tournaments

2013 Open Championship Preview

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Winner: Phil Mickelson by three strokes over Henrik Stenson.

The U.S. Open is my favorite golf tournament. The Open Championship is 1A, and when I watch it, I actually like it better. Maybe only national pride keeps our Open at the top of my list.

I love the ground game, the way links golf asks you to get the ball up to the hole however you can. Imagination is king, which is the way I like to play.

The Honourable Company of Edinburgh Golfers owns the course which hosts the Open this year — Muirfield. Though St. Andrews is the older course, the Company is the oldest golf club in the world, dating from 1744. It also composed the original 13 rules of golf upon which the modern rules were founded.

Every course has its own character, emphasizing one part of the game over the others. Muirfield is a driver’s course. There is no water, no trees, no carries. Just get the ball in the fairway, or else. Another strength of the course is its bunkering. The landscape is designed to collect balls into bunkers that are intentionally penal.

Shown below is the 13th hole, a 190-yard par 3. The green is quite narrow. The bunker on the front left is six feet deep.

The outward nine circles the perimeter of the course, running counter-clockwise, and encloses the back nine, which circles clockwise. Wind is another of the course’s defenses, and only at holes 3, 4 and 5, and 10 and 11 do consecutive holes run in the same direction.

Muirfield plays to a fairly short 7,192 yards. It has no hole that you might call a signature hole. Every hole is a challenge.

The opening hole is 447 yards long, but against a headwind getting on in two can be difficult. The second hole is only 364 yards long, but players will need an iron to keep the ball in the fairway, and the green has no real landing area as it slopes away from you. Combining an army of bunkers on the right side of the green with out of bounds hard on the left, what looks like a birdie hole could surprise more than a few golfers.

On and on it goes, just like that. Every shot must be carefully thought through up to the closing hole, a brute of a par 4 at 470 yards. Like at Merion, a leader nursing a one-shot lead on the 72nd tee will be examined fully.

Who is the favorite? Phil just won in Scotland. Tiger is coming off an injury and is an X factor. Rory could pop out of nowhere and have four greats rounds, but I’m not holding my breath.

What I can say is that no slackers win the Open at Muirfied. Its post-war winners are Cotton, Player, Nicklaus, Trevino, Watson, Faldo (twice) and Els. We should expect no less this year.

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mental game

Golf’s #1 Swing Wrecker

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I know that every one of you has a pretty good swing. You can use it to get the ball in the fairway, and get the ball on or near the green. But for some reason you don’t. That’s because you get caught up by the #1 swing wrecker in golf — the ball.

Take four practice swings, without rushing, but take four practice swings in a row. Seems simple. Now step up to the ball. Did something change? Did knowing that you were going to hit a ball cause you to think different thoughts, or even have a different state of mind, if you are sensitive to those things?

If so, what’s killing your golf is not some technical flaw in your swing, but the way you use your mind. The ball cannot change things. It just cannot. Your swing is the same whether there is a ball there or not.

When you make your practice swings, you have an expansive, unconcerned state of mind. It feels good. It feels capable. It feels right.

I believe the major golfing skill, more important than any other, is to maintain that state of mind when you are about to hit the ball. If you can, you will play the best golf you are capable of. You will play up to your technical limits, and that is all you can ask of yourself.

Here’s a drill to teach yourself how to do that. Be warned, this is a very difficult drill — and I’m not kidding.

Put a ball on the ground. Now step back a bit and take four or five practice swings. Swing enough times so that the thought of hitting a ball has vanished from your mind, and all you feel is the motion of your swing.

Now step up to the ball and address it. If you switch to thinking about hitting the ball, stop. Don’t make another move. Step back and take more practice swings until “hit the ball” leaves your mind. Step up to the ball once more. If you start thinking, “hit the ball,” step away and begin again.

At some point, you will decide that the ball is not worth all the time you are wasting, and you’ll decide to get it right. When that happens, you will have taken the first step to learning that the ball is not in control — you are. Keep going and take more steps. Having one experience is not enough. To get the most out of this exercise, you should do it all the time, and make it your principle golf drill.

