Archive for September, 2010

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What Golf Swing is Easiest on the Body?

September 28th, 2010

For all of you that are unaware, I am at an AMF meeting today(Monday and tomorrow) in Dallas, Texas.  AMF is an organization of like minded golf professionals that will get together to share information on all subjects golf.  Each year, there is an AMF Instructor Division Summit that brings a bunch of us together in an effort to learn and share ideas about the golf swing and/or playing golf.  It’s a great place to network and learn some new information about teaching this great game.

Our first presentation was from Rod Cook and Dr. Troy Van Biezen  about the subject of “Injury Prevention/Performance Improvement.”  A nice presentation on some of the physical issues juniors are beginning to face and some steps they have taken to help prevent golf related injuries.  Dr. Van Biezen gave us some staggering quotes about numbers of doctor visits that were occurring each year related to golf.  Care to guess?  If you said 15 million, you are a brighter person than me.  15 million doctor visits related to pain created from the golf movement.

From all accounts, Dr. Van Biezen is a leader in the industry as confirmed by TPI founder Dave Phillips and many other golf professionals that use his services.  He is certified in a special category of soft tissue rehabilitation called A.R.T.  This stands for Active Release Therapy and we were recommended to find an A.R.T. doctor to join our team in working with our students.  There was a long discussion about information that was covered in the first TPI Golf Fitness Instructor seminar about physical problems and their impact on the golf swing and the likelihood of future injury.

One of the big areas Dr. Van Biezen mentioned that contributed to a great many injuries was the combination of reverse pivot in the backswing and reverse ‘C’ position in the follow through.  Very shortly after that because we all were golf professionals, some one noted that those things looked like what some had read about the Stack and Tilt swing.  Instantly, Dr Van Biezen became somewhat uncomfortable and asked Dave Phillips to respond to this area.  Dave was also quite reluctant to answer but rather reminded everyone exactly what the Stack and Tilt backswing should be like and that it wasn’t a target leaning spinal condition at the top of the backswing.  Rather, it is a spinal tilting to the golfers left side that is rotated.

Shortly after, Dr Van Biezen tells some stories from his time traveling with the PGA Tour Fitness van about how many players are getting treated week in and week out.  Some names get thrown around and some questions are asked along with some success stories.

I felt that this Dr Van Biezen seemed like a very bright and respected guy in the industry so I put my hand up to ask the question everyone wants to know the answer to.  I have a tendency to stir the pot a little and I thought I would give it a try.  It gets to my turn and I ask, “In your opinion, relative to injury prevention, is there a best anatomical/biomechanical way to swing a golf club that is the easiest on the body?”  “Is there a best way.”  Dr. Van Biezen says, “You’re going to make me say it aren’t you.”  I start to get excited.  No one ever answers that question. I had no idea what was going to happen next.  His answer……

Stack and Tilt!

The room shut down.  All the talk stopped.  Up till then, I could here little snickers about the system when they were talking about injury.  This was especially true when the subject of reverse pivot and reverse ‘C’ was being discussed.  During that talk Dr. Van Biezen mentioned that he had worked with some stack and tilters on there sore backs while he was treating players on tour.

He went on to say, assuming the player had no imbalances or weaknesses that stack and tilt presented the least amount of sheering forces in the spinal region when performed correctly.  Amazing as it sounded to many, it just made me laugh. I love when people that don’t research get slammed.  To me, and from second hand information, it seems pretty clear that TPI is in agreement with what Dr. Van Biezen was saying.  I hypothesize that this information will come out in a big way at the TPI World Fitness Summit but that’s just a guess.

Please feel free to ask any questions or leave comments on this post.  Hopefully, at some point, AMF will post the video of this presentation and all doubt will be cleared up about if what I am saying actually happened.  My guess is some of you won’t believe me but I promise you the information contained above is accurate.

