Just a quickie

From my friend Tim Cusick

http://www.myavidgolfer.com/articles/?view=department&department_id=15&no_current=1

Very good stuff.

It's been awhile, sorry

Sometimes I'm not sure if I'm writing about golf or life or if there is any difference. I do know that as an instructor I have at least one flaw that gets in the way of my success. I assume that everyone who comes to me for a lesson not only wants to get better but is willing to pay to price necessary to achieve this goal. The truth is that I don't understand those that aren't compelled to keep pushing themselves. This is my problem not the students. It's one of the reasons I will not be as successful from a financial standpoint as I could be in my chosen endeavor.

Back in the days, some 30 plus years ago, when I was still a professional alcoholic (I now have my amateur standing back :-)) I could not understand people who could and preferred to stop drinking when they began to feel or it or worse yet would stop with just a half glass of wine. It never made any sense to me. Even now my knee jerk reaction is one of "what?". In my recovery I became a member of an organization that has had great success with those of us who had gone as far down as we chose to. One of their precepts was that "Half measures availed us nothing". In other words anything less than a 100% effort produced zero. I've found this to be true in golf, also.

Every student I've ever had has approached changes to his/her game with great expectations and great resolve but it doesn't last except in a few rare cases. Changes to an existing game or learning it for the first time is very hard. Much harder than anyone imagines at the beginning.

Let me give you two examples.

I've had a set of Dave Pelz's putter clips for 8 years. There are 3 in each set. The idea is to help you learn to hit the sweet spot with your putter every time. Each one is progressively smaller. The last one gives you a 64th of an inch on either side. I've never been able to move out of the easiest size until last week. That's 8 years of work trying to learn this.

In my full swing I tend to be well above the plane on my follow through. David Leadbetters people brought this to my attention almost 20 years ago. I've been trying to fix it since then. A big breakthrough took place within the last few days.

Excellence in any activity is a very lonely business be prepared to spend lost of lonely hours to improve your golf. I'll be joining you in spirit.

Take care.

A little shift in direction

No complaints and no regrets,

I still believe in chasing dreams and placing bets

And I have learned that all you give is all you get

So give it all you've got

These are the beginning lyrics to the song "Here's to Life". I've fallen in love with it particularly done by Shirley Horn. If your golf game isn't doing what you want it to then take a look at these lyrics again. You may find both the problem and solution there.

Take Care

The Perfect Swing and A Perfect Swing

There is a difference. The Perfect Swing is the most efficient one that we can imagine. All of the angles are correct at address and at every stage of the swing. Tiger's swing was the essence of that concept while he was working with Hank. I'll go into those ideas in just a bit. I will say that in all probability none of us will achieve the perfection that was his. I can dream however :-)

A Perfect Swing is an individual matter. It occurs when a golfer makes the best pass at a golf shot that he can given his present knowledge and ability. A Perfect Swing is never compared to what someone else either can or cannot do. I play golf from time to time with a Long Drive participant. He routinely hits his driver 350 to 400 yards. In my wildest dreams I don't imagine hitting the ball that far but when I pick a spot off the tee and imagine my shot flying to that spot and subsequently hitting the ball there then I have made A Perfect Swing. A Perfect Swing is not limited to swings. It includes chips, pitches, sand shots and putts. A Perfect Swing requires you to imagine a shot that is within the scope of your present ability and then execute that shot.

The Perfect Swing however is what we aspire to. The Perfect Swing doesn't care if we are out of shape or not flexible enough or that our balance is weak or that we have a faulty emotional makeup. It just sits there waiting for us to pay the price which we may not be able to do to acquire it's perfection. It is the ideal that we strive to gather.

My goal as your instructor is to teach this "Perfect Swing". I believe that unless you know where you are going you will do nothing but go around in circles. We all see people like this at every driving range that we go to. People hitting ball after ball with little or no thought given to what they are trying to do. As an instructor I also recognize that humans have limitations. Sometimes a compromise will need to be made but I never want to make a compromise until you know what the ideal is and how this compromise will effect your over all results.

This blog has been sitting here for a couple of weeks while I tried to find words that conveyed the truths that I know. I think I'm ready to try to use "imperfect language" to describe perfect relationships.

The Perfect Swing is one where the swing adheres to the principles of physics and geometry as we now understand them. An understanding of Newton's Laws of Motion and angular momentum are requirements. Please don't misunderstand me. You can play very good golf without this knowledge. Look at John Daly, Bubba Watson and JB Holmes all who in my opinion have flawed swings but for me the knowledge of the ideal is very important. I can't help but wonder how much better they would have been or would be if their swings lacked these very evident flaws. For myself every shot I have ever missed has been because I was not aligned with these principles. Quite honestly I didn't begin to understand these concepts until I began to teach. I thank all of you for this increase in my own knowledge. I'm going to in the next few blogs lay out these principles. Take care.

What I know, how I learned it and why I teach it.

The game of golf is about getting outside, being with friends, taking a break from the pressures of life but ultimately its about shooting the lowest score you can. Remember the old Smith Barney commercial, "we make money the old fashioned way, we earn it"?

