One thing that drives me crazy!

One thing that drives me crazy!

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One thing that drives me crazy is this comment: “If Moe was so good, why didn’t he play on the PGA Tour?” Another form of this question is this: “If the Single Plane golf swing is so good, why isn’t there more tour players on tour using it?”.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the question. As a matter of fact, I myself probably asked the question 20 years ago when I first heard of Moe (Although I doubt it).

There are a few things about this question that have me flummoxed.

First, the question implies that all that there is to play the game of golf, and winning on the PGA Tour is mostly about ball-striking. This is far from the truth. As a matter of fact, a friend of mine made me laugh this week when, after caddying for a tour player in the recent Orlando PGA event, said “You know that commercial that says ‘these guys are good’. The fact of the matter is that when it comes to ball-striking ‘These guys (PGA players) are NOT that good’”.

My friend is right. The PGA tour players are, at best, adequate ball-strikers.  And good players know this. There is so much to play a good round such as chipping, putting, course management, decision making, caddies, good and bad breaks….  The list goes on and on.  Ball-striking is just a piece of the puzzle.

The second frustrating part of this question is that, the person asking the question is usually 10,000 hours away from being a skilled golfer. As a matter of fact, the skilled golfers I know don’t often question Moe’s ball-striking ability because skilled golfers understand the importance of ball-striking as it relates to playing the game. Is an important part but not the total determinant of playing great rounds. Heck, Moe even knew this and started every clinic by talking about how important the wedges are.

If you want to truly understand how ball-striking helps you become a better golfer, the answer lies what great ball-striking actually does for your game – one word – Consistency.

Great golf is played because, because of great ball-striking (or adequate in the case of the PGA Tour), only if you are able to predict outcomes. For example, things such as where your drives will likely end up, or how far you hit a 5 iron or 8 iron no longer leave you guessing about whether you can get over a water hazard or bunker. Furthermore, adequate ball-striking can allow you to manage your game and strategize how you play certain shots or holes.

Without predictable skills in ball-striking, there is no real way to develop consistency in your scoring. One day you will play a golf course where driving accuracy is not a premium and you might score well due to the fact that all of your off-line drives end up in bounds with clear approaches to the greens where, on a difficult course, you would have found yourself penalized and replaying shots from the tee. I recall one student in particular who kept statistics on all of his rounds such as Fairways hit (FW), Greens in Regulation (GIR) and Putts (P). One statistic he tracked was what he called BUH – for “blow-up-holes”. Not a regular statistic on the PGA tour, but maybe it should be. My students BUH statistic was related to having an explosion and making a triple-bogey or worse on a hole.

Further investigation, however, showed that his BUH’s were mostly due to bad drives almost 95% of the time. What does this tell us? Those statistics are great if you look at them correctly and that scores, as in this student’s situation, were reflected in his ball-striking ability particular to his driver. This was definitely a case of ball-striking However, often students will blame their ball-striking when statistics show that their putting is the problem.

In one situation, after working with a student for almost 6 months and huge ball-striking improvements, he was still complaining about high scores. I offered to play around and observe the real problem. After the front 9, it was obvious that after working for months on his swing, he had neglected his short game – scoring 45 with four 3-putts and two 4-putts! I decided on the back-nine to let the student hit the shots and I would play against him, from his shots, from within 100 yards.  With my rusty short game, playing from my students’ shots, I scored 36, even par. My student shot 43. I beat him by 7 shots! A perfect example of adequate ball-striking is all you really need to play good golf.  Consistency and a having a short game are the main factors.

Furthermore, you can’t shoot 59 three times or score 61 as many times as Moe did without both, ball-striking, short-game AND putting. Nor can you win as many tournaments as Moe did without more than just ball-striking skills.

One writer friend of mine compared most golfers challenging of Moe’s swing similar to staying in a burning house because it might be raining outside. You will only reap the benefits of Moe’s swing, and the consistency it can bring, if you step out of your comfort zone and get wet. Then again, there was no better way to understand how great Moe was and why so many people considered him the greatest golfer the world never knew. Of course I understand it because I knew Moe and maybe, more importantly, was able to do what was more convincing that anything – watch him hit balls.

