Tinkeritis

Bobby Jones' father, Mr Robert Tyre Jones Sr., and I seem to have been afflicted with the same golfing disease. We were, and in my case still are, afflicted with tinkeritis. We tinker with our swing when we are supposed to be playing golf. My old father had the same disease. I think it's quite common in golfing circles.

Bobby wrote about his father in his book Golf is my Game. I think it's worth sharing as it may--but probably won't--help other similarly afflicted. Tinkeritis is a serious disease that, if left untreated, can simply ruin your game. Bobby wrote:

    "One of the greatest gifts golf gave me was the enjoyment of many years of playing association with my father. We started to play the game about the same time, and from the time I was thirteen or fourteen we had the same golfing companions. On one occasion he and I met in the finals of the club championship. In later years we played together two or three times a week.

     For many years the offices of our law firm were arranged so that there was an inside connecting door between Dad's office and mine. I used to stop by for him in the mornings so that we arrived at the office together.

     Almost invariably immediately after we reached the office, Dad would appear through this inside door, carefully close the door from my office to the hall, select a club from several I had in the corner, and confront me across the top of my desk, 'Here's something I discovered the other day. See what you think of it,' he would say.

     Whereupon he would demonstrate, and I would comment--as briefly as possible, I admit--in order that we both might get some work done.

     But Dad was a dedicated golfer. He always seemed to think he was on the verge of discovering the secret of the game. It cost him untold agony, but he loved it. The secret he had shown me in the morning never worked in the afternoon, but he always discovered a new one on the seventeenth hole and went home happy and with something to show me the next morning.

     There might have been other things wrong with these secrets, but the fact is that they were never given a chance. The golf course in the midst of a round is no place to experiment or try anything new. The only place for that is the practice tee, and Dad never went to the practice tee before a round.

     We hear a lot these days about the repetitive or repeating golf swing. It seems to be a new term in the golfing jargon. Obviously, like the semi-automatic shotgun, it is a fine idea. If a golfer could only set himself in the same position each time and, by pulling a mental trigger, release the identical swing, he would be a happy fellow. Even though the swing might be bad, at least he would know where to look for the ball.

     The struggle for good form in golf has purpose, because a sound, simplified swing can perform with greater regularity. But one of the eternal beauties of the game is that it will never be susceptible to such rigid control. The feel of the club is altered from day to day by changes in the weather, and the player's senses respond differently because of the myriad of influences within his own make-up. It is important to test out this feel every day, either before the round or as early as possible in the play...

     If I should be limited to one piece of advice to offer to a golfer before the start of a round, it would be, 'Take your time'. And it would mean to take your time and to avoid hurry in everything; to walk to the first tee and from shot to shot at a leisurely pace; to pause before each stroke long enough to make a considered appraisal before deciding on the shot to play; and, above all, to take a little more time if things should begin to go wrong."

Tinkeritis is particularly prevalent among players like myself who don't tend to go to the practice tee. I figure I've only got so many more swings left in me; and besides, if I haven't figured it out by now, chances are I won't find it by hitting a bucket of balls. Like Bobby's father, I tend not to give things a chance. If I hit a couple of stinkers I immediately try another swing. I do this knowing full well that it's the strike that is the only thing that counts in the end.

I played today with the same swing all day. I hit some stinkers and a couple of beauties, but in the end your score invariably comes down to how well you chip and putt. Today my putting stunk and so did my score. But then part of the problem may have been my switching back and forth between looking at the hole and looking at the ball. I think I'll stick with looking at the hole if I can because it helps with distance control and stops me watching the putter head go back, which is a cardinal sin.

As Bobby advises, we need to restrict our tinkering to the range. Once we're on the course the only thing we need to think about is finding our rhythm and getting the ball in the hole in as few swings as possible. In golf it's all about how many, not how.

How Golf Should Be Learned

There are many good golf professionals who have a passion for teaching the game. No doubt it must be a source of frustration for them that many of their pupils don't improve. The average golfer remains pretty much as average as the average golfer was fifty years ago. This despite the many advances in technology. Why is this the case? 

