Dr. Strangeclub

I think my initial take on this was much more limited than the discussion has taken it. The question I was answering was if you have nothing else to go by, neither recommendations from knowledgeable friends nor reputation. (And the more I think about it, this doesn't come up much, does it?) I even mentioned Harvey Penick as an example of a person who would pass muster. I was thinking "Beginner Lessons", too. Clearly, winners of major championships don't seek out people who hit the ball better than they do in general, so the "Good Shot Test" hardly applies in their case. Left with nothing to go by, say picking up a teacher at the range, it would seem to me that the ability to hit shots themselves is the only measure that even exists. In the back of my mind, I was thinking of some club pros I've seen or known over the years who couldn't teach worth beans OR hit the ball worth beans, yet whose docket was filled with lessons. My reaction/solution to this situation is no doubt a bit extreme. . The Recreational Golfer said, When I have a lesson with my current teaching pro, I tell him, "I want to learn how to do this with the golf ball," and he teaches me how. I'm not there to see if the pro can do it. I'm there for him to teach me how to do it. If he can, what other test counts? Exactly right. I'm betting he can hit the ball, though. .

That would make a pretty decent golf article! I think everybody has to stop including Hogan as a "teacher". He was a swing theorist, but didn't really give golf lessons at all, per se. Maybe to Kite and the Byrum brothers or something, but teaching was definitely not his thing that I'm aware of. He gave Faldo a talk in his office shortly before he died, after which Faldo went out and won his next tournament, absolutely crushing the ball (a bit more appropriately to his size). He had always been something of a dinker, the sort of the thing big, strong people can get away with, but something Hogan said had him launching it that week. From what I've seen, Haney and Leadbetter are complete frauds. I sort of like Ballard and tried it for a while after Strange won the US Open doing it, but coming off the ball that much on the backswing eventually went to hell for me and I had to go back to "basics" -- keeping the head still remains a good idea for me. S&T; seems pretty sensible, but I'd list The Golfing Machine cult as some sort of bizarre religion. (Yes, I read the book. Horrifying. And I, too, am an engineer, so I'm not so easily bowled over by Homer's quasi-scientific approach.) I'd rate Jack Nicklaus' book, Golf My Way, talking about people who can hit the ball but can't teach, as the most destructive golf instruction book of all time.

How would you judge a teacher, then, if not by how they hit the ball? If you have no recommendations (obviously the best course of action, but reliable recommendations are not easy to locate for a new golfer), you have to start somewhere. I would no more suggest taking a golf lesson from an unknown pro who could not hit the ball at least fairly impressively than I would say to take guitar lessons from somebody who couldn't rip off a fairly complicated piece on demand. Admittedly, some pros have "lost their edge" from having to deal with the course business day to day, but who were once pretty good players and know their stuff. Others never knew anything to begin with. I must say, I'm a bit surprised that all you low handicappers suggest taking lessons from somebody who can't hit the ball themselves; true, they might be splendid teachers, but I think it's highly unlikely. Why would you want somebody to teach you with methods and ideas that don't even work for them? Baffling. I'll compromise, 3 out of 5, with one real spank, no worm burners. The "straight right arm" story, an attempt to return to the threadline, involved one hacker teaching another hacker. The right arm was straight.

My point was to assure that the teacher can hit the ball, not for the shots to teach you anything. Okay, make it 5 irons or something, and if he chunks one or thins it, he's gonzo -- a little push or pull is acceptable, but a rope hook is not. Anything to demonstrate competency. The playing requirements for a PGA club pro job are pretty easy (something like a 76?) so there is no guarantee whatsoever that the club pro knows much of anything. Like the old saying goes, never take a tip from anybody with a handicap over 4, which could easily be the case with a club pro (despite his official handicap being zero). As for the straight right arm thing, this was actually a straight right arm. The guy giving the lesson was a hacker. Truly bizarre swing positions. I see what the thread is talking about and agree. I'm a big believer in arc width not arc length for generating accurate power and this seems to be a swing thought that would help that.

