You say you want a revolution

Technology finally makes its way to golf instruction

This one comes from noted golf instructor David Leadbetter, about an LPGA player who came to see him a few years ago: "She booked a lesson with me, worked for two hours, was hitting it well and said, 'That's great. I'm so glad I came to see you. There's no way I could've gone to see my coach the way I was swinging.'"

It's sort of like cleaning up the house before the maid comes because you don't want her to see what kind of slob you really are. (Not that I'd know, since I'm not in the maid-employing earnings bracket. Also, if you have a maid, trust me, she already knows exactly what kind of slob you are. All your friends do, too. You're not fooling anyone.)

This week's topic is golf instruction. You may think you don't need it, but you probably do. If you saw your swing on video, you'd probably be appalled. Actually, the hottest new trend in golf is recording your swing on a DVD. Philips Electronics has a new DVD recorder out, which means that the days of VCRs are numbered. DVDs are smaller, more compact and easier to use than videotape. No more rewind or fast forward, just click on the index number and you're anywhere you want to be on the recording. Also, if you've played any of your old videotapes lately, you'll notice they're losing color and getting fuzzy, sort of like you in middle age. DVDs last longer. Best of all, you can play DVDs on your laptop computer, and you can e-mail video of your swing to someone else, like, say Leadbetter, and he can e-mail you back some tips (or, more likely, strongly suggest you take up tennis). Young guns Aaron Baddeley and Charles Howell, Leadbetter told me, are already doing the DVD checkups. "Aaron is in Australia. He sends them straight to me and the clarity is fine," Leadbetter said. "I can speak with him on the phone within a few minutes of him sending it." So, what did you tell him, I asked? "Keep working on the same thing. It's looking good," Leadbetter said, laughing.

Leadbetter said he had been resisting computers for a while, but now he's joining the revolution, which he thinks golf instructors and golf academies will make frequent use of. "We're even getting into some 3-D analysis. I think we have to be careful with all this stuff, that it doesn't make teaching more complicated. The idea is to make it easier for teachers to impart information. It used to be golf was more like, 'Try this, try that,' but now there's a more scientific approach. With a VCR, you need a remote. It's a pain. The DVDs are the wave of the future, no doubt about it."

I went the low-tech, old-fashioned route last week in search of instruction. I visited the PGA Tour Golf Academy at the World Golf Village in St. Augustine, Fla. for a two-day session. Overall, I was fairly impressed. I learned a few things and got some good swing instruction, which I approached as spring training for the golf season back home in the balmy climes of the Pittsburgh area.

There were nine students in my class, ranging in handicaps from 2 (me) to 32. There were three instructors, one of whom was former PGA Tour star Calvin Peete. Peete had the most memorable line of the week, right before he demonstrated his perfect-tempo swing and showed that he can still hit a driver straighter than Up With People. "If you're driving well, you can attack the golf course," Peete said. "If you're not driving well, the golf course is attacking you." OK, so it wasn't exactly instruction, but it was right on the money.

The class split into three groups of three. First, we had our swings videotaped. Then we went inside, watched our swings on some high-tech gear, analyzed them and got advice from our teacher. Seeing your swing on video is always an eye-opening experience. My swing was hideously off-balance and disjointed, which explained my terribly inconsistent ballstriking last year. Back on the practice tee, I was given a new stance and a new setup, with the idea of keeping my head behind the ball during my swing, something I hadn't been doing before. I started seeing improvement within three or four 18-hole rounds. I was striking the ball much better, especially with my irons. In that first session, we were also taught the fundamentals of how to play a pitch shot -- very useful.

After the video session, we spent an hour or so on the putting green with Peete. He altered my setup there, too, suggesting I close my stance, play the ball off my left big toe, and get more weight on my left side. He suggested I try the reverse overlap grip because it helps keep the wrists in place better. Well, he ran the tables at Tuckaway Country Club when he won the 1982 Greater Milwaukee Open, which I covered for The Milwaukee Journal, so am I going to listen to him? Absolutely. Next up was an hour on the chipping green. My only complaint there was that in two days, I never touched my sand wedge. We used pitching wedges and 8-irons for bump-and-run chips, which golfers ought to use more often than they do. We also learned an interesting scale that I'd never heard before. With a pitching wedge, the ball will run after it lands about as far as you carried it in the air. With a 9-iron, the run-to-carry ratio is more like 2-to-1; an 8-iron, 3-to-1; 7-iron, 4-to-1; and so on. While this theory is general, and will vary by player, it's a great concept. Instead of just blindly pulling out the sand wedge and trying to play a long chip purely by feel, you can pull out a chipping iron and, using this formula, decide precisely how far you should carry it in the air. It takes a little of the guesswork out of the shot. When you see a tour pro stepping off the distance of a long chip, chances are he's pacing it off to apply the formula.

After lunch, we got some verbal instruction. Then, about 3 o'clock, we were sent out onto the Slammer & The Squire golf course to play nine holes, or as many as we could get in. By the second day, my hands were already a little sore even before we started. One nitpicky thing about the two-day school is that it's a lot of golf swings. I'd been pounding balls at an indoor range a fair amount back home, so my hands were reasonably calloused. But I'm not sure how the 32-handicapper endured this many swings. We went out to play on the course at the end of the second day, and I was not upset when the storm alarms called us off after nine holes. My hands were sore, my arms were tired and my back was aching. I was glad we stopped.

Before the storm rolled in, we had done more chipping and putting drills, and Peete put on a driving clinic for us. His swing tempo is to die for. He said he just tries to swing a driver like he's swinging a 9-iron. It's a great visual image, but my brain still can't shake that Kill! mantra when the driver is in my hands. I'm working on it, though.

