Unraveling Golf

8/14/2019 Unraveling Golf

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Joseph F. Laurentino UNRAVELING GOLFS GREATEST MYSTERY 00

h t Ntat Yur on ectv g SnBY JOSEPH F. LAURENTINO


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Ts bk s as avaab nAmazn.cm, Brdrs.cm, andBarnsandNb.cm, as asn ca bkstrs.

Portions of this eBook appear in

The NegoTiABle golf SwiNgHow To Improve Your GamewITHouT pIcTure-perfecT form

A new book by Joseph F. Laurentino, PGAPublished by Mountain Lion, Inc. March 2008. ISBN 978-0977003921

2009 by Joseph F. Laurentino

Copyright holder is licensing this under the Creative Commons License, Attribution 3.0. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/

E-book design by Bob Antler. Contact Bob at [email protected] and interior illustrations by Phil Franke. All illustrations are copyrighted and used with permission.

Special thanks to my brother, Vince, who read the early drats o this e-bookand provided valuable eedback and advice to make it read better.

Please eel ree to post this on your blog or email it to whomever you believe would beneft rom reading it.THANK YOU.

T purcas an autrapd,prsnazd cpy The NegoTiABle golf SwiNgpas vst.jaurntn.cm/prsp


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The Answer To Gols Greatest Mystery Is SimpleKnowing What Is Negotiable

4

What The HECK Does Learning To Walk Have To Do With Gol

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The Learning Model Applies To All Physical Skills

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The Gol World Is Fixated On Form Over Function9

Your Swing Doesnt Need To Be Perect, Just Eective

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Why The Learning Model Breaks Down With Golers

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Ball Flight Is The Golers Feedback, But Only I You Understand It

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Why Ball Flight Is Nonnegotiable15

Gol Has Only Five Irreutable Laws And Here They Are

16

Whats Negotiable Versus Nonnegotiable?

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Gols Biggest Mystery Unraveled

23


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not long ago, I had a goler come to me who wasvery rustrated with his game. At age 50, he had

been playing gol or a ew years. He was strug-

gling and ed up with being a 25 handicapper.

Fairly athletic and relatively strong, he elt he

should be much better, and was mystied as to why he wasnt. The

rst issue he wanted to address was that he was only hitting his driver

about 200 yards, with no control, and the ball was slicing some 20

to 30 yards. He also told me that he didnt have time to practice. His

swing was home grown with a very unorthodox grip and takeaway. I

started the lesson by explaining to him what the gol club was doing to

make the gol ball fy with a big slice. Then, I explained how his grip,

a negotiable element, was aecting the movement o the clubace. I

suggested we make an adjustment to his grip. Not completely change it

to make it conorm to the model, but rather modiy it, explaining that

the grip was negotiable and that the modications would allow or a

more eective movement o the gol club, and thus lead to the desired

ball fight.

Then, I explained how we needed to change his swing path.

He took a ew swings to get comortable with the newly negotiated grip

and altered swing path. Within a dozen shots, this goler was hitting

the ball between 260 and 270 yards with a slight

draw. He had never seen a ball fy like this, at least

not when he was swinging his driver. He stopped

and just stared at me in disbelie. He was so excited

he was literally shaking. He was amazed that with

the same clubhead speed, he was hitting the ball 60 yards arther and

straighter just by gripping and routing the club dierently.

And the best part o it was that he understood why and that

it wasnt a fuke. With his new grip and swing path he soon got down

to an 11 handicap. In this case, as it is with most golers, it was very

simple; I just needed to change the golers understanding o what the

gol club needed to do to improve his ball fight. And the same is true

or you.

Despite all the advancement the game has seen over the past

ew decades, a golers search or an eective gol swing still remains

one o not just gols, but lies greatest mysteries. But Im going to let

you in on a secret its NEGOTIABLE. See below:

Jack Nicklauss flying right elbow. NEGOTIABLE.

Ben Hogans flat arm swing. NEGOTIABLE.

Arnold Palmers helicopter finish. NEGOTIABLE.

Curtis Stranges floating head. NEGOTIABLE.


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Each o these unique elements, rom Nicklauss elbow posi-

tion at the top o his swing to the movement o Stranges head in his

backswing -- although indelibly distinctive o the respective goler

nevertheless unctions as an integral part o the consistent, repeatable

swings o these legendary gol champions. They are characteristic o

the individual player, but not damaging to his perormance.

Why negotiate a consistent swing to create a better game?

Why not simply emulate the model gol swing? Because a negotiable

gol swing gets you where you want to go aster and you make that

journey with many o the tools and physical attributes that you al-

ready possess. A negotiable gol swing allows or the myriad o indi-

vidual dierences among golers, and still yields good results. Its that

simple.

