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Lights-Out Putting
A Mind, Body, and Soul Approach to Golf's Game
Within the Game
by Todd Sones with David DeNunzio
Contemporary Books, 2000
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Books on putting can leave the reader with Warren Report-like disquiet. Here, for example, the author, a Golf magazine Top 100 instructor, expertly dissects the facts as we have them. The fundamentals include a sound set-up (bending from the hips, not the waist), a reliable pre-shot routine, productive and studious practice, positive imagery, a good attitude. These are widely in general agreement. (We're also given a comprehensive discourse on plumb-bobbing and green reading.) Still, the feeling is hard to shake. No matter how closely we scrutinize the footage, we can't help conclude that a body of evidence suggests there are clearly other, less quantifiable, forces at work - Genius, Fate and Destiny among them.
The author sticks with hard data. Typically, he quantifies, the best putter wins - at the pro level, and more so the higher the handicap - something, he says, like 40 percent or more, whereas for the pros putting accounts for 30-35 percent of strokes. A reprinted index of the 1999 season shows that on the PGA, LPGA and Senior PGA Tours, the vast majority of winners were at or near the top of the putting chart for the week. Well, yea.
A sign of the times, the author acknowledges the space between the ears. "Store successes in your mind," he suggests. "A good putter trusts more than he or she tries." "Good putting is like a good marriage: You need trust and a commitment to the line that you've chosen to putt along."
That supreme confidence, common to great chefs, tenors, and bullpen closers, or putting masters, may not be found in books but Sones logically lays out his points. Those in need of substance and structure will find it. There are drills, tips and bromides like: "Five minutes on the practice tee will loosen you up, but five minutes on the practice green will lower your scores."
All it takes, he argues, is practice, perseverance and patience. We must:
- Rid our body of tension.
- Secure our head and chest.
- Move the putter with our arms.
- Ingrain the feeling of arm separation.
- Stroke along the target line.
- Match stroke length with the length of the putt.
- Match backstroke length with forward stroke length.
- Think rhythm and tempo.
- Think rhythm and tempo.
- Think rhythm and tempo.
It's that easy. And, yet, among generations of the most talented and determined, lightning just won't stay in the bottle.
Rating: Cat-Stroker * * *
A little Updike, a dash of Darwin, some Jenkins, a Haultain snippet, a tsp. of Wodehouse. Good ingredients if reheated and poorly served. There is an outtake from Bud Shrake recounting Harvey Penick's uneventful meeting with James Michener, but it's not worth the price of admission. Say this: the graphic artists at Woodford Press understand taking dead aim. You'll swear looking at the cover that this is another from Harvey's casebook.
A chapbook, we learn, is a primer, akin to Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanac. They apparently went out with stiff collars, and one can see why, even with our declining attention spans. This is a case of literary short sheeting.
Always nice as it is to renew acquaintance with Goldfinger (I'd forgotten that he putted croquet style), we aren't given the full chapter of the delightful match with Bond, just the equivalent of an M&M. The flavor's been cruelly blanched out of these classics. Strangest of all is the inclusion of an interview with baseball pitcher Curt Shilling. No offense but Roger Maltbie, for some reason, is here too.
Tailored to those seeking to cross off the golfer on their holiday gift list, iff you don't already have any of these folks in more complete, edifying and satisfying platefuls, dig deep. Or, if the names don't mean anything to you, find a better collection (there are many). Do not pay full retail.
Rating: Scooper * *.
Marketing Jane Goodalls among the golfing
apes, the D.S. has been poking its nose into the playing habits of professional golfers since the Depression.
They also track consumer trends. Their latest findings are now being served up buffet style, perhaps the start of a series of published annual reports billed as this one is as a "A Consumer Resource."
Given our penchant to buy first and complain later, the interest among golfers for such information would seem flimsy at best, but there is some fun reading amongst the charts and graphics, such as:
- Some golf bags offer club locks.
- Among sponsors emblazoned on tour bags, in Japan there's Mr. Donut and Mr. Magic.
- Almost all of the world's elite use graphite shafted drivers - except Tiger and Sergio.
- T-shirts rank second in golf shirts behind only Ashworth.
"If you flew over the United States and took a picture of everyone on public and private golf courses during the month of July," they conclude, "you would find that the majority of golfers would be wearing shirts that are a non-golf brand. Imagine!
Despite the depth of research: gloves, balls, drivers, bags, irons, putter grips; everything, it seems, except headcovers, the D.S. stops short of Consumer Reports. There are, regrettably, no direct comparisons nor any sharply drawn contrasts between manufacturers with respect to performance. This may explain their long years of unfettered access.
