Saturday, February 2, 2013

Slough of Despond

Lately, I've been thinking of editing the title of this blog from "learning a good golf swing is difficult, but realistic" to "learning a good golf swing is not only difficult—it's nearly impossible." When I think about a real swing, I'm reminded of the "Slough of Despond" in John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, the archetype of discouragement and demoralization.

As you know by now, from previous posts, I am a devoted student of the swing. I know much more about the swing than I can actually perform. That's probably true of most golfers who take the swing seriously, but what I've been learning over the past few months is that the familiar credos about the swing are sayings that I thought I knew, but really didn't. Often, lately, I find myself thinking, "Oh, that's what that means!" At the same time, I'm realizing that what I thought I knew and had incorporated into my swing was something that I really didn't understand and wasn't performing. In other words, in trying to learn the golf swing, you think you know something about it, but you really don't: a perfect George Carlin moment.

So, I haven't written for a long time, mainly because things were changing so quickly that keeping up with them would be a full-time job, and I already had one. Also, my efforts weren't getting me anywhere fast.

Then I had my "Aha!" moment back in the fall, when a video of my "swing" showed me that I didn't have one; I was all arms, hitting at the ball. Casting, hitting way behind the ball, losing clubhead speed way before impact. Powerless effort instead of effortless power. Then, in my customary fashion, I decided that I couldn't live with this and went to a new pro to work on developing a real golf swing.

Dante Antonini, Teaching Pro at Yorktown Baseball and Golf
The new pro was Dante Antonini, who came from Knollwood CC to be the full-time pro at Yorktown  Baseball and Golf (and on Facebook). He has a great swing (which I recognized from a distance the second I saw it when I drove into the parking lot) and devotes himself to helping everyone who shows up at the range. So I immediately bought a series of lessons. And he told me what I needed to know. The trouble is that I can't do what the golf swing demands.

I don't even understand what the golf swing demands. But, whatever it is, I can't do it. And neither can practically every other golfer on earth. I looked into the statistics. Leaving out the PGA stats on golfers with handicaps, or indexes, this is what it comes down to. From a Website I found, these are the discouraging numbers. If there were 1000 golfers on the planet, only ten percent of them would ever break 90. Of those, only ten percent would ever break 80. And we're not talking about averages here. Would EVER break 80. And of those, only ten percent would ever break 70. And of those, only a very small percentage would make it onto the PGA Tour.

Those numbers confirmed for me that learning a good golf swing is virtually impossible. Very few human beings can do it. Once I realized this, I decided that there is no point in taking my quest for a golf swing so seriously. I could try to teach my wife how to play tennis, for example. I used to be a decent player, and I understand the tennis strokes and could teach them to someone else, but I don't know how to hit a drive 250 yards.

As a result, my life is returning to normal. The golf swing is on the back burner. I still go to the range, maybe once a week, usually less now that winter temperatures are often below 30 degrees, and I have a nine-iron in my living room so that I can rehearse swings.

Trying to learn a good golf swing is an addiction, and I'm an addict. So, instead of going to the range at every opportunity, I've been Googling the swing. I'm more interested in a "Virtual Swing." And I've been looking at all the hits on the "Double Pendulum" swing. It makes all kinds of sense to me, in a theoretical way, but the only people I see actually doing this are on the PGA Tour. I don't see anyone at the range swinging like this. The only one I see is my pro, Dante. And in the early spring, some college and high school teams come to the range to get ready for their season.

As I told an acquaintance yesterday, forget about golf. Take up boxing.