My favorite Tommy Bolt story

http://www.lasportshall.com/inductee...?back=inductee

Golf has always been a gentlemen's game, though. Tiger ruined it.

Brooks Golf Course in Lake okoboji Iowa, Bolt head pro emeritus. I asked him for a Hogan story and he told me that Ben had a huge cock, never wore a towel in the locker room and would stand dangling in guys faces as they sat on the bench tying their shoes. I never read that one in Golf Digest

Wouldn't you do the same thing?

It looks like I have a new favorite Tommy Bolt story.

Maybe the greatest thing I've ever read.

via SBNation
Chamblee absolutely strained the limits of credulity when he claimed, “I don’t ever remember sitting on this stage and criticizing Tiger Woods.”

Supposedly Chamblee said this on the friday evening broadcast after Rory threw his 3 iron in the water. Amazing.

Wow.

Time to start drug testing the commentators.

God damn, watching tigers old swing makes me think I should be taking the club to what I feel is way outside (which apparently is money)....his old swing is so fluid and free/strong

Doesn't he watch any of these old videos to try to get close to that position!????

lol

I am trying to remember Chamblee doing anything other than criticizing Woods?

I was watching that live and the best I can remember is that he made the statement in regard to temper tantrums. Is it true that he never criticized TW for that specific reason?

Club out, hands in, classic Golfing Machine fundamental. Working on something like that right now, have lost a little distance, but I have never hit my short irons with better flight or more control.

In my opinion Mac O'Grady and Gary McCord were/are the best teachers of this method. I don't know how to put links in here, but there is a great McCord clinic on Vimeo, and a couple of bootleg O'Grady sessions out there as well.

Mac is such a nutcase though, that if you share info or steal his thunder in any way, he cuts you off. The list of great swingers/players/instructors who have been sent to Siberia by Mac is quite long. Ballesteros, Elkington, Grant Waite, Jodie Mudd, Andy Plummer. There was a time when if you were able to study under Mac for a year or two, you could run off and teach pretty much anyone, including Tour Players, and make some nice coin.

Tiger is gravitating toward these guys now, I am pretty sure Como has some MORAD/Golfing Machine background, and Foley definitely did. These guys' stuff is perfect and in my opinion indisputable, but it gets to be like a cult. They transform themselves into perfect swingers and great ball strikers that just can't win, it's almost pathological, they hit it better and better until they just vanish from the game. Kind of like the old Hogan disciples who become awful putters as they immerse themselves in his aura. That was why I wrote that I was worried about the instructors Tiger has been gravitating toward earlier in this thread.

All that said, O'Grady is the absolute pinnacle of golf swings, if you haven't seen it check out some YouTube clips, just awesome. He is the model, and then you go down the line to Waite, Elkington, Robert Rock, Heath Slocum, and the class clown McCord.

Awesome post SQRed

How?? Why?? Bc they can't putt? Or chip?? So bizzare at first read

I can't really explain it, I just know that it has happened a lot when guys wrap themselves up in The Golfing Machine. There are more examples, top of my head, Bobby Clampett and Chip Beck. The better their moves get, the less success they have as Tour Players.

There definitely was an attitude that guys who relied on putting/short game were less manly than great strikers. Making four thirty footers and getting up and down 8 times in route to a 64 was almost a thing to be ashamed of for Mac and his ilk, because you missed 8 greens. Take Mickelson for example. The Golfing Machine has 9 key positions and Phil misses eight of them and arguably all nine. That matters more to the GM guys than score or wins. They seem to be more concerned with optimal form than results, and openly take pride in that.

I kind of get it and don't get it at the same time.

Ok, just to be crazy, here's what is wrong with Tiger from a MORAD perspective. He misses the 5 position quite consistently. Ideally (According to GM/MORAD/Waite-Mayo, after the first move down the spine retains its tilt established at address, while simultaneously achieving a secondary tilt, back into the right, which positions the hands directly in front of the chest with the club dead on plane. From here the arms and club are almost "backing up" as the downswing is finished by full rotation of the torso, while the arms and hands stay quiet and pick up a free ride to the finish. Think of the club as a drill bit, the hands and arms the chuck, and the body the actual drill. The chuck and bit never move independently of the drill and neither should the arms/hands/club from the torso.

