tournaments

2012 British Open Preview

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Winner: Ernie Els by one stroke over Adam Scott.

The British Open will be played at Royal Lytham & St. Annes this week, for the tenth time. Set on the west coast of England in the city of Blackpool, the course is a blend of seaside and urban settings. The ocean is only a half mile away, so it will not be seen from the site, but winds off the Irish Sea still affect play. The course is surrounded by domestic housing and is bordered on its south side by a British Railway line.

Royal Lytham & St. Annes has left behind some of the most finishes in Open history. Bobby Jones’s flawless shot from a fairway bunker on 17 in 1926 put his ball on the green inside Al Watrous’s approach. Watrous went from thinking he had Jones beaten to three-putting and handing Jones the title. A plaque now marks the spot of Jones’s shot.


In 1963, Jack Nicklaus was on the 17th tee, two fours away from winning the championship. Two fives instead let Bob Charles and Phil Rogers slip into a playoff, which Charles won the next day. He was the first left-handed player ever to win a major title.

Seve Ballesteros won in 1979 when he hit his drive on 16 into a temporary parking lot, but got a drop, hit onto the green and made a birdie. That saved his round in which gave him a three-stroke victory over Ben Crenshaw.

The two nines are as different as two nines can be. Unlike at Olympic last month, players will be make birdies by the fistful on the front nine. They will, however, spend the next nine holes giving them all back. The course closes with six par 4s, all of them tight and most of them long. On the 15th, the hardest hole on the course, the field averaged almost a half stroke over par in 2001, and in 1974, over a full stroke over par.

The first hole is a long par 3 which will be remembered as the hole on which Ian Woosnam, only a few shots off the lead in the closing round, discovered a 15th club in his bag. The two-stroke penalty ruined his chances of winning before he had holed his first putt.

The tee of the eighth hole, pictured below, is the highest point on the course. The imposing cross-bunkers are about 40 yards from a green that is difficult see from the landing area in the fairway. Trees currently along the right side of the fairway now hide the evidence of the railway shown in the older picture below, detracting from the former charm of the hole.

          Eighth hole, Royal Lytham & St. Annes

For more, see this hole-by-hole course description.

Royal Lytham & St. Annes is known for its pot bunkers (204 in total) that surround greens and landing sites in the fairway. For example, the green on the little ninth hole, 164 yards long, is surrounded by nine of them. It is because of all these bunkers that the greens are relatively free of contour. The control of roll through the fairway to avoid those bunkers makes or breaks a score.

Like Olympic last month, this is a short course for a major championship. It will play at 7,110 yards. It is likely that a driver will not be needed at any time. The strategy that Tiger Woods used at Royal Liverpool in 2006, when he used a 2-iron off the tee almost exclusively, might be followed by more than a few contestants.

Who will win? I’m going to pick a golfer who can play a controlled game and keep his head on straight when things go sour, as they will for everybody — Zach Johnson.*

The U.S. Open is the toughest championship, but this one I think you could say is the world championship of golf. I love the ground game British courses force you to play, I love the international flavor of this tournament, I love how to win you have to keep figuring out how to get the ball in the hole. The U. S. Open is a steak dinner. The British Open is a rich chocolate dessert.

*This review was written and this pick was made before Johnson won the John Deere Classic.

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rules

Know the Rules: General Considerations

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There are some rules that govern the game in general and which are scattered throughout the rule book. Let’s call them rules every golfer should know.

Rule 1-2. A player must not (i) take an action with the intent to influence the movement of a ball in play or (ii) alter physical conditions with the intent of affecting the playing of a hole. Penalty: two strokes

Rule 1-3. Players must not agree to exclude the operation of any Rule or to waive any penalty incurred. Penalty: DQ.

Rule 3-2. If in stroke play a competitor fails to hole out at any hole and does not correct his mistake before he makes a stroke on the next teeing ground or, in the case of the last hole of the round, before he leaves the putting green, he is disqualified.


Rule 6-6d. The competitor is responsible for the correctness of the score recorded for each hole on his score card. If he returns a score for any hole lower than actually taken, he is disqualified. If he returns a score for any hole higher than actually taken, the score as returned stands. Note: The Committee is responsible for the addition of scores and application of the handicap recorded on the score card.