Now I want to add on another condition. If at any time you think, “hit the ball,” stop and start over. Not just at address, but during the swing. If you’re starting your downswing and you think about the ball, stop. Do not complete that swing. If you do, you will reinforce the wrong feeling.

You’re teaching yourself to hit the ball without having hitting the ball in mind. You will teach yourself to do that only if that is your state of mind.

What am I saying? I’m saying this: when you eat your cereal in the morning, you don’t think at all about your spoon, or the cereal you’re loading on to it, or getting the spoon into your mouth instead of hitting your chin. You just scoop up some cereal and eat it.

That is the same state of mind you need to be in when you hit a golf ball. That’s what this drill will teach you if you stick with it. I believe that the more time you put into learning how to do the drill correctly, the better it will be for your golf.

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practice

What the driving range is for

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Every time you hit a golf ball, there should be a purpose. At the driving range, you can hit balls with no other purpose than building positive habits to serve you when you play. What would be the habits you might wish to develop?

The first one, which should be shared with what follows, is the feeling of mind that the shot is within your capability to hit well, and that it will be hit well. Train yourself to have that feeling every time you step up to the ball. Do not take for granted. Make that feeling explicit, part of your emotional checklist you go through before you take the club away.

When you play, don’t you want to have a confident feeling like that when you’re about to play a shot that counts, as confident over a drive into a narrow fairway as over a six-inch putt? Of course you do. You can have that feeling if you have trained yourself to have it, by making it a natural response to hitting a golf ball, regardless of the situation.

You need technical skills, too. Good golf is played by hitting the ball the right way, the same way, every time. Please take lessons to learn what the right way is. Very few of you are genius enough to figure it out by yourself. Once you know what the principles of good golf are, practice those principles, and only those. Hit each ball with one thought in mind, the same thought.

If you hit the ball poorly, take it to mean that you haven’t learned the principle yet. The mistake is to think it doesn’t work, and then go fishing for something else. That leads to one thought after another, ending up in having learned nothing, and having established a habit of guessing over the ball.

While the emotional confidence you are trying to build up shouldn’t be influenced by your circumstances, when you really don’t know what you are doing, it’s hard to maintain your confidence; because you are believing in, what?

So practice your technical point using practice swings, enough of them so you feel you have it down, and then step up to a ball with the feeling that you know what you are doing and that it will work. The ball cannot be a test to see whether you know, but a confirmation that you truly do.

If the shot works out, repeat the whole process. If it doesn’t work out, chalk it up to needing more work, then go do the work.

In the end, this is true: While you want to have all parts of your game polished as well as you can, a positive mind will serve mediocre technique much better than flawless technique will serve a mind that worries. Because the mind is intangible, we tend to forget its influence. Those who remember are the ones who get the most out of their skills and have the most fun.

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putting

The key to approach putting

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There is a simple way to hit your approach putts on the number. It involves knowing what physical impression the stroke for a certain distance makes on your body. I spoke of this in an earlier post, but this post goes into more detail.

This method works only if your putting stroke is a body stroke; that is, the rotation of your torso is the prime mover of the stroke. If you are all hands on the green, read no further.

Go to the practice green and hit several fifteen-foot putts. As you hit these putts, pay attention to any physical sensations you have at the apex of the stroke. For example, I feel certain compression of my upper back muscles on my right side.

What you have found is the physical feeling, for you, of a fifteen-foot putt. Now whenever you recreate that feeling, the putt will go fifteen feet. Simple.

Now make a longer stroke, one that hits the putt twenty-five feet, and look for the physical marker again. For me, it’s a stretching, or maybe a tugging, in the right side of my torso.

Finally, hit some putts that go thirty-five feet. When you have that distance down consistently, search once more for the indicator physical sensation. I feel a stretching or tugging sensation in my lower back.

After you’ve done this, you have found three reference feelings that produce approach putts of three definite lengths. Given a putt of that length, you merely have to reproduce the feeling as you make the stroke and the perfect distance is the result.

For putts between those reference point distances, use the feeling of the shorter stroke and add on a bit of hit with the hands.

For putts of longer than your longest reference stroke, you do the same thing–add a bit of hit with your hands. Practice will tell you how much.

