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:

In my first book, Golf by John Jacobs, I remember that the first thing I wrote down on paper was, “Golf is what the ball does.” That was my breakthrough as a teacher. I look at what the ball’s doing, and then I ask, “Why?”

If you stop and think about it for a second, that’s an extremely profound idea. It’s so simple that you’re probably tempted to not pay it much mind.

Many of you are like me in that you like to digest a lot of instructional material. These days, so much of it is about achieving positions in the swing with the idea that if you get all the positions right, then the ball will fly well.

The golf swing, however, is nothing but a means to an end. That’s not to say that you can just do whatever you want with your swing and that you’ll be a successful golfer. On the contrary, there are any number of things that can go wrong to destroy distance or consistency.

How many of us spend an inordinate amount of time achieving certain positions in our golf swing? We try to make sure we have enough lag. We make sure our weight shifts right then left, or not at all, depending on which swing we’re talking about. We try to stay on plane. We make certain not to swing past parallel. We try to maintain spine angle.

I could go on all day listing things like that.

Jacobs goes on to add:

The golf swing has only one purpose: to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly, and to achieve such impact repeatedly. Many unorthodox players achieve correct impact — so long as it’s repeatable, it’s OK. If golf were about getting into correct positions throughout the swing, then the greatest players in the world have had it wrong. The only position that matters is the club’s at impact, which is determined by the clubface alignment (the most important factor), the path of the swing, the angle of attack and the speed of the clubhead. The biggest step in becoming a good player is understanding how the flight of the ball teaches the correct geometry of impact.

None of this is ground-breaking. Well, it might have been at the time, but by now, many of us have heard similar things. Especially the idea that the only position that matters is the club’s at impact. I’ve heard famous teachers before saying that one common trait that many, many great players share is similar positions at impact.

The real takeaway from this is that it’s kind of the opposite of how many of us try to improve our games. We work on swing positions with the assumption that once we get them all locked in, then the ball will start doing what we expect.

The problem with that philosophy is that we end up chasing a white whale. We could spend the rest of our lives trying to perfect dozens of swing positions and checkpoints and see little or no improvement in our games because the number of variables is just too great. Plus, as we’ve heard, impact is all that really matters. Jim Furyk is proof of that.

What Jacobs is saying, is, look at the flight of the ball and work backward from there. “Golf is what the ball does.” Can it get any more simple than that?

I really identify with that philosophy. Over the years, I’ve kind of naturally gravitated that way. Not completely, though. I certainly find myself looking at geometry in the swing and things like that.

I definitely make it a point to understand the flight of each and every shot I hit. I’ve gotten to the point where I can feel where on the club face I’ve mis-hit the shot and I can also tell, at times, how my swing went wrong by looking at the ball flight.

This is not to say that it’s easy to look at the flight of a shot and suddenly know that you swung past parallel or something like that. But understanding the flight of the ball can certainly help to narrow down the problems as well as the number of changes that need to be made to fix them.

The moral of the story is, maybe we all ought to stop trying to be golf swing mathematicians and just pay closer attention to the flight of the ball when we want to understand what’s going wrong in our golf games.

I recommend checking out the article at Golf Digest for more wisdom from John Jacobs. It mentions that Jacobs has written several books. I may add one or more of them to my pile and report back to you at a later date.

In case you’re wondering what other great teachers think of John Jacobs’ teaching style, there’s a quote from Butch Harmon about Jacobs on his World Golf Hall of Fame profile. Harmon said, “John Jacobs wrote the book on coaching. There is not a teacher out here who does not owe him something.”

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Learning from Ball Flight

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 the entire swing.

How many times have you heard the importance of a proper finish in the golf swing? Certainly, the point of that is not so that you can look good, though, I wonder with some people. What that means is, it’s important to get to a proper finish because it probably means we’ve done things right along the way.

At the same time, if we’ve mangled up the whole swing, but have a great finish (which we probably wouldn’t, but let’s pretend), then what have we achieved?