I'm still a little concerned about the statement, "All I'm saying is that your back leg does not retain it's original flex throughout the whole swing." That, as opposed to, "As regards the right leg, it should maintain the same position it had at address, the same angle in relation to the ground, throughout the backswing.", Five Lessons , Ben Hogan, pg. 75. And to say this is not fundamental, rather some advanced concept, certainly flies in the face of the extended title, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf . Oddly enough, this chapter is entitled, "The First Part of the Swing".

I'd like to add that paying for lessons is often no better than asking a friend with a low handicap to spend half an hour with you for free or for a beer or two afterward to talk about it. Most of the better players I've known have been quite generous in this respect and frequently far more knowledgeable about swing mechanics than the "teaching pro". Many people know somebody who knows somebody, as it were.

I think one of the simplest tests of a teacher is to have them show you that they can do it themselves. If they can't hit 5 perfect tee shots in a row, right before your very eyes, on demand, they shouldn't be charging money to teach you how to miss the driver like they do. An exception to this would be an old teacher who carries "good credentials", like a state amateur championship or time on tour, but whose game has been stolen by infirmity, Harvey Penick for example. There's also entirely too much time watching the student hit full shots and not nearly enough time having the student hit half shots to ingrain good balance, proper hand action, footwork, connectivity, shoulder turn, steady head, etc. It's a lot easier for a beginning player to learn to hit half shots properly than full shots and then full shots become just a larger version of what they learned in miniature.

My Truly Fair and I play 9 holes in 1:30 easily with nobody holding us up, sometimes even a bit faster. And we walk without hurrying any shots. Unless they know us, there is no chance that a group of guys will let us play through, even though we're waiting on every shot, because the primary rule for guy golfers is that women will never be allowed to play through because they're slow. My experience (and it's considerable) is that woman generally play faster than half the guys on the course, and that includes single digit handicappers in many cases, as they do the Faldo Grind on every shot. A poor but experienced woman golfer is far faster than a poor but experienced male golfer, almost every time. A novice female golfer is WAY faster than a novice male and women leagues move like lightning compared with the abominable hackers in your typical league. A good woman golfer is faster than 90% of the men with comparable skills. I tried to look it up and couldn't find anything, but without knowing the answer I'd bet a few bucks that the woman tour players average faster rounds than the men's tour players. (They don't even HAVE a slow play rule, do they? Never heard it come up that I recall. Comes up a lot on the PGA tour.)

Two more suggestions that I've never heard before! Spot on!

I think it's the very thing for shooting the breeze on a golf forum. How else do "lesser" players come to grips with their actual distances? For me, a 250 yard windless carry is pretty much my limit, usually more like 235-240. On dry, hard running fairways, that can easily translate to something close to 300 yards and in a strong downwind even more. I'm 68, 5'7" tall and weigh 130 at this point, with age-atrophied muscles and tendons like worn out elastic on a pair of sweatpants, so I'm not as long as I was when I hit ballata and persimmon. I'd be even shorter without the hyper-active ball and watermelon sized driver played these days. Consider though, that I missed a PLUS one handicap by two shots in 1966 and started playing when I was 11 -- with LOTS of help from the best players around. And I practiced a lot, too, with my primary, adolescent objective to hit the ball as far as possible. Before I reached my 50s, I won long drive in scramble tournaments pretty frequently, not because I was the longest hitter (not even in my own group) but because the big hitters would miss the fairway. I've never been able to hit irons out of my shadow though, because of short arms, ie, the arc on a driver isn't percentage-wise as short as larger players because of the shaft length ratio, so I'm closer to "big people yardage" with the longer clubs. When I could carry a tee shot 250, I couldn't hit a wedge more than 100 yards -- still true, even though a modern pitching wedge is more like an old 9 iron in loft and length. I play with quite a few players in scrambles who absolutely launch the ball who don't even have single digit handicaps. (They're on the team for a reason!) With people so much bigger and stronger, with longer drivers and hotter balls than were played in days of yore, I have no trouble at all believing most of these guys hit it at as far as they say.

