McGolf-Doggie

DJ, Westwood, Garcia and Day perfectly positioned to capitalize tomorrow

Tomorrow morning at 7 am apparently.

Quite happy to see some new and new-ish names...although a bit surprised.

Wife wants to know if the leaders have a chance of finishing the round before dark, and what happens if they don't. I ran out of answers.

To the OP ditto on Quote: A regular flex shaft is definitely NOT what you want. I recommend a Stiff I have an inside to out swing and was a hooker, never a slicer, the only club I ever sliced was all the used handmedown R-shafted drivers I'd collected. I'd never paid for one at that point. When I finally went to get fitted for a driver, time after time I did much better with the S flex of the TM burner, it's like that shaft miraculously straightened out my drive. Quote: Originally Posted by vangator You'll never hit the ball consistently until you realize you can't swing that hard (unless you're well practiced like a tour pro). You have two options. You can swing hard and shoot 100 or back off and put the ball in play and shoot in the 70's. Just because you CAN hit it that far doesn't mean you should. When I was your age, I very rarely was outdriven. But I rarely broke 80. Now, I can hit a 5i over 200, but choose to throttle back to about 180-185. If I need to hit it longer, I grab a 4h, 5 wood etc. Learn to hit those 3/4 shots. You'll love the results. Your swing speed has to be 115+ to get that kind of distance. A regular flex shaft is definitely NOT what you want. I recommend a Stiff with a high flex point (lower, straighter flight). If you can afford it, get fitted to find out what shaft works for you. I had a set of Tommy Armour T-1000 (the big titanium shovels). I could hit that SW 185. Doesn't mean I should have. Well said. Sometimes, oftentimes for me, the issue is how to dial it back. It's a constant battle to rein it in. I've been working on a shorter backswing and that has had some results, and fits better with my range of flexibility, but still, about halfway into a bucket or so one can get "jacked" with adrenaline and bloodflow, it's just plain difficult to refrain from attacking the ball with gusto. I've done meditation for other things; maybe it's time to put that into practice for golf.

Similar experience here. This is really a post for you fellow hookers. After my initial floundering I went to a PGA pro who taught me an inside out swing using bottle caps to help map the path. it became ingrained. (I don't think I ever sliced an iron in a long long time.) However, I had a tendency that I did not realize to have a too strong grip in relation to the way I set up at address. What I was finding was that even when I set the club in the fingers of the left hand properly and then took my grip thinking that at address it was good. I was still hitting lots of hooks or variants on the hook. And pushes, with just enough perfect shots to keep me persisting with the same grip routine that felt right, (but was too strong). I went back tot he pro but ended up doing some horribly punitive drills that led to me hitting a lot of water filled gatorade bottles. That was like shock therapy. But it didn't work. I tried making the swing less inside out, but the problem was not the swing so much as the angle of the club face at impact. I tried to alter the grip for a couple of years, but it never felt right on the backswing . But just because it didn't feel right , didn't mean the change was wrong, it was just a difficult adjustment. [Unconsciously, I liked a heavier feel to the club head at the top of the backswing, and when I weakened the grip, the club felt too light at the top of the backswing, which felt less solid and less controllable. I recently took a few months off, came back to it, and I found that if I did a small check on how I was returning to address after taking my grip and then my stance, I noticed that the grip that I had thought was square (or even a degree or two laid open) was actually way too strong when my natural wrist and hand tendencies took over. I revised my grip routine, let my hands do what they want to do, but rotated the club counterclockwise in my finger so that when I return to the impact position it is now square. It seems to have eliminated this inconsistency and the hook is all but gone. I do still have the occasional push, but I'm so relieved I don't have to fight the hook any more. The key was not entirely the change in weakening the position of the club in the grip — that was important but I had not been doing it quite right — what seems to have been more more important was the sequence, the point in time during address where I make sure the club face is square. Trying to "control" the club head in flight IMO, is asking for trouble, at a time when you really want the unconscious — rather than conscious — capabilities of the mind to be dominant. It's still a work in progress and I have not catalogued the changes -- I just made them — and I will have to make some notes and remember what the new sequence for taking the grip is, but, oh what a relief. I hope it's not fleeting.