At the age of forty six Bobby Jones was stricken by a crippling disease. He could no longer play the game he so loved. In his book Golf is my Game, Bobby produced what I think is the best book ever written about golf. In the first chapter, entitled Learn by Playing, Bobby addresses the subject of how golf should be learned, and/or taught. Bobby wrote:

    "Since I have been unable to play for more than ten years, I have had that much more time to think. Much of my thinking has been of golf and how best to teach or to learn the game. It seems obvious to me that writing about the golf swing has become too technical and complicated, and even the most earnest teaching professional presents the game to his pupil as a far more difficult thing than it really is. It is equally obvious that what the game needs most if it is to continue to grow in popularity is a simplification of teaching routines which will present a less formidable aspect to the beginner, and offer the average player a rosier prospect of improvement.

     The trouble could be, and I think it is, that golf is not taught as it is learned. It is taught more as a science or as a prescribed set of calisthenic exercises, whereas it is learned as a game.

     Most of our successful tournament players have come up as caddy boys, like Sarazen, Hogan, and Nelson; or, like myself, as sons of members of golf clubs, turned out to pasture with a club or two and a few balls. They have learned to play golf, just as others have learned to play baseball, by playing and playing and playing because they liked the game. In most cases it has only been after gaining considerable proficiency that thoughts of method have been of much concern."

Bobby Jones wrote--and they are the Master's own words--a classic book on golf in Golf is my Game. It contains the crystalized wisdom of one of golf's greatest personalities and champions. If it isn't part of your golf library, I can only suggest that you acquire a copy. In the introduction Bobby described what he had attempted to do in writing the book. He wrote:

    "What I have attempted in this book, although less ambitious, I believe will appeal to the vast majority of people who play golf. I have suggested ways of making a mental approach to the game, of thinking through the playing of shots and of managing one's resources so as more often to enable the player to approximate the highest level of performance to which he has a right to aspire."

Bobby Jones understood that golf is a game that involves striking a ball with a club and trying to get the ball in the hole in fewer whacks than your opponent. He realized that golf was not about pretty swings, or even pretty shots, it was about the score. Bobby Jones reminds those of us who might have forgotten that golf is a game and it is best learned by playing it. It's just a shame that it generally isn't taught that way. 

So, if you are just learning the game; or just looking to improve; by all means try to gain sufficient knowledge about the golf swing in general and yours in particular. Then try to find pleasant companions to play with and throw yourself whole-heartedly into playing the game. Rather than worrying about your swing, focus instead on making the lowest score you possibly can with the swing you possess that day. That's what golf is really all about and, according to Bobby Jones, that's how it should be learned.

The Wisdom of Bobby Jones: Management

There is a fairly new trend in golf towards appreciating and benefitting from sport psychology, with a number of good books having been written on the subject. Once again, however, Bobby Jones was very much ahead of the curve when he presented his master's thesis on golf psychology in his book Golf is my Game. 

Bobby devotes a chapter to what he terms, "Management." The common term used today is course management, but an examination of Bobby's words will show that management doesn't necessarily just begin and end on the golf course. After learning how a ball must be struck to produce the different and desired ball flights, which Bobby covered in Chapter two, I think Bobby would agree that this chapter on management is the most important for the average player to read and understand if he is to improve.

Bobby writes: "Having played the game for over forty years, always with the utmost thought and attention, I think I can tell a golfer a few things about the management of his ability which will enable him to get better results without the painful necessity of hours of practice improving his technique."

"The businessman golfer," Bobby continues, "takes lessons and reads books; imitates good players; he buys new clubs; he does everything he can to improve his swing, his shot-making ability. But he overlooks one important feature: he doesn't ask himself often enough if he is scoring as well as he ought with his present ability." Management starts with some honest self-appraisal.

"In every club," Bobby points out, "there is always at least one man who has the reputation of making a poor game go a long way, the man who seems always to beat a player a bit better than himself. He doesn't do it by any divine inspiration, nor yet by any trick of fate. He simply uses his head, analyzing each situation as it confronts him, always keeping in view his own limitations and power. That is what we call judgement, and it is a lot easier to use good judgement than it is to learn to swing a club like Harry Vardon."

"The challenge of golf is well known." Bobby writes, "But I feel that the average player sees the wide superiority of the expert and concludes that this is perfection. Is it not better for him to realize that there is no such thing as perfection and that no one has ever produced, or will ever produce, except because of the intervention of some chance, a shot in which no improvement could be made?" I wonder if Bob Rotella had Bobby's remarks in mind when he named his book, Golf is not a Game of Perfect.

