“The next time you’re on the practice tee, take a few swings and try humming to yourself while swinging. Listen to the humming.

“I hadn’t considered my swing particularly tight, but my humming told me differently. I could actually hear the tightness of my swing in the sound. While I was going back the sound would be nice and smooth, but during the change of direction my voice would become strained, and at contact my throat would constrict and the humming would increase in volume, in pitch, and most anxiety treatment noticeably, in tightness. Sometimes, when I really went after the ball, the hum would stop after contact and I would notice that I had also cut off my follow-through. Using a tape recorder, I later recorded the sound of my practice swing and compared it with a recording of a swing at the ball. The increase in tension was painfully obvious.”

–W. Timothy Gallwey, The Inner Game of Golf

via Hole in Oneness: A Spiritual Golf Journey: #78. Humming in the New Swing: Tim Gallwey.

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via A Golf Lesson On Beating Tiger Woods « alexander mcqueen BLOG.

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via A Golf Lesson On Beating Tiger Woods « jack wills blog.

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via Tom Linskey – Linskeys Laws | Breaking News Sports – Make Yours Needs.

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via Must it all end so soon? « Saayman Says … Golfing Weblog.

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Swing Thoughts

Fred Shoemaker talks about how he himself went to see a coach to get rid of a bad habit – a swing fault. I too am trying to change my swing and form new and better habits – so I thought this would be useful. Fred talks about how he learned to be aware of his swing and experience the fault and by doing that it actually disappeared without any conscious changes! But, the coach Fred Shoemaker had been to see was not a famous Golf coach – but a Tennis coach called Timothy Gallwey. This intrigued me, so I bought his book next…

I’m still reading  Timothy Gallwey’s The Inner Game Of Tennis and it is brilliant! I’ve struggled for a long time to change a certain swing fault and now I really feel equipped to do so once and for all. He introduces the concept of Self 1, the Teller and Self 2, theDo’er and how to let them do their own jobs.

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Tiger Woods

Steve Williams’ Hitting The Zone came to hand as I searched the shelves of my favourite second-hand Hard to Find book shop.

Steve’s book, co-authored with Hugh de Lacy has been around for some time however having read literally; no let’s not go there, just let’s say lots of golf tuition books, I decided I should at least, buy it for my collection.

And then thought it’s about a Kiwi so maybe a wee word about it will fit the bill for a Golf in Godzone blog.

So here’s a few of my Aha! thoughts while reading what turned out to be a very good book.
And I’d go as far as say it’s a must-read for young golfers.

Not because it’s one of these do this, don’t do that kind of mechanistic methodology tuition books.
It focuses on the mind side of playing this great game.

Its focus on the mind, exquisitely explained in the book’s opening quote.

“Competitive golf is played mainly on a five-and-a half inch course-the space between your ears-Bobby Jones”

My first Aha!
Steve approves of the use of “shrinks” then writes, “Tiger Woods is an exception-the nearest thing to shrinks on Team Tiger are Steve, and Tiger’s [late] father Earl.”

I guess it’s because so much has been written about Tiger’s swing coaches we fail to observe Tiger doesn’t have a favourite “shrink”.

I also liked Steve’s definition of a successful swing and/or performance.

“We could define success in any sport as the natural learned potential stored within the subconscious, minus the negative interference from the conscious.”

-See what I mean when I write it’s a book about the mind rather than mechanical methodology?

Steve’s definition brought to mind Tim Gallwey’s The Inner Game of Golf and Tim’s idea that we have a Self 1 which creates physical and mental interferences with the natural abilities of Self 2.

Steve gets very upset when he hears of his old boss, Greg Norman, being called a “choker”. And I’ll come back to my thoughts on Greg later.

Mention is also made of the rapid fall in form of Ian Baker-Finch but Steve is not naïve enough to suggest he’s got a fast-fix solution for such a huge fall in performance level.

