and 18th fairways, with Puget Sound, Fox Island, and the Olympic Peninsula in the background.

Par will be 70, but it breaks down as 35-35 or 36-34 depending on whether the 1st and 18th are par 4s or par 5s (they will swap each day). Total yardage can vary between 7,200 to 7,600 yards.

Though it might not be apparent on television, there is an overall elevation difference from the highest and lowest spots on the course of over 300 feet.

Even though it is the Pacific Northwest, and Puget Sound, along which the course lies, is essentially an inland sea, there isn’t much rain or wind in June.

Trains run by the course affecting play on the entire 16th and 17th holes, and the tee shot in 18. These are not little commuter rains, but full-sized freight trains. Do not expect golfers to be allowed to wait the three or four minutes it takes for them to go by before hitting a shot.

In case you’ve ever wondered how hard a U.S. Open course is, the course rating this week is 77.3, and the slope rating is 145. That means if you shot 90, you could turn in a handicap differential of 9.9. Par is a +5.7 differential. But actually, I think it’s much harder than that.

The course is too new to have the key holes identified, but the most picturesque one is the 15th, a par 3 that runs toward the Sound and has the course’s only tree perched behind the green.

Here’s a detailed look at the course, hole by hole, from a caddy at the course. Study his comments well to get the most out of watching the tournament.

There are some odd rule quirks that you, and especially Dustin Johnson, should pay attention to. Greens and fairways are made of the same grass, fine fescue, and cut to virtually the same height. It can be difficult to know if your ball is on the green or not.

At the 2010 U.S. Amateur, played here, the USGA put small white dots around the green to mark its limits. They haven’t decided if they will do that for the Open. When in doubt, call a rules official, though how he or she will know is a good question.

Sandy areas that are raked are hazards, while sandy areas that are not raked and contain vegetation are through the green. Sometimes both can be found in the same larger patch of sand. Again, call a rules official if in doubt.

Finally, players will be permitted to move stones that are in a bunker, according to a local rule the USGA will put in effect for the tournament.

I asked a friend of mine, Jim O’Donnell, a 9-handicapper who used to live in Seattle, if he had played the course and if so, did he have any comments I could use for this post. He had played Chambers Bay, and here are a few of his thoughts:

“Accuracy and knowledge of the greens and approach areas will be required more than power. After I played some holes, I tried to determine again where a landing area for a successful shot should be. Alas, that doesn’t mean I could later execute that shot. The difference between an excellent approach and a disappointing one will be so fine that only someone in complete control of his ball striking will prosper.”

“For some greens, the undulations, ridges, and swales were a problem that only experience could mitigate. In that sense I agree with the USGA official [Mike Davis] who has stated that a cursory knowledge of the course will not suffice. There will be complaints about the greens.”

So who do I pick to win? The player with the best control of his irons will be hard to beat. That can be anyone who gets hot for four days. I will say this: the winning score will be over par, which means a player who is content to take what the course gives him will have a big advantage.

shot-making

How to Hit a Fade or a Draw, in 50 Words

May 31, 2015 recgolfer 2 Comments

(and one video, q.v.)

1. Always align your body parallel to the yellow rod.

2. Always aim the clubface halfway between the two rods.

3. Fade: the orange rod is the target line and the yellow rod is the swing line.

4. Draw: The yellow rod is the target line and the orange rod is the swing line.

Notes:
All this is predicated on being able to hit the ball straight at will. Otherwise, you’ll just be adding more uncertainty to your game.

Practice these shots before you use them on the course.

Make sure the swing line points in a direction that won’t hurt you if the curve doesn’t come off as planned.

When you set up, disregard your target. Think only of the direction you want the ball to start. If you think of where you want the ball to end up, you will try to move the ball there deliberately, ruining everything.

The amount of curvature you get depends on the angle between the two rods and your ability to curve the ball. Experiment to find out your results.

commentary, distance

The State of My Game

May 24, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

The posts I write are meant to help you play better. Whatever I put up here is something I tried myself and find that it works. I’m not going to tell you something I heard somewhere that sounds like it makes sense. I test it first. But it’s all about you.

Today, though is different. Today is all about me, though maybe even then you might find something in it that helps you as well.

Because of some back surgeries I underwent several years ago, I had to change the way I swing the golf club. I swing it much easier now. I haven’t measured my clubhead speed, though I know it’s slower because I have lost about twenty yards off the tee and one club from the fairway.

Distance, though, is only one part of playing golf. I have become much more accurate, because I have to be accurate. I have designed a swing, therefore, that hits the ball very straight, time after time. That’s certainly not a bad thing.

