|
 |   |
|
EVENTS Fantasy Central Inside Game Video Plus Statitudes Your Turn Message Boards Email Newsletters Golf Guide Cities 
CNNSI.com GROUP
COMMERCE
|  |
Working off the rust
Sports Illustrated senior writer John Garrity was a 42-year-old eight 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. Monday, Jan. 22 SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. -- Tiger Woods and I have decided this is a good week to spend in the desert, working on our games. Unfortunately, he'll be tying up the range I normally use, the one at the Tournament Players Club. I'll have to settle for the mats at Cracker Jax, an automated range on North Scottsdale Road. In most respects it's a first-class facility, but I find it hard to see the distant targets from ground level, and I can't swing comfortably from the upper deck for fear of falling off. Also, the facility's practice putting green is AstroTurf, which means a two-inch backswing rolls the ball 50 feet. I'll have to take second best, because my swing needs some work. A couple of weeks ago I managed to escape the frozen north for a two-hour lesson in Orlando with Brian Mogg, and I couldn't believe how much I had regressed in just a month of inactivity. My warmup shots could have been dated "1/11/99." Pull hooks. Weak fades. Thin shots, fat shots, and shots that felt like impact was being made on the toe or the hosel. Brian videotaped a few swings and took me back to the teaching center, where I got to watch myself in slow motion. Horrible! My posture had sagged so badly that I looked more like a Rocky than my usual Bullwinkle. I was taking the club slightly outside on the backswing and then pointing the shaft across the target line at the top. My downswing had turned steep again, and the club was descending from the outside. And, as was the case a decade ago, when the Golf Digest teachers had me swinging as if I was in a barrel lined with rusty nails, my left hip wasn't driving toward the target. To make a point, Brian got out a recent tape of Mark O'Meara and showed me how O'Meara's left hip slides forward as he begins his downswing, giving the club room to swing from the inside and through the ball. "He actually overcooks it," Brian said, drawing a red line on the screen digitally with a computer mouse. "He has to work on slowing down that move. But in your case" -- he punched a button and my picture showed up in a window next to O'Meara's -- "your left side is barely moving. You're hanging back, your head is way behind the ball, your right shoulder is a little high ..." and on and on, although I sorta tuned out when Brian found fault with the logo on my windshirt and the quality of the soft spikes in my new shoes. "It's not that bad," he said, noticing that my chin was on my chest and my eyes were vacant. "We always revert to our tendencies over time. It's just a question of going back to fundamentals." So we walked back out to the range and Brian went to work on my posture. With time I had gotten too comfortable over the ball and had let my body angles get rounded. My hands were low at address, causing the toe of the club to be higher than the heel. My spine angle had softened, too; my belt line was practically level, when the back of my belt should be higher than the buckle in front. I could go on and on, but here's the gist of it: A month of glacial conditions in Kansas City had caused me to "forget" my new swing. Brian left me for 15 minutes to work with another student, telling me to practice driving my hip toward the target on the downswing. I could do it all right -- I pretended I was Fred Astaire doing that little stab step where the trailing leg extends with heartbreaking grace -- but I couldn't hit the ball while doing it. Almost every shot started well right of the target, flew high and then faded, indicating that I was getting the swing path right (inside-out) but failing to square the clubface. By the time Brian came back to check my progress, I was thoroughly frustrated. "Let's see it," he said. Naturally, I immediately crushed two straight 5-irons at the target with a nice draw. "You don't like that? he asked. "Well, sure, I like that," I responded. Anyway, we made some progress with the full swing. I never felt comfortable over the ball, and my swings felt rushed, but I managed to hit maybe a third of my shots with authority. Prognosis: We'll see. On the plus side, Brian accomplished in five minutes what you, my well meaning but pedagogically challenged readers, couldn't do with all your tips: solve my sand nightmares. He marched me into a beautiful white-sand bunker and had me hit three explosion shots -- all of which were pretty good, by the way. "There's nothing to change in the swing, really," he said. "The ball's too far forward, for one thing. I'd play it back here." He borrowed my Titleist Vokey sand wedge and addressed the ball. "And I'd open my stance a bit more. You're too square." He drew a target line in the sand and then handed me the club. I altered my setup and tried a few more shots, and finally I hit the shot I wanted -- a bladed buzz-bomb that shot over the green and bounded off toward the Everglades. "That's the shot I've been hitting!" I said happily. "That's the sonuvabitch that's been costing me five strokes a round!" Brian tossed another ball down and said, "Hold the flex in your knees." He made a pass at an imaginary ball with an imaginary club, his knee flex staying constant throughout the swing. "You're following through like this" -- he swung again, straightening his legs at the end, his right heel coming well out of the sand. A light bulb went on in my brain. "Maintain the flex," I murmured. Digging my feet into the sand, I addressed the ball, waggled and then took a smooth pass at the sand while keeping my legs bent. Swooosh! The sand flew out easily, and the ball popped onto the green and hopped sideways a foot or two, stopping near the flag. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah. That felt right." Brian had me hit a few more for him and then left me to practice while he checked on his other student. I hit maybe 15 bunker shots. All of them finished within 15 feet of the hole, and a couple of them stopped within tap-in range. Then I hit one that bounced once and hit the flagstick. I gave my wedge a little Phil Mickelson twirl, tossed it onto the grass and reached for the rake. The sand-wedge battle, as they say on Iron Chef, was "ovah!" Of course, that means that Brian Mogg is the winner of the first Mats Only contest of 2001. Unfortunately, as an employee/contractor of the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, he is ineligible for the prize: a Volvo S60 sedan. But he's certainly entitled to my thanks.
Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity advice, share your experiences, or suggest a driving range, click here.
| ||||||||||||||||||||
