Last week, I asked you to tell me if you’ve ever left the game and why, for a chance to win a copy of The Downhill Lie, Carl Hiaasen’s tale of woe chronicling his taking up the game again after over 30 years away.

There are two winners to the contest:  the story I liked the most, and a second winner chosen at random from the remaining entries.  I will be contacting each winner by e-mail shortly.

First I’d like to thank Vintage Publishing for sponsoring this giveaway.  Stay tuned in the near future for my complete review of the book.

Now, the random winner.  Congratulations to Chris, who shared a great story of discovering the challenge of him versus the course instead of him versus other players after having given up the game for 18 months.

And, now for the winner that I selected.  First, I want to say that I really enjoyed all the entries and it was truly difficult to pick a winner.  I’m not just saying that to console everyone who didn’t win.  I really mean it.  Thanks to everyone who took the time to submit an entry.

Drumroll, please…

I’m choosing Brad Clardy from Brad’s Wonderful World of Golf as the winning entry.  Have a look at his story and then I’ll talk more about it below.

I quit for one whole week last year. I was shooting in the low 80’s looking to bust into the 70’s last spring, when all of a sudden on one of those days when you feel like you can win every lottery in town, I played a round in the triple digits. It came out of nowhere. It slammed me like a sack of potatos on the curb. I could not believe it! My buddies kept asking me if my marrige was on the rocks. From slices, to shanks, to putts off the green. It all happened at once like some terrible nightmare, except I was fully awake and powerless to stop it. I never blew up or out. I calmly left the course, went home and drank 2-3 scotches trying to put my finger on the worst round in my life.

The next thing I did was put up a web page ad listing every golf club I owned. I listed every club, in single lined description, with the value of each to the side. At the bottom of the page I let my words flood a full paragraph as I finally dumped my anger and emotions on to my keyboard and explained to the whole world why I was giving up the game of golf. At the bottom of the $2500 price tag, I put this note.”50% off to the first guy that helps me quit.”

Three days later, I get this call from a local, where I ran the ad and he says he’s interested. He shows up at my door with a van full of clubs and starts telling me he wants to do some trades. I was a little upset and told him that he didn’t even read my ad. I said, “I’m trying to quit mister!”, and he said, “And I’m trying to keep you in the game.” I shook his hand laughing as he left. After four days of stewing, I deleted the ad and went back to the same course and shot an 80. If you quit on life you die, If you quit on golf, you’re just a loser.

One of the reasons I chose this entry as the winner is because I could literally feel the frustration.  Anyone who takes the game seriously has felt it at some time.  It’s kind of like being stranded on an island alone.  It’s one of the most frustrating things that can be experienced.  Here’s this game that we love so much, and it has stopped being fun.  Our friends and families can only watch the spectacle and feel sorry for us, as if we’re dying a slow death.

But what really did it for me is the conclusion he came to at the end.  I personally wouldn’t call anyone a loser for giving up the game.  I say, to each his own.  But the point is a valid one.  Why would we give up this game that we love?

Now, I’m not talking about people with young children or people stricken with financial hardship.  Sometimes people have to make hard choices like that.  It’s the ones that love the game and walk away willingly that I’m talking about.

In the end, we have to look inward to ask ourselves why we would give up something so dear to us because we put up a big number or have a case of the shanks.  It’s a defense mechanism to protect us from the negative emotions, but really, it’s a failing in our own ability to manage expectations and to handle adversity.

Golf hasn’t changed just because we face adversity.  It’s still the game we became attached to for whatever reason.  The answer for those of us who have faced this despair (and I’ve been there, believe me) is simply to work a little harder and to reshape the expectations about what golf gives to us, and we’ll see no reason to walk away.

We’ll stop obsessing about winning the club championship or about looking foolish in front of others or falling short of our own lofty goals and enjoy the game for what it is and what it always has been:  several hours of camaraderie, companionship, and competition in the great outdoors.  It’s wonderful exercise, and a challenge that can never be conquered.  It provides exhilarating highs and depressing lows, all which make us better players and better people.