To better understand what negotiable means, look no urther

than the swings o the best players in the world today. Tiger Woods

plays with a neutral grip and a model backswing, whereas Jim Furyk

plays with a double-overlap grip and a very steep backswing. Fred Cou-

ples plays with a strong, closed-aced grip, while Charles Howell plays

with a weaker open-ace one. John Daly launches 300-yard drives with

an overly long backswing and Allen Doyle won two Senior U.S. Opens

with an extremely short backswing.

By understanding how to use basic learning skills, along with

the nonnegotiable and negotiable and the link between all o them, a

goler can use his or her own analysis and common sense to negotiate

the building o an eective gol swing and unravel the mystery, once

and or all. How can you negotiate your own eective gol swing? By

understanding and combining the ollowing:

1. Basic human learning skills, the ones you used to learn to

run, walk, and throw a ball.

2. The nonnegotiable, that is, the relationship between the

gol club and the gol ball that create the irreutable laws o

the fight o the ball.

3. The negotiable, those aorementioned permissible

alternatives, such as a strong versus weak grip.

With a sound understanding o what is nonnegotiable and

negotiable in the gol swing, youll be able to look at your own gol

swing and diagnose what you need to work on. You will no longer ride

that roller coaster o inconsistency, that pattern o I got it, I had it,

and I lost it. All golers experience this mysterious, vicious cycle. At

times magic comes to us in the orm o good-quality, consistent gol

shots, but then it disappears. You had it last week, but not this week.

You had it on the ront nine, but not on the back nine. You had it on

the last hole, but not on the last shot. What happened? Where did it

go? When golers lose the magic, they struggle to gure out what it was

that they had. Finally, they give in and begin again, usually chasing

random cures and tips. They dont understand whats absolute or non-


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negotiable versus whats negotiable in their swings the negotiating

otheir own eective gol swing and, ultimately, the key to consistency.

Instead, they wander down new paths looking or some other swing

thought or swing change that they hope will bring back the magic.

I have personally experienced this cycle with my own game, only to

have it take more wayward bounces than a ball rolling across a newly

aerated green.

One day a goler came to my tee or a lesson. He was play-

ing terribly, was distraught, and was seriously considering quitting the

game. He was so discouraged that he actually asked me i I thought

it would be a good idea or him to start over and learn to play let-

handed. He then shared an analogy with me. He said, You dont un-

derstand, struggling golers are desperate. Were like drowning victims.

Well grab on to anything just to stay afoat. He was both wrong and

right. He was wrong because I did understand the eelings he was de-

scribing, both rom the perspective o a player and a coach. I believe

his comparison o golers being akin to drowning victims, however, is

very true. In act, in an eort to reach their golng potential, many

golers are waterlogged victims who are barely staying afoat.

I, at times, you eel like a drowning victim, read on and let me

throw you a lieline.

Who taught you how to walk? Or how to hold a

pencil to write? Or how to throw a ball? And didthey really teach you? Yes, certain subjects can be

taught, such as science and math, but physical mo-

tor skills, such as driving a car, jumping a high bar,

or riding a bicycle cannot be taught. They must

be learned. Much scientic inormation describes

in minute detail the process o how these physical skills, the ones that

require motor coordination, are actually learned and perormed. But

its not necessary to understand the how and why

o physiological processes to understand the learn-ing process. Rather, we can learn much about the

learning process by observing humans attempting

to perorm physical skills. We can especially learn

by watching small children, since all the physical

skills they learn are new to them.

The process o how we learn a skill is basically the same, re-

gardless o the particular skill. First, we make an attempt to perorm


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the skill. Next, we observe the eedback on our success or ailure, and

make adjustments based on that eedback. Then, we make another

attempt, observe, and adjust. This process continues until we achieve

the desired results. As children, when we rst learn to walk we lose our

balance and all down, but we keep adjusting to the eedback we expe-

rience, steadily improving at the task, until we can walk. When we rst

learn to throw a ball, we make adjustments based on the weight o the

object being thrown and the distance and the direction o the target. I

you had a bunch o rocks and were trying to hit a bulls eye with them,

you would need to throw the rock an accurate distance and direction.

You might miss right and short or let and short or too high or too

low. Ater every throw, you would make adjustments, many o them

subconscious, until you arrived at the sequence o physical events that

need to take place in order to hit the target with the rock.