That’s a perfect example of what I’m talking about as a symptom and not the problem. Concentrating on fixing that symptom might not address the real problem.

Don’t get me wrong – that’s just an example and working on a better finish may very well help you fix the actual problem. But the finish happens well after the ball is in the air, relatively speaking. So, the odds are that something went wrong earlier that led to a poor finish.

If you have an infection, you could take some aspirin to help your aches fell better and maybe your fever will go down some. You might take some decongestant to help with the sniffles. But you still haven’t addressed the infection itself.

That’s at the heart of what I’m talking about. You need to make sure your swing is getting antibiotics, or your problems will just linger.

Back to the idea of the swing as a machine, or as a chain of events. If you’ve read Life in the Rough regularly, you know that the takeaway is something I’ve had to work a lot on over the last couple of years. In fact, I find that even when I have it fixed, I need to keep an eye on it periodically because for reasons I can’t explain, over time, I will tend to start to take the club back slightly to the outside of the target line instead of in a nice arc slightly to the inside.

From there, several things can happen, but for example, it might set this possible chain of events into motion: I re-route the club too far inside, it gets too vertical over the plane, it’s too steep coming down, I come over the top, and I pull the ball left.

That chain of events is set into motion by the simple fact that I start the club back to the outside the line. Put another way, all those things are really symptoms, not the actual problem.

That’s hard to grasp because we’re kind of wrestling over semantics. Sure, coming down too steep is a problem.  But it’s not the problem.

Until I realized this, I caused myself a lot of anguish and wasted time.

I like to look at my swing on video occasionally. Last year some time, I recorded some swings and I looked at the video. Lo and behold, what was I doing but getting too steep in my down swing. It was easy for even me to see. A few instructional books and some episodes of The Golf Fix and even I’m qualified to diagnose that problem, er, I mean,symptom.

Or, am I?

I set out to fix that steepness by resolving to make my back swing flatter. I’ll spare you the gory details. The point is, I couldn’t do it.  After a few weeks, I was a wreck.

The reason I couldn’t do it was because I didn’t know enough to set out to fix the problem. I didn’t really understand why the club was getting steep. It’s not like I was purposely hoisting it straight up in the air.

One lesson and my pro pointed out that my takeaway was a problem. I worked hard on that and wouldn’t you know, I was cured of that affliction.

Even after that, the idea of fixing problems and not symptoms didn’t really stick. It was very recently that it actually sunk in. My most notable problems of late have been not getting a full shoulder turn and getting away from my natural tempo to start the down swing. I have a tendency to try and hit the ball hard, but if I’m not careful, I get ahead of myself and get out of sequence, which causes several other issues, most notably with me coming over the top and pulling the ball left (most of us that do that will slice the ball, but I happen to pull it left and hook it, usually).

As I fell apart again and went in for a lesson and we worked on the same issue of tempo yet again (it’s been a common theme for the last 3 years), it finally started to hit me.

When I fix the actual problems, then the rest just works itself out. I started to hit the ball like you wouldn’t believe.

I’m not trying to say my work is done, but it’s a start. I have to work on making that good tempo more ingrained, along with that solid takeaway and along with that full shoulder turn. It’s not there yet when I’m on the course under pressure, but it’s there on the range. Some sessions are better than others, but I’m getting there.

My point is not to try and boil down everyone’s golf swing into those three things. Certainly, they’re important for everyone. But that doesn’t mean that any of those things is your problem.

At the same time, I know a lot of you are like me and like to tinker and look at swings on video and read instructional books and learn how the golf swing works. That’s all great and believe me, I’m here to walk that path with you all.

Unfortunately, many of us, me especially, have been given just enough rope to hang ourselves. Ultimately, the best thing I’ve done is work with a teacher that is adept at recognizing the problems and not just the symptoms. And even though he was telling me as much, it didn’t really sink in completely until I had a lot of time to think about it and agonize over my swing issues and to try and fail at various things.

