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!

Men's & Women's US Opens Back to Back? Dodgy logic from the USGA...

This back to back thing makes me think the USGA got it backwards.

I'm thinking of the number of divots the fairways on #2 will have by the time the women get to play. The landing areas may be different but with the course playing about 800 yards shorter maybe not. The fewer and far shallower divots the women take would be easier to deal with than those dug by the guys.

Obviously it should not be an issue on the tees, but on the fairways I anticipate problems. Also, since there are still a good number of men who wear steel spikes the greens are bound to be a bit (and maybe more than a bit) beat up by the end of the week. 

Here's hoping the USGA doesn't let the greens get too dry this week as well or things could get ugly. The USGA's Mike Davis was quoted as saying, “We have a much better chance of getting the golf course right for both championships with the women playing second. The reason really gets down to the putting greens. The first week, if Mother Nature is cooperative, they're going to be slightly firmer. ... Very firm greens to slightly – underscore, slightly – less firm greens that second week. And agronomically, it is much easier to do the second week than the first.”

I'm simply not sure what the downside would have been to have the women go first and the logic Davis' quote is really dodgy. 

Softer, slower greens the first week could be easily made firmer and faster the second week. 

It's very hard to understand the USGA's thinking on the order of play.

Review: Star Grip Sidewinder

You know, there was a time when buying grips was easy. You ambled down to your local golf shop and had them put a set of Golf Pride Victorys on your clubs and you were done. Cord or no cord, you were good to go. Easy. Simple.

Those days are gone. Companies like Golf Pride and Lamkin now offer scores of grips and they all have four things in common:

They're made out of who knows what...

They're made who knows where...

They're way too expensive...

And, the don't feel or play as well as they used to...

Fact: Many players on the PGA Tour still play a grip (the old green GP Victory) that the company no longer sells to consumers.

Huh?

I find the best grips from Golf Pride and Lamkin to be little more than OK when it comes to quality and feel. Grip durability (like tire durability) depends so much on the user I won't comment but to say that I very much doubt that moving manufacture overseas has helped.

Star Grips came to my attention while I was looking for a replacement for my current semi-cord grips made by one of the aforementioned grip makers. These are OK grips but they don't feel consistent over time and they've become hard and slick in places I've never had that kind of problem before. I'm convinced. It's not me, it's the grips!

The Star Sidewinder looks a little like a Lamkin Crossline or a Golf Pride Tour Velvet. Interestingly, it's built with a .590 core rather than the more common .580 or .600. This strikes me as a good compromise and should be just slightly oversized on a .600 or .610 shaft. Made from a 100% EPDM rubber the Sidewinder has a unique feel. It's smooth but with any grip pressure at all you can feel the tackiness beneath each finger. One test I like to do with new grips is to scrub them down with Simple Green. If the feel changes when I'm done I know the grip had mold release residue on it. After giving the Sidewinder a scrubbing it dried quickly and felt exactly the same as when it arrived.

I readily profess a preference for U.S. made products. This is partly because I loathe the idea of loosing any aspect of this country's grand history as a builder of things. But, it's also because I have more confidence in the consistency and materials used here as opposed to overseas. A high percentage of Asian-made grips use thermoplastics instead of rubber. I won't say that I'll never use a thermoplastic grip but I will say that all of them I've used to date have worn quickly and changed in feel well before they were worn out.

It's too soon to comment on the durability of the Sidewinder, but the feel of the grip is excellent, better than anything I have felt in many years. Even though Star says it's a grip well-suited to low handicap players, I'd say it's perfect for everyone.

It's been a long search but I am very pleased to have found Star, just one state to the east! I'm going to pick up a full set of Sidewinders and will report on how they hold up.

Until then, do yourself a favor and give them a try.

Looking back on golf lessons & working toward the future

I started playing when I was just a little kid but quit when I was 15. The game was simply too much for me. At the time, it had proved impossible for me to apply any of the swing elements I had developed playing baseball. As much as I wanted to play, I knew I couldn't.

When I was about 40, I started to think about playing again. I was lucky enough to find Harvey Penick's Little Red Book. Even though I haven't looked at my copy in years, it was the perfect book for someone looking to correct some very stubborn misunderstandings about the golf swing.

Clip the tee.
Aim at second base and hit the ball over the shortstop's head.
See three knuckles on the left hand.
And the biggie; take dead aim.

These seemingly simple ideas penned by Harvey Penick got me playing golf, really, for the first time in my life. Earlier this year I started taking lessons again and it's gotten me to reflect on all the lessons I've taken and the pros who taught me.

