iacas

He apparently does this often.

Like our 2008 , 2009 , 2010 , 2011 , 2012 , 2013 , 2014, 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 threads, here's the official thread for 2019! The rules are the same as they've been: Post your goals personal golf-related goals for 2019. Be specific and thorough. Elaborate on how you'll go about achieving these goals. Details, people! Post just once, though if you reach all of your goals, you should quote your post and revise them later in the year. And set harder goals next year. Keep the replies to a minimum. This thread is mostly for the posting of goals. If you want to encourage more discussion of your goals, post a copy of them in your Member Swing thread. If you're looking to recap your 2018 goals, that's over here in this topic. Let's hear 'em!

This thread will be for the discussion of the most recent film/movie you've seen, news or discussion of movies you want to see, etc. I saw Now You See Me the other day. It was disappointing. Too much suspension of disbelief, and nowhere near enough of the backstory to make you wonder WHY the four people would go along with the whole thing. We'll enforce a grading scale of eagle, birdie, par, bogey, or double. I give Now You See Me a bogey.

Just answer the poll, and you must choose one or the other.

Welcome to the "5 Minutes Daily" Practice Challenge for 2018! Please read as the rules have changed! Yes, for all of 2018! I'm changing it up. Rather than do this monthly, we're going to have an ongoing challenge. Here is how you can earn the coveted award you see to the left. Make a detailed post describing your practice every day during the month. "Going to the range later" doesn't cut it, nor does "worked on my chipping today." Describe what you did for at least five minutes of practice (indoors or out, with or without golf balls, etc.). No back-dating or pre-dating posts or practice sessions. When you've gone four weeks (28 calendar days) in a row, missing at most two days, make your post in bold, red text to let everyone know that you're on a streak. Every day after that, so long as you're still 26 of 28 or better, post in bold, red text. If you had a streak, but lose it, post again in regular old black, non-bold text. Be honest; this is golf we're talking about. I'll periodically check those of you with the award and will remove the coveted award/badge from your profile when you've fallen off your streak. Other members are encouraged to point out when someone else has fallen off as well, because I want the badge to belong only to the truly dedicated! What's different about this? Your "month" basically can begin any time. If you're stopping in and it's the 17th, you can start your streak right now, and a month later, have the award. Before, you had to wait for the month to change on the calendar. Enjoy and practice hard!

I prefer to see my players exhibit two pendulum-like things in their putting strokes: A backswing length and follow-through length that are about the same. A fairly standard rhythm or tempo, defined as either when you take the putter away to when you strike the ball, or the end points of your backswing and follow-through. Both of those traits are characteristics of a pendulum. The period is the same, and the swing lengths are the same (in a vacuum 😄). Find Your Tempo Everyone has a slightly different natural tempo. Some players prefer to have a slower putting stroke (think Ben Crenshaw), while others might putt with a faster tempo (like Brandt Snedeker). Most golfers will fall between about 66 and 80 BPM, but… Here's how to conduct this test to find your natural putting tempo. Download an app like this one for iOS: https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/metronome-tempo-lite/id599833596?mt=8 and set it to 2/4 time if you can. Start with about 72 BPM. Take your putter and set up in your address position, and just start swinging your putter back and forth, trying to time either the bottom of the arc as it passes to the left and to the right, or the end points of your stroke (backswing and follow through). If the metronome feels like it's too slow, and you feel you naturally want to go faster, speed up the tempo. If the metronome feels too fast, slow it down. Verify this by altering the length of your stroke - try to find a tempo that feels good for short, medium, and long strokes (and thus short, medium, and long putts). Vote in the poll above and post a response in this topic with your tempo. @mvmac and I are curious to see what everyone's tempo is. Me? I'm typically a 78.

Day 306 - December 16, 2018 - Some punch shot work to toy with the left wrist condition and demonstrate something for a student.

Averages don't matter nearly as much as some of you might think. 64-80 is a pretty good estimate for the range on the PGA Tour.