Congratulations to Chris and Brad.  I’m thoroughly enjoying the book, even if I do think Hiaasen shouldn’t have sworn off the game to begin with. Stay tuned for my full review in the near future.

It’s been raining here in one form or another for the better part of the past week.  I did manage to get out to the driving range on Tuesday, but other than that, Mother Nature has foiled me again.

For many of you, it’s tough to find time to play golf, let alone commit time to improving.  With family, job, and other obligations, just blocking out four or five hours on the weekend to play is tough enough.  It’s even more tough when there are violent thunderstorms or torrential downpours that turn your precious golf time into something else time.

Then, to make matters worse, it can happen for a few weeks in a row.  As we all know, golf is a “use it or lose it” skill.  Those of us who deal with an off season know that it takes a while to get it back in spring.  The last thing you need is to lose it in the summer because of some poorly timed rain.

The first step in all this when your blocked-out practice or play time is rained out, leave at least part of the time slot open.  There is a lot that can be done indoors to keep the golf game sharp.

Look in the Mirror

A full-length mirror is one of the best training aids money can buy.  It’s perfect for checking swing positions that you can’t see for yourself as you hit shots.

It’s especially useful if you’re working on swing changes.  You can use it to see whether the club is on plane, to check the position of your hands, or to check that your weight isn’t shifting improperly.  You can inspect virtually any part of your swing.  Even if you’re working with a pro, it’s great to help you see whether you’re doing the things you’ve been instructed to do.

Study Up

Rainy weather is the perfect time to find a nice comfortable spot and enjoy some relaxing reading time or even watch an instructional video.

If you’ve been thinking about adopting a certain swing or brushing up on your fundamentals, use that down time to study.  Learn the Stack and Tilt, the One Plane Swing, The X-Factor, study Pelz’s short game and putting systems, brush up on the conventional swing.  The possibilities are numerous.  Learning about the swing, in general, is a great way to help you diagnose problems and make corrections on your own, if you’re not inclined to take lessons.

Swing a Weighted Club

Harvey Penick used to encourage his students to swing a weighted golf club.

It has two benefits.  First, it definitely works to strengthen your golf-specific muscles.  You can spend a lot of time in the gym trying to isolate golf muscles and strengthen them, but a weighted club does it all at once.  You are effectively engaging exactly the muscles needed for the golf swing.  Second, it can help your swing mechanics.  A weighted club has a tendency to show you when you’re off-plane during the swing.  When you’re not on-plane with the weighted club, the weight becomes more difficult to manage and you know right away when you’re on-plane again.

If you have low ceilings and can’t easily swing a club indoors, there are a number of weighted golf trainers that are much shorter than a regular club that you can easily swing indoors.

Work on the Short Game

There’s plenty of work you can do indoors on the short game.  Depending on what kind of area you have available to you indoors, you might have to limit yourself to chipping or even just putting, but everyone can work on the putting stroke, at a minimum.

Dave Pelz sells a number of putting training aids, and some can be used indoors on the carpet.  I have a Putting Track and I love to use it for a few minutes here and there.  A rainy day is perfect to spend a little time grooving a pure in-line square putting stroke using the Putting Track.

If you don’t want to spend the money to get one, you can get a similar effect by assuming your putting stance facing a wall so that the toe end of your putter head is just off the wall.  Swing your putter squarely along the baseboard, using it as a guide to help you keep the face square.

If you’re a “screen door” type putter, you’re on your own, but there’s no reason you can’t sharpen your stroke on the carpet, too.

For a little chipping practice, there are a number of indoor-safe balls and little chipping nets you can buy to work on your stroke at home.  Those are great for grooving your stroke when you’re sidelined because of weather.

Work Out!

