A Taste of Luxury

As we noted in the previous post, the replacement shoes came the other day.

On occasion in life you run across things that are remarkable in their ability to exude luxury.  I can remember the 25 cubic foot refrigerator that opened new vistas in the harsh arena of cool and cold storage.

Then today I'm out with one of the new pairs of shoes.  It was cold and windy; the dew point was not in play and the course sprinklers had not been run last night.  And I was a bit cold.  Could have used another layer.  But my feet were wrapped in warmth and dry to boot -- hmm, interesting word there!

I cruised around the course and felt warm all the way.  The highest accolade one can have for an article of clothing is that after a bit of time you don't know you are wearing it.   That happened too.

New shoes can break in in a number of ways.  I have experienced shoes that do not crease nicely over the toes.  But the new ones have nicely begun to wear without any toe joint problems.  Another wonderful trait.

To suggest I'm happy would be an understatement.

I also treated myself to some cedar shoe trees this Xmas.  I put the trees into the new shoes.  They seemed happy together.  I intend to rotate the shoes as I use them.

I'm also going to buy some silicone spray that provides some water proofing but it also helps to make the leather more slippery.   That will keep them cleaner even if the water proofing is not helped.

That is the shoe saga for the moment.

I have a couple of days off as the holidays once again interfere with the golfing.  Very sad.

Warranties in a Post Modern World

I'm not sure I know what the post modern world really means.  But it comes up a lot in the climate debate.  I suspect it is not a compliment.

As close readers of the blog and those with whom I play golf will remember that I'm having issues with leaky golf shoes.

Now wet feet are not too bad.  It is getting cold however and then there is the proliferation of animals on the course.  Animals bring with them, or actually leave little bits of themselves all over the course.  Add in some copious sprinkling and I see the course as a large, wet, thinly layered bio sphere.  Probably not one you want to put in the trunk of your car nor bring home with you or, most scarily, bring with you to lunch.

We should probably talk of cross contamination.  When I worked at an unnamed national laboratory, we have a lot of things that you didn't want to spread around.  Cross contamination is the method by which you move material from one place to the next to the third by a intermediate means.  Means might include hands, or gloves or shoes or golf towel.  We didn't have a lot of golf towels at the lab, but we had plenty of other things.

Cross contamination does occur at the course.  And, drawing a bit on bridge, it happens in spades.  Every ball that comes onto a green is usually cleaned before being putted.  The material that gets wiped off the ball goes on the towel.  You handle the towel with your hands.  Clubs are wiped off after every shot and they've been ripping through turf and water and mud and everything else.

When you pull the granola bar out of your bag, you are moving that material to the zipper, the outside of the wrapper on the bar and if you dare to handle the bar on its way to your mouth, then the material is now internal.

Then you finish the day and put your stuff away and wipe stuff off.  Slap the shoes together to remove loose impediments and place them in the trunk.  Grab the door handle, gear shift lever, steering wheel, radio knob, etc.  The icky stuff is everywhere.

We thus have evidence that stuff is not really dangerous since golfers are not dropping like fly and there are no warnings from the CDC on every course with the handy "take along gallon of hand sanitizer" available at no charge.

But if your shoes leak then after a bit there is a certain aroma that can build up in them.  I get nasty looks from Barb as the fragrance migrates to my street shoes off my wet feet.

You can get sprays from Amazon to kill bacteria on athletic wear.  It seems that the one that is popular smells like bubble gum and smells strongly!  I think I'll pass on that one.

But the leaky shoes are a problem.  I've been buying New Balance shoes and their waterproof shoes are made by a third party, Klone Lab.  I contacted New Balnace (NB) and they referred me to the lab and with two emails I have two new pairs of shoes on the way.  They can't get here too soon!  They have a two year waterproof warranty - most useful and generous.

I asked my man, Ricky, at Klone why the shoes are leaking.  He said that leaving them in the trunk where extreme heat can get at them was one reason.  Other than that he had no response.  Now I do leave them in the back of my hatch back, but I don't think it gets that hot.  I've been getting about 9 months out of the shoes and then they leak. 

Last time I sent some shoes back I had to supply invoices and pictures and eventually the shoes.  This time it was just an email with the invoices pasted into the email body.  Nice!

Then, it was a tough week for gear, my golf watch has a fancy charging cable.  The watch is water resistant and the method they have to supplying energy to its internal battery is a clip on cable that interacts with the watch internals vial 4 tiny pins.  The watch has 4 recessed contacts and the spring loaded pins on the cable can extend into the holes and make contact with the pins tightly enough that charging is possible.  One of the pins no longer will extend.  Either the spring broke or something.  It's buried deeply inside a molded cable so I can't look at it. 

I couple of emails and a phone call to Bushnell and a new cable is one way.  I had a nice chat with Kim, ex-navy, and it seems we share some common world views.

There is a third party cable on Amazon for $15.  A reasonable price to play, but feedback suggested that this cable might not be a good solution...  There is talk of a fried watch and just not working.  So kudos to Bushnell for supplying the part gratis.

It's nice to have a couple of manufacturers standing behind and going a bit beyond their duties to back their products.  If they hadn't I would have sought other suppliers, so it's in their long term interest to keep this avid customer happy.

Sadly, I kind of need all this right now, but I have a few days of no golf to allow the powers of the USPS to get things to my door.   I'm looking forward to tossing the old golf shoes away and so is Barb.

New Direction

I took a few golf days off as Barb and I journeyed to Santa Monica.  Oh, there was some pitching and putting practice on Saturday.  Jay and I went out to one of the LA county courses.  It's one we had played before.

On the 18th hole there is a plaque that records Arnold Palmer taking a 12 on the 18th hole during the 1953 LA Open.  He sliced three onto the driving range and then hooked three over the boundary fence.  Jay and I both parred the hole, I might mention.

I told the story to Jimmy at the local course.  Jimmy is an Irishman who has lived all over the world.  When he finally ended up the US he landed in the LA area.

Jimmy is 90 this year and has managed to shoot his age a number of times.  He didn't start golf at an early age.  He learned hurley as a child.  This sport is a lot like shinty.  And if you've not traveled enough to come across either of those sports, it's field hockey for men and found in Ireland and Scotland.  Jimmy has a long swing and gets the club well above his head.  He has not lost the ability to swing it around and hits a nice long ball considering his age.

As I was saying, I told the story about the plaque to Jimmy.  And he was there!  He saw Arnie play all those shots.  He was in sales at the time and would take customers to the golf tournaments.  He played a lot of golf in the LA area.

He and his pals would also journey out and play other courses in California.  He recalls playing Torrey Pines in San Diego.  It seems the weekend greens fees were $2.50 back in the day.

Jimmy is fun to play with.  He has some interesting stories of bygone times.  In his early adulthood he would leave home to some other country, find some work, do that for a time, then return home.  Then repeat.  He worked in accounting and sales and some manual labor too.  He finally ended up California, got married, had 5 children.   He raised them right and one of the daughters comes out and plays golf with him during the summer.

But, back to the topic of the post.

I was playing at Wente yesterday and I was eager to put some of the ball striking changes that have occurred to use.  Wente is a tough course for me.  It's probably 5 stokes harder than my usual course.  It's longer and the greens are bent grass.  Bent grass rolls nicely, but it gets in the way of gravity.  To my eye, balls break up hill.  Then there is the speed.  In one direction the greens will be lightening fast.  In others, deathly slow.  I can't see it.  But Phil, known as Mr. Two Putt, knows these like he planted the grass.   It is very difficult for me to score there.  I've broken 80 twice, but it was a lot of work.

Yesterday I tested the new swing thoughts.  One the first hole I managed to hit a driver onto the fairway!  Well, this is nice.  Note that there is a canyon just to the right and a vineyard to the left.  I hit an iron in from 150, which is about 30 yards closer than I usually am.  I'm short, but decide that smooth bump and run to a close pin seems like a good shot selection.  This comes off quite well and actually goes in the hole.  Hmm, birdie to start.  I can get used to this.

