Category: PGA Tour
2023 Season Prep #1 — Aerobic Base Building
Looking to the future for the 2023 amateur golf season this summer has lead me to think of some issues I’ve had on the golf course, and research ways to improve them. With this, I’m going to write a few posts talking about the changes I’ve been making, and looking to keep doing for the next couple months before the weather warms enough to get out on the grass. First up, fitness.
I think the thing for me is seeing in some of my athletes, this whole, like, non existent aerobic system. People just don’t have one.
Polarizing Your Training — 37:04.
One of the most beneficial results of aerobic training for alpinists is the adaptation of the muscle cells to prefer fats for fuels at a relatively higher intensity, which before training would have required glycolytic metabolism (the breakdown of sugars) with its inherently very limited fuel supply. Fat can provide a vast source of energy for the well-trained alpinist. By well trained, we mean your body can produce energy from fats at the rate required to sustain moderate power outputs for hours on end.
Training for the New Alpinism. If you substitute “golfer” for “alpinist”, hopefully you can see the benefits that come from sustaining moderate power outputs for hours on end (while walking a course day after day).
What these quotes are saying, and something I’m able to admit, is I don’t have any bit of an aerobic system. I’m not using the best energy source to survive 18 holes, let alone 18 holes multiple days in a row. If I do the right aerobic training, I can teach my body to use the much more efficient aerobic, oxidative system. This will give me tons more energy that round, and make recovery easier for the round the next day. Thinking back to events these past few years and how tired I’d be at the end of rounds, I’m betting doing these trainings can shave strokes off my scores.
Workout Zones
If you’re following other fitness trend talking points (somewhat bro-sciency), you might have heard the phrase “Zone 2” training being brought up more frequently. If you research energy zones, you’ll find tons of examples of any numbers of zones. Below you’ll see three graphs of intensity vs blood lactate levels. The rising line shows that as intensity increases, blood lactate stays fairly level, and then increases at various rates. You’ll also see two vertically-dashed lines. Those refer to thresholds (or turnpoints, pick your T) that indicate changes in lactate levels. The difference between the charts, though, is where and how they define zones.
The first chart has three zones, whereas the second has six of different sizes. The important thing to look at though, is those lactate thresholds. The bottom has no zones, but two cutoffs and better descriptions. I put all these charts in here to help show there are many names, one might be slightly different from another, but they all show the same overall information. For me, I’ve found I prefer to refernce them in “green”, “yellow”, and “red” style rather than numbers.
source for second graph, and this is an excellent article to read on this topic. Much of what I’m saying here matches what is written. Third graph is from Training for the New Alpinist.
No matter what amount of intensity you’re giving, you’ll be using both the glycemic and oxidative systems. But as you move up in intensity, above the first threshold, your body switches from mostly using oxidative system of energy to the much less efficient glycemic energy system and lactate starts to build.
The more lactate your body produces, and if its unable to recycle and reuse for energy, it 1) makes you feel more tired and not as strong that day (think the end of a round how you can struggle to finish) and 2) a longer recovery time while your liver and kidneys try to remove it (meaning more tired the start of the round the next day).
What this means is that for someone to have a body for competitive golf, the higher their first threshold is, meaning the more time they spend using the aerobic system, primarily with fat metabolism, compared to the anaerobic inefficient glycolytic system of mostly sugar.
If you can do that, you’ll have more strength and won’t feel as tired at the end of a round, as well as feeling much better the start of the next round the next day.
What’s a good level of workout?
The two main points I want to drive home is are that 1) We don’t nearly do enough time in any workouts that train our oxidative system and 2) workouts for non professional athletes that do train the oxidative system are way less intense than we think.
Starting with point number one, if you do any searching for training regimens that elite endurance athletes use, you’ll find that the vast majority of workout volume is spent below LT1. Like, 80% of the time. You’ll also hear things like no matter which the event they’re training for, they’ll all do the majority of their workouts below LT1.
In fact, the talk in the higher end of cycling endurance, they say the big difference between amateurs and well trained is that when people are “going at the these harder intensities, you’re seeing the more elite athletes with this better base fitness, better able to handle pH better able to do the work aerobically with fat oxidization, where you’re probably seen in the less trained, they’re relying a lot more on anaerobic metabolism”. The elite know the importance of this. The non-elite think that more effort is always better.
As for the second point, a 2018 paper was published where the aim of the study was “to assess metabolic flexibility across populations with different metabolic characteristics.” They ran tests of various kinds on three types of individuals – professional endurance athletes (PA), moderately active individuals (MA), and patients with a conditions termed metabolic inflexibility (MtS). These graphs show what the first quote of this post says — us normal people don’t have aerobic systems.
In the upper graph, the line for the PA matches quite nicely with the generated graphs in the pictures above. They can output a ton of energy and keep lactate from building. For the MtS patients, theirs spikes so quickly. For the “moderately active healthy individuals” line, it spikes up very quick as well, much more matching the MtS compared to the PA. Pretty much showing that if we give any amount of energy aside from sitting, our lactate spikes. We give any amount of energy aside from sitting, we’re above our LT1. The bottom graph shows fat oxidation rates for intensity, and again, the MA line drops instantly. If us MAs do any amount of work, we go right into burning sugar rather than fat. In order to be more efficient, we need to train at a much, much lower rate than we think because we’re not professional endurance athletes.
Pretty much all our workouts are too intense to train our bodies to use the oxidative system. There are so many charts that say what percentage of max heart rate you should be using to be using aerobic systems. I think these are incredibly wrong for most people. These articles are focused on people with a strong aerobic base, which most of us don’t have. We need to lower that heart rate range for aerobic system.