Incidentally, a few weeks ago, I was in one of my lowest low points when all this hit me. I scheduled a lesson and was waiting for the day to arrive when I kind of woke up to all this. I went to the range on my own and resolved to fix the problems and not the symptoms and I did it.

I fixed it on my own. By the time I showed up at my lesson, I was hitting the ball as well as ever.  On the practice range, anyway.

Please don’t take this as a warning not to learn and tinker and try to dissect the swing on your own. While I do recommend working with a professional, it’s not that any of us cannot improve on our own. What I will say is, make sure you’re fixing problems and not just symptoms or you might find yourself spending a lot of time on a fruitless endeavor, or even worse, you might even compound the problem, just like I did.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Addressing Problems, Not Symptoms

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 high flop/cut shots, or get wedges with higher lofts.  He adds that it’s easier to hit shots straight and control the distance with a square club face than it is with an open-faced cut shot.

This is where I’m kind of torn.  Believe me, I don’t doubt that Pelz can show that, scientifically, hitting those little cut lob shots is not as reliable as hitting something with a square club face.  But, I also think there’s something to be said for developing the creativity that comes along with hitting all kinds of shots with each wedge.

As you may know, Dave Pelz is a proponent of a 4×3 system, where the goal is to carry 4 wedges, and to groove 3 distinct short game swings with each, thereby giving you twelve absolutely grooved, reliable, distances within wedge range.  I talked a little more about Pelz’s 4×3 system and why it works when I reviewed his Short Game Bible, which you can check out for more background.

When it comes to finesse wedge shots, I can certainly agree with using that system.  I’ll be the first to say that if your 9 o’clock sand wedge swing produces a shot of 50 yards, then trying to open the face of your pitching wedge to hit that distance with the same swing isn’t a great plan.

But let’s talk about shots from within your shortest 4×3 distance.  We’ll say for the sake of argument that we’re talking about shots 25 yards and shorter.  I will agree with Pelz that, all things being equal, hitting a 15-yard pitch with a square face will produce a more consistent shot over numerous attempts than if you have to open the club face of a less lofted wedge some amount to hit a higher, softer shot to produce a shot of the same distance.

Naturally, introducing a second variable (an open club face) adds some degree of inconsistency because the best we can do is make a guess of how much the face is open and it won’t likely be the same each time, whereas we can probably get the club face closer to square each time (even though it usually won’t be perfectly square).

I get all that.

At the same time, I think there is some benefit to being able to take out a single club and produce a nearly infinite number of shots within a certain distance.  And maybe that doesn’t even mean taking those shots to the course.  Maybe on the course, it’s best to just stick with the shots Pelz recommends for maximum consistency.

I believe there is, however, a certain confidence and comfort that comes with being able to take a wedge out of your bag and feel like you can do anything with it, even if your intent is only to produce a vanilla, square-faced, short pitch.

I think I kind of felt that a little last spring as I was putting in my foundational practice green work for the year.  To mix things up, I would spend 20 minutes or so with each of my four wedges.  I would hit all the plain square-face chips that I could, to various targets around the green.  I was working on my basic stance and swing and all that, and getting a feel for how each club reacted for those shots.  How high did the ball fly?  Did the shots check at all?  How far did the ball fly for a given swing length?

I also spent a lot of time with each club hitting shots that I might not normally attempt.  I would find a pin that was only a couple of paces on the green and drop the ball in the fringe and see if I could hit a little lob and stop it close.  I would bury the ball in the rough and try the same shot.  I would drop the ball on the fringe and try to keep the ball lower by de-lofting the club some.  I would address the ball with my hands back some to see if the shot came out higher and more softly.

I believe that spending so much time doing that gave me an extreme comfort with my wedges from just off the greens.  My stats don’t really show me getting up and down a lot last year, but in fairness, I usually wasn’t just off the greens because I was struggling with swing troubles for a while and as the summer wore on, I spent less time working around the practice green and more time on the practice tee.

However, early in the year, my confidence from just off the green was at an all time high, and I can’t help but wonder if that was the result of trading a little art for science around the practice green.

