A question for "senior" golfers

[hybrid25]

On 1/17/2021 at 5:21 PM, torbill said:

 

Yeah, I think we all look at the pros and want to emulate some of what they do.  But we have to pick a player who mechanics are right and that we can physically perform.  Here is probably the best swing model I have come across, I have looked at this video endlessly:

 

 

 

I watch the simple set up and posture, lack of tension, left elbow points at the ground as the backswing starts, club shaft comes as much up as around, no stiff left arm tension, none of the “keep the head down and behind the ball” nonsense that causes so many back problems, left arm folds after impact.  With those mechanics she can put a driver in her hand and step on the gas and put it out there 260.  In my view the greatest female golfer ever to breath air, and she will play without a back problem until she is 105.

 

So, there’s a model that most of us can emulate and will never lead anybody down a swing mechanics rabbit hole.

 

 

Yes, she is arguably the greatest women of all time, but her swing works for her, and personally, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Take a look at the photo I attached, as it is a still photo of a portion of the video you are sooo fond of. Now, look where she is looking EVEN before she strikes the ball. lol, who would teach such a technique??? What happened to 'keep your eye on the ball' ? wth

 

 

 

[torbill]

2 hours ago, jobin said:

Good points, @torbill.  And i appreciate the Annika vid.  But if you look, her left arm does seem pretty straight to me, so that's a consideration.

And the moving head thing is hardly a teaching item.  What teacher would recommend that?  "Keep the eye on the ball"....golf advice from long, long ago.

 

But i have heard that even blind folks can play golf.  So just seeing the ball is not critical.  Must be another reason to keep the head still or to learn to move it, as Annika does, without moving the shoulders from desired path to ball.  Sure, most of us move our eyes, then the head, then the shoulders, then the club head hits the ground or misses entirely the da*m ball. So i guess keeping the head still keeps (or may keep) the clubhead path radius constant.  Which obviously is fundamental to striking the ball cleanly. 

 

Annika perfected her technique over many years, starting when young, no doubt. If i were to do that now, move my head prior to impact, i believe nothing good would result. She is very machine like, that's for sure.  And effective, so kudos for her.

 

I tried the free flowing form she offers and yes, felt good but will take me some time to get more club speed onto the ball as i now am thinking of all those other things; load back, load forward, hips inward not outward, ...etc. 

 

 

 

You ask, who teaches not keeping an eye on the ball?  Jimmy Ballard, for one.

 

If you don’t know about Ballard, it is because he is old now.  In his time, he worked with everybody from teen female amateurs to over 300 tour professionals including majors winners, and all skill levels in between. He claims that his methods can be taught to any player at any skill level.

 

Now, if Ballard is right - and he has >50 years of teaching experience - then it probably is the case that if you spend some time not keeping your eye on the ball through impact you can do it.  Annika is pronounced.  I suspect that most people are like me, they just let the head flow with the body and lack of eye contact less apparent.

 

But let’s back up a bit.  The point is *not* to “not look at the ball”.  Not looking at the ball is simply something that tends to happen with players who use Ballard principles, and Annika is a pronounced case. So it’s more an effect than a cause. 

 

The idea behind Ballard’s method is that a powerful, consistent golf swing involves a transfer of weight to the right and then to the left.  What Ballard saw, no doubt, in many students coming to him, victims of traditional golf instruction, was players who had been taught to keep the head down and the eyes on the ball, swing around a stationary head, hold the head back during the downswing.  What results, typically, from this sort of instruction can be an arm swing with a reverse pivot as opposed to a powerful swing based on loading and unloading of the large muscles.

 

In throwing/hitting sports - hitting a baseball, throwing a baseball, throwing a football, hitting a tennis ball, squash, racketball, hockey slap shot, you name it - there is a weight transfer.  In the sport that I grew up with, baseball, it was load and stride.  This is power.  You don’t see power hitters being taught to hit or throw around a fixed head.  It would be unnatural to try to get a good weight shift with a totally stationary head.

 

Ballard (and others) want the golf swing to incorporate a powerful throwing motion.  So a key focus of his teaching is weight shift.  And as the weight shifts, there is a corresponding shifting of the spine, away from, then back toward the target.  With many good players this this isn’t real easy to see.  With some good players it is apparent.  But it happens.  Ballard will tell you that all great strikers of the ball who have lasted more than 10 years have had this, and he has the pictures to prove it.

 

Now, if the spine moves back and forth a bit, there is only one way to have a stationary head, and that is to tip your spine forward a bit on the backswing and backward a bit on the downswing.  And what do we do when we tip our spine backward on the downswing?  Typically, we fail to transfer our weight forward and we reverse pivot - not good golf.

 

But, since the spine shifts a bit, back and forth with the weight transfer, and the head is attached to the spine, Ballard wants the player to let the head flow with the motion of the spine so that the spine can maintain a consistent angle, no tipping back and forth - and a consistent spine angle is crucial to good golf.  So we shift our weight, our spine shifts with it, and the head shifts a bit, and for many players the eyes come off the ball before impact.

