I think it may have just made sense

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

If there's been a particular area that's been the bane of my existence on golf courses, it's been the short game. I have made some improvement since last fall, but one particular area that has continued to thwart me is the pitches inside of 30 yards. There's no doubt I would have broken 90 already if I had a better game in that area.

So now with it warmer today, and the extended light, I took my wedges and some balls outside, and began fussing with the setup, and this type of swing. And suddenly, it clicked and became so simple. Just open myself up a little, address the ball with my hands out towards my left thigh, look to my target, and imagine how much backswing and swing through I would need, see the clubhead going through the ball with that, and focusing my eyes on that ball. Once I had that, bam, execute the swing.

Bye bye chili dips. Bye bye skulls. I began striking ball after ball with mostly clean and crisp contact. And I started to get the feedback that Dave Pelz talks about. I would see the shot, and was able to correlate it with my swings. I could begin to imagine how the ball would come off the face of the pitching wedge, the gap wedge, the sand wedge, and the lob wedge. In fact, the lob wedge started becoming ridiculously easy to hit if I set myself up and went through the thoughts. I began, maybe, to see what it is the better short game players see, how those balls are going to fly, and how to get them to land where you want them to land. And it's so easy. It's not hard except that perhaps it's just not completely natural for some of us.

Of course, the big test will be when I get out to the course again. But I think maybe I've got it. And if I have, it's going to make my game a whole lot easier out there.

Is it the weekend yet?

[Davebud]

I am hoping to get out on Thursday if the weather is good. Cangrats on the wedge shots, just 5 short months ago I was hitting a 9 to go where I hit my SW now. Its sort of amazing once you get it, you got it.

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

I think maybe the big thing is this, at least for me. When I make a full swing, my hips and shoulders turn out, then the arms follow. Right? That makes sense, right?

But now, these short pitches, the ones you want to make inside of 40 yards, you aren't using your body to make that full swing, you're trying to let your arms execute a pendulum motion. You know what? That's hard to do with your arms coming across your body. What's the natural underhand motion do? It has your body facing the target. Solution? Open up the stance, and make it easy for you to sight your target, then look down, and simply throw your clubhead through the ball.

It's that easy. My goodness, it's that easy.

[Davebud]

I make a full Iron swing from 10:30 but from 9:00 I am just using my arms, its been real good at getting to the target that way. My Iron swing gives me great distance but the arm swing is better for accuracy.

[Eracer]

The best part of this game is when you make the discoveries that seem to help you clear a fundamental hurdle. Right around the green (10 yards or so) is my "death area". Recently, I too had an epiphany of sorts. If I focus on a spot two inches in front of the ball, and try to make the leading edge of the club hit that spot, I make much better and more consistent contact. I know it's just a trick to get my weight forward and moving through the ball, but it works. You would think that it would lead to thin shots, but it doesn't.

Funny thing is, it seems to help with all my iron shots as well. I do have a tendency to fall back with a reverse weight-shift from time to time, resulting in fat shots. This little trick will help me avoid that.

[bdcrowe]

Eracer, RBB... It sounds like you guys had 2 different epiphenies to get to the same place. Both of your descriptions basically boil down to "accelerate through the ball".

Dips and skulls are almost always due to deceleration into the ball. Kudos on "finding it in the dirt", as Hogan was so fond of saying.

As an aside RBB, and you'll note this is opinion, but... Pelz may have been your biggest problem to start with. I find it amazing that an over-analytical scientist is pawning lessons on the part of the game that is 100% feel. You are 500% better off reading a chipping tip and spending 40 minutes in the yard with a wedge, ball and bucket than listening to this drip chastising you for being an amateur and quoting E=MC2 on the putting green.

Just get out and do it, and you'll develop that feel.

Anyway... kudos dude.

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

I don't know about that. I think we all have varying methods of learning, and while Pelz's style of description and execution kind of repels a natural feel player, it also helped me a lot in understanding the principle of accelerating through the ball. Okay? Pelz is very clear about that principle in his book, and explained it in a way that made sense to me.