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Posted in Teaching Techniques, TPI

AimPoint Golf Green Reading – How to Determine the Stimp

September 24th, 2010

AimPoint Golf Certified LogoHere’s a quick little reminder on how to find the stimp.  We all know that the stimp on the putting green may be different than the stimp on the course but that shouldn’t be an argument for not trying to find it out.  You’ll need your AimPoint Charts, Breakmaster and a digital level.

Go out to the practice green and find a hole location that is on a consistent planar area of the green.  Determine the location of the 6 o’clock position at the hole using your breakmaster.  Go 5 feet away at 3 o’clock and place a tee in the ground.  Use your level and measure the slope in 1 foot increment in the direction of the slope to find the slope percentage.

Take a guess at the stimp you think it is, find the AimPoint from the chart, aim your putt at that location and hit a putt that rolls 6 feet.  If this putt goes in center cut, then you know what the stimp is.  The charts are so accurate that this is the fastest and easiest way to determine the stimp.

Be honest. If you hit it the wrong speed, try again.  If you hit it the right speed and it misses low, try a stimp number that is higher.  If you miss high, try a stimp number that is lower.  Also pay attention to starting direction to see that you are starting it on line.  Having a buddy confirm would be the best way.

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Posted in AimPoint, Putting

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Golf Professionals and Facebook

September 22nd, 2010

Golf Professionals and FacebookNext to YouTube, I think Facebook is the next most powerful piece of social media that the Golf Professional should be using.  Facebook is very recognizable and is checked by most who use it on a daily basis.  There’s also a good chance that you and your customers are all ready using it.  The key now is turning it into a revenue source and a branding vehicle.

Depending on the person, some will want to create a Business Page while others will simply work with their regular profile. Personally, I use both. Click on the previous link to check them out. If I were to have just one it would be a regular profile page.  I think the main reason for a business page is it allows for more than 5000 friends.  If you think you will become more popular than 5000 people, a business page is the way to go.  Currently, I have more friends than fans but I don’t see this as a bad thing.  Some people will prefer becoming a fan because there is less information passed along.  If they become a friend, I will be able to interact with their friends and a bunch of other things.  In other words, a friend is a more powerful connection. The problem is, you can only have 5000.

Here are 3 keys for using Facebook for you business:

1:  Use Facebook as another avenue to notify others when you’ve posted a new blog post.  If you aren’t blogging you should. I will cover this in a future post.  There are a bunch of ways to have your blog post fed right into your Facebook feed like Networked Blogs or Twitterfeed.

2:  Interact with your students and potential students.  The key to social media is the social part.  Use Facebook both as a professional development tool and a humanizing tool.  People tend to gravitate toward others they have built a relationship with.  Facebook can be one of those ways.  Friends of your friends may see the golf pro interacting on Facebook and decide to come take a lesson.  I can guarantee you this happens because it happens to me all the time.

3:  Offer specials only available to Facebook friends/fans.  When I offer a special on Facebook, I also ask them to print out a copy of the Business Page to bring in as their certificate.  That way I know they are using Facebook and that they will return to see any future specials.

I hope these small introductory posts on using Social Media have been helpful.

Please consider becoming my friend John Graham

or like my Business Page John Graham Golf School

Please leave questions or comments if you have any.

JG

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October Update on the difference between Facebook Business Page and Facebook Group.

As a golf professional, you are your own brand.  Because of this, a business page is what you want.  However, before you can create a Business Page you must have a personal profile page.

Here are some of the advantages of a Business Page:

1)  After 25 ‘Likes’ you can create your own Facebook URL. For example, mine is http://facebook.com/johngrahamgolf

2)  Unlimited membership. A group and a profile page is restricted to a max of 5000 ‘members’

3)  They are indexed by external search engines like Google.

4)  Enables analytics and tracking.  Facebook “Insights” allows for tracking the sites performance.

5)  It can host applications like a regular profile page.

