|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Multimedia Central Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities Work in Sports
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Thinking of Tiger -- and my game
Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity was a 42-year-old 8-handicapper when he suddenly lost his swing. Since December 1989 he has been looking for it -- a modern-day Odysseus adrift on the troubled waters of swing theory. As Garrity travels the world reporting on golf, he visits as many driving ranges as he can, avoiding the dreaded "mats only" ranges that prevent him from teeing it up. TORONTO -- It was nearly midnight when I checked into the Airport Marriott last Thursday. From my room on the ninth floor I could see some street lights and the neon sign of an Outback Steak House. Otherwise it was -- as my dad used to say -- as dark as a yard up a stovepipe. A lake? A park? I was too tired to speculate. I pulled the drapes, nibbled on some room-service chicken fingers, and fell asleep to reruns of SCTV. When I threw back the curtains in the morning, I was surprised to find a golf course below. I had a blimp's-eye view of a dogleg par 4 that curved around a long pond. A golfer was in the right rough, contemplating a shot that had to carry at least 175 yards of brown water to reach the green. I stood at the window and watched him swing. He had a bit of a reverse pivot -- probably from trying to lift his ball in the air -- but he hit it solidly. The ball hung tantalizingly over the water for a few seconds before splashing down a few feet short of the wooden bulkhead. The golfer dropped his club, turned around and looked heavenward. Toward me, actually. Collecting himself, he dropped another ball, took another swing, and hit one higher and further right. This shot had no chance. SPLASH. He stared at the ground for a moment and heaved a sigh. He reached into his pocket, pulled out another ball and dropped it on the ground. This time his reverse pivot was even more pronounced, producing a high slice. The poor guy was walking across the fairway to his cart before this last shot hit the water. I thought of Tiger Woods. During my four-hour layover in Kansas City, I caught a few minutes of the Canadian Open on TV, and I saw Tiger hit his approach into the water fronting the 11th green at Glen Abbey. The difference, of course, is that Tiger's waterball was caused by a slight misjudgment of his lie or the wind, while the duffer's was pretty much programmed into his swing. Also, Tiger is better than the duffer at recovering from his mistakes. On Friday, while I was trying to find a place to park at Glen Abbey, Tiger played four holes in six-under par on his way to a second-round 65. My game, meanwhile, is somewhere on the scale between that of Woods and the fellow I saw from the window at my hotel room. Last Tuesday I had a late afternoon lesson with young Rob Stanger at the Maderas Golf Club in Rancho Bernardo, Calif. Maderas is a new course designed by Johnny Miller, and like most new layouts it has a spiffy practice facility. I particularly liked the short-game area, which has two tightly bunkered practice greens linked by rolling fairways and lush collars of rough. Rob, a veteran of the old Hogan Tour and various mini-tours, started me out with a simple 30-yard pitch with a sand wedge and then moved me back another 20 yards. There he stretched his trademark carpenter's line along the ground toward the flagstick. The string is the only teaching aid Rob has used so far, and it may be all he needs. He told me to take short practice swings (from nine o'clock to three o'clock) along the string. He said he wanted the tip of the shaft and then the butt of the club pointing at the string during the swing -- not at the same time, of course -- with the clubhead "covering" the target on the follow through. This was a terrific exercise for me because I tend to pull the clubhead to the left on my follow-through, producing either a pull hook, a dead pull or a high fade. Swinging to a reference point over the string keeps me swinging down the line with a square clubface. This was just my second lesson with Rob, but I knew there was something very different about his method, something I couldn't put my finger on. Then it hit me. He wasn't concerned about the space between my left arm and my body, or the relationship between my chin and left ear lobe at address. "Most teachers get you focused on what your body is doing," he explained. "I think you should pay attention to what the CLUB is doing." By watching the club and not being distracted by the idiosyncratic movements of various body types, Rob has concluded that most great players use pretty much the same technique. "People think that Tiger Woods and Jack Nicklaus have very different swings," he said, "but both those guys keep the club on the target line throughout the swing." The point is not as obvious as it sounds. Many golf pros teach that the club should be PARALLEL to the target line when it reaches horizontal on the takeaway. Rob says no, that just stands the club straight up. Instead, the butt of the club should be pointing at the ball-to-target line on the ground -- the string -- and then at the ball, and then down the extended line behind the golfer to infinity. Same thing after impact. The tip of the shaft follows the target line until the clubhead covers the target on the way to a full follow-through. It's easier to say than to do; my clubhead still wants to go left whenever I apply power to the swing. But I hit several nice pitches under Rob's watchful eye and even holed a 50-yarder. "That has to be in your column!" he said. "No way," I replied. "I'm much too modest." He then had me hit a few eight-irons, five-irons and five-woods with the same short swing. "Don't react to the ball," he said. "Make the ball react to you." It was very difficult to make a short swing with the long clubs, but I hit several shots that pleased him -- easy swings that compressed the ball and sent it flying almost as far as a full swing would have. Then we stepped down into one of the bunkers for some sand instruction ... but I'll leave that for my next column, when I will also reveal the winner of my sand tips contest. After the lesson we played a few holes, and I got to see Rob put his theories in action. I don't believe it is necessary for a pro to be a great player to be a great teacher, but Rob's game was impressive. He hit the middle of every fairway. He hit every green. To be honest, Rob hit the ball as straight as anybody I've ever seen -- excluding Iron Byron -- and made three birdie putts before the sun went down. And he did it while giving me an on-course lesson. It was as if Shivas Irons had walked up and said, "Let me teach you the game." It got dark way too early.
Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity advice, share your experiences or suggest a driving range, click here.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
