LC - I need your home address so I can carry out my “hit”. Great post, and I think it’s more like 15 who will understand it.
My wife will say it’s about time…
Yeah, I copied and pasted it pretty damn quick when I read it in case you pulled it off- I knew it was gold!
You gotta grind him down Lag… show him how to play. Hopefully it’s not balls cold again…
I don’t think I could yank it even if I wanted to. Only Mr Lag can do that if anybody can. It’s out in the universe now, the first numbnut ever to just blurt out the one thing everybody who’s ever picked up a club has been searching for. And do it for free just to try to get a dozen new balatas. That’s me. I can live with that, I guess. Rather be known for winning the Open, but oh well.
That’s the thing about ideas, they can’t be contained. We think we own them but they want to be free. I heard a cool interview with Stephen Spielburg where he talked about ideas for movies that he had from time to time but never got around to making. He reckoned that he saw a few of his ideas as movies as time went on even though he had never shared them with anyone. His conclusion was that the ideas are always floating around and that they land on people and if they can’t or don’t use them then they float off to someone else. Kinda cheesy idea but I like it.
Do you not have any balatas?
I’ve got a couple dozen I got about a month ago but they’re pretty dried out. Got some more on the way off of ‘the source’ and I hope they’ll fly a bit better. Most of the sites I’ve seen say the max shelf life is 3 years but I think and hope they’re wrong.
I feel the same way. The absolute only thing that matters is that enlightenment and progress happens. As long as it gets done who cares who gets the credit, to an extent. I’m big big big on the view that we’re each an important but very small link in the chain. One of the many things that soured me on the game was the ‘look at me look at me I’m the only person who’s ever been any good I’m so pretty me me me me’ BS from so many of the guys out there. It is so boring being around these guys and almost all the places I went I didn’t know anyone else. Being single and out on the road alone on a tight budget got old.
Yeah it’s tough to let go of or share ideas in our culture when it’s so cutthroat. If everyone was sharing for the good of good then it would be easier. But when you have a feeling that someone will take your idea and make a ton of cash or claim it as their own then it puckers everyone up. It’s important to keep it moving though. Making money is a weird thing, especially from golf. A buddy of mine charges a hundred bucks an hour for lessons, and he’s not alone doing that. I just can’t see how that makes any sense in the grand scheme of things. But that’s the charge and people pay it so what are you gonna do.
Yeah, the old road is a tough place to be when it’s not clicking. Highs and lows like you’d never imagine. I think I agree about the links in the chain thing but it’s tough when you look at all the suffering in the world- it’s tough to believe that those types of experiences could be considered someone’s role. My jury is out on that one as well as a whole load of other things- but they are working on it! Chance is such a crazy thing and when things fall into place there’s the weirdest sense of purpose to the whole mess.
PM me if you want me to send you a box of Professional 90’s. They’re not dead- they lack a little with the irons but go pretty strong off the driver…
One of the reasons I retired from the tour was my complete inability to fully enjoy it. It seemed that the guys that were too happy, didn’t play well… what I mean is that every time one of the guys got deep into eastern philosophy, or turned vegetarian, it seemed they were off the tour in 6 months.
There is something about that vicious sense of competition, that drives you to grind it out, because you just hate to play poorly.
I never liked missing a cut, and I never wanted to get too comfortable doing that. I figured if I am out there… then I am there to grind, and not allow complacency into my life.
However… with that kind of mindset, it’s not easy to feel a serendipity of spirit flowing out of your pores at all times… especially when you are playing poorly… or even worse than that.
I realized over time, that it didn’t make sense to live and die over every week. Many guys do… It’s a lot of travel, and different situations to deal with. Somehow, it’s a fine line between having the right vibe on tour and being too hard on yourself, or not being hard enough.
So many times I was trying to talk somebody, anybody into going someplace different, a museum or community theatre or whatever on a Monday or Tuesday to get our heads out of the grind. A few times a few of us would, but it always turned into some kind of pissing contest, especially if there were 3 of us or 4 and all they wanted to talk was golf golf golf. When I got done at the course after a while the LAST thing I wanted to do was talk about it and grind some more. And there’s so little time to even stick your head up and even see where the hell you are. Every week is the same and it’s like your in Groundhog Day. Plane, car, hotel/motel, diner, room, diner, golf course, diner, room, repeat. Mix in maybe a movie or a bookstore and it just keeps going exactly the same way forever. That’s if you keep playing well enough to afford to keep out there. Not that I’m bitching sour grapes but it’s not the most enlightened lifestyle.
Going out and playing golf tournaments is weird. You think you’re doing something so metaphysical and on another plane of existence and the next thing you know your big contribution to the world is drawing pictures on golf balls like a retarded 3year old (Still love you Duffy). We’ve all done it in a dark hotel room at 3 in the morning, don’t even try to deny it. He’s just the only one that would show them in public.
I never liked missing a cut, and I never wanted to get too comfortable doing that. I figured if I am out there… then I am there to grind, and not allow complacency into my life.
Ya but at 10 o’clock at night you’re still in the same hotel room hitting putts and chips whether you’re in the lead or shooting 75. The only thing that changes is tension and how fast your mind is racing. I think nowadays it would be a lot easier to do with my PowerBook with me. At least it’s some sort of distraction and a connection to the outside world. Makes it a whole different ballgame that I could have all the newspapers and blog and crap that I read all night long, the forums like this where I’m driving everyone nuts with my neverending posts and I could even keep teaching online courses while I’m on the road. Nice thought actually.