In order to determine your LT1 intensity, there are clinical or home done tests that involve testing your lactate levels. If you feel like it, got for a $400 lactate meter, that you can do to figure out your LT1. But also you’re able to decently do this by listening to your body. A common description I see that can indicate you’re below LT1 is that you should be able to have a conversation with someone, but that the other person can tell that you’re currently active. Another method is if you’re able to nose breathe consistently.
What kind of workouts should we be doing?
I think so many recreational are scared of not training hard enough. And that’s not what they need to be afraid of. What they need to be thinking about is, is training easy enough and long enough in the low intensity sessions to build that biological durability so that those high intensity sessions really can be developmental, they can really push and handle them. And I think that’s where a lot of athletes get it wrong.
Steven Seiler — 25:05
Those two methods for determining if you’re below LT1 seem to work, but the best I’ve found from my own self-testing is to find a steady state that I know I can keep going for hours. You need to be honest with yourself to know if you can go consistently for that long a time frame. Being on a golf course is close, but not like that. A good workout of this type doesn’t include time standing on a putting green or tee box waiting for someone else to hit. It’s continuous movement.
It’s very common these days to hear that HIIT workouts are the best use of our time. You might go into a workout saying “I only have an hour so I better go at this as hard as I can to make it worth it and get that heart rate up!”. Running hills, doing sprints when on a treadmill, or any of the gym classes that are offered (cross fit, Orange Theory, Peleton classes, take your pick.) What this really means is you’re training the wrong energy system for being able to be on a golf course all day.
In my non-lifting workouts, I pretty much only did HIIT, running up and down one of the hills near Lake Michigan. I figured a higher heart rate is better than a lower one. This is now clearly incorrect. I want to make changes to move my LT1 further to the right so I can use that more and more on a course, be less tired at the end of rounds and recover much quicker for the next day.
An example of the workouts I’m doing now can be seen here from the Whoop I use. I went to a treadmill with 20 pound backpack (hence the hiking distinction), and walked at an incline and slow pace. I found a pace that I considered being able to talk to someone and listen to podcasts and mentally able to understand what was being talked about. Over the hour long walk there were times when my heart rate spiked and I could feel my body saying something was changing, and I’d lower the speed and inclination to get the heart rate and bodily feeling lower.
My average heart rate was a paltry 100 bmp. That barely registers as a workout (which is a big problem for Whoop and other wearables), but my energy level was consistent. You can see at the first two thirds how the HR was moving up and down and adjustments were made. But then you can see at about the 50 minute mark, something changed. I noticed this while walking that I didn’t need to make adjustments to the incline or speed, and I didn’t need to hold the machine to help me keep pace. This is exactly the feeling I want to train in for help my aerobic base.
In fact, the article linked above talks about how to use HR to know if you’re sustainable. “A true sustainable effort will be at a flat or very gradually rising heart rate (approximately one or two beats every 10 minutes).” This is what my HR was doing at the end.
I’ll keep doing this leading up to the season, especially while it’s cold and snowy outside and I don’t feel bad spending an hour indoors. My hope is that in a couple months, I can have the same body feeling I had when doing the workout from above, but the speed and incline I can do this at will increase. By the start of the season, and throughout the summer, I’ll be using more of the oxidative system.
Because that’s what racing comes down to is holding power when the other guys are fading out.
Steven Seiler — 43:19.
Substitute “golf” for “racing” and this rings true.
State of my Game — Represented by the final four holes at the State Open
The State Open finished last week up in the Sheboygan area – 54 holes at Blackwolf Run’s Meadow Valley, and 18 holes at Pine Hills. I finished, +3, T20, which felt pretty pathetic when driving back from the final round and thinking about how I played.
The whole event I felt like I was only hovering around par and didn’t have the ability to get under par and stay there. A big reason for my bad play was that I couldn’t ever get a sense of the greens on either of the courses. Issues with speed meant I had trouble with lags, and issues with reading the break lead to not making putts over 5 feet without luck. Hole to hole, I’d make a bogey or two, follow with a couple birdies to get it back, only to make a bogey again. Or sometimes I’d flip that, where I’d alternate from a birdie on one hole to a bogey on the next hole.
The biggest note of my scoring was I played the par 4 10th hole at MV a combined +5 in the three rounds played there. The makeshift hole is quite dumb, if you’ve played there you know what I mean. But then again, everyone had to play it three times, so not like I was the only one who had problems on it. Other than that hole, I had one double meaning I wasn’t taking huge steps back at any time. Just consistent bogeys.
I’ve always had a weak mental side of my game. I can count on one hand the number of times in my amateur career that I was in the zone for longer than 5 holes at a time (one example being the final 9 holes at the US Am qualifier in 2018 where I played it -2 in the 20 mph winds and penalty areas all over). My weaknesses are all over, an I can come up with plenty of individual examples showing the weakness (like the 72nd hole of 2011 State Am where I just whacked the 4 footer to tie and force a playoff rather than trying to make it).
When looking back and how I did in the State Open this year, I found that the story of my final four holes does a good job of explaining how to be good at on the course, and how frequent my weaknesses come up. This is my attempt at summarizing.
After making a random 20 footer on 14 for birdie to get to +4 overall, I get in the cart, drive over the rackety bridge up the hill to the 15th teeing area…
15, Par 3
The 15th is a slightly downhill par 3 we measuring 188 yards in the fourth round. Pin was front right on a giant green, where a miss short would be in a penalty area which likely would lead to drop zone of ~150 yards, a long miss slightly left would end up in a ravine five feet below where the pin was, a miss further left would be on another part of the green where you’d have to putt down to the ravine and then up to the hole, and a miss right would miss the green to having a short chip from longer rough. Basically the only play was to be directly at the pin and not be short.
The light wind of the day was in with maybe a slight quarter from left to right, but the quarter was negligible considering the inconsistency of the wind.
