Professional help valuable for golf

August 12, 2007 12:14 am

— A friend of mine has been hitting lots of golf balls — between 200 and 250 a week, he says — for much of the summer and now has decided all that practice didn’t make perfect.
The friend, who shall go unnamed, decided that what’s good for the pros wasn’t doing him any good. In fact, his game has deteriorated. So, he is planning a sabbatical from golf for a week just to clear his mind and give his muscles a rest.
Part of the problem, I suspect, is he’s been trying to do too much, changing this and adjusting that while hitting ball after ball to ingrain several new techniques into his swing. The result has been far less than he hoped for, and scores have sailed well beyond his occasional bad round of the past.
Not being a golf instructor, I can’t offer any suggestions about what has gone wrong with his swing or how to go about correcting it. My recommendation is that he get help from a professional and let him sort things out.
But one thing I do believe: Hitting lots of golf balls twice or three times a week isn’t a good idea if you’re making swing changes. Not unless you’ve got your golf guru there to keep an eye on what you’re doing and make sure that whatever modifications you are making in one phase of the swing don’t bring about aberrations elsewhere.
Golf is the toughest easy game there is. It looks so simple when you watch the pros. Actually, the swing should be relatively simple. But we clog up our minds with so many instruction thoughts picked up from friends, television and golf publications that it can get confusing.
Knowing my friend, he will be out there again in a few weeks pounding golf balls. Maybe not by the hundreds. But he is an excellent golfer who wants, like all of us, to get better. And he is dedicated enough to get it done.
But smashing 200 balls a day can be tiring when you’re not used to it, and fatigue can result in some bad habits creeping into the swing.
A good swing should seem effortless.
Many, many years ago, I visited with Orville Moody after a clinic in which he hit many golf balls under the hot sun for 45 minutes to an hour. He would stop every once in a while, wipe his face, arms and hands with a towel and take a sip of water. But he kept going, hitting low fades, high hooks and straight shots on command with irons and woods.
Moody, who remains one of the best ball strikers I have ever seen (I would put him in the class of Ben Hogan), told me that he never got tired while hitting golf balls. He didn’t exert that much energy, he said. Moody got hot under the blazing sun and would take a momentary break, but “I could hit golf balls all day,” he said.
Not many of us have reached that level. Our practices often start out in synch with whatever objective we are trying to accomplish, whether just getting into a rhythm or altering a grip or adjusting weight distribution. Some players get deep into angles and positions, an almost certain formula for disaster when working out by yourself.
At some point, we may get tired or careless or both and then nasty things start creeping in, usually by increments. By the end of a long session of hitting balls, we may be swinging worse than we started.
I am a great believer in seeking professional help. You see a doctor when you’re sick, a dentist when you have a toothache, a plumber when the sink leaks and a carpenter when the roof needs repair. So when your game goes south because of wayward or clunky shots, shouldn’t you go to the guy (or gal) who knows how to straighten things out?
You may never be Orville Moody out making near-perfect swings on the practice range for an hour or more, but you aren’t going to look like a lumberjack hacking away at tree limbs with an ax.
New assistant
Anthony Fink, a former golfer at Missouri Southern State University, has joined the staff at Loma Linda and helps Brent Burney in working weekly with the 10-15 youngsters in the Community Support Services program.
Fink attended College Heights Christian School and has registered for the PGA apprenticeship program.