Let me ask you a question. If you could go buy a driver somewhere that was guaranteed to hit the ball 300 yards dead center of the fairway every time you swung it would you buy it? . Let's say you went out bought and then played with your new driver and it did just exactly what was promised, 300 yards dead center every time. Well, next week all your buddies would have purchased the same driver and you all now hit the ball 300 yards dead center every time. I bet that after awhile you would all become bored with driving the ball and eventually you would just walk out 300 yards and play your 2nd shots from there. This analogy or scenario is at the heart of golf. YOU CANNOT BUY A GOLF GAME! you must earn it. It is the challenge to improve that brings us back. It may be the last place on earth where success or lack of it is entirely dependent upon the individual and the effort he or she is willing to spend.

Every golfer can improve regardless of their present level of play. Even me who has been playing this game for 59 years a few of those at a pretty high level still has areas that need improvement, far more of them than I would like to admit.

So if you can't buy a golf game you have to earn it. Part of earning it is learning it. That's where people like me come into the equation. Golf instructors don't do anything that can't be done by any other human being who is willing to learn the game, be a psychologist, a communicator with an understanding of the physics of the game and have infinite patience. In other words we do the things that you could do but you choose to have us do them so that you will still have time to do other things, like play the game. :-)

Next time I will introduce the Perfect Swing and what I mean by that.

Take care

They are all correct

Every book, every magazine article, every golf video has correct information. Some of them talk about using the big muscles of the body others say your arms must swing faster.So how are we to determine which group of opposing ideas we try to use? To answer that question I think we need to remember the five things that are critical to each golf shot. They are;

1. Club head speed-How fast is the club moving at impact?

2. Centeredness of impact-Did I hit the ball on the sweet spot?

3. Angle of attach-Did the club approach the ball not to steep, not to shallow but just right? If you are on the correct swing plane as I teach then you will be correct.

4. Club face position-Was the club face at right angles to the target at impact?

5. Club swing path-Was I approaching the ball from the inside?

The answers to these question will tell you what you need to be working on. You will notice that 4 of the 5 of these question have nothing to do with how hard or fast you swing. I believe that we must answer questions 2 through 5 in the affirmative before we become to concerned with speed. Numbers 2 through 5 require a blending of both body movement and arm/hand movement not with the idea of creating additional club head speed but with creating the angles necessary to make solid ball strikes. Ultimately how fast I swing is determined by one, my physical limitations and two, by my ability to maintain the correctness of 2 through 5. Of the two the latter is more important.

My teaching is geared to these ideas. I believe you should swing as fast as you can AND successfully adhere to the correct positions required by 2 through 5.

The purpose of hitting one handed golf shots or half wedge shots or one armed putts are all geared to getting 2 through 5 in place. The better you have these in place the faster you will be able to swing and keep the golf ball on the golf course which for most of us results in lower scores, the primary reason we play the game.

Tim Cusick, my primary instructor when I was talking lessons at Hank Haneys told me that you get more benefits from hitting half wedges in practice than you do with your driver. He was right.

Tell next time

Effective practice or how to spend the hours on the range productively

Do you spend at least 50% of your time putting? Do you spend at least 50% of the remaining time on the short game? Anything left you can spend on your long game. I bet you have heard that at some point in the golfing life, heck I may have said that to you but that method is only true in some circumstances. If you have no other information then by all means use your time as outlined above but if you have numbers that suggest a weakness in your game that is adding strokes then change your practice time percentages to reflect those changes.

Let's explore that a little further. I'll make the following assumptions.

1. You have a game plan for each round

2. That game plan maximizes your potential for example, if you can't hit the driver in the fairway then you are using a club that will do so.

3. You are keeping accurate records of your results

If these numbers show that you are making all your putts within 3 feet of the hole but putts in the 20 foot and longer range are seldom getting into that 3 foot range then don't practice your short putts practice your distance control.

If when you chip the ball you get it up and down 75% of the time then go to pitching. If it's fine then work on your sand play.

All of my current students have gone through the target drill recently. For those of you who are not my students (why aren't you :-)? ) the drill consists of finding a target at 25 yards and then giving a giving yourself a circle with a 20 diameter. Hit 10 balls and calculate your % of landing the ball in the air in the circle. The goal is at least 75%. Then go to 75 yards with a circle of 40 feet. the % should be 60. Then out to 100 yards and a circle of 50 feet and a % of at least 50%.

You will probably find that your %'s are not very close to the ones I've given you. The first reason is that your technique is not yet good enough however the 2nd and far more important reason is that instead of focusing on the target you focus on technique. Nothing messes up a golf shot faster than thinking about how to hit a shot rather than where to hit a shot. These tests and drills that I use are to get you to focus on the latter not the former.

All of this brings us to the title of this article "effective practice". I'll restate the definition

1. Practice with a specific purpose in mind

2. Get immediate feedback

3. Focus on process rather than results

Let's assume that the drill above or your scorecard from your rounds of golf suggest that at 75 yards you get 30% of your shots into the target range.

You have to analyze why.

1. If you hit the ball very poorly most of the time then you need to focus on technique so your effective practice would look like this

a. My purpose is to improve my technique

b. Is the ball flying better or worse. Am I on plane or not.

c. If my goal is to keep my chest back longer am I willing to do that even if I hit the ball poorly?

2. If you hit the ball pretty well then the practice would look like this

a. Hit more balls into the target

b. Immediate feedback is am I doing it

c. The process is am I focused on the hitting the ball into the target or am I thinking about how to swing?

Golf is not easy. It's fun if you choose to make it so. You don't have to be good to have fun but if you want to get better these concepts that I've outlined here will help.

Take care