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Nothing is true.
Everything is permitted.
Jim Carroll
So here it is, right in front of you. 200 yards, elevated tee, wind slightly in your face, pin front right, water surrounding the green. A hard four-iron gets the front third of the green and a chance at a birdie, a Rescue 3 clears the water easily but works to the back of the green and might be too much, plus the green slopes back to front and the back bunker is no good at all. The shot is really the four, although a miss-hit is almost surely wet. The answer, of course, is “don’t miss it”. Just a nice, solid shot: put a good swing on it and fire it just left of the pin. Four is plenty of club, just stay with it and be aggressive. Same routine, good set-up, waggle, see the shot, and go.
You’ve thought your way through the shot, chosen your club, prepared as well as you know how, and now the real fun begins: you have to swing. What is it exactly that you need to pull off the shot? Do you need to believe in yourself? Is that enough? Do you need great technique? And what exactly is great technique, anyway? Is any technique that can consistently hit this shot on the green by definition “great”? Should you have swing thoughts or would it be better to think of nothing at all?
One thing is for sure: if you’re never in the situation, if you never face the shot with your heart rate elevated (for whatever reason), you cannot begin to answer any of these questions. The truth of the game is not on television. It is not in any magazine. It is not in a video. No matter what the salesmen promise, it is not in what they sell. It is not in what I teach, although I make it my goal to help my students find their own truth.
There is no more individual game than golf. Any player’s search for golfing “truth” is a lifelong journey to find what works in the field of play when the pressure is on. I have always held the opinion that you can’t know the merit or value of anything you might think you know until you test it. And tests can be on different levels, as would be the case if I take my game out into a club professional event, then try the same thing in a PGA Tour tournament, or for you it might be the Spring Handicap tournament at the club, or the club championship, or the State Amateur. You will find the truth, your truth, at the moment you stand over the shot and pull the trigger. If you play competitively, which is what I encourage all my students to attempt, you are guaranteed to face this very situation. How are you going to handle it?
A lot of players just don’t have the stomach for it. And why should they? Being so nervous that you almost want to throw up is not the greatest feeling in the world, especially when the next thing you have to do demands incredible precision just to be adequate. Let’s face it: the game is too hard for most people to excel. There are the fortunate few, the “freaks” as I like to call them, who picked up a club at whatever age and had the “knack” for the game. For no discernible reason they figured out the essential elements involved in hitting a golf ball, and, if they went on to compete and win at progressively higher levels of competition, figured out how to get the ball into the hole with shots around the green and, most importantly, with the putter. But right there in the beginning, (as unfair as it seems), unlike the vast majority of those who take a stab at playing the game, they could hit the ball.
If you’re good, and I mean really good, then performing under pressure is not that big of a deal. By that I mean that at a certain level there is an innate knowledge that you will win your share, and that failure does not carry over to the next shot, or the next hole, or the next round. You know that the shots are there, you can hit all of them, and chances are you’ll knock in the putts when you need to. But how many golfers are like that? Not many, and those who are you see on television because they are the best of the best. Everyone else is subject to the vagaries of the game, and as we all know, even the mighty succumb to the cruelly capricious nature of golf.
So if you’re not one of the “freaks”, how do you get to be that way? Aren’t we all trying our damnedest to be great, or at least to be better than we already are? Wouldn’t we love for the ball to go where we are aiming it, and further than we usually hit it? Wouldn’t we want to drive it like a combination of Fred Funk and Tiger? Putt it like Faxon? Pitch it like Furyk? Iron it like Vijay? How do you approach that? Is the answer on the Golf Channel at 5 in the morning? Is it in the newest equipment, or swing aid, or swing theory? Is it for sale at all?
One thing is for sure, the salesmen are banking on you believing that it is. An increasingly large part of the golf industry is based entirely on the desperation of the golfer. Everyone is dying to get better, and few want to hear that it will take a long time, or even worse, that it might not ever happen, or that at least there are no guarantees. Just turn on the tube or flip open one of the major (or minor) magazines. “I Can Fix Your Game in a Weekend”! “Cure Your Slice”! “Lower Your Handicap 15 Strokes in a Week”! “Add 30 Yards to Your Drives in Minutes”! “This is the Best Device Ever Invented- We Guarantee You Will Hit the Ball Better than You Ever Have, for only 3 easy payments of (fill in the blanks)”. And do you know what? Enough people buy into such stupidity that it won’t go away. It’s a huge business, and it’s all about making money, so why should it? Even the stuff that has merit for certain types of problems is sold through hysterical pronouncements that it will cure everything for everybody. It just ain’t so.
