Author Archives: Jay

About Jay

Weekend golfer whose goal is to always break 80.

3 Year Old Golf Prodigy Shows His Stuff On Morning Drive

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Apparently I have been missing out on a big story in golf and that is 3 year old Tommy Morrissey.  Here is a video of Tommy and his dad visiting the Golf Channel’s Morning Drive.

So Tommy has met Tiger Woods, Bubba Watson, and Arnold Palmer, and Ellen too. I think that if I could have a round of golf with anyone in the previous sentence, I would choose Tommy.

I know that I could swing like Tommy but there is no way I would be hitting it anywhere near as well as him swinging that way (using two hands on the club I barely hit it as well as Tommy does with one hand).

Golf Digest: 5 statistical oddities from the 2014 PGA Tour season

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GolfDigest.com has an article about 5 Statistical Oddities From the 2014 PGA Tour Season, which is a summary or excerpt from a book called “Pro Golf Synopsis” by statistician Richie Hunt. Hunt has analyzed the statistics from the 2014 PGA Tour and discovered a few trends in strategy to help pretty much all golfers.

The first one mentioned in the article is that “Laying up on a par 5 or a par 4 should be considered the last option”. Everyone scores better from closer to the green, so unless it’s to avoid a hazard you should never lay up and just get the ball as close to the green as possible.

Also found is that “Tour players tend to be more accurate with their driver than their 3-wood off the tee”, and “Scores are typically lower in the morning than in the afternoon”.  What I take from this is, stick with your driver and get the earliest tee time possible. I think they are more accurate with their drivers because they probably practice hitting drivers more than their 3-woods, and scores are lower in the morning than the afternoon not because of higher winds in the afternoon, but because play is generally quicker in the mornings than in the afternoons. In my experience, faster play makes for lower scores.

The other trends noted in the article are “The better drivers of the ball often split their misses closer to 50/50” and “Round 1 Scoring Average has the strongest statistical correlation to PGA Tour success, followed by Round 2 Scoring Average”. These ones aren’t so interesting to me.

 

Gain More Distance On Drives By Lifting Lead Heel

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Martin and Sara of School of Golf talked about the myth of never lifting your heel of your lead foot in the golf swing, and Martin suggested that lifting the heel could generate more turn in the back swing and more power overall.

There are two keys to lifting your heel.  You should start the downswing by planting your heel back onto the ground, and also you have to make sure that you put your foot back in the same position it was in at address.

There was a magazine many years ago called Golf Illustrated (I think there have been other Golf Illustrateds before and since) and I remember one issue where the banner story was John Daly’s tip to slam the heel for power (which is essentially the same thing as this lesson).

Another Golf Illustrated classic banner story was “Chi Chi’s Chip Tips”, where Chi Chi suggested using your fairway woods to hit bump-and-runs (this is back about 25 years ago in the days before hybrids existed).

3 Lessons From “Golf Swing Consultant” Chris Como

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So Tiger has a new swing “consultant” (whatever that means) named Chris Como.  I had never heard of Chris Como until the other day when Tiger broke the news, and I still don’t really know much about him other than he is a Golf Magazine Top 100 Teacher, and he is Tiger’s new “consultant”.

By the way, how lame odd is Tiger that he doesn’t just say that he has a new coach, but a “consultant”.  My new favourite word is “consultant”.

Other Consultants:

  • Car Mechanic – Automobile Consultant
  • Waiter/waitress – Food Consultant
  • Garbage man – Refuse Consultant
  • Dentist – Teeth Consultant
  • Barber – Follicle Consultant
  • I could keep going but I think that’s enough.

Golf.com posted an article called “Chris Como: 3 Things You Can Learn From Tiger’s New Instructor“. Here are the tips from the article:

  1. Hit it farther with footwork
    Here’s a quick tip to gain extra yards with every club using only your lower body. Crank your right foot (or left if you are a lefty) clockwise into the ground to develop a powerful lower body move and stripe it off the tee. See Video
  2. Pushing it right? Lend yourself a hand
    We all crave solid strikes that fly high and don’t balloon to the right. Use Chris’ easy-to-implement fix to get rid of a slice by pointing the back of your glove in the right direction. Try it and start enjoying a draw off the tee. See Video
  3. Use your power arc to drive it longer
    The transition from the end of the backswing to the start of the downswing can be one of the trickiest parts of the game. Here’s Chris’ simple tip to get your hands moving in the right direction and start crushing the ball off the tee. See Video

Hopefully these tips will work for Tiger.

