Tag Archives: golf practice

Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella

19 Friday Jun 2009

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Click to buy at Amazon

I started out the year with high hopes for my golf game. I was going to practice a couple of times per week, hit lots of putts, maybe take some lessons, and try to get down to a single digit handicap.

I shot a 39 on April 9 of this year at a tough course. I thought for sure I was on the right track. After that, it wasn’t pretty. I was in the high 50s for a number of rounds in a row. And it wasn’t a full round of 18. I was getting discouraged and started to think I really needed rebuild my swing from the ground up.

I bought two books at the same time. The first was Five Lessons: The Modern Fundamentals of Golf by Ben Hogan. I heard it was a great place to start to learn how to play golf. The other book was Golf is Not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Rotella.

I started reading the Hogan book first. It’s full of wonderful illustrations and Hogan has a direct and concise way of explaining the complex nature of the golf swing. There are definitely a lot of great things to pick up in that book.

I read a chapter or two and then started reading the book by Dr. Rotella. His book deals with the psychology of sports, and more specifically, the psychology of playing golf. As I read it, I realized my problem wasn’t so much that I didn’t know how to swing. It was that I didn’t believe in my swing. I had too many unfulfilled expectations, too many missed opportunities that haunted my thoughts as I played, too many mechanical ideas to focus on, and wasn’t having nearly enough fun playing the game.

He has a number of great ideas in the book that have helped me find some balance on the course. A few that I focus on are:

  • Don’t take swing thoughts onto the course with you, they are for the practice range. You can’t fix it on the course anyway, so play with the game you brought.
  • Take the shot you know you can hit and swing with confidence. Play smart.
  • Stick to a pre-shot routine. Do it every time.
  • Aim at a small target.
  • Practice with your short game often. That’s where you score.

If you can hit the ball well most of the time but aren’t getting the results you want, this is a great book to read. This book can help you understand the mental side of the game. If you are still figuring out how to hit the ball, then go get Hogan’s book first.

Last week I shot a 42 and felt great about it. I was even able to right the ship after a terrible seven where I took six shots inside of a hundred yards. I believe this book has helped me out a lot, and I make sure to read a little bit of it each time before I go and play.

Rating: 4 out of 5 – It isn’t a masterpiece novel, but it is a must have for any golfer who wants to play better.  (what do the ratings mean)

The Game Before the Game by Lynn Marriott and Pia Nilsson

16 Monday Feb 2009

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I bought this book because of its subtitle, “The Perfect 30-Minute Practice”.  It was my absurd belief that somewhere in the book would be a chart, a list, a description, a walkthrough, or some other way of conveying the perfect 30 minute practice.  How silly of me to think that.

I’ll admit I only made it through a third of the book. But, it was enough to realize that the book is a poorly organized hodge-podge of positive thinking anecdotes that if I believe in them enough will make me a better player.  I’m a believer that having positive attitude will help your golf game, or any other facet of your life, but I’m a bigger believer in a well organized chart of things I should do during my practice.  By the end of the fourth chapter, when I got the fourth “Perfect 30 minute practice” in four chapters, I realized that I wasn’t going to get what I wanted out of this book. I get it if there is 4 hours worth of practice stuff I should do. Just tell me what days and in what order I should work on things.

So, I skimmed the book and the chapter names to see if somewhere was the organization I was looking for.  I did not find it, but I found some gems like:

Chapter XV. Bake the Cake of Confidence

And

Chapter XVIII. Celebrate Golf: Sing the Song of Greatness

I checked chapter XV. Perhaps it was a chocolate cake. I like chocolate cake. Alas, there was no recipe for a cake that gave you confidence.  Undeterred, I checked chapter XVIII. Perhaps it was a song like those sung in Lord of the Rings. Or some sort of magic song that would give great success in golf.  Again, nothing was found but disappointment.

If you want to think happy thoughts, this is the book for you. If you want to learn how to practice, I suggest looking elsewhere.  So far, I’ve found a book on Instinct Putting to be great at presenting the problem, showing how the solution works, and then giving a course on how to go about learning the solution.  That’s how a golf book should work.

1 star – see the book rating explanation here

Instinct Putting: Putt Your Best Using the Breakthrough, Science-Based Target Vision Putting Technique by Eric Alpenfels

30 Tuesday Dec 2008

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Golfing is my favorite summertime pastime. And in the winter I like to read a bit about golf to see what I can do to improve my game. Putting is by far the worst facet of my game. It just never feels right. So I picked up Instinct Putting, hoping to find a something to help me figure this stupid game out. It’s a radical idea and may  put off many traditionalist putters.

Early on in the book, there’s a quiz to take to see if Instinct Putting is for you.  I had struggled with each scenario outlined in the book.  Can’t figure distance right on long putts, too many three putts in a round (and that doesn’t count the four putts!), and it just never feels right.

If you have a few of those problems, this may be for you. The method is based on the premise that each of us carries an innate ability to do things through “athletic intuition”.  When you walk, do you have to think about how to move your arms, legs, hips, shoulders, and everything else in concert? No. You just do it. Thinking about it is likely to screw it up.  

Think about hitting a receiver on the run in football, or how you pelted the neighbor kid with a snow ball as he ran away.  Did you have think about the physics involved: the angles and speeds and velocities? No, you just lined it up and did it. Your brain took care of the rest.

Instinct putting builds off of that. It says that looking at the ball while you putt is like looking at the free throw line while shooting free throws. That doesn’t make much sense and neither does looking at the ball instead of your target when you putt. The target could be the hole, or some point on the green you want to putt to.  It has you look at that point throughout the putting stroke.

The book goes into depth on the science behind it, studies to show that it is effective, and highlights some golfers that have used it.  The book also quickly covers the basics of putting like grip and reading the green.  

To learn Instinct Putting, it includes a number of drills, broken up into three sections.  The first to get you used to hitting the ball without looking at it, the second to work on distance control, and the third to fine tune the method in competition.  It even lays out a multi-week practice schedule for you.

I’ve tried the first two drills out. The first just has you toss a ball from your putting stance while looking at the target.  It’s definitely strange at first, but I was soon hitting my target regularly. The next drill is the No Where drill.  You hit the ball to No Where in particular, but you do it while looking at your target, not at the ball. It’s just to get a feel of hitting the ball squarely without looking at it.  It seemed to work pretty well for me.

I can’t wait for the snow to melt and the code to relinquish its death grip on Michigan so I can go outside and start working on this. If this works, I’ll be well on my way to my Senior PGA Tour Card in 30 years.

4 stars – see the book rating explanation here