Yeah, screwing it in is a bad idea. I yield. I was trying to subconsciously trying to get even with all those people who dig the ball out of the hole with their putter head or something. The screw-in flagstick would probably just chew the cup up worse. I do think futzin' with the pin slows things down some and tacks on some unnecessary rules, though. There's really no reason to take it out except to retrieve your ball or mow the green. Leaving the pin in might have one other advantage -- at least some of the people will take their ball out of the hole (or pick up a gimme) and NOT step on the hole as they get out of the way for the next player.

What one page rule book would describe the weird and frequently inconsistent rules of golf? A simplified game is dictated by the thread, in my opinion. (You can knock it off the tee by accident for free, but if you do it with a putter you're toast. pheeh.) I don't consider riding in a golf cart golf, either, but people actually do that. I played the ball down for 30 years, from the blues. Sod that. What does that sort of golf have in common with a scramble tournament? None at all, so scramble tournaments aren't golf either one can assume. I've made a LOT more money and won much better prizes on scramble teams than I ever did playing in tournaments or playing for $10 Nassau, and had a lot more fun to boot. As I've gotten older, I have realized that the game isn't fun when every lie is bad because the fairways are longer than the first cut of rough in a PGA event, every round, like where I play. It's odd that the PGA puts into play very similar ideas when their courses are not pristine, even going so far as to tee the ball up in fairways at times. lift clean and place even in the rough. Guess they aren't playing golf in your opinion on those days. Not everybody plays on froo-froo courses. It's easy to say "play it as it lies" until you play the courses I play. If the pros played the course I play practically every day, they'd be putting it on a peg in the rough as well as the fairway -- and that's when the weather's nice and they just mowed. I've shot 6 under before and never touched the ball except to put it on a tee, mark it on the green and pick it up out of the hole, so I'm quite familiar with what you're talking about. A one page rule book is not that game. Actually, I like to play the ball down when the conditions permit it. Many people, me included, can't really afford those conditions very often. I'm hoping to shoot 68 this year and shoot my age. Thought I had it 2 years ago, but blew it on the last three holes. If I shoot it, it will probably be from the white tees and with winter rules, and I'll still feel like I played a good round of golf, despite what you froo-froo players might think. And yeah, I've played it down a lot with virtually no grass on the fairways whatsoever, too -- played in Kansas and Texas, back before watering systems were commonplace. You guys would be tearing your hair out on the course I grew up playing. It'd be intolerable to your golfing sensibilities. You could leave the pin in the hole for every stroke down to 6 inch putts when I was in high school. Lots of people played without hassling with taking the pin out of the hole. I've seen Arnold Palmer tap in many a one or two foot putt with the pin still in. You guys really think dicking around with the pin is sacred to the game. You are very young. If you want to keep the game "pure", get rid of the hole entirely, since the hole is a fairly "recent" innovation; they used to just play to hit a stick hammered into the ground in the next town and added up the shots it took to get there, playing across hill and dale. Now THAT'S real golf, eh Laddybucks? I'm sure the rules for that game fits on one page quite easily. And it would certainly be real golf, especially with a gutta percha. You know, I posted a few things here last year and ran into the same sort of humorless people then. Looks like I probably don't belong here with all you serious golfers.

+1. About all I would change is putt every day , even if it's on the living room rug. 10 minutes 7 days a week is worth more than an hour a day twice a week.

Get rid of the carts and bring back the caddy shack. Half the people out there now are just out for a cart ride with golf thrown in anyhow. If you don't have a handicap license plate or an excuse from your doctor, walk. A round of golf didn't take nearly as long in the 50s and 60s, when everybody walked.

