Styles
simple scenario! will play with a driver with a COR of 0.90 or 0.99.
Well we can’t preach to the choir obviously…but that’s not the intention… the intention is to actually make people look outside the box (even for just a split second)
I am open to all types of suggestion, especially having played the tours through all these equipment eras and seen the changes first hand, but when it all boils down…why?
Why would you want perfect greens Golow?..why perfectly manicured fairways?..I suppose you even expect a perfect lie in a bunker even though it is technically deemed a ‘hazard’.
One of the great intricacies of golf is it is played outdoors under all types of conditions…no two days are the same…the wind can blow from all different directions and actually switch so you may get to play all 18 holes into the wind…this is called brain work…you are meant to be tested physically and mentally…that’s why golf is the ultimate sport.
Where in the rule book does it say we need a perfect lie?.. or a perfect green?.. that’s what separates the men from the boys…a little adversity…a challenge…the use of a brain cell or two every now and then
So why make a sport an equalizer by equipment?..shouldn’t the best be allowed to be the best…?
It’s like letting a boxer stick some lead in his glove because he can’t punch as hard as Mike Tyson just so they can even the score up a little. …“No…that’s fine…we gotta make this a fair fight…stick some lead in that there glove…mishit your punch…that’s no drama, you can still break his nose with that sloppy awkward slap”
If you are then good enough to be able to hit a fairway…shouldn’t you gain an advantage in that?..shouldn’t a fairway hit count for something?..if you can scramble your heart out from being in trouble all day like Seve (supposedly did…not enough people give him credit for how good he actually was as a ball striker because they only remember the magic recoveries)…then good luck to you…BUT… you shouldn’t be given a direct path to the hole by hitting your drive 20 yards offline…you should be in deep rough or stymied by trees with little escape routes as an option
If you can then hit the fairway and then hit the green and actually hit an iron approach close…shouldn’t you be rewarded?..why have a perfect green where guys can bomb them all over the place from 40 feet… the crappier the green…the closer you need to hit the approach to increase your chances on capitalizing… but it doesn’t work this way…the entire golf world is ass backwards…rewarding mediocrity and giving no value to assertive sensible pure down the middle golf.
There has been no other game invented that can test a man’s mettle than the game of golf…and you guys obviously all want it handed to you on a silver platter bar any calculation or outside hindrance or thought put into the process.
I get so sick of people whining about the greens on a course and how perfect they should be…it’s grass…it isn’t perfect…everyone plays the same course…you should get rewarded for straight drives and direct irons. if you mess up from the tee or into a green there should be difficulty involved and at least half a stroke should be rendered away unless you can somehow conjure a rabbit out of your hat to avoid the dropped stroke
BTW it’s not a non thought amongst other people/golfers. Nicklaus has talked about it for years…Geoff Shackleford (golf writer)…also see Mike Clayton article below
theage.com.au/news/golf/trut … ntentSwap2
Imagine if a tour course was set up like this these days…the players would cry their eyes out and revolt… I have been at player meetings and they really are babies some of them about how easy they want the course to be for them…pretty pathetic really when the complaints came from some of the world’s best that can’t hit fairways to save themselves…When the rough is up, one of them goes hiding quickly and is brought undone from tee #1 on Thursday morning
Amen Two!
I’ve said it before but I DON’T get to play perfectly manicured courses, but it’s always an easier shift going from muni’s to country clubs. GoLow certainly plays at different tracks than I do.
No offense to higher handicap players but I think a lot of the modern equipment controversy is magnified as you get into the “more skilled” level. IMO it allows what I refer to as “fringe players” to advance into the same level as the very skilled player. I caddied for a friend of mine in stage one US Open qualifying this year. He’s a really solid player and we had a pretty good collegiate player in the group and one other younger guy (player #3). It was a CLASSIC example of frying pan drivers allowing someone to be able to compete. Player #3 swung so hard and so erratically with the driver but managed to hit it close enough to the sweetspot to keep it around 80. Had he used a persimmon I’m convinced he’d have whiffed a couple of tee balls. Had he used a “year 2000” driver he’d still likely have shot 90.
