I’ve become a fan of The Golf Fix on The Golf Channel, hosted by Michael Breed.  I was skeptical of his frantic pace on the show at first, which made me wonder how much one could glean from a bunch of disjointed tips and fixes for swings phoned and e-mailed in.

I must say, however, that I’ve been pleasantly surprised at how much I’ve learned from those dozens of rapid-fire tips, fixes, and information.  The show gets a big thumbs up from me, but that’s a thought for another day.

A while back, Breed took a question from a viewer who had problems reading greens.  I was very impressed with the perspective he provided on the topic.  He made the point that reading the break on greens is all about good mechanics.

You may have had the same reaction I did:  “Huh?”

He went on to explain, though, that what players do, is look at a putt and subconsciously “remember” similar putts they’ve stroked in the past and then kind of just “know” how much break there will be.

Think about it like a baby learning to walk.  When a baby first tries to walk, there’s a lot of stumbling, falling, and wobbling.  Then, after a while, walking becomes effortless because the child just “knows” how to make everything work in unison.

We all started playing the game for the first time at some point, but may not remember much from that long ago.  But, many of us have played with new players more recently.  I know I’m somewhat surprised at how imprecise a new player’s putting is in many cases.  Well, they’re just going through the stumbling, falling, and wobbling like a young child.

As they continue to play, they start to see basically the same (or very similar) putts over and over and over and over.  Before long, they’ll instinctively know how much break they need to play and how much pace is required.

So, how do mechanics figure in?

Well, if you listen to the great teachers, they all stress the importance of consistency in golf.  And consistency comes from a repeatable swing.  If you can repeat the same swing time after time, then you can predict with a high degree of accuracy what a shot is going to do.

Considering just putting for the moment, if you have a repeatable putting stroke, then you will eventually be able to intuitively predict how much break to play for a particular putt.  After all, you’ve probably putted the same distance and break dozens, if not hundreds, of times.

If your putting stroke is highly flawed, though, then your body won’t be able to learn from all those hundreds of similar putts.  One time you miss a foot right.  Next time, you aim a foot further left (you think) and still miss a foot right.  So, next time, you aim even further left and this time miss two feet left of the hole.

You’re like that wobbly baby but you never quite learned how to walk.  It’s not because your brain can’t process the break.  It’s because it’s getting the wrong signals about how the ball will react in that situation.  Your putting stroke has become a variable that your intuition can’t account for.

On the other hand, if you get the ball close a few times, gradually your subconscious will begin to take over and given future putts that are very similar, you will almost instinctively know how much break and pace to play.

That’s why it is so critical to build a repeatable putting stroke that will always give you accurate feedback after a putt.   My personal preference is the pure in-line square (PILS) stroke advocated by Dave Pelz in his Putting Bible.

Whatever style you choose, the idea is to build the most repeatable stroke possible.  That will ensure that every time you face a putt, your body will file an entry in the old memory bank, and when you face the same putt later, you’ll intuitively know how to handle the break.  You won’t need a plumb bob, a slide rule, or trigonometry.  You’ll just know.

If you’re a regular reader, you may have seen comments from Harry, ak.a. Yardage Pro, who has been working on a website of his own.  Harry, along with his brother-in-law Paul, write as Hack and Scratch.  They concentrate on club comparison, equipment reviews, golf information, and tips.

Reviews are given from the perspective of a self-described hacker and from a scratch player, providing a view from both ends of the spectrum.  In case you wondered if Scratch really plays to scratch – he opened the Kenridge Invitational in Charlottesville, VA with a 4-under 66.

Their site is called Tee to the Green.  Stop by for a visit.

Yeah, I know, you’re tired of hearing me say how important the short game is.  It seems to be the conventional wisdom and rightly so.

It’s impossible to progress your game without a solid short game.  I learned something interesting over the weekend.  Not only will a good short game bail out our pitiful swing flaws.  It will prevent us from reaching the next level at the exact same time.

Indulge me in a little personal reflection so I can explain what I mean by that.

