The ball is going to be a tough sell, I’d almost say that best case scenario is a split tour. Other best case would be that golf evolves as the music industry has and where the big labels/companies start focusing on money/quick sell/ soulless/lowest common denominator/sexualized bomb and gouge bullshit, while the real golfers/musicians go off by themeslves and set up indy labels and play golf/music for the love of the game and marginal profit that gets equally spread, or at least fairly spread. That’s actually my main hope, and I can kind of see how it could happen, or at least some version of it.
The problem with turning back the clock within the existing shape is that there are so many good/great successful players who are aged 20-30 who have known no other game than what the rocket ball and frying pan produces. To them, this IS golf. Even for me playing around with those Professional 90’s, it’s not that easy, you really have to be good again! And I love that, you really have to do all the right things to make it travel or it wont go very far. I was thinking while reading one of the articles you posted that top players and tour pros used to use the ball that was hardest to use, the one that actually went the shortest! That alone gave good players an aura of quality because you knew that was something. It was kind of a badge of honour. Things have changed so much now, it’s weird. I agree with everything that’s being said, everything has been dumbed down from the top down. Even the courses the tout play are easier. They’re playing easier courses with easier to use equipment, and like you were saying, the really good players get lost in the haze. And the funny thing is that the guy that got screwed the most is the guy that wins everything- Tiger. It’s frightening to think of what he would’ve won if the ball didn’t change. He was on a different planet, is on a different planet, and the incredible thing is that we actually don’t get to see how much better he is than everyone else…
Yeah, E gets the shaft, but look at the other guys getting the screzizzle too. Love, Howell, Scott, Rose, there’s a LOT of potential for a lot of the kids who are trying to do it like Faldo and Price did. That Leadbetter stuff worked for them and it’s a roundabout long road to compression but it can get there. If nothing else there’s a lot of work ethic in guys like ma boy Charlie Wi who’s stuck in nightmare S&T land with Aaron Baddeley. As good as these guys are with a putter and with the shape they’re in there’s no reason they shouldn’t be playing Watson to Tiger’s Nicklaus. Everybody is out in lala land and their swings don’t have a natural evolution. What a shame, everybody loses, the players No1 and everyone who loves the game is being cheated out of an era by greed of the clubmakers. I’m optimistic.
My fantasy is winning a Nationwide event or something by 10 with a patent in my pocket and anouncing with the trophy in hand the old Maxfli Tour Balata is available on my website for $100 a sleeve stamped only FU Titleist 69.
Next week in Las Vegas…
My fantasy is winning a Nationwide event or something by 10 with a patent in my pocket and anouncing with the trophy in hand the old Maxfli Tour Balata is available on my website for $100 a sleeve stamped only FU Titleist 69.
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I love it… I also think you were right about Ryan Moore over in that other thread, he seems like a no bullshit guy who plays it the way he wants to or the way he thinks is best for him beyond the cash. The funny thing again is that Tiger is holding all the cards( or was anyway) and he has said that if it was up to him they’d be playing persimmon and balata. What was he thinking, it IS up to him! All he would have to do is say lets have a tournament a year with the old gear and it would be done. I’m not sure where all that stands now, but who knows. Yeah there are a lot of guys that got lost in the mix for sure, Els is the other guy, he could hang the ball low in the air like not many could- I watched him hit balls one year in the mid 90’s- insane. It was as if his whole ball flight was a perpetual ‘hang’ then drop. Amazing.
It’s says a lot for how good Charlie Wi must be that he makes that stuff work for him, he seems to be the only one that has over a period of time…
Awesome. I’d love to be able to make it- it’s not likely though. Are there a few of them through the year? Is this the one that’s pre 80’s gear, or are they all that way?
Selling the wound ball to players is the EASIEST part of it. Look at the GAWDAWFUL crap they use now that doesn’t do any good anyway. Square Drivers?!?!? Belly Putters?!?!? The Claw?!?!? These guys would not only sell their soul for a top 10, they’d bring their mothers too. It would take a matter of weeks for anybody with a little talent to start to ‘get it’. And what nobody realizes is that the graphs lie that the wound balls go so much shorter. When they test the different balls there’s no Y load on the Iron Byron that compresses the ball and lowers the launch angle to approaching 10 degrees. Totally different than a player hitting it. As the balatas reach optimal compression and launch numbers in real world scenarios they go AT LEAST as far as the ProVs. They cook the books and lie about how far the different balls go because the solid balls are so much cheaper to make.