You can use whatever you want, but the argument that golf has gotten better over the last 15 years as a result of the equipment is rubbish, and it most certainly has NOT produced better ball-strikers… period.
robbo
The argument could almost be summed up by listening to the sound of this drive- music… Alex Hay’s voice isn’t too shabby either- he was the best!
… the embed doesn’t work but if you click on it it sends you through
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NzJpeb7vtCY[/youtube]
Have you ever chosen not to play in a particular tournament because you didn’t care much for the course for whatever reason…or the course didn’t fit “your” game? If so, why?
Have you ever chosen to play a particular course (over some other course) because it was in better condition? Or is your idea of a course being in better condition one that has bare hard-pan fairways, clumpy unraked bunkers…uh hazards, and scruffy long greens that looks more like an unkept goat track than a beautiful place to smell the roses?
Why are the modern day pros breaking records set years ago? Is the equipment better? Are the courses easier? Are the pros bigger and stronger? Do the pros have a better understanding of their swing and/or better coaching?
Why has the amateur handicap remained virtually the same for decades regardless of the new fangled equipment, manicured courses, physical training, much better understood swing methods, computerized teaching aids, etc., etc? I’ll tell you why amateurs can’t score any better today than 30 years ago, or 130 years ago, or 430 years ago. I feel it is three reasons - (1) they won’t seek long-term lessons from “quality” instructors/teachers that fully “understands” and knows “how” to teach the best swing method based on each particular student’s abilities, and (2) because most people simply cannot make their bodies do what needs to be done (even when told a thousand different ways or shown), but instead use their bodies in such a way that destroys progress beyond some level, and (3) only a relatively small percentage of people have the ability (natural or learned) to swing a golf club effectively whether the club is swung using mainly centrifugal/centripetal force (swinging) or mainly muscular force (hitting). Put #1, #2 & #3 together in a mixing pot along with a heavy dose of poor instruction and using opposing swing methods…and there’s little wonder why amateurs have terrible golf swings and handicaps that remain high.
The final round of the Chevron was exciting but I can’t say that about the other 90% of the coverage? Golf tournaments now rely upon a close finish to be exciting.
I’m pretty much as obsessed with golf as one can be; it’s my hobby, my exercise, my job and much of my socializing, yet I have trouble watching the first few rounds, so I ask, who is actually glued to the first few rounds on TV? People whinge here in Australia over the poor TV coverage of events, but I don’t blame the broadcasters–too little of the public are interested. I desperately wait each year for the short Aussie Tour season to arrive yet when it’s here I’ll only visit a tournament for a day and watch maybe a third of the coverage.
Something’s been lost, but I don’t think it’s only equipment. It’s the prevailing attitude I see spreading through the world of making everything easier so we’re not seeing true brilliance any more. Bunker recovery is child’s play because bunkers have to be the perfect consistency. Putting greens are perfect and if not rolling above 11 and flawless, half the field is whingeing. I keep on hearing that spectators want to see birdies–I don’t, I hate it when I see the first page of the leaderboard all better than 15 under. Give me the 2009 Open Championship any day, when the course beat up nearly the entire field and true talent and experience shone through. I don’t want to see some no-name take a major because the stars aligned for him that week with the putter.
Spectators clap when a pro gets birdie, but he’s just approached (again) from 80 yards–so he flippin’ should. Seeing someone smack a 7 iron second shot into a par 5 irritates me no end. I’d find it extremely mocking if I was a lady pro, playing on such shortened courses to keep the scores superficially low–no wonder some of them want to tee it up with the men.
It’s my belief that the average amateur handicap has stayed pretty constant because of an ageing population playing golf. Many more 70 year olds now with new hips, knees and shoulders driving around in carts than there used to be. Also a reason for 5+ hour rounds too. Scratch golfers are a dime a dozen now, and just look at the qualifying scores out of Q-school now compared to 20 years ago, even at the same courses.
Plus paralysis by analysis. We think the more knowledgeable one becomes, the better one will become. We think launch monitor numbers or a 3d motion analysis machine will sort us out. When it doesn’t, we move on to the next promising method. But we’re still really attacking the problem the same way and expecting different results.
