It Is No Longer The Golden Age of Golf

I used the term “Golden Age of Golf” in a LinkedIn group and was asked to define it.  Here was my reply.

The “Golden Age” was made up of a multitude of factors that would need a book or two hour podcast to cover completely.  But since you only asked about how things were at the local golf course, here goes.

It was back when club membership was a management perk in almost any business and 90% of the clubs were private.  The company picked up the tab and everybody wanted to be a decent golfer because it was important to business success.  Parents encouraged their children to take up golf because it was important to their future.

Businessmen went there to spend four hours on the course getting to know each other to see if they wanted to do business with each other.

Political leaders were frequently there to strengthen their support with voters.

The clubs were like Cheers – everybody knew your name and what you liked and didn’t like.  The employees and management cared about you and your family.  Personalized service was the driving factor instead of rounds and the bottom line.

The golf staff cared about your golf game and went out of their way to help you play better.  A successful teaching professional was one that the members enjoyed taking lessons from – not the guy that booked the most lessons.

Members took lessons and worked on their games and they club professional knew whether they were improving or not and had a personal interest in their progress.  He was also expected to play with the members frequently.

People went to the club to eat and to socialize with their friends and have great food and service – it wasn’t all about the profitability of the food service operation.

The local golf course was the social, political, and economic hub of many communities.

In other words, it was in the days before the IRS got involved and got the ball rolling down hill and before management companies.

When the IRS targeted golf and private clubs in particular it all began to change.  Once businesses could no longer write off club memberships as a business expense the world of golf began to change.  Of course the legal system striking down golf companies having green grass only policies and forcing them to sell to discounters didn’t help any.

During the “Golden Age” PGA members were held in high esteem and compensated accordingly.  It was not uncommon for the Head Professional to own the golf shop and the golf cart plus receive a retainer.

Today golf professionals are being paid less than I made as an assistant.

I am just glad that I was able to experience it.  I thought this worth sharing for all the young professionals that never got to experience it.

A Different Take On Short Game Alignment

I keep seeing articles about your setup on short shots and chip shots, but for some reason, no one mentions that alignment and setup for each shot is slightly different.  The length of the shot and how high or low you want the ball to fly is determined by your setup and alignment.

Align the Shoulders

While ball position and lower body alignment may vary, the one constant is shoulder alignment.  Your shoulders should always be parallel to your target line on any shot whether you are hitting a driver or a putter.  NOT pointed at the target, but parallel to it.

The Lower Body

The lower body – meaning the feet, legs, and hips - will be open or pointing left of the target in order to get yourself out of your own way.  The club needs to travel down the target line as long as possible and a square stance makes it much more difficult to accomplish that. 

Do NOT Shift Your Weight

The single most important factor in developing a good short game is that you absolutely must learn to contact the ground in the same spot in your swing every time.  To accomplish this you simply need to stabilize your weight.  The low point in your swing arc is where ever your weight (or center of gravity) is.  If you shift your weight the bottom of your arc moves constantly with your weight.  The odds of winning the lottery are better than the odds of getting your weight in the same spot every time if it is shifting.

One point that needs to be made at this time is watching and reading about how tour players do it is a waste of time unless you are already that good.  Tour players have extraordinary hand-eye coordination, touch, and feel so they can do things in their swing that would be problematic for the average golfer.

It is easier to just place the weight on the left side or left foot and keep it there throughout the swing. 

 Keep the Club Head Low

Keep the club low to the ground as long as possible on the back swing and the follow through.  Never make any attempt to lift the club or cock the wrists unless hitting out of deep grass.  Keep the hands quiet.  Over active hands will result in fat and thin or skulled shots.

Another very important factor is to be able to have your hands in the same position at impact that you did at address.  The club head must never pass the hands until well after impact.  The chipping or pitching swing is made primarily with the arms and shoulders – not the hands.

How long the shot is determines how wide or narrow the stance and how open your body is.  For a chip shot your right foot is very close to your left foot and your lower body is very open.

For a pitch shot it is less pronounced.  The hands will generally be more forward on a chip, but the height of the ball flight will be determined by the loft of the club and the forward lean of the shaft.