Ryan whether he knows it or not could be THE MAN. I saw an old interview of Pete Rose earlier and one part was great. He said that he never liked facing a pitcher in a slump or who was coming off of surgery or hurt. He said he wanted to face the best of the best from everybody all the time and know that he could hold his own and better. Tiger has that mentality too. That’s the way it should be. Gimme your best and I’ll give you mine and either way I’ll shake your hand. That’s what it’s all about.
Ya Lag I can’t get out both days but I’d like to meet up on Sun or Fri afternoon after 2. Prob I’ll wander around for a while and watch on Sun.
I’ve still got a copy of the Masters final round in 94 where Ollie beat Lehman and Mize. Els was right there and bad drives left on 13 and 15 cost him the jacket. He was SO close to perfect, club laid off beautifully at the top and he went out right after and won the Open in that 3 man playoff. Kostis was CRUSHING him all the time for laying it off, still makes me laugh.
Shortly after he did a spread in GD with a persimmon driver that was money. His left hand at impact is perfect, like a vice working under through the ball.
KOSTIS!!.. said in Jerry’s NEWMAN voice…
Yeah that play off was awesome- I wore out my vcr recording of it. Poor Monty wore the navy pants and navy and green shirt and it must’ve been 110 degrees. Manboobfest… I think Loren Roberts had 12 putts that day 
His left hand at impact is perfect, like a vice working under through the ball.
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Do you mean holding on tight and solid? He used to throw the right hand pretty good over the ball- do you see the left as the sort of counter to that?
The first time I met Loren was when he was still working at Morro Bay GC outside of San Luis Obispo. What a sweetie. One of the only guys I ever rooted for as he was bashing my skull in. Dink dink in dink dink in. The Loren rule up there was anything within 2 flagsticks was good.
I never look at the right hand that much, just how it works and applies the Y load from P3 through the zone. With Els, especially back when he was winning was the way he worked the left through the zone. Unbelievably strong and in control. I thought when he was young he had the best iron swing from deep rough I’d ever seen. Huge huge advantage in the Open and in the wind. Plus the fact he was so big with huge hands it’s not even fair. I still don’t get what the happened other than not working at it anymore.
Cool. Yeah, the left hand strength and stability is key, as well as keeping it moving…
I think with Els it’s easy to say it, but Tiger got him. He was supposed to be Tiger, and in any other Era he probably would’ve been. He got in his head and his swing.
When Tiger came out he was hitting it miles with a half swing and Els looked like he was trying to get a bit of that, and I reckon he lost his natural rhythm from trying. Now he has this weird cast move, and the more he casts it the more he tries to compensate by setting it earlier and earlier on the way back. But the more and the earlier he sets it the more he casts it- that seems like basic physics to me. I can’t believe whoever he’s working with hasn’t figured that out. Then Look up his interview on the back of the 18th green at pebble after playing with Tiger when he won the open by 15- it’s almost depressing to see how beat up and resigned Els looked and talked. Kind of cool too because he was giving him all the credit he deserved, but tough too. Then his kid has difficulties and his mind is somewhere else. Who knows. I’ve always loved his game and his way and I’ve followed him pretty closely over the years and that seems to be how it’s gone down…
All he (Tiger) would have to do is say lets have a tournament a year with the old gear and it would be done.
That’s not a bad idea to save a little face right about now at Congressional. Make it an Invitational and if nothing else use it as a PR distraction and a little something for the players. Call it The Capitol Cassic or something.
Ya I totally forgot that vicious awful arse whoopin he took at Pebble. That would take anybody’s heart of it, I don’t care who you are. That’s all right on. Now that I think about it I remember the TofC at Kapalua where he birdied and eagled like every hole plus the playoff and still lost that too. Buzzsaw, and he took more of it than anybody else. Took every damn gutshot with a lot of class too, don’t know that I could have that well.