A note about lie of irons. I’ve talked to many people about importance of lie-loft machines and a huge difference they can make in both visual and physical feelings. With clubs bent too flat, I look down and can see that I have to change my swing to make solid contact by either strengthening my grip and / or opening up my body quicker. Similarly with a flatter iron, I can feel how the weight of the toe is further down, which means when I take it back, I can be thrown off and feel that I get into bad positions at the top and try to compensate on the downswing. Both cases cause problems.
I’ve spent so much time this summer bending clubs, the next day going to the range to test, realizing some are too flat or too upright, and then having to find another time to go back to the machine and try again. To bend each club, it takes a few minutes to set up the machine where I have to make sure it’s perfectly aligned to begin with, tighten the screws, then recheck that it’s still aligned. Then have to trust both lie and loft the numbers from the machine are correct, or in the end use a visual guess before moving to the next club. It’s a pain and struggle to not know what to trust and to know that you’re not going to get it perfect unless you’re able to hit balls in real time. Right now and at time of the State Open, a couple of my clubs are clearly too flat, but I don’t have a machine to do this (if you know of a used one someone wants to sell, dead serious, let me know).
My 7 iron however, is perfectly aligned. I can set up over the 7 iron and see and feel the club to know that even if my swing isn’t on the perfect path, meaning hitting the ball from inside or outside, it’ll be flat and solid at impact.
Back to the 15th. Light wind is into us, it’s slightly downhill which canceled that out, pin is 188, and my perfectly lied 7 iron lands 185-190 when swung solidly. With all of this thought about, I’m able to tell myself that there’s no excuse for me to hit a bad shot and to have confidence to be able to hit it perfect as I’ve done many times with it in the past.
The result was a perfect swing. The ball was hit dead solid, great trajectory, never left the target of the pin, landed 4 feet short, and rolled 4 feet past to the point where I’m not sure how I didn’t make it. John Jensen was the spotter on the green and he said it didn’t miss by more and an inch or two.
I wasn’t perfectly sure of how much the break was in the putt, but because I was 4 feet, and even though it broke more than I read, I still made it for a birdie 2. Par 3 birdies are rare, especially with a small landing area at the 15th.
16, Par 5
The 16th hole is a par 5 with an uphill tee shot with an angled dropoff on the right side of the landing area where the further right you hit your shot, the further you have to carry the ball to get to the fairway. If you get to the fairway, you can have ~225 downhill yards to the middle of the green. That green is angled back right however and has a giant low bunker guarding the green for more than 50 yards. Back left of the green however is light rough and a full green to work with, so pretty much stay left and go long and you’ll be fine. It’s a classic Pete Dye hole.
In the final round I hit a good tee shot but fell right to where it didn’t cover the dropoff to get to the fairway, so I had the 10ft high grass lip I had to hit it over to get back in play. This meant I wasn’t able to go to for the green. Instead, I was able to launch that perfectly lied 7 iron way left of the green and get it far enough that the low bunker wasn’t in play for my 50 yard approach. Really was a great second shot to get out of slight trouble.
Those two shots lead to a prime example of my golf course patheticness. The shot was 50 yards off the fairway, where the pin was 10 yards on the green. Flat from the ball to the hole and nothing in the way. The fairway grass was well kept enough that the amount of grain was negligible so that wouldn’t affect the ball if I landed it short of the green.
Flashback to the 3rd round in the morning. The pin then was way back right, and my second shot was a good miss to where I was within a foot of the green on the left which left almost 40 yards of green from ball to hole. I had two choices. First would be a long putt over multiple rolling hills on the green. The second was to hit a pitch shot that had the ideal landing area for any pitch shot. If I didn’t hit the ball hard enough, it would land on an downslopeing part of the green 40 feet short and get a kick forward to make up for the difference. If I hit the pitch too hard it would hit an upslopeing part of the green to take off some of that energy. In either case, the ball would have the right speed to get over the final upslope to the flat part where the hole is. I bet readers know of that kind of giant landing area and love it like I do. For that shot, I hit my 60, had it land at the bottom of the downslope, and it rolled the 20 feet to a tap in birdie. Good example of me thinking and performing.
For the 4th round though, I didn’t think, and I didn’t perform. I’m having trouble describing what I even did for that shot because I didn’t have a plan. I think a few seconds before I stepped up to it I thought “oohh I can leave this short of the green and it’ll bounce right up!” but after that I didn’t think about where on the clubface to hit the shot to determine spin, how high the ball should go, and what length of swing would give that result. I just whacked it and the ball didn’t even get to the green.
I was stunned. The hole before I was focused and hit an infinitely more difficult shot really well; here, I didn’t even hit the green from just off the front. I yelled at myself and asked what the hell I was doing. Such a waste getting the ball to that spot and having only short grass between my ball and the hole for such a good opportunity of a birdie. Imagine if there was a 50 yard par 3. Pretty sure we’d all be going for birdie. Instead I must have been too pleased with getting to a position that I had, where a bogey was off the table.
The green had some break to it in both directions, but even though I was a couple inches off the green, I barely read the putt because I didn’t deserve to have a birdie after that pitch approach that I couldn’t even get on the green. A pathetic par.
17, Par 3
The 17th hole at MV is the final par 3, similar to the one two holes before where you’re not exactly left with a bailout area. If you miss to the left of the green, you’ll have a 15 foot hill to flop up and over to get to green level. If you miss further to the left you’re in a penalty area. A miss to the right you’ll be in what I considered the longest rough of the course. So another case of hit the green or you’re probably making bogey.
Pin was lasered at 177, left side of the green but in the middle of the depth, and into the slight breeze. I consider a solid 8 iron lands ~175, so with a teed up flat lie, I’d be able to swing as hard as I wanted and the ball wouldn’t go too long. There was enough room short of the pin as well so a mishit, wouldn’t land short and in the penalty area there. This is one of the swings you want to have on an approach shot.