The second hole is a bit strange.  It's short, but you need to hit a left to right shot to avoid a huge Sycamore tree near the tee and then bend it right to avoid the rough and another bushy tree out about 175 yards.  There is a small shoot that avoids disaster here.  If you are left there is chunky bark under the bushy tree and the tree hangs so low that there is no path to hit the ball up in the air.

It was a magic day and I hit the hybrid down the left with a nice fade that takes it out into the middle of the fairway.  It feels good to be a golfer that seems to know what he is doing.

The green is trapped in front and there are more Sycamore trees that, octopus like, wave thick white arms to block the high approaches to the green.  The pin is tucked way to the right and the trees are blocking any kind of direct path in.

But it's a day of "can do."  It's still cold and I decide to fade a short iron in.  This comes off as well.  But it's a shallow green and hard to hold.  I'm in the back, but I've found the corner of the green where the pin is.  A par for this hole with two putts.

I won't bore you, dear readers, with a hole by hole recitation of the rest of the round.  But I'll mention that ball striking with a couple of exceptions, goes like a wondrous dream.  Need to move it right to left and hit it 190 yards?  No problem.  How about a 4 iron with a slight fade to get close to the pin on the long par 5?  Ok!  A smooth 7 iron on a par 3 goes right over the pin -- a deviation of a fraction of a degree.

Now, there was a black cloud to all of this.  I was caught up a bit in three putt city.  The approach shots I hit to 10 feet were all two putts and longer putts frequently turned to three putts as I couldn't get the speeds right.

But I came off the course feeling very good.  The long game has jelled into trustworthy friend that is always willing to help.

When I was playing a lot of bridge, I longed for the day when I didn't make stupid errors and could concentrate on playing the game.  Golf is kind of the same thing.  If the mistakes are small, then you are playing a different game.  Shot placement and strategy are the important parameters, not "I'll hit this and hope it works out."

I feel I'm on the edge of a new game.  It's quite different from the old one.  Challenges are similar, but different.  I'm afraid that that it might be more a putting game.  A portion of the game that held lessor interest than the other parts.  Well, I must adapt and change my thinking, I think.  I think there be rewards there.

O brave new world,
That has such challenges in't.  -- apologies to old Willie!

Last Round for a Week

The last couple of rounds have been near to God.  The ball is going where it is supposed to.  I walk up to a shot and have no wonder just that quiet confidence of someone who has learned his trade.

Well, there was always the driver that decided that he just didn't like to be one of many in the bag. 

But let me roll back just a bit.

There is always another YouTube video expounding different aspects of the swing.  The video makers that I tend to believe is Athletic Motion Golf,  AMG.  What separates them from the crowd is that they are detailing what they have learned.  They collect data from professionals and good amateurs and discuss and point out the differences between the two.  And there are differences.

One of the aspects of the swing is the hip bump.  What this is the first move in the down swing is to push the left hip forward and then to rotate.  This is a common understanding.

AMG took a look at this.  And found that it's not a good idea.  It causes a lot of problems.  It's not what the pros do.

What they do see and like, is for the entire body to make a first move towards the left side.  They talk of it as a slide down hill to get it all started.

What this does is to load the left side and maintain the spine angle and finally provide a solid platform and location from which to rotate.

I've worked with Glenn, a local pro, who wanted me to just take a backswing and then rotate the shoulders.  I had trouble with this.  It seemed to work, but it just didn't feel right and I was still not hitting the driver well.

The other problem is trying to remember all the stuff I'm trying to do.  I long for old days when the memory never slept and it sucked up everything.

So today I'm determined to try this torso glide followed by a rotation. 

I shoot one over on the front using the driver just twice.  One bogey was a thin shot into a bunker that I couldn't get up and down and the other was a three putt where I ran the ball well past the hole.  There was a birdie in there with a nice 10 footer down hill.

Drive one was on the screws and hit the fairway and turned a semi long hole into a birdie chance.  The next time was a par 5 where the drive really didn't matter much.  I got to the green with a wedge even as the driver was short and hooking.

The back nine started with 3 regulation pars (on in regulation and two putts).  Then came the par 5 at 550 yards.  I hauled out the driver and hooked it into a bunker.  I needed a nine iron to clear the lip and over hanging tree.  That left me with 250 yards in and it was too far to get there in regulation.

I got on in 4 and two putted.  But I realized what I was doing with the driver.  I was not rotating the shoulders properly, but getting shoulders off plane to get the club back.  When I came down I needed to make large adjustments to get back to the ball.  I needed to take the club back, like an iron, more upright and under the plane.

Meanwhile I'm using the fall and rotate method for everything and I'll hitting the ball like a minor deity.  

So on 14, armored with this realization, I hit the driver and it goes well with a touch of push and finds the fairway bunker.  "Hit a fade 6 iron," Steve says.   He was right, that was the shot.  I catch it thin  and hit the face of the bunker and it goes 30 yards.

But now I am in my wheelhouse -- 130 out.  I don't need all of an 8 iron and hit a little fade in.  It runs about 10 feet past as the pin is in a devilish position with a downhill slope.  But I put a good stroke on it and in it goes.  A par for the story books.  Well, not really.  Getting up and down with a short iron is not an unexpected event.

The 16th is another driver hole and now I hit it down the left side of the fairway.  Good strike, not perfect, but it has a lot of perfect elements in it.  We have a short iron in.  I hit a thin shot, it goes over the green and I get cute and don't get it up and down.

17 can be a driver or 4 wood.  I'm pumped. I've figured this out.  I grab the big stick and hit it well.  A fat 8 iron leaves me with a challenging two putt but I manage.

Then we are on 18, a par 5.  The ball is crushed down the middle with a tiny draw setting up a routine second shot with a great angle to the dog leg.

I hit it too well.  It goes through the fairway and into a culvert with really large rocks.  They might have been stones.  They might have been rejected for paving stones for being too large.

To make a long story short I take a drop and then hit a feeble wedge.  On line, but short.  It gets messy from there.

I'm shooting my usual 76 with a nasty back nine.  But my doubts about the driver are erased.  Bring on the next round! 

There is irony in the world as we are traveling for the rest of the week.  The clubs will stay home and think about prior rounds.  I'll be clubless and thinking of future rounds. 

Happy Thanksgiving all.

Putter Thoughts

The long game continues to improve.  I've become quite fond of it and look forward to more improvement.

I mentioned that I might steer this towards putting a bit.  It's a topic that hasn't interested me over the years, but now with more holes being fairway then green then putts, I need to spend some time on this topic to keep my game improving.

I've been lusting for an Evnroll putter for a while.  I play golf with Sonny, who changes equipment like I change socks.  He bought an Evnroll after I talked it up.  Then he traded it for a different model or Evnroll.

Sonny was in love for a few rounds but then put it away and went back to a Scotty Cameron that he's had for a while. 

I asked him why he switched back and he said that he wanted to see a deeper putter. 

The model he has is called ER1 and has the classic look of a Ping Anser putter.  It's not very deep and not too long.  By deep I'm referring to the amount of material that extends backwards from the ball impact position.

Sonny is quite generous as lending out his equipment and sells his unwanted gear to his playing partners.  I asked to borrow and I've had it for a week or so.

I played with the ER1 for three rounds.  I've also come to the same conclusion that Sonny did and that I like to have more visual mass behind the ball.

If the putter is "deeper' then I tend to drag the head into the ball and don't twist it at all.  With the Anser shape there is a tendency to shut the face at impact.

I'll be returning it to Sonny soon.

Of course Evnroll has mallet type putters too, so I'm not necessarily saving any money yet!

There is some technology in the putters by Evnroll.  The face has asymetric grooves that provide more contact the further from the "sweet" spot you hit the ball.  Thus the grooves are weakest at the sweet spot and there really isn't one happy spot.   Guerin Rife, the designer, has found that amateurs and professionals don't hit putts in the sweet spot much.

Now for the grooves to really be a factor, you have to do a lot of things right.  Your path and face angle and speed have to be reasonable.  Putts hit off the sweet spot with a putter without the grooves will be sprayed to the sides and be shorter.  The grooves tend to funnel the ball back on line and have them go the full distance.

