From the Range to the Course

One of the most baffling and frustrating stages in improvement is when a player can produce good contact and ball flight during practice, but can't get the same results on the course. The obvious problem is that when we're practing, there's no consequence for poor shots. That leads to making free, relaxed swings on the range because we really don't care if we miss our target.

Fast forward to the first tee, where there's not only obstacles such as trees, water, out of bounds, ruthless playing partners and highly critical onlookers. At that point, the smooth swing on the range is replaced with tension, fear, anxiety and the desire to make the ball to go toward the target. Not a chance.

What do we do? Well, we need to 1) Play more like we practice, and 2) practice more like we play. In order to play like we practice, the biggest element is to trust your body to do what you've trained it to do in practice. You can't play good golf and produce good shots if you're worried about the mechanics of your swing. The mentality of hitting good shots on the course is that you commit to making a good swing, and let the ball go wherever it wants to go. It will take some practice and discipline, but as Rotella puts it, "we gain control of the golf ball by giving up trying to control (guide) it." There's no limit to the number of good shots one can hit when we don't care where the ball will go. Ultimately, there's only two results from any shot: it goes to the target, or it doesn't. Either way, you're still a decent, worthwhile member of the human race (assuming you were prior to the round).

To the second point, practicing more like we play starts with the realization that there are two types of practice: practice for technique, where we work on mechanics, and competitive practice, where we work on trust. I believe strongly that trust begins with a consistent shot routine. When you approach shots the same way every time, it starts to produce a comfort zone, where we know what to do when it's our turn to play. Other than tour players, how often do you see someone going through their entire routine on the range? Not often. Spend some time not only defining your routine, then repeating it on the range. By the way, a shot routine doesn't need to be something that takes five minutes! It just needs to be simple, and repetitive.

When practicing in this mode, not only should you pick a target, but also define what is an acceptable miss, and imagining obstacles right, left, short or long. You also want to change targets and distances so you're not hitting the same club on each shot. Try playing a practice round for a specific course on the range, hitting the same clubs and shots that you'll hit during a round.

For more advanced players, try the "75% / 10%" practice. That means, for example, from 150 yards, you look for 75% of your shots to fall within a margin of 10% or less from the hole. That gives you a 15 yard circle that defines a succesful shot.

Bottom line is that you can get your swing to the course, but it will require changing both the way you practice, and your mindset when you play.

Finally, pay attention to your warm-up session before a round. If you hit 15 fades in a row with a driver, there's no reason to expect to hit a nice draw on the course (I believe that is the working definition of insanity). Hit the shot you know you can hit, not the one that you think you should be able to hit, or what Tiger would hit (Thanks Dr. Bob).

Hit it, find it, hit it again.

Club fitting is too broad a topic to be covered adequately in one article, especially one that is supposed to be entertaining and likely read by people with as short or shorter an attention span than the author. That said, I’ll try to cover a few of the more salient issues as they relate to different types of golfers. Please note that the information below is the opinion of said author, and may not accurately reflect fitting concepts endorsed by GolfTEC, equipment suppliers, bloviating club geeks, or people who read too many magazines.

CF (I’m already tired of typing that out, so I’ll abbreviate it) is largely misunderstood, so let’s define what it is. I like to think of CF as simply helping the client get what is best for their game. If I have a client interested in new equipment, the CF process starts with an assessment of their ability level, shot shape, dreaded miss, and desired improvement. Equipment is produced by most suppliers that range from ultra game improvement clubs on one end of the spectrum to muscle back blades that should only be played by .00001 of the golfing population (probably doesn’t include you or me).

As it pertains to beginners, CF is as simple as game improvement clubs that will help a) get the ball up in the air, b) have a very large effective hitting area, and c) help square the club at impact. In the case of an abnormally short or tall beginner, fitting for length is an issue. Shaft flex is a simple function of clubhead speed, which is generally low. Beyond that, we need to get the grip size correct, and not worry about lie angle as that requires a repeating swing. I like to get this player into a relatively cheap set as they will either improve and need new clubs, or discover how brutally frustrating the game is and runaway screaming.

