golfdad

ks, great to see your kids getting involved with golf early. i think no matter how they turn out, they will be thankful to you for introducing golf to them. every single time we are on the range, someone will walk over to chat and comment that he or she wishes that their parents have taken the time to come out with them as kids,,, but, in a nutshell, i am not too sure what you are really asking here because there are just so many variables in introducing the game to kids. one, different families have different philosophies. different parents have different expectations or aspirations for their kids. and then, kids react differently to golf at different ages. two, to enjoy something may also be interpreted very differently. i can pick up ping pong paddle couple times a year and enjoy the wacking process with no second thoughts about it afterwards. and, i can work very very hard on something to get better, work or avocation wise, and enjoy the process and or the outcome. to get something out of something, one may have to put in a lot. so to me, to enjoy something may warrant further qualification. so, is your aim to encourage her to make something out of golf in her life by learning it as an educational process or simply playing around to her heart's content... i noticed that you have an older boy, probably already an accomplished golfer. out of curiosity, will your boy's involvement and development with golf in some way influence your daughter's golf future?

now i know where rickie fowler got his swing from... she has better alignment than most folks,,,

well, doesn't it boil it down to the combination of swing speed and contact? so how far a person hits depends on how "hard" the ball is struck and how "well" the ball is struck. assuming for a second that both tiger and annika strike equally "well", but tiger strikes much "harder" than annika, the distance covered by tiger is longer. a not uncommon observation has been that someone "weaker" can often beat someone "stronger" in terms of score, because of superior attitude, mental toughness, short game, course management, etc... i highly doubt the top tier junior girls can bench press more than anyone here (men that is); however, i suspect longer drives by people on this board may not command a better game than those girls. in addition, i think the generalization of men vs women is like comparing one fruit with another, not just limited to apples and oranges. even on this forum, male golfers run the gamut of different physical attributes and scoring ability and i highly doubt the two aspects correspond well. one observation of mine comparing pga vs lpga players is that as a whole, men putt much better than women. i suspect the stats can back this up.

thanks for the clarification, my bad.

now, looking backwards on the original issue,,,to release the club...i wonder what the pro was seeing for him to suggest that... if you so called do not release the club, how does it look like? did the student push the ball to the right???

k2, i think you are quite talented, meaning, with issues invariably faced by all beginners, you can manage to maintain decent contact. there are many issues already brought up, essentially all helpful if you can one by one tackle them. in what sequence it is tough to speculate. one poster earlier mentioned something about lower body leading the upper body. i would like to expand on that, because to most beginners, it is not that intuitive, and if it is, the body needs some getting used to. with video tech, it is quite easy to plot your progress on that. unfortunately with the utube video, one cannot slow it down, only pause it. i have played around on your video with the play and pause buttons to try to freeze the frame i am looking for. if you can, try to do the same and find that frame where your clubhead contacts the ball (or somewhere near there) and then look at where your belly button is facing. somebody else corrects me if i am wrong, but from what i have seen in that frozen frame, your belly botton pretty much did not move much, indicating that your lower body did not turn toward the leftside/target much, so so far you are pretty much upper body driven. essentially, you move your lower body AFTER you hit the ball. more advanced players try to clear the hip, as the saying goes. here is a video of one of my kids some time back. she has other issues to work on, but this video format allow you to slow the playback and focus on the point i am discussing. try at play speed at 2% and see where her belly botton is facing during impact (2:16-2:20). often, it is important to get a visual to go along with a thought http://www.swingacademy.com/videoplayer.aspx?id=2198 to go onto another level, think about this proper sequencing of lower body leading the upper body. it may take some time/practice to get used to this but with it you can leverage your existing core strength more efficiently, imo. good luck. nothing can trump someone who is interested to improve,,,

http://www.politico.com/click/storie..._on_golf.html# i have no intention to bring politics to this forum but this article seems to hint that playing golf is not a wise use of time, or something like that. nobody will pick on you if you jog i suppose. do you guys get stares when others realize your spend time golfing?

