Mac O'Grady's Ballstriking

[iacas]

32 minutes ago, Yff Theos said:

I think I have found an interesting old article about Mac that is partially related to the discussion:

Yeah, you'll find some quotes out there by people saying that Mac was a great ballstriker.

Thing is, Johnny Miller himself was a better ballstriker than Mac ever was. So too were… Jack Nicklaus. Ben Hogan. Billy Casper. Lee Buck Trevino. Tom Weiskopf. Tom Watson. Arnold. Gary.. Byron Nelson. Sam Snead. And many, many other players. Tiger. Phil. Jordan. Sergio. Fred Couples was said to have never missed the sweet spot. Vijay Singh. Calvin Peete. Moe Norman. There's a looooooong list of people who are proven ballstrikers.

I don't care if someone can hit balls solidly on the range. There are thousands of guys who can hit any shot they want, dead flush, on the range, all day, without any real targets. The measure of a ballstriker is how well they hit the ball when they're playing golf.

37 minutes ago, Yff Theos said:

P.S. I can see the title of the thread I started has been changed again without my knowledge what is sad. Much sadder thing is that the new title does not reflect my idea of the thread but instead suggests something opposite to my intentions.

I think the current title is as good as it's going to get. Your original title was "Meander ball striking" or something like that. "Meander" made no sense at all.

[Yff Theos]

I have found also the source of the quoted here Mac's statistics in this thread:

http://forum.brianmanzellagolf.com/golfing-discussions/7506-mac-ogrady-ball-striking-stats.html

I guess it is worth mentioning that the person who started the thread and quoted them 9together with his forum accolites) obviously wanted desperatedly to belittle Mac's ballstriking quality. Never mind. What is interesting is that there are in the discussion two esteemed tour teachers that took part in the discussion (including one that I admire a lot) who not only witnessed Mac striking balls but also lots of other tour players closely. I just took some most interesting quotes from the discussion:

I know Toms cant hit a one iron 250 stright up in the air and bend it in both directions and do the same low.Everytime. But who really cares.I played golf with him and quite a few of todays golf pro's including tiger.
Mac is on the top of the list.

Ball striking is a grouping of power and accurate shots. No Im not saying from 230 ones better, just saying there is not a myth about Mac's ballstriking.

First off. Mac in his prime bombed the ball, for that time it was very long. Todays ball and clubs make it imposible to compare.
Second yeah alot of guys hit it closer than these stats, Mac would be the first to say he lead the tour in flyier's to the green.
I have played with him alot, when he went to square grooves which was about a month ago we talked about this.
So really we can't compare the stats to today.
However I still don't know many who can hit a 1 iron over a 90 foot fence and draw it to a green. Or hit the back of a hybrid left handed 240.

Have any of y'all critics seen Mac firsthand or played with him so that your judgements of his ability or lack thereof are accurate rather than heresay?..I've seen Tiger and Mac both in competition..on the range of PGA Tour events close enough to feel the compression into your soul...Tiger best player..hands down...And a very impressive individual...However.... IMO...Mac would beat his ass in breaking windows...Ask my wife...she witnessed/learned first hand from Mac ...Witnessed Tiger first hand in the 1999 US OPEN [...]

Do not worry, I will not bring everything I can find in the internet. But, the thread alone is worth reading because there are opinions of ignorant naysayers and two witnesses and great teachers, thus, experts. I agree they were not as objective, as Johnny Miller (who had no interest in belittling himself in comparison to Mac) because they were Mac's friends. However, I have no problems to believe them instead these other fellows.

 

P.S. The title of my thread now is OK.

[iacas]

58 minutes ago, Yff Theos said:

I have found also the source of the quoted here Mac's statistics in this thread:

Wow! You found it! That must have taken some effort, considering how… oh, wait, what? I posted it right at the end of the quotes I took from that discussion.

58 minutes ago, Yff Theos said:

I guess it is worth mentioning that the person who started the thread and quoted them 9together with his forum accolites) obviously wanted desperatedly to belittle Mac's ballstriking quality.