Cuz I don't see it as a waste of time, and because I enjoy talking about this stuff, thinking about this stuff, hearing other sides of the argument, and everything - golf is my passion, my life, my drive and purpose. It's my small way of making the world a little bit better place. Everyone's opinion has value, but that value depends on a lot of things…

Yes it was. Man that's slow… you've gotta take the putter back pretty far for your uphill 40 footers on stimp 9 greens!

Not really the topic for it, but group lessons can be good in that they lower the pressure, but the obvious "bad" parts are that the individuals don't get the same amount of attention as they would get individually. Adults often do them because they're cheaper, they can do them with friends, and they are less pressure. Kids often do them because they're good babysitting. That's not the point I was making at all. My point was that beginning golfers don't get to face a "beginner" opponent - the golf course and the equipment is pretty much pro-level right from the start. Beginners in cricket would not fare very well nor would they develop any good habits at all if they faced professional cricket bowlers right from the start, but unfortunately that's basically what happens in golf - they're given a golf ball, a driver, and a hole that's 4.25" away. About the only concession we make as "golf" is to sometimes tee them up 150 yards away instead of 450 yards away, but the actual act is still incredibly difficult, with virtually no margin for error. Cricket and virtually all other sports: Have a simpler motion with shorter implements at slower speeds. Have more margin for error. Are played against other human beings, who can make mistakes and who are, particularly when someone is starting out, often at about the same level. Golf: Has a complex motion with longer implements swung at higher speeds. Have virtually no margin for error. Is played right away to a 4.25" hole 150+ yards away. 🤦‍♂️ I think you've completely missed the context, not to mention the bit about meaning no offense. Being happy to shoot a 92 doesn't mean you're a bad person, your handicap is not a value judgment of any kind. Hell, half of my students probably started with me when they were at your level or worse. It's not a value judgment of any kind. But it does shed some light on your perspective here. It does lend weight to how strongly others might wish to weigh your opinions. Imagine if this was a court of law, and you were called to the stand as an expert witness. What insights could you offer into what it takes to play golf at a high level? Have you been a single digit golfer within the last 20 years? Ever? Have you been a 3, with a small but annoying miss, that required a few months to iron out? I don't know the answer to these things. I guessed at your age based on the year in your email address. For all I know you're 88 and you were married in 1967, and so shooting 92 right now is pretty good, but back in the day you maintained a +1 handicap. I don't know. That would certainly give a bit more weight to your opinion, wouldn't you agree? Think about how this looks from my perspective. You're a 22 handicapper, and I'm a +1 and a pretty good instructor. You're coming on to my site and telling me a bunch of stuff about what makes for a good lesson and how people get good at golf. Between the two of us, honestly, who might know more about these topics? And hey, maybe again I got the 51/22 stuff wrong. But if I did, tell me. Because, like in my golf lessons, I like to tailor whatever I'm saying to the audience, to the person I'm talking to. Admittedly here I'm talking to a few people, anyone who might read this, but I'm also trying to understand where you're coming from, and I'm talking at least a little more to you than the others who might read it. You want to know how someone else put it? That's how someone else put it. And your reaction to my questions above, which again, man I trademarked the phrase "Golf is Hard®" - it is, I get it… anyway, your reaction to that doesn't dissuade me from agreeing with my friend here. What are your qualifications for telling us what a "good lesson" is? What are your qualifications for telling us what it takes to be "good" at golf? That's not to say you need a sparkling résumé for each of those. If you've taken lessons at all, from anyone, you will have opinions on what makes for a good lesson and a bad lesson. And that feedback and those opinions are welcome; I welcome feedback from all corners, from anyone who has something to say, new or old, rich or poor, +6 to 36 handicap… etc. But understanding where you're coming from helps us to understand the context of your opinion. Imagine walking into an auto body shop having flipped through the pages of Car Mechanic magazine and telling the guys who worked there all about what's wrong with the auto body industry. Or talking to a bunch of Fortune 500 CEOs about how they should run their businesses because you took a few college business classes. If I'm right about the 51/22 stuff… maybe we're not that far off here.