"Golf, in my view," writes Bobby, "is the most rewarding of all games because it possesses a very definite value as a moulder or developer of character. The golfer very soon is made to realize that his most immediate, and perhaps most potent, adversary is himself. Even when confronting a human opponent, the most crucial factor is not the performance of the opposition, but the effect of this performance upon the player himself." We can either be our best friend, or our own worst enemy on the golf course. It is entirely up to us.

Bobby continues: "The play of the game at times exerts enormous pressure urging frantic efforts exceeding reasonable limits; at other times it offers a beguiling invitation to complacency and over-confidence, which can be equally deadly. The only effective defence in either case is a rigid discipline of self which will at one time shut out panic and at another maintain appropriate vigilance. The main idea in golf, as in life, I suppose, is to learn to accept what cannot be altered, and to keep on doing one's own reasoned and resolute best whether the prospect be bleak or rosy."

We need to just keep on plugging away, during the good times and the bad, as Bobby writes: "I have always found help in remembering that few things turn out as bad as promised, or as good; and that neither championships, nor even matches for that matter, are won by giving up when you are down or by becoming too happy during periods of prosperity." We need to not be discouraged by the bad times, or seduced by the good times.

Speaking of his early years as a golfer, Bobby writes: " I think I must have been completely intolerant of anything less than absolute perfection in the playing of any shot. I often heard Grantland Rice tell of seeing me break a club after hitting a pitch that stopped two feet from the hole, simply because I had not played the shot as intended. I don't remember this incident, but I know I habitually played every shot for its ultimate possibilities, regardless of risk. This lack of discretion must have been fairly obvious; for Bill Fownes, the resourceful Pittsburgh amateur, once said to me, "Bob, you've got to learn that the best shot possible is not always the best shot to play." In golf, as in life, the old saying holds true; discretion really is often the better part of valour.

Bobby writes: "J.H. Taylor, of the famous 'triumvirate' of Vardon, Taylor, and Braid, once described the ideal attitude of the golfer as one of 'courageous timidity', with courage to bear adversity coupled with enough caution to cause him to be aware of a limit to his powers. It took some doing, I'll admit, but it is a fact that I never did any real amount of winning until I learned to adjust my ambitions to more reasonable prospects shot by shot, and to strive for a rate of performance that was consistently good and reliable, rather than placing my hopes upon the accomplishment of a series of brilliant sallies."

Bobby came to adjust his ambitions as a result of an objective analysis of his own play. At the time, he was shooting consistent scores of anywhere from sixty six to seventy around his home course at East Lake, and would have expected, upon looking back on those rounds that he would have hit lots of shots that were, as he put it, "completely satisfactory." However, Bobby was amazed to discover, as he now writes: "in some rounds, fairly good from a scoring standpoint, I could find only one or two shots that had not been misfit to some degree... I finally arrived at a sort of measure of expectancy that in a season's play I could perform at my best rate for not over half-a-dozen rounds, and that in any one of these best rounds I would not strike more than six shots, other than putts, exactly as intended."

As a result of this honest self-appraisal, Bobby wrote: "If one should have confidence in such an appraisal, which I had, the following conclusions were inescapable: 

1. I must be prepared for the making of mistakes.

2. I must try always to select the shot to be played and the manner of playing it so as to provide the widest possible margin for error.

3. I must expect to have to do some scrambling and not be discouraged if the amount happens to be more than normal."

Bobby now sums things up for us by writing: "The main point of all this for the play-for-fun golfer is to emphasize the importance even for him of adjusting his attitude towards the game before he goes out on the course. Let him first divest himself of any thought that it may be unsportsmanlike or unworthy to prepare himself for the play as best he can. There is no point in going out to play a game unless one has the desire to play well, and golf was not meant to be played impetuously; nor is one likely to exercise the needed restraint and self-discipline unless one has prepared oneself in advance. You don't need to go into any ostentatious seclusion, but only quietly and within yourself, to get your mind on the game before you step on to the first tee."

So from now on, before I hit my first shot, Lord, forget about a swing like Rory McIlroy; give me a mind like Bobby Jones. Then I'll be in business.