If you calibrate your stroke in this way and memorize these feelings, there is no need ever to guess at how hard to hit an approach putt.

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commentary

Jack Nicklaus vs. The Modern Golf Ball

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Golfers of a certain vintage know that the modern golf ball helps us hit the ball farther than we could with a wound golf ball. Jack Nicklaus wants to change all that.

He wants to dial back the ball by twenty percent, not just so the pros won’t hit it so far, but so all of us, you, me, we don’t hit it so far, either. And he thinks that would be a good thing.

Yesterday I watched the David Feherty interview with him. Nicklaus was talking about 17,000 courses that would be brought back into play if the ball were to be contained. Too many courses have to be 7,000 yards. That takes too much land, too much water, too much time to play.

If courses measured 5,600 yards that would get more people on the course, conserve resources, be more fun.

It’s not that Augusta has had to lengthen itself by 500 yards in order for it not to become obsolete, he said. It’s all the courses. What’s wrong with a course that was built for a different age gracefully aging out of competition, somewhat like Nicklaus himself did?

Here’s the question I have for Jack. The very first course I played was Eastmoreland Golf Course, a municipal course in Portland, Oregon. I still play there. It was built in 1928, so it is not a case of using excess land to build a modern course. It’s there, nothing is going to change.

Length from the white tees is 6,106 yards. Not excessive by any means. The second hole, though is par 4, 427 yards. When I was in high school (mid-1960s), it was the same length. I have a scorecard from back then to show it.

Now when I was in high school, I hit my a driver and a 3-wood, and I still wasn’t up to the green. This hole was a three-shotter for me. Now, a drive and a 21-degree hybrid get me on.

Tell me, Jack, how is dialing back my distance so this hole becomes a three-shooter again going to make my golfing experience better?

My best drives go 235 yards. How is cutting that back twenty percent, so I can only drive the ball 188 yards, going to let me have more fun?

Leave our game alone. It’s fine the way it is.

The scary thing, is, though, dialing back the golf ball could well be the USGA’s next itch to scratch.

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playing the game

What I learned on the course – 3

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There are times when you have to take on a hole, and times when you need to ease off. Knowing which holes are which will save you strokes.

1. Example 1 is a 359-yard par 4 that goes downhill off the tee to the halfway point, then uphill after a right turn to a shallow green. This green is thus meant to be approached with a short iron, but the tee shot is intimidating and makes a driver look like a risky choice, because: a fairway bunker will trap a ball that goes off the tee too far and straight. The proper tee shot is a fade, but if the ball bends too much, trees in the corner of the dogleg will surround the ball leaving no shot but a chip back out to the fairway. And, the gap between the bunker and the trees is none to wide.

I had always laid up off the tee to be safe, but had a mid-iron into the green not designed to hold one. I seldom got a par. Two days ago, I hit my driver anyway just to see what would happen. The ball went into the trees, I chipped out sideways, but the tee shot with my driver had gone far enough that I had an 8-iron to the green. I hit on, and two putts later had an easy bogey.

So I learned that on this hole, a bad tee shot would cost me one stroke, and a good one meant an easy par, whereas hitting short meant bogey, and a double if something went wrong.

2. Four holes later we’re on the tee of a 427-yard par 4, with water on the right, a slight dogleg right, with water in front of the green to its left, beside a generous lay-up area. Unless your drive is pretty long, you will have to hit off a rolling fairway (an uneven lie is a certainty) and over the water to get to the green.

I hit my drive straight, but not as long as it could have been, and I was faced with a shot of about 175 yards over the water on the right, off a downhill lie, to get safely to the bail-out area. The green was out of the question. One of my primary playing rules is: never hit over water if you don’t have to. Since it was going to take two shots to get on the green anyway, I chipped 50 yards down the fairway so I could have a short iron over dry land into the green.

I got on, took two putts for a bogey, and avoided a double or even a triple had I tried to cross the water with my second. Had my drive gone about twenty yards farther, I could have safely taken on the green. But sometimes, you have to do that discretion and valor thing.

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fundamentals

Good golf in eighteen words

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Millions of words of golf instruction have been written, including thousands on this web site. There is so much information to distill and absorb, it’s hard for anyone to make sense of it all. That’s what this post is for.