Or, maybe he wanted to share his opinion on and shed some light on a myth.

58 minutes ago, Yff Theos said:

What is interesting is that there are in the discussion two esteemed tour teachers that took part in the discussion (including one that I admire a lot) who not only witnessed Mac striking balls but also lots of other tour players closely.

I suspect that the "one you admire a lot":

• Was the exact same "anonymous" one I talked to about the "level" (your words) knees and the retracted trail foot.
• Would say things quite differently now, particularly if you define ball-striking as more than just "hitting it solidly" as your OP does. He, too, has learned quite a bit since 2006.

Also, it's bullshit that you call Brian Manzella (himself a "Tour teacher")'s forum members "accolites" (seriously, learn to spell the word if you're going to (ab)use it so frequently), but don't then apply the term to any Mac followers. Mac fans and followers are the very definition of "acolyte," particularly when they're still "in the circle."

Brian Manzella, it should be noted, also saw Mac hit the ball in person several times.

58 minutes ago, Yff Theos said:

But, the thread alone is worth reading because there are opinions of ignorant naysayers and two witnesses and great teachers, thus, experts.

:sigh:

This is one of many problems with what you keep saying. Anyone who disagrees with you is simply an "accolite" or an "ignorant naysayer." Others who agree with your position are "witnesses and great teachers, thus, experts."

Bullshit.

Brian Manzella is not an "ignorant naysayer" on this. And David Toms had a MUCH better career than Mac O'Grady.

The stats are pretty damning: in his best year on the PGA Tour, the excellent ballstriker Mac O'Grady finished 32nd in GIR. There were, that year alone, at least 20 better ball strikers, and likely closer to 30. Ballstriking is not just hitting it solid. It's controlling where the ball goes. Distance, lateral dispersion, etc.

This topic is going nowhere. You're as close-minded as it gets, and can't even acknowledge that you're only willing to listen or give any weight to the opinions that support your side. The facts don't seem to.

And no, you still don't get to quote, respond to, or @mention me.

[Yff Theos]

Since I think the deal between you and me concerning not quoting, responding to and mentioning one another has been already cancelled. Please note I was trying my best to write neutral posts despite you could not. But, OK, no bad feelings from my part.

First, I do not know who this Brian Manzella is. I know who David Toms is but, sorry bud, he is noone special to me. He obviously had a better carreer than Mac but this means nothing when comparing different streams of sport activity. If you want I will explain this to you better but I believe you do not need it. He will be as soon forgotten as next generation of Mac's fans enters your forum: that is my prediction.

The teacher I admire: invite him to your forum, we shall see what he says about Mac's ballstriking in your presence. But, I am afraid, it will never happen for the reasons we both know too well.

 

P.S. I asked you several days ago to ban me permanently from your forum. I repeat it: ban me, since I do not fit your forum and I do not like to upset people, even so arrogant as you are.

[tristanhilton85]

29 minutes ago, Yff Theos said:

P.S. I asked you several days ago to ban me permanently from your forum. I repeat it: ban me, since I do not fit your forum and I do not like to upset people, even so arrogant as you are.

If you don't want to participate anymore, stop. If you don't feel like you fit in here, that's fine, you can stop posting. We don't need to ban you for you to stop posting.

[iacas]

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

Since I think the deal between you and me concerning not quoting, responding to and mentioning one another has been already cancelled.

There was never a "deal" that I didn't get to respond to your posts. I'm the administrator, and it's my site, and though I'm sure you'll think it's unfair as all get out, I get to make the rules. And the rule I made was that you didn't get to quote me or mention me or respond to me. Why? Because you argue poorly, call people names, and otherwise consistently break the only rule on this site. You ignore the points, so why respond, quote, or @mention me at all? So you can call me close-minded or arrogant? No thank you.

Your entire argument, all of your support, boils down to this:

• You think Mac was a great ballstriker.
• You can find a few other people who think Mac was a great ballstriker.

