Golf swings and snowflakes:

No two are alike.

Two keys to having more fun and shooting lower scores in golf are:  1) learning the finesse swing for distance wedge control, and  2) developing your individual full swing. Michael Jordan didn't reach great heights by duplicating some ideal model of how to go to the hoop. Fred Couples, Lee Trevino, and Ben Hogan didn't become champions by forcing themselves to fit some universal swing pattern.

In order to be yours, your swing must come from within, from the same trust you have of your awareness skills that allows you to balance standing on one leg while you pull on a sock.

Before this begins sounding like Inner Golf all over again, please understand that the role of the qualified PGA teaching professional is indispensable in growing your skills expediently and efficiently. A qualified instructor will save time and wasted effort by guiding your sensitivities toward feeling the cause and effect results of your swing.

The qualified teaching professional also understands how shaft behavior is the determinant of the extent to which a golf club works for or against a player. Just as shoes or skis can influence how you walk or ski, shaft behavior can work for or against you and influence how you swing.

Having the right shaft behavior means determining the appropriate shaft frequency and swingweight relationship, and understanding how length and grip size influence that relationship.

When a golf club shaft behavior is most natural for you, your sensitivity and awareness are free to assimilate productive skills. The golf club shaft behavior that responds most naturally to you eliminates the habit of developing compensations to satisfy an ill-fitting club. It is like the old adage: Either you train the dog or the dog will train you, because somebody will definitely get trained. Similarly, either you adjust yourself with swing compensations to fit a golf club...or...you adjust a golf club to fit your swing.

THE POWER WITHIN

Once the equipment variables have been managed, it is my contention that golf skills are most easily assimilated from the inside out. That is, by getting in touch with the feelings associated with results.

The feelings during a golf swing consist of nanosecond impulses of feedback and reaction in your nerves and muscles. Any attempt to interrupt the processes with a thought is futile. However, there are reference points in a swing that give the most pronounced sensations and those points are where inertia is most prevalent.

Inertia is the overcoming of a static object's tendency to remain static in order to put the object in motion, and it is the overcoming of a moving object's momentum in order to change its direction and/or its speed. The golf swing take-away is governed by the law of inertia. The change of direction at the top of the swing is governed by inertia. Impact is governed by inertia. Getting to know inertia is getting to know your golf swing. After set-up routine, these three inertia points are the most critical elements in a golf swing.

In the case of beginners, the ideal way to develop these critical elements is by starting day one on the practice green. Contact comes easily and getting used to wielding thirty-five inches of putter has incremental successes that carry momentum to each new level.

To illustrate the effectiveness of this strategy, I instituted a mandatory limit of five one-hour lessons and solicited beginners who had never held a golf club. I explained that golf was easy to learn and that in five lessons we would build a foundation with enough direction to keep them busy learning on their own for a year. The purpose for instituting this strategy was to create case histories to be included in a book now in progress.

The most notable case history involved a married couple, two lawyers who worked at the same law firm in downtown Los Angeles. The firm was having its annual outing at Ojai Country Club and while participation was not mandatory, it was the politically correct thing to do, especially for staff over the age of thirty.

We began on the practice green and they became aware of how it feels to roll the ball into the hole while learning about how and when to tend the pin, mark the ball; about line, shadow and noise etiquette, repairing ball marks, and how to see the green's influence on the roll of the ball. Then we chipped-on and putted-in during the second lesson. The third lesson was the lofted iron approach to the green. Lesson four was fairway shots and lesson five was from the tee box. We got them outfitted with appropriate apparel, bags, clubs, shoes, balls, gloves, tees, divot tools and rule books. They studied the rules, practiced diligently between lessons, but six days a week of twelve hour days at the office left no daylight opportunities for getting onto a golf course.

The Monday following their Ojai outing, I received a call from the wife.

"I have some good news and some bad news," she said.

"What is the good news?" I asked.

"I shot one-thirty-two and my husband shot one-forty-four. We did better than some of the people who have been playing for a year," she said.

"So, what's the bad news?" I asked.

"They all accused us of lying about it being our first time on a golf course!"

REMODEL OR REBUILD

With golfers who have been playing for some time there are two basic options. You can remodel with instant gratification remedies or you can rebuild. Rebuilding can be frustrating and may require more patience than it is worth, unless your commitment is serious beyond compromise.

