I wanna play like... a woman
Byron Nelson said that amateur golfers should try to find a tour professional to pattern their game after. I've been thinking about that and I've decided that the professional I'd most like to play like is... Annika Sorenstam.
Okay, I hear the guys snickering, but I can defend this.
First, of course I admire much in the games of the old time greats that I grew up watching. Jack's strategy, Trevino's wind cheater fade, Ray Floyd's competitive fire, Chi Chi's shot making skills. And of course I can certainly appreciate elements of the games of many of the current professionals on the PGA tour. For example, I really love:
- The effortless swings of Freddie Couples and Ernie Els.
- Phil Mickelson's "Arnie-esque" go for it attitude and his magical short game.
- The grind it out games of guys like Jim Furyk and Tom Lehman.
- And of course, Tiger's power, competitiveness, focus and sheer determination to win.
She just makes the game look so... simple. I love how she moves quickly into her setup after visualizing her shot. She just steps up to the ball and swings, and her swing is precise - without any wasted effort. She seems almost robotic at times.
I think you could give Annika an air gun capable of shooting golf balls and she'd end up with the same result. "Fire"... ball's in the fairway. "Fire"... ball's on the green. Putt for birdie. Move to next hole. "Fire"... ball's in the fairway...
She just never seems to struggle with her game. If the putts are falling, she wins. Otherwise she finishes top ten and just moves on to the next tourney. It's as simple as that. Golf is just... simple.
So there it is.
Snicker away boys.
Annika's is the game I want!
posted by p2h @ 2:54 PM
2 Comments:
I hope the Lord excludes athletes who are talking to themselves from "Thou shalt not bear false witness", for surely it is by creative fiction that we achieve the mental attitudes necessary for success. A batter who is hitless in his last dozen trips to the plate says "I'm long past due, I'm gonna get a hit this trip to the plate!", while the batter who has gotten on base 4 of his last 5 at bats says "I'm on a streak. I'm gonna get a hit!" These batters are not journalists, and please, Lord, they are not sinners. They are athletes who are choosing always the best, the most effective, fiction to present to their inner selves. I commend them.
Annika Sorenstam has said publicly that her goal is 54, or even birdies, every time she steps onto the course. So far, she has not reached that goal, but she has gotten mighty close on a few occasions.
Robert Browning wrote "A man's reach must exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?" Didnt that poet have Scottish aka Goffish, blood? My personal realization of the truth of his immortal assertion came 25 years ago when the one piece of heaven I have personally grasped, my wife, rode along with me for a quick after-work nine at Sleepy Hole. I played 6 good holes, then pooched the last 3. "I can play better than this, baby, let me show you. If I'm gonna make the PGA, then I can replay 7, 8, and 9 right now and go birdie-birdie-par."
(In case you are wondering about the wisdom of taking my young bride along for golf, let me tell you that the practice led eventually to today's continuum of her not complaining about me playing golf any time, every time, just as long as she doesnt have to go along...)
So we went back to number 7, and long story short, I went par-par-bogie on those last three holes. As I struggled to ignore the folk-fortune of "No PGA for you, dude" portended by my failure to achieve my goal, the correlation between my goal and its result dawned on me: I had achieved my goal, plus one, on each hole. My game improved immediately by accepting this new strategy: Play for birdie on each hole. I had to quickly refine the plan, because playing for birdie on some particular tough holes led to taking unreasonable chances, so par became the goal on these holes.
As long as I believed the birdie goal, it was an effective fiction, but to maintain that kind of doublethink for 4.5 hours, over a term of years, proved to be beyond my powers of self-delusion: In the short time span from the green where I have just scored goal plus one, to the next tee, I had to become realistic enough to card my actual score, then again accept the birdie fiction so completely that I could score par. I had to fail 18 times (unless I actually DID make a bird) and still believe I could succeed next time. Understandably, my objective corrupted to "par", and my outcomes, predictably, sunk to bogie.
You might be better off without hearing my comments, but I'm going to trust that if you can believe the pragmatic fiction of "get it to 2" strongly enough to actually achieve a 5 handicap, then you have plenty of doublethink power to also accept what is uplifting in my comments, while creatively ignoring the parts that work against your goal.
What a great benefit a 2.0 index would offer to me! I have tried repeatedly to qualify for The Eastern Amateur by placing top 10 in the First Flight Qualifier, but with a handicap of 2.3 or less, I could walk on to the primary event. Hooboy! You do that, I'll caddy for you. And what a caddy I would be! "See that house with the white trellis? That's where I went OB when I had it going in 1996...dont go there!"
===
One piece of advice I will offer, as one who sees your game rather objectively, is to keep on dancing with who brung you, no matter what aspect of the game you are working to improve at a given moment. Who brung you is your putting. Whatever your ongoing maintenance routine is for putting, do not forsake that routine for anything. Do you keep a journal of your game development thoughts? The sneaky mysterious thing about the golf swing, and the putting setup and stroke, is that generally we are conscious of whatever 5% of the process we are currently working on, and the other 95% is what we have committed to subconscious habit. Just as your handicap is influenced not only by the latest score you post, but equally by the score 21 rounds ago that now drops from consideration, that subconscious 95% needs periodic conscious refreshing. We generally trigger the refresh with subtle reminders like "What the hell am I doing wrong?", and while the habit drops from usage in a moment, rediscovering it can take weeks or months, unless you have a good journal to review. "Hmm, I forgot that part about eye overtop of the ball..." etc.
The perfect journal, I believe, would have scorecards with fwys, girs, and putts recorded, interspersed with notes from your readings and driving range reflections. I dont think I'm really recommending any extra work, just a different organization of your reports.
The Vision 54 thing... I really like that thought!
Standing on the tee box, what attitude is more likely to lead to success?
(Mine: "Trap on the right... let's avoid that. Don't overdo it though, 'cause there's OB on the left. But swing hard, 'cause this is a long hole...")
or
(Annika's: "How am I going to birdie this hole. Let's see. Fade the tee shot into the right side of the fairway just short of the trap so I have a straight shot into the flag tucked left.")
My current putting secret...(at the risk of losing my mojo by thinking about it enough to write about it)... is to NOT think about it.
Yep... I'm puting all but one thought out of my mind and just rolling it by feel (the one thought is there only to give the mind something to do.) The one thought - "keep those thumbs steady so there's no club twist".
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