golfdad

probably need more info to give a fair opinion, but here is one thought. does pga know that he is on something before the testing? if i were taking steroid prescribed by mds but know that there may be issues with pga, i would, without any hesitation or delay once i know pga sanctions a list of banned meds, contact pga proactively before any testing is done. now the horse is out of the barn. tough chance for pga to recind. no need to get a black eye for one guy. use him to set an example, justified or not.

there is that silkiness in your motion. i suspect it is born not made, and it is simply a pleasure to watch, at least to my eyes... as others have inquired, is your handicap really 21? or are you age 21?

your description of the kids in the juvenile correctional facility is sad but actually quite funny. more power to you.

if you wear some more colorful pants, from a distance, i will mistake you as john d. love your swing. good tempo, massive clearing of the hips, a little overswing is no biggy.

concur that often it can be confusing when those good players or so called experts talk about one facet of a topic instead of providing the entire perspective. may be they want to keep the competition guessing also, they go through evolution as well,,, notice that some players like tiger has developed a stroke that is quite abbreviated in the follow through phase, almost like knock and stop, esp with 6 footers or less. because of this abbreviated action after contact, instead of a chase, a third person may not really appreciate clearly tiger's intention, straight or inside. in other words, even if the intention is to track inside naturally, from a distance it may look like straight through... who knows,,,

"Yeah Stricker says he has a straight back and straight through putting stroke. I've never heard about his different stroke theory depending on the speed and line of the putter. Can't imagine myself being consistent doing that but he obviously is." i just looked up the article on stricker and duh, realized that the two verisons of putting that i thought i have read somewhere was not there, hehe. did i cross it with another pro? let me investigate further in the universe tiger on nov/09 golfdigest page 28 said this: "bad habits can sneak back into your game like a recurring nightmare. that happens to me sometimes when i start missing left to right putts...nine times out of 10 it's because i am not releasing the putter through impact, not letting the putterhead track to the inside after impact. i am kind of push-putting instead of swinging on an arc." one thing about arc is that we are all of different heights, but the arc (its radius) is fixed. therefore, someone may find the off the shelf arc natural to his physique, others may not. if not, to square the club down the line may not be natural...and therefore prone to misalignment during impact..me think.

it seems that david stockton is sitting in the sweet spot at the moment as far as helping with putting goes. i hesitate buying into the hype in general for different reasons, but here is couple youtube videos where he was discussing couple issues with a rep. of note, they were looking at initial ball spin right after impact and clubface angle away and back. even putter (i guess some putters give more optical illutions than others?). i think with any new swing changes or new gadgets, ideally, it will be good to get feedback more scientifically. i am not a big fan of stories where one beams about cutting how many strokes right after a switch. more info is needed: what happens to the next 20-40 games... one needs time to smooth out the different variables. besides, didn't pelz say something like, not all well struck putts go in and not all poorly struck putts miss... in terms of straight back vs arch, recently stricker in golf digest revealed what he does. he changes between the 2 depending on the putting surface speed!!! fasting green: straight back. slower: arch through. so, diff strokes for diff folks,,,,,at different time? i have seen jim flick's write up about tiger putting almost like a draw. but the story does not end right there, as with anything else in life. i have also seen tiger recently talking about for longer putts: when he did not putt well, he thought it was because he did not RELEASE the club, meaning, he did not let the club swing into inside naturally. the dichotomy of life. http://www.••••••••••••••••••?v=vNelgVLhz00 http://www.••••••••••••••••••?v=N5Ya7fCH0pc http://www.••••••••••••••••••?v=569s92AJs_Y here is stockton putting: note he is standing open to the line, is that arch or straight...you tell me? doesn't matter. years of horning his skills allow him to arrive to this set up. unless we can copy every little thing he does, it may or may not be of help to our game, i think. just noticed that those youtube feeds don't work. type in david stockton golf on youtube, you should be able to find them.

one easy way to find out, whether it is you or the new irons, assuming you still have your old irons, is to hit an old iron for comparison... does colder weather play a role here? cooler balls fly less and extra clothing inhibits flexibility... stronger grip...before or after the new irons?

i have seen my share of junior golfers behaving like mad men or women. i can almost forgive other kids throwing clubs into their bags or slamming them into the bag, but i just cannot stand it when they slam putters into the green if they miss a putt. there are definitely dents. as a spectator, i wish i have bigger balls one day to report them, but the softer side of me always prompt me to stay out of it since those kids have their own parents watching and i think it is their job,,,perhaps one day those kids will learn a bigger lesson from an official at a crucial moment of a crucial tourny, a lesson not given by their parents. i think most kids if not all kids know full well that bad behavior on the course is bad. the issue is impulse control and the discipline to control the animalistic urges. i am not sure if idols like tiger bear that much responsibility in that department. his ratio of merits/regrettable moments must be 99:1. i think the bottom line is that responsible parents may want to make use of the tiger incident to make yet another point to the kids on how to carry themselves when they are really upset or disappointed. i cannot think of a better format other than golf to instill some necessary life lessons, to turn negative situations into posititive. and the saving grace is that in golf, those with bad tempers rarely do well,,,:)