My first lesson was a putting lesson from a driving range pro at El Cariso in Sylmar. Serious guy, no BS. He managed to square away a simple address and setup problem that was holding me back. The thrust of the lesson took about 3 minutes to impart but the benefit of that lesson still helps my putting today. Then, I went to see a local guro at Little V who was a very big staunch proponent of TGM. Interesting guy, great swing, but not really all that able to create a path forward. He talked a lot (and so did I) but the talk didn't really seem to go anywhere. It pointed out, in the end, the limits of metaphor when it comes to learning more about the golf swing. Sometimes information needs to be literal to be readily applied to golf even though I've never met a logically consistent metaphor I didn't enjoy.

A couple years later I took a lesson from a high school buddy of mine who had become a teaching pro at Robinson Ranch, which was about 10 minutes from where I lived at the time. It was a lesson in the sense that I handed him $80 when it was over, but it was really just a chance for us to reminisce. He did have some helpful things to say about my swing like, "Gawd, you are so lucky you're a halfway decent athlete otherwise there would be no way you could ever hit the ball. Geez!" 

Thanks, Larry!

Sometime later, I got divorced and totally by coincidence my game went to shit. And I mean really to shit, as in ready to quit shitty. Out of desperation, I went to see another driving range pro at Westlake. He was the nicest guy on earth. But my problems kinda had him flummoxed. He liked to say, "Well, you hit that one pretty good. What's not to like?" We spent more of my lesson time chatting about golf than hitting balls. It was almost worth it for the good conversation and the warm vibe.

Later that year, I took a trip to Palm Springs and figured it couldn't hurt to take a lesson from a local guru so I asked around and found a well-regarded pro at Tahquitz Resort. Great guy. He had been a caddie on the LPGA tour, had lots of juicy stories, and had me figured out right away. My posture and stance had gotten sloppy and he was a stickler for posture and stance. Also, I had been unknowingly moving further and further away from the ball. He actually got out a measuring tape and said, "15.25 inches! Don't get any closer to the ball than this." 

So, I did what he said and my game started to improve.

Still, I felt the need for a big push so I began to toy with the idea of going to see someone with big-time street cred. He was one of those Top 100 guys from one of the national golf magazines. At $125 a lesson I was forced to establish my first golf fund to finance the lessons. It was worth it. I could tell he had the gift of being able to see relationships in my swing almost as if they occurred in slow motion. I walked out of my lesson knowing what I doing and what I had to do differently to get better. I went back to see him two or three times but the drive and the cost made it difficult. Plus, I was really playing pretty well.

Fast forward to now.

The most important goal is to create a productive kind of practice, something I've never been able to do before. I've always relied on playing to get better and it's held me back. This dovetails with my goal of minimizing the decline my game suffers in the fall and winter while reducing the amount of relearning I have to do to get back into my game in the spring. I also wanted to make my misses smaller. 

Hitting the ball further was never a goal; hitting it better and more solidly was. For some reason it had always been hard for me to keep going to the pros I have worked with. This made it all too easy to slip back into what was comfortable in my swing and so minimize my progress. I didn't want to repeat this error  (again) so I decided to check out a guy who came highly recommended by a guy I played golf with at my club. 

He teaches at one of the oldest and most humble golf courses in the valley. He's a valley guy, born and raised, like me, and is right around my age. I made an appointment for a lesson really not knowing what to expect. To cut to the chase, I was really lucky to find this guy. The first issue he nailed was my tendency to set up closed to my target line. This led me to slide forward in my move toward the ball and to bring the club into the ball from too far inside. I could hit a lot of good shots that way but a low & left miss was distressingly common from 125 yards and in. He is also working with me to minimize my shoulder turn on pitches and short approach shots, encouraging an accelerating arm swing. When he first said this I realized how many bits of good of advice like be sure to make a full shoulder turn, can become excessive or just not be applicable to a given kind of swing or shot.

I've been going to him every week for the last month or so and I am really pleased with my progress. After my lesson last night I realized that seeing him consistently has helped my pro, too. It gives him a chance to learn not just what I'm do but also my swing patterns. 

Let's say the bad result is Z and the initial cause is identified as Y. But, over the course of a few lessons he has had the chance to recognize a preceding cause I'll call X which acts as a kind of trigger to the problem. So, this allows me to finally become more sensitized to essential causes of the things that go wrong with my swing.

Now that I trust my guy, it's been important that I give him the keys to my game. I want him to identify issues and decide how to address them. Then it's up to me to practice effectively and play as well as my ability allows. I can be very hard on myself when it comes to golf. And, I am finally learning what a waste of energy that is. 

Free will makes me totally free to grind on myself about how I should have done this years ago, or about how much strength and flexibility I've lost (and will continue to lose) but to what purpose? I am an optimist when I work with others, but an overly hard-edged realist when it comes to me. It feels sensible and logical but it has surely held me back and I'm working hard to be done with it.

For me, that last part may be the most important change of all.

Claremont's only golf course closes: An open letter to Joe Lyons, Mayor of Claremont, California

Dear Mayor Lyons

I read this in a local online newspaper:

"This city’s only golf course, a nine-hole facility at 1550 N. Indian Hill Blvd. that opened in March 1959, is scheduled to close Dec. 2."