This thread typically gets started one way or another, so I may as well start it here. When you play a round of golf, pop open this thread and add a comment. Tell us your score, tell us how you played, and so on. I'll kick it off... Today I shot what would have been about a 78 or a 79 at my home course. Tough to say since I didn't putt (I gave myself two putts on all but three holes where I'd stuffed it within 5 feet - any missed I'd have made there I figure would have been balanced out by the five putts I had from 5-10 feet). Temporary greens, you see. A week ago we had a foot or two of snow. Today it was 40-45 degrees and the ground was soggy, but very little snow existed. I was one of about ten golfers out there. The lack of much wind was nice - 45 degree weather plays about a club shorter. I'll write more later. Gonna post a picture or two from my camera phone. Note: this thread should contain only posts about your score. No replies, please!

Doesn't mean that motion is much at all like a golf swing. Since you later admitted that "natural" was a poor choice of words, though, I'm letting all that stuff go, except to re-iterate that things like cricket, tennis, etc. are much, much simpler motions with much, much wider margins of error, with shorter implements. I've seen golf taught to beginners in much the same way. I teach a junior camp to pretty much beginners every year. Where are these teachers filling beginner's minds with "technical mumbo jumbo" like you keep saying? I feel you're creating a straw man here that doesn't often exist in the real world. Nor do we do this much in golf, for beginners. Again, where is this happening? The sports are also significantly easier, and since they're often playing against people their own age, their flaws are hidden. Golf doesn't do that - golf basically puts you against a top level opponent every time - the golf course. That's not accurate. I coached my daughter's softball team, and gave them instruction on hitting that yielded stellar results because one of the biggest flaws of girls softball is that they don't swing very well. They don't have speed, they don't use anything but their arms, they don't step into stuff and use their hips. My instruction didn't use video, but you keep pretending like people become 5 handicap golfers in a summer just by doing what's "natural" and they don't even necessarily become bad softball players doing what's "natural." What's "natural" to a lot of people, or what they "figure out on their own," is often really, really bad. Let me ask you. I think you're 51 years old, and you're a 22 handicap. I mean no offense here, because trust me as the guy who trademarked the phrase "Golf is Hard®," I know it to be quite true. But you've been playing for many years, I believe, and you're not that old, and you've had lessons… and a good day for you is shooting in the low 90s? That's not that good. You and I disagree, I think, at a pretty basic level on just what "good" is at this sport. I have no idea what beginner golf lessons you've seen that you think they often "immediately become technical." Straw man? And yet most people, given a year, still can't break 100 reliably. We are defining things very differently, man. People are not as good as you're thinking, or you have a very low bar for "good." People whiff when given a club, until they don't whiff anymore, but golf requires not only not whiffing, but hitting the ball in a very small area of a club swung properly and at faster than you drive your car. A club that, by the way, is longer than any other sporting implement that I can think of except a hockey stick… and players have a bottom hand that's much closer to the puck than their bottom hand is on a driver or even a 6-iron. Golf is hard.® Humans are "good" at it, but overall, they still kinda suck. That's not always possible OR best. That's why I feel like you're possibly a band-aid fan. Sometimes change is difficult, or foreign, or "weird," and takes more time than the 35 minutes you have in a lesson to work on that new pathway. This further solidifies in my opinion the idea that you're a band-aid fan. Obviously it's a guess, but it's an educated one. It's possible that some of the lessons where you got "worse" were actually good lessons, but you gave up on them and didn't put in the work. Not everything is fixable in 35 minutes - like the story I told at the beginning of my first post about the woman. And I'm of the opinion that grip changes are incredibly easy to make. You're not moving, you have all the time in the world to make them, and you just have to know how to put your hands on the club differently. I could make any grip change instantly, as soon as I understand it. You likely find them "difficult" because you give up on the instruction quickly, because after 35 minutes you're not hitting the ball very well. This is somewhat common. A guy has a ridiculously weak grip. It's palmy. He swings over the top and flips because if he doesn't, the ball goes way right. It still goes right, but at least with the over the top move and the flip, it starts a little to the left and then curves way right. Sometimes