I'm in about your shoes.... hovering between scratch and +2 but didn't bother playing in college because I got a 3/4 scholarship anyway.

I'd say it would be insane of me to go pro. I played with some of my old high school teammates (guys I would compete with back then) this last summer and it is incredible how much better they have gotten in college.

ship this, thanks for all the great responses.

i was thinking quickness is very important in golf (and becoming much more important each year as you said), but tennis quickness is even more important. i'm thinking young andy bean, john daly, joey sindelar would be competitive with today's technology/teaching but those guys would have no hope of making tennis tour with their physiques.

anyway, fabulous thread, and thanks for giving your name..... do you know spenda who posts here? he's an outstanding player apparently, was very helpful on alot of things and seems to live/die with texas A&M as per something i read in recruiting thread.

Daly in his awful pants playing tennis would be a great sight. I don't know spenda, did he play at A&M? I was there from 93-96. Only thing I live and die A&M is the golf...2008 National Champs...suck on that Okie State! WHOOP! That should light some fires.

The people who have not made it who were great is amazing. US AM Champs, NCAA Champs, Walker Cuppers, etc.

When I was a kid, Sam Randolph seemingly won every college golf tournament (along with Duffy) and he was never able to make it.

At least in poker, you can pick your games (or get lucky). In golf, you pretty much have the PGA Tour or you need to be an elite on the Nationwide Tour.

If you go for it, give your heart. Practice all the time. Hopefully you still love golf at the end. The tragedy is taking a game you love and end up hating it. That has happened to a few people I know.

A&M won it in 2009. And yes I'm an Oklahoma State alum.

All your other posts in this thread have been very enlightening. Thanks for sharing.

ship---this, thanks a lot for your posts in this thread, they've been helpful!

bruin/ship, I played elsewhere but my entire family went to A&M, so I grew up loving the Aggies, just wasn't good enough to play there. I was never good enough to consider going to Q-school, and although I hate the whole handicap dropping stuff, I was playing to a +3 for a fairly significant stretch. Good luck to OP, it's a cool dream to have, work your butt off and stay positive.

Oh yeah...2009. Details. I knew it was last year, I just forgot the year had changed in the meantime. Calendars are tough.

I'm a single digit and my dream is scratch..this thread is probably one of the best things i've read in a while, 5*, thanks for all of the posts.

http://www.dustinrison.com


He loves to drink. Natural talent will overcome alot.

I know him well, enough to run his website.

I guarantee you he doesn't drink much on the road. He might let lose back home but there are very few, if any, people who actually drink much between Tuesday night and Sunday on the road....and are successful. He clearly had a great year this year and can play but if he is drinking a decent amount during the tournament I can assure you he will stay where he is...on the Nationwide. Ask him if that is accurate.

Lots of great responses on here...I had a chance when I was 17 to move down to Florida for my Senior year in HS (from NY) and train at a tennis academy...I had only picked up the sport two years prior but was a natural athlete and had a friend of the family who was very well entrenched in the scene help me out.
I ended up deciding against it because I didnt want to be away for my senior year of HS. I wont say it was the biggest mistake of my life, but it is definitely one that I think about very often.

Plain and simple, you will end up regretting it if you dont go out and see just how good/great you can get at the sport. Whether that consists of playing PGA, Hooters, Nationwide or Amatuer events, you do owe it to yourself (if you have a passion for it) to see just how far you can take it.

I would suggest getting a mental coach/sports psychologist though. As many people mentioned, the biggest difference between you and those players who have been trained since they were younger is "experience in the moment". They are not nervous, not just happy to be there, and they expect to win. This is the mentality that you will have to have if you expect to compete at the highest level.

Best of luck, definitely keep us posted on your progress. Maybe even graphs or updates of your handicap progression and practice schedule? Might be a nice motivational tool as well.

Oh I would say you are right about this, I don't think he drinks during the tournaments. It would be more a Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday thing, and cut partys.

hey, i've seen dustin risdon play a few times? isn't there a spelling error in the link posted? or did someone grab his proper name domain, and he had to go with something slightly different?

saw dustin down the stretch in manitoba in 2007. he and fellow alberta mike mezei. mike won. derek gillespie of big break fame chipped in on 18 in 2nd last group to force mike to par 18 to win..

dustin had his girlfriend carrying his bag as i recall... are they still together/married now?.... i do remember maybe all of stricker, weir and benepe having wives/gf's acting as caddies. i'm thinking weir for sure and stricker almost for sure.

one interview dustin did that i didn't think was good was when he said he never practices. i think since revised to doesn't pound balls aimlessly and that often his only practice is work to square putter in hotel room... anyway, people want to sponsor guys who are perceived to work really hard etc., even if it isn't the case.

anyway, i'll check out dustin's website. sorry for the downer last paragraph.

ahaaa. i was right. there was a spelling error in link......... i can't remember the syntax of the address, but his name is dustin risdon, not dustin rison.

i saw on his website about the 62 on sunday in 2008 (i think).. i was there then too. i think risdon played with mark leon and mark shot an ungodly low number on sunday too. maybe 62 or 63........ ties into the whole "these guys are good" idea of the thread. not that easy a course. and this is a bunch of levels down from pga tour.