Unlike my perfect 7 iron, my 8 iron is still lies flat, which means when I change my swing to make up for it, the tendency is a little pull. So here, I aimed meaning slightly right of the pin, hit the slight pull, to where the ball ended up right in front of the pin about 20 feet short. Exactly what I thought would happen.
I could have shortened my swing with the 7 iron I talk so much about, but that would have been almost too much of a change from normal swing. In the future, and this is something I consider importance to be a really high level player, I’m going to want to have a swing and confidence to be able to club up and take distance off the longer iron in all cases. But here, I smartly knew what would give me the best result both in birdie chance and lack of high score.
As for the putt, this was a rare case of me having the correct read and speed where I hit the putt far enough to the right and it broke dead center with great speed. A few feet out I kind of walked it in while slightly surprised I read it that well. Another birdie on a par 3, where each one of those you’re gaining on the field.
18, Par 4
The 18th is a par 4, a quarter dogleg to the right, where the second shot to a huge rolling green is over the river. There’s also a second green on the hole straight out from the tee used by those playing the forward tees, which is to offer a second shot that doesn’t have to fly the 50 yards over water. That second green does come into play for either playing of the hole as bunkers and rough of that green that start ~300 yards from where our tees were.
I hit a really solid 5 wood that I drilled dead straight where the ball bounced enough in the fairway to get into that rough around the secondary green. It was a really great tee shot especially considering missing left or right brings in much more trouble where you can end up with a lie in the thick rough which makes covering the river tough for us, something we’re not used to in public play.
I found myself left with 163 to the back left pin. There was probably ~12 yards of landing area short of the pin, and then less than 5 steps past the pin until we hit the rough that is growing on a four foot kind of a wall of backstop to guard the clubhouse area against people who don’t know how far they hit it. My lie wasn’t bad where it didn’t have much grass behind it to affect the shot, I’d just need to hit is solid. I was in the same place my first round with a worse lie that did affected the ball flight.
Looking back, my pre-shot thoughts should have been that a solid 9 iron from fairway flies ~155-160. The little wind is crossing right to left, and because the greens had been firming, I’d probably want to land it 150-155. So I should aim a few steps right, take the 3/4 backswing, stay down and hit as solid where if the little grass behind the ball had an impact, it’d be to hit it longer. I hit 3/4 swing shots like that a lot in practice and on shots earlier in the tournament, so it’s not like it’d be a completely new swing. I feel quite comfortable with it and know that the result would keep the ball safe and let me get a birdie chance I wanted.
Instead, I saw the 163 show up on the range finder, thought to myself that that number is longer than the 155-160 a 9 irons usually goes, how I didn’t want to be short, so I need to swing really hard. I had the correct aim point to the right, and I did take that hard full swing my mind said I should. The ball was hit perfectly solid, but nothing short of nuked to where it landed past the pin, ~165, and bounced over into the rough on that little hill. In the cart ride from the fairway, over the long bridge to the green, I couldn’t help but think how dumb I was for not thinking about how I needed to land it the 10 yards short. I pulled the move of seeing the number and going with that rather than where to land it.
The lie by the green was so downhill in that rought that I couldn’t do any sort of flop without the risk of the club going under the ball and leaving it short. All I could do is land it in the rough 1-2 feet short of the back fringe and maybe get lucky with the bounce. I didn’t get that luck, and the ball bounced and rolled 30 feet past and ended up a two putt for a bogey and overall -1 on the last four holes.
What’s to Learn?
Some of what happened in the closing holes is different than what I do normally on a course. For instance, if we only counted par 5s, I was -11 for the tournament and 4th overall. On par 3s though, I was +6 and way down the ranking. In these final four holes though, I birdied both the par 3s and made par on the par 5.
Ignoring that difference of overall holes, the results of the individual shots was right in line with my issues. If I think through and really know what kind of shot I need to hit, I can have the results. Those really were two good irons on 15 and 17. My approach on 18 was a good swing and result of that swing, but my reasoning on why to take that swing was quite wrong.. On 16, I didn’t even think about the what pitch to hit or how to hit it. I have that happen many times around as it’s a lot easier to just swing and whack than to think.
The main thing to learn from these results is to remember and store the feelings I had standing over the shots on 15 and 17. Both cases I had confidence that I had the best club for me, which is the mental state I need to have for all shots. After the round and after I thought through all parts of my finish, I made sure to think about those individual shots to try to imprint into my mind the feelings that I had when standing over the shot and during the swing. The goal of that is to have shots I can think back on when faced with shots in the future. For example, next time I’m on a par 3, I want recreate the feelings I had before the successful swings. Writing about the shots in this post also helps imprint them in my mind.
The other part I want to learn from this ending is how dumb I feel for 16 and 18. By writing out the thought by thought / play by play of what happened, in the future I’m hoping to avoid making mental mistakes because of how I don’t want that feeling of stupidness again. Feelings of success == good. Feelings of weakness == bad.
As an overall statement, playing golf in cruise mode without thinking is much easier than playing golf while doing planning thoughts for every shot. So often, especially in random play on weekends, I go around and just hit the ball, find it, and hit it again. My game’s good enough and courses we play are easy enough where I can do that and still play alright. Why would I want to use my mind on a Saturday morning when it’s a lot easier to just hit and find and enjoy the sun?
I had that feeling in college most of the time. I played so many tournaments every other week that rounds became something I had to do so I didn’t feel like wasting mental energy on thinking. (The one time this really stuck out was end of my sophomore year when we had some good players on the team and kind of peaked at regionals. Having teammates that are all trying really hard meant I had to as well. That spring and summer was probably the best I’ve played, and also when I subtly realized I wasn’t good enough to be a pro in the future. That’s another story however).
There are many sport quotes that go around talking about how players are supposed to think back on a past game only after it completed, learn from it what they can, and then move on to the next game or event. That’s what I’ll have to do here.