That's perfection, but at what cost if tiger can't do it for whatever reason? He won an awful lot of golf tournaments missing the 5, and relying on his other worldly hand eye abilities. He is actively trying to eliminate what made him GOAT (hands), and it should be no surprise his short game is suffering as this "optimal" crap filters down to his pitching and chipping?

I reiterate, GM/MORAD is perfection for the full swing, but once again, so what?

One suggestion. Mac cuts off guys before he teaches them everything, and some of his most closely held secrets relate to short game and putting models. Very few of his students have this stuff, so they go out on tour and teach an incomplete method. I have seen Mac demonstrate the flop shot by setting up 10 feet from a cart and lobbing thirty consecutive balls into the groove that runs along the roof. If Tiger wants GM he should just go to the source, but that probably wouldn't work out either. If Haney and Butch were too Alpha for Tiger, Mac and him would probably get in a fist fight the first session.

Quick side note, one of the most used drills for instilling GM positions is to hit 3 quarter wedges, slowly hitting all 9 of the key positions, with no hand/arm manipulations. It's a tight, "together", action, that is VERY hard to do well. When you first start doing it you get "ball bound", stick the club in the ground or miss the 6 spot and catch it thin in an effort to shallow out the club. Does that remind you of anyone's current in game pitching action right now?

Fun little story about what kind of a guy Mac is. When he worked with Seve he didn't charge him, typical Mac rejection of material gain. Then they went to tournaments together, Mac only received expenses. Mac probably burned 6-8k calories a day because he worked out so hard. Seve saw three breakfasts in one day on the bill, questioned Mac about it, and Mac never spoke to him again, really, NEVER.

Long live the myth of the great ball striker who just can't putt or chip

I don't know much about The Golf Machine(just remember dagolfdoc telling me he wasn't particularly a fan so I didn't investigate much) but if this swing doesn't hit all of its points then I would be very very skeptical. Tough to swing it much better than this, and the good thing is the swings during TW's practice round in Phoenix looked pretty close to this. Worse during the tournament unfortunately.

GIFSoup

Also how can there be 9 check points in a golf swing? That seems a bit insane, it's really not the complicated of a movement.

that swing looks great, maybe even better than Waite's. Who is that?

9 points really isn't that many really, it is when they start breaking them down into sub points that things get nuts.

I am sure Tiger looks great, he is a terrific athlete and a golf genius, and the stuff he is working on is cutting edge good and rooted in science and biomechanics. Mac made McCord into a guy who striped it and looked great doing it, imagine what Tiger will be able to accomplish. I just question whether this program will make him a better Tournament player, Because so many GM guys weren't.

Great posts SqredII. When I came up in the early 90's Mac stuff was super hot and I loved it. My theory though is that once you hit a certain level in your ball striking you need to stop using mechanics so much and just beat balls until you find a pattern you can depend on. The mind can only take so much analysis before paralysis sets in. You need to intuitively know your tendencies and learn to adjust. If you rely on going back to the "model" every time something goes wrong eventually the brain will just stop learning. Besides Rotella didn't call his book "Golf is Not a Game of Perfect" for nothing.

My direct connection to mac was exiled about 13 years ago just as they were breaking down the short game models, which I think are Seve and Hubert Green. Would love to see some of that work, but alas Phil McGis a very secretive guy.

I know Phil Rogers was a big fan of Mac's short game work, and that is high praise. I hope O'grady finally writes his book, but that has been a pipe dream and a tease for twenty years.

What is amazing is that so much of the MORAD work is now being validated by Trackman, shotscope, and all that great video and computer work out there today. He was ahead of his time.

But once again, from direct evidence, the kind of guy who embraces this stuff doesn't seem like a champion. It is really kind of weird, but I think there is a very good chance Tiger becomes a better ballstriker than ever, yet is never again in the top 25 in the world.

Is that Spenda in the vid?

The guy in the video is Chuck Quinton

You do realize this is almost impossible. If Tiger can somehow strike it better than he ever has, even with the worst short game on Tour he would still likely be a top 25 player. With an average short game he'd probably be the best in the world.

During the 2000s if Tiger had just had an average short game he would have been the best player in the world. His elite short game mad him dominant but 2/3rds of his skill advantage came from ball striking.