although we all tend to perform worse under pressure, with the exception of that pilot that landed on the hudson, your question begs more details about your situation. first of all, driving range essentially does not cover the most crucial part of the game, the short game. without good management around green, it is easy to add couple strokes each hole and add up to over 90, even with 14 fairway drivers. you and your pro may want to break your on course score down into short vs long game. some of the better junior players that i know of essentially spend over 90% of practice time on short game which is done away from the range. on some level, practicing a lot on the range basically does not prepare you to score well on the course. 10 driver swings is not as useful as 10 chipping touches, for instance. very difficult to stay in the 80s if long putts means 3 putts often. assuming your short game is decent and that it is your long game that suffers under pressure as compared to the driving range, then you may benefit from increasing some "pressure" on the driving range. self torture for instance, you and your pro can device an hour lesson playing an fake 18 hole on the range. he picks a target for your driver, you do it. he records it in terms of quality,,,distance, sideway deviation. then a wood or hybrid. then a short approach shot. repeat it about 18 times. it won't be a walk in the park i can tell you discuss afterwards and try to deduce a reasonable score. how do you perform after bad shots on the driving range under this format where you feel and know your teacher is watching and evaluating you. during this process on the driving range, you may learn a lot about yourself and consequently find ways to cope and help yourself. how to strike a balance between relax and enjoy yourself and relax but focus on goal after goal after goal... usually, our goals on the driving range are rather simplistic and when we push ourselves to the limit, it is often about hitting further or even straighter, but rarely about quality of contact and distance control...

on having too much info, as discussed above,,, the topic on having too much info can be a tricky one. whereas to some having too much correct info won't hurt (too much incorrect info is another story:), to others it may interfere with natural executions. for instance, my kids play violin and piano at pretty high level and through out the years i have been exposed to teachers or masterclasses of different levels and calibres. some encounters were just a bore, not stimulating, even though the kid was smart, the teacher brilliant, but there was no connection. the key and the lock did not fit so the flow of correct info was impeded. other times, i saw true master teachers delivering a message wrapped with a different notion. simple, light, so easy to understand, the uh ha moment. brilliant and a joy to see the instant response from the student. back to golf, even though i have read and learnt a lot from the jargons and cliches, i can imagine some folks can be misled by teachers who are not very intuitive, who are not that capable of tailormaking the same info in a different format to each individual students, often ending up as more is less. and concur, to dwelve on the "release" can be misleading if not paralyzing. some folks have better reaction time and may be able to appreciate what happens in less than half a second, if not less. others are better off to keep the wrists firm and let the momentum bring them to a finish. i have a bias that the left side should "lead" which theoritically can delay the release even further. but it does not, because the timing usually work out on its own as long as the body (lower) set the correct tempo into the hitting zone. and guess what? every time the lower body leads with a wrong tempo, this "release" business will pop up, sort like a compensation in timing and invariably, the ball will be struck with a funny side spin... think of it this way: we show to beginner bikers a videotape of someone riding a bike in slow motion, trying to make a tight corner, not falling off the bike. we emphasize all the right moves he has made on the video, this gesture to balance and that. we tell newbies to follow those traits. to me, that is not necessarily a helpful illustration or exercise. the newbies's bodies are equipped with unique sets of physical attributes. once on the bike, they will figure out how to balance. there is no need to point out how to balance...

that is very sound advice. in fact, some people can't chip well because of that wrong notion. also, releasing wrongly actively basically is casting. but, even some magazine teachers use that phrase loosely, suggesting that the extra snap at the wrist/forearm adds power. not good.

i think this is a case where we may need to go with the general knowledge or even, wisdom, instead of precise numbers, because in the link to the golf channel article, the author, not a physics prof with empirical data on his "thesis", basically coined this "50%" rule as a way to communicate,,,a general idea. really, when standing over a ball, how can a human being set a club 2 degree open reliably? impossible. further, even if we manage to have a machine to measure a 2 degree open club face at address, at impact, the club face has a very low chance to maintain that 2 degree openness. my understanding is that life will be much simpler is we just square the face at address and "play around" with the swing path (ie, how inside) in order to find an acceptable draw path. keep it simple. "How many degrees of inside compensates for how many degrees of open, I guess that changes too based on a billion things." disagree. at least 2 trillions.