Below are eighteeen words that tell you exactly what you need to do to become a shot-maker — someone who hits the ball well consistently and accurately. Everything I have read, heard, and been taught, boils down to these eighteen words.

1. If the ball is on a tee, think: square face, center hit. (4)

2. If the ball is on the ground, think: ball first, ground second. (4)

3. In addition for the short game: weight left, stays left; left hand leads through. (8)

4. Putting: sweet spot. (2)

Numbers 1 and 2 are mental skills, not physical skills. Let your mind lead your body. Think these things just before you take the club away. Give the order once, then stay out of your way and let the right things happen.

Number 3 means start with your weight on the left side and let not one ounce of it shift right; the right hand never passes the left. These principles are common to every short shot. You can practice this in your living room without a ball.

Number 4 is the soul of the putting stroke. Listen and feel. Contact on the sweet spot sings a different song and is so soft in the hands. It’s what gives you control of the ball.

Devote your practice to only these things. This is what to repeat 10,000 times. If I wanted to create a good golfer from scratch, this is all I would have him or her work on.

Write these eighteen words down on a card to carry with you when you play. Look at the card before you hit any shot.

Trust me. This is it. If you want to hit the ball as well as you can, it’s these eighteen words. It is that way, it always was that way, it will always be that way.

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grip

A golf grip fundamental

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“That’s everything,” Sam Snead said, when Jim McLean asked him, “How important do you feel the grip is in the golf swing?” So many problems are caused by a bad grip, and so many are solved by a good one.

Here is one aspect of a good grip that you don’t read about too much, but is nonetheless a vital feature.

In Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons, he said the the V in the left hand should point to the right eye, and the V in the right hand should point to the chin. That’s a pretty weak grip, which most recreational golfers could not use successfully.

What this alignment does, however, is get your hands working together as a unit, something your grip does not likely do for you now.

Try this: Put a tee between the thumb and forefinger of your left hand, all the way up in the V. Put another one in the same place of your right hand. Now take your grip.

The tees should be lined up and pointing in the same direction, as in the pictures below.

If they point off to different places, the means your hands are not lined up, and thus not working together. Everything good in your swing is working under a great handicap. Controlling the ball could be a problem.

The good news is that it is not necessary for the Vs to be pointing in the exact direction that the Hogan grip describes. You might want to rotate both hands to the right, but in doing so, making sure the tees end up pointing in the same direction.

There is, on the other hand, Sam Snead’s method. He tells you to have both Vs pointing to the right shoulder. That’s a stronger grip, good for most recreational golfers, but it gets the hands out of alignment. The tees will be pointing in different directions.

It worked for Snead, and it might work for you. But if it doesn’t, the Hogan method is something you can try.

It could be the only adjustment you need to make to bring every shot around to the center. That’s what it did for me.

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playing the game

What I learned at the course – 2

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1. I really like 2s. When you put a 2 on your scorecard, everyone knows exactly what happened. A 3 could be anything; 4s and 5s look all right, but a 5 could be a double bogey. A 2 means only one thing. I like 2s a whole bunch.

2. When you’re learning a new shot, it takes a good while practicing it at the range to be able to hit it on command. Only when you get that good at it would you want to use it when you play. The next thing you have to learn is when to use it when you play.

You can easily make the mistake of using it when you shouldn’t, or not using it when you should. I have a great new short shot about which I made each mistake the first few rounds I played after I had it down. But that’s how you learn.

3. Play the shots you believe in regardless of what conventional wisdom says to do. Jack Nicklaus said that Arnold Palmer once told him to putt from the greenside fringe (I was going to say “frog hair,” but I’m not sure everyone would know what that word means), since your worst putt is always better than your best chip.

Not if you know how to chip.

4. Yesterday I skanked my tee shot way to the left, just a few feet still in bounds, skanked my shot back to the fairway, hit a 75-yard pitch to four feet, and sank the putt. Walter Hagen once said, “Three of those and one of these still make par.”

Never give up. One good shot can make up for a lot of bad that has happened before.

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Little Differences That Make a Big Difference in How Well You Play