I like the contact feeling with the putters.  It does feel a bit thin, but the ball rolls well and seems happy.

I made some putts with the ER1.  I think I made about 5 putts of long length on Friday.  There were a couple of saves and 3 birdies.  It wasn't too bad.  But I think I would have done better with a mallet.

The main problems with making more putts was due to speed issues.  On occasion the guy who selects the pin placements can put them in some devilish locations.  Then if you get above the pin, you are in trouble.  That happened a couple of times on Friday.

Otherwise, all is going well in golf and in life.  Though I've still not found a pickleball player...

Some Numbers

I'm sure that I will return to the long game at some point.  Golly, nothing in golf seems to last more than round and half, so I'll be back.

But I was thinking about the levers and radii in golf and thought I'd provide some actual numbers.

I'm making some assumptions here.  I could look all this up and I may, but let me jot down some actual numbers and calculations and then I'll expound about the whole thing.

My numbers:  Middle neck to shoulder joint: 9 inches,  Shoulder to start of fingers: 26 and length of a normal driver from middle of hand position to center of the club face: 42 inches.

The diameters can be calculated if we could spin these items into a fill circle.  But since about 90 degrees is all I want to for my shoulders let's start there.

A 90 degree arc for my shoulder is about 14 inches.

The arms are going to have a longer arc since they are getting somewhere over the right shoulder and then extending down to the ball.  I'll be generous and say that it's 170 degrees or 170/360 * the diameter.  That number is about 77 inches.

The final number is that of the club.  For the driver we have 3/4 of a diameter as we will get the club close to parallel above the shoulders.  That number is about 198 inches.

Let's look at ratios of these numbers.  The idea that I move shoulders back and coil the arms and club around the body and then we will spin back and unwind everything.  If the time is the same, i.e., the shoulders are finished rotating at the same time the arms and shoulders are, we can calculate the speed attained by the club head as a multiplicand of the shoulders.  We can talk about how valid this all is in a moment.

The distance the club head moves is about 14 times the shoulder movement.  Note that the swing centroid is at the left shoulder.

If we can move the shoulders at 8 miles an hour we should get about 110 at the club head.  Raise your hand if you'd like to have a club head swing of 110 MPH?  I'd love to see 100...

Caveats and there are always caveats.  1) It might be hard to move the shoulders at 8 MPH, not sure.  It seems certain people can.  2) If the "swing" times are not the same then the end speeds will not be correct.   But if the energy is the same and we get some whip at the end, it may be that parts are slower initially and then faster later.

I'm inclined to think that this might be fairly accurate at least as a model for the swing.  I believe that since at impact the hands and club are pretty much in line with the left shoulder.  So the end positions and times are pretty much the same.

The shoulders have to start it all.  But the arms stay against the chest for a time and don't have the full diameter on the downswing.  Now this is probably a good thing in re building club head speed.  The arms unfold after the shoulders have moved a bit.  Then the club swings out in the same manner.

The natural release method tells us to let the angular acceleration do this for us.  We don't want to "help" the arms or club come out and swing around.  See Tutelman.com and his swing section for more information.

I've managed to play with this a couple of rounds.  The swing has simplified to a small shoulder movement back and down and then forward.   Everything else is on its own.  I'm really happy with contact and direction. 

I had another nice range session today and I'm still a happy camper.  Big test will be Tuesday at the long course.  I play tomorrow too, Monday.

Sorry for the disjointed post here, but I wanted to get something out. 

It's a Wrap

Ok, I think I talked about the magic 7 iron that took place on Wednesday.

I went to the range to make sure I could repeat it.

I played today and was able to play with this new technique.  I did realize that I have to turn away from the ball and not slide.  The slide I was doing was not much, but it was enough.  Also I was only doing it with the driver.

I realized that late in the round.  However when the smoke cleared and that's saying something with the Camp fire filling the sky, I had two drives that got me in trouble and 10 or so that split the fairway.

On the front there are a couple of holes that are usually tough because they are just long enough that I struggle to get to the greens.  Today they all dissolved into birdie opportunities as the driver was serving me well.

My iron game was spot on and the shots were more solid than usual.

If I can keep this up, then the long game need not be discussed again.  I think we will have to alter the topics and probably move to putting.

I'd talk chipping, but I miss so few greens, who cares?  And in all modesty, my chipping and pitching and sand play are pretty solid.

We might as well jump in to putting.  I ran across an interesting putting video on Youtube the other day.  The lead "expert" was talking about what they have seen with the putters (people) they have looked at.

His finding was that people are better at line than they think and not as good with distance control.  Today I was working on distance and not paying much attention to line.  It seems to be a reasonable way to putt.  The only three putt I had was when I got the speed wrong. 

Working on speed with just a modest interest in line seems to be for me a fairly low Angst way to putt.  There is a lot of speed adjustment done subconsciously.  I take a few free practice swings to "feel" the line and then step in and hit it.  This is basically how I pitch and chip.  The feeling is the club just swinging and catching the ball along the way.  No interest in trying to hit the ball.

I will keep working on this and report back.

The front nine today was even par, with a birdie on the par 5 second and a three putt birdie on the 5th.  All the other holes were straight forward and pretty simple.  I did have a nice sand shot on the 8th hole green side bunker and my playing partners just kicked the ball back.  

The back was not a lot of drama.  Got in trouble with wayward tee shots on two holes, otherwise I hit all the rest and two putted.

It's been a good week.  I think I've figured out how to swing properly and easily.  I'm expecting this to continue as the big mistakes are gone.  My swing thoughts are just move the arms with the shoulders, get the left should under the chin, then move it back to the setup position, which is all of 5 inches -- a simple swing!  If I just do that without trying to swing hard, the ball goes straight, long, and up in the air.  The very thing we are looking for!

A couple of holes

I hit a seven iron yesterday as sweet as I've ever hit any shot.

 

It was 140 from an uphill lie and I didn't need all of it.  It felt like warm butter and a hot knife and the ball took off like a happy eagle.  Flew straight as a Roman road and went right over the pin.  Would have been fitting to have made the putt, but "ho hum" pars are the strength of my game.

Then on to the long 13th.  I hook the drive into the bunker about 180 off the tee.  The lip is in the way and I come out of it with an 8 iron.  That rolls out pretty well, but it's still 220 in.  A low, hot hybrid gets to the middle of the green and I can the breaking, fast,  side hiller for the second birdie of round.

The Costco hot dog tasted good that day, my friends...

Some Thoughts on Thoughts

There was recent family research program that got started over some portfolio allocations. 

After the research my views on what I felt I knew were changed about 180 degrees. 

I first ascribed this to a phenomenon of believing what you read in the popular press.  The press was in this case and in many others, a bit alarmist.  And in this case I took those words for gospel and it was affixed in my mind for a number of years.

That was a bit of a mistake and I wish now that I had maintained my usual skepticism of what I had read.  I'm usually good at that, but on occasion when an article aligns with my core beliefs and possibly what I want to believe, it's awfully easy to accept it.

We all have that problem. 

Then I ran I ran across an article from a researcher.  He mentioned he ran into a person whom he knew in grad school.  They were both working towards their PhD.  The friend dropped out and went to law school.  He stuck it out.

The friend told him that she quit because the research made her feel stupid.

The researcher considered this.  He recognized that looking into things that are unknown should make us feel stupid.  Well, maybe ignorant is a better word.

I've run into this too.  I was doing some judging at science fairs.  I was working at a national lab and doing technical stuff, so this shouldn't have been too much trouble.

There were a couple of problems with that.  The kids were looking into stuff that was unknown to me.  They tended to stare me in the eyes too; quite disconcerting!  And then a number of exhibitors had access to labs and parents who probably helped a lot.  A lot of it was beyond me.

An interesting part of this was as I tried to fill in the gaps of my own knowledge by asking questions of the kids, they had problems with my lack of understanding.  General principals of a lot of things be they biological or physical are usually fairly simple.  But the connections from what they are playing with and general principals can be obscure.  I needed the connections, but the kids had trouble providing them as they were too close to it and never looked at their project from an outsider's point of view.

