You will watch in amazement this week at the Cialis Western Open.
You will see drives soar as if shot out of a cannon. You will hear the sound of the ball whistling overhead. It is a sound your drives don’t make.
You will see the ball land in the fairway, leaving 185 yards to the hole. And the pros will pull out a 7-iron, or maybe even an 8-iron, for goodness’ sake. Since when did that territory become short-iron distance?
Most likely, they will land that shot on the green, often within birdie range. If they miss and find the bunker, however, no worries. They’ll splash some sand out of the trap, and the ball will cozy up to the hole.
You’ll watch the pros do this and you’ll come away wondering: How do they make golf look so easy?
It’s a hard game, isn’t it? At least it seems that way when you shoot a 92 on your home course.
You’ll ask yourself: What separates them from us? Why can’t we master the game like they do?
Well, there are reasons they’re so good and you’re, ahem, so bad.
“I like to say it’s 180 degrees of separation,” said Peter Kostis, the noted instructor and analyst for USA Network and CBS Sports. “The average player plays the game 180 degrees different than the tour pro. The tour player will spend minimal time on the driving range warming up with the driver. He’ll concentrate on the scoring clubs. The average guy will take 50 hacks with the driver and then go to the first tee.
“Tour players have effortless power. The average golfer has powerless effort. The tour player hits down to make the ball go up. The average player hits up on the ball, resulting in a top.”
Kostis went on and on. So did several of the game’s other foremost experts as they explained the differences between pros and hackers.
First thing: Get a grip
Tiger Woods has played in many pro-ams throughout the years. That means he has seen many bad swings.
Asked what flaw consistently stands out among his pro-am partners, Woods didn’t hesitate.
“It’s the grip,” Woods said. “Most amateurs have never been taught a good foundation in a grip. A lot of flaws are attributed to the grip because you have to make a lot of different compensations along the way in the golf swing to square up the club face.
“I think the best thing amateurs can do is focus on the simplest thing, which is the grip and your setup. That’s something you can control.
“It’s very easy to get your grip right and your posture right. It’s amazing how much better you can play golf from a correct and solid foundation.”
Reason 1: Athleticism
Forget the debate over whether golfers are athletes. Golfers are athletes, at least pro golfers.
“Supposedly, one of the appealing things about golf is that you don’t have to be an athlete to play the game,” Kostis said. “Well, that might be true if you want to be a 20- handicapper. But if you want to be good, you have to be athletic.”
Kostis maintains most of the PGA Tour pros could perform well in other sports. They may not be able to run up and down the court like Kevin Garnett or chase down Ricky Williams in the secondary, but they are athletes in their own way.
Consider John Daly. Outwardly, it might be hard to consider the chain-smoking, chocolate-binging, pot-bellied masher an athlete. But under all that flab and those vices is a man with incredible flexibility, sense of balance and hand-eye coordination. All those traits belong to athletes.
“Daly’s a heck of an athlete,” said Jim Suttie, the 2000 PGA teacher of the year, who has an academy at Green Garden Country Club in Frankfort. “He’s got the flexibility and wonderful hand-eye coordination. That explains why he is so terrific around the green.”
Johnny Miller takes the analogy one step further. He says fans look at heavy-set players like Daly and Craig Stadler and scoff at them for being out of shape. He says fans don’t take into account that these players have very strong thighs and rear ends. They form the foundation for a powerful swing.
“These guys come in with those legs driving, and the clubhead is like a train roaring down the tracks,” said Miller, NBC’s golf analyst.
But Daly is not a model for the current player. Tiger Woods is.
Tightly muscled, Woods, a workout fiend, sparked a fitness craze on tour. Vijay Singh credits a training regimen for keeping him going strong into his 40s.
Therein lies another difference between you and them.
“The average golfer wishes and hopes to be better rather than working on it,” Kostis said.
If average players did work on their bodies, Kostis says, they would see dramatic improvement in their games. But failing a physical makeover, the 15-handicapper could take all the lessons in the world, and it won’t make any difference.
“You have to assess each person,” said Todd Sones, who runs his Impact Golf School at White Deer Run in Vernon Hills. “You may tell a student to do all sorts of things in the swing, but it won’t work if he isn’t physically capable of getting in those positions. Sometimes I encourage the student to see a fitness person. It’ll increase his chances of making a better swing.”