You put down anyone who disagrees, or call them names, while those who happen to - at one point in time - agree with you are described as "experts" and "respected Tour instructors." It's bad/poor form, and really obvious. It's gotten old, and I think anyone who is capable of looking at the arguments logically can see right through it. It actually diminishes your argument and, IMO, makes you look a bit silly.

Anyway, it was never a two-way deal. You don't get to make rules for me.

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

Please note I was trying my best to write neutral posts despite you could not. But, OK, no bad feelings from my part.

This is as "mean" as I'll get in this final post of mine in this topic: you're delusional if you think you were writing "neutral posts."

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

First, I do not know who this Brian Manzella is.

So, once again, you're arguing from a position of ignorance. I'm not going to talk up Brian Manzella as the world's greatest instructor (he's not), but… he's a Top 50/Top 100 instructor in Golf Magazine and Golf Digest. He is, like me, on the Best in State list, of course. He's taught on the PGA Tour, and he's taught golfers. He knows stuff, and he knows people. You form opinions without the basic knowledge necessary, without the table stakes, like even having read or even know what Every Shot Counts is about. Like having a clue who Brian Manzella is. Or taking two minutes to even Google it. And rather than taking that two minutes, you simply flaunt that ignorance. Instead of possibly admitting that the other side may have a point, or some knowledge, or respecting the reputation of those who disagree… you just label them "ignorant naysayers." Because they don't agree with you.

Brian Manzella's opinion in that topic is every bit as valid as Dana's. I could argue it's more relevant, because he wasn't "in Mac's circle" at the time. He wasn't earning some of his pay from Mac. Brian's not an "ignorant naysayer" just because he disagrees with your firmly baked, unchanging opinion.

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

I know who David Toms is but, sorry bud, he is noone special to me.

He won 13 times on the PGA Tour including a major. He was relevant during an era with Tiger Woods, the greatest player of all time. He kept his PGA Tour card for decades. There's ample evidence to support the idea that he's a better ballstriker than Mac O'Grady. But, like anyone who disagrees with you, or presents evidence you don't like, "he is noone special to [you]." Convenient.

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

He obviously had a better carreer than Mac but this means nothing when comparing different streams of sport activity.

I don't even know what that means ("different streams of sport activity"?), but once again, you just dismiss stuff that doesn't line up with what you want to believe. There's ample evidence to support the idea that David Toms was a much better ballstriker than Mac O'Grady.

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

He will be as soon forgotten as next generation of Mac's fans enters your forum: that is my prediction.

Mac fans are diminishing in number. He's falling behind, he hasn't really even been relevant in the last decade. Instructors coming up are much more likely to learn things from other people. Hell, I've trained a few hundred instructors. I've trained more instructors in the past five years than Mac. I've spoken at educational summits, I was on stage at Open Forum. And my book has been touted by some of the game's best, players and instructors. Mac? He won't ever publish. Whether it's because "it's always in a state of flux" or whether it's because he simply wants to avoid criticism and having his work reviewed by other golf instructors and possibly picked apart, who knows… but he doesn't publish. He doesn't engage.

Mac's not really relevant anymore.

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

The teacher I admire: invite him to your forum, we shall see what he says about Mac's ballstriking in your presence.

In case you didn't figure it out before, I know Dana pretty well. @mvmac knows him really well. I'm not going to waste his time asking him to post here. He has in the past, but he's got shit to do, and has been out of Mac's circle for a little while now.

I called another guy who was in Mac's circle from the early/mid-90s to the late 00s. Very close to Mac, basically second in command in whatever "organization" you'd call the "Mac" group. @mvmac will attest to who he is, and we talk to him and visit with him frequently, often at the PGA Show, where we'll go to PF Chang's, and he'll room with us for several days/nights in a row… etc.