Remodeling can be as simple as a band-aid cure d' jour, such as often happens during friendly corporate outings or Pro-Ams. I will see amateurs straining, swinging out of their shoes to get the ball airborne, only to have it scorch the earth and send gophers and worms to new depths.

"Hit one low," I'll say. They usually shake their head and remark that it's already going low and that is the problem. "Low is not a problem," I'll say, "but, if you're gonna hit 'em low, it ought to be on purpose, so go ahead and hit one as low as you can." Of course the ball then flies high and true.

Clearly, what they are "thinking" and "doing" in an effort to get the ball airborne is having the exact opposite effect, as the ball flight attests.

Golf is sometimes called a game of opposites and the successful cure d' jour often lies in having a golfer hit the undesired shot intentionally. The idea being, if you are going to hit that shot, let's learn to use it. Maybe one day it will come in handy, so while you intellectually want to qualify it as a mistake and correct it, just for a moment hit it on purpose and get familiar with the feeling you experience in doing so. Then you will be able to call up that shot if you ever need it to get under something.

There is no downside risk to this strategy. The golfer is no longer in a right or wrong frame of mind. He or she will often straighten a hook or a slice by trying to hit that shot intentionally, but the key is that the golfer is monitoring the feelings that cause the effect and this is pure learning from the inside out.

Granted, these strategies are more applicable to beginning and intermediate players. Advanced amateurs and professionals are in need of more subtle realigning of their sensitivity awareness, but the best and most permanent results are assimilated from inside out-holding a finish while watching what the swing still fresh has delivered. If you are not in touch with the empirical cause and effect relationship of what you are feeling, how will you get to where you want to be? What good is a map when you have no idea where you are?

The quality teaching professional understands this and helps develop awareness in a golfer, as opposed to asking a golfer to mimic Tiger's swing, as if anybody could. Tiger didn't get where he is trying to be somebody else. He, like all champions, gets into his "zone" when he knows what he will have the ball do. The money and pleasure go to those in the "zone" of awareness who trust themselves enough to feel results and not think process once the set-up routine is initiated.

Thinking is only of value to the decision making process of club and shot selection according to conditions. Once the decisions have been made, thinking is replaced by knowing in accomplished golfers.  Knowing what you have decided will happen means that your attention is fixed on the target. Being fixed on the target is to look intently at the target. When your eyes stare intently, your mind goes quiet.  So, get your eyes supremely involved because the reality is "out there," not between your ears.

SPORTS PSYCHOLOGY

One afternoon a distinguished gentleman came into the shop and somehow we got onto the subject of how performance is influenced by thinking. I explained that every human has thoughts when the insecurity of doubt is allowed to linger. Those thoughts can turn negative, as in, "Don't leave it short in the water." There are times when that "don't" digs in like a tick.

I went on to say that Fritz Perls, the Gestalt Therapist, would have us not fight the "tick" but rather he would have us befriend it in order to understand it. Intellectually we know that we should be aware of where we want the ball to go, but the negativity prevails and even seems to grow more resolute when pressured. If the "don't" has attached itself to the situation, just place the "don't" where you want it. Your body doesn't know do or don't. It only knows where you attention is fixed, so make the "don't" your friend. Keep it and place it where you want it, as in , "Don't knock it stiff below right of the hole." Your body, which is swinging the club, knows where your attention is fixed and will perform accordingly. Do or don't does not enter the anatomical equation. 

That nice gentleman laughed and shook his head while handing me his business card. The card showed him to be a psychiatrist and performance enhancement specialist for a major league baseball team.

"I've been having this problem with two of my hitters," he said, "the negative thoughts and all...and I am going to use this technique with them, thank you."

One way to develop awareness is to exercise it in the most mundane situations, where nothing is at stake. When slow play has you backed up and waiting, feel how you are standing. Feel your facial expression. Relaxing your facial muscles relieves squinting and improves visual acuity. Feel the improvement in your balance and stability, just standing there, when your toes are raised and not pressing the ground. It is hard to roll to the outside of the foot with the toes raised. You will need a little help with this one, but notice how much more stable you are in your address posture when your chin is elevated from your chest, your neck straight. Have someone give you a nudge and see for yourself.

The levels of concentrated awareness are infinite and will serve you well. In fact, they already are serving you well in everything you do, from interacting with your car to walking in a hurry through a crowd, dressing yourself, and in the intimate expressions of love you have for another. Life offers infinite opportunities to grow your awareness and manifest the unique individuality fundamental to golf, nature, and snowflakes.