When I was 14 and just starting learning golf, I used to practice, during Philadelphia winters, with a Whiffle ball in our living room. Sort of half swings with a Bobby Jones blade 9 iron. I got pretty good knocking that Whiffle over the living room couch and against the curtains…until…one day…when I got a […]
The Downswing
Shaft Lean and Lag: More important pieces of the compression puzzle
Shaft lean is a sacred cow to tour pros, but is not well known or practiced by handicappers. And when done correctly, it is the main avenue to properly compressing the golf ball off the face of the club. But many handicappers are flippers, a term Lee Trevino uses to describe golfers who flip their […]
Compression Obsession
It’s one of golf’s not-so-dirty little secrets. The pros all do it but few show you how. So at the expense of vilification from my betters, I will attempt to explain this technique that I’m sure goes back to Tom Morris and son in the bonny town of St. Andrews. The key to compression lies […]
Tiger and Charlie
For me, it was uplifting, in this time of doom and gloom, to see Tiger and his son playing golf at the PNC father/child event, as well as others like 86 year old Gary Player, 82 year old Lee Trevino, ageless Tom Watson, Henrik Stenson and his 11 year old son, and the eventual winners […]
Troubleshooting
We’ve watched Phil get out of trouble time after time. We’ve watched Tiger get out of trouble often. And before these two magicians, we watched Arnold get himself out of trouble. But few of us have the skills of these experts, and practically all of us, handicappers and pros, get into trouble a number of […]
A Recently Discovered Secret to Solid Contact
The other day I attended a LPGA event south of Portland and I paused to watch one of the participants warming up at the range. Actually I was about to leave when her swing and its results caught my eye and my ear. The solid sound her irons made was captivating. I stopped and watched […]
The Essence of a Good Lesson
As with any instruction, there are lessons which are effective and lessons which are not. I might be a concert pianist today if I stuck with lessons when I was six, but just didn’t connect with the teacher and his methods. On the other hand, my first golf instructor, though far from a top 100, […]
Jordan…and Tiger…
He started out on tour like a house a’fire. Three majors in his first five years, fourteen wins, and a putting stroke for the ages. Jordan was on track for legend status. But after his win at the Open in 2017, robbing Kooch of his first major, he went dry. Nothing. Nada. Nyet. The guy who […]
The Importance of Pace
It’s what is most different in the swings of touring pros. And it’s what can throw a swing out of kilter possibly more than anything else. Essentially it exists on a continuum of two elements: slow to fast. It is pace, and you can see it in the way people walk, eat, talk, pay for […]