Grip Down On The Club

One final point that needs to be addressed is gripping down or “choking up” on the club.  The shorter the shot the more you choke up.  It is perfectly fine to grip all the way down to the bottom of the grip.  This enable you to be firmer and more aggressive because the shorter you make the club the shorter distance you will hit the ball.

Hubert Green who had 19 PGA Tour wins including 2 majors used to choke the sand wedge all the way down onto the steel and open the face so he could be firm and aggressive. 

Never let the golf club slow down prior to impact.  Taking it back too far and slowing down prior to impact will cause the club head to pass the hands with the absolute certainty of a bad shot.

Practice with slightly different alignments until you find what is most comfortable for you.  I suggest practicing extensively with a sand wedge which is about 56 degrees.  By adjusting the shaft lean forward and backward and opening and closing the face you can learn to hit a variety of shots.  I am not a fan of using the lob wedge to chip or pitch with.  I agree with Barney Adams, the founder of Adams Golf, when his club designer told him they were going to design a 60 degree lob wedge he told them to stamp a skull and cross bone on it. 

As you go from a full swing to a less than full swing to a chip the right foot gets closer and closer to the left and the hips open more and more.  Shoulders stay parallel to the line.

Once you have learned to develop a solid short game simply start taking a bigger and faster swing and gradually square your body alignment and you will have an excellent full swing as demonstrated by the video below.

Are the Equipment Companies Misleading You?

Since I believe that off-the- rack golf equipment or “stock” golf clubs don’t really fit anyone very well I was reading and article recently by Tom Wishon who is probably the leading expert in club fitting and golf equipment.  In the article I pick up several points that I had suspected to be true, but didn’t have the proof until now.

Set Make Up

Originally a set of irons was 2 – PW or nine clubs.  Sand wedge was considered a utility club and everyone choose the one that worked best for them.  They never matched the rest of the set.  Then the 2 iron got dropped and the sand wedge got added.  Still nine clubs but now you had to buy an additional fairway wood to make up for the 2 iron.

Today a set of irons is 4 – PW, GW, SW.  Club lofts have changed so that the gap between the PW and SW got too large and they had to add the gap wedge.  We still need the something to replace the 2 iron and now we need something to replace the 3 iron so they introduced hybrids.

The manufacturers planned it so the number of clubs you need keeps expanding plus now just having a sand wedge isn’t enough.  We now have lob wedges with additional loft and utility wedges with more loft than that.  How in the world did players get by with just a sand wedge?  We are now up to eleven clubs in a set plus an extra fairway wood and a hybrid.  The set has gone from nine to thirteen to cover the same yardage.

Vanishing Loft

For years there was a fairly stable and reliable guide to equipment loft that most of the industry used because all irons were forged.  With the introduction of cast club heads this started to change.  From the late 1990’s it has been a race to see who can make the strongest lofts and for a reason the manufactures don’t want you to know.

As you can see from the chart we now have to have a “gap wedge” because of the huge difference between the pitching wedge and the sand wedge.  It also points out how many clubs have been added to a set.

Growing Club Lengths

The following chart shows the old “Muscle Back” forged iron compared to today’s “Cavity Back” investment cast iron.

More Difficult to Hit

As clubs get longer they become more difficult for the average golfer to hit but the only way manufacturers can keep claiming their clubs hit it longer they have to make them longer and reduce the loft.

In club design there is the “24/38 Rule.”  This rule basically states that the average golfer cannot hit an iron that longer than 38 inches and has less than 24 degrees of loft.  In the traditional forged iron that was the spec of the 3 iron and most people struggled with it.  Today that is a 4 iron and most people struggle with it.

The Point

The point of all this is to hopefully get people to understand that the manufacturers do not have the average golfer’s best interest at heart so before spending any more money on clubs you need to find out what fits you best and each golfer is slightly different.  The future of golf equipment is in club fitting.

In my next article I will explain how they are doing the same thing to you with the driver.  The overwhelming odds are that you actually hit it shorter and less accurate with today’s driver.

Golf Does Not Have To Be So Difficult!

One of, if not the major, reason golfers struggle is because they have been brainwashed, especially by the golf instruction industry, into believing golf is about “pretty” and positions. Videos of golf swings have been posted online asking for comments on the swing.  It is amazing how many golfers and even so called teaching professionals jump in with instant analysis without knowing anything about the golfer or his ball flight.