We continue to experience this learning process through eed-

back rom things we do in everyday lie. Our mind is an amazing

computer, constantly making changes, adjusting and adapting to the

environment without our utilizing conscious thought. But eedback is

required through our senses o seeing, hearing, or eeling. I we dont

have our senses, we have no source o eedback to make perormance

improvement possible. Imagine standing at the ree-throw line on a bas-

ketball court. The rst source o eedback you would receive is through

your vision. You throw up the rst shot and might miss. Watching the

ball miss the basket, or example short and to the right, you observe

this result, process it in your brain, and make some adjustments, many

o them subconsciously, or the next shot. I you were blindolded, you

could use your hearing as eedback, making adjustments based on

what you hear, providing you understood what it sounds like when the

ball misses the basket, as opposed to when it goes in. Or i you were

blindolded and someone told you where the ball was missing, you

could make adjustments based on that eedback.

But i you were blindolded and wearing earplugs, and I guided

you to the oul line and gave you some balls, it would be impossible

or you to accurately perorm the skill o making baskets rom the oul

line. Without some source o eedback, we cannot perorm or improve

our skills.

Now that we understand how we learn to walk, lets move on

to learning gol.


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through the observations we have made we cancreate a basic learning model shown here.Humans

are problem-solvers by nature and use the experi-

ence o sel-discovery to learn physical skills. One

day I was sitting on the couch and my 5-year-old

son wanted to throw a little oam ball to me. Hewas about 10 eet away rom me. Now, my son

mostly plays with his trucks and other toys. At this

point, he hadnt shown any interest in sports and

had no experience throwing a ball. I said to mysel

this was going to be a disaster, with the possibility

o the ball going just about anywhere. He threw

the ball to me in an overhand style and, to my

surprise, it got pretty close to me. As he continuedthrowing the ball to me, his accuracy improved.

Then, or some reason, he began to throw the ball

with a sidearm and underhand style. The ball was

going all over the room. I became intrigued observ-

ing him throw the ball. Because his best success

was coming rom the overhand method, I encour-

aged him to keep doing it that way. When he did

one o the other methods, I reinorced the idea o

throwing overhand. Ater about 15 minutes, I was

shocked at how accurately he was throwing the ball

to me. But during this process, I wasnt instructinghim on how to use his elbow or when to release the

ball rom his hand. He was just throwing the ball,

learning rom the visual eedback, and letting his

subconscious calculate the adjustments. For a child

who really had no experience throwing objects to a

target, he did amazingly well. Maybe hes got some

potential, but, o course, since then hes gone back

to his computer games and other toys and hasntasked to play catch.

We dont teach children how to walk by

talking about the hip, knee, and ankle movement

in walking, or how and when the heel must make

contact with the ground beore the toes. Generally


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speaking, we learn by doing small things beore big things; we take

little steps beore taking big steps. We also learn movements slowly,

beore learning to do them at a aster pace. We learn to walk beore we

learn to run. In essence, we learn through sel-discovery and the under-standing o the environment in which we learn. Ill also bet that when

cavemen learned to throw a spear, someone wasnt around communi-

cating the actual individual movements needed to throw the spear. Ill

also venture to guess that there wasnt a detailed manual carved on

the inside o the wall o their cave. A physical skill needs to be learned

through sel-discovery, a process o adjusting to eedback and experi-menting through trial and error until the desired results are achieved.

The gol swing is no dierent.

golers talk much about the orm o the swing andthe techniques to produce eective swings and bet-

ter, more predictable results. Look at this photo to

the right o me hitting a ball o a tee thats used by

young kids playing tee ball (the arrow represents

the direction o center eld).

Which way is the ball going to go, to the

let or to the right? Its pretty obvious that the ball

will go to the right. I instead I wanted to hit the

ball straight to center eld, what would I need to

do? I you said to make sure that at impact the bat

is acing more toward center eld, as opposed to

right eld, you would be correct. But i I hit a gol

ball to the right and take a picture o my gol swing

at impact, chances are most golers, and some ex-

perts, would ocus on some body part - such as

the head, hips, or elbow - being out o position. A

ew years ago, I would have been included in this

group. In act, ocusing on body position, or orm,

was the only way that I worked on my own game,

as well as the method I employed when helping

students work on their swings. O course, there has

been some success with this methodology, but I

have ound that its not the most eective way or

golers to improve their gol swing.

The word orm is probably best dened as


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the gol swing model, the one that you see in magazines, books, and

on television. Its the perect gol swing, one with all the elements in

the perect place and in the correct sequence. Its the swing that I stud-

ied, like so many golers, in an eort to emulate every part and posi-

tion. Many instructors and golers use the word ecient as a term to

describe a swing that is close to the model. It has the connotation o a

swing without wasted motion. But the most important thing to under-

stand when building a better swing is how to get the club to unction in

a way that produces the desirable ball fight, whether its to curve the

ball in any direction, high or low, straight, to the right, or to the let. I

consider a swing eective, regardless o the orm being used, when it

gets the club to unction in a way that consistently produces the desired

results.

