Entry 25.44

As a golf instructor and movement specialist, I am always evaluating how people move in their golf swing. Sometimes that’s a blessing. I mean, if I’m only doing it when I teach, then I’m missing out on tons of learning moments. The more differing information you take in, the more refined the evaluation tool in your brain gets. That’s part of the reason that you should be playing golf more than you are on the practice facility and why you should be doing random practice more than you do block practice. The golf course and random practice give you novel information every time at a scale you don’t get during block practice or while on the practice facility. Yes, every swing and every lie is different for every golf shot you will ever hit. But block practice and the practice facility make the bandwidth of those differences really small. That bandwidth is the differing information I’m referring too. You want that bandwidth wide, so you capture more opportunities to learn. A modern example would be artificial intelligence. The wider variety of information that you feed the model, the better the answers you can get. In golf, the wider variety of lies and shots that you have to read and create, the better those results can get. It’s a possibility, not a guarantee. There’s a lot of other things that have to fall into place. That’s why I am always looking at golf swings. Recreational, college, club pros, and tour pros are all in the scope that I am evaluating. That’s a really good thing when it comes to teaching. When I play golf? Not so much. It’s a mental distraction that I am always fighting against. I need to focus on the task at hand: ball in hole. It doesn’t matter whether the players in my group are playing well or poorly. My eye always wants to look for certain patterns and outcomes. It doesn’t help that while I’m playing in a group is the best time for me to do these evaluations. People tend to move differently when they know they are being evaluated. I definitely let my focus break because of how valuable being able to watch a golfer in the wild is to how I teach. My game suffers because of it. In the past, I used to take videos of my students' swings try to recreate them so I would have a better understanding of what they were feeling and what they were trying to accomplish. That made my game even worse.

About a month ago, I abandoned that approach. Reason number one? I want to play good golf. I love playing the game and when I’m trying to make my swing and all these other swings are competing for my attention, that just wasn’t a good recipe for success. Reason number two? I’ve got enough information from all the swings I’ve recreated. Major patterns have developed. Another way to say that? I got bored. Sure, every player has their own unique flair to the swing, but the underlying patterns were similar so recreating them just got way too easy. When our brains get bored, they stop learning. So, we’re back to needing that new information for learning. It’s one of the reasons I am constantly in a course or have my nose in a book. Sure, repetition helps us remember things, but repetition doesn’t make us more intelligent. The difference between intelligence and knowledge is intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge, while knowledge is just facts and information you have acquired. The lesson here? Strive to be more intelligent and less just a storage system. That’s why I’m constantly evaluating swings. I just don’t watch swings. I try to break down the swing as fast as possible, find what made it work or fail and come up with a solution to make it better. On the tee box, my goal is to have all that completed by the time the next person hits. Sometimes, I make it. Sometimes, I’m left scratching my head. And that’s ok. I’m not going to have all the answers that fast. But it’s a practice that has helped me get faster at helping all of you.

Last week, I wanted to set up a camera face on and down the line on the first tee box and I sent groups off each round for the PGA Playing Ability Test (PAT) I was hosting. That wouldn’t be fair to all the players though. They are there for a reason: pass the PAT and continue their pursuit of PGA membership. I want to do everything that I can to help them in that goal. I felt the added pressure of just seeing cameras on the first tee would just be too much for some of them. The PAT is hard enough without any additional pressure. So, I set out to see how fast I could evaluate players as I sent them off. I got to watch ninety-four players to evaluate their first tee shot over those two days. I wish I could say ninety-four tee shots, but unfortunately some of those players had to hit multiple tee shots. Out of bounds right off number one saw to that. Even when I set up the course this time, I tried to scooch that line a few feet further to the right to hopefully help some of those players out. A few got lucky and were able to take advantage of those extra feet. A few didn’t. I should’ve marked the swings that I figured out in time and found out my percentage of success. Feedback is important in life, not just in golf. This exercise wasn’t all about speed, it was about precision too. Player’s swings who stood out to me on day one got a second hard look day two. That was only between 8-10 swings, some good, some bad. If you took an iron off the tee on day one, but a wood on day two or vice versa, I paid extra attention. Did the pattern I saw on day one change signifying that one swing was a bad one or was the same pattern there with a similar result? If you hammered the ball straight down the middle on day one, was your swing good to go as is or was it luck? Of those players whose swings stood out, I was perfect on judging the underlying pattern. That doesn’t mean some of those were false positives or false negatives. Just means in my mind, I was correct. And honestly, it was way too easy.

