Worst Golf Instruction/Advice/Tip

[brianmontgomery2000]

I wish I had had as clear a picture as Yoda's avatar to guide me. That image alone could have saved me God knows how many strokes over the years and made my ball striking what I have always believed it could be...and what it is on its way to becoming with all the help on here!

[O.B.Left]

I regret mentioning Jimmy Ballard's name , that isnt right. I dont know the guy , he may have some fine insights on golf, what do I know anyways.......but the maintain the triangle theory on the backswing killed me, for years.

No bending right elbow, no right forearm magic. Jimmy Ballard, Jimmy Ballard......I feel very small right now. Ballard , Jimmy.
Great sales pitch though. Great. But a death elixir. Hogan did not do that.

[golfgnome]

I regret mentioning Jimmy Ballard's name , that isnt right. I dont know the guy , he may have some fine insights on golf, what do I know anyways.......but the maintain the triangle theory on the backswing killed me, for years.

No bending right elbow, no right forearm magic. Jimmy Ballard, Jimmy Ballard......I feel very small right now. Ballard , Jimmy.
Great sales pitch though. Great. But a death elixir. Hogan did not do that.

I worked with Jimmy back in the day. Never once did I hear no bending of the elbow or was I told to sway. If anything he was the first teacher that told me how to use my right side and "trace" the outside rail (the plane line). Spring the shaft was what I heard. Still good today.

Jimmy could also fix somebody faster than just about anyone. I think he got a bad reputation because his followers bastardized his message just as many did to Homer's work.

[airair]

I regret mentioning Jimmy Ballard's name , that isnt right. I dont know the guy , he may have some fine insights on golf, what do I know anyways.......but the maintain the triangle theory on the backswing killed me, for years.

No bending right elbow, no right forearm magic. Jimmy Ballard, Jimmy Ballard......I feel very small right now. Ballard , Jimmy.
Great sales pitch though. Great. But a death elixir. Hogan did not do that.

[brianmontgomery2000]

I worked with Jimmy back in the day. Never once did I hear no bending of the elbow or was I told to sway. If anything he was the first teacher that told me how to use my right side and "trace" the outside rail (the plane line). Spring the shaft was what I heard. Still good today.

I don't remember the book advising a sway necessarily. I may have just picked that up watching his star pupil, Curtis Strange (I am recalling that right I think).

[O.B.Left]

I worked with Jimmy back in the day. Never once did I hear no bending of the elbow or was I told to sway. If anything he was the first teacher that told me how to use my right side and "trace" the outside rail (the plane line). Spring the shaft was what I heard. Still good today.

Jimmy could also fix somebody faster than just about anyone. I think he got a bad reputation because his followers bastardized his message just as many did to Homer's work.

Hey Jeff

Nice to hear from you. I do admit that its been a long while since I read his book ...... maybe I got that maintain the intact triangle on the backswing thing from somewhere else then? If so then I regret attributing that horrible methodology to Mr Ballard and stand corrected.

So he traced the target line with his right side and folded his right elbow? Man, why didnt I get that message back in the day?

Good luck with the coming season.

[brianmontgomery2000]

Here's another one from the old days...

The now so called "old" ball flight laws. Heck, I was just drawing these on a white board at work like a year ago. (I've been away from the game for like ten years...)

How long have we misdiagnosed swing problems based on those!

[Yoda]

Thanks for this, Air.

I know what Jimmy Ballard is saying here. Leaving aside various references to the connection of the left arm, its role in the golf swing, and those actions causing its radius and arc to change -- -- the action he recommends inhibits getting laid off on the Backstroke or under-rolled through the Ball. These are Clubshaft and Clubface considerations. Just as important, demonstrated but not mentioned, is the Mechanical Advantage gained by the Overtaking Action (of the Flat Left Wrist by the Clubhead) through Impact. (Jimmy's obvious Sway [1:36-1:40] is not requisite to this Overtaking Action and should be avoided.) In a world desperate for Simplified Golf, this tip is a winner.