Now, back to golf...  As I struggle through the mass of knowledge out there one has to realize that it's not all right.  Even if we agree that there are a number of ways to hit golf balls, there are physical properties that we have to respect.  Then it's also an issue and body of knowledge as to how and what we want our physical bodies to do.

As I stumble along I feel like that researcher who feels stupid.  I feel lost on occasion -- ok, quite often.  I envy the golfer who just gets up and hits it and doesn't have to reflect on it all. 

But like the researcher, this feeling is valid and acceptable.  I should accept the lost feelings and embrace them rather than feeling discouraged.  It reveals new areas of inquiry and new possibilities and directions of investigation.  All of which should be considered as a good thing.

I don't know if my family member will resolve the beliefs we used to share in common.  I hope the question well provide some incite into firmly held beliefs and how they might be correct or correct for everyone. 

I used to engage folks on Facebook about the issues of the day.  When something came up which I didn't agree, I looked into it.  For example I was told that the expected life span in Tennessee was 30 years less than the rest of the country (interestingly this was also from a family member).  30 years seemed a lot.  I looked it up.  She was right, they do have a lesser life span but it's 5 years not 30.  There are also details that I found interesting as the Tennesseans had a tendency to die young.  It wasn't health care or lack of social support, they just tended to get a little crazy early in life.  Why did she accept the 30 year number uncritically?  It should have seemed awfully big to anyone.  Another post topic!

I got interested in science and the "news" in a big way when the issue of global warming came up.  Al Gore was telling us that the world was doomed and the arctic would ice free by 2018, etc., etc.  That led to a lot of reading and thinking and learning about peer reviewed papers and how science is done, etc.  I don't have a lot of respect for much of what I run across now and no belief in what I read in the papers.  Any headline that starts with "Scientist say..." is almost guaranteed to some newspaper editor's world view and not what was in the actual paper.  The press releases are not much better and the papers tend to print without asking any questions.   Also peer reviewed papers are no guarantee of truth either.  A topic for another day...

So I feel in a lot of ways and in almost all fields that I am surrounded by a large sea (are there small seas?  Maybe I don't need the "large" in there.), of ignorant, slanted, and poorly understood stuff in all fields.  Think salt and fat are bad for you?  Better check.  Think the golf swing needs a huge lower body movement to swing fast?  Might not be that clear...

I've reached the point where I don't trust anything.  Thankfully it's quite easy to access the sum of all human knowledge these days allows you to look around and see what is probably true and that which is wrong and that which is unknown.

My advice is to embrace all of this and be very wary about "knowing" something.  I'm going to work on my humility!

More Progress

I have not been keeping my many, many readers up to date in re my on going theory of the golf swing.

Lots of things have been going on.  The main points are that I am trying to turn and keep the body fairly stable over the ball.  Ok, not over the ball, but a touch behind it.  Thus no slide back and no need to slide forward.

Once I started that, I found that I had no need to manipulate the club with my hands.  They were, in the immortal words of Ben Hogan, "freewheeling through the swing."

Of course, and I include this only for completeness, that you can't be lunging forward in the downswing.  Maintaining the body location is required.

Can we do this or is more of an "easier said than done?" 

I can state with no reservation that this is all quite doable.

Today the pieces dropped into place.  I turned, I stayed, I cocked the wrists, I came down in the proper area, my plane was good, the club squared up, I kept the swing in front of me...  And the ball was very happy to go where I wanted it to go.

Distance, good, direction was the envy of my playing partners.

Even the driver, when I chose to pull it out, was operating properly.

Of course, there is always a fly in the ointment and the putter was a bit balky.  I had less than 10 foot birdie putts all over the course.  Never made a one. 

I was applying some of full swing items to the putter swing.  I was killing the ball!  It was zooming off and rolling nicely and it had the proper over spin.  All good, but the tendency was to hit it too well, too long, and I was not making all of the return putts.  On the front nine I shot 3 over with 3 three putts.   The back was equally solid. 

Add all of this to the fine weather and a good group of players.  It was a very fine day to play.  The swing items worked far better than expected.  I am very excited about those.  Maybe all that practice and thought has finally gelled.  It is all good.  I won't be playing tomorrow, but I'll get to the range and try to cement in some of the above items. 

Everything I Need to Know about Golf, I Learned From Hitting my Nine Iron

I'm at the range and it's going pretty well.  There is a young boy there and he is sitting on a nearby bench with his grandfather. 

The grandfather goes off for a lesson from Stan, the aged, local pro.

I say something to the boy.  I don't remember what it was, but something encouraging.  He says, "My grandpa says you never miss a shot."

In some ways old granddad is correct.  At least compared to others at the range.  I assure the lad that the better you get, the more you can find wrong with what you are doing.

I told the boy that he has about a 40 year head start on my golf career and I'm sure he will over take me in no time.


On to our main topic.  Faithful readers will note my long struggle with the big stick. 

When I practice I start with my 9 iron.  Also I've been pretty good about keeping my head behind the ball.  So everything but the driver has been very well behaved. 

I keep pondering this.  "What's the secret of the nine iron?"  I pull it out and set up to hit a ball and try to be very observant about what I'm doing.

I realize that I put very little body action into the swing.  I'm basically turning shoulders and then turning them back.  The body is very quiet.  The backswing is slow.  I have infinite trust in this swing.  It's the envy of my friends and enemy of tight pins. 

A light goes on...

Let's try doing these several things with all the clubs...  It seems that the speed of the backswing depends on how far I'm trying to hit the ball.  Bad, bad!  I try taking the club back slowly.  Then let's try this "bodyless" swing for all the clubs.  Hmm, this seems to be working.

I grab for the big stick.  I'm very happy with my contact.  I'm not sure how far it's going, but it's straight and up in the air.

Hope returns again. 


Meanwhile I mentioned pickleball the other day.  This showed up in my youtube feed and I'm hot to give it a try.  I got a paddle and some balls.  After my range session I went over to the courts.  They were vacant as usual.  But I could try some serves.

My last racket/paddle sport is table tennis.  I found that I had to hit the ball a lot harder than expected.  It took a couple of hits before I got a ball over the net.  If you watch the players on youtube they are whacking it pretty hard.  There will be an adjustment here.  I'm glad I didn't talk anyone into hitting with me before I tried it.  There will be a learning curve here.

The Plan Continues

It was another cool, windless morning at the Las Positas golf course.  The sun was buried behind amorphous clouds that would take a number of holes to burn off.

The seniors had made the turn from their backed up shotgun start.  Our usual group of intrepid golfers were off on their Monday round.  Sadly, a number of our regulars were absent.  Rich II, a usual stalwart member, was off on another course with his third golf group -- he does play around. 

Dick, aka Rich 0, wanted to play the forward tees as the Wednesday contest would be played from there. 

So off we went onto a strangely dry course.  Normally the dew and left over watering makes for some heavy grass laden with juice.  It finds its way into all shoes and, rumor has it, capable of dissolving glue on some usually good shoes.

Playing from the reds was fine with me.  I could work on my iron game and not worry about trying to hit long drives.  And so it went.  I've made changes to keep the ball to the left of my head through out the swing and it's still doing a wonderful job.

My length with the clubs has gotten longer and as I'm trusting what I'm doing, the distance continues and it's become nearly effortless.

One of my other swing thoughts, there has to be at least two, is to allow the club to swing and slap the ball as it comes into impact.  No longer trying to drive the hands past the ball, just let the club come around and the momentum from all of that to bring me out and up from the hitting position.

I was hitting everything with the utmost confidence and thoroughly enjoying every hit.

How did you score?  I hear you ask.  Not badly, a smooth 76, which pretty common these days.  I had a three putt and did hit one tee shot into a bunker, which cost a stroke.  But two birdies and 15 greens in regulation.  There were a couple of lip outs.  It all could have been better and I can't see that it could have been worse.

All fun, all good.  But, yes the driver needs to be hit the same as the other clubs.  I'm looking forward to that day.  And I suspect that it might be fairly soon. 

When a Plan Comes Together

As faithful readers will remember, the gist of the new goals is to keep the old noggin behind the ball.  Start it there and keep it there. 

