Fundamental Conundrum

[cliffj]

While reading a thread elsewhere dealing with The Golfing Machine (TGM) it brought to mnd what I consider golfs fundamental conundrum. As golfers, we work quite hard at having a relaxed swing. We try to get the club and body to certain points at certain specified times while doing it in a smooth relaxed manner with an even tempo. This leads to the body mind conflict of swinging the club vs hitting the ball. While all the launch monitors and high speed cameras can pin point the slightest flaw, it can also lead to the proverbial "paralysis by analysis". The question becomes one of whether there is a place for feel anymore in the modern game? I am guilty of trying all the scientific methods to improve my game but like to believe there is a modicum of feel that remains.. Thoughts??

[Mr3Wiggle]

Remember there are 4 stages of competence:

1. Unconscious incompetence:  The individual does not understand or know how to do something and does not necessarily recognize the deficit.
2. Conscious incompetence:  Though the individual does not understand or know how to do something, he or she does recognize the deficit, as well as the value of a new skill in addressing the deficit.
3. Conscious competence:  The individual understands or knows how to do something. However, demonstrating the skill or knowledge requires concentration.
4. Unconscious competence:  The individual has had so much practice with a skill that it has become "second nature" and can be performed easily. As a result, the skill can be performed while executing another task.

I believe there certainly is a place for feel in the modern game/swing.  Probably most effect once you've reached stage 3 or 4.

[Shorty]

Originally Posted by cliffj

Thoughts??

I am the absolute opposite.I play by 100% feel and am totally bemused by people who talk about their 40% wedge swing and P2 and whatever. I know almost nothing about my own golf swing. It is all consciously unconscious. I do all of these things but it's all feel.

Not saying that there is no place for these things, because there is, but I think that this is partly a problem with the internet.

You used to just go out and play golf. You didn't have the internet to spend all your spare time about the latest gear and whatever. I mean...recently there was a post where Mahan just won using a new putter and the suggestion was that it was great timing and Ping would sell a bunch of them. FFS.  Who gives a crap what another player uses?

Now we have people who read all sorts of things and think they have to incorporate them into their game.

We have "debate" about players clubs, GI, SGI , perimeter weighted. Who cares? They used to be called golf clubs and nobody cared waht anyone else was using, and you certainly didn't make your own choices based on what others would think.

Not to mention the utter, utter crap about "forged" clubs and their "feel" (for the 1000th time). A little bit of knowledge is a bad thing that makes people look stupid.

Not saying that progress is bad because it isn't but too many beginning players are thinking about golf equipment and technique but not "playing" golf or just golf.

Launch monitors are great for getting the right shaft etc. but to read hackers talking about "Aimpoint" when thy have never seen a putting green with a break of more than 2 feet and stuff and then think that their putting must be great because they had 32 putts is way off.

Just go and play the game!!!

The people with the meticulous routines and aping of what they think are pro like methods are almost always the worst players with a total absence of feel.

[Parker0065]

You don't have to go any further than Tiger Woods to see that going from playing "Golf Swing" to actually playing "Golf" can be a difficult one. For beginner's or anyone just trying to improve it can be difficult to focus on only the target rather than how they will get the ball to the target.

We live in a world of instant gratification and most average golfers want to take 2-3 lessons and break 80,,lol. That's just not reality, so thay take 2-3 lessons, don't improve and figure it was a waist of time and money or the guy was a bad teacher(which could be true). To me, golf is a difficult game that must be digested slowly one bite at a time. True you do have to groove certain movements or body positions in order to hit a proper shot, but when you step on the first tee your brain has to switch into "Target Mode". I think that how well you've grooved those body positions into your subconscious will adversley effect how well your brain can focus on the target.

On the practice range I may have 2-3 swing thoughts going through my head depending what I'm working on. On the golf course I never use more than one single swing thought and most times the more distant that one swing thought is in the back of my mind, the better I hit the ball. In other words my mind is freed up to focus on the target.

