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A lesson in tempo
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. Tuesday, May 23 SOUTHERN PINES, N.C. -- I played Pinehurst No. 2 Monday morning with the course superintendent, two golf architects ... and better tempo. In fact, any objective observer would have told you that my swing reminded them of Mr. 59, Al Geiberger -- a player whose pass at the ball was regarded as so smooth by his PGA Tour peers that he wound up on the SyberVision golf tapes. Knowing that this claim will be met with skepticism, I invite those of you with broadband connections to check out the accompanying video. For the rest of you, those who get by with coal-powered Internet service, I'll describe what's on this remarkable video: Two driver swings, side by side -- mine, recorded a few weeks ago in a backyard in Leawood, Kan., and Geiberger's, filmed on June 10, 1977, the day he shot 59 at the Danny Thomas Memphis Classic (check out the groovy pants). The takeaways of our swings have been synchronized; the remainder is a display of tandem grace and power rarely seen outside an Olympic venue. My swing tempo and Geiberger's are virtually identical through impact. Watch again, this time in slow motion. From takeaway to the top and back again to impact, Geiberger and I look as if we're being controlled by the same servo-mechanism. The swings don't part company until the follow-through -- and that happens only because Geiberger is hitting a golf ball with a driver and I'm hitting a tiny pup tent with a Velcro-covered sphere glued to the end of a driver shaft. Not to sound like an infomercial, but I achieved this miraculous result in one 30-minute lesson! And I did it without the aid of hypnosis, electrical stimulation or mind-altering drugs! All I did was spend a couple of hours with John Novosel, the Leawood businessman and golf gadfly. This is the guy, you may remember, who finagled his way into Mats Only a few months ago by buying me lunch and boasting that he had discovered how to teach the tempo secrets of the touring pros. (He didn't actually boast, but he did buy lunch.) "I just need a couple of hours of your time," he told me. "I'll record your swing and analyze it on the computer. Then I'll show you some things that I think will interest you." Fast forward to a recent morning. The place: the Robin Nigro Golf Academy & Practice Center in Kansas City, Mo. I was hitting balls off a mat when John arrived with his digital minicam and his "SwingMate," a little box that measures clubhead speed. First he recorded my 5-iron swing. I hit the ball pretty well, and the digital readout on the little box read "96." John put down his camera and showed me a chart full of numbers. According to the chart, a 5-iron clubhead moving at 96 miles per hour will fly the ball 180 yards -- assuming that the clubface meets the ball squarely. John then had me hit a few balls with my driver. I hit these balls very well. (I was in one of those two-week spells during which my timing was good enough to put the ball in the fairway half the time.) My clubhead speed with the driver was 110 mph, which translated to a ball flight of 254 yards -- PGA distance, according to the chart. When John was satisfied that the swings he had recorded were representative, we went to his house, which is just off a fairway at the Leawood Country Club. He pulled a chair up to a table in his breakfast room, fired up his Macintosh PowerBook, and then downloaded my swings from the camera to the computer, using a version of Final Cut Pro software. I realized right off that he was not exactly Steven Spielberg; he had shot my driver swing with a roof support blocking the camera. But, hey, this is Mats Only, not USC film school. Next, John went into this mad-scientist routine -- slowing the swings down, muttering to himself, writing numbers in a notebook. "Your swing mechanics look pretty solid," he said at last. "Your position at impact is good. I do notice a little casting at the top." He moved the image forward and back, forward and back. I saw my wrists breaking down, the clubhead dipping toward the ground. "Sometimes the clubhead drops into my peripheral vision," I said. "It's startling." "But take a look at this: Between the time you start that casting motion and the time the clubhead reaches the ball, you make some sort of correction. Your position is good at impact. To be honest, there are good players, tour-quality players, who do the same thing. However ..." He didn't have to complete the thought. Corrections of that sort require constant practice to time properly. "Anyway," he said, "you're a ..." And he gave me two numbers. I have to be coy about this, because Novosel and his collaborators (including Golf Magazine Top 100 teaching pros John Rhodes and Gerald McCullagh ) are in the swing-aid business. But here's the essence of what he said: Despite being told for years that I had a tendency to be "too quick" and should "slow down, keep it smooth" ... I was, in fact, taking the club back too slowly. (If you compare my "before" swing to Geiberger's swing, you'll see that Geiberger hits the ball before I even complete my backswing.) What's more, most amateurs do the same. We all follow the old Bobby Jones dictum, "Nobody ever swung a golf club too slowly" -- which probably made a lot of sense in the age of hickory shafts but is bunk in the era of Tiger Woods. "Everybody teaches 'low and slow,'" John said, "but the tour pros just don't do this. They are much quicker on the backswing than they look." He got up from the table. "Now we go outside and I show you how to swing the club with the tempo of Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson. " John went into an adjoining room and started rummaging through an assortment of golf clubs and odd-looking shafts ... Oh, hell, look at the time. I have to run out to Pine Needles and get ready for the U.S. Women's Open. I'll continue this tale of tempo -- or, as John calls it in his promotional literature, "Golf's Last Secret Finally Revealed!" -- in my next column. You can keep a secret, can't you?
Watch this space for another installment of Mats Only. To send John Garrity advice, share your experiences, or suggest a driving range, click here.
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