Even though we might practice a wide variety of shots around the practice green, normally, that can’t match the infinite combination of possible situations we face on the course.  I might hit 50 balls from three paces off the green to a pin five paces onto the surface, but did I hit any where I was three paces off the green to a pin that was three paces on?  Maybe not.

What I did, though, was practice all sorts of shots with my wedges so that when I encountered a shot on the course that was a little different from what I might have practiced, I was still very confident because I felt like I could vary what I was doing with hand position, club face, swing length, etc. and not feel totally out of sorts wondering what the result would be.

It could be that all I did was find a way to give myself a little false confidence.  Maybe I would have enjoyed the same confidence and even more success by just sticking with grooving a consistent, repeatable swing and not trying to concern myself with hitting all sorts of wacky shots with my wedges.

What do you all think?  Is there a benefit to mixing in a good bit of art with all of the science?  Or do you think that keeping it consistent and repeatable is better in the long run?  I’d love to hear how you all approach that segment of the game.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Trading Science for Art Around the Greens

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, you’re making a level hit and have an angle of attack of zero degrees.

Hopefully, this puts an end to the debate once and for all.  I believe Golf Magazine has proven convincingly that if you do not have a positive angle of attack with your drives, you are robbing yourself of precious distance.

The Numbers

Golf Magazine’s research has shown that an optimal angle of attack for drives is somewhere between +4 and +6 degrees, regardless of swing speed.  For a zero degree angle of attack (a level hit), the ball flies about 14 yards less for a 90 mph swing speed.  For a -5 degree angle of attack (hitting down on the ball), expect to lose about 30 yards.  Additionally, you’d need a 15 degree driver to achieve the optimal spin rate of 3,100 rpm and the optimal launch angle of 10 degrees.

Golf Magazine includes a particularly interesting table (p. 83) that shows the actual (as opposed to theoretical) results of players of varying abilities who had their initial angle of attack measured and then received instruction from top-100 teacher Bruce Patterson on how to increase that angle of attack to achieve optimal launch conditions.  Then, they were tested again to see what kind of improvements they made.

Among those tested were a Tour pro and players with handicaps of 0, 9, 14, and 23.  Every one of the players increased his angle of attack and achieved a remarkable increase in distance.  The higher handicap players actually ended up increasing their swing speeds and gained between 15 and 23 yards.  The Tour pro and scratch player, however, maintained the exact same swing speeds but both still increased driving distance.  The Tour pro increased his angle of attack by 3.2 degrees and gained 21 yards and the scratch player increased his angle of attack by 2.2 degrees and also gained 21 yards.

Interestingly, none of the players tested actually achieved the optimal angle of attack of five degrees, but they all increased angle of attack by somewhere between 1.7 and 5.3 degrees.

Tiger versus J.B. Holmes

One of the most interesting comparisons made in the study is between Tiger Woods and J.B. Holmes.  Tiger can certainly bomb the ball, but J.B. is known for hitting the ball really long.  Using Shotlink data from the PGA Tour, they found that both players have very similar stats at impact.

A look at driver loft, club speed, and ball speed shows that both players are virtually identical at impact.  The differences end there, though, as Holmes has about a +3 degree angle of attack, while Tiger has about a -3 degree angle of attack.  This gives Tiger almost 1,000 rpm more spin than J.B. Holmes.  The result?  J.B. Holmes hits the ball nearly 20 yards further than Tiger for the same swing speed.

Another Case Study

Golf Magazine presents another interesting case study for increasing your angle of attack when driving.  PGA Tour player Jeff Sluman changed his swing to achieve a positive angle of attack and added 20-plus yards.  He also adds, “You’ll be taken aback by how simple this change is.”

What to Do

Simple:  increase your angle of attack!  OK, I know you probably want a little more than that.

The answer could be as simple as playing the ball just a little further forward in your stance.  Bruce Patterson recommends finding the bottom of your swing arc and teeing the ball three or four inches in front of that.  You’ll want to make sure your hands are more over your left thigh and your spine angle will tilt a little more to the right.