Unfortunately, for those seeking more precision -- that would be us -- there are no alignments to control that left elbow action. (Indeed, I'm sure Jimmy would say that the "left elbow down" is the alignment.) But what we're really talking about here is both Forearms fanning -- the Right Forearm fanning (about the elbow) in the Start Up and Backstroke and Left Forearm fanning (about the elbow) in the Release and Follow-Through.

The good news is that both Elbows have a control: the Left Wrist. Via its Wrist Action (7-18 ) and Hinge Action, (7-10) the Left Wrist controls the respective Elbow Motions while maintaining its mission-critical alignments related to the Inclined Plane. Which, of course, is boss.

In fact, Jimmy's tip is all about helping the golfer achieve the precision Turn and Roll of the Left Arm and Club (Primary Lever Assembly / 6-A-2) and its #3 Power Accumulator Angle (6-B-3-0) as established at Impact Fix (8-2) and regulated per 2-G. (Non-TGMers reading that last sentence should stop after the words "left arm and club".) Jimmy's tip would be helpful to almost all handicap golfers (which is why he delivered it in the first place).

My only beef is that all this dumbing down -- Position Golf versus Alignment Golf -- is now expected in the golf teaching business, and precision has gone buh-bye. (This was not the case, by the way, when Robert T. Jones, Jr., aka Bobby Jones, was writing his scholarly, nationally-syndicated weekly newspaper columns in the 1930s). Especially with regards to the Hands. (Unless, of course, you want your left elbow to control your golf stroke.) The truth is that the Hands (specifically, in this instance, the Left Wrist and its complementary Right Wrist) control and execute these precision alignments, and the left and right elbows respond accordingly.

In Jimmy's prescription, the Hands . . . the Hands . . . are conspicuously absent.

Regarding his Ben Hogan reference, I've just finished reading former LPGA Tour player Kris Tschetter's wonderful new book, Mr. Hogan, The Man I Knew. (Buy it on Amazon at a significant discount here http://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listi...ndition=used).

Here are three quotes that summarize how important Mr. Hogan viewed the Hands:

"Once again he focused on my hands. That should have come as no surprise. Mr. Hogan had a simple philosophy when it came to golf: The player's only contact with the ball comes through the club, and the only contact with the club comes through the hands. To him the hands are like tires touching a racetrack. The engine, transmission, steering, and aerodynamics don't mean a thing, if the only parts of the car touching the road are faulty. In golf, everything begins with the hands, and Mr. Hogan knew more about the effects of the grip on the swing than anyone who had ever played. According to Mr. Hogan, the slightest variation in any aspect of the hands, whether it was the position of the thumb or an increase in the pressure of one finger, could change the swing entirely."

"It seemed so strange to me. No one had ever focused so much on my hands."

"I still didn't understand everything he was trying to get me to do with my hands. In fact, as I stood there watching him walk away, only one word came to mind: Wow."

In the same chapter she spoke of the article Mr. Hogan said he would one day write:

"The left hand is the steering wheel and the right hand is the gas. Once you get your grip on there correctly, the left hand controls where the ball goes, and the right hand provides the power."

Ben Hogan never wrote his article, but Homer Kelley wrote his book, The Golfing Machine:

" . . . you will save yourself much anguish by using the Right Hand just for sensing and controlling acceleration and the Left Hand just for controlling alignments. Right Hand -- Clubhead. Left Hand -- Clubface." (1-F)

Rarely does a day go by that I do not thank God for Homer Kelley, his Golfing Machine, and his personal tutelage.

Today is another of those days.

[gmbtempe]

That is a really good post....

so since Homer got it all wrong then I just suppose it makes Hogan all wrong.

Such bad company I guess.

[Yoda]

I worked with Jimmy back in the day. Never once did I hear no bending of the elbow or was I told to sway. If anything he was the first teacher that told me how to use my right side and "trace" the outside rail (the plane line). Spring the shaft was what I heard. Still good today.