Personally I think all aspects of learning and playing the game are important. You need a trackman or whatever to get properly fitted. You need a good instructor to help guide you one step or swing position at a time, not 2-3 changes all at once. You have to get off the couch and spend time on the range/ practice green grooving those changes. And finally, when you put that tee in the ground on #1 you have to be prepared to play a game of hitting your target.

One of my favorite Harvey Penick one liner's is "Take Dead Aim". I'm sure some people read that and think well no duh, of course I'm going to aim at my target. But what I think Penick was really saying was focus on the target, not on your golf swing!

[The Recreational Golfer]

Yes. You need to learn what the right movements are, then learn what those feel like. That's what you play golf with—the feel of what's right, learned through conscious practice of what's right.

[iacas]

First, Richie Hunt says it best about TGM, since that was mentioned specifically:

Quote:

If there’s an irony to The Golfing Machine book it’s that for all of the technical jargon and debated science, it’s a book that has a system for the golfer to develop their golf swing by learning how to best incorporate feel into their swing. Every now and then some critic, who probably has never read the book or taken the time to understand it will talk about how it takes the feel out of the swing for the golfer when in reality it does the exact opposite.

http://3jack.blogspot.com/2012/02/going-from-feel-player-to-mechanics.html

http://3jack.blogspot.com/2010/12/how-to-understand-feel-from-mechanics.html

We talk all the time with our students about how they work during practice to improve their mechanics (virtually ALWAYS by figuring out which feels work for them), then when they play golf they need to get their ball in the hole and not worry about the mechanics a bit. The student understands what the mechanics should be, and how they need to feel things in order to make them better.

In my own "My Swing" thread I talk about feels all the time. The mechanics are relatively easy. Understanding them takes some time and effort, and the compatibilities takes a LOT of time and effort, but they're relatively easy. DOING them - using the proper feels to achieve the proper mechanics - is what's difficult. That's 99% of my work and effort - applying feels to ingrain the proper mechanics.

Nobody can strike a golf ball well with poor mechanics. Nobody. But poor is not the same as "unconventional." Jim Furyk and Bubba Watson may look different hitting a 9-iron, but they achieve all 5 Simple Keys®.

I'll disagree with Rich in one way. He uses someone like Robert Rock as a "mechanical" player. 20 years ago we'd talk about Nick Faldo as being such. Clearly, though, both players are feel players first and foremost. Just because they understand the mechanics doesn't mean they're "mechanical" players.

No golfer on the PGA Tour thinks about "mechanics" on the golf course. They might think, for example, "hinge the club up faster," but that's not mechanics - that's feel. It improves the mechanics.

I'm going to stretch this analogy a bit, but let's take Robert Rock and Bubba Watson, because Richie used them in his example. Robert = "mechanical" and Bubba = "feel." When either player starts to struggle, if all else was equal (this is where the analogy is stretched) who is likely to come out of the funk the fastest: Bubba or Robert? Robert can tape his swing or hop on Trackman and say "ah, this is off, now I can focus on some feels that fix that and I'll be back on track."

Bubba does… what exactly? Just randomly guesses? Granted, they're somewhat educated guesses based on what's worked before, but they're still guesses, because he doesn't really understand the mechanics as well as Robert. And even if you recorded his swing or put him on Trackman, he wouldn't really know what to look for, because he doesn't have the understanding for his mechanics.

I can tell you with absolute certainty that I don't get in "funks." I don't go for a week or two or longer at a time without knowing what's going on. I know within a few swings, and then I can immediately begin solving the problem via feels that improve the mechanics .

Cliff, you mentioned "scientific approaches" to the game. I think there are some students who like the science and the mechanics, and there are some students who don't care. While all of the students are feel players at the end of the day , some simply like to know what the feels are doing, and some just want to know what feels work for them. Science and mechanics are for the instructors or the players in the second group, but again, players in both groups are feel players.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shorty

I am the absolute opposite. I play by 100% feel and am totally bemused by people who talk about their 40% wedge swing and P2 and whatever. I know almost nothing about my own golf swing. It is all consciously unconscious. I do all of these things but it's all feel.

That doesn't make you the opposite of anyone. I've yet to meet the 100% mechanical golfer.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shorty

Not saying that there is no place for these things, because there is, but I think that this is partly a problem with the internet.

