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I Get My Golf Advice From a Guy Who Doesn’t Golf

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golf_senseMy friends, I’m about to take a leap of faith. I’ve decided to change the way I approach my swing, my putting, in fact my entire game. And I’m entrusting this momentous metamorphosis to a man who doesn’t even play golf.

Yep, I’m an idiot.

I’ve just finished reading a book called “Golf Sense – Practical Tips On How To Play Golf In The Zone” (Front Runner Publications, 2010). It’s a book that follows nicely on the heels of another golf book I read recently; “Straight Down the Middle” (see my review HERE).

Both these books are, as it happens, similar in that they don’t really give swing advice, rather, they attempt to put you in a golfing state of mind. Where Straight Down The Middle helped me find “inner peace” on the course, Golf Sense provides you with practical exercises to help you keep that inner peace going throughout your round.

The irony of it all is the author of Golf Sense, Roy Palmer, states right in the introduction that he doesn’t even play golf! I almost closed the book right then and there. But, Mr. Palmer was nice enough to ship me the book gratis from across the pond in England – I figured the least I could do was read it (all the misspellings idiosyncrasies of the Queen’s English included).

I was originally inspired by this golfing inner peace (or getting in the zone) from the movie The Legend of Bagger Vance – the scene on the tee when Bagger is explaining to Junuh why Bobby Jones is so good (“he’s in the field”). To me, there’s just something about letting go of all the BS in your head, getting out of your own way (mentally) and just letting your natural swing emerge – it just sounds like the way a golf swing is meant to be executed.

So as I digested Mr. Palmer’s book, I felt his writings and exercises (many of which can be done without a club and while you’re actually reading the book) would really help me find that happy place to exist in during a round. For example, he points to tension in the swing as a major cause of poor play – tension that you may not even know you have since habitually, you’ve swung the same way for so many years.

But realizing the cause of your poor golf shots is only the beginning. Golf Sense is packed with simple ways to put you in (and keep you in) a calm and relaxed state of mind on the course (which will translate into a more relaxed swing, and subsequently lower scores). I have to say, I’m anxious to give it a try.

So my plan is to put Mr. Palmer’s book to the test. Beginning in the new year, I am going to practice a few of the exercises at home. Then, once the weather gets warmer, I will move to the range and finally to the course. I’ll post sometime next season about how I’m progressing.

If you’d care to join me, feel free to get your own copy of Golf Sense HERE and email me (info@golfstinks.com) with your own experiences using this method. Stay tuned…

Book Review: When to Regrip Your Ball Retriever

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imageFor more than a year now, we here at Golfstinks have been telling you not to take your poor play and high handicap too seriously. We’ve posted many colorful articles on this blog that we hoped would instill in you the necessary frame of mind to enjoy golf while still stinking at it. In fact, we plan on posting many more of these types of articles.

But to help you along, I’ve come across some great reading material. Whether in your favorite arm chair or on the porcelain throne, these books are sure to increase your laughter with every page-turn. Endorsed by former U.S. presidents and CEO’s of Fortune 500 companies, “How to Line Up Your Fourth Putt” and the recently released “When to Regrip Your Ball Retriever” should be part of every golfer’s book collection.

My copies are now on my bookshelf – wedged right next to Ben Hogan’s Five Lessons. They’re the perfect compliment to each other. I feel it projects to others that: “I’m trying to get better, but I’m not gonna lose any sleep over it.”

Author Bobby Rusher presents his material as a golf instructional manual of sorts. But you wont find advice on how to properly grip a club – instead you’ll find a chapter entitled “The Insignificance of Proper Grip.” My other favorite chapters? “How to Hit a Dunlop 2 From the Rough on your Second Shot, When You Hit a Titleist 1 From the Tee;” or “What to do When you’ve Parred the Course by the 11th Hole;” and the always popular “Body Blocks and When to Use Them.”

One of Mr. Rusher’s more compelling chapters is entitled “The Importance of Realizing that Most Golfers are Bad Golfers.” He explains that when he played Pebble Beach (he shot 141 there by the way), he was intimidated because he feared he would embarrass himself on one of the world’s greatest courses. But he quickly realized that all the other golfers on the course that day were bad too. It took him 6 hours to complete his round because the group he was following was just as terrible.

Of course, I’ve been using the term “chapters” but, these are each typically one page of light and comical reading. The reality is, Mr. Rusher’s books are sarcastic, laugh-out-loud pointers and cheats about taking a light-hearted approach to your stinky golf game. And if you can laugh at these books, you’re one step closer to enjoying golf despite how bad you may be at it. Hats off to you Bobby Rusher – you’re a true stinky golfer.