Jimmy could also fix somebody faster than just about anyone. I think he got a bad reputation because his followers bastardized his message just as many did to Homer's work.

Glad to hear that, Jeff, but . . .

At least in the mid-'70s -- you were less than ten years old at the time -- Jimmy Ballard taught a sway.

Big time.

(If you want to see it done in person, look at Air's Post #14 above at 1:36-1:40.)

How do I know?

Because, for one full day, that's what he and one of his assistants taught me -- indeed, insisted that I do -- at his teaching range in Pell City, Alabama. I was not a "reverse-pivot-er" and have tons of pre-Jimmy photos to prove it.

The mantra: Move the weight and head to the right, then "fire" the right arm. "Nobody keeps their head still", right? The swing has "two pivot points", right? Move to the right and turn on the right leg. Then, move to the left and turn on the left leg. Let the head go with the motion.

All s-o-o-o logical and all so wrong. And all filtered down from three-time 1930s PGA Tour Money Winner Bill Mehlhorn to baseball great Sam Byrd and, finally, through Jimmy's own prism.

"Many a slip 'twixt the cup and the lip."

I never heard a word about "tracing an outside rail" or "springing" the clubshaft. Of course, the Left Side Chorus of the 1970s Golf Digest Schools left the door wide open for Jimmy's liberating message to "fire the right side". Mac McLendon http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_McLendon and Jim Colbert http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Colbert performed on Tour and the world came calling.

I was there.

At Jimmy's and his assistant's direction, I swayed my head off the ball and my weight laterally "into [my] right hip" on the backswing, and then I "fired" my right side, by the hour for six hours. I did all I could do to do exactly what they were asking me to do. I have never felt more out of control swinging a golf club.

At the lunch break, they took me into a little motel room at the complex. Over a sandwich and chips, they flashed some Hogan 1948 Power Golf slides on the wall. They all showed the "head back" and big back lean away from the target. (Thirty-five years later, I was to learn about parallax and how it can affect photographs).

"See?" said they.

"Yes." said I.

Then back into Hell's Kitchen.

I had arrived a halfway decent, low-handicap ball striker and had paid my $100+ bucks in 1970s-type money (regular gas was at 40 cents a gallon; do the math). I had no game: Club championship stuff (but in a top-flight club!) and a former USAF Tactical Air Command Championship team player. Still . . .

I left -- seven hours later -- shanking every shot. Unbeknownst to me, I had been transformed from a Centered Swinger to a Swaying Hitter (with none of the latter alignments supplied).

At day's end, I asked Jimmy simply, "Why am I shanking everything? And, why should I move to the right like this?'

To which he replied, in words indelibly imprinted on my memory:

"Don't pick it apart, son."

I had come to him, a now renowned "expert", and paid a lot of money (at least for a young insurance agent with a non-working wife and three kids) to "pick it apart".

But he couldn't do it. At least not to my satisfaction. Not then. Not now.

I'm okay with not being able to do some athletic something. (That said, I'm reasonably coordinated: I made straight A's in six quarters of Physical Education at Georgia Tech).

I'm not okay with not knowing what it is I can't do.

Insult to Injury Category:

Jimmy pointed to newly-minted LPGA Tour player Joan Joyce 'swaying and firing' beside us. Impressive! Joan Joyce, former softball fast-pitch champion, the fastest in the world. A magnificent, gifted athlete. She pitched 150 no-hit, no-run games and 50 perfect games.Further, her career batting average is .324. Somewhere along the way, she was inducted into the Connecticut's Women's Basketball Hall of Fame.

She never made it in pro golf.

But later, Hal Sutton and Curtis Strange did.

Fortunately, my continued journey led me to Homer Kelley.

Until tonight, courtesy of Google http://www.fausports.com/sports/w-go...ce_joan00.html, I had no idea what happened to Joan.