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Nothing tickles me more than to listen to a Tour player answer the question “what were you thinking out there when you shot that 65?” “Well, I’m just really trying to hit it solid.” OK, great: really? Now, I’m just a viewer, but I am interested in how a young player shoots such a great score. Should I expect a more detailed answer? Recently, if a player does give a more technique oriented answer he would probably be criticized for being “too technical”, or for “playing golf swing instead of golf shot”, whatever that means.
So when a player comes up with an answer like “I just swing smooth and try to hit the sweet spot” when asked how it is that they can drive the ball 350 yards, we all have to marvel at the simultaneous simplicity and stupidity of that statement. I mean, gee, really? Is that all there is to it? Well, I guess for that player maybe that’s true. But I wish we could catch the same guy after he misses 4 or 5 cuts in a row and see what he says then. The truth is, nobody wants to be interviewed when they are struggling. They probably don’t want to be interviewed at all, but they will put up with it if it follows a good round. I bet that the guy who is missing cuts is not just on the range “swinging smooth and trying to hit the sweet spot”. Rather, he is going over things he has tried in the past that have worked, and is likely under the supervision of some kind of helper, be it a teacher or caddy or relative who is helping them organize their thoughts and is being somewhat of a cheerleader.
If you listen to an interview with Tiger and the resulting commentary you get a clear idea of why he tries not to say anything interesting to the media. Every now and then he will talk about his swing mechanics, and he immediately gets hammered for speaking in terms that the interviewer doesn’t understand. But if he gives his stock answers he is being boring and cliché’. The truth is, he can’t win, and he knows he would be better off not saying anything, although you can’t sell the products you endorse if you live in a cone of silence.
Getting back to the massive over-simplification of what it takes to hit a golf ball by those who possess otherworldly amounts of talent, I remember Hale Irwin saying that he just didn’t understand why people had to make the swing and game so complicated. I wanted to jump up and say “we aren’t like you!” We haven’t had the same swing that hit the ball great without any need for changes since we were kids. You have no idea how hard it is to manage a round of golf when you don’t know where the ball is going, and if you tried to spend a day at my club teaching the players that I teach you would want to kill yourself. Golf is incredibly hard. People who master it with little effort are interesting to watch and analyze, but maddening to talk to. They just don’t get it, and they don’t want to “get it”, because that would mean that they would have to understand how “not easy” the game really is. But like I said, let’s try to catch them when things aren’t going so great and then see what they have to say. I would bet that “I just swing smooth and try to hit the sweet spot” would transform into something entirely different, and that would be something that us normal people might be able to learn from.
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