A return to basics, rediscovering his roots… it could make sense…
Yeah I forgot that Kapalua too- that was a heavy weight bout on a golf course no quesiton!! Tiger just poured them in on top of anything Els holed, or holed monsters before he even got a chance to have his fun. And what’s worse is that I don’t think Tiger tied his shoe laces well back then without running around fist pumping the air- and Els had to look at that every weekend. Tough stuff. Great TV though!
God that Open at Pebble was 10 years ago this year. Seems like yesterday. Gettin old man, I was watching the Karate Kid last week when my wife told me it was 25 years old. What the hell’s goin on around here?
Johnny Miller was A#1 on the Els train, he figured the next dominant player would be like 6’4" and have extension and like Sam Snead tempo with touch and a putter. Ernie Els to a tee before he ever heard of him. That was him and I thought when I was coming up he was as good as it could ever get, the total package. Ernie thought so too.
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Some great points in this post. This part really speaks to that idea I mentioned the other day about loading, and how a lot of the action happens late in the swing. This really explains to me that feeling that I was having without understanding what or why it was happening. It does bring into question I think the nature of loading, and the time and place it happens. Along with that shallow journey into the ball that’s so necessary, it keeps me questioning the value of active transitional loading whether it be float or drive or whatever it may be called. If you’re trying to load at the top you’re kind of at the mercy of it in a way, which makes it difficult to be in control of that journey down.
It also opens up a question I was trying to get going a while ago about the club being the only true lever in the swing and that the hands are doing opposite things. The description of the pp3 being a fulcrum of sorts is exactly what I can see. Lag talks about the swing being based on a class 1 lever and a lot of people have disagreed with that. I think it might be a class one lever concept but the force is the left hand and it’s origins of power, and the fulcrum is then the right hand and it’s roots- it works like floating active fulcrum if that’s possible. The load being the clubhead. That’s a crazy thought but I can’t seem to shake it. In a way, the hands are the embodiment of either side of your body, and if that’s the case then on some level they have to be doing different things, working in slightly different directions all the time.
The thing about that late load thing of shifting into the left foot is that there’s no control to be had at that point, it’s all power and release- you need to be psychologically prepared to play like that. It ties directly to that recklessness that Jackie Burke talks about it. There was a great article posted a good while back by someone and I can’t remember who it was in it, it may actually have been Burke. But it was comparing players and the game from the different eras. And when talking about Tiger he was saying that he has that recklessness that a good curve ball pitcher has, the ability to just sling something out there with freedom and trust that it will come back. On some level you have to not give a crap if it does or not- nice way to play golf!
I still can’t believe I posted that on an open forum for free. There’s about 20 maybe 25 people in the world was totally understand the swing dynamics and how to create that kind of compression and as I write this they’re all probably putting a hit out on me.
I could care less about about Class 1 levers and all that TGM and physics junk. I hated those classes and when I try to think about the golf swing in those terms I get a headache. What I care about is smooshed golf shots. In that one post are all the ingredients to every single great golf swing in the history of the world. But it ain’t the recipe. The recipe to compression is the sequencing on the downswing through P4. And that I will leave to Lag. He knows that probably better than I do. At the least he does it better than I have ever done it. But I know it and I also know I ain’t the one cashing the checks around here so everybody enjoy your impact bags.
Knudson talked a lot about that recklessness also…
I like to think of it as commitment to the shot and the feeling you own up to within the body before you execute it.
The rest is simply living with the results.
I had to live with 6 bogeys today out at Mare… it just ate me up… I just couldn’t get over how long it was playing wearing 3 sweaters. I was hitting 4 iron from where I usually hit 8 iron. But that is what makes this game fun… if it was easy all the time, it would not be nearly as interesting. The club felt light in my hands which usually means my pivot was taking the day off.
Tomorrow I’m playing with Al Barkow, his son Adam, who is the new hot shot over at Fresno State… so I’ll have to watch 320 yard towering drives off a frying pan, and Ron Chalmers who ran the Rifle Shaft company and Sounder for years. It should be fun!