Interesting thoughts, guys. I had a friend I played junior golf who was notorious for being lucky on the course. I don’t think it was a myth either. I remember on two different occasions he hit a bad shot and it was going O.B., hit the freaking O.B. stake and stayed in bounds. I think part of it is that if you’re really good, you can get your bad breaks, but then you can go on and play the rest of the holes well and people then forget about the bad bounce you got on the 7th hole.
All of this is helping give me a different perspective on the game, particularly when I’m playing it. When I got back into the game, I decided I needed to either focus my efforts on ballstriking or putting/short game. I don’t have enough time to work heavily on both. I chose ballstriking, but that was just a guess if I was right or not. Now with the statistical research I’ve done and it being backed by guys much smarter than I am, I’m very confident that I made the right decision.
But I also look at things differently. Like I was watching Bay Hill yesterday and Ian Poulter knocks one from 210 yards to about 8-feet (amazingly enough, the announcers were semi-non plussed about it…that’s a great shot). He missed the putt and the wind went out of his sail a bit. I think that would’ve happened to me in the past as well if I had hit that shot and missed that putt. But now I look at it differently…that’s a shot that even PGA Tour golfers are likely to take a bogey or a double bogey instead of a par and that by making a par, Poulter is still up on the field for that hole. Had he made birdie…he’d have a bigger advantage on the field, but it’s certainly not the end of the round that he missed that putt and there’s no reason to let the wind out of your sail because you just missed birdie on a 210 yard par-3.
Same with that round where I was +4 after 12 even though I felt like I was hitting it decent. That kinda gets depressing and monotonous when you just say ‘I didn’t score well’ and then revert back to practicing extra hard putting and chipping the ball. Particularly since I’ve had a pretty darn good to great short game since I was in college. Now I know where to look at (Danger Zone play). Sometimes you may just putt awful or hit bad pitches. But my guess is that the long approach game is typically the reason why you don’t ‘score well.’ Kinda reminds me of my lowest score ever, 64. I actually didn’t feel like I struck it well or that I putted well. I just hit a lot of average shots and a lot of great shots and I kicked ass inside the Danger Zone.
Totally agree with working little by little to put the odds in your favour & luck not really being a factor in the long run. I guess when these statisticians talk of 9 shots of luck for the average tour winner it makes sense when they are including ‘getting hot’ as lucky, which in a way i guess it is, as it can’t be turned on & off, it just happens & it is usually what makes the difference ‘it all just came together for me’’ kind of thing (as you say unless it’s a Tiger or a Norman) . Certainly it’s a way of describing why the list of winners every year includes plenty that seem to come out of the blue.
Everybody who takes the ABS course will improve and improve the farther they shoot down the module course.
Distance doesn’t necessarily come from hitting the ball hard…
most people I teach can hit the ball just as far with a shorter backswing because they start to learn when the force need be applied
The key to distance and also accuracy IMO, is the creation and preservation of angles.
Learn to hold those angle into impact and get rid of them with the correct sequencing later on and distance will not be a problem.
This will also allow you greater distance control because impact is less of a timing problem…you learn to apply the correct forces in the body also
and control your distance that way too and not just from hand slapping fast or slow and hoping you judge it correctly
This is true module 5 and module 6 work setting you up to utilize what you are/have already built a basis on with your module 1, 2 and 3 work
Twomasters–it’s the creation of angles, preserved and then releasing them as fast as you can, yes? I say, fast as you can, b/c once you learn the correct sequencing and have the muscle strength built up, you can go as fast as you want with control and distance. What I’m finding is that the current module I’m working on helps me improve my earlier modules. I’m assuming Mods. 5 and 6 improve 1,2, and 3… and so on.