all this player needs is a grip change. Make the grip stronger, the clubface feels "shut" to the player, and he starts swinging out to the right. That doesn't always happen inside of 35 minutes. At first, that guy often hits some nasty little low pull-hooks. Then instinctively (but not correctly per ball flight laws), he starts swinging out to the right a bit more. Everything you keep saying further solidifies to me that you're a band-aid kinda guy. You want some tiny little thing, maybe even just "move your change into your left pocket" type stuff, that makes you better inside of 35 minutes, and that's a good lesson to you. But - and again, not demeaning at all, because the sport is damned difficult - you're a 22. So I don't know that you know what a good lesson is like, or how to be a good student, or a combination of both. And I think that John Jacobs would have used more technology had it been available to him. I don't think that made him all that "different," because there really wasn't much "golf instruction" as a profession back when he started it. There was nobody for him to be "different than." Sentences like that make no real sense to me. You have some image constructed in your mind, and I have an entirely different image in my mind. Tour players and all good golfers do five things well. We call them the 5 Simple Keys®. Every lesson on the full swing that I've ever given has been with the aim of getting that golfer to do one of those things (or multiple) better. Because those are the things all good golfers do. Including Tour players. My students often have five minutes per day, though, or 10. And my students get better, not always with band-aid fixes, but with real, good, prioritized "pieces." You're a band-aid guy. I'm pretty sure of it now. Not all "obvious swing faults" can be fixed in 35 minutes to the point where the golfer is "better" right then. You're creating a dichotomy when a spectrum is probably more truthful. You're setting this one up as the "bad" one (because of the words I left off), but who wouldn't want an instructor who has a system in place for improving their students? You want someone who has no system? No methods? That just randomly gives advice? Every good profession has systems and methods. Doctors don't just say "Oh, let's try this this time to fix this same heart condition we've seen a million times." No, they have a method. A system. Those are good things. The words I chopped off were "in quite a lot of detail," but again you're assuming that a lot of that detail is exposed to the student in every lesson. I rarely expose students to too many details, but you're damned sure I know them. No, I reject this entirely. There is no dichotomy here, and ultimately every golf lesson, every good lesson anyway, is about fixing the ball flight. You're a band-aid fan. That's fine. But it's very clear to me now. You want something "simple" that probably doesn't even involve changing your grip (one of the simplest changes anyone could make), and you want to be better almost immediately, even if that improvement doesn't last very long, and you return to shooting roughly the same scores you've always shot. Again, not saying that in a mean way in the slightest. I'm glad you're a golfer who enjoys the game… but I think you have a very limited perspective on golf instruction, and that's made pretty clear by your bottling of instruction into two boxes. Who f***ing "reconstructs the entire golf swing"? This is the problem with your limited perspective. You've created this straw man argument here, and have lumped in all sorts of things together, all with this underlying (mis)belief that if you're "technical" you automatically spew it all at your student and now, apparently, "reconstruct the entire golf swing," even - to go back a bit - if the student is a beginner in his first year of playing golf. C'mon man… So do I. So does Sean Foley. So does Chris Como. So do a ton of instructors who you'd automatically assume are "bad" because they understand technical things and/or use video or draw lines or have a GEARS system or use high-speed video or launch monitors or pressure plates or SAM PuttLab. No, I don't ask the student which way to go, because they're not the educated one in the equation, they're the student. It's on me to make the judgment call. If I did ask them, you'd just blame me with trying to throw too much mumbo jumbo at them. She's not in a position to make a good decision there… and some students don't want to or need to know the "why". They want the "what" and the "how." But I always, always have a "why." And that reason is never "because a Tour player does it" or "because it looks better." Yeah, and a lot of the "just hit the ball" mechanics are horrible for golf. Yes, we can pretty quickly learn to swing a club and hit a ball without whiffing every time. Those swings might not let most people break 200, though, because the goal of golf goes beyond "swing this stick and hit that ball." Golf is hard.® Band-aid instruction can make some people feel better about their games, and might even help them long term… but it's not how every lesson can or should go.

