Golf Talk

It’s almost May, and with a turn of the weather we serious golfers get ready for a serious assault on the links. Having been stuck inside for months with cold, nasty conditions forbidding enough to stifle even the most hardy players, we have, for a lack of anything better to do, allowed ourselves to be subjected to endless golf talk. I admit it: I love it. I find no subject more interesting than golf, as absurd as that may seem. Listening to the cast of characters who have managed to occupy a position which allows them to offer their opinions on the current events in the game is alternately enlightening and infuriating, which if nothing else makes it fun. I find myself mulling over my own take on many of these topics, and thankfully I have this column which with to vent my overloaded brain.

First of all, enough already with Tiger Woods: he’s just a guy, not a god. He doesn’t own the game. Where did people get the idea that anyone could ever “get” the game of golf? Golf always wins. It has never been mastered, and it never will be mastered. Even the best player in history went three years without a major at one point, and had bad years even with a major victory, if such a thing is possible. The point is, Tiger’s play up to two years ago was as phenomenal as has ever been witnessed, and it may be that good again. Then again, it may never be quite the same. No one has a crystal ball, but since he is the preeminent player in the game the conjecture is endless. I recently read one hysterical article stating that if he didn’t win the Masters the world would end, or something almost as calamitous. Well, he didn’t win, and gee, the world is still spinning, and Tiger is still practicing for his next tournament.

What many golf pundits miss is a sense of history, or at least a sense of perspective. History tells us that the game is too difficult to play well all the time, as proven by the records of the best players who have ever picked up a club. The list of multiple major winners is amazingly small, and for a game that has been played competitively for over 100 years that should tell us all something. The Masters was great theater without Tiger, because it was great golf, and we watch, at least I do, because we love to watch great golf. I love to watch Tiger because he is a wonderful player, and golf played with extreme skill is addictive. When he is not playing well, I’d rather watch someone who is. TV seems to be learning that a sour, pouting, club slamming Tiger, which is what he is when he is falling out of contention, is not that enjoyable.

Perspective is another consideration. It would seem that many want Tiger to be dying inside with each defeat. They see the relentless grinder, the champion with a single purpose in life, that of winning more majors than Nicklaus, and as each one passes without a Woods victory they just know that he is beset with self doubt and self loathing. That is a story, and they don’t want to see Tiger enjoy himself or his fiancée, or any of the hundreds of millions of dollars he has already amassed, unless he is winning as well. No, it just can’t be enough. They have bought into his quest, and have no patience with a Tiger who shows any evidence of being less than mortified at failure.

Things have gotten so absurd that now Tiger’s friend Mark O’Meara has been pegged by at least two prominent teachers as the root of Tiger’s technique problems. You see, Tiger left Butch, and then started working on stuff O’Meara worked on with Hank Haney, and hasn’t won a major since. Oh, he’s won a bunch of other tournaments and was Player of the Year last year, but none of those count. No, his swing is all screwed up because HE HAS COPIED MARK O’MEARA’S BACKSWING, AND NOW HE’S STUCK. Good grief, give the guy some credit. I mean, he’s 28 years old and he’s won everything since he was 6. Do you think he doesn’t have a pretty good idea of what he wants to do with his swing? And if he is working on his game with O’Meara, is there some problem with having someone watch and offer comments who can actually play the game, and who has won two major championships to boot?

Remember when Greg Norman worked with Butch Harmon back in the early 90’s? Do you remember what his swing looked like? I do, and if you looked at films of the British Open in 1994 you would see that Norman was taking the club away inside, getting his arms deep behind him in the middle of the backswing, getting to the top in a flat, shut, and extremely across-the-line position, then coming down with the club “stuck” behind him, saving himself partly by sliding his right foot backwards as he hit the ball. Well, it worked for a while, and Norman played some great golf like that. Now, remember, Butch was his instructor, and that particular swing style was one that Norman had changed to under Butch’s lead, moving away from a more upright and down-the-line position at the top. When Tiger won the Masters in 1997, do you remember his swing then, more inside, shorter, flatter, more across the line?

Then Tiger decided to change his swing. Now the idea was to get the club more out in front of the body, with the arms moving more away in the takeaway, the midpoint of the backswing finding the hands more in front of the chest, and, the most different by far, arriving at the top with the club pointing left – a complete rerouting of the backswing, quite a bit like what O’Meara had been doing for years. Nothing like what Harmon had been working on with any of his students up to that point. Thus, the mystery: where did Butch come up with this revelation? Rumor has it that the information somehow passed from O’Meara (and Haney) to Harmon, but this has never been revealed or substantiated. At the time Tiger had already won the Masters by 12 shots, and my guess is that he wanted to keep Butch on because he truly liked working with him, and felt he owed him for some of the success he had already achieved. Once Butch got the gist of what Tiger wanted to work on, he remained the main man in the Tiger camp. But after 4 years of that, how much more did Butch have to offer? How many times did Tiger need to hear the same thing? If Tiger thought Butch would make a difference now, don’t you think he would jump right back in with him? I think Tiger wants to win badly enough that he wouldn’t let any personality problem get in the way. If he felt that Butch had anything new and different to say he would certainly want to hear it. I just don’t feel that’s the case.

