Reaching my golf potential with Jim Venetos: Book One

So as through a glass, and darkly

The age long strife I see

Where I fought in many guises,

Many names, but always me.

George S. Patton, Jr. / Through a Glass, Darkly

Through the travail of the ages I have walked many golf courses, in many places with many results and I have appeared in many guises. I have been the confident golfer and the struggling golfer. I have been the teacher and the historian. I have been the golf buddy who made the starting time. I have been the son who picked up his father to take him to the course. I have been the single paired the 20 something threesome of college buddies. And, I often have been alone yet never lonely.

Oh I've been from Jerusalem to Rome

Now I'm floating through these rooms tonight alone

And looking back on everything

All I ever wanted was a home

Marc Cohn / Olana

Oh I have been from Torrey Pines to Desert Willow

Now I'm floating above those fairways alone

In looking back & looking forward

All I ever wanted was to strike the ball pure

Paul Cervantes

For some golf is like a fraternity. For some it's an office without doors. For some it's the oddest kind of pastime; a game misunderstood yet still enjoyed.

For me, golf is the state of feeling close to something yet so far away. It's the quest for a destination that's uncharted It's like being in a dark and unfamiliar room looking for a lightswitch.

It has been ever thus, but...

But now time feels so fleeting.

Get busy living, or get busy dying. That's Goddam right...

Red / The Shawshank Redemption

Figure this out, or take up an easier game.

Paul Cervantes

Figuring it out doesn't mean shooting a certain score. It certainly doesn't mean beating anyone or making money at golf. For me it means finding a haven of effectiveness. It means finding or creating a method of moving the golf club that brings the center of the club face into the ball.

What could be more simple? Still, as I am prone to say, simple is seldom easy.

After last year's 6 month failed effort I came into this year with a searching state of mind. I kept asking myself, what should I do?

Here's how I saw the options:

1) Reengage with self-discovery. Hogan dug it out of the Earth and so can I.

2) Look for help. Just because the last pro I worked with wasn't able to help doesn't mean you won't succeed with another pro.

Self discovery is very cool. Others have done it, no doubt about it. But I think it's a very tricky thing for one big reason.

In golf, feelings lie.

Also, in trying to do one thing you can end up do another and that other can really hurt you.

For example: If I try to turn my lower body through impact my shoulders spin, carrying the club head over the top. The resulting pull-draw can be played but there's something unsatisfying about it.

Does this result from my own fundamental lack of flexibility, the same one identified by my Titleist TPI evaluation from years back?

Maybe.

But, more essentially, it points out that an effort to do one thing can cause another thing that in turn causes a problem. Bummer.

As I was bouncing between the polar opposite perspectives of figure this out yourself or for God's sake, get some help I happened upon a video at 4GEA.com, one of the older and crustier golf gear enthusiast websites.

The video was 1:13 long and showed a single swing in very slow motion.

My reply: I feel like 1:13 of my life was just stolen.

Later, I watched the video with the sound turned on.

Great idea; it was a big help to hear what this guy is actually saying before calling BS on him.

There's a chance one (yeah, I know that's a pretty small chance) of you knows that I edited a book by Tony Manzoni called, The Lost Fundamental. Manzoni opines that the golf swing ought have a single axis or pivot and that point is on the right handed player's left side.

Now this idea compelled me but I was working on the book so I didn't want to try it on my game while my head was into helping Manzoni write the book.

Still, long after the book was finished I tried it (especially with driver) and got some very encouraging results. Odd, though, I couldn't find a way to incorporate the technique into shorter clubs.

I know, this seems like a digression but it's not.

The Jim Venetos swing is the Tony Manzoni swing on steroids with a shot of spiced rum with a twist of lime.

A left sided swing promises a lot for me (and a lot of other players, too). It promises a quieter lower body. It promises a shorter back swing. Most of all, though, it promises more consistent, and more solid contact.

Ding!

I've now enjoyed three lessons with Jim Venetos. He says that after 8 lessons I'll be on the Champions Tour (Sorry, Jim...couldn't resist the hyperbole) but even if it takes 10 or 15 I'll be overjoyed. We're also having an informal  contest to see who can talk more in the course of 90 minutes and so far we're in a dead heat. At any given minute he may be saying, Yeah, man, I could see you fighting for stillness there...So, good contact but shoulders were a little open...That was a little fat so what did that tell you?

