Periodically I browse thru some of my golf books, in particular the stuff that become written a long time in the past. I'm afraid we are falling into an obsession with mechanics and numbers that blinds us to the simpler factors of the game, and I re-read those vintage books with the desire that I won't lose those little gems of expertise.
One of my favorites is Bobby Jones because he played back in the days of hickory and, although he wasn't adverse to a modern approach (check out my post about his views on using video to improve your swing to see what I mean -- they did have slo-mo film back then, you know), he approaches the game with a less technical view.
With all the debate over players like Tiger and Yani Tseng "losing their swings" -- and just this past week, with Jordan Spieth suddenly losing his while Jason Day has "found something" and now can't seem to miss -- I thought a Jones article called Maintaining the "Feel" from his book Bobby Jones on Golf was appropriate.
Apparently Jones had been asked how great players could inexplicably lose their ability to play when they had been so good before. He was asked, "Is it because he [the player] can't play while he is thinking about his swing?" That's what we hear teachers and analysts on TV say all the time, isn't it? Here are a few of the things Bobby Jones had to say about the matter:
It seems to me that this query means that the better participant, or expert, is able to play golfing without thinking of some thing at all except wherein he needs the ball to go. I understand a good many pleasant young chaps engaged in huge-time opposition who would be highly thrilled if this had been so.
Unquestionably, there are times when satisfactory gamers can play the game subconsciously. But the common participant need to remember that the maximum carried out golfer can lose the contact as suddenly and for as little obvious cause as everyone else, and that, even though at instances he can immediately find out and accurate his fault, there are also instances while he is totally at a loss for a remedy.
This does no longer suggest that the expert does now not understand how he must swing the membership. But golfing is a tough sport to play consistently nicely due to the fact the precise swing isn't always a thing the human frame can accomplish completely obviously. To hit the ball efficaciously the golfer has usually to be under restraint. I even have continually, in my very own mind, likened this restraint to that underneath which a trotting or a pacing horse must hard work in a race when he need to hold to an synthetic gait although each urge must be for him to run like blazes.
So any golfer may for a while have the feel so that he may think he can go on playing in that way easily and naturally; but the trouble is that the moment some mental implulse or physical necessity suggests to one of his muscles that it do something else at a particular time, it is likely to yield, because the thing it is doing is not the thing it can do most easily. (p10) I think his explanation of why this is so is quite interesting. "The golfer has always to be under restraint." When I read that I think about teachers who say we should teach kids to swing as hard as possible and just straighten them out later. Somehow I don't think Jones would have agreed with that philosophy!
Anyway, he then terms his answer to that authentic query this way:
The answer to the question that started all this is, "Not due to the fact he can not play even as he's taking into account the swing, but due to the fact he isn't sure what he ought to think about, and what he need to try to do. (p10)He muses that some people might have a great swing concept and still be incapable of performing it properly, but that such a situation doesn't alter the fact that
...The man who has the muscular control and experience of timing can't play consistently nicely until he is aware of what he is doing.
But I think the nature of the problem is indicated when we realize that even the man with the control, the sense, and the knowledge finds intervals when his game is off and he can't find the reason. There are so many places to look and so many checks to make -- and sometimes the trouble is found in the simplest and least obvious locations. Golf is a game that must always be uncertain. (p10-11) "Golf is a game that must always be uncertain." In an age of biomechanics and Trackman, this is a truth that rubs us the wrong way... but truth always has a way of doing that, doesn't it? On some days, some weeks, and even some months, our bodies simply won't repeat our golf swing no matter how hard we try -- and that's true even for the best golfers in the world.
I remember, returned while Tiger first established with Haney and he was getting better from knee surgical operation, he joined NBC's golf group within the booth and Dan Hicks requested him how he managed to get enough practice even as his knee was improving. Tiger's answer caught with me; he stated that the better he understood what he become seeking to do, the less exercise he regarded to need.
Maybe we've grow to be too obsessed with our games. Maybe we've made the golf swing so complicated that we now not apprehend what we're truly looking to do. Maybe it is time we spent a bit less time focusing on the technological know-how of the golfing swing and spent extra time simply getting to know to have a laugh swinging the club and hitting the ball. And perhaps we need to comprehend that on a few days our our bodies definitely are not going to cooperate... And that the ones days are just a part of the method.
Maybe we must just be given the reality that we are simplest human, recover from it and strive once more tomorrow.
It's a notion, anyway.
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