For the life of me I can’t understand why anyone would think that a player as experienced, intelligent, and accomplished as Tiger would need an instructor to tell him what to do with his swing. Give Tiger a video camera and let him work it out on his own. He will get to it, and when he does he will own it, and he will win bunches more majors. Ever since Nick Faldo appeared unable to tie his own shoes without David Leadbetter at his heels the cult of the instructor has bloomed and insinuated itself in the psyche of everyone who follows the game. Don’t get me wrong, I am a teacher myself, and I do believe we have a lot to offer our students. But when you boil it down to the root it’s the talent and the heart that wins out, and the vast majority of the great players in history were their own men and women who worked their games out for themselves. Give me a choice of spending a day with Harmon or O’Meara and it’s a total no-brainer. Give me someone who plays every day, who hits shots under pressure, who knows the difference between theory and reality. You can only learn so much staring at swing videos of other players. It’s my belief that Tiger has realized that, and that he has too much class to tell the truth to people who won’t understand or appreciate it. Anything he says would look like a slap at Butch, and that is the last thing he wants.

So, how do you feel about Stuart Cink? Did he cheat? Do you feel sorry for him for having a rules controversy cloud his amazing come from behind victory? Did Ted Purdy get jobbed out of an unlikely win? It certainly is a tough question, one that the Golf Channel covered thoroughly, interviewing everyone involved short of the providers of the sand and pebbles that made up the waste area. I didn’t see the tournament, and it wasn’t until Monday on Golf Central that I heard of the controversy. When I saw the tape of Cink working on his lie in the waste area my first reaction was “oh, man!” I mean, he just teed the thing up. No wonder he hit a great shot. That had to be cheating, or something very close to it. I was amazed that a rules official had sat through the same tape with him and decided that nothing was wrong, and that no penalty had been incurred. I fully understood Purdy’s feelings, especially since he had been in the same situation on the 15th hole and had made bogey.

Any shot from a fairway trap is easy if there is nothing behind the ball, and very tough if there is. The lie is everything. Hit the ball first and you’ve got a good shot. You still have to hit it the right distance and direction, but a Tour player’s percentages on that type of shot are pretty good. But put a bit of sand in between the ball and the club and now the shot gets exponentially more difficult. Catch the sand and the ball ends up way short. Try to hard to get the ball first and a bladed shot can easily fly 30 yards further than desired. After watching the tape there can be no doubt that Cink improved his lie. He plucked and swept behind the ball until it was perched up there like Marie Antoinette’s head on the guillotine. If Slugger White watched that and decided that it was kosher then the only conclusion that any normal person could make is that the rules allow the player to tee his ball up in a waste area. This is a ludicrous situation and needs to be rectified quickly by eliminating the designation “waste area”. Defining the ground the ball sits on as composed entirely of loose impediments allows the player to remove anything he wants to in any fashion, and right behind the ball. You saw Cink do just that. It looks like cheating to me, and if it’s legal, it shouldn’t be. All such areas should be sand bunkers with rakes in them, and no one should be allowed to remove or brush away anything except man-made objects or stones. Ted Purdy should be angry: not at Cink, but at himself for not knowing how to take advantage of a stupid rule.

Was anybody displeased with the Masters? How could you not root for Mickelson? The guy has handled himself as well as almost any top player of which I can think, even while being saddled with the media induced moniker of “best player never to have blah blah blah”. He never snapped at anyone who repeatedly asked him stupid questions, and managed to actually smile while failing to come out on top in the majors. For this his fortitude, manhood, desire, intelligence, all were questioned by writers and announcers who just couldn’t get enough of his struggle, and couldn’t get over the fact that he never treated his failures like the end of the world. It seems that those who never actually played the game at a high level are the ones most likely to question a player’s ability and dedication when that player fails repeatedly, as though the player is letting them down. Announcers with playing experience, who have been there in the trenches and know what it is like to try to win a big event, are usually much more understanding with a player like Mickelson who just can’t seem to get over the hump (unless it’s Johnny Miller, many of whose opinions are so ridiculous as not to merit discussion). Non-players love to attack players for failing, often labeling late round meltdowns as “choking”. And if the player does not appear to be a half-step from suicide the same non-playing scribes immediately proclaim that the player “didn’t want it bad enough”.