Overall, I was pleased with the experience. I'd rate it an A-minus. If it was up to me, I'd end the daily sessions earlier, like an hour after lunch. Unless you're Vijay Swing, you've only got so many good strokes in you. Also, you're going to get more attention if you take lessons from a PGA club professional one-on-one than if you take a group class like this. Let's face it, the 32-handicapper needed constant assistance on the range and pretty much usurped one instructor. I didn't need as much individual help, but if I had, I might have re-thought the academy experience.

The most important thing I learned from the school, besides a reminder that the grip is everything, is how different your swing looks on video compared to how it feels to you. The biggest reason you don't improve as a golfer is that you don't know what you're doing wrong because you can't see it. With video, however, you can see it ... and for most of us amateur hacks, it's usually not pleasant.

Hey, the Mailbag is full. Let's check it out:

After 10 years of trying, I finally got four tickets to the Tuesday practice round at the Masters. What should I absolutely NOT miss during my one day at hallowed Augusta?
—Pat McGuckin, Springfield, Ill.

Walk the whole back nine, Pat. You'll be stunned at the elevation changes. The 10th hole, for instance, is basically a ski run. At the concession stand, make sure you get a fried chicken sandwich. There's no hot food served and the spicy chicken is way better than the alternatives, such as pimento cheese. Walk under the cathedral of pines. Kick the pine needles. Smell the scent of spring -- the course used to be an exotic nursery, and unusual foliage abounds. Bring a camera, but forget the shot on the circle on Magnolia Drive in front of the clubhouse. All the tourists go there. Don't waste your precious time standing in line to get into the on-course store to buy Masters souvenirs. If you're only there once, see, feel and smell the course. That's the best souvenir you can get.

Just thought I'd let you know that down here in New Zealand we are tremendously proud of Craig Perks and the way he gutted out a tremendous win at the Players Championship. If there is one thing we can learn from him, other than his never-give-up attitude, it's the importance of a solid short game.
—Lyall Callaghan, New Zealand

Right, Lyall. Perks proved that not only with those two chip-ins but also by missing those two tap-in putts, which looked for a while as if they might cost him the tournament.

Would you rather see a highly ranked, media-dominant player such as Tiger Woods or Phil Mickelson win a tournament by a half-dozen strokes or an ending like the one we were blessed to observe at this year's Players Championship, involving a virtual unknown such as Craig Perks?
—Randy Phillips, Maryville, Tenn.

Who wants to watch anybody win by six, Randy? American fans want an exciting competition, a thrilling finish, not great golf. And you can't beat an ending as dramatic as what Perks provided, although it's easy to forget what a dull tournament it had been until those last four holes.

The inventor of the Claw putting grip is Bud Baker of Westmoor Country Club in Wisconsin. You had someone else claiming to be the inventor in your last column. Well, parallel universes do exist, I guess. But Skip Kendall's success on the tour right now directly correlates to Bud showing him this grip (when both Bud and Skip, during his youth, competed in tournaments in Wisconsin). Give a hometown genius his rightful and due credit. Thanks.
—R.J. Pyritz, Wauwatosa, Wisc.

All right, R.J. I guess we're going to have to hold a Claw Off.

Gary, what's the inside scoop on Tom Watson? A multiple winner of Player of the Year honors during his prime, he's almost invisible on the Senior Tour, showing up at only a handful of events. We know about the putting woes, his affection for fine wine and the new marriage, but what is this guy doing these days? If it's designing courses, he must be focusing on daily-fee munis down Mexico way. Care to shed any light?
—Ben Storey, Seattle

Watson is a pretty tight-lipped guy, Ben, but let me put it this way: Let's say you were the best player in the world for quite a few years and you lived to win major championships. Then you get the yips for a decade, so golf is not much fun. Then, you have a chance to play a bunch of senior tournaments that mean nothing, but cause you to be away from home for 20 weeks a year and you know your game is a pale shadow of its former self. Does that sound fun? Not likely. Once you've done it all, the Senior Tour must seem remarkably irrelevant.

What the heck happened to Peter Kessler? I had hoped to find out from The Golf Channel, but they're keeping quiet about it. Then I checked out your suggested whattheyrewriting.com (super site, thank you), also to no avail. Do you have the inside scoop?
—Sandra White, Toronto

The leading theories, Sandra, on Kessler's departure: 1) It was payback from former TGC head Joe Gibbs, an Arnold Palmer chum, for criticizing Arnie's stance on Callaway's illegal driver. 2) TGC was tired of being The Peter Kessler Channel. He'd gotten too big for the station's own good. 3) TGC wanted to control the content of Kessler's shows, which he refused to give up. 4) Others at TGC were jealous of and/or fed up with Kessler, who was reportedly unpopular with his fellow workers. 5) The owners couldn't stand one more smarmy, brown-nosing interview. Take your pick.

I got a new high-tech driver. I'm hitting the new golf balls and it is really adding distance, but I'm still hanging on to a set of Ping Eye2 copper irons, circa 1990. Am I missing out on technology? Are the new irons on the market as advanced as the new drivers and golf balls?
—Mike (Mannix) O'Connor, Coronado, Calif.

Well, Mannix, the Eye2 irons are classics. It would be hard to put them on the rack. You should check out some other possibilities, though. Steve Stricker was bemoaning his errant driving and I asked him why he didn't go back to the old Warbird driver he had used the year he won twice (1996). He said he'd tried it, but the new golf balls didn't react as well off its surface as the balls of that era. I don't know if that's a factor with our hack swings, but you should demo some new stuff and see if there's a noticeable difference. Have your secretary, Peggy, set it up.

Sports Illustrated senior writer Gary Van Sickle writes for the magazine's Golf Plus section and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send him a question or comment.

 

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