My problem had not been in understanding that principle, but in the how of achieving it consistently with my short game stroke. Right now, I'm thinking there were a couple of factors that were making it tough for me to execute a consistent pendulum type of stroke with a consistent bottoming out point. While Pelz talks about flaring your front toe forward, I wasn't using that to open up my stance. In particular for me, this was going to cause difficulties because of the shoulder problem I still have which limits my mobility of taking my right arm across my body.

With a closed type of stance and trying to bring my arms across the front of my body, I was going to have immense difficulty in hitting a consistent point. But that's when it finally came to me last night, all that I had observed, all that I had read of Pelz, all that I had learned about how the body is positioned when hitting a golf shot, along with how when I took a chance to just toss a ball underhanded I realized that I had my body open, it became clear what I should try.

I know there are some on this board who almost despise Pelz, but I will still maintain a position that his books are useful for certain types of people, and I'm in that group. There are some sorts of who have that native eye-hand coordination and instinctive feel that too much thinking gets in the way, but there are some of us with less coordination who need to take our lumps and learning in a different style to get the epiphany that takes somewhat longer.

[Davebud]

I am with RBB on this one, Pelz works for me too, it must just be the astronomy connection. He puts it in terms of simple physics, I can relate to what he is saying, my father-in-law also gets him, my best friend thinks its all hogwash. Some people just want it to be shown to them and they get it, some people really want the why it works detailed in depth, I know I am rambling but its just how I perceive it.

[Eracer]

I took a Pelz one-day class and it had some good - and some not so good - stuff for me. Pelz' fundamental lesson is that the only way to be a consistent short game player is to take "feel" completely out of the equation. My problem with that is this: If I keep my head still, and my eyes focused on the ball during my swing, how do I know when my arms are at the 7:30 or 9:00 position. I have to FEEL IT.

I did take some good lessons out of the class. His method for reading break (and how to calculate your aim point) is great. My putting immediately improved because of the understanding I got. And his setup for bunker play is both repeatable and effective.

Overall, though, I'm pretty good from 20-100 yards just feeling the swing. I get paralyzed when I worry about what position my arms, shoulder, hips, feet, etc. are in. I just think of swinging the clubhead towards the target aggressively, with as little backswing as I "feel" is necessary. Same results as what Pelz teaches (short backswing, long follow-through) but achieved differently.

My problems from 20 yards on in is that the swing is TOO short, and I end up rushing the downswing because I don't trust that there is enough clubhead speed to get the ball to the hole, then (as bdcrowe so correctly pointed out) decelerating through impact.

[bdcrowe]

RBB, DaveB, I get ya. But Eracer is right. Dave Pelz tries to take feel totally out of the equation while paying lip service to it. I hear so many people who swear by him. That's cool, dfifferent strokes. What I see all-too-commonly in the people who swear by him (no fingers pointing here, please note) are people who swear by him, and fall into 2 categories.

(1) Those who swear by him and couldn't find a 20 foot circle from 40 feet away because they get over the ball with paralysis by analysis.

(2) Those who swear by him and have good/great short games after struggling for far too long. And the quality short games have come along despite Pelz, after a eureka moment where they learn to do what pels teaches against-- settle down, feel the proper swing, and just let go.

It's kind of like the person with a cold and has gallons of chicken noodle soup shoved down their throat. The soup chef swears it's the soup, when all the poor sap needed was some relaxation and time to feel better.

Again, kudos on the break-throughs and I'm not crapping on what ya'll have been doing. I'm just saying that any teacher that puts more emphasis on checklists than feel in the short game is a quack. I stand by that assertion.

(Not to mention he is a tool. Every show, he pops off with some, "If I've told you once, you bunch of moron hackers"-type schpiel and it is rediculous.)

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

Originally Posted by Eracer

And his setup for bunker play is both repeatable and effective.

The chapter on bunker play is the best of all the chapters in Dave Pelz's Short Game Bible, as it finally explained a very simple to execute shot that I can work with. I've actually made a few bunker saves since learning it that weren't accidents. I did it on Sunday, when I hit into the greenside bunker at the 14th hole. I looked at the shot, and saw that it would be right for me to open up the pitching wedge, set the ball up on my left heel, flare the toe, and take good swing back and through. The ball came out with lovely height and spin, rolling out to 6 feet below the hole.

Not to mention that I had saved at hole #2, with that time I used the gap wedge to get the ball close.

