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Under Par A Newsletter fromKeyGolf.....December, 2005 Potpourri ...As the Old Year Ends and the New Year DawnsWe hope that it is not too presumptive to speculate that there is no one among us who hasn’t heard the cries of those who want to remove a few valued words from the common, everyday (probably mercantile) vocabulary. Perhaps there is some sense in the call for a “level human playing field,” but the logic in the beliefs behind that leaves a residue that is somewhat lame. We think, tongue in cheek, that the same logic could be applied, for instance, to the PGA and LPGA Tours, for the same reasons. After all, they show a decided bias in terms of the rest of the golfing population. But, of course, by definition, they are minority groups, and, as such, by the presumed standard, eligible for special consideration. As if they had none. Surely if we have to think about removing language from prayers, money, advertising and public systems, it is only a short “trip of the light fantastic” to get to some other things. Why should anyone be resigned to drive a Mercedes, while the majority drives those less expensive rigs? Doesn’t that seem discriminatory? Where is the ACLU when you need them? (As this is being written, we are listening to a TV news report of a McDonalds in our home town of Raleigh NC that has a sign saying “Merry Christmas” and “Jesus is the reason for the season.” That got a call from someone to McDonald’s corporate HQ wanting the sign changed to “Happy Holidays.” Shades of mercantilism!) Pardon us! We seem to have forgotten that no one has really defined the size, shape and reason for a “level playing field.” When will we decide to re-write the dictionary? After all, there are words in there that some will not, do not, would not appreciate. Is the “level” of the playing field going to be defined by the Tour or the Saturday foursome? Will it be marked by the Ford or the Mercedes? Is it to become the language used by a few or that used by the many? And
if you think that’s a stretch, just consider that
congress, quietly we think, is considering a special tax
on hybrid auto owners (a minority, we think) since their
cars don’t use as much gasoline, which may
compromise the highway maintenance budget! Talk about
weaving a web that will come back to bite itself! And
that consideration comes after last year’s offering
of a tax incentive to encourage the purchase of hybrids!
Would someone point them to a way to use the minds given
to them by whatever name you wish to call “the
whomever” it is that gave them those minds?
We’ve seen golfers with less confusion than that
over what kind of clubs to buy or what sort of shot to
hit. Hopefully, you will see the ridiculousness in such drifts, but while you are at it, at least notice that what appears generally far-fetched surely has some leaks in the bucket along the way. Will 2006 be the year that “politically correct” becomes the law of the land? And before you wonder what this really means to golf and golfers, notice the last part of this edition and take note of the kind of questions golfers have been asking, having been mesmerized and conditioned by open ended, ambiguous information that keeps moving in circles, piled higher and deeper - PhD for short. We say all that, really, in order to “excuse ourselves” for wishing each and all of you a Very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! in the language to which we have grown accustomed. If it is not yours, that’s OK, too. Now
to a Broadside. Some of you may already know about this matter. Either because you visit golf forums or because you have seen the announcement on our website, you may know that a person or group in Australia, calling themselves “Golf Sciences Australasia,” has produced a most provocative website within the past couple of months. That site contains content, which while poorly camouflaged, clearly was pilfered from us: our main themes, processes, wordings, analogies, illustrations and arrangement of principles. They have proceeded to claim what is really ours as their own original work. It is not, and, needless to say, we do not like that. So we are in the process of putting that back in their faces – as only a Driver would do it. You’ll find our retort at: http://golfimprovementtechniques.net) As one person wrote to us and observed (we paraphrase): They are simply stating what your clear key is and does while calling it an “automatic key” instead of using your language, and they are doing it without your permission. We note that it may be a worn phrase, but after all, “A rose, is a rose, is a rose…. and it would smell the same by any other name.” Their devious approach includes having started at a point at which they were giving away our process for automatic and our design for getting the game to the fourth level. Following our challenge of that, they put our processes, which they simply refer to as “Automatic” and “Golf’s Master Skill, “ behind a closed door that opens only after one subscribes to a 7.95 monthly membership. Their “auto” is our clear key and their “Master Skill” includes our process for developing habits from skills and a poor man’s parallel of our 32-ball drill. They claim they knew it all along, but if you read their emails to us, you will see that either that is not true or they fabricated everything said in their messages. (BTW, they acquired all of