Over the winter, I came to the realization that I have not been putting enough work into the short game.  Putting, chipping, pitching, finesse wedges, bunker play, the whole works.  I’m certainly proficient in the techniques and have passable skill, but not the kind of refined technique that leads to serious scoring.

The first thing I did when winter broke was spend about 2/3 of my practice time around the practice green.  And this is on top of the fact that I committed a LOT more time to practice this year.  I worked a lot on chipping and short pitches, and put some work into putting, as well.  I didn’t put as much time into finesse wedges as I wanted, because my range time was spent working on retooling my swing.

My full swing work has been heavily documented, so I’ll leave that to you to go back and catch up if you wish.  I was having serious problems early this year.  Time spent on the course was painful.  I chose to spend much of the time working hard on the range, with the guidance of my pro.

When I did get to the course, though, it was clear that all my short game work was paying off.  Even though I was having such a terrible time with the full swing, my scores were basically where they were last year.  I was in the mid-40’s (I play a lot of 9-hole evening rounds by myself). All the work I put into chipping was bailing me out because I wasn’t hitting any greens in regulation.  I was sinking putts or avoiding three-putts, at least.

Here’s where it gets interesting.

As I continued to work on my full swing, I began to see definite improvement.  I’ve put in a lot of work trying to beat some bad habits.  I have the blisters to prove it.  I was slowly doing better and better at the range, but wasn’t taking it to the course.  So I put in more work.

Gradually, over the last few weeks, I got to the point where I felt that I could go out to the course and play at a respectable level.  My swing was by no means where I wanted it to be, but I was hitting good shots, and my terrible shots were becoming fewer by the day.

I headed out for an evening 9-holes and found out something fascinating.  Aside from a couple of dumb mistakes and a couple bad shots coming from my old swing flaws, I hit the ball reasonably well.  I hit five greens in regulation and hit five or six fairways.

Wow, with that kind of performance, I must have shaved five or six strokes off my score.  Unfortunately, no, I didn’t.  My score was right there where it always was, in the mid-40’s.

Why is this?  My short game held me back.  The same short game that kept me in the game with a disastrous full-swing was now keeping me from rising to a new plateau.

What I found was, my wedge game was imprecise.  Instead of missing the green, chipping close, and taking a putt or two, I was getting on the greens, but 40 or 50 feet away. I even duffed a couple of wedges where I wouldn’t normally.

My lag-putting was not adequate and I had a couple of three putts that I don’t normally have.  I had a chance to get up and down from the sand, but blew it because I haven’t put much work in from the sand.

The fact is, the swing flaws I’m working to overcome did cost me a few strokes in the form of a lost ball and another poor iron from the tee that led to having to wedge back out to the fairway.  But instead of my short game overcoming those mistakes, my improvement in the full swing just exposed holes in my short game that I didn’t anticipate.

My short game work this spring was really subconsciously targeted toward overcoming my massive swing flaws, not toward having a well-rounded game.  And it did just that.  Now, I’m not as prepared for the eventual swing fixes as I thought I was.

It’s OK, though.  I’m just going to head back to the drawing board and devote more time and effort to the short game.  I’m going to fall in love with it again, and this time, I’ll plan for all possibilities.

The moral of the story is, it is absolutely, positively impossible to spend too much of your practice time working on the short game.  When your full swing fails you, it will be there to bail you out.  And if you’re not careful, when you’re trying to reach a new plateau in your game, it will hold you back, as well.

Since 2007, when Golf Digest first published its feature on the new-fangled swing, Stack and Tilt fever has swept the internet.  At the time, Aaron Baddeley was the poster boy for the swing on Tour.  Over time, stars like Mike Weir adopted the swing, as well.

A couple of weeks back, I heard that Baddeley had given up on the swing and gone back to his old coach Dale Lynch.  Then, I was somewhat shocked to read that Mike Weir did the same, returning to coach Mike Wilson.