So for those of you who might still doubt Moe’s Single Plane Swing – I hope you at some point will come to find the true benefits of an easier swing. Until then stay dry and call 911.

Pre-Round Preparation – Be ready To Play

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By Dr. Ron Cruickshank, Golf Mind Coach & GGA Director, Canada

Technique: Get Your Attitude Right Before You Get To the Course

Several years ago I was driving south on Hwy 220 on my way to the Greater Greensboro Open (GGO) at Forest Oaks C.C. It was a new highway then, four-lane with a 65 mph speed limit. I came up quickly behind what I recognized as one of the PGA Tour Courtesy Cars and I slowed down to see the driver.

As I casually passed the car I recognized Mark Calcavecchia at the wheel. He was doing about 55 MPH and leaned way back in the seat, looking like he was half asleep. As I passed I looked to the right and briefly caught his eye. He gave me a friendly nod with wide-open forthcoming eyes and then he sank even lower in his seat. Wow, did he look relaxed.

As I reflected on this I remember thinking he was going to arrive at the course in a great state of mind. He was ambling to the course, not rushing. There is a lesson there for all of us: pay attention to our pre-round preparation and arrive at the course in an optimized mental-physical-emotional state. Don’t defeat yourself before you take the first swing.

Attitude Generalization

An attitude is one’s feeling or emotion toward a fact or state. If we have several negatives experiences on top of another (rushing late from the office, the traffic is slow, we catch a few red lights, a driver pulls out in front of us) we can begin to ‘stack’ these and they become generalized as a state of anxiety, stress, pressure or anger. You find yourself in a bad mood suddenly and don’t know why. A friend asks you how you “are” and you respond ‘I’m having a bad day’.  It is often because you’ve stacked up a series of little things and generalized them into a negative emotional state.

In my experience, I’ve found rushing and the lack of a pre-round preparation routine can set the conditions in support of having a bad day on the golf course.

For most of us, golf is not our profession. It is our passionate hobby and we look forward to getting out on the golf course or to the practice tee as often as possible. Yet still, we have to fit the game into our busy work schedules and lives. This reality often leaves us rushing to the course after a meeting or when our weekend list of chores is completed. We drive to the course at the last minute, often speeding and worried about making our tee time, fretting because we already know we won’t have time to hit any balls and get warmed up. In other words, we are in a stressed condition before we even start playing.

How would you feel if your doctor arrived in this condition prior to operating on you or a loved one? Or your lawyer rushes in at the last minute all flustered before sitting down to a sensitive negotiation?  In both cases you would tell them to take a few deep breaths and calm down. Well, while a game of golf doesn’t have the potential import of these situations, why not give ourselves the best opportunity to play the best we are capable of.  It starts with intention and consciousness.

Pre-Round Preparation Techniques: Arrive Optimized

  1. On your calendar, mark your start time well in advance of before it actually isand then treats that as real. Rushing always produces stress, limit the stress.
  2. Startyour preparation on your drive to the course. Listen to some soothing music. Imagine yourself hitting the ball solidly all day with nice See your putts going in. Breathe and appreciate the day. When you pull into the parking lot, remember this is about having fun playing a game you love. Ahhhhhhhh!.
  3. If you know the course, play it in your mind, see yourself doing well on each hole.
  4. If you don’t know the course, imagine hitting it solidly off the first tee and making every putt you look at.  Imagine success.
  5. When you arrive at the course have a pattern of preparationthat works for you.  Do the same thing each time. Know how long it takes. It could look like:  check your equipment, stretch, hit some putts and see how fast the greens are, hit a few balls and get in a nice tempo, back to the practice green and hit a few putts to store the feeling of the greens speed just before you tee off. Move at your normal pace.
  6. Get to the 1sttee with a couple of minutes to spare.