In addition to the research findings, there are several good pieces in the article with additional instruction on increasing your angle of attack.

I recommend checking out the article.  It’s depressing that I’m stuck in the middle of winter, because I’d really like to get out to the range to give these things a try.

Without a doubt, the findings confirm that, in golf, it’s not always about how hard you swing.  Optimal distance is a combination of a number of optimal launch conditions.  It’s very possibly for you to make a big jump in distance without having to commit to a big swing change.  It may be worth visiting a facility with one of those sophisticated launch monitors to see how close your swing comes to creating optimal launch conditions.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Hitting Up with the Driver, Yet Again

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 that is missed is the relationship between the hands and the right shoulder (for a right-handed player) during the back swing.  We’ve heard the term “width” in the back swing.  By keeping the hands as far from the right shoulder as possible, we create width (which is another way of saying we have a bigger swing arc) and with that, we enjoy more power and consistency.

When players become fixated on getting to parallel but can’t do it, that width is usually the first thing to suffer.  The left arm breaks down and the hands get closer to the shoulder.  This is a huge power drain.  The player feels like he has a long swing, but in reality, he doesn’t and has actually put himself in a worse position.

Poor Shoulder Turn

The other thing that goes hand in hand with achieving a full back swing is, obviously, a full shoulder turn.  The inability to make a full turn is often a cause for a breakdown in width.  The player knows he has further to go to complete the back swing, and that’s where we see that breakdown in the relationship between hands and right shoulder like we discussed above.

A good shoulder turn should be about 90 degrees.  At the top of the back swing, your left shoulder should be under your chin and your right shoulder should be right behind your head, where if a line was drawn through the shoulders, it would be perpendicular to the target line.

Poor Hip Turn

Another symptom in these relationships is a poor hip turn.  Not just too little hip turn, but too much hip turn.  Sometimes when a player can’t get enough turn in the shoulders, it’s easier to help the situation by turning the hips a little more.

If you’re familiar with Jim McLean’s X-Factor swing concept, then you know that power comes not from how far you turn the hips and shoulders, but how far you turn them in relation to each other.  Normally, the hips should not turn more than 45 degrees.  A little less is probably better.  If you’re overturning your hips to try and get to a full back swing, then you’re robbing yourself of serious power.

The Hands and Wrists

This isn’t so much a flexibility issue as much as a problem with finding the wrong way to get the club shaft to parallel at the top.

One problem I suffered from while trying to make a full turn was letting my hands and wrists break down.  Because I felt like the club wasn’t getting to parallel, I was subconsciously “helping” by letting my grip and wrists break down to let the club get into position.

The big problem this caused was forcing the club into a different swing plane.  For me, that meant a terrible blow to consistency because of the re-routing that had to take place to get back to the ball.  I’ve known for a long time that lag is a good thing (lag being the delayed release of the club as you approach the ball on the down swing).  Now, I strive for a relationship between my left arm and club shaft of 90 degrees at the top of the back swing.  I was going much further before, partly because I felt like I was helping get more lag, and partly because I couldn’t see what was happening.

It’s OK if that relationship between the left arm and club shaft goes beyond 90 degrees during the down swing (watch Sergio Garcia swing, for example), but letting that happen too early put me in a bad position at the top.

The Answer

There are two solutions to the basic problem.

As I said at the top, the obvious fix is to increase flexibility and strength in the body to be able to allow yourself to make a full turn without sacrificing width, shoulder turn, and hip turn.  There is an absolute mountain of information on the web and in books about how to do this.  Half an hour a day for several weeks will allow you to see huge results.  If you want proof, check out Mike Pedersen’s video series with his pupil Morrie, a senior golfer who wants to get some distance back.  In a few weeks, he has seen drastic results in distance by working on his flexibility for just minutes per day.

That’s the optimal solution and is the one I recommend.  But you and I both know that many of you aren’t going to put in that effort.  Between family, work, and life obligations, time is short.  It’s much more fun to just go out and play golf with that precious time.  Working out isn’t much fun.  I understand.