Golers need to ocus on making their swings more eective.

The gol community is so ocused on orm and the perect gol swing

that its no surprise that the bulk o tips and theories are about orm.

We have become obsessed with the movement o the body, as opposed

to the movement o the gol club.

Several years ago, I was driving in a car with my ather on

the way to a ather/son tournament. My dad was a real student o

the game (my mom called it obsessed). While driving to the tourna-

ment, we listened to a tape o someone, I believe a sports psychologist,

discussing the gol swing. I remember the person asking the question,

Are you looking or good orm or good unction? Interestingly, back

then I didnt even think about orm, much less study the gol swing. I

just thought about making the ball go straight, and thus had a rela-

tively unorthodox swing. But based on his in-depth studying, my dad

did ocus on orm. I asked him which one he wanted: good orm or

good unction. He replied, Both. Today, my response to his answer

would be that i we get the club to unction eectively, many times the

desired orm will also improve. Hence, in many ways orm can ol-

low unction. Nowadays, many instructors teach and golers learn the

opposite way, by trying to learn orm rst, with the intention o unc-

tion ollowing. Because we dont learn other things this way, I consider

this a backward method o learning.


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Understand that you do not need to have perectorm in order to get the club to unction eectively.

This is not to say that ocusing on the body is a

poor or ineective way to think; it just depends on

what the goler is thinking about. Over the years

Ive ocused on my toes, knees, thighs, hamstrings,hips, buttocks, rib cage, chest, elbows, eyes, neck,

shoulders, wrists, ngers, elbows, and orearms.

Unortunately, many times this was done ran-

domly as a result o studying swing sequences or

written material that ocused on swinging like the

model, and most o the time was ineective. This

is how most golers choose to change elements: on

a random basis with a ocus on the model swing.The dierence or me now is that when I ocus on

changing a particular movement with my body, I

understand how the change aects the movement

o the gol club and whether or not the change

is negotiable. For instance, a particular element,

such as the grip, should only be addressed i it

is negatively aecting the movement o the gol

club.

Many golers will point to tour players to

illustrate how all their gol swings look the same

and are perect model swings. Not true. Some stand

with an open stance, some take the club above theplane during the takeaway, some move their heads

back more than others on the backswing, and so

on. Fred Couples, Lee Trevino, and Jim Furyk, along

with many others, have unorthodox swings. Jack

Nicklaus played with a fying elbow, and he did

okay, didnt he? I you look closely and understand

what youre looking at, youll see many more di-

erences among the swings o the best players inthe world than you may have originally thought.

Many will credit the success o some tour

players to the act that they do have a swing that

closely resembles the model. This may be a valid

point; however, I believe there have been players

well never hear about, or others who were on their

Jack Nicklaus and his fying elbow.


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way to success but ell o the radar screen, all because they were try-

ing so hard to conorm to the model and create a swing with perect

orm, as opposed to sticking with their own unique way o swinging the

gol club. Successul players with less than orthodox swings are usually

credited with resources, such as an amazing natural ability and the

time to hit thousands o gol balls to groove that unusual movement.

But i they have so much talent and time to hit balls, which they do,

why dont they change to the model i it is a much better way o swing-

ing the gol club? The answer is that they ound the best way to swing

the club is their own individual way.

I youre trying to build a swing with perect orm, you have to

ask yoursel some questions. Do you possess the strength, fexibility,

and coordination to build this type o swing, and i so, do you have the

time and the resources to build it? Most golers dont. I your body has

weaknesses and limitations, you may not be able to perorm many o

the movements you are trying to execute. In act, i you are not aware

o these limitations and are attempting to execute movements that you

cannot physically perorm, its very likely youll have more struggles

with your swing, with the possibility o making it worse. Many o these

struggles are caused by golers trying to do things that their bodies

are incapable o doing. I remember taking lessons on two dierent oc-

casions with two dierent instructors, both well respected nationally.

Both instructors were hands on and were physically trying to put

me into the model positions they were suggesting. The problem was

that in both cases my limited fexibility would not allow me to get into

those positions, and when I did, it was actually painul. I understood

why they wanted me to be in those positions, but unless I was able to

improve my fexibility, there was no way I could perorm those move-

ments. The mind will ght the body when trying to perorm move-

ments that cause physical discomort.

The important thing to understand is that the swing that will

work or you can be very unique. Like a ngerprint, in a way. But the

rst thing you need to understand is what are the negotiable and non-

negotiable elements o the gol swing.