Chris Henry at Eagle Par Birdie weighed in on the situation, making the point that pros change swings all the time and that this is really getting attention because the swing has been controversial since day one.  Both of these things are true, but I’m still surprised.

Two things echoed through my mind as I read about Baddeley and Weir changing swings again.

First, I did a post a while back that crunched the stats for both Baddeley and Weir and a few other Stack and Tilters over the last several years.  I believe I was able to show that both players had lowered their scoring averages and increased their earnings since adopting the swing, though in some categories, they had not regained previous high points, for instance, Mike Weir in the year he won the Masters.

Second, since I wrote my first article about the Stack and Tilt, I have read literally dozens if not hundreds of comments and e-mails from readers that have had moderate to great success with the swing.  Don’t believe me?  Look at the posts in the Stack and Tilt category and read through the comments.  If my math is correct, I count exactly 300 comments on those posts.  A good chunk of those are mine, responding to other comments, but that’s still a lot of discussion.

Search the internet for Stack and Tilt and look at the discussion forums and other blogs.  I know that Stack and Tilt accounts for a good chunk of my visitors so I assume other bloggers and websites are experiencing the same thing.

So, I’m left wondering why Baddeley and Weir decided to revert.  I think Chris is right that pros change swings and coaches all the time.  That’s a big part of it.  At that level, stats are kind of secondary to wins and earnings.  If Mike Weir feels like he’s not on his way to a year like he had in 2003, then logic dictates that he’s probably going to change things up periodically until he finds that spot again.  Same for Baddeley.

That begs the question, then:  if players at the top feel like this swing is not going to help them get there, then why the huge popularity among the amateur ranks?

The only answer I have is that the Stack and Tilt is a good swing for amateurs to adopt that has the benefit of wiping out some of the major flaws that amateurs struggle with, proper weight transfer being one of them.  With a little study, the swing is fairly easy to adopt and players quickly begin to strike the ball better.  Better contact and better ball compression immediately gives players more distance and accuracy, even if they don’t increase their swing speeds.

What may be happening is, the swing doesn’t offer as much to top players who don’t struggle with things like weight transfer like the rest of us do.  Perhaps it doesn’t offer the same level of distance or precision control that top players need.  I’m not sure about that, though, as the stats for the Stack and Tilt players don’t really bear that hypothesis out.

But that brings me to another point:  confidence.  If a top player doesn’t feel like he has as much control, then he doesn’t.  Even if he does, if you follow me.

As reported in the Naples News article I linked above:

Baddeley, who said before the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill that he was going back to Lynch, won twice on the PGA Tour and once in Australia over the past three years. But his statistics had slid this season.

“I haven’t quite seen the results I wanted,” Baddeley told FoxSports.com. “The past year has been a little inconsistent. I thought I was making good progress but there were a couple of things in the swing that weren’t clicking, so I went and saw Dale for a second opinion.”

To me, that’s a confidence issue.  Baddeley said that a couple of things weren’t clicking.  It sounds more like a couple of things stopped clicking, because they clicked enough previously for him to have won twice  on the PGA Tour.

It’s like anything else in golf:  once confidence in something is lost, it’s very difficult to get it back.  Some players go through dozens of putters, looking for one that feels right.  They have bad streaks and change putters just because they’ve lost confidence.  They get to the point where they would putt with a tree branch if they felt like they were making putts with it.  And players change swings for the exact same reason.  I’ve done it myself, and I don’t have millions riding on my golf swing.

I kind of wonder if this will affect the adoption of the swing by the millions of amateur players out there.  And not just because I run ads for the swing DVDs.  I assure you, that’s the last thing on my mind.  I’m just interested in learning about the golf swing and seeing others raise the level of their games.  If this swing wasn’t adopted by a handful of Tour pros and subsequently featured in Golf Digest, it’s doubtful that knowledge of it would have extended beyond the most hardcore students of the golf swing.