This is a commonly misunderstood rule. The player is responsible for turning in the correct scores on each hole. The player is NOT responsible for the total score. If all your hole scores are correct and you turn in an 86 but the scores really add up to 87, there is no penalty.

Advice: Advice, which is any counsel or suggestion that could influence a player in determining his play, the choice of a club or the method of making a stroke, may not be given to a competitor.
Information on the Rules, distance or matters of public information, such as the position of hazards or the flagstick on the putting green, is not advice. Except on the putting green, the line of play may be indicated by anyone, but no marker may be placed.

Stroke: A “stroke’’ is the forward movement of the club made with the intention of striking at and moving the ball, but if a player checks his downswing voluntarily before the clubhead reaches the ball he has not made a stroke.

Cleaning the ball: A ball may be lifted and cleaned on the putting green. Elsewhere, a ball may be cleaned when lifted, except when it has been lifted:
a. To determine if it is unfit for play (Rule 5-3);
b. For identification (Rule 12-2), in which case it may be cleaned only to the extent necessary for identification; or
c. Because it is assisting or interfering with play (Rule 22).

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

putting

Plumb-Bob Putting: Does It Really Work?

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I have this thing about plumb-bobbing and putting.

I don’t get it.

Some people say it’s bunk and other golfers swear by it. They plumb-bob everything. I even saw Karie Webb plumb-bob a putt of under two feet, for cryin’ out loud. So I thought, maybe she and they are on to something. I decided to give it as fair of a test as I could.

First I read all the stuff on the Internet about how it works (there doesn’t seem to be complete agreement on this point). Then I went to the range with an Acushnet Bulls Eye putter, built in the early 1960s. This putter has the advantage of being symmetrical from front to back, so that when it hangs down as a plumb bob it hangs down 90 degrees to the earth. Most putters to day are built asymmetrically, and do not hang straight down, which makes their use for plumb-bobbing suspect from the very start.

I also took a metal track that can be used to roll a ball to determine the true contour of the green. I found a 12-foot putt with three inches of break from left to right. This is a good test putt for this experiment, because many golfers looking at it would not be certain that this putt would indeed break to the right. The idea of plumb-bobbing is that the putter would make the direction of the break clear in cases like this.

I held the putter between my thumb and index finger and let it hang down. I lined up the shaft so it covered the hole and the ball. Then I closed my right (non-dominant) eye. The theory of plumb-bobbing is that the hole (in this case) will appear to the right of the shaft, meaning the putt will break to the right. No go. Both the hole and the ball disappeared behind the shaft (below).

I tried closing my dominant eye just to see what would happen. Both the hole and the ball appeared to the right of the shaft, which is what I expected (below).

My 13-year-old grandson was with me. He tried the same procedure and he couldn’t get it to work, either. With only his dominant eye open, the shaft covered the ball and the hole. There was no indication of break.

One caveat of plumb-bobbing is that it works if there is only one break in the line of the putt. When I rolled the ball down the metal track to find the direction and degree of the break, the ball rolled on a continuous curve to the right, so there was no problem on this point.

So, I tried, and I couldn’t get it to work, but I’m still open to the matter. If you plumb-bob and it works, please write a comment with a detailed description of how you do it and how you interpret the visual information you get.

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aim

Aim Your Golf Swing Intuitively

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Something I’m not sure recreational golfers pay enough attention to is aim.* You can’t hit the ball north if you are aimed to the northeast.

I use an intuitive method of aiming that never fails me.

Step behind the ball on a line connecting the ball and the spot downrange you are aiming for. Find something on the ground about a foot in front of the ball on that line — a piece of dirt, a distinctive blade of grass, or the like. This establishes an aim line.

Step up to the ball and put the clubhead down behind the ball so the grooves are square to the aim line. Hold the clubhead there and turn your head to look at the target.

Now comes the intuitive part. Without moving your head, and as you look at the target, step into your stance. Your feet will automatically find the places that put your stance parallel to your aim line.

As you’re learning to do this, put an alignment stick on the ground behind you. When you are aimed to your satisfaction, pull the stick against your heels and step back to check that the stick is parallel left to the aim line.