With minimal exception I was able to do that today.  Woods, irons were all on the program and chipping in to do their best.

Of course there is always a fly in ointment and the putter, usually a friendly chappy, was a bit cold at times.  I hit it close enough to have made 5 birdies without much work and dare I bring up the three 3 putts?  Well, in the interest of an honest account, I must.

I've not added up the score, but it was pretty good.  I did manage a couple of birdies in spite of the short stick.  Played most of the holes with goodly purpose and forethought.

Let me take you back to the long 6th.  It's 500 yards and there are trees left and out of bounds.  To your right there is a yawning trap that never sleeps and if you hit it right and avoid the trap, there are trees to block an efficient advance.

One of the interesting parts to this hole is that there are bunkers left and right at 100 yards.  The gap between then is about 20 yards wide and there is some banking and such around the bunkers.

I decided to eschew the driver off the tee.  My four woods is reliable and I was center fairway and about 280 to the green. 

I like to get around the 100 yard distance for an approach shot and 180 yards is a bit awkward for me.  The 5 iron tends to about 170 on a good day and the hybrid is been dashing off about 200.  I hit the hybrid without putting too much behind it.  Off it races and the ball slips into that 20 yards gap between the traps. 

When I get up to it, it's managed to roll out to about 80 yards in.  The pin is back left, top tier of the green and there are fearsome bunkers short and left.

Well, 80 is most of a sandwedge.  I keep the old pill on the left side of my head and give it a wack.  High and to the point it goes.  Hits on line and runs out to two feet.  I tap in for 4. 

I was quite pleased with my approach and club selection all around on this hole. 

That was pretty much how it went all day.  Solid shots, even some drivers working.  Off to a nice lunch at the Costco.

The only thing to spoil it was that on the first tee Allen mentioned that the back of my pants had split open!

Wednesday Round

On Wednesday it is important to get out early.  Steve and I teed off at 7:20 or so and had a nice run with little waiting until late in the back nine.

Every other week the seniors have a little competition and since they make them putt out everything, they are slow.

I played with them one time and the putt out everything is not a good rule.  The group I played with frequently would have 3 or more putts each and since they all count, they took a lot of time with each one.

There is a joke out there about writing the book, "How to line up your third putt."  Sadly it is no joke with this group. 

The seniors, not liking a slow round themselves, put their slow guys up last.  Then they drag behind and all of us non-competitors move no faster than the slowest group.  Asking the marshal, excuse me, player assistant, to cattle prod the slow guys, rarely works.  Basically it's slow and you want to get out early.

7:30 or so in the middle of the summer is a nice time.  This time of year, it is chilly and wet.  The dew is heavy and waterproof shoes are a really good idea.  I had a friend who liked to play in sandals.  They make them for golf.  His feet were soaked early and often.  He said he didn't mind, but it didn't look like a comfortable condition to me.

I had some goals for my Monday round.  I discarded them for new ones today.  I was determined to stay behind the ball, i.e., staying at the back of the batters' box.  There might have been another, but it has slipped away.

I was pretty successful with this.  I managed to hit most of my drives, only one was pulled.  A few went high right and a bunch found the fairway with reasonable distance.

The rest of the game was just fine, thank you. 

Jackets came off on the 7th hole.  Which is a bit late.  It is kind of a cool day.  It's just reached 80 on the patio and it's about 2:30. 

I had one birdie.  Bunches of pars.  Maybe two double bogeys as a couple penalty shots showed up.  I tried to hit a low slice out from under the trees on 10 and it pushed, caught a limb, and found the arroyo!  My pitch after a drop, was one of my most solid shots.  Alas, the putt didn't fall.

We were done playing about 10:40, so the round took all of 3 hours and 20 minutes.  Steve is like me, a no nonsense player -- just get up to it, grab a club and give it a wack.  He plays a nice game, thought he was a bit off today.  He blames this on painting his fence all day yesterday and then going off to taco Tuesday for $1 tacos and $3 beers.  I suggested that he have 3 tacos per beer and not vice versa.

He is good company and we enjoyed a snack post round.  I pitched the idea of some pickleball to him as he used to play tennis.  There are courts in Livermore.  I went over and looked at them.  I hoped to run into some players, but the park was empty save for a couple of guys just hanging out and another guy on the tennis courts practicing his combat pistol shooting footwork. 

I'm going to keep at this stay behind the ball stuff.  It's the right thing to do and I'm not doing it and when I do it with my irons they are as wonderfully straight as usual.  So there is much to gain and nothing to lose!

Goodness Around the Greens

The best round of my life was 2 under.  But it was not being under par that caught my attention, it was that the round was bogey free.

I managed to do it again today.  18 consecutive pars.  But, wait, there's more!  I played the links course yesterday and shot that at 2 under, also bogey free.  Hmm, so it's been 27 holes without an error.

The front nine had some scrambling today.  I had consecutive sand saves.  Considering the consistency of the sand at the course, this is impressive.  They lost a lot of bunkers when the floods came a couple of winters ago and it's been slow to reconstruct them.

I think I had 4 missed greens besides the sand shots.  I managed to chip them all close enough that the putts were "gimmes." 

13 putts on the front and 16 on the back.  I had 36 putts on Monday and managed to shoot 76.  It's been a pretty easy stroll around the course this week.

My driver is still an issue.  I had a couple of two hundred yard shots into greens that should have been 150 or so. I'm off to the range to work on that tomorrow. 


I keep imagining that I've found various things that point to a solution.  But it never seems to last nor travel well from range to course.  The drives that were good today, I felt that I hit them at 10% power.  Perhaps there is some value in that.

Not much else to report.  Oh, I borrowed a putter I wanted to try for the back nine today.  No miracles, but it did a pretty good job of moving the ball on the greens.  The putter was an Evnroll model ER1, an Anser shaped head.  I've been a mallet guy for awhile, so this was a bit different.  But I holed all the short ones and the long guys were close enough.  Doesn't make me want to run out and replace what I have, which is an early Titleist Red X by Scotty Cameron.

The days are getting shorter and the early holes are cooler.   The fairways are damp and I fear my golf shoes are leaking.  But the pars are rolling in, so there is much contentment to be had.

Another Monday

And back to the golf course...

I was trying to get to the driving range yesterday, but the wind was blowing 25 or so and it was too windy to chip.  I had no need to try and hit any full shots, so I called it a day.  My back got a twinge in it and some time off was probably prudent.

I watched a lot of the Safeway open, which was played an hour up the road from here.  They had some of the wind too on Sunday.  It was a play off finish.  I do like how Ryan Moore hits the ball.

I was trying to incorporate some of Ryan's nice wrist set today.  It was a day of much distance and good ball striking.  Add to that some putts were dropping. 

In addition to the wrist cock, I'm getting more athletic in my back swing.  I'm allowing the lower body to do some moving.  I think I've been trying to lock everything up for control.  The new movements are as accurate, easier to do, and it feels a lot more powerful.  The swing seems to have a nice solid base from which I can swing.  

It feels very liberating.  I was tempted to go to the range after playing today and try to cement in the feeling.

Tomorrow is another day and I'll get out a bit later than early morning and see how it goes.

Confidence

I got a link from my golf mentor.  It was about confidence.  The idea per the author was that confidence is a learnable skill.  With some effort you can get better at it and that should lead to more even play -- less mental dips, less fear of failure.

Here were some of my thoughts in a reply to Sonny:

Thanks for the link in re confidence.

I would like to believe in this.  I don't really have a reason to doubt it, but I think it may be a bit more complex then saying to yourself "I can do this!"  

Humans have a couple of problems.  One being that we are too adaptive.  We are not good at doing something the same way time and time again.  We are always looking for a new/better way.

Of course this is good when we have a strange golf takeaway.  We somehow manage to get get club on ball.  But if we couldn't get the club back to the ball, we would have to change the goofy swing.  More of that and it might lead to better swings more quickly.

VJ Singh said that confidence comes from doing something 20,000 times.  Dave Pelz might agree with that.  Though Pelz was saying that until you do something 20k times, you have to consciously be aware of how you are doing it.