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Weve seen in the learning model a sequenceo events that takes place when perorming any

physical skill. No doubt gol is a physical skill that

requires motor coordination. You use your body to

hold and swing the gol club, and with that club,

you strike a gol ball with the goal o getting the

ball to a specic target. As with the other physi-

cal skills that weve talked about, gol cannot be

taught. It must be learned. Someone can give you

suggestions about what to do to play gol well, but

like learning to drive a car or throw a ball, you

have to teach yoursel what to do.

Lets plug a gol shot and learning gol into

our learning model. With some modication and

an addition, the model or learning looks like the

diagram to the right.

I we use the learning model or physi-

cal skills, we should be able to use it or playing

gol, right? We should be able to use the model

or any type o gol shot rom a putt to a drive,

right? While many golers believe they are using

this learning model, i you listen to most o them

youll hear that they arent improving their games,

no matter how many swing changes they make. As

mentioned earlier, occasionally golers nd a swing

thought that seems to work well, but the positive

results are feeting.

So, why arent golers using the learning

model eectively? There are several reasons that

explain why the learning model breaks down with

golers. One problem that intereres with the eec-

tiveness o the learning model or golers and com-

plicates the mystery -- and this is a big one -- is

the abundance o inormation with which golers

are being bombarded. I went to Amazon.com and

searched the words gol instruction. The search

returned results that exceeded one thousand books

and DVDs. In addition, golers have access to nu-

merous monthly gol magazines and 24/7 cover-

age on the Gol Channel. All o the proessional

tournaments are now broadcast, including exam-

ples o tour players swings with slow motion pic-

tures and commentary oered to viewers. However,

much o the inormation that is available to golers


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is conficting in theory. Or it is misunderstood, misapplied, incomplete,

or oversimplied. Some o the inormation is completely inaccurate,

but appears logical and convincing with a orced perspective. In my

early teaching years, I took ideas that appeared very logical and con-vinced both mysel and my students o the relevancy and importance

o certain concepts. I spent years experimenting, jumping rom theory

to theory, concept to concept, in an eort to nd the magic that would

take my game to new levels. Now, beore the entire golng community

seeks me out or a lynching, Im not suggesting that all o the inorma-

tion out there is worthless. On the contrary, an abundance o it oers

very sound concepts. However, it is dicult to sort through all o the

available inormation in all o its orms. The abundance o inorma-tion provides hundreds o suggestions and secrets that can temporar-

ily improve ones gol game. I nd that most golers randomly choose

swing thoughts and make changes with the hope that improvement

will take place. Many times this method is nothing more than a goler

taking a stab in the dark, an eort to catch lightning in a bottle, so to

speak. Working on and changing the position o your elbow at the topjust because you heard an expert state the importance o it does not

necessarily lead to improvement.

Golers need to understand the importance o eedback in the

learning process. It is essential to achieving our goals. Without it, we

cant properly monitor our progress and make the necessary adjust-

ments to achieve our goals. Imagine going to the range and hitting

balls into total darkness. All you see is the ball on the ground in ront

o you. Ater you hit the ball, it goes into the darkness. You could makeobservations about how it elt to hit the ball, but none about where the

ball went. Feedback is necessary in order or you to improve.

In gol, our primary source o eedback in the learn-

ing model is the fight o the ball or the path the ball

takes ater it comes o the clubace, whether its a

slice, a hook, a straight shot, high, low, a chip, or

a putt. It stands to reason then that golers need to

understand this relationship between the club and

the ball, a relationship termed ball fight. Most golers think they un-

derstand ball fight, but they dont. I know this rom experience, both

as a goler and as a teacher. When Im workingwith golers, in the very beginning o the lesson, Ill

ask what the problem is and theyll tell me how the

ball is slicing or hooking, or that theyre topping it,

or whatever other unacceptable ball fight they are

experiencing. Sometimes the rst question I ask is

What is the gol club doing to produce that result? Most golers look

at me with a quizzical expression and shrug their shoulders. They just


15/26


dont know. Golers understand general things like I slice the ball be-

cause Im cutting across it or to hit a hook, I need to swing rom

inside out. But do you know what the clubace should look like at im-

pact? Do you know why your short irons go straighter than your longirons? Do you know that i you curve the ball, in either direction, that

you need to aim at thirteen dierent targets to be accurate? I you dont

know the answers to these questions, then you really dont understand

ball fight. Since most golers dont understand the balls relationship

with the club -- the nonnegotiable laws o ball fight -- success utilizingthis model is doomed rom the start.

We live in a physical world, one that is governedby the laws o physics. These physical laws allow

us to predict things that will happen. They are ab-

solutes and are nonnegotiable. Something happens, and then some-

thing else happens as a result o it. I you drop a ball rom a particular

height onto a hard surace, it will bounce back up to a certain height.

