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Stanger shares secrets Posted: Friday February 01, 2002 2:53 PM
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. Wednesday, Jan. 30 MONTEREY, Calif. -- Square divots are good, right? Byron Nelson took divots that were the size and shape of dollar bills, as opposed to your average duffer, who leaves a divot the size and shape of a silver dollar. I bring up divots because my last several practice sessions have been on mats. It takes more strength than I can muster these days to take a divot out of AstroTurf, so whenever I go back to grass I begin by reading my divots. If they're short and skinny and pointing left, then I know that I'm falling back into old habits -- casting the club, coming over the top, sneezing at impact. "Divots are almost as distinctive as fingerprints," an old teaching pro once told me, "but not as useful to investigators because criminals don't leave them at a crime scene." Anyway, today's crime scene was the driving range at Quail Lodge, a lovely little resort in Carmel Valley. I warmed up by hitting a few gap-wedge shots to a target green about 95 yards out. Most of the shots were decent, if not great, but I noticed that my divots were very narrow. That told me that my club was meeting the ground in a toe-down position, plowing a nice little furrow but leaving me with a very small sweet spot on the clubface. Suspecting that the ball might be too far forward in my stance, I moved it back an inch or two. Immediately, my divots regained their optimal shape -- rectangular and level -- and the ball checked up nicely upon landing. On the other hand, these divots were too deep. I was throwing up a slab of sod that created a brief but total eclipse of the sun and lowered the air temperature by a couple of degrees. Later in my session, I got into a nasty spell with the wedge, hitting two or three solid shots and then one or two seriously fat. As was the case in Honolulu a couple of weeks ago, when I started shanking at the Ala Wai driving range, I needed some help. Unfortunately, my swing coaches don't travel with me, the selfish swine. All I could do was review my mental checklists. My setup and posture, for instance, I got from Brian Mogg, who teaches at the David Leadbetter Academy in Orlando, Fla. My swing tempo is courtesy of John Novosel, the tempo titan of Leawood, Kan. The swing itself is about 25 percent Mogg and 75 percent Rob Stanger, the innovative young teaching pro from Southern California. My Quail Lodge problem was not particularly acute, but it created confusion in my mind. Tonight, as I ready myself for sleep, I question my strategy of moving the ball back in my stance to create those square divots. I think maybe I should have left my ball position alone and tried to create the pretty divots by transferring my weight more aggressively to the left side on the downswing and trapping the ball with the clubface. That would create a rectangular but shallow divot, which is what I want. My real problem, of course, is the calendar. Ten months have passed since my last lesson with Stanger and my swing is starting to look like an untended garden. I hit more good shots than bad, but I'm making swing adjustments that would not please my gurus. For instance, I'm setting my shoulders and hips in a closed position at address. (That keeps the ball from sailing over the cart barn to the left of the second fairway at my home club.) I'm also fiddling with my grip pressure, trying to find a happy medium between white-knuckle apoplexy and let-the-club-fly nonchalance. It is time, in other words, to return to fundamentals. To that end, Stanger has graciously offered to give me a refresher course by e-mail. What's more, he says I can share these lessons with you, my Web friends. All he asks is that you drop by Mission Hills Country Club the next time you're in Rancho Mirage, Calif., and spend a few hundred dollars on private lessons. For the foreseeable future, then, Rob's tips will be archived here alongside my Mats Only columns. He is doing this, I might add, at considerable risk to his reputation. This is the La Brea Tar Pits of golf pedagogy, and more than one meat-eating teaching pro has taken on my swing, only to wind up as bleached bones on the sand. ("Bones are almost as distinctive as fingerprints," an old criminal investigator once told me.) Alas, nothing in these first two Stanger lessons mentions divots, square or otherwise. I'll query him by e-mail and next week I'll let you know what he has to say about the excavations at Quail Lodge. Until then ... turf's up! 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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