I’m bored and injured, a double whammy as I haven’t been able to play golf for the past four weeks.  I last played with the Santa Clara University (SCU) golf team and the Loyola Marymount University golf team (LMU) at Monterey Peninsula Country Club on two separate weekends.  With the SCU guys, I played from my regular tees and survived albeit in a lot of pain, but at least I was able to play almost normally.  The pain is weird and something I have never experienced so it wasn’t caused by one event.  A week later, I was in survival mode and could hardly play at all so I played off the tee shot of the LMU golf coach.  After that round, I was “toast” and can’t play at all because I can’t turn from right to left to get through a golf ball.  I went from limping around to at least walking in a straight line, as I continue to try and find out what this issue is.  I don’t write this looking for sympathy (nobody cares or really should care) but it is the off season in professional golf and I can’t believe this has happened to me.  I have been managing back golf pain for years and it never threw me off the course but this current situation is untenable.   in my frustration, I actually watched the World Wide Technology Championship from Cabo San Lucas in Mexico last weekend.    The El Cardonal course was set up a birdie fest for the professionals and had the looks of a nice resort course with absolutely no trouble on the course.  Austin Ekhart’s putter won the event with a birdie barrage that overcame the efforts of a number of very good players that simply couldn’t match Ekhart’s prowess for these four days.  Watching these guys play in beautiful weather only depressed me further as I am chomping at the bit to play, but it’s just not possible and there is no positive prognosis.  I had been looking forward for months to playing in Steve Young’s charity event in Scottsdale, Arizona at Troon North but that is not going to happen.

In the context of another restless night of sleep, I started reading John Updike’s book, “Golf Dreams” and the beginning of the book launches into Updike’s perils with the golf swing, which is what is motivating me to write this piece.  Updike’s works are legendary, and in the beginning of Golf Dreams, he details all the difficulties he had with his swing, consisting of a smorgasbord of dizzying form and techniques.    I’ve never had the skill or the patience to analyze any of this stuff and I never read the instruction panels in Golf Digest where the latest Major Champion is going to teach you how to play like him/her.

I’ve been playing for 50 years and started with instruction but like most players, I  had no idea of what could be accomplished.    My first attempt at instruction literally almost cost me the game as I tried to reduce my 18 handicap.  The instructor decided that my golf swing needed to be scrapped altogether, resulting in my inability to hit a golf ball more than five feet.  I fired him and almost gave up the game.  I managed to recover all of what this instructor did to me by taking six months off and watching professional golf on TV.  I remember playing in Houston with Gary Player who was less than impressed with my golf swing but stated, “Laddie, it’s the not the best swing I’ve ever seen but it works so don’t change anything.”  However, at the age of 65 and facing the inevitable loss of clubhead speed, I decided that a golf “coach” was required to get me through the rest of my golfing life.

At this point, it was important to select an instructor that is going to be with you for the long haul.  In my view, I had to change swing mechanics and develop a technique that is scalable, repeatable and simple to maximize playing potential in my later years.  Unfortunately, today the game with the golf ball, the equipment and the new materials that constitute these products has brought distance and power to the higher handicap player as well as the outstanding low handicap players.  Players in their 70’s are driving the ball 300 yards or more.  I wanted nothing to do with the complexity of arm angles, knee flexes, grip pressure and all the attendant gizmos produced by the golf industry and hawked by its instructors.  I wanted someone who could take the game that I had and introduced the necessary techniques to produce a game I could carry into my later years without first having to raise my handicap by 100%.

I found that teacher and the big decision and commitment that you must make is that you have to stick with that teacher and not take instruction from more than one instructor.    Golfers that take lessons from multiple instructors or decide to take only a few lessons and then drop out, will never be able to develop a consistent approach to the game.  In my case, the transition was rather simple, I had to swing from out to in and get the club as far back as my body will allow to produce shots that will be accurate and maximize length.  My game was impacted immediately to the positive as I had a regime with an “out to in” swing path that delivered tee shots that are almost always in the fairway.  My challenge is that getting the golf club as far back as possible to facilitate club head speed through the ball.  I had all of this reinforced by looking at a video of Lee Trevino who really emphasized the outside in swing and starting the angle back at the 1-2 o’clock position.  Every professional golfer and low handicapper executes this technique very well and it’s a shame it took me 35 years to find the teacher that would will enable to play the game reasonably well going forward.