Yes, I know you don’t want to hear that one.  I know how hard it is to find time to get to the gym with life being so busy.  Well, the rain just freed up five hours of your Saturday, so now you have no excuse.  Keeping strong and flexible, and maintaining your endurance will pay dividends on the golf course.

Even if you just devote half an hour to stretching, it will help.  It will help a lot more if you devote that half hour several times per week, but hey, it’s a start.

Put it All Together

These are just a few of the things you can do to keep your game sharp when the weather keeps you off the course.  I’m sure you can think of more.

But, if you’re suddenly left with five hours open on your schedule because of the weather, you can easily do all these things in that time window.  None of this is going to get you on the PGA Tour, but sharpening your game just a little might give you the added boost you need to reach a milestone or to take a few bucks off of your buddies when you get back out to the course.

There’s no better time to start than a rainy day.

Note:  This contest is now closed and the winners will be announced shortly.

Thanks to Vintage Publishing, I’m fortunate to have a couple of copies of The Downhill Lie: A Hacker’s Return to a Ruinous Sport, by Carl Hiaasen, to give away.  The book will be available for wide release on May 5, 2009.

The Downhill Lie chronicles Hiaasen’s return to golf after 34 years away from the game.  I started reading it myself last night and am loving his wit and storytelling.  When I finish, I’ll publish a review, but in the meantime, it’s contest time.

Here’s what we’re going to do:

To enter, leave a comment telling me if you’ve ever given up the game for any length of time – a day, a month, or multiple decades.  Also, tell me why you left, and if you came back, tell me why.

If you’ve never given up the game, don’t worry, you can still win.  If you know someone else that left, tell me their story.  Or, simply tell me why you’ve never given up the game and never will.

Entries that violate my comment policy won’t be considered, so please review it if you’re not sure how things roll around here.

As I said, there will be two winners, chosen as follows:

• One winner will be chosen subjectively by me out of the entries.  Whichever story I like best will win a copy of the book.  There’s no criteria other than following the instructions above and me liking your entry the most.
• The second winner will be chosen at random from the remaining entries.

The contest will run for one week.  I’ll choose a winner on Friday, May 8, 2009.  I’ll contact the winners directly and will also publish a post (and I’ll update this one too).

In the meantime, I’m going to continue reading the book and will publish a review in the near future.  Good luck to everyone.  I can’t wait to read those stories.

We golfers practice for one reason:  to be able to hit the shots on the course that we hit on the practice tee.  We are training our bodies to produce an automatic reaction on the course to whatever shot we are faced with.  We hit certain shots repeatedly on the practice tee and practice green until they become second nature.  When they come up on the course, the fact that our bodies have been programmed to hit them inspires confidence and we greatly increase the chances for success.

The main problem is, though, that the practice tee (unlike the practice green) is not necessarily comparable to what we’re going to face on the course.  The shot conditions out there are generally different than what we experience on the practice tee.  The key is to be aware of the differences while we’re programming our brains so that we can effectively make the transition.

Lie Quality

Perhaps the biggest difference we face between the practice tee and the course is the quality of the lies we see.  On the practice tee, we hit virtually every shot from a perfect lie.  On the course, perfect lies are a not a given, even in the fairway.  We might find our balls in divots, on bare spots, in rough of varying degrees.

It’s a good idea to try and hit some of these shots on the practice tee, if possible.  If your range permits it, try and hit some from the rough.  Hit some from divots.  Try and get out of the mindset of hitting every shot from perfect conditions.  Obviously, if you’re working on swing changes, you don’t need to create more adversity for yourself by amping up the challenge.  But if you’re out there just beating balls, then working on these things to whatever degree you can will only help you on the course.

Along with quality of the lie of the ball, we should also talk about the quality of your stance.  On most driving range tees, you’re going to have a nice level stance.  On the course, you’re going to have very few.  Knowing the adjustments to make for uphill/downhill lies and side hill lies will help you on the course.  If your driving range has any spots where you can practice these shots, it will be a big help when you face them on the course.

