Ball control

Don't spend a lifetime trying to master the golf swing

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.

PERRY, Iowa -- Last week I was in rural Ireland. This week I'm in rural Iowa. Tuesday, in fact, I found myself standing in waist-high grass on a beautiful piece of farm property. I thought of Brian Mogg and his "bucket drill." A few years ago, when Brian was trying to fix my swing plane at the David Leadbetter Golf Academy, he told me to pretend there was a swimsuit model behind me and that I was holding a bucket of water instead of a golf club. "Swing the bucket back so that you throw the water on the swimsuit model," Brian said -- one of the better swing thoughts I've ever entertained.

I only bring this lesson up now because Tuesday, in the wild grass, I had a swimsuit model behind me -- not to mention a photographer, a hairdresser, a makeup artist, two magazine editors, a couple of photo assistants and a film crew. I didn't have a bucket of water, but I had a chilled bottle of water. Lacking courage, I drank it.

The episode made me realize something: I haven't thought about swing plane in some time. Presumably my plane is not horribly askew, because I haven't been hitting those toe hooks, skulls and fat shots that plagued me for years. More important, my fundamental approach to the golf swing has changed. I no longer focus on the mechanics. Instead, I concentrate on the spin of the ball and the path of the clubhead through the impact zone.

I tested this approach in Ireland, where I was working on a feature story about the Carne Golf Links, a magnificent course on the Atlantic shore. Sports Illustrated photographer Bob Martin needed a golfer -- "actually, just a human being" -- to lend scale to his course photos, so he had me out in the elements at dawn and dusk, hitting balls against dramatic backdrops of sea and sky. On two of the holes, par-3s, I hit shot after shot, while a photo assistant scurried out from behind a dune to retrieve the balls from the green.

Yes, from the green. Using the method taught to me by Rob Stanger, my neighbor here in the Mats Only building, I tamed a three-club wind and hit most of my shots to within 20 feet of the flag. On the par-3 13th, where the wind was whipping right to left, I hit anything from a 6-iron to an 8-iron, making the ball fly straight by imparting one-o'clock cut spin to it. [See Rob Stanger's Lesson Tee, "When the Wind Blows."] On the 15th, which called for a short-iron shot from a towering dune to a sunken green, I handled a left-to-right tailwind by hitting a 7-iron with 11-o'clock draw spin.

Martin, shooting from behind me on an even higher dune, was effusive in his praise of my shotmaking. ("Wanker," I gather, is the British euphemism for a person of great skill and artistry.)

Granted, in a round of golf you aren't allowed to hit the same shot over and over until you get it right. But I couldn't have successfully hit any of those shots a year ago. I would have gone for those greens with a full-power, high-launch, random-spin swing, and the ball would have ballooned upward or been smacked down by the wind. I would have lost many balls in the high grass.

The change in my game has been gradual, owing to the fact that I play infrequently and fool with swing theories and swing aids the way a child plays with matches. But I am finally beginning to "feel" shots the way the good players do. The genius of Stanger's teaching is that he doesn't put control of the golf ball at the end of the lesson chain. It's where you begin. Put another way, you shouldn't spend a lifetime trying to master the golf swing; a good swing is the natural product of learning how to control the flight of the ball.

What are your thoughts on this? I suspect that 99 percent of us believe that shaping shots is beyond our abilities. We try to play golf with our driving range swings. We surf the Web for answers. We never improve.

Is it possible that we've been going at it backwards?

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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