I'd call it little more than plagiarism, personally. One of the commercials on TV a few years back had Leadbetter showing the swing in slow motion -- GROSSLY over the top! Terrible! As to Haney being Tiger's coach, I think Tiger would have had pretty much the same record with no coach at all. I think Harmon is a great teacher, with a great understanding of the game, but he really didn't change Tiger's game that much. Leadbetter's "helping" Nick Faldo is also a bit of a stretch. Faldo may have believed it, but I don't. Taking a world class player and then piggybacking their subsequent wins as part of your influence seems to be all the rage these days. I think these world class players are like everybody else in many ways, and need psychological crutches, so to speak. I doubt if Yoda even plays golf, but the effect would have been the same. I watched the entire Charles Barkley fiasco. Ridiculous. I think I could have fixed him, actually. To me, Haney's approach to Barkley's problem was simplistic and ineffective. I'd have used the Davis Love, Jr. approach on him, building him up from 50 yard 5 iron shots and 100 yard drivers. You can't teach a new swing going at full speed. Speaking as a classical guitarist and some things are just universally true -- if you can't do it slow, you can't do it fast either. Barkley was unable to fix his full swing making full swings and that holds true for anybody at that level, imo. He needed to really start over and figure it all out baby steps at a time. Haney has no imagination. Encouragement is no substitute for mechanics, except at the Tiger Woods level.

Push carts are great! I used a pull cart, starting in my 40s because of my bad back. It helped, but when I got a push cart I couldn't believe it! I'm 68 and have no problems walking a course at all with one. Makes life easy. I can use a big bag and carry enough stuff for an expedition to the South Pole as easily as putting a Sunday bag on the rack. I have water, bad weather gear, my "pharmacy" of pain pills, bandaids, and allergy remedies, a sweater, jacket, extra balls and sofa for waiting on the tee for that ridiculously slow group ahead of us, and it just rolls along. The guy that invented the wheel was really onto something. Before I was 40, I thought it was wimpy and uncool to have a cart. You can have some really stupid ideas when you're young.

Why is it acceptable for some people to have a caddy to ask and others not? Money talks in this case -- literally! I think it's almost unenforceable to shut the caddies up, so just ask whoever you want, since you take your chances with the answer in any case. It's an advantage to have such a player in your in group in any case, to provide what is now "legal" help that would save you shots that other groups might not be so lucky to get. I frequently have players, who don't play with good players much (or ever), play their best with me just by putting themselves in the "monkey see, monkey do" mode. And what of the pros? How fair was it to the other players to have Angelo Argea pacing off all the yardages on the course with a stride he practiced on football fields, so that Jack Nicklaus always had better yardage (never mind better advice) than the other players? How fair is it to the good player in your group to have to play with relative hackers? Golf is fundamentally unfair. The whole game is masochistic at its core.

Absolutely should let groups play through. Here in NY, though, that sort of behavior would be, uh...out of character. The greens would be good, but for some reason the owner has decided to take advice from somebody who plays really well and even gives lessons but knows zip about taking care of the greens. He ordered a giant load of cheap "sand" ten or fifteen years ago that he uses to "sand" the greens. It's just sandy dirt full of small rocks and does no good whatsoever. Just about the time the greens start to recover from his last maintenance disaster, he'll plug and sand them (which doesn't even work with that dirt, just screws up the greens for a few weeks and covers them with pea size stones. About the time they start to roll smooth, he'll verticut them -- there's barely any root structure at all on some of the greens now from his doing this. Pitiable. Fifteen years ago this was one of the best nine hole courses around here -- actually the best one! -- and the greens were especially nice. He's destroyed them. Occasionally, the greens mower will break down and spill oil or other toxic material on them. The damage becomes a permanent fixture; rather than dig the area out and fill it in and reseed it, he just leaves the bare spot/track. Another annoyance is the placement of the holes. For some reason, the people who set the pins (also non golfers) try to make it like a putt putt course (they probably think it's clever), putting the holes on severe slopes making them almost unputtable sometimes. (We just take two putts and move on. Ridiculous.) The rough around the greens makes the PGA tour rough look like a cakewalk.

Really. I play a course like that, run by a non golfer. He has no idea whatsoever about taking care of the course (it would be really fine course with minimal correct maintenance) or running it. Fivesomes are frequent and sixsomes not unheard of. It's truly infuriating. What's worse, there are leagues that are allowed to take the carts out on the course at league time and start anywhere they want! I frequently play as a twosome (walking, of course) with my regular female partner and have had one of their roving foursomes go to the tee as we were finishing the previous green. Here we are, playing happily along at an hour and a half pace for nine and wind up taking a full hour to play the final three holes. Gotta love the goatlots! At least they're cheap! Fortunately, we have found periods during the day where we are virtually alone on the golf course three quarters of the time. Now if he'd just mow the fairways and reset the pins correctly...maybe we're asking too much.