 

For a fluid swing and a release of the body to the target we let the head flow forward.  We don’t hold it back, behind the ball. If we hold our head back in the downswing, after the shot is gone, we hit into a reverse-C.  You show me a reverse-C and I will show you a back problem in the larva stage. So we let the head flow forward, which facilitates the weight transfer and the release of the body, into a straight and balanced finish - no tipping backward at the finish, no tipping to the right when viewed from behind the player.  The finish looks exactly like what you see with Annika - straight and balanced.  And as the head flows the eyes tend to come up, sometimes very early as with Annika (I don’t think that it was always as jpronounced as what we see in the video).

 

This method of playing golf, as with many other methods, provides the mechanics that can win at the highest levels of competition, as we have seen with Annika.  But for seniors there is something that is even more important.  This method is about as good as it gets for keeping strain off the back and other joints and muscles.  Just look at her, no tension, no contortions, nothing that would hurt her body.

 

There you have it, my thinking on what Annika’s swing is about - a swing that has won at the very highest levels of her sport, and that is not hard on the body.  And a swing that incorporates mechanics that aren’t beyond anything anybody can do. Think about this: I claim that anybody who can shift his/her weight from one leg to another and walk down the street is capable of doing a swing the involves the mechanics that Ballard teaches, because the essence of it is little more than a weight shift with a golf club in one’s hands.  I rebuilt my swing entirely several years ago using Ballard principles.  It wasn’t easy or fast, ridding myself of long ingrained tendencies and learning a new way.  But I think that my handicap and my back are generally happy for the change.

 

Annika’s arm:  I see no tension in her arm.  She was young and supple, and she might have played with an arm that was straight, or relatively straight.  Try playing with a straight arm, without tension, at age 76 like me.  I never wrote in this thread that playing with a straight left arm was a bad thing.  I wrote that there is no physical principle that requires it, that as long as the player can load the big muscles it doesn’t matter if the arm stays straight or bends - mach nichts.  But if we try playing with a straight arm when we are older, it will likely create tension.  If we have tension we probably won’t let our left arm fold at impact, like Annika’s. This folding is a key to clubhead speed.  Start to chicken wing it and you are going to lose power and control.

 

Annika never worked with Ballard, incidentally.  Jesper Parnevik did, and took the method back to Sweden, where it is the basis of a lot of Swedish instruction.  You can see some of Ballard in players like Stenson and Sorenstam.  Annika did read Ballard’s book, and came away with an idea that really helped her (don’t recall what it was), and has given Ballard a lot of credit.  I read somewhere that she came over here and was given an award a few years ago, and actually asked Ballard, who she apparently had never met, to introduce her. So he was an obvious influence in her career.  Here is some background on Ballard and his controversies over the years:

 

https://www.departures.com/travel/golf/ballad-jimmy-ballard

 

I don’t intend this post to be a commercial for Ballard.  I love Annika’s swing.  You commented on it.  I explained what you are seeing with it.  There are many good ways to hit a golf ball.  There are even a few that don’t hurt the backs of seniors.  Ballard’s method is a method that does both for me.  There are other good ones.  

 

Wow, what a long post.  As somebody once said, please excuse the long letter, I didn’t have time to write a short one.  I’m going to bed, lol..    

[Miss_Tee]

On 1/17/2021 at 8:24 PM, willie991 said:

74 years young.  Over 200 18-hole rounds carded in 2020.  Worked until I was 70.  Have a group of "geezer golfers".  We play every day we can.  It's social interaction.  It's not sitting in a recliner and rotting away.  Someday your the bug.  Somedays, the windshield.  The oldest in our group is 80.  He will shoot his age, or under 5 days out of 7.  

We all say that if we get to where we are shooting in the upper 90's... we will still play golf.  It's good for mental health.

For me, it's putting the ball in play off the tee... and the short game.  "Never belittle a ball in the middle!"  "It ain't how you drive.  It's how you arrive!"  My drives aren't as long as they were 15 years ago... but they are in the fairway.  We have postage stamp greens.  Gotta have confidence in your chipping and putting.  Up and down.  Up and down.

We play from the senior tees.  Had the third ace of my life this past week.  Carded the lowest round of my life this past summer... 68.  Two eagles this past year.  I can't hit it as far as the young flat-bellies, but will play with most of them due to a short game.  

Don't let age get in your head.  Go play!  Go have fun!   

Your post made me smile. I had heard of some of those expressions (bug/windshield and Never belittle . . . ), but hadn't heard "It ain't how you drive. It's how you arrive!" That's a good one. And I chuckled out loud at "young flat-bellies." 

[GLF4EVR]

On 1/17/2021 at 9:55 AM, RainShadow said:

I'm 59, will be 60 in September. I've been a " serious" golf addict since my early 30's, and have played off and on since I was old enough to swing a club and get on the course, 7 or 8yo or so.

