Mandrin,
Nice to see you back here… what have you been working on in the lab?
I came across this quote from a newspaper clipping from the Montreal Gazette May Second 1961 by Al Balding.
For those not familiar with Balding, he was the first Canadian to win on the PGA Tour in 1955, and followed with his epic year
in 57 winning three PGA Tour events in a single year.
I was fortunate to meet the man briefly in Toronto as he would on occasion play a tour event while in his mid 60’s and he would always make the cut even
at that age. A dynamic swing that you could tell evolved in a different era, even in the late 1980’s.
Hit the long irons well as a gauge of the golf swing?
Amen
This is the most shocking evolution in golf, to remove these clubs from the bag because the hackers and businessmen playing this game that end up
in positions of power simply can’t do it… so they invest money into scientific technology to invent and sell forgiving clubs such as hybrids to the masses for profit in the name of golfing betterment.
Shame on them 
They best hope that Hogan, Moe, and Balding are not waiting at the Pearly Gates of Golf in the afterlife… if they want a tee time!
I wouldnt say, they do it 100% for corporate greed (despite the profit margin might be bigger since hybrids usually sell for a lot more than an iron)- there are probably a couple percent mixed in, that are actually trying to help the masses “improve their scoring” but not their game (or swing).
We should never overlook one thing that is pestering our western society nowadays - we want everything - the lazy way, we dont want to put in the work to learn something difficult and trying to master it, when there is some kind of workaround or technological advantage that can mask the problem but produce similar results. And those club manufacturers just cater to the masses with products and ALOT of marketing that sells longer, straighter and easier to hit - and every year a lot of people fall for this kind of nonsense.
And the sad thing is, there is no way back, once you get the masses sold on the lazy way. And Golf is not the only environment that is affected by it. But we will learn our lesson sooner than later…
@kafka - too true - many folks seem to want their lives to change without them lifting a finger - I think what you describe is at the root of much of the deep dis-satisfaction in our society - that’s why I am drawn to things like ABS and people like Lag, and the members here - people really working to get things fundamentally right, to develop a skill in the time-tested way - to learn it, and to learn via practice, where the practice is not a stream of immediate gratifications (at least not for me so far!).
by the way, more relevant news - Corey Pavin 2nd, Peter Senior tied for 3rd, Senior British Open, on a super-tough test of controlled low-flight ball-striking - Carnoustie, across the Firth from St. Andrews, in Angus (Council Area) - Langer was the winner - he is a great champion in his own right
All three are great strikers of the golf ball. Too bad Peter Senior didn’t do better last week at St. Andrews.
Langer is actually from my homecourse where he started as a caddy. So the time between the BMW Open in Munich and the British Open he tends to stay in Germany for a couple weeks. I think i saw him only a couple of days practicing & playing a bit (like hitting 20 balls on the range then going off on the course) during this time. Once you mastered it through hard work it seems you only have to polish it from time to time…
Anyways, Congratulations to Mr. Langer.
After watching a bit of The World Cup… why not get rid of the goalie? That way it would be easier to score goals, games would be much higher scoring with lots of excitement and would probably cater in favor of the American public sentiment for action and more scoring activity on the field.
This may not be a totally parallel argument, but it would similar in intention.
Removing the long irons makes golf easier. Removing the goalie makes soccer “football” easier. The goal of golf is to shoot as low as possible, the goal of soccer if the make as many goals as possible.
The protective argument would be that having a goalie makes the game more interesting, and adds a skill to the game that keeps it very exciting. I am not a soccer player, but I would think that a top goalie would need great instinct, intuition, athleticism, and a great pair of hands and kicking ability amongst many other traits I am not aware of. A top long iron player would need similar characteristics, including a superior swing and technique, which gives the player more options for putting the ball into play off the tee, not having to fear a long iron second shot, therefore having a distinct advantage over those who do not possess such skill at that given task.