 

Keys to Reading Greens

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I’ve always been interested in how to read greens better. There are lots of tips on how to have a better swing, how to pitch and chip better, how to have a better putting stroke, but not many about how to read the green better.  You can have the best, purest putting stroke in the world and never make a putt if you aren’t good at reading the greens.

School of Golf’s Martin Hall and Sara Brown describe 4 keys to reading the green.

The keys are:

  1. Find the uphills and downhills along the line.
  2. Look at the putt from the side to help find the break.
  3. Look at what’s going to happen around the hole (the putt should be moving slowly near the hole, so any breaks affect the ball more).
  4. Think about the speed of the greens and the putt.  The faster the greens are, the more the putt will break.

Tiger Woods Vs Dan Jenkins

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Who the heck does Dan Jenkins think he is?  How dare he write an article about an interview he had with Tiger Woods when he didn’t actually interview Tiger Woods?

I wish that everyone reads what must be the best fake interview with Tiger Woods of all time.

The next best part, and also the saddest part, of all of this is that Tiger felt he had to respond to Jenkins’s fake interview.

The interview might not have been true, but I thought it was funny.

But who is Dan Jenkins? According to Wikipedia, he is about to turn 85. He is also an legendary golf journalist and author (23 books and counting, including “Dead Solid Perfect” which was a story that pulled back the curtain of what the PGA Tour was really like back in the 1970s, and probably still is more true than not today). He used to cover golf for some magazine called Sports Illustrated, and now writes a monthly column for Golf Digest (although there was a period of time when he wasn’t appearing in too many Golf Digests, and that’s when I stopped my subscription).

Jenkins’ articles for Golf Digest are usually short stories that are satire, much like his fake interview with Tiger. Did I mention he is a legend?

So what was Tiger’s (over)reaction? First, to say that is was actually a “Fake” interview. Nailed it!! Then he comes off as the just the guy that Jenkins’ wrote about, the thin-skinned pouter who will fire or freeze out anyone who says anything about him that isn’t fawning worship.  Tiger concludes this first paragraph with saying that Jenkins’ fake interview “fails as parody, and is really more like a grudge-fueled piece of character assassination.” And then proceeds to take some cheap shots of his own at Jenkins and Golf Digest.

While I agree with Tiger that he is not portrayed favourably at all in the “fake” interview, he must realize that it was never suggested that the interview was anything but FAKE.

What is Tiger taking umbrage about?

  • That he’s a bad tipper? That is well known.
  • That he’s been injury and scandal plagued? Everyone knows that too.
  • That he fires people when they say or do things that he doesn’t 100% approve of? Fluff got turfed over what he said in a Golf Digest interview, and Steve Williams (a jerk in his own right) was fired for getting permission from Tiger (who was recovering from an injury) to caddy for Adam Scott for a few events, and when Tiger changed his mind and felt slighted.
  • That Tiger hasn’t won a major for 6 years? Come on now.
  • That he stunk in 2014 when he did play?  Breaking news there.

Here is what I get out of this.

  1. Dan Jenkins is still great
  2. Tiger is as thin-skinned as ever.
  3. Golf Digest got a lot more readers than they usually get.  If Tiger had just rolled with this one, 90% of the people who read Jenkins’ article would probably not have read it.
  4. Tiger helped out his buddy Derek Jeter by writing his response on Jeter’s new website, http://www.theplayerstribune.com. Jeter could not have had a better promoter.

Maybe I could be fortunate enough to have Tiger Woods complain about something from my site. Not that it really matters, but currently Tiger is ranked 1530 (out of 2055 players) on my Power Rankings, tied with Darren Clarke and right behind Greg Owen.

Here is Golf.com’s take on it, http://www.golf.com/tour-and-news/tiger-woods-calls-out-golf-writer-dan-jenkins-over-satirical-interview.

UPDATE – Here is USA Today’s Christine Brennan’s reaction to Tiger’s reaction. http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/golf/2014/11/18/tiger-woods-dan-jenkins-fake-interview-christine-brennan/19246965/

Pause at the Top for Better Ball Striking

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There is almost nothing more important to achieving solid ball-striking in the golf swing as having good timing. The Golf Channel’s Annabel Rolley shows how putting a slight pause into the top of the backswing can help improve the overall timing of the swing.

Towards the end of the season I consciously was trying to put a slight pause into the transition from backswing to downswing and did notice that my ball striking did improve.