I you hammer a nail with a certain amount o orce, the nail will bedriven into the surace to a certain depth. All causes, when exactly re-

produced, will produce identical eects. This is reerred to as cause and

eect. In gol, a club is used to strike a ball. The cause, the club, has an

eect on the fight o the ball. Simply put, gol is nothing more than a

stick-and-ball game; we use a stick to hit the ball. And we need to make

the ball do two things: go a distance in a certain direction. The cause

and eect is an irreutable relationship between

the gol club and the gol ball. The collision be-

tween the club and ball, i exactly repeated either

positively or negatively, will produce the same results every time.

This cause and eect relationship needs to be understood be-

cause it is the primary source o our eedback in gol, and hence a nec-

essary ingredient in the learning model. I vividly remember playinga casual round where one o the golers hit a really unusual-looking

poor tee shot that went very low and to the right. The goler turned

around and looked at me bewildered and said How did that happen?

That moment really drove home the act that most golers, and in this

instance the goler was a single-digit handicap player, just dont un-

derstand the cause and eect between the club and the ball. A goler


16/26


should be able to watch the ball fy and know what the club did to

produce that result.

I you were stranded on a desert island and had only a set oclubs and a bunch o balls, the only eedback you would have would

be ball fight. No mirrors, no video, no instructor, and no second set

o eyes. However, without knowledge o cause and eect, most gol-

ers would take a long time, i ever, to gure out how the relationship

between the club and ball works because it can be very conusing and

counterintuitive. I love to hear golers say let the club do the work.

This commonly heard phrase sounds really good and very simplei

you understand how the club works. For most golers this is really anempty concept that is much too vague. Theres certainly truth in the

statement; however, in order to let the club do the work, you need to

understand how the club is designed to unction and how it aects the

fight o a gol ball.

In gol, there is what is reerred to as the laws thatdetermine ball fight. These laws are irreutable or

all golers and or all gol shots. Five major laws

aect the fight o a gol ball, each o them having

a primary infuence on either distance or direction, with some second-

ary infuence on the other. The laws are speed, centeredness o contact,

path, ace angle, and angle o approach.

SPeeD. How ast the club moves (speed) deter-

mines how ar the ball will go. The aster the club

is moving, the more orce is transerred to the gol

ball, resulting in increased distance. The primary

eect o speed is distance, with a secondary eect on direction.

centereDneSS oF contact. Centeredness o contact reers to the

spot where the ball is struck in relation to the center o the clubace. Its

primary eect is distance, with a secondary eect on direction.


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Path. The path is the approach the clubhead takes as it nears the ball.

The path o the club has a primary eect on direction, with a second-

ary eect on distance.

Face angle. The ace angle reers to where the ace o the club is

pointing at impact relative to the target line. Its primary eect is direc-

tion, with a secondary eect on distance.

The three clubace angle positions atimpact (or a right-handed goler),relative to the target line. Open(to the right), square (at the target),

and closed (to the let).

The three basic clubhead pathsrelative to the target line.


18/26

angle oF aPProach. The angle o approach is the angle

at which the clubhead moves down as it approaches the

ground. The primary eect is distance, with a secondary e-

ect on direction.

When combined, these laws produce what are called

The Nine Ball Flight Patterns.

I have incorporated these ve laws into a baseball

diamond to provide reerence points. and have ound this to

be a very eective tool in helping me communicate to the

golers I work with. For example, when I speak about the

movement o the clubhead path and clubace, I might ex-

plain that the PULL shot is produced when the clubhead and

clubace are both moving in the direction o the shortstop,

sending the ball directly into let eld. This is essentially a

straight shot and is the easiest to comprehend. However, i

the clubhead path was to be swinging more toward third

base, with the clubace pointing at the shortstop, this would

produce a PULL SLICE. (see next page)


PULL

PUSH

STRAIGHT

STRA

IGHT

SLICE

PULL

SLICE

PU

SHSLI

CE

STRA

IGHTH

OOK

PULLHOOK

PUSHH

OOK

The Nine Ball Flight Patterns


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O course, when you use the baseball diamond, you need to imagine that center

eld is more like 300 yards, as opposed to 400 eet, and that all fights are relative to the

target line, which, in this illustration, is a straight line over second base into center eld.

The illustration also labels all o the ball fights that are possible.O course, there are more than nine, as there is an innite

number o ball fights within these nine fights.