to be able to correct a slice means the person changed the plane of from outside- in to inside- out, more or less. for many it is a new territory,,,to approach from the inside. invariably, situations will arise where one has to question how much inside is too inside, or what happens if it is too inside? one thing for sure, it is very unlikely to slice anymore, but couple other things may happen. for instance, if the club face is not squared and stayed on the inside-to-outside path, a pushed shot may result. somehow i don't see that very often, perhaps because of instincts in the last moment to "help" with wrists. on the other extreme, if the club face is squared "too early"---often as a reflex since one knows that inside path otherwise will push the ball straight to the right. to compensate for that tendency, one should "correct" that rightward path with a left aimed clubface. unfortunately, rarely do we end up with a resultant straight shot to the target. because the club is too left sided aimed during impact, hooks result. many people talk about controlling the clubface during impact. my opinion is that it is very difficult to do or do well consistently. it takes a lot of talent and althletic ability. another approach is to avoid obscessing over it and not try to control it. tiger in a recent article in one of those mags talked about it as well, where he maintained that whereas some pros can play with active wrists during impact, he has tried to avoid it because he cannot achieve high accuracy. the take home message for me is that we tend to give our wrists too much control and in doing so we snap a component of a dynamic chain which involves the whole body from the ground up. we have disrupted the chain by trying to control the wrists. we play with overactive wrists. perhaps a better thinking is to influence a natural occurring of the squaring of the clubface. i feel that even with an overly inside approach, if the left side of the body leads the downswing, the BODY may naturally squares the clubface, through centrally driven large muscles. (if you will, think just the opposite of what nadal does in tennis:) the hook may turn into a reasonable and acceptable draw. we talk about upper and lower body synergy and sync. my opinion is that even if we are on the right track with upper body swing plane and club face, the final outcome very much depends on the proper left sided momentum from the hips and legs. to me, improper weight shift needs to be evaluated along with a too inside approach. couple things i would encourage to try: 1. try to imagine one is contacting the ball 3-4 balls ahead of where the balls is. this mental picture often triggers the mind and body to act more correctly. 2. try to hit some shots from entreme inside to outside and see what it feels like. if one's final aim is to hit in the middle, might as well know the extremes. gradually, one finds ones own proper plane,,,not outside, but not too inside. 3. forget about wrists and clubface for now:), if you have a good grip.

ash, good luck with your recovery. from your description, concur that most likely it is of muscoloskeletal etioglogy. (a side note: i see that you are from uk. currently in the usa we have that health care reform debate and once in a while, uk's service level came up with some arguing that uk's service level is inferior to that of the usa. from what you have described, that you in fact got a mri already, with bone scan or ct to come if indicated, i am quite impressed but i digress...) one modality used in physio is called ultrasound. in this case it is used therapeutically instead of diagnostically, as you have mentioned in your post to further check out other parts near the pain site. if the pain does not subside with rest and antiinflammatory pills, the physio ultrasound may be of help. the wavelength penerates couple cms into the tissue and increase perfusion and repair near the muscle/bone junction. of course, whether this is indicated or not, it is up to your doc/physio. fyi,,to diagnose a stress fracture with bone scan, it must be done immediately, not 3 months later, because the scan catches only the active rebuilding process. incidentally, bone scan is good at picking up malignancy or infection in the musculoskeletal system.

would love to hear some stories.... what games do people usually play? does gambling make you play better or worse? shhhh, what is the most you have won or lost?