To help our readers start their book collection, Golfstinks has secured a set of both books to give away to one lucky reader! Simply post the phrase “I Love My Ball Retriever” on our Facebook page, and we’ll select one random winner from those posts on October 29th! If you end up not being our winner, you can email Bobby directly HERE for more info or to purchase either book (hey, the holiday’s are coming up *hint* *hint*).

Judging My Custom-Fit Clubs

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Finally. For the first time since I received my new custom-fit clubs, I actually got out and played a round of 18! So now the new clubs have 27 holes, plus some range time, logged on them. I still don’t think it’s quite enough, but I’m going to try to make a fair judgement as to the added value of a custom fitting. You asked for it, so here it is.

Firstly, in fairness to my clubs, I stink at golf. I understand there are many golfers who are worse-off then me, but I’m still pretty freakin’ bad. No club is going to make a real significant impact on my game. Stinky Golfer Greg has pointed out previously that the way to get better at golf is to play…constantly. Well, I don’t have that kind of time. So I play as often as I can, which is not nearly as much as I would like, and nowhere near enough to show any real improvement. The point I’m trying to make here is, I don’t get to use the clubs as much as I should.

That being said, let’s move along to the clubs themselves. Obviously being custom-fit, the clubs are tailored around my swing. So one would have to imagine there would be immediate benefits to having a club built to strike the ball where it should be struck and hit the ground where it should be hit…And one would be correct. Thing is though, I didn’t realize how much it would affect the result of the swing. Due to the new found distance these clubs seem to provide, it looks like I’m going to need a bit more range time. After overshooting a couple of greens which I had no business overshooting, along with reaching a few traps I had no business reaching…this became quite clear.

So I need to work on my distances. But what about accuracy? Well, that’s another thing I’m going to need to get used to. I’ve spent the past twelve or so years with a swing that, I didn’t realize at the time, was compensating for my clubs. But now that the clubs are in order…my swing isn’t. I can feel when I hit the ball correctly. And when I do, the shots are great. However, right now, those don’t come as often as I would like. But once I get used to the clubs and stop swinging like it was my cheap, old, off-the-shelf set, I think I’ll be fine. But in the meantime…it looks like I’ll be spending a little while at the range working on that also.

In the end, I can tell the idea and the process of custom-fitting will be time and money well spent. Obviously I have some work to do and adjustments to make. But I know once I work out the kinks and get used to them, the new clubs will make a noticeable difference in my game – even though this past weekend produced one of the worst golf scores I have posted in my life, there were upsides and, even better…legitimate excuses!

So if you’re in the market for new clubs, I definitely recommend the custom-fitting process. I already can’t wait until next year when I can spend an entire golf season with the new sticks! If you’ve never done it before, but you’re going to spend the money on a new set, then you might as well spend the extra time (and cash if necessary) to make sure the clubs you’re getting will be of some benefit to you rather than just some shiny new showpieces. Just be prepared for the adjustments you’ll have to make.

Swing ’til you’re happy!

The Process Of My Custom Club Fitting

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About two months ago I talked about getting fitted for clubs. Well, I did it. And after quite a bit of a delay from a certain club manufacturer, I received them. Further, I’ve even played with them! But one nine-hole round certainly doesn’t constitute enough playing time to make a proper judgement as far as the difference between my old “off-the-shelf’s” and the newbies. So I’ll have to get out a few more times before I can really make a fair comparison.

But in the meantime, many have asked me about the actual process of the club fitting. Was it hi-tech? Did they video your swing? Did they measure your swing speed? Did they hook you up to computers? Well, the answer to all of those questions is, simply, no.

Rather, the pro and I went outside. Can you believe that? We actually went outside…where golf is actually played! He took me over to the driving range, handed me a 6-iron and had me smack a few balls. After watching me hit a few, he threw some tape on the bottom of the club head, dropped a board on the ground and had me hit a few more off of that. After about three or four swings, he took the club and showed me the tape. Ah-ha! Now I see part of the reason I stink at this sport! I could see which part of the club-head was hitting the ground….and it was not the part that’s supposed to be hitting.

So we swapped some differently angled club heads, taped those up and hit a few more. We combined the club head swaps with some different types of shafts (steel, graphite, stiff, regular) and before you know it, I had something in my hand that felt quite comfortable.

I say “before you know it,” but that’s not how it felt at the time. This process went on for about an hour or so. After non-stop swinging (for the most part) on the range for that long…I was wiped! I mean, it felt like I took more swings on that range than I would possibly take in two rounds! But, even though I have yet to have enough time to see if it was beneficial, I feel this was well worth it.