our books in March of this year). We are not pleased either with what they are doing, how they are doing it, the position in which that places us, or the feelings within us that call for confronting their misbegotten activity. So if you read about this more than you’d like, we will, somewhere down the road, apologize for thrusting it forward, but that will need to wait until we have disposed of “the fox,” and returned the “hen house” to normal. We only report this to our readers now so that if you are asked, you will not be in the flat-footed position of not knowing and wondering what is going on. End of Our Rant. ******************************************************************************************* On another front, we noticed what is almost a sidebar in the current (Jan. 2006) Golf Digest section, "Breaking 70 – How to raise your concentration level.” The author says, “Let’s face it, if you are shooting in the low 70s, you probably have a well-grooved swing and a reliable short game. But getting down into the 60s requires mental fortitude that few golfers possess. How do you get it? You have to exercise your brain, just as you do your body. Pay attention to your thoughts and emotions, and work to gain control of them.” Then, the author adds… “Get the Mental Edge” “Developing your mind is much like honing your swing. It takes patience and practice. Try this drill: Pick a shot in your pre-shot routine, hit it, and then assess your concentration level during the shot. Rate yourself on a scale of 1-10 with 10 being most focused. On 10 shots, try to get your cumulative score in the 80-plus range. The good news is, you only have to focus for about 20 minutes in a five-hour round, but it still requires practice.” If that were a cake recipe, would you know what ingredients you needed, how to mix and bake it? What method will you use to rate your concentration? What will a scale of 1-10 tell you? What will ten shots gain for you – and how does all that transfer to the game you will be playing? It’s a little like the stats game. What do you learn from the number of putts you have in a round? That you did something well or poorly? Of course, it may urge you to practice more, but it doesn’t really tell you what to practice or how. It does give you a medium and a reason for self-adulation or incrimination, as the case may be, but it is not likely to produce serious game evaluation that will add up to an improved outcome. Again, stats carry no design for action. They may be fun and interesting, and they give some a reason for living, but their use is limited. Stats may tell you that something, somewhere in your game, is either right or wrong, but they don’t deliver any definition of what needs adjusting or how to accomodate that. OK. So you had 38 putts in that last round. Does that mean that your stroke is bad, your putter needs changing, your head is on crooked, your mind has taken a vacation, that you’ve got the yips and don’t know it, you need to practice, buy a training aid, or go see an instructor? Stats may serve notice, but they cannot diagnose for you. (Oh sure, if you keep them for a year, you may be able to look back and notice that the two weeks you used the most putts was when the boss was away and you got in some extra rounds, but the guilt caught up with you and landed in your putter, or maybe you just had the flu). Those are just illustrations of what we mean when we refer to the obscenely common occurrence in golf literature that makes nice sounding words which only lead either to a dead end or back to the start point. All of us may read those things and sit there nodding our heads up and down in agreement, moved to do little else but wait till next month and see what gets to the pages then. Use whatever metaphor you want, the fact is that in golf and all other worlds, Mother Nature (can we still say that?) will hold your head and your feet to her standards and your rationality will do little other than "beg the point" and provide maybe, a little solace when you discover that her "rules" carry consequences - not some of the time, but all of the time. Golfers will not escape (cleanly) the human tendency to be influenced by the words of others. And when that influence does not have the benefit of the principles of sound evaluation, it can take you anywhere, and probably will. The kind of press that delivers such conditioning leads to actual forum questions like “I’ve got a bad slice. Can anyone help me?” “I’m not getting the same distance with my driver as I get with my irons. What can I do about that?” “Will somebody look at my swing and tell me what is wrong?” And from whom do they get their answers? Someone with the same problem. It is our fervent wish that principle and process, at some point, will grasp the minds of golfers, especially those who teach and write about the game or comment on TV. That’s not a New Year’s Resolution, but it does qualify as a thought that might inspire someone to embrace such a notion for the 2006th year of calendar measurement. And we close with a facetious note: We say “calendar measurement” so as not to upset the creationists and the evolutionists by saying something like “since the beginning of time.” We certainly wouldn’t want to start an argument at the end of this year. Father Time might not be able to take it. Good Cheer to all!... T’was the night before the holiday……zzzzzzzz. =============================== |