Through impact, my club hits the ground at the same spot, at the same depth, with a square clubface, consistently. The way I accomplish this is to lose all thought of hitting the ball powerfully, and instead, think of swinging the club gracefully.

To strike the ball accurately, so many things have to be lined up just right, and when this has to be done at speed it’s all more difficult. I swing as fast as I can while still keeping everything in order. If I tried to swing faster, I would only disrupt the impact alignments and start hitting the ball anywhere but where I wanted it to go. In addition, I doubt I would hit the ball that much farther to make the effort worthwhile.

I find my longest shots happen when I take care of swinging the club and let the club take care of the hitting. After all, the hit is built into your clubs. That’s why you paid so much for them. You just swing it and let the manufacturer take care of the rest.

The recreational golfer, who doesn’t have world-class talent, doesn’t have access to world-class coaching, nor hours a day to spend practicing, needs to play golf differently than the players who do. We need a swing that keeps the ball in play, first and last.

In my personal experience, and in what I see in the people I play with, the pursuit of distance, trying to hit each ball as far as possible rather than as straight as possible, is the number one reason why so many golfers play worse than they are capable of. I know it’s fun to really tag one, but if your overall game is designed around doing that, you’re costing yourself handfuls of strokes for the occasional satisfaction.

On the other hand, if you can build a swing that accomplishes the three things I mentioned earlier, you will hit the ball straighter, and you won’t lose distance, because you will be making a more solid impact. I lost distance because of a physical condition, but that’s not you.

Recreational golf is wrapped up in hitting the ball straight. Spend some time at the driving range just watching people and ask yourself, about every one of them, if their problem is that they don’t hit the ball far enough, or that they don’t hit it straight enough.

If you can change your conception of golf from hard and far to graceful and straight, and they act on it, you will be on the way to becoming the best player you can be. Well, as long as you can putt, too.

golf swing

Ben Hogan’s Three Right Hands

May 17, 2015 recgolfer 8 Comments

There’s a guy I play golf with occasionally who is in his 50s and new to the game. He’s small, but strong. His swing is, wind up the upper body and swing through as hard as you can with your shoulders and arms. When he connects, it’s really impressive. The other ninety percent of the time, it’s not.

He told me once that he read Ben Hogan’s book (Five Lessons) and mentioned the part where Hogan said he wished he had three right hands. Having read that book so much I almost have it memorized, I agreed that Hogan did say that.

I think my friend interpreted that as a green light to hit the ball as hard as he could with his right hand. That sure looks like what he’s trying to do.

What I didn’t say, because I don’t give unsolicited advice on the golf course, is my friend needed to read the whole sentence rather than just that part.  Hogan at that point (p. 101) was talking about the left wrist. I won’t give you the entire quote, but he said,

“…the left hand will not check or interrupt the speed with which your clubhead is traveling. There’s no danger either that the right hand will overpower the left and twist the club over. It can’t. As far as applying power goes, I wish I had three right hands!”

That’s it. You can hit as hard as you want to with your right hand IF THE LEFT WRIST IS IN THE PROPER POSITION (illustration below).

Hogan was not saying to hit the ball as if you had three right hands, period. There is a catch, and the catch is the shape of the left wrist.

The right hand turning over the left was my problem exactly for many years. I solved it by changing my grip and by giving my hands less responsibility through impact.

What I have is a flat left wrist at impact. Having that wrist bend outward like Hogan showed is beyond my ability. If you can get your left wrist flat (Hogan) and facing the target (Trevino) at impact, you’re way ahead of the game.

But back to the book. Hitting hard only makes sense if you are sure you can keep the clubface aligned while you’re doing it. Hogan showed you in Five Lessons how he did it.

A shorter way of saying it is, square first, hard second.

playing the game

Be Your Own Caddy

May 10, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

In Better Recreational Golf, I have a small essay on the chapter titled Playing the Game, called Be Your Own Caddy. The point I made was that you need to have a good reason for every shot you hit.

It has to be a shot you know you can hit, that you have confidence in, and one that leaves the ball in a good spot for the next one.

Yet, more often than not, all we think about is how to get the ball from point A to point B, without giving much thought to our selection of exactly where point B should be.

If we had a caddy with us, those two questions would be the topic of some conversation. The caddy would not be satisfied until you had good answers to both of them.

To play your best golf, you have to step into the role of your caddy and discuss things with your other self, the player self, until you both are in agreement.

Now this might not work for everyone, but I believe that if before you take a club out of the bag, you explain to yourself why you want to use this club, and what shot you’re going to hit with it, and to where, you might start thinking a little clearer about the choices you make.

You would consider the lie, the wind, the landing area, and the distance. Then you hit the shot you can hit, rather than the shot you want to hit, or would be good if it works out.

