Every golf tournament I watch, it’s inevitable and only a matter of time, before one of the broadcasters, whoever is the “expert’ on the golf swing, will say something about a player’s missed shots or even the positive analysis of a player’s swing, to make me so mad I want to throw my drink at the TV. There are two problems here -one is that damn “Biz-Cam” that does video playback at 1 zillion frames per second. The other is commentators that don’t know much or anything about the golf swing.
The combination of these two things can cause disaster for the average golfer. Breaking down great player’s motions at that speed inevitably leads to over analysis, and to be honest, analysis sometimes I don’t even understand. But that’s easy to do – if you watch something that’s in SUPER slow-motion it’s simple to go “look at this” and “look at that”. Soon they’ll be talking about Tigers right pinky and how it moves in the golf swing – and you should be doing that. To me, the most infuriating thing is when a player misses a shot and they go right to the video playback, then someone offers the reason that the shot was missed. And comments by former tour players (with exception to maybe Nick Faldo) are worse than the swing analysts, because honestly, just because you can play doesn’t mean you know about the golf swing – it just means you can play.
At least the guys that are instructors are fairly knowledgeable, and in their defense, many times I think they need to fill in dead space and constantly offer explanations for why a guy with 130 mile an hour clubhead speed missed a fairway by 15 yards – maybe it was just the clubface was slightly open at impact? At that speed it doesn’t take much to cause the ball to go offline. But that would be boring after awhile, so there’s the need to look at how the hips are rotating and stopping, the shoulders are moving to slow or too open, the hands are not “releasing”, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile anyone who knows about video playback also knows that if you put two swings up on the screen side by side, many times it’s very difficult to see the minute differences between the swing of a good shot and a bad one. But this doesn’t stop them – and maybe it can’t. If they want to keep their jobs, the swing commentators need to offer an analysis to the reasons why – even if those reasons are inaccurate. Now I’m suggesting they are not sincere in the analysis, I’m suggesting they’re pressured to say something and fill in the blanks.
Now if this sounded like a rant…well, it was. And it’s not because I think they know nothing and I know everything, but rather because golfers listen to them, because they are “experts” in the golf swing. They are like talking magazines, or Golf Channel shows, that offer tidbits of information, more times than not unrelated to the listener’s golf swings. This just continues this cycle of passing around bad information and confusion that circulates with golfers, and eventually they come and see me. So I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about the swing analysts, I think they might be helping to keep me in business.
Subscribe