I can usually heard to be muttering a series of expletives and groans punctuated by the (very) occasional exultation of, I can do this!

The I can do this sound comes after I have actually achieved a small dose of stillness and an attendant sense of my weight staying left throughout the swing. It's is so far a fleeting feeling that comes and goes. When it comes it feels solid, inevitable and obvious and the strike is heavy and solid.

When the feeling is missing I usually find myself cheating stillness by starting with my weight left but allowing it (and the rest of me) to drift right as the club moves back.

Horrors.

There will come a point where you realize you could have kept your weight still right away, in the first lesson.

Jim Venetos

No, I am not there yet.

Still, the promise of all this is a swing I can take with me into the rest of my 50s, into my 60s and beyond. All promises rely on faith and golf is a game that often seems designed to test our faith.

In Reaching my golf potential with Jim Venetos: Book Two I'll talk more about my quest and how Jim is doing as my sherpa. What I am starting to feel is a confidence in the method that is very settling. The question remains whether I can (can, as in have the ability) to fully mesh the method with my brain and body.

Without jumping ahead to answer that question in the affirmative, I will say that I intend to continue to strive toward stillness. I hope you'll follow my journey.

What is the best major in golf?

US Open: Tour players are seldom embarrassed and I enjoy it when the USGA's motive over four days is to do just that. A little humility is a good thing especially when you're driving courtesy cars every week. I find must-make par putts far more interesting than a procession of makable putts for birdie and eagle.

The Open Championship: The R&A doesn't have the same flair for penal setups as the USGA and their rota is a bit tiring. Still, I love the spectacle, the weather and the galleries. Bring on the wind and rain, preferably both at the same time.

The Masters: As much as I admire Jones, I despise the patrician and elitist nature of AN. But, the back 9 is an amazingly good theater every year. If I had been Rickie Fowler and some AN clown told me to turn my hat around I would have told him to pack sand.

The PGA: The PGA is has no identity. It's just another event that's called a major. Many of the courses are ho-hum and so are a lot of the winners. I think they should make it back into a match play event but the potential loss of TV money means that will never happen. They could have two days of stroke play and take the top guys and play 18 hole matches on Saturday and have a 36 hole championship match just to maximize the suffering.

My favorite rounds of golf, past & future

Past:

I played a mid-summer round with my dad and a real nice guy we got paired with. At the time, my dad was probably around 80, still walking the course, and still shooting in the mid 80s.

I was in such a good zone that day and we were playing one of my favorite courses, Simi Hills. Pretty much every hole moves a little right to left.

The 18th green at Simi Hills

But on the first tee I hit this hard fade with the driver.

Weird...

I hit that same hard fade on 1, 2, 5, 6 and 9 with driver and by the time we putted out on 9 I was 2 over and not made a putt.

Back 9 and more hard fades.

Finally, after my drive on 18 the guy we're paired with says, "What I wouldn't give for your 5 yard fade!"

I said, "I've never seen that ball flight before and I'm pretty sure I'll never see it again. But it's been fun while it lasted."

Anyway, I shot 75 and didn't make a putt on the back 9 either (My putting sucked in those days).

My dad had tallied my round and told me that I only missed one green and one fairway. All I remember was that the game seemed so damn easy and way that fade looked in the air.

Future:

I've been trying to set up a long golf weekend with a cousin of mine from the midwest for years. He's a software engineer for Cummins back in Indiana but we grew up playing on munys in Iowa and Illinois when the humidity was off the charts. Most of my dad's family lived in the Quad Cities and we visited a lot when I was a kid.

I loved it...

Anyway, we have a plan to meet in Vegas for 3-4 days of golf, hanging out and drinking iced tea this September.

Golf in Vegas

Then my cuz said he'd always wanted to go to Scotland. Neither of us has been to Europe.










Vegas? Scotland?

 it won't matter where we meet or what we shoot, I promise you.

It'll just be great to have some time with my favorite cousin.

The Old Gray Town

Revisionist History is Alive & Well at Golf Digest

Question: Did Martha Burk, who wrote a letter to Augusta in 2002 and led a protest in 2003, help or hurt the cause?

Answer: I think Burk set back the process by years.