You used to just go out and play golf. You didn't have the internet to spend all your spare time about the latest gear and whatever. I mean...recently there was a post where Mahan just won using a new putter and the suggestion was that it was great timing and Ping would sell a bunch of them. FFS.  Who gives a crap what another player uses?

I don't. But I think you'll find that a lot of the people who participate online in golf discussion are exactly the type that is least likely to buy Hunter's putter because he won with it. More typically it's the more casual golfer who gets led into this sort of thing. Golfers who are members here, for example, are more discerning. They're doing the research, they're discussing things. They aren't brainlessly buying something because someone else won with something like it.

And don't blame the Internet. How many of those hideous putters were sold in 1986 when Jack won with it? People have been doing that stuff for decades. People bought stuff because Babe Ruth endorsed it, and it happened before that, too.

You go on to keep talking about golf clubs, and you know, I'm one of the least "club ho" type people out there, and I don't think that's what Cliff was talking about, so I don't really have much more to say about that, because I largely agree: some people care too much about equipment and should be even more discerning with the information they believe and the information they question.

We - Golf Evolution, I mean - have a standard policy of questioning everything we can. Including ourselves.

And the last little bit on equipment: I've said before and will say again that I can play a pretty good round of golf with my wife's clubs, especially if I get to hit them for a little bit on the range first to figure out how to make them perform best. Do they feel like they're too whippy if I swing them like this? No? Okay, good. I'll use that "feel" to break par with my wife's clubs today.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Shorty

Launch monitors are great for getting the right shaft etc. but to read hackers talking about "Aimpoint" when thy have never seen a putting green with a break of more than 2 feet and stuff and then think that their putting must be great because they had 32 putts is way off.

Sorry, Shorty, but you're probably speaking from a place of ignorance on that one. And of course you only need to be off by two inches to miss virtually every putt, whether it's from five feet or twenty-five feet.

AimPoint isn't "mechanical." In fact, it's a lot like the full swing examples above: guessing versus using feel but understanding the underlying mechanics (or physics).

I don't know what the 32 putts bit is about. That's probably a really good putting day if you hit 16+ greens, and probably a lousy day if you hit six or fewer. All I know is most people are lousy green readers and they're not great at controlling distance or starting the ball on-line, either. AimPoint helps with one of those. You've still gotta hit the putt where you want and with the right speed.

Quote:

Originally Posted by The Recreational Golfer

Yes. You need to learn what the right movements are, then learn what those feel like. That's what you play golf with—the feel of what's right, learned through conscious practice of what's right.

Well said.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Parker0065

We live in a world of instant gratification and most average golfers want to take 2-3 lessons and break 80,,lol. That's just not reality, so thay take 2-3 lessons, don't improve and figure it was a waist of time and money or the guy was a bad teacher(which could be true).

If the golfer works at what the instructor says and doesn't get better, the instructor is almost certainly a bad one.

Now, most often, the student takes the lesson and thinks that because they kinda understand it, they've "got it," then they never work on it and blame the instructor. So I'm not saying "no improvement = bad instructor." I'm saying that if the student does the actual work and doesn't improve, the instructor likely stinks.

The rest of what you had to say I agree with (though I don't always think "target" per se).

[Bullitt5339]

I'm one of those "hackers" who's taking Aimpoint.  Why?  Because I can't read greens and no one, including both instructors I've used can give me a method that's repeatable and accurate for me.  After speaking to a few Aimpoint students who were in the same situation, they can now read greens and have improved their putting because of it.

I'm one of those guys who can do 35 putts while only hitting 4 greens, unfortunately. I'm hitting 61% of fairways but I'm only averaging 25.4% GIRs and only 10.6% in scrambling.  My approach shots are typically not far off, but just not on the green. Averaging 1.9 putts per hole, but 2.1 per GIR.

Where can I cut the most strokes off my 84-87 stroke average?  My short game.  Putting practice hasn't worked because I can't read the greens on the course.  My speed is decent, but I'm never on line.

So...... What is the harm in taking a class to teach me a quick and scientific method to read greens that's been proven accurate?