Take your salary, convert it to an hourly rate, and compute how much is costs you, at that rate, to play a round of golf. Add on a quarter of your green fees to that hourly rate, too.

Now ask yourself if you would pay a caddy that much money for the same advice you usually give to yourself. For most of us, I think we would demand a little more.

Hitting shots is only part of golf. Hitting the right shot to the right place is how you use your hard-earned skills to shoot a low score. You do that by being your own caddy.

practice

Good Golf Takes Dedication

May 3, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

A few years ago, I published a blog post that was a reprint, with permission, of the best piece I have ever read about how much practice it takes to get good at golf.

The answer is essentially what Ben Hogan told Gary Player when Player said he practiced all the time. Hogan said, “Good. Now practice more than that.”

I read an obituary a few years ago of Bob Kurland, who played professional basketball in the 1950s. He was one of the first truly big men in the game. Kurland realized if he developed a hook shot from close in, no one would be able to stop it.

So the story goes that he went to the gym and started practicing. The first 100 or so shots didn’t come close. The next hundred showed promise. By about 300 shots, he started to connect.

That’s not too much for you to do, either, if you want to.

A few days ago I was cruising around Wikipedia, reading the entry for Broadway composer Stephen Sondheim. He worked his butt off to get where got to.

He said, about composing, “Well, I can do that. Because you just don’t know. You think it’s a talent, you think you’re born with this thing. What I’ve found out and what I believed is that everybody is talented. It’s just that some people get it developed and some don’t.”

You have the talent to be good at something in golf. Very good. Decide what you’re going to be good at, and put in the work to get there.

How much work? One more time.

I picked up this line recently, but I can’t remember from where. It goes like this: An amateur will practice until he (or she) can do it right. A professional will keep on practicing until he can’t do it wrong.

The next time you practice chipping for ten minutes and a few shots get close to the hole and you’re about to call it a day, think about how good could you be vs. how good are you allowing yourself to be.

short game

How to Learn a Short Game Shot

April 19, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

There is a right way to teach yourself how to hit a new short game shot. Go through this sequence and the shot will work for you.

1. Learn to make consistent contact. The shot will behave the way you want it to only if you hit it the same way every time. It might take hundreds of tries before you become consistent with how you strike the ball. It’s worth the effort.

2. Learn to hit the shot where you’re aiming it. To get the ball close to the hole, you have to hit it straight and the right distance. Straight is easier, so start there. Again, hundreds of balls won’t be to many.

3. Learn to hit the shot the right distance. This one takes time and thought. One way to start is to get a standard-length stroke and play that stroke with different clubs, seeing what distance you get with each one. Another way is to use just a few clubs and learn how to finesse each one to the right distance. A combination of the two isn’t a bad idea, either.

You might want to start with your bread and butter short shots, the greenside chip and the standard pitch (from 50-100 yards). You can always hit them better than you’re doing now.

When you pick up a new specialty shot, go through this sequence to master it. Hitting it sort of well isn’t what I want you to do. Get good!

I once heard that Lorena Ochoa would practice a new shot for about six months before she used it in a tournament. That’s good advice for all of us.

—–

This tip was extracted from my first book, Better Recreational Golf. There’s lots more stuff just like this in there. Believe me, I won’t be disappointed if you buy your own copy. Neither will you.

putting

Leaving Approach Putts Short

April 12, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

I’m sure you’ve heard the old joke, “95% of all putts that come up short don’t go into the hole,” so I don’t have to say it here. Oh, wait… I just said it. Sorry.

If this is you, if you have a bad case of the Shorts, let me give you a cure.

You don’t leave thirty-foot putts short because you don’t judge distance well. If that were the case, you would be leaving them long, short, and in the middle. But they all seem to come up short.

What is likely going on is that you fear the putt going past the hole. You feel safer sneaking up on the hole. Even though you know five feet short is the same as five feet past, you are more comfortable with five feet short. The prospect of going five feet past just gives you the willies.

That’s fine. We don’t need to change that feeling. All I’m going to ask you to do is change the way you stroke the putt.

Even if you have the speed perfectly judged, at the last instant you flinch and pull back, hitting the ball softer than you had planned. What I want you to do is change the point of impact to take out that flinch.

You think now that the putter hits the trailing edge of the ball, the one next to the putter when you address the ball. And that’s true, it does.

What I want you to do instead is look at the leading edge of the ball, the one closest to the hole, and think about hitting that edge. Think that the ball is transparent to the putter and you will hit that edge when you hit the ball.

By doing that, you will hit the ball before you expect to. You won’t flinch because by the time you mind is ready for the “hit” sensation, the ball has already been struck.

