Should Steve Stricker be Hitting the Golf Ball Further?

Golf professional and Wisconsin native Steve Stricker recently made a big decision. He decided to forego an elk hunt vacation for a shot at winning the $10 million Fed-Ex Cup. Stricker has played a limited schedule of about 10-12 tournaments this year yet he is at the top of the Fed-Ex Cup standings and has a chance of winning the Tour Championship in Atlanta and $10 million. Stricker is also currently ranked 8th among the PGA money leaders. His official world ranking is 10 and his scoring average is 69.46 strokes. His official earnings this year are about $3.5 million and this does not include endorsements (see Steve's hilarious "The Professionals" Avis commercial below).




So, it takes a great deal of chutzpah for golf instructor Clay Ballard (the Rotary Swing Lag Doctor) to suggest that if Steve Stricker followed Ballard's advice, he could hit the ball further. Ballard suggests that by getting more "lag" in his golf swing, Stricker (driving distance 285.3 yards and ranked 7th in driving accuracy) could be hitting the ball as far as Bubba Watson (304.2 yard average, ranked 141st in accuracy), Sergio Garcia (289.7 yard average, ranked 78th in driving accuracy) and Tiger Woods (292.7 yard average, ranked 74th in driving accuracy).

What Mr. Ballard does not discuss is that Steve Stricker used to have a lot of lag in his golf swing and he was hitting the ball all over the place. What Steve Stricker learned in the trailer (he hit balls in a heated trailer at the Cherokee Country Club during the off-season until he worked his way out of a horrible slump between 2004 and 2006) was that less lag produced greater accuracy (which is obvious from his current performance statistics) and that greater accuracy produces better performance. Lag Doctor indeed!