As a member of Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden, I am a frequent visitor to Claremont. As you know, the golf course shared a fence with the garden. Members of my family have lived in and around Claremont since the early 1940s. In all those years, I believe the town has had but one public golf course and now it's closed.

The clubhouse in happier times

I can recall playing that little 9 hole course with my father back in the 1970s when we were in town visiting my aunt. But, I do not write merely to ask you to reminisce with me. I write so you might be emboldened to look ahead. The loss of that little golf course may not seem like a big one today, but I can assure you that it will become a great loss in the future. A modest golf course like that can bring a community and, indeed, generations together in a way nothing else can. Worse, the effects of its loss will grow over time as Claremont residents are forced to leave their city to enjoy such a basic form of recreation.

I understand the operators of the course had failed to make their payments to the CUC. If the city has the vision, it will take the course on as a part of its recreation department. CUC has indicated they have no immediate use for the land, so now is the perfect time for the city to step in for the sake of its citizens to ensure the ongoing resource only a small, community golf course like this one can offer.

At this point, the city has lost the jobs the course provided and the citizens have lost their place to play and their place to come together. How will the senior citizens of Claremont manage to enjoy golf now? How far will they have to drive and how much will they have to pay? The same question now applies to your middle and high school students. The loss of the course is a loss to everyone in your city not just today but on into the future.

In closing, please ask yourself and your city council what you can do to bring your city's only golf course back to your citizens.

I think they deserve it.

Best regards,

Paul Cervantes

Playing better golf in 2014: My mission statement.

Like most mission statements, this one may not be worth much. 

Still, here it is: 

From now until the end of the 2014 golf season I am going to practice solely on swinging with good tempo and staying in balance. Attendant with this effort is staying more in touch with the feelings that lead to both and also the feelings that tell me my tempo was off or I was out of balance at any given point in my swing.

Methodologies: Home practice

• Swinging my knock-off orange whip thingy in a good tempo and in balance. I've also borrowed a technique from Harvey Penick and started to take 10-15 orange whip thingy swings with my eyes closed. This feels quite odd at first but after a while feels pretty good and it really sensitizes me to how my swing feels and makes any loss of balance very obvious.
• Continuing on that theme I hit eyes-closed shots using wadded up sheets of paper as balls. I like swinging at these. I get a little sound and a slight suggestion of impact feel but no fear of breakage.

On the course:

• Take a meaningful practice swing. For me, that's a swing that is intended to feel like the swing I hope to take at the ball. I know; lots of luck. But still, that's the goal. It's an especially tough one for me since I've gone years without taking a practice swing. My regular golf buddy, The Playah, takes two and sometimes three. Over time I got fixated on how long it took him to get ready to hit a shot and started going the other way, all the way to no practice swing.
• After hitting a shot I'm going to grade the feel of the swing as well as the result. I've been doing this for the last few weeks and it's sobering. Even good shots don't feel like I think they should. But, last week I hit one driver and one three wood off the tee wherein the actual shot felt quite similar to my practice swing. Pretty neat but so far also pretty rare.

I'm not making any predictions about the state of my game at the end of the 2014 season. In the end, what does it matter if my handicap goes up (or down) two or three strokes? In the end, I've simply grown rather tired of the infinite, formalized notions of the golf swing and what it takes to improve. I still want to get better, I'm just going to try another path. 

Monte Scheinblum's Impact Handle

I have great respect for product development and even more respect for inventions, whether they're golf-related or not. 

Golf-related inventions have two instantaneous effects on me. 

First, they turn on the skeptical part of my brain. 

Second, they make me irrationally hopeful that some device could actually help me to suck less at golf. 

As my rocket-scientist friend used to say, "Not bloody likely!"

Monte Scheinblum has really great web cred and his videos are some of the best I've seen. Beyond that, he endows his teachings with a very genuine style or pitch, as I like to say. Teachers, of golf or whatever, are also salesmen so I am prone to relate to the style and quality of their presentation as their pitch.

Monte: Teeing it high & preparing to let it fly!

Anyway, Monte Scheinblum's pitch is refreshingly free of that tiresome preachiness that's become so common in golf instructional videos on the internet. Monte's is truly a no nonsense kind of guy, as evidenced by his shorts.

Comes now the inventor and his product, The Impact Handle. I have to admit it; the first time I saw this I was a little dismayed. It looked too simple, possibly bordering on simplistic. But, the more I thought about it, and watched the videos on the kickstarter website, the more I started to think Monte was really on to something special.

Proper impact position is the latest term of art for the kind of swing wherein the club head is delivered into the ball with the hand leading and the rotated well beyond their position at address. Instead of achieving this position, most players flip, arm swing and body stall their way to lousy ball striking. I can't tell you (yet) if the Impact Handle really works. I can tell you that it has my attention. You can also check out Monte's blog if you haven't already.

Best of luck, Monte!