Will players stick with it, and others give it a first try, knowing that the pros are moving on?  I read a comment on another blog once (and I can’t remember which one) where someone said something to the effect that when Tiger Woods adopts the swing, then it’s worth thinking about.  There’s some truth in that.  When one of the perennial winners thinks highly enough of the swing to switch, that’s saying something.  Everyone else is just trying out new things to find some old magic.

So, what do you think?  I know that dozens of you have had success with the swing because you’ve told me.  It stands to reason that there are hundreds or thousands more that never even bothered to comment about it, and that’s just here in my little corner of the internet.  Why is it losing steam in the pro ranks?  Do you think it will continue to be popular among the amateur ranks?  Or will it die out, only to be remembered years from now as another swing fad?

The struggles of this game never cease to amaze me.  Yet, I see some light at the other end of a long, long tunnel.

I’ve been working with my pro regularly since early in the spring.  We’ve identified a number of things for me to work on, most of which I’ve mentioned previously.  When I say, “we’ve” identified, I mean he’s identified and I’ve responded with “ahh” or “hmm”.

Here are the things I’m working on:

• Improved takeaway.  This is my number one problem.  A poor takeaway puts me in poor position at the top and causes some big problems.  My pro gave me the imagery of starting the back swing by moving the back of my right hand straight back away from the target.  That’s really been helping me feel the correct move.
• Better tempo.  In general, my tempo is pretty good, but sometimes I get a little adrenaline and get a little quick at the top of the back swing.
• Solid weight transfer during the back swing.  I tend to keep my weight too centered sometimes which makes me steepen my down swing and causes poor contact.  This has happened for a variety of reasons.  The two biggest are: 1) my experimentation with the Stack and Tilt and One Plane swings, both of which encourage the weight to stay centered during the back swing, and 2) a defense mechanism to keep me from shifting too far to the right, a problem I had years ago.  When I get a proper shift (for a conventional-type swing) during the back swing, my contact is improved immensely.
• Keeping my left foot more square at address. For a long time, I’ve addressed the ball with my left foot flared out a little bit, to help me get through the ball quicker.  Unfortunately, it seems like that might have been causing me to not quite get enough turn in my hips on the back swing.  Then they outrace the rest of my body on the down swing.  As an experiment, we tried having me hit some shots with my left foot about square and I feel like it improved my contact.
• Weakening my right hand grip.  My grip is fairly strong, but over time, my right had has actually gotten turned a little more to the right (stronger) than my left.  I’ve been working on getting that right hand turned a little more left.   This change is more difficult than some of the others because it feels strange and thus, uncomfortable.  It’s very, very difficult to do anything positive with a golf club while feeling uncomfortable.

Sometimes it’s frustrating because at my lessons, the constant supervision has me hitting shots that are quite good.  But, on my own, I find it much more difficult to get in the zone and find those great shots.  On the plus side, though, each time, I make fewer big mistakes. It sometimes takes me a lot of shots before I start hitting solid ones repeatedly.  Each successive range session seems to take me less time to get in that zone.  It still takes me way too long.  Today, it was 50-75 balls before I started to feel comfortable.

I’ve noticed that my bad tendencies are starting to level out some.  For a while now, when I make poor contact, it’s on the toe of the club face.  And obviously, because of that, my miss is a hook.  It becomes magnified when I fight the tendency to also come slightly over the top.  For many people, that produces a slice, but for me, it’s a pull hook.

Now, I notice that my worst shots are not quite as bad as they were.  My hooks are not hooking as much and are more playable than they were.  It’s a frustratingly slow process, but it is a process.  I’m getting there a little at a time.

I haven’t gotten out on the course much in the past month because of poorly timed rain and a couple of other obligations, but I’ve been practicing like a mad man.  At this point, my calluses have calluses.

I have a tee time tomorrow at 1:30, so I’ll get a chance to see where I’m at.  I don’t expect a good score based on how I’ve been performing at the range but that’s OK.  What I’m really looking for is improvement, as well as an evaluation of how I can take the various things I’m working on to the course.  As long as I continue to move in a positive direction, that’s all I’m looking for.