i am not sure "palms facing each other" should be a major (or correct) determinant when holding clubs, as illustrated by the drawing in uttex's post in which i do not see the palms facing each other. perhaps there are different variations even within strong or neutral or weak grip groups respectively. one outcome to watch out for is that with an improper grip the hinge of the wrists at the top of the swing is not optimal...for the lack of a better word. meanwhile, i do believe strongly that when holding the putter, palms should face each other,,,

kle, as you have suggested, it is very likely that your machine can provide more strenous exercise than regular walking. in other words, it is likely you are comparing a machine that can simulate occasional uphill steps vs walking outside on flat ground, stop and go by traffic or other distractions. however, you really cannot compare the 2 reliably unless you have hard data. for instance, if the mean heart rate over 20 mins of machine is 100 and the mean heart rate over 20 mins of outside walking is 95, then the machine burns more calories. however, if somehow you can manage to walk more aggressively, so that the heart rate is equivalent to the machine, then calory burn should be similar. it is not exactly like comparing orange and apple, but if do, at least compare them at the same size,,, if the outside weather is very cold, that will also help consume more calorie if you walk. if you are conditioned to use certain sets of muscles (say on your machine), your body learns to be more efficient in grabbing the oxygen and other nutrients at cellular level, you may burn less calorie than another set of activieties that part of your body has not been exposed to recently, thus less efficient and consumes more power... but, overall, getting a general sense of your heart rate during exertion gives you the ballpark idea,,,

just want to point out that to play pro ball and stay in college at the same time is a gutsy (or moronic to many) decision and not for the faint of heart and, this is purely personal, between watching on tv a highly photogenic person playing golf and lesser photogenic ones playing golf, i prefer the former

a lot of great advices above. i will add 2 more cents make it a dollar 1. wristy strokes tend to cause distance control issues. larger muscles are more reliable. the triangle formed by the 2 arms and chest ideally should remain intact throughout the swing. 2. to break a habit (some say takes 21 days:) takes effort. one primitive point to start is: any short putt is bad bad bad. any longer one, even insanely 10ft long, for now, is better than one inch short putt. think and plan the putt beyond the hole. work on getting to the hole backward from, 6 ft, to 3 to 2. 3. try to read the putt from the side to get a better sense of the slope, esp the last 6 feet. 4. one exercise i do almost evey time with my kids is: get a whole bucket of ball and putt something like 15 ft. flat one first: record the ratio of short vs long. then uphill 15 ft. then downhill 15 ft. if time is an issue, do it once a week. and compare week after week. short of hard work, one just have to be talented and talent is not very reliable and not abundant

i think tiger is not only a very competitive person, but also a conscientious one,,,by now. i don't want to throw the race card here, but growing up as a black kid in america trying to break into a game that is traditionally not dominated by minorities, tiger must have learnt from his parents, the environment or even himself, to watch his word and deed. in fact, i have read that both his mother and father were very strict about him behaving himself on the course. he threw clubs as kid (very likely not the lame bounce he did this time) and his father stopped him and threatened him about it: stop it or no more golf. sure, he signed no contract or pledge to be a role model. he has grown into that role. it goes without saying that as one of the most well known brand names on the planet, he knows better how to behave. when he reached out his hand, waiting for his club to be returned from the gallery, i could imagine his embarassment. that is why people regret later what they have done during a road rage, from the animal within,,,

"but her course management on 18 with a 1 shot lead was horrendous" 18 is par 5...

thanks for that suggestion. unfortunately, i am not good enough of a golfer to swing sandwedge at an accuracy that can be considered scientifically reliable i'd hate to introduce operator error and to be another confounding variable... allow me to clarify. by downward force, i did not and do not mean 100% of the force, but a vector, aka, a percentage of it because the angle of attack is not purely forward toward the target, nor purely downward toward the center of the earth. in addition, ideally, the sandwedge strikes at the tanget of the sphere of the ball, not directed directly at the center of the ball. however, even if the tee is slanted so much that the ball is just about to fall off, at that instant, there is still contact and friction between a portion of the top of the tee and the ball. because this physical relationship exists, when another force (via the sandwedge) is applied to the ball, a vector of that force should apply to the tee as well... IF the top of the tee receives a teeny weeny bit of the downward blow, then, based on the physics principle that for every action there is a reaction, the tee pushes up on the ball with that same teeny weeny vector, thus an upward pinch, or compression:) . i am really blushing because this is very geeky!