He said:

• Mac wasn't the best ball-striker he ever saw. "Not top 100" he said. He teaches five or ten people at any given time who are better ball strikers than Mac ever was. Played with a guy, initials "MB" who is an up-and-coming player, who played with him in the cold and whipping wind the other day… quit after seven holes, and the guy had seven birdies.
• Like people who watch Mike Bennett, people are seduced by the look and feel of Mac's swing. It is pretty. It is nice to look at. It has a good rhythm, or flow. He usually hits it pretty flush. But, like Brian Manzella said, so can a thousand other people. Mac didn't have great distance control, and his clubface control left a lot to be desired. Ballstriking is more than hitting it flush.
• This guy, the one I talked to (not the "MB" guy), who beat it around the mini tours at the highest level of his play, would play Mac (or Mike Bennett) frequently, and beat them far more often than not. Since he was so close to Mac, they'd often play casual rounds together. He almost never lost to Mac. Mac would, even in these rounds without the pressure of competing in a PGA Tour event or anything, simply not hit the ball as well as this guy; Mac wouldn't hit it as close, wouldn't control his distances, etc. He acknowledged that Mac isn't a good putter, but putting is never why Mac lost. (I've caddied for Mike Bennett before. I won't give details, but suffice to say I understood a lot of what he was talking about here. Mac, like Mike, would hit a bad shot on the third hole, just a sideways one, and immediately want to get back to the range.)
• Mac's not a particularly good teacher. Everyone at his group clinics would work on the same thing, often, and on the rare occasions when an older person or a woman or a newer player would come to a Mac school, they'd leave playing worse and very confused. The only players he could make slightly better were the players who were already pretty good and who had already been a "Mac person" for years. They knew the lingo, they were trying already to swing the way he wanted, etc. That's not golf instruction. He said he was a better golf instructor than Mac, that I was, that Mike (@mvmac) and @david_wedzik are better instructors…

This is a guy who spent more time with Mac than anyone else for over 10 years. He's not bitter. He's not pissed. He's not upset with Mac in any way.

I'd tell you his name, but… why? You probably won't know who he is, or you'll think because this doesn't line up with what you want to think that I made it all up, and the fact that @mvmac or @david_wedzik could verify that everything I just said is accurate won't sway your opinion… so what would be the point?

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

But, I am afraid, it will never happen for the reasons we both know too well.

No, the reasons why are stated above, and they're not the reasons you think. I called Dana last week, btw. Sorry, I texted him, and he called me back. He's a friend, and @mvmac knows him really well. We've had dinner together. I've sent students his way. He's a pal.

He is the one, in case you haven't put it together yet, who pointed out that you were wrong about the "level" knees. I thought it was more about the baseline shift, and he confirmed it. You called me names and mocked my "anonymous" source then, well, it was Dana.

I suspect he'd backtrack a little on the stuff he said in 2006. I don't care enough about you - and I respect him too much - to call him and bug him about this. I did call the guy I mentioned above, because I haven't talked to him in a bit longer, so I wanted to catch up on some other things too. The Mac part of our conversation was a small part. We talked more about how dumb the PGA is than most other things…

2 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

P.S. I asked you several days ago to ban me permanently from your forum. I repeat it: ban me, since I do not fit your forum and I do not like to upset people, even so arrogant as you are.

Why, so you can be a martyr?

No thanks.

And buddy, you can keep calling other people names and behaving like a jerk all you want. You will get warnings for that. If they add up to enough points, you will eventually be permanently banned, but it's not because you disagree. It's because you're behaving like a jerk.

You patently refuse to accept, hear, understand, comprehend, research, respond to, or acknowledge anything that doesn't fit your firm, close-minded opinion that Mac O'Grady is one of the greatest ballstrikers of all time.

You denigrate anyone who disagrees, and exalt the few people who agree, even if their opinions are 20+ years old. You know who was the better ballstriker of the two, between Johnny Miller and Mac O'Grady? Johnny Miller absolutely PWN3D Mac O'Grady. It wasn't even close.