[Topper]

Originally Posted by Shorty

I am the absolute opposite.I play by 100% feel and am totally bemused by people who talk about their 40% wedge swing and P2 and whatever. I know almost nothing about my own golf swing. It is all consciously unconscious. I do all of these things but it's all feel.

Not saying that there is no place for these things, because there is, but I think that this is partly a problem with the internet.

You used to just go out and play golf. You didn't have the internet to spend all your spare time about the latest gear and whatever. I mean...recently there was a post where Mahan just won using a new putter and the suggestion was that it was great timing and Ping would sell a bunch of them. FFS.  Who gives a crap what another player uses?

Now we have people who read all sorts of things and think they have to incorporate them into their game.

We have "debate" about players clubs, GI, SGI , perimeter weighted. Who cares? They used to be called golf clubs and nobody cared waht anyone else was using, and you certainly didn't make your own choices based on what others would think.

Not to mention the utter, utter crap about "forged" clubs and their "feel" (for the 1000th time). A little bit of knowledge is a bad thing that makes people look stupid.

Not saying that progress is bad because it isn't but too many beginning players are thinking about golf equipment and technique but not "playing" golf or just golf.

Launch monitors are great for getting the right shaft etc. but to read hackers talking about "Aimpoint" when thy have never seen a putting green with a break of more than 2 feet and stuff and then think that their putting must be great because they had 32 putts is way off.

Just go and play the game!!!

The people with the meticulous routines and aping of what they think are pro like methods are almost always the worst players with a total absence of feel.

Great post.

[iacas]

To be fair, I don't think Cliff's original post is about AimPoint. Heck, he's taken an AimPoint clinic from Sara Dickson, IIRC.

So if I could, I think the discussion on "feel" and "mechanics" has value, and I'd like to nudge it back in that direction.

[bwdial]

Anyone familiar with Howard Gardner's 'Multiple Intelligences"?

Some people learn by listening, some by seeing, others by doing... and so on.  I think it's the same with golf.  I've always been a pretty good putter.  However, when I allow my mind to get too active in the process of putting, I tend to lock up and hit it halfway to the hole.  I envision the path the ball needs to be on and try to roll it along that path.  Likewise, when I read P2 and A4, my eyes tend to glaze over.  I'm better at looking at someone's swing and then trying to emulate it.  I'll take a little crappy video and try to see what I'm doing, but mainly that's just to make sure my head is still and that my old sway isn't creeping back in.  I just focus on impact when it comes to position... and that is improving.

[WUTiger]

We're all striving for unconscious competence .

The golf pro I worked with for three years (2007-10) took my basic swing tendencies and teased out all the junk and wobbles. Basically, prevent OTT by not overswinging.

When I would ask him some detailed question about the golf swing, about three of four times he waved me off. "You've already got it covered naturally, don't even worry about it," he would say.

He got me down to a 19 HDCP (as you can see, I've backslid since then). I got to 19 by working on swing parts and drills on the range, and then focusing on alignment (and what happened naturally in the swing) on the course.

Started having trouble with the long clubs last summer; will spare you the details, too many swing thoughts part of the problem. Looks like conscious incompetence has returned.

What I seek: Work on swing on the range, do the swing on the course (and try to have fun).

[JCoop]

What a great thread!

Having just started this game last year I've been working a ton on both mechanics and feel. And I could not agree more that you must learn a mechanical detail and then practice until it feels right. Perhaps I can illustrate: Last year during a lesson, my instructor told me that I was standing too upright and proceeded to change my posture and stance.

At first this felt horrible! My distance was wrong, I didn't know how far to bend over or how much to flex the knees. I was hitting everything fat, chunking, etc. Nothing was consistent. Blech! But I've kep at it and just this spring a light went on and I am starting to FEEL it when I'm set up properly. And sure enough, when I feel right I hit the ball better. I'm no longer trying to calculate how many inches I am from the ball on the tee. I just wiggle around and adjust a bit until it's right.

It's still not totally natural but I can see that by continuing to practice the mechanics, the feel will let me know when I'm doing things right.