Having a good pre-round preparation routine will not give you a great swing. What it will do is ensure you don’t defeat yourself before you start. Remember, improving your mental game means to optimize your mental/emotional and physical condition in support of playing the best golf you are capable of. Give yourself a chance.

Why Have a Purpose When You Practice?

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Technique: Be ‘On Purpose’ To Improve Intelligently

At the gym the other day I found myself at a locker next to a middle-aged guy in the dressing room. He was droning to his friends about how he came to the gym regularly but never saw good results: he chalked it up to advertising hype, age, genetics, diet and a busy schedule.  Full of excuses, he trooped off to the gym with his buddies.

55 minutes later, as I finished my workout, I took the time to observe him. You see, I love going to the gym, but I am constantly amazed when I see people wandering around aimlessly like sheep looking for fresh grass. He was picking up a dumbbell here and pumping out a few reps and then wandering over and chatting with a friend, then pumping a few reps out on the bench press. No routine, no systemized sets or reps, no apparent purpose or outcome to his workout.

Sound familiar? How many times have we found ourselves at the driving range or on the putting green aimlessly hitting shots with no sense of purpose, defined here as the lack of any plan or specific objective when engaged in an activity? Yet still we feel dissatisfied because we aren’t getting better? This is self-defeating and needs to stop now!

Would you be offended if a friend told you that you ran your life without purpose, that by definition you were “purposeless”? Most likely you would be, because you reject the idea that you are just wandering around. However, the reality is that this concept reflects how most people go about playing the game. Remember that old adage: If you don’t change, you will keep getting the same results. Damn, there’s a concept!

Begin to do something different now. To start, get specific with the outcome. As opposed to going on to the putting green and just randomly hitting a bunch of balls in the direction of the hole, think about what you want to accomplish. For example, today, I want to work on left to right putts from the 20 foot range and make sure I am swinging the putter on the right path to the point of break.

Secondly, use your training aids to ensure you are practicing the right technique and getting the right feedback. It takes a bit more effort, but the energy output pays you back with solid data about your performance. It only takes a minute to set up the putting strings or pull the Eye-Line device out of the trunk and take it to the green.

Third. Keep a journal about your progress and track your progress and results from each training session. The act of writing about your results in your journal forces you to become analytical and translate your feelings into left-brain terms that will help you recall them as needed. The technical term to describe this process of translating feeling to thought and vice versa is called modality synaesthesia.

In golf, as with most sports, we generally think of taking a concept and translating it to feel.  However, what should you do once you acquire the feeling and you want to be able to reproduce that feeling with consistency? Our experience is that you want to store that feeling in as many ways as possible. Take pictures, write it down, and put it in your own words. The importance is that you have a process for being able to recall and repeat the movement on demand.

Remember, improvement and growth in your game come incrementally based on high-level distinctions you make. Most of these improvement distinctions will come as a result of practice. So be ‘on purpose’ with every practice session and improve with intelligence.

Consistency is the Main Factor – Not Distance

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Recently, Tim and I visited the Titleist Performance Center in Carlsbad California. I consider the Titleist Performance center the “Mecca” of golf. It is a golf performance dream where you can get fitted for Irons, Drivers, Fairway Woods and Wedges. The fitting/practice area extends approximately 50 acres with expansive lush practice fairways and practice greens. Once side of the facility is dedicated to consumer testing while the other part of the facility is for the tour players. Inside the building, you fill find infrared and doppler radar systems to analyze golf swings and ball flight spin rates. Literally, if you are a golfer, you will want to visit the Titleist center at some point.

Tim and I made the visit so that we could get completely outfitted with the latest Titleist technology. In the process, I learned about spin rates, launch angles, smash factors and all of the factors that make the ball fly long and straight. And thanks to Cliff Walzak, I learned what makes a good player. Of course, we spent all day with him and he told stories of various tour players, club head speeds and ball striking exploits. But it wasn’t his stories of famous players that I found the most fascinating but his experiences and research on how he can “predict” who will be a good player.