There’s a lesson, friends. Before you hit the range, you should hit the gym first.
Reason 2: Work ethic
Butch Harmon says it takes no athletic ability to set up a shot. Woods’ noted former instructor says it merely is a result of ingraining the routine, over and over and over.
Again, another difference between the pros and the average player.
“There’s nothing better than a good grip, good posture and good alignment,” said Harmon, who is promoting a new training device called “The Right Grip” in the hopes players will learn how to put their hands correctly on the club.
“The setup is something the pros think about constantly,” Harmon said. “They’re constantly checking it. The average player never thinks about it. Instead he sees this ad on the Golf Channel for a high-tech driver, and he has FedEx get it to him right away. The tour player, meanwhile, goes back to the basics all the time. In reality, that dictates how you swing the club.”
When it comes to comparing the work ethic of the pros with amateurs, throw out quantity. The pros obviously spend many more hours fine-tuning their games. It isn’t a hobby for them.
“I guarantee Phil Mickelson has spent more time hitting high, soft flop shots than most golfers have spent on their entire games,” said short-game specialist Dave Pelz.
But the issue is quality. When it comes to working on their games, most amateurs are wasting their time. They have no clue how to make their games better. Pelz calls it “exercise, not practice.”
“The average player never practices anything he doesn’t do well,” Harmon said. “If he doesn’t hit fairway woods well, you’ll never see him practice with those clubs. With the tour player, whatever he doesn’t do well, that’s what he’ll spend all his time working on.”
Harmon laughed that the amateur’s inability to work properly on his game is good for his business. “It keeps me busy,” he said.
Pelz knows most amateurs don’t have hours to invest on their games. But he says a few minutes of proper practice can go a long way.
The emphasis is on proper, Sones said. If the average pro practices for 30 minutes, he won’t hit more than 40 balls during that span, Sones said, whereas the amateur will go through 60 to 70 balls in rapid-fire fashion.
“Most people are just out there beating balls,” said Sones, who works with U.S. Women’s Open champion Hilary Lunke. “The repetition of quickly going through a bucket of balls is not like anything you do on the golf course. You get into the rhythm of hitting a ball once every 20 seconds. On the course, it might be once every three or four minutes. You get a false illusion.
“That’s why [amateurs] struggle to take it from the range to the first tee.”
Reason 3: Mental approach
This is the biggest item that separates pros from amateurs. Amateurs either think too much about the swing on the course or don’t think enough about the right strategy to keep the score down.
Suttie has seen many cases of brain lock on the course. He says the average player is way too tight, the probable result of over-thinking.
“They’re so focused on hitting the ball, they can’t swing the club,” Suttie said. “I asked [PGA Tour pro] Steve Lowery about his key. He said, `Trying to turn off the brain, so I can play the game.’ “
The amateur’s brain definitely goes into hibernation when it’s time to make decisions on the course. Harmon says the tour player deals in reality; the amateur resides in fantasy.
Say, for instance, you’re facing 170 yards to the green.
“[The pro] knows what he can do,” Harmon said. “He doesn’t try to do things he can’t do. The average player, meanwhile, thinks he can hit it a ridiculous amount of yardage. He thinks because he once hit a 6- iron 170 yards, that’s the club he should use. That’s unrealistic. You have to be realistic to play golf.”
You also have to be fearless. The pro teaches himself to be blind to all the obstacles on the course. He doesn’t see the water. He doesn’t see the out-of-bounds stakes on the right. He sees only opportunity. The amateur, meanwhile, sees nothing but trouble.
“For the average player, the water is a magnet,” Kostis said. “For the tour player, it’s a reverse magnet. For the amateur, the last thought in his mind is, `I hope the ball doesn’t go in the water.’ Sure enough, the ball goes in the water.
“The tour player goes, `I’m not going to hit in the water because I’m going to hit over here.’ He finishes with a positive thought.”
Reasons are boundless why they are pros and you are not. Ultimately, you shouldn’t be too upset that you can’t do what they do.
“We beat up a lot on the average player,” Kostis said. “Let’s remember that you work hard at your job. You don’t want to work another job when you play golf. Accept the bad shots and let the one or two good shots bring you back again.”