Surface Condition

Most of us hit off synthetic driving range mats at one time or another, especially those of us in places where the weather gets cold and the grass tees need to be closed for the winter.

These mats add a different layer of complexity to the learning process, which is why I will always hit off a grass tee if given the choice.  Logically, I know that I’m not going to be hitting from a synthetic mat on the course, so I like to replicate the types of feel I’m going to get on the course when I’m on the practice tee.

An even bigger problem is, when we hit shots, our brains intuitively learn from the feedback we get from each shot.  We see the trajectory, see the divot (when hitting on grass), feel the contact with the ball, feel the contact of the club with the ground, feel our balance, etc.  When hitting shots off of synthetic mats, we may be getting mixed signals.

If you’re hitting from a grass tee and the club strikes the ground 2 inches behind the ball, it digs in and the ball hardly goes anywhere.  It’s the classic fat shot.  Do the same thing on a range mat, though, and the outcome will be totally different because the club can’t dig into the ground.  More likely, the club head will skip a little and you’ll strike the ball thin or skull it.  You might even salvage a decent shot if you don’t hit so far behind the ball.

This is where you need to learn the feel of a fat shot or thin shot.  You can’t just look at the results and make a change.  If you let it, your brain may try to make the skulled shot correction instead of the fat shot correction that it has filed away from having hit thousands of shots over the years.  Awareness that your hands and eyes tell you that you hit a fat shot, even when the results say something else is something we need to develop to effectively practice, especially from synthetic surfaces.

Wind Conditions

This is something that’s not going to differ from what we face on the course, but when practicing it pays to be very aware of what the wind is doing. We all know there can be a very pronounced effect on the ball and it’s challenging to try and make swing corrections when the wind is magnifying or even nullifying swing tendencies.

For instance, the most unpleasant condition to practice in for me is a stiff breeze coming from the right or left.  This makes it difficult to read the curvature of the ball.  Did a left to right wind turn a big hook into a gentle draw?  Did it turn a gentle fade into a big slice?

We can’t avoid practice when it’s windy (especially for those living in windy places), we just need to learn to expect what kinds of reaction the ball will have and not make unnecessary swing corrections subconsciously to try and straighten the ball out.  The effects of wind from the right or left are fairly obvious.

Wind blowing from the end of the range back at you will both shorten the distance of the shot and magnify the curvature of the ball in every direction.  A fade, slice, draw or hook will be magnified.  A high shot will go higher.  But, a low shot will stay fairly low, which is why it’s the generally accepted method of playing in the wind and why people living in windy places are usually low-ball hitters.

When the wind blows down the target line, it has the opposite effect.  You’ll hit the ball longer, for one.  You’ll also find that the shots that curve probably won’t curve as much.

The key to practicing in the wind is understanding these things so you can read your shot results and not go down the path of correcting something that doesn’t need correcting.  The same goes for lies, stances, and surfaces.  If you gain a full understanding of what your practice conditions are, you’ll be much more effective during practice time, and that means much more success on the course.

When I was contacted by the folks at 6 Week Golf Lesson, I was intrigued by the idea.  The 6 Week Golf Lesson is a series of online golf lessons, designed to introduce players to proper swing fundamentals.  The internet is full of instruction.  There are tips hiding around every corner, like here, for instance.  There are tons of people selling swings, via DVD or other means.  But there aren’t many places that give beginners a cohesive, planned, simple introduction to the golf swing.

According to the website:

The 6 Week Golf Lesson provides a series of simple instructions that will help you to build up a solid golf swing with the correct fundamentals. The 6 Week Golf Lesson has been developed over the last 14 years with the aim of helping anyone who is keen on improving their swing or taking up golf for the first time.

All it requires for 5 – 10 minutes practice a day, following a simple tutorial each week for 6 weeks. Once you have completed the 6 Week Golf Lesson you will be aware of what you should be doing, and be in a position to help yourself.

