DaveP043

Once again its time to revive this thread. We're headed back to Palm Springs in a month, arriving Saturday, 1/12, and heading home the next Saturday. 1/19, which leaves 6 days for golf. My buddy Tom, the one who has a house in La Quinta and hosts us each winter for a week, has specifically asked me to invite my TST friends to join us if you can. As before, we'll have 5 or 6 golfers, so we expect to have at least 2 open spots each day. At this stage, we don't have a specific schedule, but I imagine we'll include a similar rotation of courses: Silverrock, Classic Club, Desert Willow, possibly one of the La Quinta Resort or PGA West courses, Marriott's Shadow Ridge. If you're interested, please get in touch, its always great to see my west-coast friends.

Any instructor that advocates a single method of swing doesn't fit my definition of a "good" instructor. As I said, different styles of instruction work for different players. Some actually benefit from detailed understand of what they're doing, and what they need to change. Others will benefit more from simple feels to change something, without really caring about the details. Real instructors may disagree, but I have a feeling that for better players, slo-mo video may be a big help in diagnosing small faults, where for lesser players their faults may be more obvious to the naked eye. I can only speak for my own experience, but I liked seeing video, so I understood what I needed to change, and what I could look for in my practice sessions to verify that I was going in the right direction. But the advice boiled down to a couple of simple feels to achieve the appropriate change.

This is right, no single specific style of instruction works with every student. That includes the older styles of instruction that focus on feeling a natural turn back and turn through. What feels natural to you might feel totally unnatural to me, and vice-versa. For many students, what feels natural is totally wrong, so the instructor has to find ways to help them make a weird-feeling movement consistently. Talking of old-school instruction, and natural feelings, Ben Hogan suggested that we should take whatever feels natural and do the exact opposite. I think its important to remember that until pretty recently, instructors didn't have the tools to understand exactly what happens in good golf swings. In many cases. what they believed was happening, and what they wanted a player to try to do, was significantly different from what the player actually needed to do. In my opinion, the best instructors can find a way to help most (not all) students. Some of us will learn better with the videos and lines and details, while others will learn better with simple feelings. Video is a great tool to diagnose the root cause of an issue, and to check progress in making specific changes, but you can't watch your own video as you're making a real swing. That's the art of teaching, to be able to explain to each student how to make the required changes, through drills or feels or exaggerated motions or whatever else that might work.

Ziggy, first I want to welcome you to TheSandTrap. Second, I don't mean this to insult you, but you probably don't have the expertise needed to diagnose the cause of problems in your golf swing. One great thing about this site is the good advice you can get by posting videos of your swing here: https://thesandtrap.com/forums/forum/13-member-swings/ Be sure to read the Hidden Contents so you understand how to take good video of yourself, and how to post it to Youtube. Last, I hope you'll feel free to contribute to many of the different threads. Its always great to hear fresh viewpoints and new stories.

I see two issues. First, the OP doesn't like the idea of competing against an individual player, as opposed to competing against the course and the field in general. It might be an issue of familiarity, he said he hadn't done match play for 40 years. The second issue is the "dick opponent" problem. He says in a later post that they weren't dicks at all, but the things I underlined above sure make it seem as if they are. I can see being less than thrilled if every opponent was trying to win with his mouth instead of his clubs, but I just don't see it very often. I don't see it at my home club. @jsgolfer and I play in an interclub league, and I rarely see gamesmanship there either. In my opinion, if they think they need to "game" me to get an advantage, I already have the edge.

I have to say I'm on the other side of this one, I enjoy match play. It may be because I play most of my golf with (or against) friends, and for very low stakes, but we're always playing a match of some kind. I've played enough that I can ignore almost all attempts at "gamesmanship", even though that's pretty rare in my group, and feel no need to try that nonsense myself. Some of the best times I've had are the Newport Cup matches I've played in, playing with new friends, and against new friends. I think that for me, part of the attraction of match play is the idea that one hole is just one hole, you can't shoot yourself out of a match with a single bad hole the way you can in stroke play.

Playing a good tight match against a good guy (and good player) is one thing I enjoy about as much as anything in golf. It sure is hard work, but its a lot of fun at the same time. Its even more fun when its all over

By now I hope you're back home, and rested up from your golf marathon. How did it all work out?

I'm always trying to shoot scores, but to an extent that's out of my control. I can work all I want, try to improve my game, but I'm going to have bad days. Most important is that I have fun, not just when I DO shoot good scores, but when I play poorly too.

If there is serious trouble along one side only, I want my ball to end up generally toward the other side of the fairway. I essentially try to shift my shot zone away from trouble. If there's really serious trouble, I want to use my most reliable shot shape, I don't want to do something that is less reliable, that would increase the dispersion. So with trouble on the right, I may try to start the ball in the right rough and draw it back to the right-center of the fairway. If the trouble is on the right, I'll try to start it at the middle, and draw it to the left-center. To assume that I can curve the ball equally well in both directions would be wrong, so I'll ignore that bit. I think that most people have one shot pattern that is more reliable for them, its a rare player that can curve the ball either way with equally consistent results.

Welcome to The SandTrap, Ikka I hope you'll get involved with more of the threads here, and be sure to post your location in the Member Map: It looks like you're just the second member in Finland.

We're not going to agree. I watched this again, and I see Wilson coming back to assume his defensive role. I see Seney pass the puck into the corner, and skate backward, changing direction to move left to right into Wilson's path. I see Wilson, looking at the puck in the corner, swerve to his right, but not far enough to avoid Seney. Wilson lifts his left skate, trying to edge past Seney, and makes contact with his own arm against the side of his body into the back of Seney's shoulder. He wasn't lining up Seney, he was skating into the corner, trying to do his job, but he clearly didn't do enough to avoid contact. Wilson has earned his reputation, he does have to change the way he makes decisions on the ice. For better or worse, he WILL be penalized more severely than other players for the same infraction, he can't expect to get the benefit of the doubt. But I just do not see this particular instance as "predatory". And for those who dislike him, you may be happy that Wilson WAS lined up for a predatory blind-side hit last night, and could be out with a concussion.

I don't think you have it in you to be bad at these things. Unfortunately, we players have to manage the Cup Tour, and as a group we're not quite as reliable.

It probably depends on the size and shape of the ball mark. If the back side is simply raised up, but not detached, it may work fine. Never put a detached piece of turf back, though, in those cases its best to push and "lever" the surrounding turf towards the center of the mark as described in the very first post in this thread.

I probably would have done just that, assuming I could find a place to drop that gave me a real shot. But Tiger is a different kind of player, he sees possibilities where I wouldn't. In this case, he saw the potential to get the ball out onto some grass, and maybe he felt reasonably certain his worst result would still have been playable. Given that possible outcome (he didn't know for sure how it would turn out), and the nature of the event (only semi-serious competition), I can see that taking the risk was a reasonable choice. As it worked out, Tiger got the ball into the rough, a significant improvement over his likely drop from an unplayable lie.