[size=200]The Golf Swing Difference Between Good and Bad Golfers[/size]
[b]Once upon a time an author wrote a story about a golfer by the name of Grover Scomer. Grover was a hillbilly natural wonder golfer like Tiger Woods when he won the U.S. amateur wearing a sombrero which he had received as a gift from Chi Chi Rodriguez. Grover had an unorthodox golf swing but nobody could touch him, perhaps because he learned the art of swordsmanship from Juan Chi Chi Rodriguez, the minute Puerto Rican golf champion. Chi Chi spent hours in the gym working out to get his weight up to 115 pounds, which allowed him to hit the ball between 250 and 350 yards with golf clubs made from guava tree limbs and balls made from tin cans. Together with Sammy Davis Jr. Chi Chi won the Bing Crosby Clambake at Pebble Beach. Sammy was voted best African American Jewish one eyed golfer by the PGA of America 7 years running.
Grover Scomer began to slide downhill when he began listening to the other evil pros on the golf tour. Grover’s downfall was his naivite. He trusted the Tour Professionals. He never dreamed that they would deliberately try to mess up his golf swing just so that they could beat him. Grover slinked back to Clinton Oklahoma a broken man.
Most golfers read golf books, magazines, and buy golf videos and cd’s and training aids in search of the perfect swing. 25 million Africans now have the AIDS virus. This is why there are no tour stops in Darfur. That and the lack of proper toilet facilities. Golfers today have become incredibly spoiled. At the age of 5 they are removed from their homes and shipped off to the Ledbetter Academy where they spend their days building the perfect swing and analyzing their takeaways on video with their golf swing coaches.
The point is that there is no such thing as a perfect golf swing. Golfers today have become like sheep, like clones, all building the exact same swing. Nobody today lifts their left heel on the backswing except John Daly. Grover hung down his head and returned to Clinton Oklahoma with his head hung down like the great John Dooley, crying to his cows. Grover lifted his left heel on his backswing, like every golfer for the past 500 years, including Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Chilli Palmer, Moose Skowron and Courtney Friel. His undoing came when Tiger came along and said, “Yo, Grover, what’s with the left heel action.” The point is that if there are 6 billion golfers on earth today then there are 6 billion different golf swings. What is gold for one golfer’s swing may be hemlock for another’s.
Nevertheless, there is a huge difference between the golf swing of a good golfer and the golf swing of a bad golfer. A bad golfer thinks that he or she or it is playing baseball. They swing back and then through. The bad golfer has 2 parts to it’s golf swing. The bad golfer is missing the third part, the key to becoming a good golfer. The third part occurs at the beginning of the downswing. It is called the transition move.
The transition move occurs at the beginning of the downswing. Lets assume that you lift your left heel on the backswing to prevent serious back injury. At the beginning of the downswing you do absolutely nothing with your hands and arms. You solidly plant your left heel in its address position. Your left heel is connected to your hands. Watch your hands as you plant your left heel. The 90 Degree angle between the shaft and the left arm stays at 90 degrees as the hands fall into the hitting position. This is called passive hands. A good swing key for golf and for life is “Be a Pacifist.” Had the first golfer President Bush turned the other cheek like Jesus Christ there would have been no Iraq and no need for an exit strategy.
If you do not lift your left heel on the backswing then begin the downswing by spinning both hips and leave your hands passive and let them drop into the hitting position. When the hands fall to waist high the hips are now where they were in the address position. Later, at impact the hips are open about 42.3 degrees. If you are using the heel planting move to begin the downswing the hips clear automatically so don’t think of them. Once you have initiated the downswing with the lower body, either the left heel or the hips and the passive hands, swing to a nice high follow through. If you then want to try to advance to a higher level, then do what the pros do. Begin your lower body transition move a split second before you complete swinging your hands to the top. If that doesn’t kill you nothing will.[/b]
1 Like
GoLow wrote:
Have you ever chosen not to play in a particular tournament because you didn’t care much for the course for whatever reason…or the course didn’t fit “your” game? If so, why?
I used to play every tournament I physically could…the only reason I wouldn’t go was scheduling conflict or too hard to travel to from where I was or where I had to get to next…or if I had played 4,5,8 weeks in a row and felt I needed a break.
The course never had anything to do with my decision to play or not…if you are good enough and have your game in order you can win on any type of course with the right attitude and an ounce of luck
Have you ever chosen to play a particular course (over some other course) because it was in better condition? Or is your idea of a course being in better condition one that has bare hard-pan fairways, clumpy unraked bunkers…uh hazards, and scruffy long greens that looks more like an unkept goat track than a beautiful place to smell the roses?