The first step would be to get rid of the "stupid" rules. A lot of the arcanery (and charm, of course) comes from too many variations on a theme and rather pointless restrictions on what one can and cannot do, for example what to do with movable versus unmovable obstructions (OB stake versus yardage marker...). Many leagues, for example, simple drop out of the woods "somewhere in the vicinity" of where it went in with a one shot penalty and carry on, treating the trees like a parallel water hazard -- indeed, many professional tournaments line the trees on some holes, usually a wildlife conservation area, with a red hazard line and do the same. Some things I'd get rid of, along with many pages of rules that cover the infractions. 1. Spike marks. Not tamping spike came into being to speed play and now has delivered the curse of "spikeless" golf shoes to the golfing world in addition to slowing play. Tamp 'em down, period. More time is wasted deciding if something is a ball mark or a spike mark and grinding over how to deal with it if you can't fix it than was ever wasted just giving it a quick tamp and going on with your business. Talk about a "Chinese fingertrap" rule. 2. Tending the pin. Leave it in. Make it a screw-in fixture so it can be removed for mowing the green, otherwise it stays put. Provide a sliding plate that connects to the pin to lift the ball out of the hole. 3. Eliminate "drops", substituting lift, clean and place everywhere. Make all drops equivalent to an unplayable lie and lost/ob balls on the borders of fairways equivalent to a ball in a parallel water hazard. No more walking back to the tee or provisionals. (You can only hit a second ball off the tee if you declare the first ball unplayable/lost.) Lift, clean and place before any shot within a clublength. 4. Get rid of the "moving ball" problem. If you didn't intend to move the ball, just put it back where it was, no penalty. This rule is entirely too convoluted. The attempts at millimeter accuracies in placement are silly in a game measured in hundreds of yards. 5. Get rid of the rakes. Smooth the sand with your feet or a club or even not at all, much like you would repair a ball mark or just leave it (it's an etiquette problem). 6. Hit off the tee anywhere behind the tee markers -- no more "two club" nonsense. 7. No more penalty shots for hitting another ball on the green -- just put the other ball back where it was. So the rules now become: 1. Hit the ball from behind and between the tee markers. Go find it. 2. If you can't find it, drop another ball as near to where it was lost as can be determined with a one shot penalty. Get complete relief from woods or water or scrub where a ball was lost, including stance and clear swing. Take relief from casual water or ground under repair with the same restraints but without the penalty. All drops can be lift cleaned and placed before playing a shot except in a bunker. where it is a one shot penalty. 3. All balls unintentionally moved must be replaced. There is no penalty for replacing a ball inadvertently moved. There is no penalty for hitting a moving ball, but the stroke counts. 4. Offering advice, if deemed by the opponent to be unsportsmanlike conduct or interference, is a stroke penalty. If the advice is solicited, there is no penalty, but the advice need not be given. 5. You may drop away from any immovable structure to provide a clear line of play and a free swing without penalty. 6. You may drop away from any rock, tree root or other object which would subject the player to injury or damage to his equipment. You may drop away from any hazardous condition, such as a bees' nest or animal. A ball lost or unretrievable because of danger, casual water, animal lair, etc. can be replaced and dropped without penalty if the ball is not in a hazard. 7. Unsportsmanlike conduct is defined by the group or adjudicated by a committee, with penalties appropriate to the offense as decided by the committee or group. 8. You may remove any loose impediments that interfere with hitting the ball anywhere, but you may not dig to remove them. You may move the ball away from impediments that threaten injury or damage to equipment, as near as possible to afford relief. 9. A ball can be lifted, cleaned and placed withing a foot of its original position. 10. Legal golf equipment is defined in the three hundred page supplement with this rule book.

Think that's about it for me around here. When I posted an almost identical version of this on rec.sport.golf, back in 1994, people found it funny. Got a lot of response to it and other people reposted it over the years in rsg for people who missed it. Even found it on a website, unattributed once, so at least one person thought it was even worth stealing. I guess golf is far too serious to be taken lightly on this forum, especially professional golf, so I'll be saying sayonara. Nothing worse than a comedian bombing, eh?