With more experienced players, it’s important to understand where their current set is on the playability spectrum, and where the new clubs should fall. It is important to fit a client with what they need, but not necessarily what they want. I’ve heard many people tell me that they want “blades” because they want to be purists and learn to hit the ball properly. These are the people that are probably using a slide rule or abacus for math problems, and say “if it was good enough for Hogan, its’ good enough for me”. Golf is hard, and golfers should take any advantage you can get. If you’re one of the lucky ones (or GolfTEC clients!) where your swing advances beyond your equipment, then upgrade at that time.

With intermediate players, once the proper clubs are selected, fitting is a bit more involved, mainly as to lie angle and length. Again, shaft flex is pretty simple, being a function of swing speed and tempo. With these players, the fitter should be making both static and dynamic measurements, and a key decision is to ascertain if you’re fitting a client for where they are at or where they’ll be with their game in the future.

Single digit to scratch golfers are easily the most demanding for their fitting needs, and will likely put the CFer through their paces. You better know what you’re doing with these guys, because you can’t guess and you can’t be wrong. True blades are for players that hit most every shot on the sweetspot, and have the ability (not simply desire) to manipulate ball flight. If a player doesn’t move the ball around much, they can benefit more from perimeter weighting, and don’t need blades.

Ultra game improvement clubs are generally designed to help with mis-hits toward the toe, while blades are more geared toward compensating for shots in the heel. This concept is not largely understood, and goes for drivers as well.

As to fitting drivers, a launch monitor is a necessity to measure ball speed, launch angle and spin to identify the club that produces optimal launch. The most ignored variable in driver fitting is length. Drivers are standard at 45 to 46 inches in length, and keep getting longer, but the funny thing is that the average driver length on Tour is 44.25 inches. I’ve got junior and women golfers that are under 5’6” that have drivers longer than mine. They don’t have a swing problem, they have a geometry problem. That, however is fodder for another blog down the road.

The above is a rather simplistic explanation and view of CF. You can get much more technical and complex, investigating intricacies of flex point, MOI, CG, and variable weighting, but personally when I do that my eyes roll back in my head and I pass out. Leave those discussions to the bloviating club geeks.

Fairways and Greens.

President's Cup Notes

The President's Cup has wrapped up, and first, I'm just happy that Obama didn't win that, too. I let two cars into traffic last week, and found out I was nominated for a Nobel Prize! Thought the bar might be higher than that (after all, I'm not George Bush, either).

While the President's Cup was interesting, for me there's just no way this will ever catch up to the Ryder Cup, unless of course the international team starts behaving more, well, European. For this event to be as compelling as the Ryder Cup, the U.S. would have to lose on home soil, and the opposition will have to be much less likable. Losing in Australia in two years probably won't make a big difference with fans here in America (didn't that happen a few years ago?), but losing in our own backyard would be tragic.

On the other side, if their side had some characters that we could dislike more, that would help boost the matches. Greg Norman, on top of having issues in his new marriage, evidently did something bad to his right arm (related?), Yang is just so happy, Adam Scott and Camilo Villegas are sooo cute and are playing horribly, Tim Clark is the little engine that could. How can you root against that bunch? It's like the Bad News Bears go golfing.

Putting Rory Sabbatini on their squad wouldn't have changed the outcome, but with how unlikable he is, no doubt interest would have gone up.

As to the golf, our top three (Woods, Mickelson, Stricker) were bullet proof, Johnson and Glover weak, and the rest of the team very good. The big surprise from their team was no surprise: Tim Clark. Notice how he's always hanging around in big events? He'll win soon over here.

As predicted, Tiger got another shot at Yang, and the world started turning the right direction again. Got the feeling Yang is finally aware of how unusual his win was in August.

Stay warm!