All I saw is your handicap. Not good enough, sorry to sound so mean, but as of now it's a no.

Ya sorry about that spelling error, had a few to drink myself last night. Dustin is still with the same girl but he has hired a guy to caddie for him. As far as practice goes Dustin generally plays rounds rather than bang balls on the range all day.

ptpoker, thanks for the response... ok, i misinterpreted the practice comment. i think dusty would help himself if he makes that more clear. for sure, playing practice rounds is great practice and hard work.

read my own post and may confuse people.... when i mentioned stricker, weir, benepe all had wife or gf as caddy, i meant i'd seen them doing that live at canadian tour events.

hey, i've posted after a few pops before too

he wasn't asking if a +0.2 handicap was good enough to get on the pga tour.

Not cool to broadcast that your friend's a big drinker on the internet.

Questions for ship---this, and others of course feel free to chime in.

1.) There seems to be different philosophies on what the correct way to teach/ approach the golf swing. One of the new things is stack and tilt, of course there's the traditional swing, gravity golf?, leadbetter has his stuff, I met with a pro one time, and he seemed to be focused on 'the 4 pressure points' and his methods seem to be like what is talked about at this site http://www.golflagtips.com/focus-on-...s-to-feel-lag/ , my dad showed me some stuff from this guy 'Ron Del Bario' where he talks about passive hands and arms, and he brings his head right through the swing, seems some pros have done well adapting a ben hogan approach to the swing. There's another poster on here 'thisnamedoesnotfi' that has some vids on youtube where he sort of gives his view of the swing.http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GU91_k29_JQ.. It just seems like for me, as someone trying to learn the game , there's just a lot of conflicting advice out there, what should I listen to and disregard. I'm not an expert on golf, just trying to lower my handicap. What would you recommend? As of now, I'm starting to believe all that really matters is working on my fundamentals : balance, posture, set up, feel, tempo, etc...

I have some drills that I work on when I go to the range, and overall, I can say I'm happy with my progress..

2. It seems like OP is ready to dedicate himself to the task of getting his skills as good as possible. How do you recommend he do this, what is his daily routine, what kind of goals does he set out, who should he be looking to get assistance from?

As for the conflicting advice on the golf swing - I think it boils down to the level of complexity, and the difficulty in vocalizing an athletic movement that has so many variables. I think each teacher is trying to speak to a niche market who may attach themselves to a key idea put forth by the instructor.

An example:

In my younger days I hit the plus side of scratch without a single lesson in my life. I had an extremely strong grip, and a Furyk-esque loop in my backswing.

Fast forward 8 years, and I now have a very neutral grip, and a straight back and through swing. I didn't keep an official handicap last season, but I feel I am playing the best golf of my life.

Both methods hold value for my game and body type - and certain schools of thought offered a different way to approach the swing as a whole - it's just what you feel comfortable with. After all the tinkering with my swing I would be inclined to agree with you that it is the basics which are most important, and finding a level of comfort within your swing. I have distilled my swing thoughts down to "keep your head still, and keep your left heel down" - but its not quite that simple. I naturally produce a lag in my wrists that would rival Sergio, and what feels like a 3/4 swing to me is slightly past parallel.

My biggest breakthrough in my swing came with videotape and the ability to review movements in slow motion while comparing them to pro players of a similar body type. A knowledge of what movement causes what, and how to tweak it will allow you to make great strides in dropping your handicap. The key movements i would start trying to wrap your head around would be the difference between inside-out versus outside-in swing planes and build from that.

Great thread overall.

Golf forum finally delivers.

I actually said he loves to drink.
Its fairly common knowledge that most of the guys have a drink now and then. You can sit in your hotel room or you can sit in the bar with the rest of the guys. Lots and lots of players indudge from time to time, I'm not saying anything that isn't common knowledge.

Beware…rant to follow.

Golf swing philosophy is the single biggest gimmick there is…anywhere. How’s that for an opener? A swing philosophy usually is a complete exaggeration by the instructor of what the player needs to be doing in order to offset his current fault. Example, stack and tilt is great for a player who gets his weight to his right side and then hangs back. If he tries to feel the exaggeration to the other extreme it usually puts him in just about the right place but short of what the instructor is actually saying to do. Players usually see great results somewhere along the way to the over exaggeration…even a car fish tailing is going straight sometimes. Swing teachers with a distinct “you must swing this way” theory are analogous to a starting hand chart for poker. If you don’t take the players physical abilities into account how can you just use one swing theory across everyone like Hank Haney (for example, there are hundreds of teachers with one theory) does? To the poker analogy, if a starting hand chart says ATs is a great starting hand in an unopened pot in middle position it is missing a ton of information. Ivey can play a few more hands than I can and I might be able to play more than you (unlikely). That is why “by the book” poker play is so exploitable.