The way I look at a course is this- it is the same for everyone…there is an element of luck as to where the ball ends up…BUT…I knew I could control my ball better than most in all types of conditions…so the worse the weather or conditions or whatever you want to call it, the greater I felt the odds were stacked in my favour… golf is about attitude. If I took the time to worry about all the uncut hazards or the way the fringes looked around the green then I am not focusing on what I need to do to achieve my best result that day or that week. I thought it best for others to worry about all that stuff so they could eliminate themselves by attitude one by one as the week progressed.
Gary Player told me something great once when we were in a courtesy car together…He said…“No matter what the course looks like, plays like, feels like…love it or hate it…you MUST ALWAYS tell the officials and the members and the committee how wonderful it is to be here playing their course…because no matter what you think, someone has put a lot of time and effort into making this course as good as they possibly could for you to be there playing, and to tell them otherwise would be a slap in the face to all their hard work and effort”… Gotta love Gary Player
Why do you think Tiger never plays Hilton Head or Colonial and rarely ever plays Riviera?..not for schedule or for money…they are too narrow for him and his comfort level to play well on so he avoids them like the plague.
Why are the modern day pros breaking records set years ago? Is the equipment better? Are the courses easier? Are the pros bigger and stronger? Do the pros have a better understanding of their swing and/or better coaching?
I don’t see that many records being broken,271 at The Masters in 1965 (Nicklaus) and 1976 (Floyd) has only been bettered once by Tiger in 97 and only by one stroke…
US Open record is 272 by Nicklaus (1980), Janzen (1993), Tiger (2000) and Furyk (2003) followed by a 273 by David Graham in 1981… nothing all that recent there
British Open record was Norman in 1993 at 267 still 2 strokes ahead of next best Tiger at 269 in 2000
The PGA Championship records are mainly all recent, but the PGA is a glorified tour event played on a similar style course that players see week in and week out
All these records are close to 10-15-20 years ago or more some of them even older
63 is still the best score in a Major Championship done on 24 separate occasions-- 3 times in the 70’s…7 times in the 80’s…8 times in the 90’s and 6 times in the 2000’s… not much record breaking going on there
In fact 63 has only been shot 6 times in a major after 1996…!!!
I believe Tommy Armour 3 broke Souchak’s 72 hole scoring record only a few years back…Souchak had that for over 50 years!!
You can’t count other regular PGA event scoring records because the courses they now play on tour are designed for scoring and are almost nothing like the courses they used to play on…wide open to accommodate gallery areas, very few trees that come into play and perfectly agronomic courses with reasonable rough to hit from as proven by guys hitting almost any club they want from the rough from any yardage and stopping them on the green
A few guys are shooting 59’s and 60’s of late (which is a great score…yes) BUT… they are playing par 65 or par 66 courses relative to the setups of the course and the clubs they are using for their approach shots… The Greenbrier was way too short for a recent event there in West Virginia…every par 5 was home in 2 with an iron, sometimes a mid iron…there were par 4’s they could drive and the 18th hole was a 145 yard par 3 
That’s not a par 70
The equipment has evaporated the absolute shocker shot from the pros game…wedges have too much spin and can stop on a dime from any condition…bunkers are too shallow and perfect and not even a hazard any longer…you have rough around every green that actually collects the ball closer to the green for a missed iron shot where the guy can just lob out a flop shot to a foot each and every time because he gets the same shot week in and week out…the greens are rarely firm so stopping the ball from any position is the norm and nothing to fear with short siding yourself with an approach …and you have perfectly manicured greens with no spike marks that all roll 10 and 1/2 on the stimp meter week in and week out, so nothing changes…every week is the same but in a different city.