MLB Spring Training Pitch Clock — Kershaw quote with plenty of talking points
View of the minor league pitch clock from Wikipedia. Imagine having to watch that click down. Kershaw says don’t pay attention.
Interesting quote by Kershaw about the test of the pitch clock that MLB is doing this spring training with more than a few takes.
“I’m not going to pay any attention to it. And if I go over it then I go over. I’m not going to change anything I do. I’m not going to pay attention to it one bit, and if it becomes a problem I guess I’ll have to deal with it then. But I think there’s ways to fake it. If it looks like it’s winding down or something you can step off. I’m sure there are ways around it. I’m not too worried about it.”
First, he’s got the right attitude for sure about not thinking about it. I’ve had it happen so many times where the thought of me being too slow made me speed up unnecessarily just to try to not get a penalty or others to judge me as being slow. Not paying attention to a possible time violation should be the thought if you’re not already considered one of the super slow players (I don’t think I am but I guess people could have kept that hidden from me).
Second, he says that if it becomes a problem then he’ll deal with it then. Kershaw isn’t known as a slow pitcher, so he’s not trying to bait the MLB to try and convict him of slowing down play, but is using this as a real reason to not look at the clock. JB Holmes talked about this in his press conference after the win, saying how he was never put on the clock so no reason to speed up.
“Yeah, when I first got out here I was really slow. But I’ve sped up quite a bit. I’ve gotten better. There’s times when I’m probably too slow, but it is what it is. I was never on the clock. Never even got a warning. TV wants everything to be real fast all the time.”
To be fair, in that quote, he admits he’s on the super slow side and claims he’s working to get faster, so I’ll give him credit. Either way, him saying how he was never given a warning made people switch to trashing Manfred about the Tour not enforcing the rules they have written.
Third, Kershaw’s right about being able to fake having reasons to not throw a pitch within the 20 second frame. In the golf world, there wouldn’t be fakes, rather there’d be legit reasons for being able to take more than the 50/40 seconds. Such as, a fly or a bee landing on a ball, or if you’re waiting for the group behind you to hit approaches on 16 green at the Phoenix Open so the noise doesn’t affect your swing on 17 tee, super hard rain where if you don’t wipe down the grip of a club you’re not able to hold on to it, or someone in the crowd how wants to give you a penalty for being slow so they yell something before you take your backswing meaning you’d step off and then be over the 40 second limit.
For the MLB, they tried the pitch clock rule in minor leagues all the way back starting in 2010, and it’s taking its time creeping up to the the majors with spring training. It’ll be interesting to see how the spring training pitch clock test goes, and it’s also good to show how if the PGA Tour has any interest in putting this into play, the Web.com Tour needs to be tested first.
Slow Pace of Play — The problem with no easy solution
One afternoon in 2011, while sitting behind the 9th green at Erin Hills to sign our scorecards after finishing playing our first round at the US Amateur, our group was legitimately looked down upon by a standing USGA ranger who asked us why he shouldn’t give us a penalty for slow pace of play. We had finished the par 3 9th a few minutes beforehand where I’m pretty sure we all missed the green and tried to get up and down which I did from one of the front bunkers by making a 6 footer. On the hole before, the snap dogleg 8th, a guy in our group missed the fairway to the left so we all walked around looking for his ball in the fescue before we were able to go hit ours. Because there was a lost ball to search for and we finished on a difficult par 3, we were then asked why we didn’t deserve a penalty.
Spin forward 6 years, and my brother-in-law and I were playing in the 2017 US Four Ball. During our first round on Pinehurst #8, on the long par three 13th hole, the guys we played with had trouble off the tee and through the green. After finishing the hole, we were told that we were behind the allotted 14 minute time limit, so we had earned ourselves a pace of play warning. We walked to the 14th tee where we sat down on the bench because we were waiting for the group in front of us to move towards the green. That’s right, we got a pace of play warning from the USGA and had to wait on the next tee. All because we played a long par three that some in the group had trouble on.
This writing isn’t just about the USGA and their feeling and enforcement of the pace of play. Slow pace of play is a huge issue these days, and keeps getting pushed higher and higher in talking points. How bad is the problem? What are the fixes? We all have thoughts, but the possible solutions are not straightforward at all.
AT&T Pro Am rounds take forever. Big part because of the Ams playing a tough course, and also partially for the Saturday interviews of the celebs on this 17th tee.
Why write about this?
Last week at the end of the Euro Tour’s Omega Dubai Desert Classic stop (and before Bryson’s comment about being happy to play the Saudi event), Euro Tour twitter posted a video of Bryson talking to his caddie about a shot on the final hole of the event. It’s a minute and 13 seconds from the time he begins talking to the caddie to when he hits the shot. He discusses lots of things like distance, landing spot, and air density, which I assume was because he knew he was being recorded and wanted to push his “scientist” branding image even further.
People took off on trashing him in replies to the tweet about how slow he is and how much he overthinks his wedge shot. I tweeted this response, which I’ll now somewhat retract. Clearly Bryson’s wedge shot should have been hit quicker considering it was a wedge shot with complete lack of outside elements.
Brooks Koepka was interviewed a couple days after, where he said “I just don’t understand how it takes a minute and 20 seconds, a minute and 15 to hit a golf ball; it’s not that hard,” and “It’s always between two clubs. There’s a miss short, there’s a miss long. It really drives me nuts, especially when it’s a long hitter because you know you’ve got two other guys, or at least one guy that’s hitting before you, so you can do all your calculations. You should have your numbers. Koekpa continued to say “If it’s blowing 30, I understand taking a minute and taking some extra time with some gusts, you know changing just slightly, I get that, but if it’s a calm day there’s no excuse.”
Not just Kopeka, others on Tour seem to all be of the same opinion of Bryson’s slowness.
