Rhythm is a Hacker

If hips rotate faster than hands,
I will send the ball to the right pushing the shot.
If hands swing down faster than hips,
I will send the ball to the left producing a pull shot.

It is the swing tempo that is to blame,
Why am I busy checking my grip, spine angle and stance?
Swing rhythm is a real hacker,
It creeps in whilst I am golfing tired and asleep.

Learning from Pain

I love practicing in the winter season. Love it because the driving range that I go to provides discount on balls. For the regular "Eagle" size basket, I could get "Albatross" size during the winter season for the same amount of money.

That is a whoopy 250 balls at one shot. For a weekend golfer like me, this is a lot of practice balls. If I pre-swing averagely one swing per ball, I will easily swing 500 times during that practicing period. Swinging these many times only lead me to one result: Extreme exhaustion and muscle pain all over.

Muscle pain has become a routine that I live by on most weekends. Depending on what I am working on, I will get pain from different areas. Of course, this includes pain in areas that is not suppose to be but caused by improper golf swings. I have learned to notice that it is such a good indicator to inform myself if I have done something correctly intended or something wrong unconsciously. For instance, if I am working on spine angle for the first time, I will feel tremendous pain at the lower back afterwards. If I am working on the weight transfer, I will feel pain from the knee areas.

After some time of pain torturing every week, I start questioning what is the point of punishing myself with consistent pain and no immediate result? I was asking this until I read Tiger's thoughts in Golf Digest today: "My whole idea is I will outwork you, so that in the end, I will be better than you." It is then I get to realize the truth behind "No Pain, No Gain." I need to out-pain myself, so in the end, I will be better than myself yesterday.

This is really a painful lesson, literally.

Struggling Waist

"I had paid attention to everything that I knew, I was swinging fine and hitting good shots, what is going on now?!" Golf likes to throws puzzle at me from time to time, out of the blue.

I was swinging and hitting ball badly, disappointed and disturbed. All a sudden a sensation of muscle spasms from lower back snapped me. On other days, I would have not noticed what the difference was, but on that particular moment, doing the painful practice repeatedly had put a lot of strain on the muscle group and it alerted me. I realized then I had a problem of stretching the lower back muscle properly. Even though I cautiously trying to maintain my spine angle and hips rotation, a discomfort lower back muscles had forced me to think I was doing the right movements which were actually improper.

Golf is interesting; it helps me to understand a lot about body movements which I never knew before. What I noticed then was that like any rubber bands, stored energy in muscle group is lost when it is over stretched. How did I know I sprain too much on the lower back muscle? I tried a simple torso rotation; I could not do it smoothly without consciously controlling my upper shoulder turns. This consciousness confused the swing rhythm of my body and hand synchronization. As a result I was not able to maintain a constant spine angle, even though I thought I did and rotated clumsily even though I thought I didn’t.

I have heard over stretching limbs and over swinging turns, perhaps I should add this new vocabulary of over stretching lower back to my little-white-ball’s dictionary.

Putting Speed

The interesting thing in golfing is the shorter the club length goes, the more it demands sensitivity in the golfer’s touch. When it comes to putting, sensitivity of the speed is the ultimate factor.

Just the other day, all the putts that I tried to make, I continuously lipping them out of the hole, the ball just refuse to drop in. It followed the right path, the right line, but it would circle around the edge of the 3 inches hole and roll out in the direction where I least desired it to go. I figure it did not drop into the hole for two reasons: 1. The putt was not accurate enough and the ball touched the edge a bit too much. 2. I had introduced too much force on the ball and the speed did not dissipated when it reached the hole.

If the ball had carried just enough speed when it reached the hole, it would have dropped into the hole as gravity would pull it down.

“Never up, never in” is always a common slogan in putting, yet to satisfy this, the first condition has to met where it has to be accurate enough. Here is the catch, if the ball carries enough speed to pass the hole as “Never Up” suggested, the path will not be right as it might has less break along the line because speed overcomes gravity. Thus, condition 1 will not be satisfied where it needs accuracy. If condition 1 is not satisfied, then “Never Up, Never In” will not be true because there is no chance for the ball to get into the hole at all when the path is off and more than enough “speed” is introduced.

I say to successful read a putt, first determine the speed, and then read the break. Only when the speed is right, only then the path could be accurate.

Within myself

"I want it now or I am going to freak out" has always been my impatient attitude on the course. Unfortunately this is never natural to the game of golf. When I carried such thought to the course, usually I was going to choose the wrong club and performed a swing that spread wider than my posture allowed.

To maximize the distance, I have to apply the maximum strength under the synchronized tempo but swing within myself. To achieve better accuracy, I have to exert a compact swing but swing within myself.

My posture, when ready, is within my two feet, with weight balance transfering from one side to the other during the downswing. Whenever I demand a result impatiently, I am going to throw myself off and the result is as wild as my imagination can leads to.

Swing within myself with maximized effort is the most contradictive logic I could think of. Though like in daily life, I think it is what golf is about.

Golf Scoring

Remember that when I was still a student, I always wonder how some of my fellow classmates scored so well in examinations. When the same people were asked to do a simple project, they were as good as Dumb and Dumber. For the average norms, some people just know how to be good enough to score well in examinations. It is a skill I never master; it is a talent I never comprehend. I wonder if it is the same in scoring in golf….