Cliff sees hundreds of aspiring players who travel from around the world to have their swings tested, analyzed and club fit. To do this, he uses a Trackman Doppler radar system which tracks ball speed, spin and flight to determine and optimize perfect ball flight. What Cliff said amazed me. It wasn’t how far a player hit the ball that really determined whether he could play at a high level. What Cliff said determined “potential” and “high performance” attributes was the consistency of ball speed. Let me explain.

Ball speed is a function of club-head speed and compression of the golf ball. What Cliff has noticed throughout the years, is that great players, when striking all of their clubs, produce consistent ball speeds. For example, when hitting a driver, good players ball speeds will range from 150 to 170 miles per hour. But what makes them great players is that they consistently produce these ball speeds on every swing. In my case, I consistently produced approximately 151 mph ball speed while Tim was approximately 160mph. The key was our consistency.

In other words, average to poor players do not produce consistent ball speeds which causes them to produce inconsistent ball flight distances – thus unpredictable yardages. The bottom line is that great players have learned to get the club to impact consistently – with consistent speeds. It just makes sense when you think of it that way.

I hate to rub salt into the wound, however, this is exactly what the Single Plane Solution is all about. When I produced the SPS video, it was really all about impact and the most efficient way to get there. You must be able to repeat impact – consistently – to be a great player. There really is no other goal if you are working on your swing.

Now to do this, you must (obviously) swing the club on plane. It makes achieving impact much easier and yes, more consistent. This is the purpose of swing plane – to get to impact – and the easiest way to do this is the way Moe did it where he started at the same place he impacted. It’s all starting to come together now – isn’t it?

Needless to say, the Titleist Performance Center was a great experience – it opened my eyes to a new dimension to understanding great golf shots. I saw my golf shots being tracked by a doppler radar. Moe would have loved to see that!

Can You Handle Being Better? Breaking Through Your Performance Set Point

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Technique: Change Your Performance Set Point

Mike was on his way to his first round ever below 80 as he came on the 18th hole. He was playing with his son in a fun weekend around, no money was on the line and he was relaxed and enjoying himself. He hit his drive in the fairway and then proceeds to pull his 5 iron shot into the bunker, hits a moderate explosion shot to within 10 feet and then 3 putts for a nice round 81.

“Foiled again”, he comments to his son with resignation as they walk off the green. “No matter what, I just never seem to break 80.”

“Ah, you were just outside your comfort zone Dad”, his son says sagely with a friendly hand on his shoulder. His Dad shook his head wryly as he nodded in assent.

The human body is always seeking to achieve balance or a state of equilibrium. This phenomenon is called homeostasis and it describes the many processes our body uses to help us survive by establishing set points. For example, this is what keeps our temperature balanced by causing shivering or sweating, sets our metabolism, and dozens of other chemical and hormonal reactions all designed to keep us on an even keel.

The body seems to like this predictability. The example we are all familiar with is how our metabolism will set itself to burn so many calories a day based on normal demands. It is amazingly accurate and resistant to change, as anyone trying to lose weight (or gain weight) has found out.

You must do something different (like reduce calories and exercise) to cause a shifting of your metabolism. The body and mind need a clear message that you want something different from it, because in its attempt to help you survive the body will keep giving you what you have programmed it to deliver.

In his groundbreaking book, Authentic Happiness, Martin Seligman, Ph.D., describes how we even have a happiness set point. He relates numerous studies that have demonstrated that even after suffering major life trauma (loss of a loved one, being paralyzed) that within 18 months most people report returning to a similar level of happiness they had experienced prior to the event. These astonishing findings demonstrate how our mind and body are deeply programmed to maintain its homeostatic state. These are core mechanisms attached to survival, and they resist long-term change. It is not a trivial challenge to change these set points.

It is my contention that we experience the same phenomena relative to our performance in a sport. We establish a Performance Set Point that governs our results, always in support of keeping our performance within a specific range.