I would suggest that you do not have to do everything 20,000 times.  I think when you come up to a different lie or some other golf puzzle, if you stand back a moment and figure out what the problem is and decide how to alter stance or loft or swing to overcome it, then you draw on all the years of experience, indeed the 20k swings in your past to overcome this new problem.  So in some sense the new problem is just a minor variation on older ones.  Ones that you have solved before.

As long as there is a bit of analysis and then resolution/decision, then I think you should be confident about what will happen.

Of course you have to be sane about what is possible.  Hitting a buried bunker shot 150 yards is probably not doable by anyone and thus the resolution may be where to hit the shot that is going to go 20 yards.  Basically take your lumps and don't turn one back shot into two or three.  

Thanks for the link.  I'll see if I can apply it to my game too.

Can You be Too Optimistic?

I was off to the range today.  Some inspiration in re the Ryder Cup and some just because I'd had a day off.  Sure I'd swung a few in the backyard and watched a few videos, but basically no golf.  Okay, I watched 8 hours or so.  Sheesh, the Americans can't play team events.  Why is that? 

But David from the UK was happy!

Ok, back to the range. 

The speed post talked of dropping the arms as the first step in the down swing.  What this feels like to me is that you line up your hands about waist high and then apply speed.   I'm a guy who is willing to try new stuff, so I'm going to try it.

And while swinging a shaft with no head on it in the backyard, I found that it went faster when I kept my left hip from moving much. 

Let's put both together and see what happens!

The irons went like the lord above suggested they should.  Then I went to the 4 wood.  It too had a "get out of jail card" attached to it too.  The sound of the strikes was different and wonderful.

Where I was hitting, there was a bench and it was quite close to where the clubs were flying.  A family took up residence on the line next to me.  A gal sat on the bench.  "Can I move the clubs?  They seem to be in your way" I asked.  "No, no, it's all fine.  Is it ok that I sit here?"  "Sure, no problem, but you have to clap when I hit a good one."  She went back to her phone.

I hit a good one.

"You should have clapped for that one," I said.

"It sounded great."  And this from a non-golfer.  She was right. 

For all the clubs save the driver, I could drop my hands and then come in low and fast.  Just like in that scene in Dr. Strangelove.

The driver seems to have a lot of emotion bound to it.  I can't relax and just hit it like the other clubs.  Maybe some day.  But I was very tickled with the everything.  I pitched and cycled through the clubs and everything was monstrous and wonderful.

I'm worried that the clubs will be longer and I'll have to recalibrate distances.  I'm ok with that.  The contact was what every golfer wants.

Monday will tell the tale...

More Thoughts on Speed

A while ago I was going to work on club head speed and that basically went nowhere as other issues and thoughts intruded.

But I was thinking in the shower about the prior post, it hadn't been written at that time, and the concepts of speed and power came up.

If you are swinging something and are going to hit something that is heavy, think axe and log, you brace for the impact and the body tightens up and as you hit the log the body is trying to drive the axe through the log.

This an example of power.

Now how about hitting dandelions with a golf club.  There is no weight to the flower.  We will whip the club through and not think about the hit much as there is nothing important going on at impact.

I think that we average golfers are more prone to think of impact as an axe and log and not cutting off flower heads.

I'm going to see if I can use this to speed things up.

I also ran across a video where the instructor was talking about speed.  "If you want get faster then think about being fast past the ball and not at the top of the backswing."  Apply the speed at the bottom and not at the top.

More Plane Thoughts

I just reviewed my earlier thoughts on planes and it looks like I had most of it wrong.

I was watching a couple of videos by Athletic Motion Golf and they measure pros and amateurs and take a look at the differences between the two.  And there are differences.

Let me go back to the the various planes.  We have the shoulders that swing at a plane that basically intersects the ball.  It's inclined to the ground.   This angle is important.  Too flat or too upright and you have issues getting your hands back to the ball.  Oh, you'll do it, but the ball direction and speed will not be optimal.  More on this in a moment.

In the prior post on planes I said that the arms which are below the shoulder plane will move up to join this plane and will follow it down as the down swing occurs.

That is not correct.

What Athletic Motion Golf (AMG) says is happening is that the arms will stay in their plane.  It is more vertical that the shoulder plane.  And it will cross the shoulder plane going back and coming down.

The cross occurs as the arms get over your shoulder on the backswing.

Now the next point is quite interesting.  At the start of the down swing we have some minor lower body movement, then the arms will cross back under the shoulder plane.  The shoulders will not move much until the arms are moving pretty good.

When the shoulders have rotated back to the setup position the hands will be close to the right thigh and moving into the hitting area.  Basically the hands are close to their lowest point to the ground.

But note that the arms are well below the shoulder plane.

One more word on this.  Since we are for the most part just moving arms, we can do it briskly, develop some speed (see next post!) and keep the body as a solid support structure to the arms.

The arms drop vertically and by that I mean straight down.  There is very little angle towards the ball initially.  There does seems to be a "corner" that aligns the arms to the ball.  Remember that the club face is going to rotate at impact and the club has to be a bit below the impact plane.  If it's not, then an adjustment will be made and inconsistencies will occur!

The hips and such will not be leading the arms through the hitting area.  They are turning as the hands go by.

AMG shows that this is what the pros do.  Amateurs on the other hand do other things.  For example let me talk about a guy I play with a lot.

He lines up the shoulder and arm planes and keeps them together.  As he comes down, the shoulders drive the direction of the arms.  He hits a very consistent left to right ball flight.  The shoulders drive the arms above the proper plane  and leave the club face open.  So the ball starts left as a pull, then the ball curves back to the right due to the club face.

If he would move the arms first, then shoulders this may all change.  I think he'd hit everything straight.

One more example is another friend who has a shoulder plane that in the backswing flattens to become almost parallel to the ground.  It is almost as if he has stood up straight and  lost all of his initial posture.

Now what does he do to get back to the ball?  He has a big problem and it is resolved into a characteristic dance of adjustments to get the club on the ball.  It's costing him a lot of club speed.  His dance is required to get his body out of the path to the ball.

---
Ok, I'm playing with this in the backyard.  Note to self, it's really easy to get winded by swinging at top speed 20 times!  It's very difficult to drop the arms.  I'll have to try it at the range.

The other issue is to see impact as a dandelion head.  If I do this, there is a lot less club manipulation and the speed seems to go up.  I'm encouraged about this aspect.

---
This is long enough and we will see what happens when it's put into practice.

Catching Up

I've been lax with my postings lately.  Not much new to impart.  There have been the usual good rounds (2) and a round where it all seemed to regress to earlier days. 

I took my usual Thursday off and did some around the house stuff and then went to the range to work on today's latest theory.

I wanted to make sure that my shoulders are staying on plane.  I think that I've been getting flatter with the longer clubs.  And then when the driver is in hand, I'm so flat that I can't get it on plane, I get outside and then we are talking the pushes and hooks.

So today I made sure I was pretty upright and shoulders were where they should be.  Of course it all worked fine on the range, it always does.  But I feel more comfortable over the ball with the longer clubs keeping this in mind.

I've updated my notes and all I'll have to do is read then before I go out and play tomorrow.

We had some 90+ weather the last few days and I came back from the range a bit soaked.  It sure looks easier on TV.

The Ryder cup starts tonight.  The recorder is setup to grab it and I'll look forward to seeing it tomorrow.

As a historical note the Kavanaugh hearing is today.  I've got a few things to say about this.  I've had a couple of other non-golf thoughts lately.  I suspect I'll put then in one of the other blogs.  But it seems to me that these are quite unique times in my life time.  Lots of things happening and people getting angry and strangely quite a lot of things getting done on a national level.  I never thought that I'd see a politician actually do what he promised to do pre-election.  What an interesting precedent!  Could we be in the position to demand that of future presidents?  Might be quite comical.  Ok, I won't dive into it here and I've not organized my thoughts totally in any case.

I've a round scheduled for tomorrow.  Looking forward to playing.  I hit it well on Wednesday with 15 GIRs, but no putts made.  It was a 78. Greens were very fast.  Long putts were fraught with tension and as the ball would just run out and out.