Why has the amateur handicap remained virtually the same for decades regardless of the new fangled equipment, manicured courses, physical training, much better understood swing methods, computerized teaching aids, etc., etc? I’ll tell you why amateurs can’t score any better today than 30 years ago, or 130 years ago, or 430 years ago. I feel it is three reasons - (1) they won’t seek long-term lessons from “quality” instructors/teachers that fully “understands” and knows “how” to teach the best swing method based on each particular student’s abilities, and (2) because most people simply cannot make their bodies do what needs to be done (even when told a thousand different ways or shown), but instead use their bodies in such a way that destroys progress beyond some level, and (3) only a relatively small percentage of people have the ability (natural or learned) to swing a golf club effectively whether the club is swung using mainly centrifugal/centripetal force (swinging) or mainly muscular force (hitting). Put #1, #2 & #3 together in a mixing pot along with a heavy dose of poor instruction and using opposing swing methods…and there’s little wonder why amateurs have terrible golf swings and handicaps that remain high.
Amateur handicaps have stayed stagnant because amateurs put their cash into golf clubs and equipment and crazy training aids that do nothing to help them… instead of investing in some good quality lessons from a decent teaching pro who can monitor them…PLUS…amateur players hardly ever practice…society is enveloped us all with less time to put into our outside activities such as golf…therefore they scoop up a golf mag every now and then reading all the worthless crap/tip/retail info in the magazines that are printed just to fill up pages …and don’t get me started on the Golf Channel and half the rubbish you hear on there about the swing- again just rambling on to fill up air time. You could sit there and watch it for an entire day and hear 18 different reasons or ways we are meant to take the club away from the ball.
Working at the game by yourself or having a few lessons here or there in front of a trusted set of eyes (local pro normally) was how people did it pre computers/videos. Teaching was more feel based because you couldn’t see it on screen 3 seconds later and diagnose it. You had to feel the swing…feel the motion…watch the ball flight and check your divots and eventually we all became our own best coaches…nowadays I don’t think many players know their swing…they have to call in a swing coach weekly to give them a thought or a tip or a shot of confidence.
Now teaching pros are diagnosing swings with lines and stick figures and trying to make someone swing like Tiger Woods even though he is 30 pounds heavier and 6 inches shorter than Tiger.The ones that therefore actually do take a lesson here or there are being fed poor information, based on observation or what Leadbetter or Haney or Harmon said and not from their own experience as a player or a teacher. So second hand info is being passed on and getting warped out of proportion along the way.
Amateurs can now also film themselves and download it to a computer and then they can look at their swing and remember something Michael Breed said on the ‘golf fix’ and see they aren’t really doing what Breed says to do…so off they go with a new swing thought every 15 swings and eventually tie themselves in such a knot they are clueless at where to begin to reverse the process to become better
GolOw I hope that shows my thoughts on some of your questions…technology is here to stay unfortunately but wouldn’t it be great to stem the tide some what…because really golf just wasn’t designed to be played the way it is today. I am certain that course designers, club designers (who were mainly hackers themselves) and so on all wanted to leave their mark and they went way out of bounds along the way without a care about later repercussions which have been rippling through for a few years now but no-one has had the balls or the money to uphold the powers of wrong
I think a good compromise might be to restrict the size, weight and COR of the driver to that of the persimmon; so then if someone likes the sound of steel thats fine. I think that way more people can afford to buy clubs too as new persimmons will not be cheap.
This is another factor of change (that we have been forced to make…with absolutely no say in the matter…for the worse) because golf clubs have just outright banned steel spikes…we don’t even get to decide as they point your rear out the door as soon as they hear clip-clop on the pavement and it’s a very valid point that is very sadly overlooked by 99.9 % of the golfing world. It was an important part of the swing…just like some weight in the club was important…and just like knowing you really mishit a shot and received swing feedback was important
Not to mention another serious problem with softspikes…who has ever walked on a wooden bridge or wooded area leading to a tee box or green when it is wet from rain and gone A over T when your softspikes slip out from under you?..I did it in Aust just the other week…did the friggin splits and nearly pulled a groin muscle…no traction available and actually dangerous in certain conditions. I wonder what would happen then if someone sued them for an injury?