since golf swing is a dynamic process, a stationary head may or may not matter depending on the person/swing. i don't think tiger can swing the way he does if his head is fixed in a halo. he dips quite a bit, even in that video---put a piece of paper abutting the top of his head and see how much he moves downward during downswing. in fact, he has talked about trying to work on that, possibly an end product of his junior playing days where kids learn to recruit body power at all cost. some jump, some squat. head sits on top of the spine axis. if head moves that means the spine axis also moved. perhaps better players have learnt that certain movement is ok, others not.

as iacas pointed out earlier, it is simply a drill to connect the arms to the body, esp during the take off part of the backswing. it reinforces the idea that the arms rotate around the spine axis. the end result is probably a better plane,,, but as some have pointed out, it takes flexibility to stick to it. if one is not that flexible but already has good mechanics, i don't see much merit with it. just a drill.

i think on cocking the wrists,,,it depends. for low loft clubs, it is more or less like putting, so mim wrist involvement. but for sandwedge etc, may need to cock the wrist to get the best approach angle. either case, however, i dont think the thought of releasing the club should enter the mind. there should be no wrist action at all on the downswing,,,the left wrist bows out all the way. michelson comes to mind with his finish. can chipping be done with "some" wrist involvement? sure. however, a chip without wrist and one with wrist may land on the same spot, but roll differently, because of different backspin, to a different final destination. problem with wrist action is that every time the wrist action may be different, so it is very difficult to control distance and productivity with practice is low because the tech is not reliable. without wrist, life is much simpler.

http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/A-level...ce_as_a_Vector

"think of a tee it doesnt get hammered down while the ball is on top of it that is proof there is no downward force" good point. as i said earlier, i have problem accepting this in a black or white fashion. common sense is very important but often we need empirical data to be sure. perhaps that is why there is that show on discovery channel to explore some everyday truism... mind you, this is not a situation where a ping pong ball is struck with a spin in the midair. when a golfball is struck with a club, it is resting on something and between the ball and that something is friction... perhaps the tee is lowered just a tiny weeny bit that human eye cannot detect,,, disclaimer: my opinion has not been proven to be fit for human consumption:)

iacas, your points are well taken... on the scale experiment, it will be also interesting to see how the scale reacts 3 wood vs sand wedge... on the lingo, i have heard teachers using the phrase,,,to compress the ball into the ground, as you said, to pinch. agree, during impact, the ball is compressed by the clubface.

so here is a theoretical question, possibly a clinical question that can be verified if proper set-up can be arranged... put a golf ball on a scale. the scale registers the weight of the ball,,,as a baseline. set it up so that the ball on the scale sits at "ground" level, allowing a decent golfer to take a regular swing at the ball. run a high speed video cam with view on the ball and the scale. it will be interesting to see what happens to the scale at the moment of impact, before the clubface bottoms out after the impact (assuming then the clubhead strikes into the scale...bang!) my hypothesis is that at the moment of impact, when the clubhead makes a contact with the ball below the equator cleanly, there is enough of a downward force on the ball and the scale will register a higher weight for a split moment than the original ball weight, suggesting that at impact there is an additional force into the "ground" that the ball sits on, thus a reaction if one looks the other way, which helps explain the well known yet fuzzy term, uh, compression... unless such an experiment (or a similar one) is done, it is geeks' playground in the air...aka, anyone is entitled with an opinion

i can't touch the cement vs dirt shot. really need a visual to see exactly what happens. the other question,,,here is my take:) for greenside bunker, to sandwich sand in between clubface and ball is important because partly it helps to dissipate the force of the blow. so, a regular sandwedge may carry the ball 80 yard, but the same swing under the above condition in the greenside bunker may carry 20 yards. of course, there are other factors at play, but keep only the above in mind when we look at fairway bunker shot. we can assume then that if sand is sandwiched in between clubface and the ball, it will travel less far than if there is no sand, aka, direct contact between clubface and ball. it has been mentioned that the sand does not help squeeze the ball during compression. i am not so sure about that because as with everything, it is not a matter of black or white, meaning no compression or total compression. i think sand still provides some degree of upward vector, just not as much as regular turf. some more physics inclined may argue that the simple fact that the ball is sitting on a little patch of sand is indicative that the sand is exerting a force on the ball, so as the ball is struck at an angle, downward and forward, sand provides an reaction. another angle to look at this is that some folks, on regular turf, can hit a well struck iron shot without taking any divot. based on that observation, one may argue that some shots can be made with predominantly downward, accurate strike on the ball---that alone can send the ball up and forward. i suspect that some folks strike fairway bunker shots with similar principles.

hmm, could be just me,,,i think tiger's swing tempo gets faster as he gets frustrated...when the going gets tough, just swing harder... on ryan moore, i don't understand why he should be regarded favorably (or more favorably) because he is considered sponsor free and wears whatever he wants, without the "usual" logos, when he does put that S for advertising his part ownership of that golf company? ins't that just a matter of different bottling? :)