The proof for me that this method works comes whenever I have a swing lesson. I step into the shot like this and the pro, standing behind me to look down the line just says one word — Perfect.

* Aim is the direction you are set up to swing at. Alignment is the geometric relation of the lines across your feet, knees, hips, elbows, and shoulders.

My new book,

The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

rules

Know the Rules: The Putting Green

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There are certain things you can and cannot do on the putting green. Rule 16, The Putting Green, covers only a few of them. Some of these things have been covered before in this weekly series, but here is the putting green collection of rules all in one place. Hopefully, most of it is familiar to you already.

You may lift your ball after marking it and clean it if you wish to (16-1b).

If the ball, after it has been replaced, moves accidentally in picking up the marker, the ball must be replaced and there is no penalty (20-3a). A ball on the green may not be touched if it is not marked – one-stroke penalty (18-2a).

You may repair old hole plugs, ball marks, and damage to the green caused by the impact of the ball, but no other damage that might assist subsequent play (such as a damaged lip on the hole) (16-1c).


If you play a stroke when your ball is on the putting green and your ball hits another ball that is on the putting green, you incur a two-stroke penalty. The ball you hit must be replaced, and you play your ball from where it came to rest. (19-5a) If your ball was not on the putting green and it hit a ball that was, proceed as before, but there is no penalty.

If there is causal water on the green between your ball and the hole, you can lift your ball and place it on the nearest spot that provides you relief, but not nearer to the hole. That spot might not be on the putting green, but may not be in a hazard. (25-1)

If you hit your ball onto the wrong putting green (one that is not part of the hole you’re playing), you may not play the ball from there. You must take relief. Lift the ball and drop it one club-length from the nearest point of relief, which point may not be in a hazard or on the putting green. (25-3)

You may not use a “putting ball” when you reach the green. You must putt and hole out with the ball you teed off with, or put into play because the original ball became lost, out of bounds, unfit for play, or substituted according to the rules. (15-1)

You may not stand astride the line of your putt when making a stroke. Two-stroke penalty if you do. This rule effectively bans croquet-style putting. You may stand astride a line connecting the ball and the hole if this is not the line of your putt. If you take a stance astride the line of your putt to avoid interfering with another player’s line, there is no penalty. (16-1e)

The person attending the flagstick may not be hit by the ball by a stroke made on the putting green. Two-stroke penalty. (17-3)

Sand that has spilled onto the surface of the putting green is a loose impediment (Definitions) and may be removed without penalty. (24-1)

A ball is holed out when it comes to rest within the circumference of the hole and all of it lies below the level of the lip of the hole. (Definitions)

If a ball comes to rest between the flagstick and the lip of the hole and is not holed out according to definition, the player may move or remove the flagstick. If the ball falls in the hole, the ball is considered to have been holed with his last stroke. Otherwise, the player must replace the ball on the lip of the hole and play without penalty. (17-4)

You may not touch the line of your putt (two-stroke penalty) except to remove loose impediments, repairing the green, measuring, replacing the ball, or pressing down a ball-marker. You may rest your putter on the green in front of your ball while addressing it as long as you do not press anything down. (16-1a)

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

mental game

Learning a New Golf Shot: The Mental Aspects

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A few weeks ago, I took a lesson on how to chip from several yards off the green. This is not where the ball is just off the edge of the green and you could poke it on with a 6-iron. The shot I need help on has to be hit with a lofted club, and that introduces spin. I wanted to learn how to hit it and get predictable spin so the shot wouldn’t check up one time and run out the next.

So, the pro taught me step-by-step, and in a half hour I had it figured out. I practiced it for a while after the lesson was over, then sat in the car before I drove home to write down the points the pro gave me on how to hit it. There were six. Six things I had to do to get it right.


I practiced every day after that, working on those six things, one at a time, until one or two points became one. Now only four things to work on, gradually merging the points until it became two points, then one. When it gets down to none, I’ll have it cracked.

What I have been doing is not training the body, but training the mind. None of the points are difficult at all. Anyone can execute them. The hard part is to coordinate them, to do them in the proper order and not leave out any. That’s an accomplishment which occurs in the mind.