We are offered general recommendations in the form of "Satisfaction" rankings, with opinions are grouped by age and handicap. Putter preference, interestingly, seems to transcend differences in skill. Their conclusion: "Irons are harder to shop for than putters."
Mostly we're back where we started: slaves to our own club lust, and to marketing glam and ad smoke and mirrors. If it helps to know that Callaway irons dominate the LPGA Tour but that Mizuno has a significant lead over Ping, Titleist and Cleveland on the PGA Tour, well, then, now you know. And, as the Darrell folks would be the first to tell you, when it comes to clubs, "feel" remains ever elusive. Nothing beats slinging them around, which helps explain why chipshot.com is no longer with us.
Those lusting for inside information, not only about what the pros play (and endorse), but also about things like "bounce" and perimeter weighting, or what fairway woods are most popular with those 30 and under use compared to those aged 31 to 50, dig in! No one searches through the club-infested jungles like these folks. If only they'd tell us what they really think.
Rating: Cat-Stroker * * *
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The Walter Hagen Story
By The Haig Himself
Simon and Schuster, 1956
Reprinted by Vintage Publishing Co.
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This festive serving of spin, written wistfully late in the match, has been brought back to life by an entrepreneurial member of the Golf Collectors' Society. I don't have the price but it's a wonderful period piece, duplicated in paperback from the original down to the jacket and the dedications at a fraction of what the hardcover first editions now fetch.
"I never wanted to be a millionaire," Hagen said, "I just wanted to live like one…" Even if he was expert at nursing drinks and pulling on a crumpled tuxedo in the morning as a ruse to perpetuating his reputation (and ''working'' his opponents), there are numerous aspects to the Haig's character, not to mention his legacy, that make this worthwhile reading. We're taken along on a joyous ride to the dawn of professional golf, as far removed from the present as wood shafts and never to be seen again.
How the landscape has changed, in large part to Hagen's moxie. And for what? Now we've got pros who don't want to live like millionaires, they just want to be them. Lord knows they don't dress like them. Tell me who among today's spartan, diet Coke-swilling, evangelical multi-millionaires could get these words passed their lips: "It gives me pleasure to entertain my friends and I expected to foot the bill." My word! Tiger clips coupons for drive-up burgers!
The Haig entertained famously. He spread the gospel of the game, made good for himself and others, was a stylist and a gentlemen. He apparently kept a lot of his news clippings (no surprise, really) and these are a treat and a testament to his now-eclipsed stature. "All over the world at this moment golfers are engaged in a simultaneous act of homage," the Daily Mail noted after his fourth Open title. "They are taking off their hats with the most generous and courtliest of flourishes to Walter Hagen!"
"There is no envy in him," Grantland Rice wrote. "No hate and no greed."
No wonder he seems so far removed. They broke the mold when he passed and of his splendor we can only imagine. Long live his memory!
Rating: Cat-Stroker * * *
Hank E. would want you to know that he's sure done himself proud here with this "hilarious spoof," "laugh-packed," what in the U.K. might be called "laddish" humor. You'll slap your knees silly.
"When teaching what is wrong with someone's game, tell them to spend less time on the swing, chipping, and putting and more time shoplifting at Crazy Punjab's Novelty, Joke and Snuff Shop."
Oh, that Hank. What a card.
How about a bunch of penis and wedgie jokes? Sexist, homophobic, Hank's got a million of them. And you thought parodies were supposed to be funny.
"Ben Crankshaft, who made a living hustling golfers all around the country and living to tell about…a true Master-"baiter."
"20. During his swing, an opponent will top the ball if you noisily tear a pair of pants in two behind them."
Doesn't he just slay you?
The cover typo and grammatical meanderings are a cue that something's amiss. Not that self-published books can't be terrific, but sometimes there's a very good reason why publishers steer clear of unsolicited manuscripts. One imagines a garage filled with boxes of these babies. Hank's got all the rapier wit of a bludgeon. If the book were just stupid, that wouldn't be so bad - there's a million golf "humor" books - but it's neither funny nor satirical, just coarse and "laddish." Reading it made me feel old and tired, and I'm neither as funny as Steve Allen nor as alarmed as he was at the decline of standards from those desperately seeking a laugh.
Rating: Rodney Spelvin
Light Reading - Edition I
Light Reading - Edition II
Light Reading - Edition III
Light Reading - Edition IV
Light Reading - Edition V
Light Reading - Edition VI
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