The bottom line in golf is that whether or not the long irons become completely extinct in competition, it would serve any player well to learn how to play one, because if you can hit one well, it will just make all the other clubs including the driver just that much easier to execute. By raising your own bar so to speak, you are mastering the swing and giving yourself an advantage over the competition that is struggling with playing hybrids anyway.
As a spectator, I miss that aspect of the game more than anything. Seeing a pro play a difficult shot that ordinary golfers simply are not capable of makes for a truly inspiring moment. I have seen complete hackers bomb the giant headed driver 300 yards when they connect just perfectly just like the pros, but give them a blade 2 iron and have them hit a slight draw for a second shot into a par four over water from a slightly downhill lie off a patch of hard pan and they are NEVER going to be able to pull that off.
The solution is a competing organization that keeps the traditional principles of the game intact, and splits from the mainstream as has happened in many other sports such as auto racing, other kick ball and goal sports, Rugby, Union, League, Canadian Rules, Aussie Rules have all set an example that spin offs can be successful and entertaining.
Actually the CFL is older than and a forbearer of NFL. They had to make the field shorter at 100 yards because they had to play football on soccer fields whenever they went south of 49’. And of course they had to add one more down to increase “the Action” to suit the American taste better.
They tried to do it another way, by having the teams play a soccer ball that wobbles so as to make it harder for the goalies.
You can see it in this vid:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D4tIquInqQ[/youtube]
The problem with that approach was that lots of shots went high or wide so scoring did not increase…
FIFA certainly is guilty of selling out. I’m not sure if the ball used in the video is genuine IoZ, but it was certainly the case that FIFA introduced yet another new world cup ball, that reacted quite a bit differently to other footballs of recent times. The result was in fact far few goals scored from a distance, as the footballers had trouble controlling it on more powerful shots, but FIFA or somebody has made more money because kids will want the latest ball, no doubt. Really football has suffered quite a bit over the last 20 years. Cheating is now considered part of the game - an attacker looks for a leg to trip over in the penalty box and it’s the defenders fault for being naive allowing it to happen. The European Cup used to be a competition between the champions of every European League, who battled it out in a knock-out competition over the season. Now we have the top four teams in the stronger leagues entering this competition, while teams in smaller countries don’t get to qualify, with a new format where they play each other ad nauseum in group stages - it’s only when you get to the quarter finals that the real competition starts. The TV rights are huge, but the spectacle is unfortunately diluted somewhat - seeing the top teams play each other over and over again begins to lose its appeal; it’s a case of too much of a good thing, and in the end the Champions League is often won by a team that was not a Champion of its league. Some footballers are purchased as much for their selling power than their abilities - David Beckham was a fine player, but Real Madrid purchased him based on the sales of Real Madrid shirts with “Beckham” stamped on the back, especially in Asia. Well, that’s my football rant! But at least we haven’t significantly changed the rules, but then we didn’t need to - football was popular with most of the world and didn’t need to introduce larger goals so that more goals could be scored just to appease those that didn’t like the sport, like the US TV companies - instead they found other ways to sell out.
Good points Teddy, too bad that the only highlight in the final (between ‘my country’ and Spain) was the amount of penalties. 
My team played too aggressive, Spain looked like they had been taking diving lessons 
.
BOM, for your collection: 
lag,
Very little activity. I have been fooling around a bit with the various forces playing a role in the release of the club. However I don’t know if I will eventually post about it as it goes very much against standard wisdom re to the role played by centrifugal force in this release action. A rather major paradigm shift. But I can give you some thoughts I had seeing Tom Watson a couple of days ago on TV. 
With the many slowed down sequences shown on television it appears that most pros are swinging the club on a plane. It is clearly visible how they swivel the club onto this plane right from the takeaway. Let’s call this a ‘2D swing motion’.
I always felt that an alternative way to swing a club is a pure 3D approach for the swing, forgetting completely about any notion of plane in the swing. Just seeing Tom Watson with an approach shot it immediately struck me that he used typically this ‘3D swing motion’ :
A simple rotation of trunk about the vertical, hands remaining close to body, with hands and club bisecting the body. In essence rotation of trunk about vertical axis whilst shoulders and wrists rotate around horizontal axes perpendicular to a moving plane, the latter attached to and bisecting the body.