In the Bryson video’s case, the slow play is because of overthinking the slow shot process. This is a problem, yes, but Koepka brings up the number one cause for slow play that I see most often: Difficulty.
What causes the slow play?
Similar to the DeChambeau video, the Euro Tour posted this video of Ian Poulter and his caddie’s conversation last year. . The timing of this video is kind of ironic since it was the week after the Euro Tour’s shot clock tournament where they enforced a time limit. People complained about the time it took him to hit the shot, but not as many as complained about Bryson. Poulter’s shot plays over 210 over water to the green with a big wind blowing. You’ll also notice Poulter is +3, meaning that the course is playing pretty hard. The stronger the wind, the more it takes to ensure you’re hitting the right club.
Besides wind, firm course conditions is another weather aspect that slows down play completely. Approach shots must really be thought about in terms of how short and where to land it compared with flat, wet ground. That takes time. Also if you’re reading this, remember that landing distance is the distance you should be thinking about, not necessarily the distance to the pin.
Course design with difficult green complexes can slow down play. Elevated, slopey greens are a great example. A missed green then brings into play imagining the putt or chip with the swales and roll outs. From there, pins placed in slopey areas lead to more 4 footers for par rather than tap ins. You’re going to spend more time over that 4 footer.
The final big cause of difficulty is the amount of trouble on a course and how long it takes to search for a ball. This is a huge part of slow play on public courses. Huge.
One of the new rules for 2019 which I’m not a fan of at all is limiting for searching for a ball from 5 minutes to 3 minutes. This doesn’t affect guys on Tour because of the spotters and fans in the area and, well, the fact is that they hit it pretty straight.
For public players, they don’t follow that rule to begin with. Never has anyone pulled out a cell phone to start a timer to ensure the search doesn’t go beyond 5 minutes. People have different opinions on how to deal with search. Some throw a new ball down relatively quickly, following the local new rule about (knee) dropping in the fairway where the lost ball was estimated to end up. Others take their sweet time either enjoying not wanting to lose a ball, or playing in a betting game where every shot counts so they want to try to find the first. And then we have to add how many times we’re searching for multiple balls on the same hole but different sides of the hole.
Maybe that’s why people keep pushing for courses to be wider with less rough and no trees. Fewer lost balls means way quicker play. Hmm.
How should it be fixed?
I talk of difficulty as the number one reason for slow play, but that can’t be changed at a tournament level. The fixes they need to look for are ones that work to get the players moving quicker, but in a fair and reasonable manner.
Notes from the US Am in Monterey — Weather was cold, and so was my ball striking
It’s been a couple weeks now, and with things settled down from the 2018 US Amateur out at Pebble, it’s time to go through thoughts from the week. I’ll start with the courses, general thoughts that deserve their own sections, and then random thoughts at the end.
Pebble
Tiny Greens
Holy crap the greens at Pebble are tiny. The first thing I noticed when walking to the 1st green in the practice round. And then noticed the tininess even more pronounced on the 2nd and 4th holes. Then, for some reason, I always thought the 12th green would be decently large, due to it being a long downhill par 3. Nope, tiny tiny. When I got to the 13th hole, I noticed that green seemed bigger than the others, and a local caddie said that it was redone in the past year.
I like small greens. It’s a yes or a no for a good shot, rather than with wider greens where I pretty much never aim directly at the hole and usually every shot is fine.
Looks completely different, and not just because of an ocean
Talking about course design sure is a dangerous area to write and talk about. But I love courses that are different, and Pebble does not match up with any designer out there. That isn’t because it’s next to a large body of water. There are courses next to large bodies of water that make it clear who designed it (I’m looking at you Whistling Straits and Pete Dye), but Pebble does not match others. Give me this type of course inland and I’d like it close to as much.
No gimme birdies
I hit the ball decently far (though at the US Am these past two years, I wasn’t the longest hitter in any of the groups, practice rounds included), so I like courses with par 5s that I can reach, or get close enough with two straightforward shots and have an up and down for birdie. At Pebble, hole 6 was the only somewhat reachable par 5, and yet, you can’t see where the tiny green is over the famous giant cliff, or really where to aim. Other than that hole, the others aren’t reachable and you won’t have any version of a gimme birdie.
Didn’t play short
The course is listed just at around 7,000 yards, but it sure doesn’t play that short. First reason was because of how many forced irons off the tee there are. Holes 1, 4, 8, 15, 16 you’re laying back off the tee. Secondly, the par 3s aren’t particularly long. 17 was the only one listed over 200 yards, and with the 115 yard 7th, those were some of the shortest groups of par 3s you’ll find on any course. Both reminders that listed yardage doesn’t always match how long the course feels.
Hit Driver on 3
Notice how I didn’t list hole 3 as an iron off the tee, which is because you need to hit driver. The bunkers straight away are positions where it’s tough to make sure the ball stays between, whereas there’s tons of open room to the left slightly hidden by a group of trees just off and to the left of the tee. The other part is how the green is angled to the front left, so missing to the left is absolutely the best spot. Even if you’re in the fairway, you can’t aim at the right pin over the bunker. Missing left in the rough is fine, hitting in the bunker is fine, and missing to the right where you’re in the fairway is also fine.
This comes up every AT&T, and will again at the US Open next year, so watch what the players do and what the announcers say. And for the US Open, I’ll be able to gather the shot dispersion data and do some analysis.
Spyglass
Bigger greens, but lots only have a few places to put a pin
Check out the yardage book picture of #8 green. Green is decently sized, but there’s pretty much nowhere to put the pin other than back left or back right. We found that a lot at Spyglass.
Even the normal yardage book shows how big of a falloff the green has
Long rough, some wispy, some thick
Read the bold sentence above and that’s pretty much what I wanted to say. The rough was decently long at both courses, but it felt a little more in play here at Spyglass.