An instructor with a “theory” doesn’t usually even look at a players physical capabilities. They simply video the swing and say this club is too far inside on the backswing and try to get the club working up quicker…or whatever the fault is. When I was playing professionally the first time around I worked with an instructor who was a top 100 instructor for years and a Hank Haney disciple. We focused exclusively on getting the club on plane going back to the top so it could swing on plane coming down. At the time I couldn’t afford a good trainer so I worked out HARD by myself. Bench press, cleans, squats and pull ups. In hindsight now that I understand so much more (via tens of thousands spent with good personal training and instruction) I realize my work outs were totally counterproductive. My shoulders and traps were so rounded up and forward because of the bench and cleans that my body couldn’t physically do what we were trying to accomplish. Period. My right shoulder didn’t have the ability to fold correctly around the spine cutting off my backswing short and always making the backswing look off plane a touch. As a result of my teacher’s on dimensional Hank Haney swing theory (he is still one of my best friends and he MINTS money doing what he does) he never realized my physical inability to do what he wanted. So we just beat ball after ball after ball in vain.

Today’s technology requires a different swing than days of old due to shaft torque, strength, club head weighting, spin rates, and on and on. Optimal performance per launch monitors is typically not the optimal performance for scoring. Sure a ball can fly high and spin less but is that going to be the best way to hit fairways? Old timers had to flip the club at the bottom to square the face because of shaft lag and torque. Modern technology allows the body to rotate much like a home run hitter in baseball and let the body put the club on the ball squarely instead of the hands having to play catch up. Done correctly this is much more repeatable.

Chad Campbell and I traveled the Hooters Tour together in 1998 and 1999. At the start of the year in 1999, I think, he came out to play with me at Gleneagles in Dallas. I knew nothing of the golf swing but my Haney inspired mentality at the time. Before we played I, of course, went into the video room to check if my swing was miraculously on plane or not. He wanted to see his swing and since I always thought his swing was odd and ugly due to my background I told him that wasn’t a good idea. We did anyway and I then gave him a quick lesson on how to swing better…HA! He went on to miss a few cuts immediately then went back to his old ways and won something like 8 of 16 events that year. We all know the story since. He is widely regarded as having one of the most Hoganesque swings on Tour and has made $18.3M since.

So, the question on correct way to teach/philosophy….I think that Sergio, Chad Campbell, Anthony Kim, Michael Sim, Jim Furyk (impact), and Hunter Mahan have it figured out. Technology allows you to stay centered and on top of the ball in the backswing and the let you rotate as hard as you can through the ball letting the club drop inside and basically squeeze the shaft and ball through impact. How you get there is such a combination of physical constraints/abilities that golf instruction along with GREAT fitness consultation is key. I know my current instructor in Dallas has it figured out. I have never seen him give the exact same lesson to two different people in a row. He is the only instructor I have seen that develops a long term plan for each player and actually takes physical limitations into play. A plan is then developed for what needs to happen in the gym as well as on the course. It took me over a year to get my shoulders into the correct set up position to work correctly. For me, I was never going to swing the club optimally until that happened. My “aha” moment came one day after a 3 hour lesson with my old instructor when I watched him give the EXACT same lesson to a short fat 20 handicapper that he had just given me, a tall, lean, good looking professional....

As to daily routine:
Up early and healthy breakfast.
Gym before play for 15 minutes to get muscles activated and ready. As I stated earlier in this thread stability is the single most important factor for putting and golf for that matter. Just “loosening” up does not activate the muscles that need to be there for stability. Nothing too heavy but a good full circuit twice through with light weights should get the muscles warm and supple and ready for action.
I would then practice for an half an hour or so just like a tournament round and then PLAY. It is so easy to sit there and beat balls for hours and bypass playing but there is no substitute for playing 18 or more holes 5 times a week. You then practice short game for an hour after play.
Putting is something to work on away from the course. The stroke should be trained in a controlled environment with positive feedback. The putting that should be done at the course is 40-60 footers and making 100 3 footers in a row. Try it, it is hard as hell.
Then to the gym 4 times a week with a purpose.
Putting practice for an hour at night. But understand how and why your stroke does what it does and what you are trying to make it do. First time around I would put two tees in the ground the width of the putter head and hit putts through them for hours. No thought at all about why did that stroke either hit the tee or not. Always practice with a purpose and understand what you are trying to accomplish.
ALWAYS take one day off a week. If you don’t I can assure you “over-trying” will be the result and you will grind yourself and body into nothing.

Now I must nap.