It wasn’t easy because I have the most discerning eye in the world. It wasn’t easy because I’m one of the best coaches in the world. It was easy because I have a model of what the swing should look like in my head. Then when I watch swings, I compare that swing with the model in my head. Because I have a starting point, I can modify the model at will to get certain ball flight results. We do this all the time in other parts of life. You go to the doctor, and they take your blood pressure. They have a model of what that blood pressure should look like. So, if your blood pressure is 120/80 they give you the thumbs up. You fit the model. If you are getting your blood sugar tested, they do the same thing. But it’s highly unlikely that multiple people who come in for check ups are going to be perfect 120/80. So, there is an acceptable range they have built. Teeter this way or that and you are still considered good. If they are a good doctor, over time they will build a more refined picture of what your personnel blood pressure range should be. I have yet to have a doctor like this. Because of that fact, I do it for myself. My systolic numbers are typically from 112-128 and my diastolic numbers are 71-85. Looking at the medical range, I tend to run just a smidge low. But that is my personal range. In conjunction with that, my heart rate tends to run a little high for my conditioning. My resting heart rate range is currently 53-58. Which is about 10 beats per minute (bpm) higher than it was when I was running triathlons in my early twenties. The lowest I have recorded was 43. But then, my blood pressure was a little higher. Over the last four months I have been monitoring my blood sugar. My average fasting blood sugar is about 91 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL). That’s pretty good. But I’ve seen it fluctuate measurement to measurements as high as 102 and as low as 67. If anything, I tend to run low when fasted (100 mg/dL is considered to be good). So, I’ve taken the model the medical world has build and personalized it in all those cases. But I don’t just look at them individually. I look for patterns linking the three together. I’m doing the same thing when I look at swings. I take the model, compare it to you and over time look at all the factors to build you a personalized model. I wasn’t doing that on the first tee of the PAT. I don’t have sufficient evidence. With one or two snapshots in time, all I can do is compare you to the model.

The second reason it was so easy because all the swings that stood out to me had one of two patterns. The few “good” swings had some similar model characteristics and the rest of them had a different model. I’m still trying to come up with a simple rhyme for the good model that I have for the “bad” model. The closest I have right now is the “Go & Throw”. These players get their bodies heading laterally towards the target, the “Go”, and then “throw” the club head through the ball (big difference between to and through). I really like this pattern. It’s the model that is floating around in my head. But it’s more than just those simple terms. I have checkpoints for where all the different joints should be at certain times. That way when most of the joints are in the correct position, I can easily see which ones don’t match the model exactly and what that will cause whether it’s poor contact, a lack of power, an unpredictable direction or curve or even pain or worse, injury. But like the few blood measurements I shared, just because they don’t fit the model perfectly, doesn’t mean they don’t work. Those few irregularities may match up perfectly and still give you a pain free, powerful, controlled ball strike. That’s you. That’s your model. When Red Ryder asked me last week if I had any driver swings from last spring to compare his current swing to, that’s what he was looking for, his model. Why? Because last spring, he was playing really good golf. He’s gotten away from that a bit, and we are working to get him back into prime playing condition. But I’m still comparing him to my normal model as well. It’s easy to get your bloodwork consistent, but still be too far away from the normal model to be considered healthy for you. It’s the same with swings.

The other pattern that I saw I call the “Pin & Spin”. In an age where the prevalent swing message to golfers is “you need to rotate more” and “you need to get more open” I shouldn’t be surprised how widespread this pattern is. And it’s not just my PGM students. Even my older players who don’t have the mobility to “Pin & Spin” are trying to do it. They are doing exactly what they are being told to do. Their swings, and their games, are suffering because of it. It’s the exact opposite of the model in my head. Pelvis wide open, pressure too far back, handle back. It’s a recipe for high spinny cuts that go no where. If they happen to close the face it’s a dead pull that’s only twenty feet off the ground. These players are the ones whose bloodwork is so far away from the model, they need a serious intervention. Pelvis at the target, pressure back and handle back is like high blood sugar, high blood pressure and high resting heart rate. If you don’t change it, you will be in serious trouble. Medication is usually prescribed but that’s like a swing tip. It really hasn’t changed the issue; it’s just masked it. You need to change your lifestyle: eat well and exercise. For your swing? You need more lateral and more arms. It’s a complete change in pattern. A total overhaul. But like a lifestyle change it’s not easy. Like a lifestyle change, it takes consistency. Like a lifestyle change, it’s a decision. Your decision. Like when people go to the doctor and ignore what the doctor says, people do that with golf instruction too. Just takes small steps over time and before you know it, you are swinging it better. That makes it more fun. That makes you stick with it. Your entire game gets better. When that happens don’t fall into the trap of beating balls or hitting the same putt 100 times. Get on the golf course. You’ll see randomness and be forced to solve problems. Your golf intelligence will go up. A good swing and a better game IQ is what great players have. Not perfect swings. Find the range you want to be in and then work on getting there. One small step at a time.