Answering Twitter Polls — How much can course setup change scoring averages?
Asking questions using Twitter’s polls is a fun time to get people to think and talk about their opinions. Instead of only replying on the twitter threads, it’s easier to write here than be restricted by the 280 characters. These first three polls were all asking the question as to how much the course setup can change scoring – pin positions, the penalty of the rough and the speed of the greens.
How much of a difference do hole locations make?
Pins in any high level event are incredibly tucked, which leads the question, how much of a difference does that make?
Comically far back. And not the best picture. I should have shown all of the green so you can see how it’s even further back than what it looks like here.
At Firestone last week, there were plenty of examples of players missing short sided, causing difficult up and downs. There were also plenty of times where they stuffed it (on? to? at?) a pin, where the ball ended up between the edge of the green and the hole. Anecdotal evidence is never an accepted way to prove questions involving numbers.
If someone could give me the ShotLink data, that I could match up with pin sheets, we could get a sense of scoring averages depending on how close to the edge of the green the pin is. Yet apparently to get the data, I’d need to submit this giant form with tons of information, including my address, and the “institution” I’m a part of. Unfortunately, golf writing is not part of a university.
I voted for 2-3 strokes. Pin position makes a difference, there’s no denying that, but I can’t see too much other than a couple strokes a round.
The Only Thing That Matters in Putting Setup: Forearm and Putter Shaft Alignment
As the title says, I’ve always thought that only one important part of a putting setup is that:
The back forearm needs to align with the putter shaft.
The big reason I figured now would be a good time to write about putting setup is Tiger’s change of putters, where he moved from the same old blade putter to a mallet.
This is a newsworthy change since he’s been with the Scotty Cameron putter forever, but more importantly, I noticed while watching him the second round at the Quicken Loans National, is that his putting stance changed as well.
See the difference?
The argument is that having the arm aligned takes wrist movement completely out of the equation. If you’re looking to feel what I’m saying, take a putter, bend those wrists to create a giant angle between the forearm and putter shaft, and try to keep the putter head stable. You can’t. The less movement the better. Another thing to think about is why people switched to anchored putters. One long shaft takes wrists out of the equation, similar to the affect forearm alignment does.
I’ll also say that the majority of the people reading this already have the forearm shaft alignment, because it’s the natural, athletic way to handle a putter.
If people can come up with a reason that not having the forearm shaft aligned is better, let me know. I want to see what you can come up with to disagree.
Remember though, setup isn’t the most important part of putting. Attitude is. I’ve written before about how the best mentality over a putt is to expect the putt to go in, and be surprised if it doesn’t. It doesn’t matter your setup, but if you don’t think the ball is going in the hole, you’re toast and will never be a great putter.
Picture time!
One thing to remember here is that camera angles sometimes make it difficult to know fore sure what the arm alignment is for the players. Google image searching only gets so far, but hopefully people agree with what these pictures show.
I’ll start with Jack Nicklaus, who, as you know, has quite the odd overall setup, but that back right forearm goes right up where his putter shaft is aligned. It was hard to find a picture of him exactly from behind, but here’s one of him right before making the winning putt at the British in 1970 at St. Andrews and launching that putter in the air with two hands.
Brad Faxon was another initial thought as he’s considered the best putter these days, and has credit for being the putting guru. Searching for his setup brought me to this picture in a forum, which includes Aaron Baddeley, who is considered the world’s best putter by this random British golf blog.
Pinehurst #2 Review — Don’t miss a green on the wrong side
Pinehurst #2. What to say, what to say. It’s been so tough to figure out what I wanted to say about #2 that I haven’t written this review until over 3 months after the Four Ball. And it’s even so tough now that I’ve been sitting here a while without knowing how to start.
TL;DR
After writing the post, I have a summary to share. Pinehurst #2 is somewhat of a bland course in terms of hole distinction and differences in important shots. But it is impressive in difficulty in that basically every bad shot, especially approaches, is penalized. This makes it an ideal home course if you’re trying to compete since every shot requires perfection, and every other course you’ll play will seem easier.
The Beginning
I guess the first thing to say is that my dad and I played #2 back in the day and were featured in the Pinehurst newspaper the next day. Don’t believe me? My mom found it can snagged picture of it before the Four Ball. This was from almost 10 years ago now, and holy crap were clothes baggy back then. Oof.
Holy baggy rain pants. It was pouring, pouring rain so much then that barely anyone went out and played. We were unsure if we’d do that ourselves, but not like you can reject playing #2 when down there. I actually remember when this picture took place. We walking up to the second green and a car stopped on the road that cuts between the 2nd green and 3rd tee and a dude with a camera stepped out. We walked up to the green, said he’s from the local newspaper and wanted a picture of us on the green to prove that people were playing the course despite the crazy daylong downpour. Fun times.
Besides the second green, I remember a few other parts of the course — 16 because of the pond, 17 because of the semi valley from the tee to the green that was just all that bermuda style rough, and 18 approach shot because I stuffed this hybrid to a foot or so and had a tap in birdie.
When playing earlier this spring, the course was a 1000% percent different. Somewhat because I bogeyed 18 instead of birdieing it, but also because of the unbelievably perfect weather, spring warmness, no clouds, no sogginess, and different type of missed fairway penalty.
With the intro over, it’s time for me to go through all the thoughts I have on the course.
2017 US Amateur Oscars — Riviera, Bel-Air, and More!
Welcome to the 2017 US Amateur Oscars. I played like garbage with a dumb attitude during the tournaments, but hey! doesn’t mean I can’t give out the awards from the US Am!
I consider myself the host of these awards, but I don’t have an intro speech with jokes, even though I’m sure there’s a joke in there somewhere about all the celebs who are members at Riv and Bel-Air, but can’t come up with any. Because of that, I’ll just lead off with the award for the best picture taken with a cell phone.