The objective of golf is simple, hit a ball with a flat head stick and try to roll this ball to the 3-inches-hole couple hundred yards away in least strokes applied. There are many ways to achieve this. Yet to score low, the critical key is to keep the ball in play. Just the other day I played with an experience golfer, he did not hit far and he did not have spectacular shots, not even a good swing and rhythm, but all shots are well managed and he eventually scored lower than me. The truth is, he knows how to score.

As a student, unless I know the subject really well, I will not score well in the examination. If I just know well enough on the subject and I do not have the skill and talent to identify and learn the topics which will be in examinations, I am going to suffer badly. As a golfer, unless I know the swing and master how to apply it consistently, I will not play well in a round of golf. If I just know well enough and cannot consistently carry out the swing sequences, I will be better off just keeping the ball in play, if my ultimate goal is to obtain a lower score.

Wine Unloading Tempo

Two men were unloading boxes of wine bottles from a truck. One man was inside the truck, picking them and loading them onto a raised wheel-ramp where the boxes would slide down to the end of the truck. The second man picked them up and stacked them onto a trolley before they were carried into the store.

The pair worked in synchronized rhythm and the boxes were unloaded efficiently. First man placed box onto the ramp, box slide downward, second man caught it, turned around and stacked it up. It was done in a fast coordinated tempo.
There was this one box, while the trolley was full, second man was busy securing the boxes; the first man did not notice and continued putting it on the ramp. The box slide down, to the end of the truck and straight to the ground. Box cracked and bottles shattered.

This is what happens when tempo is off. If the first man is the lower body and second man is the upper body, or the first man is the torso and the second man is the hands, when one is done faster or slower than the other, bottles shatter.

Both men can work in fast or slow pace, it is the synchronization that matters to a smooth tempo.

First read about this from Golf magazine, found it inspiring. Second time watched it on Golf Channels where Nick Bradley himself promoted his book and idea. Found that he introduced the very critical concepts in modern golf swing, could be extremely beneficial.

Worth the attention spent, I think.

Weight Transfer

I learned the mechanics, I learned the swing path, stance, wrist hinging, shoulders turn, knee bending, spine angle, hips initiation. I learned the rhythm, swing weighting, course managing, lie reading.... Among all these, somehow I have forgotten to learn and figure out the proper weight transfer.

Ohh, weight transfer doesn't come in naturally in golf swings, at least not for me. Without the sequential progress in transferring weight, all the things mentioned above could be as good as rubbish.

Weight transfer is about first shifting body mass from center to right in backswing and than from right to left in downswing and follow through. Practically, this mass is within the body and it relies on me to move this static mass by stressing on different muscle group both right and left sides. However, as interesting as it sounds, I need to perform this "silent" motion through a stable hip. While I feel the body mass is being moved from one side to the other, I should not have acted as I have moved from one side to the other if viewed externally. This is definitely not easy, especially executing this on a driver where swing speed determines distance. My thighs have to be strong enough to support the repetitive movement of this silent motion but my hips have to be stable.

I have to create a motion which does not move, this is as easy as it gets.

To top off the easiness on weight transferring, all this motion needs to be completed in a particular timing of swing or it will be out of rhythm, which will result a bad outcome that is worst enough for me to break the shaft.

All this time, I have taken this silent motion for granted. Yet, I can assure you that 8 out of 10 weekend golfers carry the same mistake as I do but they think that they know this by heart. I say weight transfer did not receive the attention that it should be receiving, for one it is hard to describe, for second it is not an interesting topic. Next time if you see me standing with my feet apart at shoulder width, doing this weird action of hips shifting, don’t laugh, I am doing my weight transfer practice.

Shanking

There are quite a few shots shaping that a golfer can produce. For a high handicapper, among these, many are unintended results.

One of these unintended shots is topping the ball. Topping the ball usually produces a flight that is low but straight, it could loose distance but the damage is usually not severe.

Another type of undesired ball shaping is slicing or hooking. Slice being the most frustrating. Slicing shot is caused by hands extended too forward in front and pulled in to the side. Usually this is done when distance is needed thus more force is introduced, yet it is producing unintended result that goes sideway, causing extreme frustration.

The most severe and unforgiving “shots shaping” is shanking. It lost distance and gained unneeded distance instead, totally missed target and opportunity wasted. Most importantly, it invited tons of embarrassment to the golfer. Shanking is also addictive, it arrived when you are least prepared and it will stick around till you give up golfing. If the root cause of shanking is not determined, it could appear occasionary and embarrassed the hell out of the golfer.

Imagine that when the shanker is standing at the tee box, focusing to launch the ball, pointed the shoulder to the target, aligned the hips, aimed the club face, repeated the routine, waggled the butt, playing partners waiting and there he swung, the ball flew sideway and almost hit the playing partner who is standing in front by 2 feet! When that happened, distance lost, stroke lost, ball lost and accompanied by lot of uneasiness. Confidence is shaken, anxiousness is raised.

Eliminate shanking should be the first priority; It is the most useless “shot shaping” a golfer could have.