The 6 Week Golf Lesson was created by a number of experts, including Michael Bannon, swing coach to young phenom Rory McIlroy.

The online lessons are presented as a series of steps using a 3-D animated golfer that demonstrates proper technique, accompanied by a voice narrator.  Each week builds a piece of swing foundation and the player is expected to practice for about ten minutes per day throughout the six weeks.

The Good

• The lessons are clear and concise.  There is nothing difficult to follow and the 3-D animations do a great job of showing a player what certain things mean, instead of letting him try to figure it out on his own.
• The 3-D animated golfer gives more detail than a series of still photos because the camera angle rotates around the player to show things in motion from multiple angles.
• I like the fact that the 6 Week Golf Lesson doesn’t have players going to the golf course, or even to the driving range during the six weeks.  Advanced players will realize that sometimes the best drills don’t involve a ball, and I believe the same holds true for trying to grasp the very basic fundamentals.  Gripping and swinging the club is made easier for the beginner without the pressure of having to hit a ball.  They’ll learn to just make the motion without worrying about the hit.
• The lessons are relatively brief to watch.  I went through the program myself and each one takes only a few minutes time to watch and digest.
• Completed lessons can be revisited easily at any time.
• The information in the lessons is very basic.  I almost put this in “The Bad” section, but I think it’s actually a plus.  It makes it less confusing and easier to learn, especially for a beginner.

The Bad

• The 6 Week Golf Lesson claims that it can even help experienced golfers.  While this certainly may be true, I would personally not recommend it to an experienced golfer, except maybe for a very high handicapper.  By the time a player has become experienced, he or she has ingrained a certain set of swing habits, good or bad.  Because players often don’t actually realize what they do during the swing, that’s where the one-on-one help that a pro gives becomes more valuable.  A very high handicapper who might not know the proper fundamentals who is willing to tear down his poor swing and rebuild it properly would probably get some benefit from the program.
• The program is a very good introduction to the basic golf swing, but not to the game.  There currently is no information about the short game, the rules, or etiquette.  From that perspective, while the 6 Week Golf Lesson has a place, it is simply an introduction to the swing, and in that sense, a starting point into the game.  After the six weeks (or however long it takes to absorb the material), the beginner will have pretty much outgrown it and will have to seek other means to continue advancing.

Conclusion

I spend a lot of time at the driving range.  It seems like there is a constant stream of well-meaning boyfriends, husbands, fathers, brothers, and friends willing to “teach” new players how to hit a golf ball.  I often cringe at the advice being given and especially at the way it is given.  The golf swing can be stated in very complex terms, and these guys like to stick right to that idea.

Despite my two criticisms, I think the 6 Week Golf Lesson solves that problem for the beginning golfer.  The instruction is very easy to understand and the practice required in between the lessons is minimal and easy to accomplish.

At the end of the six weeks, a new player is not going to go out and shoot in the 70’s.  But what he or she will have is a basic set of fundamentals beginning to be ingrained into muscle memory.  When a player begins to hit balls and to actually play rounds, he will have the building blocks to become a good player over time, whereas the new players I see at the range are virtually doomed to permanent frustration and may not even stick with the game.

The 6 Week Golf Lesson costs £29.00 (which at the time of this writing is about $43).  Given the comparable cost of 6 lessons with a pro, it’s a bargain.  This isn’t to say that lessons with a pro won’t be beneficial, especially down the road, but if money is tight, this is a more economical way for a new player to get off the ground.

I recommend the 6 Week Golf Lesson for beginners of any age.  I also recommend it for very high handicappers who may not have been playing for long but who are willing to sit down and follow the program to start learning proper fundamentals.  Experienced players will probably want to skip the 6 Week Golf Lesson, in favor of working with a pro one-on-one.

You can get more information about the 6 Week Golf Lesson here.