Sometimes a troubling bit of revisionism can reside in a single sentence. The question quoted above was posed by Golf Digest. The answer was provided by Golf Digest Editor, Marcia Chambers. As is often the case with revisionism, I have every confidence most readers will have missed it, or at least will wonder how it could possibly be relevant.

Chamber’s response revises history by her use of the word, process. Her sentence makes it appear that prior to Martha Burk there was a process in place at Augusta National to admit women members. This would be analogous to the contention that Rosa Parks set back the process pf racial desegregation by refusing to sit in the back of the bus in Alabama back in 1955.

Quite simply, organizations, whether golf clubs or municipal transit companies, do not like to be told what to do.

As I grow older, even small examples of revisionism are troubling to me. It’s easy for me to imagine a young person reading Chambers’ quote and imagining Burk as a common rabble-rouser just out to make trouble.

The PGA Tour’s history does not allow for much leeway when it comes to issues of equality. The end of its Caucasian Clause came in the year of my birth, 1961. It feels real to me since its stain continued into my own time.

Too long ago for you?

In 1984, Shoal Creek Country Club hosted the PGA Championship. At the time, the club had no black members. It is stunning to think that the PGA of 1984 wasn’t savvy enough to be aware of that fact at the time. If that’s easy enough to forgive, how can we forget that when 1990 rolled around the PGA again awarded Shoal Creek with its most prestigious tournament?

Though six years had passed, there were still no black members at Shoal Creek.

Fortunately, the Martha Burks of that time and place were not silent: The Southern Christian Leadership Conference threatened a boycott and sponsors like IBM pulled millions of dollars of commercial advertising from the broadcast. In a matter of weeks, Shoal Creek hastily accepted a local black businessman as an honorary member.

The only difference between Shoal Creek and Augusta National is muscle. In 1990, Shoal Creek feared both financial loss and a damaged reputation. Augusta did a simple calculation based upon the immense wealth of their brand and decided to weather what in the end was merely a bothersome squall of adverse of public opinion.

But know this:

Had Martha Burk stayed silent in 2002, today poor Condi Rice would probably be teeing it up at her local muny. The truth is Martha Burk started the very process Marcia Chambers now says she delayed.

Augusta National is a singularly magnificent golf course. Its co-founder, one of the great gentleman of sport this country has even known. But, its history is always complex and sometimes conflicted.

Marcia Chambers, by way of an implication, brought by a single word in one sentence, has only added to that complexity.

A comment from Martha Burk:

Thank you very much. The piece is a concise and very accurate frame, not only of Chambers' statement but of the Shoal Creek situation and the response re ANGC. Maybe now that female members are allowed, the asterisk will be removed from the "official" PGA tour event list -- an exception they carved our for Augusta in the wake of Shoal Creek when Augusta opened to African American men, but no women, contrary to the new PGA policy against race and sex discrimination. As you know, some clubs dropped out of the tour rather than admit women, but Augusta got to have it both ways.

As for Chambers, I am puzzled. She and I were in contact during the controversy, and she seemed to be entirely with me and what I was doing.  Her book, The Unplayable LIe, had called attention to the problem of sex discrimination in golf long before I got involved.

Again, thanks for an honest and straightforward critique.

Martha Burk

Money Editor, Ms. Magazine
Director, Corporate Accountability Project, NCWO
Producer/Host Equal Time with Martha Burk, KSFR public radio
Twitter: @MarthaBurk

The Greatest Fear of Tiger Woods

"My play, and scores, are not acceptable for tournament golf."

"...but I won’t be there unless my game is tournament-ready."

These seem like a simple and logical statements and there's no way to argue that it has been untrue for the last few events Woods has played in.

The obvious fallacy is that anyone's game can become tournament ready without actually playing in a tournament.

Beyond that I think lies Woods' greatest fear, the fear of not being the Tiger Woods of old. The odd thing is that the very same fear could also be a part of what keeps him from winning again on tour, let alone getting to 18+.

In the mid to late 1970s Jack Nicklaus seemingly didn't have a fear of not being the Jack Nicklaus of the 60s and early 70s. That lack of fear allowed him to stick around the tour as something like a mere mortal. 

In the end, though, being willing to be a mere mortal paid off with him winning his last four majors between 1978-1986. Nicklaus had no tour wins in 1979, 1981, 1983 and 1985. Still, he stuck it out with game that probably didn't at all remind him of his conception of the real jack Nicklaus.