One For the Ages

I've been looking at some videos by David Bull.  He is a Canadian who moved to Japan and learned to be a wood block carver.  The blocks, usually cherry wood, are then used to make prints.

I just watched a video where he was talking about the transitory nature of stuff.  Cars and phones and washing machines have a life span, but art lasts.  He sells prints made over 200 years ago.  He is pushing gifts of prints for a very nominal cost that will outlast the giver.  It's nice stuff and worth a look.  He makes good videos and is an interesting talker.

But back to golf...  Tiger has managed to return to a very high level of play.  It was very entertaining to me to watch it play out over the last 4 days.

But what has this to do with old Japanese prints?

Ah, we come to the attraction of watching Tiger play.  During the times when I've found golf to be of interest, I've seen Nicklaus and Tiger in their primes.  I would have loved to have seen Sneed or Hogan or Jones when they were working miracles.  There are some film and videos, but it's not the same as watching it occur in real time.  The first golf I ever watched on TV was when Johnny Miller shot his 63 at the US Open.  It was on an old black and white set we had up on the porch in Palatine.  It was a good introduction to the game.

I find Tiger of interest as I am able to watch history in the making.  Maybe he will pass Jack down the road.  It seemed a sure thing not too long ago.  Then it seemed impossible.  But now, it just might unfold.

Every victory and well struck putt adds to what he has done.  The mastery he controls is inspiring.  The power and finesse is art and I look forward to more of it.

Tiger, the non-golfer, is of not much interest.  I  hope he is happy and enjoys what will come to him down the years.  His retirement from competitive golf might be interesting depending what he may turn to.  But I want to see the history book rewritten in my time.


Ok, here is a joke that came out when he was having marital troubles:

Tiger has crashed his car and the police have shown up.  They look over the scene and talk to Elin, his wife.

"It seems like you hit him with the golf club a few times.  How many times did you hit him?" asks the cop.

Elin thinks for a moment and uses her fingers to count out things as she remembers them.

"Put me down for a 6," she answers. 

It's funny if you golf!

The Ongoing News

I'm about to conclude that I've been doing things incorrectly.

Now I've been able to move the ball pretty well this summer.  But the driver is still the weak spot.  Yes, it's gotten better, but it is nothing that I can rely on.

I have two things that I'm try out. 

We can start with the easy item and it may be that this has been my algorithm all along.  We are talking pitching here.  The idea is that we swing a circle using arms and club with as large a radius as we can.  Thus we don't hing the wrists and chop at it.  We come back at the ball and allow a long flat spot in swing as we hit it.  The idea being that we get a nice consistent contact with a consistent club face angle to the ball.  I've been at the range for a couple of days and tried this.  I'm pretty happy with the technique.  The trajectory seems a bit low.  I've not taken this to the course.  Friday's round was lost to a memorial service for a friend.  Monday is the next round and I'm eager to try this out on a course.  If you watch the pros this week you will see a lot of this as they bump it along the fringes and greens.


The second swing thought is to make sure the hips are not too active.  Get the hands in front of the body and then let the hips go.  It's a different take on the swing.  The hips don't pull anything around, but we want to get into a good position, close to the impact position before we drive hips around.

This can be thought of syncing the arms to the body.  It feels slow, but I'm really happy with contact and distance.  I was rolling shots up onto the 250 target at the range.  The tees were about 15 yards up, but I am happy to hit the ball 235 or so with range balls.

What I've found is that to do the above, you have to use the torso more than the legs/hips.  It may be that I've never really used the torso much.  An untapped power source!

I looked for YouTube videos for syncing the driver swing.  I ran across a gal who talked about pros having a very solid and stable platform from which to hit.  I think this is an important thought.  We amateurs are all over the place and have no balance.  The pros are rock solid and balanced.  If you can be in balance, you can be very consistent.

I've been trying to turn without moving my hips much.  Then do not take a too long back swing and then get the arms moving and join the hips, then let the hips go.

I hit some nice shots.  I have to think if I hit any bad ones.  If they were, they were up in the air and out there.  If I can move all of that to the course, I will be happy.


As I've been trying this, my calluses have started to move.  I'm getting sore spots on the joints of the little finger on the left hand,  The sore spot on the left thumb is in remission.  This lines up with what Hogan had in his book.  Since I started as hooker of the ball, this is probably a very good sign.


Sadly we have to wait for Monday.  Since retirement, I have found weekends to be the bane of my existence.  The roads are crowded and the golf course is closed to me!

The Club of High Confidence

That's what my father used to call his 5 wood.  If he had a name for the club at the other end of the happiness spectrum, I never heard it.

I raised the question with the boys while we were having our after round hot dog and frozen yogurt.  "Why are some clubs beloved and others tossed to a dark corner of the garage?  It can't be that the untrusted club is so different that it cannot be playable?"

Sadly there was no insights from the boys.  Just a gentle munching of  hot dog, the odd slurp of the soda.

There is a tale about this.  Back in the 70s they started frequency matching clubs.  One of the first folks to have his clubs checked was Tom Weiskopf.  It seems he had a 7 iron that wouldn't be friendly no matter how much he beat balls with it.

But in these days the quality and consistency of equipment is of a very high order.  If there is a problem we have to look inward and not at the gear.

I have no other thoughts to pass on.  But if there are thoughts out there, I'm happy to listen...

The Return of Monte

Monte Scheinblum is a golf instructor.  He's had some fame in the long driving world and has some interesting videos on YouTube and Instagram.  Worth a look if you golf.

One of his drills is called the "Hinge, no turn and cast drill."  To perform this you try to cock/hinge your wrists without taking the club back and then try to cast, which is to open the wrist angle as hard as you can.

What actually happens is that you will make a full shoulder turn by just cocking the wrists and when you try to cast, you will end up in the perfect impact position.

Monte's point in this and other things is that the body is incredibly reactive.  It will do things to make sure we don't fall over (most of the time!) and get a club on a golf ball from very strange starting points.  You can't anticipate what is going to happen, it just does what it needs to.

I've mentioned what 88% of the brain is doing while we think with the 12% left over, and it's how to do things very automatically.  It's learned.  Watch a two month old whose hands are all over the map as he learns to control them.  It is not long and he will be able to grab and hold and reach and all that good stuff.  But initially it's all training.

But early development is not high on my list of things to think about.  Side note: an agendum is a list of things to do.  Agenda is plural!  Multiple lists as it were.  Is there a Latin word for a list of things to think about?

So, back to golf.  If we want to have a better swing then I think (and Monte thinks) we can't worry about the end positions.  We want to learn the things that will make the body react to get us to the proper impact position.  With this in mind we have the drill mentioned above.

I can attest that it works quite well.  But it's not perfect.  It's fine for irons, but the driver is still not where I want it to be.  So let me dwell on that a moment.

The drill does a couple of things.  By trying to cast the club we put a lot of effort into accelerating the right hand.  That causes the body to brace against this.  The arms move against the brace and we arrive at impact.  The stress on using early movement of the arms is promoted by others instructors and I think the foundation for it is accurate.  The body has actually started to move a bit too, but the reaction is due to arm movement and that provides the majority of the total reaction.  And as I said, this gets you to a nice place with the arms and body synced up and happy and the ball is well launched.

I've just been in the backyard doing some experiments.  With a sand wedge I can easily move the arms fast enough that my body can't get ahead of it.  This is what I want.

In the drill it seems that there is a large component of moving the club down and not forwards.  This also does not require the body to move forward, but maintains a balance.  Trying to move the club towards the ball or target seems to activate the body to move in those directions and then we are out of sync.

What I suspect I do with the driver is not move the arms forward, but I'm trying to move the club head around.  When I do this the body can get ahead and sometimes to the right and now I am doomed.  Moving the club head and not the arms is not what I want to do.  I want to move the arms and leave the club behind.  That should freeze the body and allow me to be in position at impact.

I tried this in front of my swing mirror and it seems to work.