ctyankee, i acknowledge many points you have made. yes, from the club's perspective, really, there is nothing to gain from having a flock of kids going through the course: not repairing divots properly or at all, forgetting to repair ball marks, banging on the green with the putter when missing a put, etc. and, with the issue at hand, collectively playing slow because some kids simply cannot keep up. it is indeed a risk that a club has to or decides to take on when accepting a junior tourny. i have seen rangers of all colors and shades, all over, in fact, all over the world. some are sweethearts, some can be a little up tight. but overall, i think the rangers i have come across realize it is a balance between a job to do and a job to keep. no one seems ready to stick his neck out too far. so, to see a ranger independently change the length for one group during a tourny is an eye opener:) so, how many options are there for a lateral hazard? :):):)

http://www.swingacademy.com/videoPlayer.aspx?id=4455 target view: has this tendency to straighten the spine at impact; better now, but still can see it in the video. what to keep in mind, swing thoughts if you will, to maintain the spine angle during impact? is it due to weaker core muscles so that not enough time and strength to turn the shoulders through so the spine gets stuck and pops up? any exercise/movement to try without swinging the club? http://www.swingacademy.com/videoPlayer.aspx?id=4454 front view: there is significant hip slide to the left during hip turn. is it excessive? does the slide help increase or decrease power generation? some swing gurus:) are big on this slide, others pull the left hip backward posteriorly. also, your opinion on classical finish (reverse c) vs the newer finish (straightened back).

ctyankee, i never provided the info that the 12-13 were sandwiched in between faster playing groups as you have stated. in fact, older kids played earlier. you lamented what is the big deal... well, in the scheme of things over a millinium or two, i suppose nothing is a big deal. but until we drop dead and are still able to gather an opinion over something, we voice it:) minimoe, appreciate your consideration. as i have stated in my first post, apparently there were no regular club members playing right after this block of juniors, something that the ranger must have known since he drove around, so the juniors did not hold up the play for the all important masters of the universe... perhaps this may serve as a reminder on humility, that we were all once juniors in something, that we fumbled, we screwed up, that we did not play by someone's rules, that we were never good enough no matter what, and when we were all ready to take on the world, we were faced with the inevitable downhill. we lose flexibility, endurance, mental sharpness but ready to teach others a lesson or two. cheers.

hello parker, since you have kids playing junior golf, i would assume you may understand some of the issues facing junior golf. i would run couple by you just off my head. first of, my kids are girls, but my older one plays against and with the boys, in the 12-13 age group. she has a handicap of 3. she happens to be more proficient than most of the boys that she plays with. usually, the pace of play is reasonable, meaning, at times, when one player lost a ball, things can get slower if the following group happens to play faster. what if 3 players lost their balls in one hole? even if they take only allowed time to search, it will be a delay right? in this case, as i have reiterated, 3 kids in the 14-15 group were ahead, and the 4 kids in the "troublesome" 12-13 group fell behind at times half a hole. to me, that means, when the kids were about to tee off, the front group just left the green. logistically speaking, it is very likely that 3 older kids should play faster than 4 younger kids over 18 holes. to me that should be a consideration when looking at the situation. playing slower or faster is relative and conditional. second, some juniors are not that developed yet. some can shoot over 100 and it takes time to shoot over 100. you can do it as fast as you can, but still, it takes time to shoot over 100. do we give penalty to kids that takes "reasonable" amt of time to shoot over 100? you have been there, right? assume you were there when the ranger drove over in one of you metpga events and all by himself had decided that one group in your kid's age bracket needed to play up because they were considered to be slow (heck, lets just say they were proven beyond reasonable doubt they were slow). what would you do, assuming the tour director was not near that hole at that moment and was not reachable by walkie or the ranger was so upset that he didn't even want to discuss with anyone? i am interested to hear how you would handle the situation right there, knowing full well that if the ranger has his way, there may be scoring issues later for everyone involved. i think it is too simplistic to say well, if you play slow, the ranger has the obligation to do something about it. the issue here is what is that "something" that is appropriate. imo, it should not be that anything goes. should the ranger drive around and find the tour director and propose the penalty to the tour director and let the director to make the final call? i am not sure if we can blame the tour director for not being there in that 2 minutes on the tenth hole when we needed him. and i am pretty sure if the ranger through the club house has found the tour director and informed him about what he was about to do, things may have developed differently. it is much much more appropriate to give penalty or dq one group instead of making one group to play up. ps, the age 12-13 plays around high 5 and low 6. it just happens that the tee box for that club for that age group was slightly over 6. and to be honest, since the kids were on feet, i am not sure playing up really saved much time at all. as i am typing this, i have been chuckling because that seinfeld soup nazi episode came to mind:)