New postby Paul C » Wed Dec 22, 2010 12:09 pm
Picked this up from Mike Maves’ blog on the importance of metal spikes and using the ground:
‘…And so it came to pass that the love of money swept metal spikes out the door along with your golf swing. Yep that’s what I said and I meant it because the leg action and footwork of the metal spike generation is disappearing. The best way to swing a golf club, with the lower body, is now becoming a lost art. It is being replaced by a brawny top heavy action that relies on the legs to be pretty much a platform. Their use as the engine is too limited by the golfers’ lack of traction. Don’t think this for real? Well, you should talk to the tour pro’s who still wear metal or to any old timer who used to hit it good. More importantly talk to anyone who learned to swing in metal spikes. The leverage is gone or at least what leverage exists cannot be trusted to the extent that it could in the metal spike days. The bottom line is that just like in any other sport traction is very, very important in golf. When you look at the modern golf swing it becomes apparent that we are now missing a whole generation of people who knew how to use their feet. Shoot, traction was important enough that Ben Hogan went to the bother of having extra spikes installed in his shoes.’
Boy Two, you sure know how to bring a rat out from a hole. Softspikes are my biggest pain in the ass. I had a bunch of old heavy shoes with steel that I got rid of. Had I known that steel would be banned, I would have kept them all, put them in the bag and got them out when out of site from the clubhouse! Man I miss them…especially one’s that were tipped with titanium…they never wore down.
Just last year on a tee I fell completely to the ground after really going after one…Scared the shit out of me cuz I had no idea how I got there at first. Then I got to thinking that it was my connection to the ground…and the next time out that’s all I thought about- falling- and it screwed up my leg work so bad…it was almost like I was half-assing it with these wooden stilts that I kept frozen. I can deal with a lot of the changes…but this is the one issue that I have no problem getting on a soap box.
Hell at the range I go through a set of those sissy things about every two weeks or less. I’ve been looking for a used set of shoes with steel for work.
Whoever…I think it was Nicklaus…came up with the idea of banning steel should never be allowed to pick up a club again.
Are you hearing this OEM’s and Owners…get off your dead asses and fix this travesty.
There I feel a little better 
RR
Thanks for that Two. I definitely understand your views, and can’t say I disagree with anything you’ve said. However, for better or worse (we’ve all heard that phrase before) things change…and I would love to draw a line in the sand and cap a lot of things as they were decades ago.
Maybe golf is going through somewhat the same thing that car racing has been going through. If you follow racing a little - they changed bias belted tires to radials tires (muscle back vs cavity). The dropped most all of the old short tracks and built long tracks (great old short courses rendered too short). Fans don’t like it that the owners and drivers are more concerned with TV air time and earning points for sponsor advertising purposes rather than racing hard to win the race, thus a race is mostly follow-the-leader until the last 10 laps. Restrictions and rules have caused the cars to run 10% slower than they are capable of racing. And the list goes on and on for all types of racing. Nowadays it’s [far more] all about MONEY…in all professional sports. Some of these changes are good for safety and others are good for other reasons. But, many of the changes are bad for the sport and fans. You have a lot of “older” fans that would prefer to draw a line in the sand and cap things as they were back decades ago. This is true with most all sports…and other things too! I say - blame the money for a lot of the changes you (and I) don’t care for. But, you know, as well as I know, that things change. I doubt seriously that young golfers (or fans/participants of other sports) give much of a crap about the way things used to be. They didn’t experience it first-hand, they can’t relate to what older people remember and savior as being good or better compared to today. The teenagers, and 20 & 30 somethings, don’t want to go back to something their parents and grandparents thought was good or better, for whatever reason may be exclaimed…even when they are told by people they care about and admire.
How many young adults watch old cowboy and Indian movies? How many young adults own 1960s muscle cars? How many young adults buy old style furniture (even though it was far better made)? Even school students, in general, don’t care much for history…because they cannot relate to how things “used to be”. How many young people play sports using prior generation equipment? The answer is - practically zero. The golf stars of tomorrow are the high school and collegiate players. They may give you their ear (or eyes) for a little bit of [old-man] history about the way it “was” back when things (in your view) were better. But, I can assure you they will not listen (or read) for very long. It’s not in their nature. No more so than it was in your nature to hear about how good it was to drink fresh milk instead of that pasteurized stuff the grocery stores stock on their shelves nowadays.
