Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Frank and the video of his swing

Frank a sheet metal worker had taken a few golf lessons. Each lesson went the same, I would give my instruction and then Gus his friend would give him either his version of my lesson or tell him ten mechanical things to do.
One day Frank walks into the shop and tells me that he had seen pictures of his swing and that it looked terrible. He said, his club would come straight up and it looked like he wasn’t taking the club away long enough, said he was going to try and take the club away slow and low for the first foot.
O.K., “I said, how long do you intend to do that? How many buckets of balls are you going to hit in next few weeks to fix that pesky problem?
“I hit a few buckets a week”.
Did you know that according to the PGA it takes up to forty- hours to change muscle-memory? Three buckets a week would take you over twelve weeks to accomplish that. What are you going to do when you forget to do it?
“I won’t forget to do it”, he said.
“How do you know if you are doing it correct if you don’t have the camera on you videoing every shot you take? How do you know if you are not correcting one thing and screwing up another?”
A mechanic named Bob was listening in. I turned to Bob and asked, “If I looked at an engine or listened to an engine would I be able to determine what is wrong or right with my car”.
Bob said, “you should be able too”.
I told Bob, “I’m not a mechanic”, and that, “I didn’t understand the first thing about such things.”
Bob said, “well, then you might have a problem”.
I said, “Bob would it be easier for me, as a layman, to feel the performance of the car rather than trying to fix something I know little of? Isn’t it easier to tell if the car is out of alignment then it might be to determine any real malfunction of the vehicle?
Frank understood where I was going but then again Frank likes to tinker with “things”, you could see it in his eyes.
Oh well?


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The moral of the story:

Remember the movie staring Tom Cruise, Rolling Thunder, he didn’t know a thing about cars but he knew how to drive fast. As a player, it might be better to think of yourself as the driver of the car rather than the mechanic. Beside, didn’t Cruise get the girl?

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