Upcoming Golf Schools at Penn Hills

Short-Game/Mind-Game: Friday, July 24

Full Swing School: Saturday, July 25

On-Course School: Friday, July 31

A good month for Awareness Golf Students

Juniors:

Event: NIKE Golf Jr Series/Stephen Ames Cup Qualifier May 30 - May 31, 2009 at Northumberland Links Golf Club

Awareness Students finished: First, second, third

EventEuro Junior Golf Cup/Lipton Brisk Canada Cup Team East Qualifier Jun 06 - Jun 07, 2009 at Grandview Golf Club

Awareness Students finished: First, third

Awareness Student finished: Girls division, Second

Adults

Awareness Students finished: First, Second

Event Brightwood ladies field day:

Awareness Student finished: First

Event: Truro Invitational

Awareness Students finished first, second

Many career bests as well. Good job, team!

Private Lessons: Prices and Programs

For All Golfers

Call 450-0111 to book,

Click here to a private lesson on-line

The Science of Golf

When Issac Newton got boked on the head by that apple, he not only changed physical science, he also gave golfers the tools to become monsters off the tee.

We all studied his laws of motion in grade school - then we seem to forget them all when striking a golf ball. Two of his discoveries apply on the tee, Gravity and Angular Momentum.

Gravity

Distance is a function of club head speed, angle of approach of club to ball, solidity of contact, and you could add in compression and launch angle.

Swing the club back into the top-of-the-backswing position, and your club will be around 6 feet off the ground. Drop an object from 6 feet and it accelerates- that is, picks up speed - at a rate of 32.2 feet per second per second. Notice that it doesn’t start at that speed, but picks up speed as it goes.

Exercise: Lift your arms to your side, shoulder height. Now let them go limp, and fall back to your sides. They were moving pretty fast, right? Now do the same thing, but instead of letting them fall, tighten up and consciously pull them down. Much slower.

Here’s the point- you are told to relax, but are you really? Do your arms free-fall when you try to crank a drive? If not, get some help from Mother Nature and be soft for more speed.

Angular Momentum Angular Momentum is rotation around an axis. Here’s the secret- when the object is brought closer to the axis, it rotates faster. Think of a skater pulling the arms in during a spin, and becoming a whirling blur.

In golf it’s just a little different-more like cracking a whip. As your arms free-fall, they are picked up by the rotating body, and that energy has to go someplace, the furthest point from the axis, or the club head.

Now here’s the part we tend to miss- nearing the ball, your arms and body should begin to SLOW DOWN to allow the energy to go out to the club head. Over-accelerate at this point, and the energy gets stuck. Think of the whip, the bigger parts have to slow down in order for the tip to snap at 840 mph.

Do this, and while you might not be moving at the speed of sound, it will be fast enough to crack it out there pretty good.

Exercise

Take a club and hold it with only your thumb and index fingers, with all the other fingers off the handle. Swing back, and let the club flop back. As you swing down, feel as if your arms and body are slowing down JUST at impact. The club which was lagging behind will now catch up and go flying out of your hands, whipping, flinging. (DO NOT do this near people, cars, or buildings).

Then at the range, holding the club normally, try to recreate the feeling of relaxed free-falling arms bumping into the turn, then put on the brakes, and watch the little white ball go into orbit.

If you pick up some distance, thank Sir Issac

See a pro and check your ego at the door.

There aren't many things I can imagine paying $200 an hour for, and the few that I can are not ones I'm likely to admit to in public. However, there is something I would pay that kind of money for that I'll acknowledge with no shame. It involves a level of enforced submission, it's true, though I probably deserve it. And yes, it encourages the addict in all of us. But standing in the heat with my master's hand gripping my forearm, his voice stern in its counsel, I realized that this was a weakness I ought to have made peace with long ago.

Suspend your lurid fantasies, because I'm referring to a golf lesson. Though I'd had a group lesson as a junior and the odd conversation with a pro here and there over the years, I'd never had the kind of attention I received on a recent trip to Scottsdale, Ariz., where I met with Bill Forrest, born and raised in Ontario, but now one of America's best teachers (in 2006 he was named Teacher of the Year by the PGA of America). He has taught everyone from foreign royalty to tour pros to Kevin Costner, but for one hour his only concern - or perhaps it's more accurate to say the source of his anguish - was my poor stray dog of a golf swing. It was an hour about me.

It was a solipsistic, decadent, narcissistic hour, unrelated to anything of any real importance or value. I highly recommend it.

Why so few of us take proper instruction is a mystery, since the vast majority of us could really use it (and winter, indoors, is a perfect time for it, since we can focus on form rather than results). Certainly, it doesn't have to cost $200 an hour; most golf instruction is considerably less than that (few teachers are as experienced as Mr. Forrest). Perhaps we don't pursue real teachers because every golf publication now focuses on the latest theory, the latest tip, the latest trend that's going to "unlock" our potential and effortlessly transform us into scratch handicaps.

Why pay all that money for a live teacher, part of us must think, when I can read a magazine and get better? Answer: Because you won't get better. Golf magazines will go into mind-numbing detail about the Stack and Tilt swing, the Two Piece Takeaway, the X-Factor Swing, and any of the other thousands of swing theories floating around out there. A country clubber unsheathing his new Stack and Tilt swing developed on what he's read in a magazine is like a mountain climber heading up Everest after reading a hiking guide; lives could be at risk. You need a sherpa to guide you through the hazards. Another factor in why we may not pursue instruction is that some of us sense, or already know, that we are less-than-perfect students.

While we chatted during my lesson, Mr. Forrest told me that he's noticed a few patterns over the decades he's been teaching: There are good students and bad students, he says. Good students let down their defences, they listen and then they practise.

Bad students are usually men, usually older, usually successful in business and have about a 12 handicap. Why is this the prototypical bad student? "Because most men who are pretty fair players, a 12 handicap, for instance, aren't willing to get five shots worse at the start to get 10 shots better in the long run; because the male ego is resistant to instruction; and because successful people aren't used to being told what to do."

The best student, says Mr. Forrest, is the female beginner. "They improve in a hurry because they're so grateful to get some expertise, and because they actually listen to what you're telling them. They don't care if they aren't going to be tour pros." Men, conversely, sometimes avoid instruction precisely because we need it, because it would be embarrassing to stand in front of a teacher and showcase that spasm that calls itself a golf swing.

We shouldn't care; the world is full of hideous golf swings. David Feherty once likened the swing of world-class golfer Jim Furyk to "an octopus falling out of a tree." In any case, as Bruce Grierson points out in his fine book U-Turn, there is an old Turkish proverb that says, "No matter how far down the wrong road you have travelled, it is never too late to turn around."Too many of us get our tips from some guy on the range, or we imitate our ill-equipped partners, or we mess ourselves up with every goofy swing theory in the latest golf magazine. If that's how you learned the game, well, let that be a lesson.