Woods appears to lack the willingness to hang around as another kind of player, even if it would mean having the chance to bag a few more wins, major or otherwise.

Shanking: Not a problem with your swing...

It could be, but it is not for me and maybe not even for most recreational players.

I hit tons of pitches with both of my sand wedges. The better I'm hitting them, the more in the groove I am, the more likely it is for the odd shankopatomus to sneak into my practice session.

The odd thing is that it's been a very long time since I have shanked during a round of golf. I save most of them for the practice tee where it's more fun watching people duck to avoid the incoming.

Anyway, forever and a day I thought they were caused by some evil but random shift in my swing. Maybe my head was moving...swinging outside in...inside out...feel free to chime in with your favorite cause.

But, I always had a funny feeling that something else had happened and that it wasn't something that really had a lot to do with my swing changing from one pitch to another.

When you think about it, why would that even happen? I mean, we all know how hard it is to make a swing change why would it suddenly happen so readily?

Trying to change the mechanics of my swing in mid-practice would be a fatal mistake, especially when moments before I was striking the ball solidly. Suddenly I'm going to try to shallow my path, feel the club head closing or work to keep my head totally still? For me, that practice is to court disaster and golf has enough disasters in it without me adding my own.

Anyway, this got me thinking about root causality. I came across three articles (and videos) out of the hundreds about shanking that attributed the cause to something other than a swing issue. These three pros contended that shanking was better considered as a hand to eye coordination issue rather than a swing issue.

Again, I started to think about my practice sessions. I tend to clank one after I've been hitting really good shots, never when I'm stinking it up. I found that I could actually predict a shank before I hit one. Now, I've found the root of that premonition:

My brain becomes so shaft-and-ball focused that I change the game from golf to stickball. I meld my sense of the club head's path into the path of the shaft.

I can actually feel my brain doing this at address.

That new awareness was liberating. Now, I can make myself have that feeling of an approaching shank but subsequently work to see that the shaft's path must be inside of the club head for the sweetspot to meet up with the ball.

Martin Chuck (of Tourstriker fame and fortune) was the first pro to raise the issue with his Sweetspot Awareness video. The next was Mark Crossfield of the UK with his juggling analogy.

Still, the message didn't completely hit home until I read an article by A.J. Bonar. His article included an illustration that was good but not great. It showed lines going from a player's eyes to the end of the shaft rather than to the sweetspot.

In a way, shanking is hard to do. I'll bet that people with dodgy hand to eye coordination would have a difficult time shanking the ball on command. The hosel's a pretty small tool to reliably bring in contact with the ball especially compared with the size of the club face.

But, if your hand to eye coordination is good (like mine and maybe yours) you can get yourself to fire off a volley of hosel rockets solely by letting your focus shift from the path of the club face to the path of the shaft.

Amazing.

Sure, a toe board or drills where you take a tee that's inside your ball line are fine but for me I find it even more effective to simply consciously refocus on that differential between the path of the shaft and the path of the club face. Again, for me, a lot of practice using clubs I really enjoy hitting can make this focus shift in a way that wouldn't affect me during a round of golf. Being rid of this occasional annoyance has made hitting a lot of wedge shots more fun than ever. 

More than anyone, I'd like to thank A.J. Bonar for his wisdom on this subject.

Why was this so hard to find? Stitch putter cover

Finding a better putter cover was surprisingly hard. 

My beloved SeeMore FGP was in need of a new cover and I wanted something clean looking but a bit more luxurious than the original SeeMore cover which was beginning to wear out.

It was a surprisingly long search. 

There are thousands of putter covers out there but most have the following in common:

They look cheap...
They are cheap...
They are made of crap...
They look cheap, are cheap, are made of crap and are made overseas...

About 20 pages into my search I stumbled upon Stitch. 

Note to the good folks at Stitch: Think about having an SEO Guru come on board to boost your search relevance!

What a relief; clean looking, Italian leather, made in the United States. 

Very cool.

My only complaint is that the cover is not very heavily padded but that's just me being picky. The leather's grain and texture are wonderful and I love the simple off-white stripe and the lack of an exterior logo. Inside you'll find the Stitch logo and Made in USA tag. Nicely done!

Sometimes finding something that seems simple can take a long time.

A great product like the Stitch putter cover was worth the wait!