I was talking with a client this morning on the range and he was asking me about any good teachers I had….and it made me remember some really awesome lessons I took from Gary Lindeblad in Spokane Washington. Gary could play and teach AND understand his clients so it was always a treat to see him.
"Alright Matthew …….what can we put to bed today." He would say. I would have a list of 6 or 10 things I had my butt in a twist over and in about 30 minutes we would sort them all out and off I would go happy as happy gets….. hitting the ball great.
So that is #1 on my list…..
1)Find a good teacher that will help you further understand what you are thinking about and working on….so it can be finished or "put to bed." Or…… understood completely and put away for a while in favor of a better choice or …….simply understood and tossed out.
(It is one of my favorite things to do as a teacher. Helping a student who already has done 80% of the work on an idea wrap it up to the point it is an asset is a great feeling for both of us. Usually what someone is thinking about is very close to being the right thing for them to work on and it's a lot easier to just finish that program than it is to pivot and go a completely different direction.)
2)"Big forces ALWAYS trump little forces"
This is what my father always said and as a physicist I took his word on it. When I was a kid he would always tell me stories as examples like "They couldn't get the P51 to fly for a long time in WWII. The engineers were fooling around with flaps (little forces) and all sorts of things and it never worked. Finally some college kid who wasn't an engineer yet suggested they make one wing longer (big force) and this solved the entire problem." "That kid saved a lot of lives of the boys flying the b17s.." As a ten year old this was a little heavy ….:) but he was right. It is a very important concept in golf…..I'll try to explain.
As a player when you are truly hitting ball the distance you want and truly flighting it the direction you want 90 % of the time then the "big forces" are probably in place and correct. (From what I know there are 5 big forces and it's fun to break them out and study them.) After the big forces are set up a player can begin to play with all the little forces (usually Golf Digest and Golf Channel sort of tips) to flight that existing shot differently. There are dozens of little forces and playing with them is one of the great joys of golf.
When a player isn't hitting the ball the full distance every swing or flighting it really well (you just need fades to fade and hooks to hook) then it is a huge mistake to be worried about a "little force." There is some big force that needs some love before the little force will even have an effect.
3)Learn to be LESS specific
My least favorite golf expression is "Take Dead Aim." Mainly because is just doesn't work. It is complicated to explain but it makes most golfers look too intently at the ball and their move follows this "overlooking" and tears itself apart. One of the secrets if there is such a thing to becoming a scratch golfer is to generally flight the ball well and to back way off the specificity.
I have some golf buddies I play with on Sunday's….cute older guys that are about 15 handicappers…..we will be on a tee and have an exchange like this…..
"So Matt should I take this drive off the top of that mound where the grass changes color and turn it over about 3 yards"
(Me) "yo whuh?"
(Him). "That mound out there about 240 right on the left side near the top where the grass changes color!"
(Me). "dude….chill……."
=). That sort of specificity is not how good players roll. On that same shot I might set up "left" and " let it go right." That way I can take a good full pass on the ball and get it going forward …..it'll go 290 or so and cut and end up where it ends up. It's not that I am lazy or so good that I don't care….its just that I have learned from other players that just a nice full shot will work out great most of the time.
Golf courses are big.
As you get closer to the green good players start to hunt for chunks of the green that have straight putts and the specificity increases some then……
Cleaning up the "to do" list in your head of mechanical stuff and getting them in the right order is always good. Most anyone can get surprisingly good if they get big forces and specificity in the right order. As I mentioned earlier playing around with little forces is really fun but only when the general big stuff is in order.
Cheers. Matt