One of my favorite examples of this is the famous miler Dr. Roger Bannister, who broke the sub-four-minute mile on May 6th, 1954. Runners had sought to break this barrier for decades, with a common belief that it was not possible. Dozens had run close, but no one was able to accomplish this milestone until Bannister broke through. Of great interest is that once he accomplished the ‘impossible’, many others began to accomplish this standard also. In fact, Bannister’s record was broken just 54 days after he set it, and now sub-four minute miles are not considered unusual.

An important question to ask is: What made this shifting of standard possible? In researching this question I ran across a telling quote from Bannister. After running a 4:03.6 in May of 1953, Bannister said. “This race made me realize that the four-minute mile was not out of reach. “Twelve months later he set the world record and continued to run sub-four minute miles for the rest of his running career.

What Bannister was speaking of in this quote was a major shift in his belief system. He now saw the sub-four minute mile as POSSIBLE, where before he hadn’t. This new belief caused him to change his training (he added intervals) and work specifically towards accomplishing this new attainable goal.

The lesson for all of us that are stuck shooting the same scores week after week is that change is POSSIBLE if we believe it is. Start with that shift in your thinking!

A Formula for breaking out of your own Performance Set Point:

  1. Adopt a new empowering belief that a change in your results is possible. Act congruently as if this is true. Your body doesn’t know you are pretending. Write this in your journal, see it in your mind, feel how good it will be.
  2. Change what you are doing. Train with knowledge and purpose. Set attainable goals, use metrics for feedback, get a coach, start videoing your swings and using the feedback to make changes.
  3. Tell everyone you are getting better. Act as if it’s true and watch your mind/body act in accordance with your desires.

The process for getting an improved swing and better game is not a secret. It is achievable. We see it every day when our students apply themselves.  Make purposeful changes in your beliefs and training program and watch the transformation happen. How surprised will you be when your handicap lowers and your game moves up a notch?

Can you handle being better?

Managing Frustration When Making Changes

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Whenever we endeavor to make a change in our golf swing an immediate by-product for most people is frustration. As we begin to consciously focus on “what” we are doing performance suffers because we have to think our way through things. Imagine trying to take a short walk if you were required to think about each step. “Lift your right foot up and propel forward, land on the heel of your foot and begin to rock forward onto the instep….” Yikes, that would really slow down a walk wouldn’t it? Of course it would, because so much of what we do is stored at the level of unconscious mind, such that you don’t have to be aware of it in order to do it.

Learning is a process of making small distinctions, practicing via repetition and then gradually getting the behavior mapped in your mind/body. Eventually, you generalize the behavior, allowing you to think about further distinctions and put your attention to other things. Think about how complex the act of driving is. You actually make between 48-52 minor adjustments per mile if you are driving on a highway. Yet, you can read billboards, talk to others, listen to music and talk on the cell phone at the same time. It is because you have automated the behavior (generalized it), and now have conscious mind space available to pay attention to other things.

When you decide to make a change you bring the activity into your conscious mind and hence performance suffers in almost all cases. This invariably produces frustration and I think one of the reasons people give up making changes as they don’t have an effective strategy for handling frustration. The source of your frustration is generally not living up to your own internal standards for acquiring new things quickly.

Suggestion: When you decide to make a change start with a master program in your mind. That program should include a clear understanding of “why” you want to make a change and a commitment to give yourself an appropriate amount of time to integrate the change.

Understanding “why” is related to your motivation. Why is it important to you to make a change… why is it important to you to get better? Understanding your reasons will help give you the foundation to both keep working at the changes, and as a reminder to give yourself a break by not over demanding perfection too early.

When you feel the anger building and have the desire to throw a club or engage in self-doubt and negative dialogue train yourself to STOP. Take a breath and recall why this is important to you and think about your commitment to giving yourself the time.

Winter is a great time to focus on building some new skills, especially for us living in the north. Enjoy the process of making the changes and give yourself a chance by ‘using your brain for a change’.

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