If my arms weigh 20 pounds and the body 200, then I can be in balance if the arms are moving 10 times the body speed; we have mass * speed to be equal for both parts.  If there is an imbalance what will happen?  Will the body get in front and keep going?  We then stagger towards the fairway.  If the arms are too fast,  then the body falls backwards?   I'm not sure about this stuff.  I'll have to try somethings.

However from all of the above, I don't think the model of the body pulling the arms around is correct.  We want to launch the arms just a bit ahead of the direction change by the body.  The arm movement will force the body to brace and become stable.  There will not be a lot of twist provided by the lower body. 

There was a drill to hit balls with your feet together.  That makes some sense as we want balanced forces.  Trying this with irons and driver ought to point out some answers to me.  Of course it's not that simple as the swing for an iron and one for the driver are quite different...  Sheesh, this is getting complex.  But let me try this.


----
After Monday's round: using the wrist cock to get to a full swing position.  Then casting with the hands.  Feeling the pressure shift to right foot on back swing and left foot early in forward swing.  Trying to take as much or more time with the long clubs as with the short ones.   Best ball striking in a long time -- maybe forever.  Long and straight. 

Curious about if the hips are staying level or going up in back swing and then falling forward to left in downswing.  See Athletic Motion Golf video on "stop slide part 1".

----
Tuesday:

Trying to make a short backswing.  That is, when the shoulders stop moving, the arms do too.  Hit three shots like this and very happy with the solidity of them.

Wednesday:
Shot continue to be very good.  Scoring ok, putts are not dropping, but there are a lot of easy pars to be had.

I find another Monte video where he talks about the drill for the driver.  In this we can cock the wrists to get the backswing, but instead of trying to cast, we try to move the arm off the chest.  We need to get the arms moving fast as we have to catch the hips.  If the hips are too far in front of them, then we will have to slow them (stall) to wait for the arms to show up.  It's not wrong to be slow with the hips and think about being fast with the arms. 

I was at the range today.  The object was to use the wrist cock and cast motion for all the irons up to the 7 iron, then use the "get the arm off the chest" drill for longer clubs.  I'm also making sure that when the shoulders stop moving that the arms stop too.

Ball contact was very good and ball height was a lot higher.  No more low 4 woods, everything towered.

I went to the course and played the par three course.  This was all irons.  The only greens I missed were due to hitting it over greens.  I was very accurate and shot shape was excellent.  Club ball interactions was of the highest order.  Even the divots were objects of wonder.

I saw a graph today of the various parts of the body and how and when they move.  The pro didn't more hips or torso or arms faster than the amateurs.  His club head speed was 30% faster, but it came later in the swing and the highest speed was at impact.  Both of the amateurs were slowing down at impact.

Interesting the amateurs' torsos and hips continued to move after impact while the pro was happy to stop them.  The hips stopped first, then torso and then the arms whipped through.  Also of note is that the arms and torso speeds were identical until the arms slowed and the club head kept getting faster.

I may play late tomorrow and see if I can take this to the course.  Updates soon!

The Dream

I don't think I've had a golf dream before, but I had one last night.

It was the last day of the Ryder Cup and Nick Faldo and I were just playing along as the last group.

But then the word came that what we did might matter.  We needed to play the last hole.  It's a par 3 with water and goes straight down hill.

But I didn't have any clubs!  So I'm wandering around trying to find something or get permission from the rules official to use something.

She said no to some scheme I had.  I don't remember what it was.

Finally it looked like I could use her rule book as a club.  It was hard back and might do the trick.

It was my turn on the tee and then...  I woke up.

Can it be that Simple?

Hmm, starting with a rhetorical question...  But if it's correct...

So I'm thinking to myself, no sense doing that out loud, it would only upset Barb and I'd have to talk loudly enough and clearly not to be asked for repetition, which seems like a lot of work and I can be lazy...  But I'm thinking about the arc of a swing and the centrifugal effects that pull the club into the ball.  Yes, the isochronic stuff still seems to be a part, but that's still up in the air.

I didn't have a tee time today and I had a few things to do this morning.  I got all the stuff done and it was painting part of the house.  It's complete and all the stuff is put away and the brush is washed and I won't have to think about it anymore.  This is a very good thing.

Now I have more processing power for my golf swing.

The thought is that perhaps I should be thinking about a swing or whipping action and not any kind of hit.  I've struggled to take my forearms and hands out of the mystery of what happens at impact.  This is not as easy as it sounds.

The quest for speed is different than a quest for power.  I want the club to be fast, not powerful.  The difference between these two is not simple to realize, I think.  When the club strikes the ball there is a transfer of momentum.  The big deal here is the difference in masses between the ball and club.  What happens with this is that the lighter (smaller mass) object will be moving faster than the more massive guy.

The clubs are the more massive and the ball is easily accelerated in the collision.  I think the maximum is that the ball will move 1.5 times the speed of the club.  This is called smash factor in the current vernacular.

This concept is useful and has to be trusted.  Imagine we have a delicate pitch.  We are close to the green, but need to loft the ball just a bit and then let roll out.  We take back the club, we start the downswing.  The swing is short; we don't need the ball to go too far.  But the club is moving slowly!  Panic sets in and we do something at impact to add a little speed.  Oops.  Not good and the ball will probably be sculled since we have to "fix" the shot by flipping our hands at the ball.

But if you trust this to work...  We return to our slow swing or even a putting stroke, where the club is completely in sync with our arms and will not swing past them.  We come into the ball at a slow speed and we are trusting that the ball will launch faster than the club was moving.

Now the ball accelerates due to the collision and its speed is nicely controlled by our delicate swing.  There is no help provided, no panic and you too will be the envy of your playing partners.

Quiz: which club has the highest smash factor?  That being the ratio of the club head speed to the ball speed...  And the answer is the putter.  Why?  Because the lack of loft on the putter generates less loss of speed.  It's all going into driving the ball forward and not much to lifting the ball in the air.  The next up is the driver and then we move down through the bag.

The trade off for speed is loft and spin.  So those are close to zero with the putter and around 10,000 rpm and 20+ degrees of loft for the wedges.

I seem to have wandered in my thoughts here, but let's return to a whip action.

The idea is that we take the club back, let the wrists break and get closer to the body and then we just spin out and let the arms and club move out and impact the ball.  We don't try to do anything but spin.  Yes, we have to be in the proper position.  If we have moved the body then the brain will compensate to hit the ball.

This not a new thought, but I went out to the course to do this, not worry about score or direction or anything else.  If I have to start the spin slowly to stay in position, then I will.

First tee is a short iron as they have the tee moved up.  Until a week ago I normally bit a 6 iron here.  But lately the 7 is the club.  I've got a ball in the pond that led me to changing clubs.

I'm on the tee and I have to wait a bit.  There is a single ahead of me and I want to play alone and hit a couple of balls if I want to.  I try a couple of practice swings.  I notice that at the start of the downswing I'm doing something strange with my arms.  It looks like I've found an element that should not be there.

I kill the 7 iron and I'm 2 yards from the water.  It's a solid hit and felt great.  It was an effortless swing and impact required no adjustments.

A 5 iron to a back pin is next.  Pretty much the acid test expect for the driver.  I hit one and I push it.  I drop another and make sure I'm square, I suppress the little action at the top and off it goes like a rocket.  Well, this is fun.  A solid 165 yard carry and on the green.

Off to the second hole.  This is a par 5 and I've been known to hook one into the trees on the left.  Of course that's pretty true for my entire group, but I'm over there more than my share.

I give it a whip and by great golfing gods it's in the air and miles down the middle of the fairway.  I tee up another.  Bang, same thing.  I wander out and they are withing 5 yards of each other.

I can hit a 7 iron to get to the 100 yard marker - a good layup.  I push these, but hit them well.  Shots to the green are also effortless.

And off I go.  Shot after shot and I'm not working real hard.

---  It's now a couple of days later and a couple of rounds later.  The above stuff remains fairly true.  But I'm thinking about other things.  I don't want to bother finishing the story.  I'd probably just dump this, but there is a bit of work here and as I mentioned, it's not all garbage.  It may be of use to others or my biographer.  (Ha!)  So I'll publish and start on the next topic.