Too heavy too. Trains you to swing slow.

http://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/rules-hub/rules-modernization.html http://www.usga.org/content/usga/home-page/rules-hub/rules-modernization/text/an-overview-of-the-rules-modernization-initiative.html Now that the finalized 2019 rules are out, we'll use this topic to take over for the previous one, which was here: Here are the major changes: Ball at Rest Ball in Motion Taking Relief Areas of the Course Equipment Playing a Ball When to Play During a Round Player Behavior

https://www.golfdigest.com/story/report-pga-of-america-moving-to-texas-hopes-to-bring-pga-championship-ryder-cup-to-frisco http://www.golf.com/tour-news/2018/03/07/pga-america-relocating-texas-new-site-host-pga-championships-ryder-cups? No, it's not really "Tour Talk" but it's the closest we've got.

Sometimes, this forum can be a bit negative toward the golf games of its members. I will take a bit of the "blame" for that - it's my nature to focus on the things that need improved, and kind of ignore the stuff that's good (it doesn't need attention if it's pretty good; work on your weaknesses!). This is not generally a bad thing, really. We should work on our weaknesses, and focusing on weaknesses doesn't have to be a "depressing" or overly "negative" experience. In fact, I get great joy sometimes from knowing what a weakness is and how to fix it - that leads to hope, and desire. But, still, sometimes we should take a moment to pat ourselves on the back. Dave and I trademarked "Golf is Hard®" and if you have LSW, you'll know what I mean when I talk about the chapter "The Man from a Faraway Land" and the estimates he'd make on how many strokes it takes to get the ball into the hole. All of us here manage to beat the score that man predicts… because we are all quite good when you view it from that perspective. So, in this topic: Please, brag about something you've done, something you nearly did, anything. (Golf-related) Post if you need someone to pump you up a little bit. Post something positive in golf that you experienced, saw, or participated in. Post about when you're pumped up about something, yourself, so others can soak in your joy. Sound good? I would start, but I know a lot of you are good at things. Actually, here's a good example: Great job @mvmac!

Why is that your assumption? Better players swing faster, and faster players are better players, generally speaking.

That's really, really low. Are you doing it right? It takes you over a second to go from one end to the other end, or middle to middle? Can you film yourself doing that and post it?

You've only made five posts in this topic, my man. Day 305 - December 15, 2018 - Hit ten balls (errrr, 12 actually) focusing on going about 60% with my transition move (elbow/wrist). Felt I did it pretty well. Also hit a lot of punch shots and chips when working with my kiddos.

I don't know the last public course I've been to that didn't have a nine-hole rate. Maybe some high-end place like Kiawah Island… and they probably have a nine-hole rate, too. But maybe not. Sounds like a deficiency in the UK, perhaps? But I could see a lot of courses there not having a nine-hole rate because a lot of UK courses go out and back in a big loop, without returning nines. I'm not saying the majority, but a lot of the earlier courses were like that, IIRC, so maybe it's not built into the "system" there to have a nine-hole rate.

Not a big fan. I'm sure it's okay for some people, but overall, it's not great for speed because it's too heavy, and it's not great for tempo because someone like Nick Price would have had that thing going all over the place with his tempo, and yet, he was a great player. So, not a fan as it's not for everyone, and has plenty of potential downsides. If you use it to stretch out a little bit, okay. But that's about all I'd really like to use it for.