See, I could have watched my swing on video. I could have measured my club-head speed. I could have been hooked up to a computer and I could have stayed inside and hit balls into a net eight feet in front of me like in the picture above. Thing is, I’ve done all of those things before. And other than a recent swing video analysis, which you can read about here, they’ve gotten me next to nowhere. I could have done them all again, but what would that have gotten me had I not seen the end result of my swing?

Any of us can hit a ball straight for eight feet. What does that tell me? What matters is what the ball is doing 170 yards down the fairway. And by being out on an actual range, I can see exactly what that ball is doing. After all…do you really give a crap how fast you swing? You shouldn’t. What you should care about is having the proper club for that swing and the end result. I don’t care if I swing 95 mph or 125 mph, as long as I have the right club for the job.

One of the questions I am also asked is, “How much did it cost?” Thanks to the hook-up from my wonderful wife, I didn’t pay a cent. So I have no idea what it would have cost. However, upon doing some research, I see people pay as little as $20-$30 for a fitting. For that price, it’s well worth it. But there’s always that other end of the spectrum.

As I may have mentioned before, one thing I will never understand about golfers is the amount of money many are willing to spend in order to try to make themselves better players. Doing that same research, I have seen that some are willing to fork over $400 for a club fitting! $400?! How much more are you getting than what your local pro can offer you for a small fraction of that price, if not free? Some people just take this game way too seriously. But, I guess if you have the money, then good for you.

So like I said earlier, I’m going to need a few more rounds before I can make an accurate judgement as to how beneficial a custom fitting really is. But as of now, I’m going to say I’m quite satisfied so far. My new clubs feel nice in my hands and nice during my swing. During my first time out with them, I felt like I hit the ball more solidly. My score didn’t reflect it, but it feels like I’m headed down the right path. We’ll see if that keeps up a few rounds from now.

Swing ’til you’re happy!

Book Review: Straight Down the Middle

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straightdownthemiddleWithin the confines of our own minds, a whole bunch of sh*t can happen to screw up your golfing ability. It is within this realm that Josh Karp writes Straight Down the Middle, his new book from Chronicle Books LLC.

The author tells me; “The basic idea is, can inner peace lower my handicap, or will lowering my handicap help me find inner peace?”

You may have heard of this mystical golf notion before – if you’re familiar with books like “Golf in the Kingdom” or movies like “The Legend of Bagger Vance” – that we all have our real (or authentic) swing hidden inside us somewhere, and we just need to step aside (mentally) and let it take hold. If we can achieve that, *POOF* we become better golfers. Sound ridiculous?

Well, a few years ago, Mr. Karp decided to embark on a two-year journey he hoped would not only help him find his authentic swing, but perhaps his spiritual path to boot. Married and in his late thirties, with 3 kids, another on the way, and a handicap pushing 20, Mr. Karp was a anxious man wrestling with his own thoughts.

His free time was consumed with baseball stats (hugh White Sox fan), golf and finding ways to channel his mental activities so he could relax. Convinced his worrying (a constant struggle to accept his own mortality) was affecting his golf game, he enlisted the help of various golf gurus that had backgrounds in (mostly) Zen Buddhism. Straight Down the Middle is about this journey.

Like many journeys, it’s filled with success, failure, frustration, and jubilation (after more success). I rejoiced every time Mr. Karp’s game improved after visiting a golf guru…and felt utterly disappointed when that initial success was short lived. I admired his openness to learn unique and sometimes unorthodox techniques and sympathized with his struggle to overcome his own internal demons.

There were times in the book when I’d become frustrated at Mr. Karp’s overanalyzing of what seemed like every situation; his terrible habit of worrying about…well, everything; and his overall anxiety in general. But when I finished the book, I realized those passages were necessary to show just how far he had come to finding inner peace both on the course and in his daily life.

Straight Down the Middle is well-written, humorous and extremely fascinating. But what’s great about Mr. Karp’s book is it’s applicable to any golfer at any skill level. You don’t have to be a Buddhist (or be in the process of converting to one) to appreciate and apply some of the ideas (and they’re mostly ideas, not swing tips) you’ll find within its pages.

Thus, when I played my first round after reading it, I found that Straight Down the Middle had given me a very refreshing ability: I seem to no longer fret over my duffs and shanks and flubs. What’s more, it helped me cut through all the BS and let me just play. It’s all clear to me now: Golf is a game that can provide unlimited happiness in your life…if you’d just let it.

You can purchase your copy of Straight Down the Middle by Josh Karp HERE.

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