Steve is a great believer in the value of goal-setting and I found this heading kinda cute;
“The pen is mightier than the passing fancy”.

Suggesting that if you don’t put pen to paper and write down your goals. Whatever goal-of-the moment comes to mind is nothing but a passing fancy.

I’m almost there with my Aha! Moments so please bear with me.

A minor factual error but worth commenting on is, when writing about Sam Snead, Sam is attributed with winning the 1946 US Open. Not so it was the 1946 Open at St Andrews.

Sam never did win a US Open and is on record of having said something Greg Norman might have said in reference to his well-documented losses.

Sam said, “It goes without saying that my biggest disappointment was never winning the U.S. Open. I’m reminded of it all the time. It hurts when people remember you for the things you didn’t do, rather than for the things you did do.”

The Great White Shark has a great golfing record but alas all too many people focus on the events https://lotusflowercorporatewellness.com/buy-clomid-brand-product-online/ where he didn’t quite finish the job.

My thought for the day, and something I did today with some success, but more importantly, enjoyment. Comes from Steve’s thoughts on the relaxation.

“Whatever the on-course relaxation routine, Steve says it’s vital for a player to deliberately break his concentration between shots.
It would be absolutely exhausting, if not mentally impossible, to maintain full concentration throughout the four hours or so it takes to play a round of golf.”

Aha! So when I see Steve and Tiger, talking and laughing between shots, there’s an explanation other than a chat between friends. It’s one of the ways to create a break in Tiger’s concentration between shots.

Slainte

Stan

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When Al Golden handed Vaughn Charlton his two summer reading books, the redshirt junior quarterback was confused.

Golden, Temple’s fifth-year head coach, had Charlton read Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect, by Bob Rotella, and The Inner Game of Tennis, by W. Timothy Gallwey. He wanted Charlton to learn how to relax. In Charlton’s time as a starter during his freshman and sophomore seasons, he let a bad play affect him more than it should have.

“At first, I really didn’t understand it,” Charlton said. “But once I started reading, I could relate them back to football and other situations in life.”

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I wrote you a week or two ago about Inner Game “certified” pros, and you were gracious enough to write me back.

You probably get notes like this all the time, but I thought I’d write, anyway.

As I look over my scores as posted on GHIN.com over the past dozen or so rounds, they are 85,88,87,93,89,90,86,87,84,86,85,87 – the scores of a slightly better than bogey golfer.

This summer I had an intention to improve my golf game and see if I could get into the 70s. I’m a 51 year old executive at an emerging small cap public company, so I don’t have a lot of time. But I decided to play 3x per week vs the 3 times a month of years past. Now it’s only 9 holes each time and one of three sessions is at the range and putting green, but I figured that swinging a club regularly could help. I also upgraded my original Big Bertha set of woods to something more contemporary, and took one lesson at a video based instruction shop (lifting my left heel, breaking my left elbow at the top of my swing). Also, I’ve been reading golf books – a few of Mark Frost’s golf history books (The Match is a really fun read), Michael Murphy’s Golf in the Kingdom, Ben Hogan’s Five Fundamentals, Bob Rotella’s Golf is not a Game of Perfect, and most recently the Inner Game of Golf.

Up until I read the Inner Game, I was still in the 43-46 range for 9. During that time I was also trying to incorporate a couple of the swing changes and get accustomed to the new clubs.

Since reading the Inner Game, I’ve been out 4 times, I’ve shot a 30 on an executive par 3, and a 41, 37 and 39 on regulation courses – an average of +3 per 9. And on this morning’s 39, I was 2 under through 5. On the 6th hole Self 1 was reveling in the possibility of shooting a 34 and I had a concentration lapse and made 2 doubles in a row.

The most fun part of all this, is when I posted the 37 on GHIN.com, there was an error message…

“This score isn’t in your normal range. Press POST SCORE again if you want to post this number.”

So, thank you for helping me create a new normal!

– Phil

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