CLUB

FACE

CLUBFA

CE

CLUBHEAD

CLUBHEAD

DIRECTIO

NOFC

LUBH

EADPATH

DIRECTIONOFCLUBFACE

PULL

THE PULL SLICETHE PULL

PULL

SLICE


20/26

Understanding ball fight is relatively simple, but it can be very mystiying. Each

club in your bag has a dierent degree o lot. More loted clubs, like the short irons, create

more backspin and, in turn, have a dierent eect on the fight o the ball. I oten hear

how golers are satised with their ball fight rom their wedge to their seven iron, but that

their ball fight starts to become unmanageable as the club they are hitting with gets lon-

ger, and their ball fight is really magnied and out o control with their driver. Short irons

move with less speed than longer clubs, imparting much less sidespin than the longer

ones. Also, the lot on the short irons and a sharper angle o approach cause more back-

spin. Backspin osets sidespin and causes the ball to curve less. I you hit a nine iron and a

our iron with the identical ace angle and clubhead path, the amount o curvature would

be greater with the our iron. Understand that i you are a goler who curves the ball, in

either direction, you actually need the starting direction o the ball, or your alignment, to

be dierent with every club in your bag, since each club will curve a dierent amount.


9-IRON

9-IRON

4-IRON

4-IR

ON

I a nine iron and aour iron are hit withthe identical aceangle and clubheadpath, the amount ocurvature with theour iron would bemuch greater than

the nine iron.


21/26


Other times understanding ball fight can be counterintuitive.

I experienced this many times with my own game beore I understood

the laws o ball fight. Ater I started to change rom hitting a ade as

my regular shot and learned to draw the ball, sometimes I would

miss let, sometimes really ar to the let. My conscious mind would say

that I must be swinging the club to the let, on an outside-in clubhead

path. I would swing more inside out to prevent the ball rom going let.

But unbeknownst to me at the time, it was my inside-out swing path

that was causing the let shot. The more I hit it to the let, the more

inside out I swung and the arther to the let the ball went. I was be-

ing ooled by the eedback that I was observing. It was a rustrating,

vicious circle that went on or some time. However, once I ully under-

stood the ball fight laws, real progress began, both with my game, and

the game o my students.

The importance o understanding ball flight cannot be over-

stated. Most books and articles dont really talk much about this,

which is why in my book, The Negotiable Gol Swing,I went to great

lengths to explain in detail the laws that govern ball fight and how

all o the nine ball fights are produced. Only with this knowledge can

golers ully understand the eedback they get when their ball fies in

a particular distance and direction, and what the gol club did to pro-

duce that fight.

once ball fight is understood, the next most impor-tant aspect o learning and improving your game

is to understand the gol swing. But this knowledge

and understanding must be o what a unctional

and eective gol swing is. Not necessarily the perect model swing, the

stu you mostly hear and read about, but rather what makes a swing

unctional, what is negotiable and nonnegotiable in the gol swing.

Golers are working without this knowledge. While

working with golers, Ill show them a picture o a

sound unctional gol swing, usually that o a tour

player, and put it up against their swing. Ill ask

them what they think is going on, the dierence between the two. De-

spite seeing it, their observations are usually a refection o the precon-

ceived notion o what they think they are doing wrong. Theyll make


22/26


observations and comment on what

the proessional player is doing with his

knees, hips, or head. Yet, none o these

things are areas they need to ocus on.

Even i you gave most golers a video o

their swing and let them work on it by

themselves, they probably still wouldnt

improve because they dont understand

what they are looking at and what to

look or. Many are too busy trying to

model the perect swing, a model swing

that theyre not capable o produc-

ing or various reasons. In act, many

times, because o this lack o knowl-

edge, I see golers change things or the

worse. I cant even tell you the number

o times that I changed something in

my gol swing, which was undamen-

tally sound, or the worse because I was

working on something else, ideas that

were irrelevant to why I was struggling

at the time.

To diagnose and make chang-

es to improve their gol swing, golers

need to understand the components, or

what I like to reer to as the elements, o

the gol swing. These elements can be

broken down into two types: pre-swing

and in-swing. Examples o pre-swing

elements are anything that takes place

beore the swing is in motion, such as

posture, grip, and stance. In-swing ele-

ments can be anything that takes place

during the swing, such as when and

how the wrists, arms, legs, shoulders, or

just about any body part you can think

o, moves during the swing. Ideally, a-

ter a goler observes the balls fight, an

element can be adjusted that will infu-

ence the club, which in turn will infu-

ence the balls fight. These elements

are all negotiable, and the key is to un-

derstand how they infuence the move-

ment o the gol club, which in turn de-

termines the fight o the gol ball.

The grip is a pre-swing, negotiableelement and infuences the clubaceangle at impact.