When we play golf, we should just be playing. Mechanics get worked out on the range. They get worked out by training the mind to perform, not the body. Swinging the club, hitting balls without a plan, is so much exercise. If you know what you are trying to accomplish, in the sense that if you get certain points right you’ll get the shot you want, you’re working on embedding the mental instructions into your memory so they become automatic and don’t think about them.

When you play, you ideally just perform so what you have trained yourself to do will come out. If you’re still worried about mechanics when you play, you haven’t completed your training yet. You haven’t spent enough time giving your mind a chance to learn what to do.

I read once, in regard to learning a new language, that language learning is overlearning. Through constant repetition, habits are acquired so the speaker can to be concerned only with what to say rather than how to say it. It’s the same with golf. Through mentally structured practice, the mind learns how to hit a shot automatically so the golfer can be concerned with what the shot is supposed to accomplish rather than how to hit it.

Let me be clear on what a new shot is. It’s not a shot you haven’t hit before. It’s any shot which you can’t hit without thinking about what to do. I began by describing a shot which I have hit many times on the course. Because I didn’t really know how to hit it, it was still a new shot to me. If you would adopt that attitude to your game, it will lead you to thinking the right way about developing your game and becoming a shot-maker.

Happy Independence Day, everyone.

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rules

Know the Rules: Your Questions

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We’re about halfway through this series of posts, so it’s time to take a break and do something different. There’s a rules quiz lined up for next week, and the week after that we’ll resume the lessons. Believe me, I’m learning a lot just by writing these posts, so I can’t wait to get moving.

Today I want to do something pretty simple. Enter a comment below to describe a situation on the course that was out of the ordinary and how you used the rules to resolve it. Could be anything. You don’t have to limit it to the rules we’ve talked about so far.

Or, if you still aren’t sure what you should have done, say that, and I might have an answer, or perhaps a reader who knows more about the rules than I do (I’m no expert, believe me) can comment. Got it? Then fire away.

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balance

Balance: Golf’s Unsung Fundamental

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I went to my city library last week to do some research for today’s post. I wanted to find out what the golf instruction books had to say about balance. Imagine my surprise when I found out that none of them addressed this rather important fundamental. If balance was mentioned at all, it was in one sentence which read something like, “Balance is the key to playing good golf.” And that was it. No discussion of why, no advice to how to get balanced, how to stay balanced, nothing.

Fortunately, I do have one book at home, Byron Nelson’s Shape Your Swing the Modern Way, that does have several pages on balance. I’ll pass on his thoughts and add a few of my own.

The reason to stay balanced should be fairly obvious. Hitting the ball cleanly requires the clubhead to be returned to the ball centered and square on the exact spot it was at address. When you lose balance sometime before contact, it will be difficult to find the ball again with the precision required. Even if you lose balance after contact, that’s only a sign that you lost balance earlier and were able to hang on for a bit. Contact still suffers.

One spring morning I showed up at the course for a 9:30 a.m. tee time to find the first tee full of players. There had been a frost delay, so about eight foursomes ahead of us had yet to tee off. I hung around to watch everyone swing. This is what stood out. A clear majority of the players ended their swing with their weight firmly on their right foot, if not falling backward in that direction. You can imagine what the resultant shots looked like.

In 2003, when Suzy Whaley was getting ready for being the first woman to play in an PGA event since Babe Zaharias, or I should say the first woman who earned her way in, she spent a lot of time working on her balance. She knew that a clean hit depended on balance, and the difference between a clean hit and one that is just a bit off would tell in competition.

Good enough for her, good enough for you. These are Nelson’s thought on how to achieve balance and how to keep it throughout the swing.

Start with a balanced position at address with the weight evenly distributed between each foot and also from the toes through the heels. Having more weight in one place forces you to make a counter-movement at some point during the swing. It is easy to overcompensate and lose the balance you were trying to keep.

During the backswing, weight shifts to your right foot, but to the inside. During the downswing, weight shifts to the left foot. The key to maintaining your balance when all this is happening is to keep your head still and “swing out from underneath your head.” This does not mean your head must be rigid and immobilized. That will create tension which infects the rest of your body. Just keep your head in the same relative position and swing freely underneath it.