Ditto that, life happens, injuries etc. Been much the same for me. except mostly injuries and physical therapy. Enjoy being back!

Golf is just one of those sports where lessons can be a good check against developing, and then reinforcing, bad habits -- but initial lessons need to be followed by several visits to the range to practice what you learned, followed by quick followup to make sure you learned it properly. I would up early in my golf learning journey spending lots of time at the range, because i didn't really take enough lessons at the right times....so I was perpetuating mistakes that hindered my consistency, and kept me from the course because I was spraying the ball around. Well timed follow up lessons — that extra set of eyes — would have been much more time-effective. After that ... you can progress to treating about 50% of your range time as target practice and maybe 50% technique (the amount can vary greatly depending on what you need to work on) — where you don't focus on technique but solely on aiming for your targets _ a variety of targets _ and swinging with almost no other thought. After you've zeroed in on your target, all further thoughts are mostly just prepping to let your subconscious take over and control the rest of the process. By devoting plenty of time to hitting "targets", real or imaginary, out on the practice range, you are essentially preparing yourself for moving to the course.

I was reminded of the other idea behind Goecks by Dufner's coaches' comment: Quote: "There's no bad position he has to recover from," says his teacher, Chuck Cook, who has coached five major champions, including Payne Stewart and Tom Kite. "His arms stay in front of his body all the way, his swing moves back and down on virtually one plane, and his left wrist remains flat. All this helps eliminate the need for timing to hit it straight." http://www.golfdigest.com/golf-instruction/swing-sequences/2013-08/photos-jason-dufner#slide=1 The "perfect connection" supposedly coordinates the arms with the body on a fairly simple shoulder plane (although it doesn't look like he uses a shoulder plane to me). The towel drill under each armpit, and the ball drill between the elbows — all fairly standard stuff — bring my arms closer to my body which means an adjustment in stance and distance from ball, and those are major re-adjustments right there if you are working on drilled-in muscle memory for consistency.

Same here as far as irons 8-5 are concerned. Wish I'd read this a while ago, but I had to find out the hard way. ... after a committing lot of ugly hooks. I have an inside out swing to begin with, so that just amplified the issue and complicated the process of diagnosing the fix, which needed to be more in my grip than anywhere else. I didn't like — in fact I hated the feel at first — and I'm still getting used to it. ... Getting used to the feel of a club gripped so that it's slightly open at address has been extremely difficult, as the weight of the toe feels so much lighter and less powerful in my hands at the top of the backswing and in the downswing (why, I have no idea; it seems counter intuitive, but I'll be a "stupid monkey" on that, and just not worry about it since the fix works, and that's all that matters). So everything now feels a lot lighter but less powerful, however the results in terms of accuracy and eliminating the hook are more desirable. If not monitored carefully, though, my hands and fingers just find unconscious ways of gripping it closed to get back to that old feel that they like but which produces hooks, or long draws that roll way past their intended endpoints.

Yes, If you're a high handicapper average duffer like me with poor flexibility, it's a nice simple system that helps take the back ache out of golf. ( I have plenty of other sports that are more stressful on the back, I don't need golf to be another one of them) I am also guilty of an over aggressive golf swing, for my age (52), plenty of strength, but a dire lack of flexibility, so Goeck's methods help me keep the swing under control, simple and more systematic. This is probably not the system for low handicappers who already have a good game ... unless they have bad back issues and are trying to find a method that allows them to play more pain free as it were.

You can say that again. I've been downed by a cold so this is good watchin' They made it more interesting than it needs to be--but that's golf. The Internationals made some shots today (DeLaet) and we were duffing them. The Ryder Cup meltdown is casting a long shadow.

I don't usually have time to mark them. I'm lucky to have time to play golf. And when I mark 'em I'm playing a darn course where I lose em! Recently got a gift of "Maxfli Practice" balls — guaranteed no-one else around is playing those, lol, except my buddy who got the same donation. if I get to play West Point next week, these straight-flying rocks are my best bet of not ending up in the bushes.

Tough rooting today, I'm a "kid" from the Tony Jacklin era so wanted to see my homeboy Rose win, or Bubba. I'd have been happy with either winning, maybe moreso with Bubba, as he's not so often in the running to win.