I may sound like somewhat of a cynic, but I prefer to think of myself as having a healthy dose of skepticism built into my psyche, and I see myself as somewhat of a consumer advocate. I hate to be taken advantage of, and I would like to think that I might help some of my readers feel less likely to succumb to the onslaught of marketing techniques coming out of the media. With that in mind I thought I might return to the theme of this piece, that of “truth”. As I said before, truth in golf is individual, and things that make one person better, what would be the “truth” for that person, are often not applicable to the next person, or if they are, it is in a wholly different way. Therefore, rather than make pronouncements as to what I think the truth is for everyone, I thought I might reflect on what I have found to be my own truth, things I have learned about the game through many years of struggle, some that have helped me improve, some just observations which have helped me avoid the general lunacy that is prevalent in the game today.
1. If you were never really any good from the moment you picked up a club, the only way you can even come close to buying the game is to pay someone who really knows what they are doing to teach it to you. This may sound like a self-serving advertisement for my own teaching business, but you’ll just have to trust that I write this for your benefit, not my own. Just about everything about the game is counter-intuitive. That means that what seems to be the right idea, and what feels somewhat comfortable, is most likely wrong. You have to hit down on a ball that lies on the ground to make it go up. You have to swing in a circle to make the ball go straight. Your downswing starts before your backswing is finished. If you weren’t lucky enough to have (for no reason other than you just did) discerned this right from the start, you aren’t going to get it by hitting thousands of balls by yourself. No magazine article, or book, or video, or TV show, or swing aid device, is going to give you the idea, much less show you how to do it and make sure you don’t screw it up. It takes a quality teacher, and plenty of time, to even get close.
2. Speaking of time, if you don’t have a lot of it to give to the endeavor of getting better, what limited chance you had just became more limited. It’s going to take a long time to get better even if you have the time to commit to practicing and playing, and you would be well advised to recruit an advisor, in the form of a well-rounded instructor, to monitor your progress and keep you on the right path. Teaching pros are there to educate you and give you direction. They should be able to demonstrate what they are telling you, and should avail themselves of modern technology in order to show you what you are doing as well as what you are supposed to be trying to do. If you never see yourself swing, and have no concept of what the best players are up to, you have almost no chance. It’s up to you to dig it out of the dirt, but a good instructor can show you where to dig as well as the most effective digging technique.
If you love the game but just don’t have a lot of time to practice, be sure to take it easy on yourself when it comes to the rate of your progress. It’s silly (and self-defeating) to have high expectations when you can’t commit the time it takes to improve.
3. Any swing device you see on an infomercial may well be an effective training tool. But is it appropriate for you? You have little or no way of knowing if the aid in question would be perfect for your particular swing flaw or disastrous to your swing in general. Let me give you an example: recently a long-time student whom I hadn’t seen in about a year came to me for another lesson. He brought along a swing device he purchased from a TV infomercial designed to help increase his club head speed. I have seen the commercial, and it is impressive indeed, with one of the world’s best players touting the device as one that helped him improve. My friend is a thick, muscular guy who started with me practically unable to hit the ball at all. Through years of hard work he has managed to get his handicap down below 10, but does not drive the ball commensurate with his strength, a perfect foil for the promises of “more club head speed”. Sure enough, he buys the swing aid for $100 and brings it to the lesson. It needs to be noted that my student has always been a “lifter”, not only in the sense that he loves to lift weights, but that his swing has always been marred by a major hoist of his upper body as he tries to swing the club back into what he perceives to be a “full” turn. Lifting like he does immediately flattens his shoulder turn, which causes his arms to pull behind him and the club to swing on too flat a plane, which in turn leads him to swivel “over the top” starting his downswing. His resulting approach angle into the ball necessitates that he release the club early to square it, thus negating whatever power his strength should provide. In our lesson he stated that he needed to hit his drives farther (who doesn’t) and showed me his new tool. “So, show me how you use it”, I ask. “Well, I swing it like a baseball bat”, he replies. “Hmmm…” I mumble. “What kind of shoulder turn do you make when you swing a baseball bat”? I ask. “Well, kind of flat, I guess”, he replies. “And what are we trying so hard to do in your swing?” I follow. “Keep my posture and turn my shoulders closer to my spine angle”, he says with chagrin. “Not exactly what you are practicing when you swing that thing is it?” I ask. “Not really”.