It had actually started getting to a point where I was hoping to get the ball in the bunker, rather than leave myself those more delicate pitch shots.

[Ravenous Bugblatter Beast]

I'm unsure if it's accurate to say that Dave Pelz advocates removing feel from the game. It's conceivable to me that one can read it that way, but that's not quite accurate, I think. There's the one chapter where he describes Jim Simons working on the varying lengths of backswings, where eventually Simons clicked into the feel such that when he executed the swing, he knew how far he had hit the ball.

What I'm suggesting here it's a different approach to develop the same feel for two player with different styles of learning. One type of player just sees and feels it instinctively, whereas the player like Simons, needed to acquire the feel.

Of course, as human beings, we don't exist as simple binary demarcations, either/or types of groupings. Ultimately, though, I think it's a matter of pragmatism, and the need to find what works for each person. There are some players who if they tried to use Pelz's methods and explanations they'd go all bug-eyed and crazy, and that's not a matter of fault or being wrong, it's just a case of human beings being somewhat different in some ways.

So I'm only suggesting that perhaps you can continue to find Pelz annoying, but perhaps understand that there is useful lessons in what Pelz writes about, as well as understanding that Pelz isn't taking all feel out of it, but simply trying to get certain types of people to find the necessary focuse on the feel they need.

[Eracer]

Originally Posted by Ravenous Bugblatter Beast

I'm unsure if it's accurate to say that Dave Pelz advocates removing feel from the game. It's conceivable to me that one can read it that way, but that's not quite accurate, I think.

I agree with a lot of what you say. But Pelz is all about one thing: the application of specific mechanical techniques proven by statistical study. His approach is completely mechanical. If it results in "feel" it's only because the repetition of any bio-mechanical activity promotes muscle-memory, which is what "feel" really is.

The bottom line with him, as you suggest, is that he works for some people, and doesn't work for others. Just like Jim McLean, Peter Kostis, Butch Harmon, David Leadbetter, etc., ad nauseum, work for some and not for others.

[bdcrowe]

That's cool, RBB. Like I said, I'm truly happy that you guys got it, no matter the vehicle used. And, I'm pretty sure that I failed in getting my thoughts through in an understandable way.

Personally, I think it is not a matter of perception at all, per Pelz. He is written in black and white, and he is definitely not lacking in explaining his methodology. It's pretty cut and dried. My point was that he doesn't work on feel, nor promote fell. period. The fact that you bring up Simons only reinforces this. Where Pelz states that Simon basing putting length on backswing length equates to feel, it is just the opposite. That is mechanics; not feel. It is a mechanical trigger that must be followed, and it fails as much as feel. What if Simons has a downhill putt? Or one into the grain? Pelz is a scientist trying to market golf as a scientific venture. But the course is not a test tube, and our phsychologies are not mechanical.

I say this, not to be argumentative. I promise and apologize if I seem so. But I see so many people who think a repeatable swing is made by "positions", and they lose SO much valuable time in persuit of that repeatable swing. The major players and knowlegable teachers know it too. Jack Nichlaus, after explaining the details of his swing, explains that those guidelines should only be thought of as check-points and that feeling the shot is the only way to play. John Jacobs, after explaining the fundamentals, then tells you to view the swing as "two turns and a swish"-- in other words, play the game by feeling it and not overcomplicating it. Eddie Merrins correctly states that 90% of golfers never reach their optimum because they live in the backswing and forget to just "swing the handle". Do pitchers worry about the wind-up, or the throw? Do tennis players think about drawing back, or hitting the ball?

Pelz gets you lost in the backswing, because he is selling a "dream". (The same dream I was guilty of looking for.) He sells his books by convincing you that the swing is something mechanical, that he can describe, you can read, and then you can do. He doesn't want you to know that the swing is something "felt", and the only way to get that feeling is by beating balls with the occasional check by an outside party. He wants to sell you a bunch of "positions" while you desperately need a fluid movement that just happens to flow through those positions. The only thing he can sell you is a cluttered mind when it should be emptying over the ball.

I only write this because I care. LOL

Take care, bro.

[Big Brother Dunk]

Way to go RRB!

Good to hear that the short game seems to be improving. It's a great way to lower your score.