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Tempo produces technique
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. Thursday, June 14 TULSA, Okla. -- Before I so rudely interrupted myself, I was relating how I got my swing smoothed out by John Novosel, the tempo titan of Leawood, Kan. We were in his kitchen, remember? Sun streaming in the garden window ... "I really like your swing," Novosel told me, looking at the video of my swing that he had downloaded to his laptop. "I think the only thing you need is the tempo. You aren't getting everything out of your swing that you could." Having concluded that my backswing was too slow, John asked me to step into his backyard for an instant cure. This time I swung with an XLR8R club (pronounce it "accelerator"). The XLR8R was co-designed by John Rhodes, a well-known teaching pro who has worked with Tom Kite, Curtis Strange, Hal Sutton and other PGA Tour pros. The club substitutes velcro-to-velcro contact for club-to-ball contact, and at impact it sounds like you're cracking a whip. But it lets you work on your impact position without worrying about ball flight. Anyway, Novosel put me through about 10 minutes of a drill designed to match my tempo to that of a successful touring pro -- say, Phil Mickelson. "You've got to be kidding," I said. My swings, when I followed his directions, felt short and impossibly fast. "Man!" I laughed and shook my head. "I feel like I'm yanking hot toast out of a toaster." "Wait until you see this video." He was looking through the eyepiece of his minicam. "You won't believe it." There was a short delay when I accidentally knocked the impact target into a tree, but I kept whacking away with my swing-on-speed until Novosel was satisfied. We then went back into the house and he downloaded the new video onto his PowerBook. "Ah, ha!" He began to laugh. "This is awesome. This gives me chills." He turned the computer toward me and beamed: "How good is that?" I looked at my driver swing and my jaw dropped. (All right, it didn't actually drop. Let's just say I was astonished.) Not only did my swing not look hurried, it looked smoother. And not only did it look smoother, but also my chronic swing mistakes had vanished. That little casting action at the top, which I've had since I went to two golf schools for a Sports Illustrated story in 1989? Gone. That nasty habit of hanging back on my right side through impact? Gone. That tendency to search my pockets for cash while somebody else pays for the sandwiches and drinks? OK, tempo doesn't cure everything. But I had to agree with Novosel: Matching my swing tempo to that of the tour players had fixed certain faults without any conscious effort on my part. "I think tempo and mechanics are married," Novosel said. "Your cast is gone because casting is actually a function of taking it back too slow." (My dad used to have a contemptuous name for that breaking of the wrists at the top. He called it "the old dipsy-doo.") "By speeding up," I said, "I don't really have time to cast. The swing feels more reflexive. It's less a collection of conscious body movements." Novosel nodded with a big smile that said, Exactly. "If you look at Tiger's swing, his club doesn't wander. He doesn't need to re-route it from the top. He doesn't waste precious time or clubhead speed." I studied my swing as Novosel played it over and over again on his laptop. I really liked what I saw: "I've always thought that good tempo was a natural consequence of good technique and hard work. You practice long enough, you get smooth." Novosel was still smiling, so I finished the thought. "This suggests that proper tempo produces proper technique." "I think it does," he agreed. He quickly added, "I don't want to claim too much. A golfer with bad fundamentals won't get the immediate results you got. But we have two little swinging drills that go with the tempo package, and they take care of swing plane, squaring the club at impact -- all the mechanical stuff that has to be mastered." He tapped on his touchpad, and Al Geiberger's swing appeared again on the screen (a good swing, but not quite in a class with mine). "To be honest," Novosel said, "I was a bit nervous trying this with you. If it hadn't worked, I knew I'd look like a real jackass in Mats Only." "Not to worry," I said. "I'm the only jackass in Mats Only." When I left the house a few minutes later, I had my arms full of his gadgets -- two XLR8R "striking clubs," a collapsible impact target, a small rubber mat, a couple of "resistance aprons" (for the impact target, not for me), a Walkman-type cassette player, portable earphones, a tape, and a training manual called TourProTempo: Golf's Last Secret Finally Revealed. I headed for the range.
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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