I was nuts a long time ago before you came along, so don’t be afraid. Keep the fresh outlooks coming.
Cool, thx. And I got a nibble from a Manufacturer on making new balatas. It’s gonna happen, mark my words.
I may not understand what you are saying…but to pursue the concept of the hands doing opposite things…Why can’t the fulcrum be between the hands, and left hand be working as a force on a class 1 lever, while the right one works as a force on a class 3 lever? The left hand will pull the handle in towards the body and the right hand pushes away, both also have some twisting motion.
Because the hands are completely in sync following the body rotation now turning around the axis starting in the ground inside of left foot working as a connected unit, driving the shot down the line and the club through the zone and left. The clubhead is resisting the force because of the late change in direction and the shaft has a huge torque and load on it in the lateral (Y) plane which creates the compression. The PP2 is like the center point on a teeter totter if the teeter totter were working in a rotational manner. The hands are one at this point coming from different places but are engaged harmoniously in the same act. Everything in the body goes around and left. The ball has had ‘the will of the player’ imposed on it thrrough the compression and has no choice but to go exactly where the compressed strike orders it to. Straight down the line and smokin with a little left or right or up or down as the shot requires.
The left shoulder may be rotating away from the target and the right shoulder toward it but the hands are both performing the same act, loading and keeping the lateral shaft press through the zone. If the hands were working in opposite ways everything would be lost and disconnected and if you remember the very first thing we started with, standing straight up before the shot where you’re moving the clubhead side to side with your wrists, remember when I said this is THE MOVE WITH THE WRISTS THAT CAN NEVER HAPPEN IN A GOOD GOLF SWING because this move destroys everything. The movements of every part of the body in proper sequence is what creates the crazy good shot. Over time when this is practiced and learned it naturally becomes tighter and more efficient so that the player can eventually create the compression in the shot with different speeds and variances. You start out crushing it and then over time allow the move to refine itself so you can create the compression with all kinds of shots.
With the polymer technology they have now I would find it hard to believe a manufacturer couldn’t make a ball that behaved exactly like the old wound balatas (including the smileys, but minus the rubber bands sticking out) with the same equipment at a song of a price!
There should be a tour ball at least. I really don’t agree that the most prominent players (i.e. Tiger) can have a company make a ball formulated especially for one persons specific needs. 99.999% of the players don’t have that option. Unfair advantage IMHO. One ball design and play it.
Captain Chaos
lecouerdevie,
is this what you are talking about when you refer to X? a vertical hinging of the wrists to create the load?
http://homepage.mac.com/brianmanzella/.Pictures/octpic3.gif
and to Y? a horizontal hinging to create load?
homepage.mac.com/brianmanzella/. … ctpic2.gif
are you talking about how you hinge your wrist on the way back when your refer to “X” or how you release them on the way down?
what do you think about these two ways of setting the wrist on the way back? Brian Manzella demonstrates a horizontal and vertical setting of the wrists, and condones a vertical hinging of the wrist. it seems to me that if you take the club straight back as long as you can to get it to the 4:30 line position then you will hinge the wrist in a vertical fashion. how do you set your wrists on the way back?
http://www.brianmanzella.com/forum/golfing-discussions/3390-october-03-never-slice-again.html
Yeah, what he said 
I’ll give you my thoughts on it, but a lot of times I’m asking questions as opposed to saying that this is how it is. If you separate your hands a little on grip and press the head into the ground to feel some resistance, you’ll notice the different jobs being done by your hands even though their goal is the same time. If you were to think that you could push the head harder into the ground by pushing both hands towards the ground, which on some simple level might make sense, you’d find out by trying that this doesn’t work- your hands accelerate towards the ground while the clubhead does nothing. You need a fulcrum of resistance in the middle somewhere which ends up being your right hand. I don’t know what you would call this since the right hand his actively push down but also being a sort of fulcrum at the same. I don’t know the numbers but I imagine that the right and left work in tandem with the same or very similar amounts of force being applied. But in opposite directions. That’s the crux of the thought really. I do agree that the hands harmonize with the body particularly as the speed increases and the job has to get done. At maximum acceleration I’m pretty sure everything coordinates into one point which is the strike. But before and during the build up, that loading into the shaft I reckon is aided by the opposite actions of each hand. It has roots in holding the weight into the right foot on the way down I think. I’ve often had the feeling of ‘pulling the grip apart’ at the top and on the way down, as if the right hand is pulling the grip inward as the right arm straightens out. A lot of the energy that gets stored is as a result of containing the shaft inside the target line, a kind of build up of CF or something like that. By dropping as low and deep as you can I think you’re doing 2 cool things- you reduce the size of the circle that the clubhead will be traveling in and when you do activate your rotation, moving into the left foot that LCDV explained so well, it’s a mad explosion of contained energy because it’s a tighter spin- this smaller circle more speed thing is a new idea to me but that seems to be taking place in this move. You’re also increasing your odds of propelling the ball because the clubhead spends more time closer to the level of the ball so you don’t have to pick your point so accurately. Kind of like bowling- you’ve got a better chance of hitting the pins by rolling the ball down there than trying to lob it down and land right on top of them. It’s also probably why good gamblers tend to have those flat approaches to the ball, they tend to work the odds in their favour. The pulling apart of the hands or their opposite roles is something I’ve felt from time to time and really just wondered about. Having read LCDV’s two responses I feel like a lot of my questions on this have been answered. Though on some level there are remnants of the journeys of each shoulder remaining in the grip, it’s probably insignificant to the total goal but interesting to discuss or ponder I think.