23/26


While I go into much greater detail in my

book, heres an example o what can happen when

a goler doesnt have the understanding o whats ne-

gotiable and nonnegotiable in the gol swing. Dur-

ing a lesson a goler once told me that he was work-

ing on something specic: keeping his head down

throughout his swing. This was something he elt

was nonnegotiable and something all golers must

do to hit the ball well. I resisted the urge to com-

ment on this and had him hit a ew shots. During the

rst ew swings, I said nothing, but captured every

swing on my video system. Struggling, the goler hit

a ew very poor shots, all the while clearly keeping

his head down, with his eyes glued to the ground, to

the point where I wasnt sure i he could see where

the ball was going. Ater hitting a ew poor shots,

he nally connected and hit a shot airly solid and

straight. He then turned to me and said, You see. I

kept my head down on that one. I then played back

the video o the shot he hit well. He could clearly see

that he kept his head down well past impact. He said

that as long as he could do that, he could hit the ball

well. Then, I showed him the other swings when he

hit the ball poorly. Basically, the swings all looked

the same, with him clearly perorming the objective

o keeping his head down. He looked at me with

that puzzled look all golers have in their expres-

sion toolbox. The act o the matter was that his

swing key, the position o his head, had nothing to

do with the success o the shot. He hit one good shot

in spite o what he thought he was working on. This

is an example o the conscious mind working with

an ineective swing thought and the subconscious

part o the mind working toward trying to strike the

ball eectively. Sometimes the subconscious mind

achieves its goal through making minute adjust-

ments and compensations, despite the thoughts

o the conscious mind. This is why many times a

swing thought, one that a goler believes is the solu-

tion to his problem, sometimes works, then mysteri-

ously does not.

So now lets get down to it and unravel the

mystery.

Ball position is a pre-swing,negotiable element and

infuences clubhead path.


24/26


When a goler is armed with the understand-ing o whats negotiable and nonnegotiable,

and the laws o ball fight, our gol learning

model is modied to look like this:

Now the mystery is unraveled and the

goler can begin to negotiate his or her own

gol swing. This model can be applied to any

part o the game, rom putting to the ull swing

-- and it works or all golers.

Improvement can be attained by all

golers by understanding the relationship be-

tween the club and the ball, the pre-swing and

in-swing elements, and the impact they have

on the movement o the gol club. The diagno-

sis process must start with observing the ball

fight and what the club did to create that ball

fight. Then, when needed, the appropriate ele-

ment can be ocused on and modied. This is

where the challenge o diagnosis exists. I the

elements and their impact are not ully under-

stood, diagnosing and changing elements can

be a utile, rustrating, and sometimes com-

plete waste o time and eort.

Remember, the things that you do in

the swing to move the gol club, the elements

o the swing, are negotiable. No one grip ex-

ists or every player. You dont need to take the

club back on a certain path to make an eec-

tive swing. Your elbow can be in an unortho-

dox position at the top and still make an e-

ective downswing. However, to allow or these

unique and individual elements, you need to

understand how they impact the movement o

the gol club, which in turn aects the fight o

the gol ball. Your goal should not be to make a

perect swing, but rather to nd a combination

o elements that are compatible or you and

that you can physically perorm to produce

a predictable ball fight. Armed with this ap-

proach, youll be well on your way to realizing

your ull golfng potential!


25/26


I you enjoyed reading this eBook and would like to learn more

about how to negotiate your own eective gol swing, please visit

www.joelaurentino.com/proshopto purchase an autographed,

personalized copy o Joes book, The Negotiable Gol Swing;

How to Improve Your Game Without Picture-Perect Form.

There is more than one way to

eectively swing the gol club.

Thats why the gol swing is

negotiable.


26/26


Joe Laurentino is the Head Gol Proessional at Indian Hills Country Club on Long Island, New York.

He has been a member o the Proessional Gol Association o America since 1997. In 2009 he be-

came a TPI -Certied Gol Fitness Instructor. He has given numerous seminars on learning gol and

the gol swing, including presentations to the PGA Proessional Gol Management students at Ferris

State University, North Carolina State University, Campbell University, and Penn State University.

Joe has studied the mechanics o the gol swing under the tutelage o PGA Top 100 teachers such

as Mike Hebron, David Glenz, Tom Patri, Darell Kestner, Ben Doyle, Martin Hall, and Dr. Jim Sut-

tie, as well as the mental game under Dr. Bob Rotella. Joes weekly television gol segment, which

regularly eatures elements o a negotiable gol swing, can be seen on News 12 every Wednesday

and airs in the homes o several hundred thousand cable subscribers on Long Island.

You can learn more about Joe by visiting his website at

www.joelaurentino.com.

Check out his blog at www.joelaurentino.com/blog.

To purchase an autographed, personalized copy o

The Negotiable Gol Swing: How To Improve Your Game

Without Picture-Perect Form,

please visit www.joelaurentino.com/proshop

This book is also available on Amazon.com, Borders.com,

BarnesandNoble.com, and in local bookstores.

Documents

Unraveling Golf