Here’s a chart comparing Pages and Groups from AllFacebook that really breaks it down:

Facebook comparison of Pages and Groups

You can also follow this link to the full article from AllFacebook.com

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Posted in Social Media

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Putting – The Tee Drill?

September 19th, 2010

Tee target DrillTo the left is a picture of a drill where you try to roll the ball through a gate.  I’m using it to discuss another drill that I see often to help people work on their focus and targeting.  It goes something like this.  Instead of aiming at the hole, place a tee in the ground and see if you can hit it with the ball.  Because the tee is so much smaller compared to the hole, it will make the hole seem so much larger.

Let’s look at the reality.  Is this Tee Drill really that much harder than making it in a hole?  We know the hole is 4 and 1/4 inches across.  We also know that the ball is 1.68 inches in diameter.  The width of tee stem is .19 inches so if we double the width of the ball and add the width of the tee we get 3.55 inches.  Hitting the tee is nearly as wide as the hole itself with only a .70 inches difference.  This is the case for a die in the hole speed.  As the speed of the ball increases the width of the hole that will actually capture the moving ball decreases.

If we have an 8 stimp green and roll the ball a speed that would go 6 inches past, the capture width of the hole shrinks to 3.8 inches. With a speed that would go 1 foot past, the capture width of the hole becomes 2.6 inches.  The next time you are working on that tee drill realize that hitting the tee (3.55 inches wide) with a speed that goes a foot past is actually easier to hit than making a putt (2.6 inches wide) with the same speed(assuming a stimp of 8).  Obviously, as the stimp increases, the ball will be rolling slower so the hole becomes wider assuming the same distance past the hole.

The point of this post is just to show you that the tee drill isn’t really different than putting at the hole.  It may look a lot smaller but in reality it can be wider than the hole.  Who’d a thunk it?

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Posted in Putting, Teaching Techniques

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AimPoint Golf Green Reading – 3 and 9 O’Clock

September 18th, 2010

I’ve had a couple questions recently on finding where the 3 and 9 o’clock positions are in the AimPoint Golf Green Reading Model.  Many are confused and think that 3 and 9 fall directly between 12 and 6.  That is only true on a clockface or a green that has a consistent slope percentage and direction.  So since we know that almost all greens are not like that, let’s find the real 3 and 9.

AimPoint Golf Green Reading - Planar

AimPoint Golf Green Reading - Planar

Let’s use this picture here.  This is a contour map of green that has a planar pin location and is basically a planar shaped green through out.  The red line represents the Zero Line where the putts are straight aimed.  The contour lines represent places of equal elevation.

The key to remembering 3 and 9 o’clock is that they are level with the hole.  When I say that, I mean they are directly across the slope.  They are neither uphill or downhill putts.  They are at the same elevation as the hole.  In this example, you can see the hole is right on that contour line.  This means that 3 and 9 o’clock are also on that line.  Hopefully, you can see that 9 o’clock is closer to 6 o’clock than it is to 12 o’clock.  This means that the putts from 6 to 9 o’clock are more volatile. The amount of break changes quickly.

Now, here are some real world tips.  You can see that the 3 and 9 o’clock line also curve. This means the green is changing elevation.  If I had my golf ball at the end of the 9 o’clock line, that would break a little less than the same length putt on the 3 o’clock. Why?  The answer is because the contour lines on the 9 o’clock side are spaced farther apart. That means the area is flatter. Now the 7 and 8 o’clock areas are real volatile and have more slope farther from the hole than at the hole.  I would generally play the 7 and 8 o’clock areas leaning toward the highest amount of break.  For example, if I feel like I am at 7:30 I’m going to figure out the estimate and add a couple to deal with the volatility.  In either case, these putts will be very hard to make because of the slope and speed sensitivity. You’d also have to estimate the slope % here because it is changing on the way to the hole. It goes from steeper to shallower.

I hope you enjoy and let me know if you have questions.

JG

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Posted in AimPoint, Putting

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