This, in a nutshell, is why generalized fixes and swing aids offered up as panacea stand as good a chance of messing you up as they do helping you. And how would you know? That’s why you need help.
4. You need to become a better putter. Even if it’s a strong part of your game, you need to be better. Why? Because someday, if you ever start to hit the ball well, your putting will show itself to be weaker than you thought. It’s inevitable: hit it great, putt so-so or worse. You get it up and down a few times while missing tons of greens and you figure you’re a pretty good putter. Start hitting more greens and you immediately have more long putts, which leads to more short putts, which leads to more three putts. You also have more mid-range putts for birdie, which, if you miss them all, tend to irritate you quite a bit. Anyway, it’s just a tip. Take it from me, hitting it great and putting like an idiot will make you want to quit the game. Figure out how you want to putt and practice it often. Good mechanics will make you truly confident. It’s hard to feel good over a 4-footer when your stroke has a good chance of starting the ball off line.
5. TV announcers who think they can tell why a player hit the ball 10 yards off line are delusional. What does that have to do with anything? I don’t know, but I have to get this off my chest. These guys are unbelievable. Take Johnny Miller, for example. He saw Tiger close the face of an iron shot from his tower 150 yards away. He noticed that Craig Parry crossed the line on an iron shot a bit more than usual from the blimp shot. He decided that ScottVerplank had the ball too far back in his stance on a pitch shot from a totally off camera angle 50 yards away. I have a challenge for Miller, Peter Kostis, Curt Byrum, Gary McCord, and any other announcer who thinks he or she can discern from the standard network video feed, which, incidentally, is not shot with high shutter speed (meaning that the slow-motion playback is blurred), the difference between a swing that produces a good result and one that nets a poor one. I’ll give them a swing, let them look at it in slow motion, and then they can tell me where the ball went. I guarantee that none of them will be better than 50%. Why? Because with players of that caliber a swing that hits the ball out of bounds looks exactly the same as one that knocks the ball stiff. In addition, the announcers have no idea what kind of shot the player is trying to play in the first place. Go ahead and analyze the swings, the comments are usually interesting, but don’t try to tell the audience why the shot went array. If you do, you are making it up. Knowledgeable golf veterans should know better.
6. Strength is under-appreciated, while flexibility is vastly overemphasized. My back and shoulders were just about toast until I traded in my stretching routine for a series of isometrics. The theory I have learned to believe in is that tightness is secondary to weakness. In other words, the reason you are “tight” is that the muscles that move you into that position where you feel unable to go are weak, and the tightness is simply your body’s way of keeping you in a stable condition where you have less chance of hurting yourself. Has anyone ever explained to you why you should stretch and offered any evidence that it is a good thing? When you stretch, how do you know when or where to stop? Do you think that your body might be telling you something when you can’t reach a certain position without pain? I can tell you that once I stopped stretching and starting resistance training (after years of Muscle Activation Technique Therapy or MAT) I have increased my strength, stability and range of motion, and have seen major progress in my ability to swing the way I would like to swing and to move the club faster while maintaining my technique.
If you suffer from an inherent lack of range of motion I would advise you to accept a shorter, more efficient swing and work from there. If you watch the Champions Tour you will see plenty of examples of this. The key is to let the legs be the governor of your swing length. For most golfers proper leg movement in the backswing is sure to make the swing more compact.
7. I never stop learning. I have made a resolution not to pretend that I know the best way to swing the club, or pitch, or putt. I just know how I prefer to do it, and since I am pretty good at it and can provide evidence that other players better than myself do similar things I bring some credibility to my teaching.
I have always taken pride in having dug my swing out of the ground, but I am not so proud that I won’t acknowledge when I have been helped. It seems to me that if more of the people who occupy positions of stature in the game would admit the same, and if it were generally accepted that the game is too hard to hope for miracle cures then the people who choose to tackle it might have a better chance at eventually experiencing a modicum of success. My goal first is to become a better player. My next goal is to educate my students, then to provide those who read these articles a bit of common sense and a small dose of reality, a perspective that might help in your search for your own “truth”.
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