iacas, fyi, my kids were not in that group. but, because other kids in that group played a different length, you can imagine it caused problem with scoring. i don't want people to confuse about things. specifically, whether that group should get penalty or dq was up to the tour director, not up to the club, its pro and its ranger. no one enjoys slow play. however, there are ways to deal with it as you have mentioned. i don't find having the ranger telling one group to play a diff length to speed up during a tourny a sensible solution. if you do not sense that particular group was singled out, i don't know how to respond to that.

thanks people for the above replies. the pace of play is usually dictated by the tour director: basically to keep up with the group in the front. in this case, 3 older kids were in the front and the 4 younger kids following. i would think arrangement like that may lead to the 4 kids playing "slower". i think the ranger knew it was a junior tourny. i am not sure why he took upon himself to single out one group. clearly he had nothing to do with giving out penalties. a less damaging thing he could have done was to shorten everyone's tee in that particular age group starting the 10th hole, so the scores were still comparable. i look at this as a kind of turf war where the ranger felt superior to the kids and had decided to dictate the situation. somehow, i highly doubt he would dare to coerce 4 adults to play a different tee in a tourny setting. further, i think the club pro did not have a strong case defending the ranger's action. i think during a tourny play, the final decision on total length of play must be conferred with the tour director. just to clarify,,the club pro and ranger work on the course; the tour director is an outside person who operates the tour and rent block time from the course. i find the behaviors of the club pro/ranger rather odd and wonder if people in that line of work usually behave like that. like in rome romans do whatever they wish:) if you are considered playing slow, then anything goes. :)

ok, without naming names, would like to get some comments from you guys on this. my kids play in a junior tour and took part in a competition in central/northern jersey a month ago. may be 30-40 kids in the field, divided by age into different flights and scores ranked and to be submitted nationally. one group of 4 kids, age 12-13 (on feet, carry bag, 6000 yards) were falling behind a group of 3, older kids. ranger came by and issued warning to keep up. couple holes later, the same ranger again demanded faster pace, for falling half a hole behind. finally, at the tenth tee, he blocked the tee box and asked the group of 4 kids to play shorter tee ahead. the group followed the direction, not knowing what else to do (tour director was not around right there, no cell phone to reach him). turns out of all kids in the tour, only that group was asked to play shorter tees starting 10th tee. the tour director was furious afterwards upon hearing what has happened. when conferring with the club pro, he stated his stand: the ranger did nothing wrong to make the group to keep up the pace, regardless of the format and the nature of the competition. turns out that there are no regular club members immediately following the entire junior group, per last group's spectator. is the ranger and the club pro out of line in this case, you think?

was reading Craig Farnsworth's book The Putting Prescription and he seems to endorse several products one of which is this Kure putting thingy. anyone ever tried it? thanks. i am always a little reserved when someone in public pitches a product... btw, i find his book extremely helpful.

i would be interested if anyone has switched like that and would like to hear some personal feedbacks. or from x20 to other clubs that you really like. thanks. ps. i have not followed the forum lately, so not sure if the topic has been covered.

my younger kid has been JUMPING near impact zone and this problem has been there forever, possibly from the day when she tried to hit harder:) a helpful poster (ritche, probably a reader here as well:) who commented on the video has pointed out again, also providing some tips to fix it. but i see this often, with both of my kids and other juniors. i think it is as much mental as it is physical in that they try to thrust the lower body foward, in an exaggerated weight shift to gain power. you ask me to shift weight to the left? sure, i will do it and some. what is your opinion why kids (or people) do that and any success with things to try? http://www.swingacademy.com/swingana...l.aspx?id=2853

thanks guys, very helpful and very consistent answers:) the video is really quite good, very very clear pic!