Who Are the 47%?

SNL provides an answer to Mitt Romney's "off-the-cuff" comment in front of wealthy donors.

Romney Makes Appearance on Big Bank Commercial

Romney's appearance started out to be a pitch for reductions in financial regulation and ended up as a commentary on heartless, robotic right wing social policies.

Club Selection for Chipping

In the video above, we have Brad Smith suggesting that you use three clubs (8-iron, Pitching-wedge and Sand-wedge) for chipping. Brad provides a rough formula for roll-out: Sand-wedge 1:1, Pitching-wedge, 2:1 and 8-iron, 3:1.

As a young player, I had the chance to see Gary Player at the Milwaukee Open in the 1960's. Player seemed to chip with every iron in the bag depending on the distance from the hole. When I recently followed college players in the Big Ten Championship at University Ridge, all the college players seemed to chip exclusively with the 60-degree wedge.

I am basically a mediocre chipper. Over time, I have had success with the Gary Player approach (to include chipping with a 22-degree utility club), with the a single club (usually an 8-iron, Sand-wedge or 60-degree Wedge), but I have not tried Brad Smith's three-club approach. Since this tip was passed on to me by Tom Scott (see Tom chipping here), it's certainly worth a try.

One concern I have about the Brad Smith video is that I have had very little luck chipping out of the rough with anything other than a Sand-wedge. All of Brad's shots in the video above were out of the rough and my guess is that he fluffed them up for the video. Where I have the most problem is from tight lies. At my home course, the Orchards in Egg Harbor, WI, the mowed areas around the greens have bent grass and are closely enough cut that putting (Texas Wedge) seems to be the most effective approach. So, we're back to Gary Player: use whatever club works for the conditions!

Another Steve Stricker Chipping Variation: the Tom Scott "Soft-Elbows" Shot

In an earlier post (here) I presented a Stack & Tilt variation on Steve Stricker's "stiff-wrist" approach to chipping. Tom Scott has a variation on the Stricker Swing which he calls the "soft-elbows" chip. Here's Tom's explanation of the shot that's demonstrated in the video below (given the typically high level of wind noise  at the Orchards Golf Club in Door County, WI, on this day, you can't hear what Tom is saying in the video, but I've asked him to write the copy below).



When I'm looking at a pitch/chip from rough or even longer cut fairways I like to use my flop wedge (60 degree).  I take a pretty open stance and, depending on the distance, I'll move my hands either more or less forward from neutral, in effect changing the loft of the club I suppose as much as +/- 10 degrees from nominal.  The swing itself is characterized by soft knees and particularly soft elbows with little to no wrist break.  In the practice swings what I'm looking for is a soft brushing of the grass in a smooth no-pinch stroke.  Distance is controlled by both loft and backswing, the latter rarely past half-way.  I use this swing on all my short to medium chip/pitches and with all my wedges.  From really short cut fringe/apron, where putting isn't possible I'll use my pitching-wedge or my gap-wedge, same swing.

Tom tried to teach me this chip many years ago and I never got it. What I seemed to be missing is that he works his right hand under on the follow through keeping the club face pointing up toward the sky. What I do a little differently, at least for right now, is to use a little more forward body movement (see the Stricker Chip here). My hands are not as good as Tom's, so I need to make sure that the club head is lagging behind my hands on the follow through (see my post on Padraig Harrington's approach to chipping here).

Jennifer Granholm's Sponge

In an earlier post (here), we saw Jennifer Granholm steal the show at the Democratic National Convention. In the video above, a 19-year old Granholm also steals the show on the Dating Game. The right wing will never forgive her for this indiscretion!

Stack & Tilt: Getting More Power

According to Mike Bennet and Andy Plummer the first golf fundamental is to "hit the ball first and the ground afterwards." Any golfer who has hit "fat shots" (ground first, then ball) understands the importance of this fundamental. The Bennet-Plummer solution to this imperative is the Stack and Tilt (S&T) swing, pictured in the right two frames above. Compared to the conventional width swing, pictured in the left two frames above, S&T maintains the weight on the left side (toward the target) throughout the swing rather than shifting the weight backward on the backswing.

A second imperative of a good golf swing is that "you generate enough power to play the course." In S&T, the power is generated by the standup move. The swing thought for S&T is "stack-tilt-standup". Over time, this swing thought has worked pretty well for me but it is not without problems: (1) my bad shot tends to be a push, (2) I have not been generating enough power and (3) I can still occasionally hit fat shots!

After a lot of experimenting this summer, I returned to an old video tip from long drive champion Steve Griffith (video above, you have to get through some promotional material to get to the tip, but not much and there's lots of interesting footage of Steve crushing his driver). To generate enough power to hit it long, Steve focuses on the shoulder turn. His tip is pretty straight forward: turn your left shoulder back under your chin and, snap, replace it with your right shoulder. The rapid unwinding of the upper body generates the power; the more rapid the unwinding, the more power.

I have been a little reluctant to share this tip because, as I well know, if done improperly it will result in an over-the-top shot (you can watch a video explanation of this fault here). What is interesting about over-the-top shots is that they usually go further  (and further to the left) then your normal shot. What we would like is the power of the over-the-top shot without the misdirection.

So, let's go back to S&T at the top of the backswing (third frame from the left above).  At the top, you are in a very stable position with S&T compared to the width swing. Quickly replacing your right shoulder with your left shoulder, as suggested by Steve Griffith, should work fine from this position.  But I can still sometimes hit a pull shot suggesting a little over-the-top.

The answer, I found, was to return to the description of how to start the width swing (see the description of the "Switch" on page four of this document):

"Your downswing starts with your left shoulder moving away from your chin as your club moves out toward the target line. Let your upper trunk rotate around you left leg while your right elbow clamps back to your side. Copy John Daly and Jack Niklaus to learn this move" (Adams, et. al. 1998: 137).

Possibly because I have the endomorphic body type suited to the width swing, the shoulder-separation move as the first step in rapidly replacing my left shoulder with my right shoulder prevents the pulled, over-the-top swing. 

To recap, I concentrate on maintaining a stable stacked position at the start of the swing, take the club back on an inside path to a 3/4 position at the top, start the swing by moving my left shoulder toward the target and then trying to rapdily replace my left- with my right-shoulder on the follow through. Right now, when done correctly, this move has given me another 10 yards on the irons and 20 yards on the driver, exactly what I have been looking for. In the future and at my age, there are probably decreasing returns to more rapid upper body rotation. For right now, I'm really happy with the results (increased accuracy and distance) being produced. As a bonus, I have hit no fat shots since taking this approach to the course!

Granholm Steals The Show

Why weren't prominent conservatives such as Sarah Palin, Michele Bachmann, and Phyllis Schlafly allowed to speak at the RNC (read an analysis here)?