Best Picture Taken By a Contestant with a Cell Phone
Best Tournament Course
Riviera of course. And this isn’t just because it hosts a Tour event every year, but mostly because it really is one of the best tournament courses I’ve ever played. Here come the reasons.
My requirements for a tournament course are 1) All the holes look different enough so you play it once and remember every hole, and 2) no funky holes. I keep talking about how requirement number 1 is the key for any course to be considered good in my book, but number 2 is required for a tournament course. I won’t list here courses that host tournaments that violate those rules, but they exist in majors and on Tour. In Riviera’s case, it perfectly follows both the rules.
Proof that it follows the first rule – I played Riv 6 years ago back in the college days, and I remembered the vast majority of the holes and their routing. And that’s not because I see them on TV during the Tour event.
And there aren’t funky holes out there. Some people might consider the par 3 6th as funky, because of the bunker in the middle of the green. Or maybe the par 4 8th with two fairways split by a waste area. But they’re not funky in the sense of required luck. When you hit a shot on those hole, you know where you can’t miss and where it’s ok to miss.
If you hit a bad shot you’re penalized, a good shot you’re rewarded. There are very few, if any, parts of the course where a bad shot stays in play. Throw in how long the course is (I had more irons 6 and over than I did wedges into par 4s, which is the first time in forever I remember that being the case) and you’ve got the perfect course to host a tourney.
Straightforward difficulty folks, that’s the best tournament course.
Most Enjoyable Course
I still haven’t figured out my exact definition of enjoyable course, probably something along the lines of which course I’d pick if I only would be able to play one from now on. Bel-Air wins the award on that definition.
Here’s some of the reasons.
- Bel-Air is easier, but not by much. It averaged ~1.2 strokes less than Riviera, but still averaged +4. Courses that are too easy definitely are on the opposite side. Courses that are too easy wouldn’t be on the enjoyable side, but compared to Riviera, I need something slightly easier to play all the time.
- Tunnels throughout the course. This includes, for example, the tunnel from behind the dumb (see the worst Bel-Air award below) 16th hole’s green to 17 tee. A volunteer told us members compete to see who can throw/roll their golf ball farthest down and closest to 17th tee. Sure, the tunnels are just connecting the course between the hills, but that’s a fun aspect you don’t see much. (Also, I won the competition in our group!)
- How about the celeb parts of the course? Like on the hillside to the left of number 4, which was the cave where Tarzan lived in the first Tarzan movie. The 8th hole were Howard Hughes once landed his plane to impress Katharine Hepburn. Or the original Bachelor Mansion to the left of 11 tee (which I can’t confirm cause I never watched that show back then, or even at all).
It’s not only those parts of the course that make it enjoyable; the design is fantastic. After playing these two George Thomas courses, he’s very high on my list of favorite course designers.
Best Hole at Riviera
Like most of these awards, it’s difficult to pick the winner for the best hole at Riv. In this case, I’m going to pick one of the more straightforward holes which I’m a big fan of. I’m go with number 9.
Expect a perfect shot, and be surprised if it isn’t
The video below has the CBS coverage of the ending to this year’s Masters. If you want to relive the excitement from the ending, feel free to watch the entire clip, otherwise, fast forward to the 41 second mark which shows Justin Rose missing his birdie putt on the 72nd hole which would have forced Sergio to make his ~4-5 footer to tie.
Did you see his reaction? If not, here’s a screenshot of what he looks like after missing that putt:
Gasp!
Story Time
During my sophomore year in college, I’m like 75% sure I had the lowest putts per round average in the 2010-2011 NCAA season, at least against teams who kept their stats with Golf Stat. I’ve been trying to confirm or deny that but can’t find the past stats from the site. One of the biggest reasons for that is because I averaged something like 10 GIR per round which meant I needed to drain a lot of putts to keep the scores somewhat low. But despite how badly I hit the ball, I did drain a ton of putts.
The specific moment I’m talking about here was at the 2011 NCAA championship at Karsten Creek in Oklahoma, which played incredibly difficult then with the long bermuda rough and woods on every hole which meant a lost ball if it got anywhere near the forest. It was the 16th hole (my 7th) in the first round where this memory comes to life. I missed the fairway on the par 4, had to whack it out of that rough, and then whacked a garbage wedge shot to something like 30 feet past the hole.
I remember walking up to the green incredibly relieved to finally not have to hit any more full shots on this hole, and knowing, legitimately knowing, that I was going to make that for par. It was this downhill somewhat sliding putt that I read, stood over the ball knowing it was going to drop, and never had a doubt that it was going in.
I’m not lying by saying that over the putt. I knew that I was going to make it. And if it hadn’t, I’d have been surprised, just like Justin Rose above.
The Correct Attitude
It’s difficult to convince people here what the “correct” attitude on a golf course is. On Tour, there are club slammers (Jon Rham), there are giant fist pumpers (TDubs), small fist pumpers (PMick), there are expressionless players (DJ), caddie complainers (Bubba). For me, I slam my club too often (my b), but I’ve only mini-fist pumped twice in my life (both on the last hole of a US Am. qualifier when I knew I’d made it), and can’t say I complain to my caddie since I pretty much never have one (shoutout to Grant!). And those different on course attitudes can definitely suit people with different overall attitudes.
As the title of this post says, my advice is to always expect a perfect shot, and be surprised if it isn’t. I can claim I have proof of why this attitude is perfect from that NCAA putt, but I look back and wish I had extended that attitude from the putting green to all shots.
I cannot push this enough. When watching the Masters this year that showed Justin Rose being surprised rather than angry with his missed putt, I finally knew I had a way to prove that at least one of the top 10 players in the world has this attitude. And I’ll guess that others do as well, but we just can’t see it.
If you’ve read all the way down to the bottom of the post here, you need to use this attitude.
Golf On The Mind 