You are going to be a lousy instructor if you cannot get past this. You're doing yourself and your teaching service a disservice, you're going to be doing your students a great disservice, and you're taking the easy, lazy way out: paint-by-numbers instruction, it's putting a picture of Mac on the left and your student on the right and saying "you need to look more like that over there."

Look, I'm done. I've asked @mvmac to post on this topic, but I'm locking this topic. Your entire argument boils down to "some people said Mac was a great ballstriker a decade or two or three ago." That's your entire argument. I think it's lacking. I think it's weak. Manzella said there are thousands of guys who can flush it on the range when you aren't hitting it to a target. That's not ballstriking. I contend that the stats, and what we know about the importance of ballstriking to succeeding at high level golf, heavily support the fact that even in Mac's best year there were 20-30 better ball strikers than him. In just that one year. That I could sit here and name 30 different ballstrikers in a minute or less.

You want to see Mac as a god. You want to put him on a pedestal.

Good luck with that.

[mvmac]

I was a huge MORAD fan for a few years. I spent time with a lot of guys that were in his circle. @iacas and I have a collection of Mac videos that Mac enthusiasts would kill for.

I originally tried to give @Yff Theos some advice not to go down the MORAD road. I've been there and while I met some really good guys, it was a waste of time for my own golf game. Myself and several other guys I know have been working on un-MORAD-ing our swings because of how wrong Mac was with some pieces but mostly with the overall philosophy of trying to hit positions. Everyone is hitting it much better and farther  Yes there is some information out there but you don't have to seek out Mac to learn it. 

Mac has a very narrow view of what the golf swing should be like and uses himself as the model. That may seem cool at first but think about all the different looking swings out on tour that perform extremely well. Heck some of the best players now and of all time have more "untraditional" swings. So maybe it's worth exploring what good mechanics really entails.

5 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

First, I do not know who this Brian Manzella is. I know who David Toms is but, sorry bud, he is noone special to me.

You seem to have a lot of concrete opinions but you're very unaware of what is happening in golf instruction. You don't really know much about MORAD other than the videos on YouTube from 30 years ago, you don't who Brian Manzella is, haven't read Every Shot Counts.

5 hours ago, Yff Theos said:

The teacher I admire: invite him to your forum, we shall see what he says about Mac's ballstriking in your presence. But, I am afraid, it will never happen for the reasons we both know too well.

You're referring to Dana? Those posts were from 2006 when he was still in the MORAD camp, it was before Stack and Tilt. Dana would have a much different take than he did from 11 years ago. How do I know? Because of a lot of the stuff you don't like me saying about Mac's patterns comes from Dana!

Dana has also been through it all and he doesn't teach much resembling MORAD now.

1 hour ago, iacas said:

This is a guy who spent more time with Mac than anyone else for over 10 years. He's not bitter. He's not pissed. He's not upset with Mac in any way.

Yes I can confirm this guy was in the circle longer than most. He learned taught and played with Mac. He's a great guy, happy to share what he's learned and whatever he says is legit because of his experiences with Mac.

1 hour ago, iacas said:

Your entire argument boils down to "some people said Mac was a great ballstriker a decade or two or three ago." That's your entire argument. I think it's lacking. I think it's weak. Manzella said there are thousands of guys who can flush it on the range when you aren't hitting it to a target. That's not ballstriking. I contend that the stats, and what we know about the importance of ballstriking to succeeding at high level golf, heavily support the fact that even in Mac's best year there were 20-30 better ball strikers than him. In just that one year. That I could sit here and name 30 different ballstrikers in a minute or less.

You want to see Mac as a god. You want to put him on a pedestal.

This is very simple @Yff Theos, if Mac was one of the greatest ball strikers of all time he would have won A LOT more. The data backs that up and it's basically common sense. In Mac's best years he wasn't even close to being one of the best ball strikers that year.

I think some people get caught up in how well he can hit, how well he can flush it and how sexy he makes it look. But that's very different than hitting greens, hitting it close, having a predictable pattern, having a small shot zone, missing it well, etc.