The past 2 years my game has fallen off from solid 7.5-8 index to now 10-11.

I moved to Tucson 3.5 years ago so I could play more golf and my goal was to get to a 5 index. Lowest I'v ever been is 6.8 about 10 years ago.

3 years ago I got rear ended and messed up my lower back, took almost a year to get my body to move correctly again. 

On the Mental side, my parents have all passed in the past 2 years so my mental focus during rounds has wandered/ declined. Trying to stay focused for 18 holes feels impossible some days.

Then, in June 2020, I was in another car accident ( not my fault, again) that resulted in a torn rt rotator cuff and bruising to the bones in both wrists. Took me out of the gym, along with COVID and needless to say, has screwed up my golf swing. I've regained about 85% of my strength in my shoulder, but my mechanics are erratic at best at the moment.

I still enjoy the game, but some days it's very frustrating to not be a able to perform like I was before injuries.

My dad was a solid 6 index until his mid 70's and my hope is that I can get my physical mobility issues fixed so I can achieve that goal.

Going to have a local teacher see if they can help my in my rehab.

Good thread,

 

RainShadow...first sorry to hear about the accidents.  You may have already done this, but just to toss this out.  A good physical therapist in sports medicine might help you out.  Living in Tucson, should not have much of an issue finding one that knows the golf swing well.  Best of luck to you.

[torbill]

14 hours ago, hybrid25 said:

 

 

Yes, she is arguably the greatest women of all time, but her swing works for her, and personally, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Take a look at the photo I attached, as it is a still photo of a portion of the video you are sooo fond of. Now, look where she is looking EVEN before she strikes the ball. lol, who would teach such a technique??? What happened to 'keep your eye on the ball' ? wth

 

 

 

Yes, I think that she is at the extreme end of having the head flow with a type of swing that flows the whole body.  It’s almost like her swing thought is to begin the downswing with the turning of the head, maybe to start her body moving and clearing.  Most people who have a flowing swing like hers don’t worry about keeping the eye on the ball, and they don’t look like she does - if you saw me swing you would say that I keep my eye on the ball, but in fact I haven’t watched one of my divots form for the better part of a decade.  My eyes flow to the target as my body opens up and the clubhead approaches impact, and I think I’m typical of people who have this sort of swing. 

 

I think that for players who have a good, solid, balanced setup/posture and whose spines remain stable throughout the swing, which is to say that they don’t dip toward or away from the target or toward or away from the ball, there isn’t any need to keep a close eye on the ball because the radius that they set at address is going to be there as they approach impact.  It’s like jobin noted in an earlier post, even blind people have played golf successfully.  So, I would argue that a player who has to keep a close eye on the ball probably has some other issues going on in his/her swing.

[jonsnow]

On 1/16/2021 at 11:55 AM, Sean2 said:

Sounds like an ego issue, lol. That's like saying "I'm going to quit running if I can't run a marathon anymore". It's a game...I think that means it's supposed to be fun. 🙂

This is GolfWRX! Don't be bringing your reasonableness around here.

[hybrid25]

If Jimmy Ballard were teaching today I would never go to him for instruction. Part of successful instruction is believing what your instructor says to do , and I just don't have it in me to believe you can turn your head sideways before you make contact with the golf ball like Annika does.

[stryper]

1 hour ago, hybrid25 said:

If Jimmy Ballard were teaching today I would never go to him for instruction. Part of successful instruction is believing what your instructor says to do , and I just don't have it in me to believe you can turn your head sideways before you make contact with the golf ball like Annika does.

 

But obviously Annika does and so did David Duvall, so therefore it can be and was done at the highest level of the game.  And to be fair, not all of Ballard’s pupils had that “signature” move...see Rocco Mediate.  

 

Not necessarily touting Ballard’s method, just pointing out that there are more than a few ways to skin a cat. 

[torbill]

True, and while we’re at it let’s be even more fair.  Ballard never worked with Annika.  Nor Duvall, to the best of my knowledge.  

 

As you say, Mediate is more representative of what Ballard teaches.  Sutton perhaps more so, at least back when he was working with Ballard and won the PGA championship.  Or Strange, when he was winning back to back US Opens and was working with Ballard.  Here is a comparison to Hogan, who Ballard idolizes.  Ballard’s ideas come straight from his study of Hogan’s swing, as you can see here with Strange:

 

 

 

Although Annika’s swing isn’t textbook Ballard in every detail, it is so simple and fluid that it is just a great model to try to emulate for a senior who is serious about playing good golf.  She is never going to have a bad back..

 

My key point isn’t about particularly about Ballard’’s method.  It’s about the fact that if seniors want to play good golf late into the back nine of their years, they need a swing that has solid fundamentals and doesn’t destroy the back.  As we get old we lack the strength to overcome bad fundamentals.  And once our back is shot, it is pretty much over.  Hips, knees, shoulders can get replaced.  Backs are a horse of a different color.