So what’s the other answer?  As I also said at the top:  shorten your back swing.

I promise you, if you lack flexibility and try and make up for it by breaking down the relationships in your swing that we discussed above, then you’re robbing yourself of power (at best), and probably hurting your consistency too.

There’s not a thing in the world wrong with just shorting your swing a little to maintain these relationships.  Just enough to keep your swing arc wide (hands further from your right shoulder), your hips from over-turning, and your hands and wrists from breaking down.

If you keep all those relationships intact but don’t manage to get the club to parallel, don’t worry.  You’ll probably lose a few yards of distance, but you’re going to make up for it with solid ball striking.

The bottom line is, fix the root cause if you are ready, willing, and able.  If not, forget vanity, stop trying to look like Tiger Woods and learn to accept the situation and maximize what you’re able to get from your swing with your level of strength and flexibility.

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

The Problem with Parallel

Most of us have probably heard that these are the fundamentals of the golf swing.  We’ve been taught that without a proper grip, alignment, stance, and posture, we can’t hope to be decent golfers.  The question is: what is proper?

Recently, I watched the Stack and Tilt instructional DVDs created by Mike Plummer and Andy Bennett.  In one of the segments, they took exception to the fact that GASP is assumed to be fundamental to the golf swing.  Their arguments are kind of compelling.

They point out the fact that if you look at the greatest golfers in history, they all vary among those swing attributes.  Grips vary everywhere from strong to weak.  Some players align themselves closed to the target and some open.  Some players have feet that are more open than the shoulders.  Others are opposite.  Some players stand more upright and some more bent over.

In fact, you can probably say that hardly any of the all-time greats share a common set of these fundamentals.  These days, you find more “textbook” swings at the professional level, with some players having swings that look very similar, and with the GASP fundamentals also very similar, but you can still find many variations.

Stewart Cink comes to mind.  At six feet four inches tall, he has said that he doesn’t have clubs made longer than standard because he can just bend over a little to accommodate standard length clubs.  That doesn’t sound to me like he subscribes to the idea of a “standard” posture.

So if GASP doesn’t describe the basic fundamentals of the swing, then what does?

According to Plummer and Bennett, the things that unite ALL great players are:

• They strike the ground (with an iron) in the same spot relative to the stance, each and every time.
• They hit the ball far enough to play the course.
• They control the curvature of the ball.

That’s quite an interesting way to look at it.

Whereas most of us look to our pros and want to know how we should be positioned just as the swing is about to start, they’re saying that it isn’t all that important.  At least not most important.  Of course, they go on to tell us how to achieve those things using the Stack and Tilt swing, because those fundamentals don’t tell us as players what to do to play well, only what we need to achieve to play well.

The way I look at it, is, that maybe GASP components are better described as being fundamental to each other.  You have to make those things work in concert to get the most out of your swing.  It would be crazy to say that grip, alignment, stance, and posture are irrelevant.  But I think Plummer and Bennett are right in that there isn’t a single configuration that spells success, so they’re not THE fundamentals.  Not individually anyway.  It’s no different from swing plane, shoulder turn, and so on.  These things all have some degree of importance but vary greatly from player to player.

Is GASP just a small piece to a larger puzzle and not of particular importance?  Or are grip, alignment, stance, and posture the foundations of the golf swing?  What about the fact that those factors vary so greatly among the greatest players?  Should we be focusing on hitting the ground in the same spot every time having sufficient length, and the ability to control the curve of the ball, or should we worry instead about setup check points?  Or is it all important?

I’m feeling like Plummer and Bennett are on to something.  Of course, their aim is to promote a specific set of techniques to achieve those fundamentals in the form of the Stack and Tilt swing.  But I do think that they make a good point that we’re not really serving our own best interests by getting too hung up on having a textbook grip, alignment, stance, or posture.

What do you think?

© 2007-2011 Life in the Rough. All Rights Reserved.

Are G.A.S.P. Fundamentals Really Fundamental?