I seem to remember several years back to have read somewhere that Tiger did not have any idea of planes when swinging a club. It struck me at that time as rather intriguing as seemingly almost everyone is so much concerned with various kind of planes that it gets rather confusing. 
I’ve been talking about the football development as the reverse of the golf ball development for years now. The early golfers thought that a smooth ball would fly straighter, but what they discovered was that the older it got, and the more scuffed it got, the straighter it flew- hence the dimples on the modern golf ball.
In football, for some unknown reason they’ve neglected this aerodynamic reality and have been obsessed with eliminating seams and making the ball super smooth- the culmination of this aim was this world cup imo… so many 18-25 yards shots went everywhere but the goal… embarrassing. Some claim that this is the same for both teams so it’s fair, but I vehemently disagree! The game itself is ruined regardless of the outcome or results- sound familiar?
Anyway, you could argue that the best team won, but I did back both of the finalists from the get go so I feel pretty cool… though deep down i was pulling for the Orange!..
Football has already been ruined IMO because of the cheating–the diving is bad but the level of player holding is disgusting.
Maybe there’s just too much glory in coming first, makes people do whatever it takes, ethical or not. They’ve lost me as a spectator. Thank god cheating hasn’t become the norm in golf–could you imagine Steve Williams purposely dropping the bag halfway through Phil’s downswing, and just copping the insignificant fine?
I agree in a lot of ways, Steb, but I also think that things tend to be in flux or transition, and not necessarily ruined. In a similar way to golf I think football is going through some dodgy times, but it’s not finished. What cracks me up about football players and managers is that they keep blaming the refs on the bad calls- but if they stopped diving then the refs would have an infinitely easier time making calls. They have what they claim to want, right in their hands, yet they somehow don’t see it. I don’t think golf is immune to such things even if we don’t get to hear about them- golf, with it’s image of decorum and civility, has a lot more to gain by keeping these types of indiscretions under wraps. That’s not to say that they’re happening, but that they very well could be.
In the meantime though, I agree, it makes for painful viewing- worse if you love the game.
Old
online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142 … 76542.html
VS.
New
golfdigest.com/golf-equipmen … a-cha.html
golfdigest.com/golf-equipmen … de-ir.html
Its kinda old so maybe it has been posted here before. The first guy (the ignorant GD-guy) even offered a challenge to the WSJ-guy, that he couldnt keep his current hcp. while playing old gear. I guess he never tried, but maybe someone here want to give it a try and try to proove him wrong?
Well, i couldnt, thats for sure, but if you consider that within the last 20 years the hcp only dropped 2 strokes on avg, despite all the new gear, which the club manufactures sell as a “big success” 
, it shouldnt be too hard, or?
mandrin,
I look forward to more of your posts and I could use a bracing paradigm shift right about now.
Best to you,
1teebox
Mandrin…nice to hear from you again.
If I understand the description correctly…it sounds close to an Eddie Merrins approach to the process…at least on the thru move. 
RR
Range Rat,
Eddie Merrins taught a vertical hinging of the wrists and this indeed leads to a ‘3D’ type of swing action. Another teacher which comes to mind is Michael Mcteigue, teaching to keep the club up and down in front of the body combined with a ‘light house turn’ for the body, very much ‘3D’. There are also those who teach keeping the arms in front of the chest which is along the same line of thinking.
With the ‘3D’ approach, if actively using the wrist/hands prior and through impact, the feeling is of unhinging the club down vertically onto the ball, hence not sideways into the back of the ball.
I don’t think being far from the truth feeling that most instruction however is along that of swinging the club on some plane. It has a very different feel for me, this ‘2D’ and '3D’s approach to swinging a club. The ‘3D’ approach seems to lead more naturally lead to a rather compact connected type of swing.