Finally, you must swing smoothly. There can be no jerks away from the ball or lurches into it, or movement an any direction until you’re ready. A smooth and rhythmical swing is best. [This does not mean an easy swing. PGA pros hit swing hard and hit hard, but they are nonetheless smooth and rhythmical as they do it. You have to find your own limits on this point.]

I use two tests to find out if I’m well balanced. The first one is at address. Can I come up on my toes without having to lean my weight forward first? If so, I am in a balanced, athletic position. It’s difficult to test yourself during the swing, so the second test comes at the finish. Can I lift my right foot off the ground as (not after) the club comes to a stop and hold my balance for a count of ten?

Just for fun, you might try standing on one foot and swinging a golf club. This little exercise will make you keenly aware of what good balance feels like, even when you swing standing on both feet.

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short game

A Short Game Framework

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The short game features many shots with many swings with many clubs. All the possible combinations leave golfers unsure of what to do when facing any given shot. This uncertainty leads to playing the same shot in different ways with no reason other than “it didn’t work last time, so I’ll try something different this time.” A reliable short game needs a firmer foundation than that.

Let me suggest a short game plan that takes the uncertainty out of your club selection, often the critical factor in hitting a successful short shot. There are two ways you can look at club selection, and I am going to call them the the iron method and the putter method.


The iron method follows the logic that a set of irons contains clubs that have different lofts which enable a player to hit the ball different distances with the same swing. Likewise, if the stroke you use for a particular short shot can be kept the same every time, distance can be controlled by using the loft of different clubs. The iron method eliminates the stroke as a variable.

The putter method is the opposite. It’s based on the notion that you putt with only one putter, regardless of the length of the putt. You control the distance of the shot by varying the length of the stroke, or its firmness, or some combination of the two. Applying this logic to the short game, you would use the same club every time and vary your stroke to hit the ball the required distance. The putter method eliminates the club as a variable.

Dividing the short game into four basic shots, (the greenside chip, the chip from past greenside to twenty-five yards, the short pitch from twenty-five to fifty yards, and the standard pitch from beyond fifty yards), you can hit each one using the iron method or the putter method. It is up to you to decide which approach you want to take, then learn to hit each shot with a particular method and stick with it. Your local PGA pro can help you with this.

You will play better golf if you can reduce the number of decisions you have to make as you play. The less thinking you have to do, the better.

rules

Know the Rules: Ball at Rest, in Motion

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There are certain things you should not do when the golf ball is at rest (Rule 18). There are certain things you should not do when the golf ball is in motion (Rule 19).

When the ball is at rest, it can be moved without making a stroke at it. You might do this when you’re removing some debris (loose impediments), if you lift it when not permitted, or if it moves after you have addressed it. In those cases, you must replace the ball (put it back where it was) and take a penalty of one stroke. Except (there are always exceptions):


• In searching for a ball covered by sand, in the replacement of loose impediments moved in a hazard while finding or identifying a ball, in probing for a ball lying in water in a water hazard or in searching for a ball in an obstruction or an abnormal ground condition,
• In repairing a hole plug or ball mark,
• In measuring,
• In lifting a ball under a Rule,
• In placing or replacing a ball under a Rule,
• In removing a loose impediment on the putting green,
• In removing movable obstructions.

In these cases, merely replace the ball. There is no penalty.

If a ball in play and at rest is moved by another ball in motion after a stroke, the moved ball must be replaced.

If an outside agency, such as the wind, gravity, or an animal moves the ball, it must be played where it comes to rest without penalty. One course I play on has a problem with foxes running into the fairway and stealing golf balls. Drop another ball as near as you can to where the original ball was and play on without penalty.

When a ball in motion struck by you is stopped or deflected by you or your equipment (and to be complete, your partner or your caddy) take a one-stroke penalty and play the ball as it lies.

When a ball in motion struck by you is stopped or deflected by another ball at rest, play your ball as it lies without penalty, unless both balls were on the putting green. In that case you must proceed as before, but take a two-stroke penalty.

These two items are in Rule 19

In addition, a ball struck on the putting green may not hit the flagstick, whether attended or unattended, or the person attending the flagstick. If so, take a two-stroke penalty and play the ball as it lies (Rule 17-3)

My new book, The Golfing Self, is now available at www.therecreationalgolfer.com. It will change everything about the way you play.

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