Dear Friends,
Spring is finally
arriving in nearly all parts of the country after a long and hard winter. We
see hopes for renewal in the hordes of people selecting plants at garden
centers and in hordes of rusty golfers banging balls at driving ranges.
The other day, as Dr.
Putt was working on his own game, he noted a young man who was flailing away in
a desperate attempt to fix a slice. The harder he tried to swing from the
inside and rotate his wrists through the ball, the more frequent the slices became.
The regime was interrupted only occasionally by a snap hook or an even less
frequent acceptably straight shot. His problem was obvious to Dr. Putt. The
solution was far more simple than all the stretched
strings and headless shafts stuck in the ground that the young man was
employing in his quest for a consistently straight shot.
The simple solution
to the problem is point two in this newsletter. The first point is for those of
you who wear corrective glasses when you play, and the last point was stimulated by all the hoopla over Annika’s brief but
brave stay at Colonial.
1) Vision – hitting a
target that appears to be moving
2) Effort in practice
and play – the paradox of less is more
3) Annika – where
your game is likely to fail first under pressure
1)
Vision –
hitting a target that appears to be moving
When Dr. Putt plays
basketball with his students at the university, he wears contact lenses. Over
the years he has noted that his shooting percentage is much higher with the
contacts than with glasses. Why? Even wearing a glasses strap, the jumping
involved in shooting the ball and contact with other players causes the glasses
to move ever so slightly. Any glasses movement causes the object of focus to
appear to move.
If you wear glasses,
prove this to yourself by standing and focusing on some small object near your
feet, say a golf ball. Jiggle your glasses. Slide them up and down your nose.
Note that the movement causes the object to appear to move and that different
positions cause the object to appear to be different
distances away.
It is hard enough to
hit a golf ball that you can clearly see at a fixed distance away from you. It
is impossible to hit it consistently if it appears to be moving. You would
almost better off to hit it with your eyes closed. (This is actually an
excellent drill, but that is the subject of a different newsletter sometime in
the future.)
So what to do? Dr.
Putt, unfortunately, cannot play golf with contacts because of a tear
deficiency that allows him to wear his contacts for only an hour or so, not
enough for a round of golf. But he can wear a glasses strap. The strap keeps
the glasses in the same position for different swings and throughout each
individual swing. Your glasses do not slide down your nose as you perspire and
the ball is always in the same place.
If you do not want to
use the old drug store elastic strap, there are some really nice designer
straps you can purchase at most vision stores for under $10.
2)
Effort in
practice and play – the paradox of less is more
Ok, back to our
struggling young man. What Dr. Putt could not help but noticing was his white
knuckles. He was strangling the grip on his club. Sometimes he would succeed in
rolling his wrists through the hitting area, but rarely would he roll them at
the correct instant to hit the desired shot.
The solution? Much less pressure and no effort to roll
the wrists. Let the roll happen as a consequence of swinging
the club, not as a deliberate thought. If you try to roll them deliberately,
you will never be able to do it consistently, especially when you are under
pressure.
You can prove this to
yourself as you sit and read this newsletter. Keep your wrists limp and shake
them around by moving your forearms. Note how they rotate freely. Now try the
same thing with the fingers tensed. They cannot move freely.
So it is with the
swing. If you have anything more than slight grip pressure, your wrists cannot
rotate freely through the ball. It is often said that on a scale of 1 to 10,
grip pressure should be a 2 -- just enough to hang on to the club. This is why
good players change grips every year. One cannot lightly hang on to a slick
grip. You would have to grip it tightly and then cannot naturally release the
wrists through the swing.
So for a consistent
release, 1) get new grips on your clubs this year, 2) focus on keeping light
grip pressure throughout the swing, from address to your posed finish, and 3)
swing with a consistent tempo.
This will cause your
wrists to roll through the ball at the same time on each swing with no
conscious thought or effort. The golf swing just happens too fast for you to
make the wrists roll at just the right instant on every swing. If you change
tempo, they will break at a different point and the result will be different.
You may have noted
that Tiger gets into the most trouble when he speeds up his tempo on his
drives. The really notable thing about Mike Weir’s play at the 2003 Masters was
that he maintained his tempo on almost every shot over four days regardless of
pressure.
3)
Annika – where
your game is likely to fail first under pressure
Annika did not make
the cut, but she played with dignity and considerable skill from tee to green,
especially considering all the pressure she was under. She did not snipe back
at her detractors. Her 71/74 was far better than VJ’s withdrawal. Her
performance was far better than that of the aging superstars who grace Augusta
National's fairways each year. If she played for a whole year, she would
certainly do as well as others who hit the ball her distance, and perhaps even
better than many who hit it longer. Some day a woman will come along who not
only has her skill and courage, but also has the distance of most men. Barriers
were made to be broken, and any socially imposed arbitrary barrier in a society
that values individualism above all else must eventually fall.
But what can we
learn, beyond any admiration we feel for a brave pioneer? Her greatest
shortcoming on those two days was what was thought to be her strength, her
putting. Putting is what is most likely to fail under great pressure, not full
swings. Witness the short putts that many competitors miss at the ends of
majors. Witness our own fears and failures on three footers to win a bet. Thus,
putting is where an automatic swing that requires no conscious thought is most
important.
This year, develop a
putting routine, if you do not already have one, and stick to it on ALL putts.
Focus on the process, and let the result take care of itself. If you think
about the outcome, you will lose your process and not produce the stroke that
gives you the greatest chance of success.
Remember to check the “Dear Dr. Putt web site”
for all your putting questions – a search feature allows
you to look up almost any subject you like. Go to
http://www.drputt.com/deardrputt/deardrputt.php
In the weeks to come,
Dr. Putt will be indexing past newsletters at the site so that you can look
back at them search them as well.
Thanks for all your
questions and thank-you letters and of course for your orders. Word is slowly
spreading that Dr. Putt’s system of aiming and alignment takes a lot of the
guesswork out of putting and greatly increases consistency.
Dr. Putt wishes you
all clear vision and a consistent effortless swing this year.
Warmest regards,
Dr. Putt
PS: This newsletter
is dedicated to the memory of Bobby Mauney, who, after a long bout with cancer,
passed away after on the morning of
Bobby was an unsung
public hero who served his nation for many years as the chief legislative aid
to Senator William Proxmire, who was one of the most prominent members of the
U.S. Senate. Bobby spoke with the deep twang of his native
Bobby was the most
unassuming person I have ever known. He did not have an ounce of pretense in
his body. He made my family welcome on his retirement home on
Bobby had a wicked
snap hook, which he battled for over a decade. His seeming inability to hit
through the ball was probably related to early effects of the tumor on his
brain. The worse it got, the worse his snap hook. But he learned to play with
it and for a good while shot scores on the good side of 80.
I am happy to have
known Bobby Mauney. I am happy that he spent the last years of his life playing
the game he loved so much but was able to play so little the many years he
served us all in
Bob Botsch
PPS--If you want to
be removed from Dr. Putt’s newsletter list, please just reply to this email and
ask. He will remove you – really!