bplewis24

Should have an update today or tomorrow. Mostly been watching the video and practicing with a mirror, but only got to the range once over the weekend.

And I call bullspit on any of your personal knowledge having anything to do with any of your other claims (to say nothing of the supposed personal knowledge itself). I have personal knowledge of Tiger Woods' swing, and I can't do a damn thing about it or with it. I have no idea what you watching some videos one night of the guy has to do with you miraculously hitting incredible shots the next day, and hitting drives to within inches of each other and thinking that's proof of something profound. And don't get me started on the whole, "most" autistic cases including genius...

I haven't heard so much bull in one post before.

Same. There's only one course I've promised myself never to play again (save a qualifying tournament being held there, which is unlikely). Two of the main reasons why are because there is a par 3 that has OB about 15 yards left of the green (and water hazard all along the right), which is still on course property and about 15 yards right of where the row of trees begin that separate the course from the adjacent property. The other reason is on-course OB separating the 10th and maybe 13th fairways. Many other reasons I hate this course because of the poor use of the real estate and the way they crammed a bunch of holes into areas with OB/hazards and other areas that aren't staked off but you have no chance of finding your ball in there.

Keep in mind that, the stronger and deeper the top 100 are (and obviously this is a large crux of the debate), the less dominant the top 10 are going to be. People who claim today's strength of field is deeper than in Jack's era, would use that to bolster their argument.

I just did a quick tally using the cbs.sportsline leaderboard. Thursday there were 15 players under par, and Friday there were 19 players under par. Saturday there were two, and Sunday I counted 11. I'd say that is a quantifiable measure illustrating that players did in fact take advantage of opportunities to score on Thursday and Friday. Kaymer significantly more than others. How are you defining this? Being able to hit an approximate distance approaching the green vs having to punch out? That means pretty much nothing in terms of scoring. When you have to hit a 10 foot circle to hold the green, being able to get it near the green yet being unable to control the spin is a big deal. And there were plenty of times guys weren't able to go after the green. And they took advantage of it. The data reflects this.

What objective, quantifiable data do you have to support your assertion? The scores clearly don't support it. It seems like I was watching a different US Open than you were. This was one of the most enjoyable majors I've watched in a while. I felt like we saw a championship worthy tournament from one player who clearly separated himself from his peers on a championship stage. You saw a guy who played good golf and everybody else stunk up the joint. But that doesn't jive with how the US Open historically plays. Most of the guys who play good golf are over par, and the guys who play the best are around even if not a few under. The rest of the field, this tournament, still fell within those parameters. Kaymer did not. He outclassed them, for the most part. My guess is that if we analyze the data, the metrics would show that this field compared pretty closely with most of the fields in the last 10 years or so of US Opens. One obvious outlier would be the one Rory won, with not only one person being way under par and winning by several strokes, but with Jason Day also being several strokes under par, and a few others (IIRC). To your subjective claims, you seem to think that those greens were easy to hold and putt on, apparently. I'm not sure why. Care to elaborate? The common them was coming up short of a lot of the greens. Long was dead, and the front of most of the greens had false fronts. Unless you hit a number within about a 5 foot radius, the ball would fall away from the pin, most times no matter where it was located. Maybe you think these guys should all be doing that regularly, but that's not realistic.

Lower resolution video here as I'm using a different camera, so I don't know if you can tell the ball is teed up, but it is. Anyway, what do you think?

It was probably more like 9:30PM when I got there. My night class gets out at 9:05PM. I think I left around 10:15PM.

Looking forward to taking some video today. Last night I think I got my hands and hips in better sync. It felt like I was doing the drill correctly, or a lot closer to it. Didn't take any video, mostly because it was 10PM, the range was packed and I had to wait 15 minutes for a stall to open. But I will have some tonight. I tried to let my hands start the downswing. That appeared to allow the weight to load on my left knee a lot more naturally, and prevent the straightening/popping up. We'll see if the video tells the same story

Of course. Although I expect that, I guess. I spend probably more time practicing swings without the ball than I do with the ball. Of course, I only (except for the past couple videos) show video of the attempts at hitting the ball. That's where all of the flaws come back in.

First day back at the range since Sunday. I hesitated to post this video because it just looks a lot like more of the same bad practicing habits. I can't really transfer the feel from the mirror to the range. Do I need to flare my front foot out more? Still looks like my hips are going without the arms?

Sounds pretty standard and I think how I do them as well. Sometimes I get lazy and don't squeeze my glutes. At which point I'll generally lower the weight and force myself to do it "right." What I find at the gym is that most people don't keep a flat back. Their backs bow or hunch over.

I wouldn't mind seeing your guys' form/technique on the dead lifts.

Thanks! Now if I could just get them to do what I want them to. I think I didn't fully understand what you meant by this before. After watching my videos, and then re-watching yours and Mike's videos, I take this to mean that my hips are moving/rotating/spinning way out in front of my arms in the videos above. Is that correct?

Much harder to keep that left knee bent than I anticipated. I know it doesn't look like much progress here, but it felt like I made some, even if only incremental. Trying to keep my left knee from straightening, and focusing on that (rather than the ball) seemed to actually help me make better contact.

Also keep in mind that golf participation is different from total golf consumption. Part of what people talk about when discussing how Tiger "grew the game" is in TV ratings and event attendance. I don't know how the study measured "golfers" in the US, but that definition probably limits it to people playing (or registered as players, or who "identify" as golfers), and not people driving other revenues that flow into the Tour's coffers.

That's the automatic ball retriever/tee thing. So you normally put the balls underneath the area where the basket is, and after each strike, a new ball pops up. One of the buttons on there adjusts the tee height.

Tonight I'll work on slowing down a bit more and keeping the knee flex longer.

Only DTL video tonight. Every stall at the range was full. Switched up the grip but you probably can't tell much from this angle. What about the practice movements and tempo; any better?

Anybody know how to find his handicap online? I looked up "Isaac Sanchez" on NCGA and some guy with a 13.7 handicap showed up.

Well, that was disappointing! Went home a bit early to eat dinner and change, then hurried to my club planning to get 50+ practice balls in of the drill I was shown. I get there around 5:45, and all of the range buckets had been taken down 15 minutes prior. So I had to hit the last 5 range balls I could scrounge up, plus some of the top-flites I keep in my bag in case anybody ever asks to use a golf ball . On top of all that, I couldn't get comfortable with the drill at all. It felt like I kept bailing out at the last second (before impact) and flipping my wrists, or instead just chunking it. Appears my right heel was still coming off the ground too. What do you think (video below)? I was trying to focus mainly on "loading" my left knee and lowering my arms faster, as instructed.

It's a Canon vixia HF M40. It's HD but I believe is limited to 30FPS. If you are offering the camera I would take you up on it through the end of June. It's up to you though. If you do, I'd like to extend an offer to come out to my club for a round of golf. $15 w/cart. Can't beat that :-)

Thanks guys. My plan is to then record video of myself attempting this drill/these pieces over the next couple of days as Mike demonstrated them, correct?

More video from today. Also 9 iron. I wanted to get some video without the stalls in the way, as well as attempt to eliminate some of the excess movement and my right heel coming up so fast. I noticed my knees separate a lot on the downswing on some of the clips. Still, swings felt a bit better than yesterday and I think the video is better quality.