If you and Lag, and some of the others here on ABS, could gather up all the tens of thousands of high school and collegiate golfers and tell them your views on old versus new golf equipment and why/how golf courses have changed, etc., etc. and why it would be a great idea to draw-a-line-in-the-sand and go back to the 1980s (or whatever year) and cap things - I dare say that 99% of these young golfers would not be interested. Have you ever sat down with a 20-something collegiate or tour player and tried to offer your view? I’m guessing he wasn’t very interested…or just to be nice he gave you some of his time. I think you get the point - that this “draw a line in the sand” stuff is really only favored by [some] people near your same age and older. I strongly believe the young people just think it’s old-man talk. That said, I’m guessing ABS may snag a young person here-and-there because [mainly] of Lag’s fantastic ability to communicate with people in terms of golf swing methods. But, even so, I strongly suspect that young people who might choose to spend some time with ABS will move-on to something or someone that doesn’t talk about yesteryear but instead talks about today and tomorrow. And that goes for not only how the old courses were better, but also how the old equipment was better.
GoLow
It’s obvious you don’t live in San Francisco! The youth culture here and in Berkeley is all over vintage stuff, rehabbing old homes like historic Victorians and walking down Telegraph Ave or through the Haight looking like Janis Joplin or Jimi Hendrix.
Old cars because they are simple to maintain and repair for those who drive, and there are retro movie houses nearly on every corner that bring back silver screen classics to the big screen for all to still enjoy. Homes and apartments are filled with vintage solid well constructed furniture because they know it’s a one time purchase. Many would also argue that SF is one of the most progressive city’s in the world.
It needs to be remembered that golf is a game. The equipment should match up with the playing field. Chess hasn’t changed. It’s the same game for 500 years. You wouldn’t try to play chess on a monopoly board. If bunkers are 250 off the tee, then the gear needs to match that. If bunkers are 300 off the tee then fine… match it up. But don’t bring your high tech artillery out to a classic course, shoot 66 and think for one second you are as good as a guy that did it with persimmon and blades and a balata. NOOOOOOO!
Why are golfers not getting better with modern gear? Simple… poor feedback for the brain. The brain simply can’t properly process the negative information and make the appropriate changes. It’s like shooting novicaine into your arm so you can’t feel a thing, then accidentally resting your arm on a hot stove top. Goodbye arm… goodbye golf swing.
I encourage students here to play gear that will be their greatest teacher. Give them the best possible feedback, so they can improve as quickly as possible. The second reason is so that they can enjoy a proper golf course for how it was intended. There is a quality there to be discovered or rediscovered. And then finally, to feel and experience the sound and aesthetic of a well struck shot off a blade or a persimmon.
If you don’t think good golf can be played with persimmon or blades. Come here and I will show you. Bring your wallet too, or even a high limit ATM card will work.
The golf swings are so bad now, even on tour, I would have no fear of playing anyone other than just a handful of guys given apple to apples with classic gear. Especially since I recently figured out how to putt. I can tell you for sure, my golf swing would not be in the condition it is in now had I been playing sloppy modern lightweight gear.
As far as golf courses… sure, it’s a matter of taste… but I feel a golf course that requires a player to hit drives straight, and work around fairway bunkers… not over them… and small greens that require precision iron play, and surfaces that are less than perfect, running through a natural terrain that is NOT a housing development, and requires the player to hit 3 or 4 long iron shots into 4 pars as well as mid and short irons, with 3 shot five pars offering very risky “go for it” options makes for the most interesting golf. For those that don’t understand this? well what can I say, some people are not going to understand a proper glass of wine or Wes Montgomery’s guitar tone. But as you learn, and study golf both past and present, and learn about the swing, and history of the game, then these ideas I put forth will come to light and make more sense. There are a lot of new players to the game, and I know if I was a chess fanatic, I would probably seek out older players who had won big events and try to learn what they learned over the years… and this is really what Bradley and I are offering here.
I enjoy the debates, and I am still hoping to find a good logical argument for the virtues of technology. To understand why golf has not fractioned off (YET) like other sports ( I do believe it will at some point) and why other organizations like baseball, cricket and have unheld their traditions much better than golf has.
I am aware that good golf can be played with persimmon or blades. I played them before you did.
OK, look. You guys gotta get on a course somewhere and just duel it out; if it’s somewhere in California within a half day’s drive of Fresno, I want to see it. Better yet, get yourselves over to Las Vegas for the TRGA tournament next month.
1teebox
Go TRGA!!!
How many people play in the annual tournament?
As many as sign up… I think we should have about 50 this year. We get some good players.
That’s a great post and spot on the money.