The reason this happens is because of the misguided obsession with correct positions and having a pretty swing.

The only position that matters in the golf swing is the impact position.  If you have the ability to strike the golf relatively solid and straight then you have all the positions you need.  You can have a golf swing that has all the “right” positions and still not be able to deliver the club head to the golf ball effectively.

If golfers and teachers would focus on impact and ball flight without obsessing with how it looks golf would become much easier.

Once you start thinking about your ball flight it gets easier to learn to fix it.  If you slice simply think about what happens at impact to cause that.  The club face is open to the direction it is traveling.  Now think about what your hands need to do to improve that.  The reason I say hands is that is the only part of the body that touches the golf club.

Improving gets easier when you start thinking like that instead of trying to fix positions or over-the-top swings.

I have often wondered what would happen if I took a random student and said, “I am going to help you create a golf swing capable of winning 17 times on tour including the FedEx Cup and the U S Open and over $60 million.  How would you like that?”

I am betting anyone I asked would jump all over that.

Then I would say, “There is only one catch.  You will end up with a swing that looks exactly like Jim Furyk’s.”

Seeing the response to that would be very interesting.  Please note that earlier I used the term “capable of.”  Even if you swing the club EXACTLY like Jim Furyk it doesn’t mean you could play like he does.  The real question is regardless of what your swing looks like “can you play golf?”

That's it from the Golf Cave for today.  Please leave comments.

What Golfers Want vs What Golf Instructors Want

Golfers don’t want what golf instructors are selling!

We have some interesting dynamics at work in the golf instruction area of the golf business.  What the vast majority of golfers want is a simple tip or short lesson to help them improve quickly.  Most golf instructors depend on lesson income to earn a living and they want to spread it out over as many full length lessons as possible.  The end result being fewer and fewer golfers are taking lessons.

Also golfers are getting older and older golfers are less interested in lesson packages and long term goals and improvement which is the business model for nearly all golf instructors.

The average golfer can usually be helped dramatically in 10 minute sessions or maybe several 10 minute sessions but that doesn’t fit the existing business model.  Studies of how people actually learn have shown that learning and retention are better in frequent short sessions.

Today only one golfer in seventeen takes lessons and I think we need to consider the possibility that the business model may be a major reason why.

One possible solution is to come up with plan that doesn’t charge by the hour such as charging your normal lesson rate but break it up into six ten minute sessions or four fifteen minute sessions.  Possibly a monthly or yearly charge for unlimited help.

In surveys golfers have indicated that they would be more likely to take lessons in this type scenario than the traditional one hour lesson with no money back guarantee.   If that is what the market prefers why not try to accommodate it and fill the need.

Marketing a program like this would immediately set a teacher apart from the rest and get people’s attention.

That is it from the cave for today.  Thanks for joining me!

View from the Golf Cave

This is my new blog and got its name from the senior instruction editor for Golf Digest that said I live in a cave.  That just appealed to me for some reason so I have decided to have fun with it.

My cave is powered by a solar energy so I can have internet access but it is fairly dark in here.  I just have enough light to read by.

I will be posting my thoughts on golf in general but primarily on golf instruction.  I think golf instructors may enjoy it and there will be plenty of posts aimed at helping the average golfer improve and negotiate his way through all confusion and conflicting opinions out there.

Most of the posts will be based on discussions I have with some of the best and brightest in the industry and the other moderators in Old School Golf.

They will also be based on things I have learned over the years and continue to learn because of insatiable curiosity.

I would love it if I get a lot of folks subscribing to it and leaving comments so I will know that people are actually reading what I write about.

I will be closing down my other blogs and moving the most popular posts over to The View from the Golf Cave.  I will also move my subscribers over here also.

I will try to make sure that I post regularly.  My plans now are to have a new post every Friday but if I get enough interest I will post more often.

I have a few thousand followers on Facebook and Twitter and I am hoping they will tell their friends about it.

You can also follow me on Facebook by clicking here and on Twitter by clicking here!

That's it from the cave for now.  I will be posting again soon and I don't expect you to see my name on any of Golf Digest top instructor lists.