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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!

Skills, such as playing a musical instrument or striking a golf ball are complicated tasks learned through repetition. The brain requires a certain amount of reinforcement and repetition to retain a sub-conscious – non-thinking action that we call “skill”. When it comes to the amount of reinforcement and repetition, there is no “simple” way to give the brain the number of experiences. If it takes 100,000 repetitions, for example, you must put in the time to give ourselves at least this many experiences. Even Moe, who I once asked why he kept practicing even at the age of 70, said “To make it (his swing) stronger.

Repetition of a task makes the skill stronger. This might seem a bit discouraging however, studies show that anyone who diligently practices two hours a day, can master any skill in five years. This evidence alone should be enough to get you off of your couch. But when you do, another question arises – “Where do I start?” And the answer to this question is the evolution of simple.

Simple is a term often used by the golf instruction industry to attract customers. Once the customer buys in, however, he often finds himself once again confounded by the amount of effort it really takes to achieve a good golf swing. To me, the golf swing is very simple however, my learning process was not. I put in many hours and I would be lying to you if I said that it was easy. When I asked Moe how he learned to hit a golf ball so well, he answered very profoundly, “hard work, it takes hard work”.

So if you understand at the outset that it is going to take time and effort, you are then ready to realize what it means to be simple. Simple, by this definition is the difference between easy and hard. In other words, there is an easy way to do something and a hard way to do something. The goal, therefore, is to use the easy way of striking a golf ball and in doing so, you will be able to achieve a lasting, pain-free, and maintenance-free way of playing golf. Simple means longevity and when compared to “conventional” methods, just makes sense.

Moe Norman’s golf swing is simple for a number of reasons often discussed in our teaching. It’s simplicity, we call the Single Plane, is founded on common sense – the common sense of starting the club on the same plane as impact. What could be more simple than that? And because of the “start where you impact” Single Plane, there are stresses and rotations of the conventional swing are no longer necessary. But be careful. This does not mean that there aren’t any rotations in Single Plane Swing which is often the assumption of those who first observe Moe’s swing.

The fact is that there are the perfect amount of rotations in Moe’s swing. What we call bio-mechanical efficiency. Another way to look at bio-mechanical efficiency is the perfect amount of movement to achieve the task. In Moe’s case, the task was moving a golf club in such a way as to strike a golf ball with perfect backspin. When you look at the golf swing from this perspective, your task is to move the club – not strike the ball. From this perspective, simple becomes more easily understood. Simple means efficient.

With this in mind, you can now begin by modeling Moe’s Single Plane Golf swing and allow yourself to refine the movements necessary to achieve Moe like efficiencies. This means a bit of trial and error and much practice. So as I always recommend, start using video analysis to monitor your movements. This is a sure way to keep on track and short-cut the process of learning a truly Simple Single Plane Golf Swing.

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