All of which is, of course, horse manure. Mickelson has a nice wife and family, lots of money, over 20 tournament victories, and his health (and youth). If he was to pout about his state of affairs because he couldn’t seem to win a major I would be the first to blast him. He’s only 32 years old, for crying out loud. He has tons of time to win. Now that he has I give him the advantage over Tiger, if only because Tiger is just getting into what Mickelson has already developed. Tiger is going to need some time to work the family thing into the routine: Mickelson is way ahead of him in this regard. If Phil keeps driving the ball into the fairway he’s just as talented as Tiger. If you were to go back a few years when Tiger was playing great and Phil almost as well you would have to say that Tiger’s advantages were driving the ball and his tenacity under pressure. Now that Phil has won in the fashion that he did I think he will be a much more formidable opponent coming down the stretch. And if he hits 30 per cent more fairways than Tiger I don’t think he can lose to him.

The forgotten men in the Tiger and Phil show are Ernie and Vijay. Remember a few months ago when Vijay was winning every week and giving Tiger a run for player of the year? Well, he’s still around (and winning in Houston). If Ernie pulls it off in the Masters wouldn’t he suddenly be the guy closest to overtaking Tiger? Ernie had every right to be as upset as he was. Ernie gets it: he needs to add to his major total to separate himself from the pack and to take aim at Tiger. Vijay is in the same situation. The truth is that these four players are becoming the “Big 4” of the decade, and will more than likely be the ones fighting for the majority of the major championships. They are the cream of the crop. All are big, powerful guys with great short games who can flat out strike the ball and get it into the hole quickly. They are fun to watch, and we will be seeing some great shoot-outs in the future.

As for myself, I am approaching this season the same as I always do, relentlessly optimistic about my prospects for playing well and winning tournaments. I once saw an interview with Bill Parcells in which he was asked how he prepares his teams to win. He answered that instead of thinking about winning, he would much rather spend time trying to do everything he could to avoid losing. His reasoning was that everybody wants to win, but not many will do what it takes not to lose, that is, shoring up every weakness, taking care of every detail that might cost you. I have come to the realization over the past few years that I am a poor driver of the golf ball, and that my main swing problems are physical. I have a good idea of what I want my body to do, but I have not been able to accomplish the movements due to weakness and lack of mobility. My driving problems have something to do with my lack of strength, but I have also suffered from a less than full appreciation of just how to hit a driver.

Throughout my career I have been obsessed with producing a solid, compressed strike of the golf ball. I have devoted countless hours of practice with my irons, and far less with the driver. A while back, before the advent of large titanium drivers, the swing required for the drive was not that far removed from the iron swing. Thus, hours of practice with the 5-iron could be followed by a few drivers and you would be hitting everything with the same proficiency. Today’s equipment and golf balls have expanded the difference in technique between the tee shot and the shot off the ground. By using a launch monitor I was able to discern that I was doing something wrong in my approach to hitting the driver, namely I was hitting it like an iron. Without getting too technical, I have figured out that the driver requires a substantial change in swing pattern, and as I work that out I have already seen great improvement off the tee.

As for my physical improvement, Muscle Activation Technique Therapy (and my main man Charlie McMillin) has allowed me to work out in the gym every other day for the entire winter, the result being 10 pounds of muscle with lowered body fat and far greater overall strength. I am now able to practice more and to work on things in my swing that heretofore would have left me hurting and unable to practice for days or weeks. Theories are great, but it would do me no good to figure out how to hit a driver if I couldn’t practice what I needed to do, and in the end the ability to move the club head faster is going to depend on both strength and technique, each of which requires repetition. The beliefs of Muscle Activation include a disdain for stretching (I haven’t stretched in over a year), and the use of isometrics for the purpose of keeping chronically weak muscles active and strong. I do an hour of isometrics every morning (the gym work is in addition to that), all of which requires me to wake up before 5 AM every morning. I have gotten used to it, and it is fulfilling to know that I have done something to help me succeed on the course every day before I go to work.

Almost everything about golf excites me, but nothing gets my blood running faster than the prospect of playing in a tournament, and, of course, winning. This mindset runs directly into my teaching, as I figure that all my students are exactly like me, and I treat them accordingly. I think I know what it takes to improve, and to succeed on whatever level you are on, and if you come to see me you can expect to get a realistic assessment on both accounts. I enjoy talking about Tiger, Phil, Ernie, and Vijay, but what I really want is to play more like them, and I will do whatever it takes to inch forward toward that goal, which, if you think about it, is, or should be, everybody’s goal, to play more like the best in the game.