They should hold an event on the PGA tour played under the same conditions that I (and most US golfers) have to endure. I offer the following standards for the Reality Open, which will be a required event to maintain one's tour card. There will be no cut, and all four rounds must be completed barring a major injury. 1. Amateur foursomes will be interspersed between the pros, no one playing to a handicap of less than 20. The pros will play in foursomes with one teen-aged novice player per professional group. All players will arrive at the course and place a ball in the rack for their place on the tee...first come first serve. The starter will see to the interspersing of amateur and professional groups. 2. A golf cart will roam the fairways carrying soda and beer for sale, said cart to loom out of the woods at unpredictable times. The driver will pay no attention whatever to whether any golfer is in the process of hitting or putting when he cranks it up to move on to the next group or player. 3. No GatorAid. The course will have just one water cooler per side -- when it goes empty, that's it. The remainder of the field will just have to suffer, no matter what the temperature -- unless they can get lucky with requirement 2. 4. The front greens are to be mowed and new pins set on Monday, the back on Wednesday. They will not be mowed again or pins reset until after the tournament.(Neither will they be squeegeed during rain, nor air-blown to remove leaves.) 5. The fairways will be mowed during the round on Thursday. 6. At least 3 greens will be freshly plugged, 3 top-dressed and 3 verticut. 7. The front side greens will be fertilized and watered during the round on Saturday, the back side greens sprayed with pesticides during the round on Sunday. 8. The mower used to cut the greens will have an oil leak and very dull blades. 9. No maintenance crews will rake the traps between or during rounds. (The interspersed amateur foursomes will take care of business as usual.) No more than half the traps will have rakes. 10. There will be no caddies. Pros can rent a pull cart, ride 'em cart, or carry their bags. There will only be 30 carts, first come first served. 11. There will be no officials to assist with rulings, all penalties to be assessed according to common agreement within the foursome. 12. The practice green will have no more than 3 holes, chip shots not allowed. 13. There will be no practice range, or if there is one, it will be closed. 14. No sissy red stakes will line the woods along the fairways. If they hit their ball into trees, they will have to play it out or hit another one from the tee with stroke and distance. 15. There will be no areas marked as ground under repair, no matter what shape they're in. 16. Tee markers will be no more than 12 feet apart, placed on either a) an unlevel portion of the tee, or b) beneath an overhanging branch. Tee markers will not be moved during the course of the tournament. 17. The rough will not be mowed for at least 6 weeks prior to the tournament, and there will be no putty-butt "first cuts". 18. There will be no high-falutin' collars around the greens. 19. The preferred course will be near a garbage dump, crematorium, slaughterhouse, freshly manured field, or other evil-smelling public facility. Failing this, at least one of the fairways will be bordered by a prison fence, so that the players can be heckled by the inmates while they play the hole. 20. There will be no marshals or ropes to control the gallery, but tickets will cost $10000 each to keep the crowds down. (Let them find their own damn ball, and when they airmail the green it will bounce out of bounds the way the golf god intended.)

One would think somebody from Calgary would have the answers, not the questions! Although global warming seems to be creeping into the Mohawk Valley, traditionally there have been two seasons, winter and July 4th. The Mohawk Valley gets less direct sunlight than anywhere on the North American continent, except for a few places surrounded by high mountains. I play in the cold a lot. First, lots of layers: Undershirt plus silk undershirt or long sleeve t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweater and wind proof jacket. Silk long johns or sweatpants plus regular pants. A Gortex rain hat (pretty warm!). Second, walk, don't ride. Third, hit more club than normal. Fourth, always have a pack of hand warmers in your bag to lend to the sissies in your group so they'll stop grousing about cold hands, brought on by their inappropriate clothing choices.

Actually, with those distances, on courses up to say 6800 yards, you wouldn't have any trouble shooting in the 60s from time to time with a good short game and hitting it straight. Distance is the least of your problems if you can't break 80 with those yardages.