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Learning from Ball Flight

February 22, 2011 By 1 Comment
Golf Ball in Flight

I was quite satisfied after leafing through my copy of Golf Digest this month. The March 2011 issue contained an article by famed teacher John Jacobs, with Jaime Diaz, featuring a number of nuggets of teaching wisdom he has amassed over a career in golf that has spanned many decades. Now 85, Jacobs was an accomplished tournament player in his younger days, having won a couple of times in the 1950′s. But, he points out that his talent turned out to be teaching. Admittedly, I only know of Jacobs by name, but reading those few pages of random thoughts gave me the sense that Jacobs is my kind of teacher. He’s a different kind of teacher, much like Harvey Penick was. He focuses on keeping things simple. In this era of video analysis and launch monitors and swing planes and angles, that kind of philosophy is like a beacon in the dense fog of golf instruction for me. One thing he said really gave me pause and led me to write this post. He wrote:

Filed Under: Instruction, Swing Talk Tagged With: ,
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Addressing Problems, Not Symptoms

June 1, 2010 By 6 Comments

This is something that I think we often take for granted with our golf swings. Think about how on one hand, the golf swing seems so simple. Just pick up a club and hit a ball with it. Easy. It truly is that simple. On the other hand, if you want to optimize the power and control of that swing so that you can maximize your distance and fly the ball at the desired height, at the desired spin rate, and with as much or as little curve as desired, now we’re talking about an extremely complex machine. So, how do problems and symptoms relate to that? I thought you’d never ask. Actually, I thought you would, but that’s just a figure of speech. Technically, it was me asking, though. Having fun yet? Not only is the golf swing a complex machine, but it happens in a well-defined sequence. What that means is, we could also call the machine, a “chain of events”, where a mistake early on can easily carry all the way through

Filed Under: Instruction, Practice, Swing Talk Tagged With: ,
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Trading Science for Art Around the Greens

January 20, 2010 By 9 Comments

As most of you realize by now, I’m a big proponent of the type of short game that Dave Pelz advocates. Not only do I recommend his books, but I enjoy his articles in Golf Magazine each month. In the February 2010 issue, he wrote an article about choosing wedge lofts wisely.  It kind of centered around the new wedge groove rule changes and, as usual, was full of great facts and advice. One thing kind of caught my attention, though, and I’m not sure I’m fully on board.  Because of the lessened spin resulting from new groove regulations, he points out that players can expect around 50% less spin from the rough and about 20% less spin from the fairway for wedges of comparable lofts. He goes on to point out that to stop shots on the greens as effectively, players will have to adopt higher and softer trajectories than what we’re used to producing.  And, he says, there are two ways to do that:  either  open the faces to current wedges to produce

Filed Under: Equipment, Short Game Tips, Swing Talk Tagged With: ,
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Hitting Up with the Driver, Yet Again

January 18, 2009 By 2 Comments

Once again, the issue of “hitting up” with the driver has resurfaced.  We’ve debated the issue here on several occasions.  Now, Golf Magazine has reaffirmed its own previous research in the February 2009 issue with a TrackMan launch monitor to show once and for all that, with the driver, striking the ball with an ascending blow will result in more distance. I want to make sure we’re on the same page when we talk about angle of attack.  Remember that the swing is an arc.  From the top, the club head moves down the arc and then gets to the lowest point, and then starts going back up the other side of the arc.  In the simplest terms, if you hit the ball before the club head hits its lowest point, you have a negative angle of attack and are making a descending blow.  If you hit the ball after that point, you have a positive angle of attack and are making an ascending blow.  If you hit the ball right at the low point,

Filed Under: Driving Tips, Instruction, Swing Talk
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The Problem with Parallel

November 3, 2008 By 4 Comments

In this case, when I say “parallel”, I’m talking about the relationship between the club shaft and the ground at the top of the back swing.  Most of us have been taught, or read, or heard that the “textbook” position in a traditional golf swing is for the club shaft to be parallel to the ground at the top. Unfortunately, many golfers lack the flexibility to achieve this position. Now, the obvious answer to that is to work on increasing flexibility until that proper back swing position can be achieved.  But, the inability to reach parallel isn’t as big a deal as the compensations that players make to try and achieve a full back swing. If players who can’t get to parallel (and didn’t want to work on flexibility) would simply stop their back swing a little sooner, they would still be able to engage in nice, crisp ball striking.  They would only lose a little distance.  Instead, they tend to do things that end up being much worse. Swing Width The most important checkpoint

Filed Under: Swing Talk
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