The result? The ball gets to the hole and goes in. If it misses it goes maybe a foot or two past. And you didn’t hit it any harder. You might have hit it exactly as you had planned.

Give this a try. You have nothing to lose but four strokes.

tournaments

Masters Preview 2015

April 5, 2015 recgolfer 3 Comments

I have to tell you right off I am not a fan of the Masters. I don’t see it as a major championship. It’s a good tournament played on a beautiful course. But it is surviving on hype and history right now.

My preview this year is a reprint of a post I put up last year after the tournament was over. Because of that timing, what I had to say might not have gotten the attention it deserved. So here it is again: Augusta National is obsolete.

—–
Augusta National is a Depression-era course built when 250 yards was a respectable professional distance off the tee. Steel shafts were just being introduced and golf ball technology was still rudimentary. For decades, Augusta was a strategic test that matched the capabilities of the day’s best golfers.

Cracks started appearing when Jack Nicklaus arrived. He played 420-yard holes with a driver and a pitching wedge, not a driver and a 6-iron.

When Tiger Woods came along thirty years later, the course had to be “Tiger-proofed,” because his length overpowered the cozy design. Now, everyone hits the ball as far as he did fifteen years ago.

The latest insult was Bubba Watson, whose length mocks August’s most difficult holes. He plays the 485-yard 13th (pictured above) with a driver and a wedge. In ten years, there will be fistfuls of players who hit the ball as long as he does. What then?

The Augusta membership is proud of its course. It’s unique in the world and one of the world’s most challenging. The Masters has always been played there; it was meant to be played there. The Masters and August National are one and the same.

This puts the membership in a bind. There is no other place where their Masters can be held.

The USGA is rotating its championship to newer courses built to challenge today’s golfers, Merion East in 2013 notwithstanding. That course was tricked up beyond belief in order to stand up.

The R&A is doing its best to keep its legendary courses in the Open rotation, but cracks are showing up in that strategy, too. The Old Course at St. Andrews is nearing the same fate as Augusta — too short, and running out of room to add length for the sake for length, not for the sake of strategy.

The table has been turned on these ancient courses. Instead of challenging golfers, they are now being challenged by the golfers. Professional golfers will soon be dominating them no matter what is done.

It could easily be the case that in fifteen years Augusta National will have no more slack to give. Its only defenses would be the pin locations on its forbidding greens. The tournament could be won the by the golfer who has the fewest three-putt greens over the four days of competition. Tee to green strategy would be irrelevant. A sad fate.

At this point in the essay, I am supposed to present my proposal for a way out of this jam: how to salvage a seemingly lost situation. I don’t think there is a fix. The hard fact is that Augusta National was designed to play at about 6,800 – 7,000 yards. It has been stretched beyond that about as far as it will go. When its current 7,400 yards is no longer enough, the course might have to be retired.

Retirement happens to everyone and everything. We have our heyday, we have our glory. The time comes when we are overtaken, and we must take a seat on the sideline for the next generation. The question is, will the Augusta membership be able to retire their course with dignity when the time comes, which it surely will?

—–

Tiger Woods announced he will play in this year’s Masters. I don’t expect him to be a factor, but I hope he doesn’t fall on his face. There are easier courses on which to start a comeback than August National.

golf swing

Swing Through to the Finish

March 29, 2015 recgolfer Leave a comment

If you get a chance to go to a professional golf tournament, men’s or women’s, go to the practice ground and watch the golfers warm up. You will be stuck by the apparent ease with which they swing the club.

No one is pounding the ball. Everyone is just swinging the club. There is no hint of forcing the shot in any way. You could watch this all day.

Here’s the difference between us and them in a nutshell. We think the swing ends when the ball is struck. They think the swing ends when the club stops moving at the finish. That difference makes all the difference.

Golf swing instruction in almost any book you read, instructional videos and Internet videos you see, breaks down into four areas: pre-swing fundamentals, backswing, downswing, and impact. There is little, if any, instruction on the finish.

So, I’m going to give you some. It’s in the form of a drill that focuses on the finish.

Make shortened swings with your driver, no ball, in this way. Take the club halfway back and swing smoothly and slowly (emphasis on “slowly”) to a full finish, just like you see the pros do. When you get there, hold that pose for a few seconds to let your mind absorb the process of your swing leading you to this place.

Repeat, repeat, repeat. This drill makes you aware that the finish is a part of the golf swing, not residue of what came before.

When you play, instead of taking your stance and thinking about how you’re going to hit the ball, send your mind to the end of the swing, and beyond that. Let impact be another thing you breeze right through on the way to your finish.

In a sense, it feels like you’re giving up control of the shot. What you’re doing is getting more control. Try it.

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