So now the USGA has gone ahead and changed the rules with regard to the design of the grooves on irons in an effort to make the game more difficult (because its become so easy!). The thought is the top players in the world can stop the ball too easily out of the rough and the hope is by changing the equipment and bring back the “flyer lie” these players will not be able to control the golf ball as well out of the rough thereby putting a premium on accuracy off the tee. Will it work? Time will tell, but I don’t think the issue is the clubs, I believe its the ball that’s made such a change in the game.
Instead of changing and trying to dial back the equipment why not change the way we score the game? For example, you could make every hole a par one. Let’s take a par four as an example. If you hit the fairway you get zero points and if you hit the green in regulation you get no points. On the green you get a 1/2 point for each putt. Two putts would give you a par one and one putt would give you a 1/2 point on the hole (like a birdie). Now let’s take the “power-hitter guy” on the same hole who likes to just bomb it and then worry about it. He misses the fairway, he gets a 1/2 point, then misses the green and gets a 1/2 point, then chips it on and gets another half point, and makes the putt and gets another 1/2 point. This took him four shots but he gets a two on the hole instead of a one. This would put the premium on accuracy and would really keep guys out of the rough.
I know, dream on, the chances of the USGA and RandA ever changing the way we score the game are about the same as my chance of being able to walk to the moon. But it’s fun to think about it.

I love the Olympics, and although I didn’t get to watch as much of it as I would have liked, it’s now over and I’m going to miss it. I find watching these athletes so inspiring. They work so hard and make so many sacrifices, then get one shot, every four years, to execute their skills under the most intense pressure. It must be an amazing feeling to execute well what you have worked on for so many hours all in one given moment. Some of the sports remind of golf in the sense that they are not, what I refer to as, reactionary sports. Sports like basketball (except the foul shot) where players are moving and responding to what’s going on around them. Events like vaults in gymnastics and diving where there is nothing happening and the competitor is the one that starts it. You can see their focus and intensity, their confidence and committment, before they execute their movements. And if something interferes, like “mental noise”, or they over think their movements, the results are ususally less than stellar. That’s how it is in golf before we hit every shot. We need to have focus and intensity, confidence and committment to the shot at hand, and if we have anything less than that — well, we all know what happens.
Now I have to wait two more years for the winter games. I love this stuff – I find watching individuals sacrificing and working so hard to try to realize their personal potential one of the most inspiring things I watch on tv — it motivates me to continue to work to realize my personal potential. Onward and upward!

I had a few golfers ask me about Utley’s technique so I bought his short game book, The Art of The Short Game”, several weeks ago and have been jumping around and wrestling with it ever since. I can’t get myself to read it cover to cover. I think the book is well written, good photos, and has very conversational tone (me to you writing style), similar to my book, but that’s where the similarity basically ends. To me Utley makes the short game so complicated — he talks about the movement of the knees the hips, the forearms, the wrists and so on — breaking the movement into teeny, tiny pieces that you need to put together to make it work –similar to putting together a kid’s bicycle on Christmas morning. His approach is just too “instructional” to me.
HOWEVER, like most golf instruction books I have read (and I’ve read a lot of them) I did find one really good gem in this book. It has to do with ball position. Most golfers, me included, have the tendency to chip and pitch the ball with our sand wedge. When we want to make the ball go low, we just move the ball way back in our stance, press our hands forward, which delofts the club and hit down on the ball, with the leading edge of the wedge creating a small divot after impact. This can make the trajectory of the ball more like a mid-iron. So why is this not good? Because when you put the ball back in your stance and hit down, you put a lot of spin on the ball, and spin is very hard to judge and control. So Utley makes the point of saying that you should never play the ball back in your stance and he plays everything forward of center. I don’t necessarily agree with this. The reason why is most amateurs don’t hit the ball first, they hit the ground and then the ball, and moving the ball more forward in the stance will just increase the chances of this happening and encourage the “scooping” motion.
Here’s what I have done with this concept. I have players take their sand wedge and first play the ball inside the right heel (for a right-handed player) and hit down on the ball. Once they are able to make clean contact and hit the ball – then the ground, I start moving the ball a little more forward in their stance, which then adds loft and because the club is not coming down so steeply reduces spin. So now the golfer is hitting a higher shot with less spin.
The idea is to experience what a low, spinning pitch shot looks and feels like, and how the ball responds when it hits the green, then experience the higher less spinning shot. By doing this a golfer learns how to hit different shots with just one club and is building a repertoire of shots.

It’s become very popular, both with tour players and amateurs to put a line on the ball to help with alginement — especially with putting. I also do this, in fact I’ve been doing it for about ten or so years, long before they had the little devices to help you put on a straight line on the ball. I used to freehand it. Anyway, obviously I do think it can be help, BUT there is one major caveat that players must understand. When you line the ball up and check the line (from behind looking at the hole) it fairly easy to line it up. However, it almost never looks the same (or correct) when you setup and get ready to stroke the putt. Many golfers readjust the alginment of the putter or make some in stroke compensation because they done trust the line. YOU MUST TRUST THE LINE! Once you line the ball up from behind you must make a 100% committment to that line and trust it when you get ready to putt. Trust that what you see from behind is muych more relizble than how or what you see standing over the putt. it’s much easier to align from behined the line than from the side. So trust it and roll it on the line. If you can’t do that — don’t bother using the line — it’s probably hurting you more than its helping.

So I’m going to to be giving this blog thing another try. As you can see I really haven’t posted anything on this blog. I think the main reason why is that I keep thinking about it — but feel like it has to be something really important that I should be saying. Instead of that I’m going to start posting whatever I’m thinking that’s golf related or at least somewhat connected to golf. We’ll see what happens.