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1 Sep 2020 admin

Editorial – Big Opportunities for Teaching Professionals Coming Up

The COVID-19 pandemic will go down in our lifetimes as one of the most significant events – if that’s the right word – that we’ve encountered. Businesses and schools were closed, livelihoods and life savings were lost, all in an attempt to stem the outbreak. I will admit that my opinion on how we and other nations handled the virus probably doesn’t square with what most people think, so I’ll keep my specific thoughts to myself. Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I am not dismissing the many lives lost to the virus. It is a tragedy of epic proportions and I truly have great empathy and sympathy for those families and friends mourning the loss of loved ones. But I also have great empathy and sympathy for those whose futures have been permanently compromised due to the mitigation strategies employed here and elsewhere. Unfortunately, it seems that there were truly no good choices in how to handle this. As with anything, life goes on. And I’ve been lucky enough to see an uptick in my teaching business at Southbridge Savannah Golf Course in – where else? – Savannah, Georgia. People have been seeking healthy outdoor activities, and golf has been one beneficiary. This has translated into people wanting to improve their games. Hopefully, my fellow teachers have experienced this, too. Is this golf “bounce” permanent, or at least long-lasting? I hope so, and I believe so. The same things that drew us to the game are drawing new people to the sport and also reclaiming long-lost golfers who abandoned the game in search of career success. But in talking to some of these people who have come back to the game after a years-long absence, I get the sense that they now realize life is more than about chasing the almighty dollar. Sure, earning money is important, but it seems that these people realize they have earned enough to start enjoying the fruits of their labors. We stand to benefit in the coming years, and by putting forth our best efforts, we can help assure the well being of our sport for a long time. By Mark Harman, USGTF National Course Director

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15 Aug 2020 admin

The Odds Were Always In His Favor

By Mike Stevens USGTF Member Tampa, Florida Early golf in the United States was a gambler’s paradise, from legitimate wagers to more seedy pots controlled by mobsters. On the professional side, it was common for players to barnstorm the country, challenging locals to a money game backed by wealthy businessmen or scoundrels with several side bets among the gallery. It was pretty much a necessity, as professional tournament winnings barely covered expenses. Despite the so-called purity of amateur golf, some of the largest transfers of cash occurred at private clubs in Calcutta pools. It was just the way of the times, and one person was adept at taking advantage of gullible blue bloods around the country. Alvin Clarence Thomas, aka Titanic Thompson, born on November 30, 1893, in southwest Missouri, became the most storied gambler in American history. Abandoned by his father, Alvin grew up on a farm in Rogers, Arkansas, with his mother and stepfather. An unruly child who disdained education, he left at age 16 with no money and entered the school of hard knocks. His street smarts would see him through a life of hustling and wagering on just about everything involving a gamble from cards to dice to pool, and even horseshoes. He spent hours on end honing his skills and could deal off the bottom of a deck of cards with both hands. His card throwing skills were legendary, but many of his bets were set up skillfully to dupe the poor rube he suckered into a wager. He took special pleasure in swindling the rich and famous. One time he bet Al Capone he could throw a lemon over a five-story building. Capone picked a lemon from a nearby fruit vendor, but little did he know that Thompson’s sleight of hand changed out the lemon for one he had filled with buckshot. Capone handed over $500 as the lemon flew over the building. Golf offered Titanic everything he loved: wagers of every kind and incessant hours of solitary practice. His relentless repetition with right- and left-handed clubs made him equally proficient from both sides of the ball. He spent a year just honing his skills before he set about challenging his marks at exclusive clubs of the rich and famous. All the while, he continued raking in cash from his flair with cards and pool cues. One day in the company of Capone and his entourage, Thompson declared that he could hit a 500-yard drive with a hickory club. Eager gamblers were ready to take him up on it, but he declared only when he was ready, “I have to feel it,” he said. So, one day in the middle of winter he announced that this was the day. Off they went to the local club and Titanic teed up the ball. There was as much as $50,000 on the line. Thompson addressed the ball and then turned around and launched the ball down the frozen lake behind the tee. The hoodwinked mobsters could only pay up as their convoluted code required them to honor the bet even if snookered. Another story involves a time when Thompson said he could mark a ball with an X and hit it into a nearby pond and dive in and come up with the same ball. Little did the poor marks know that on the previous day, he hit several balls marked with an X into the pond. It was easy money. Now you understand the man and why the odds were always in his favor. Over the course of his golf life, he teamed with some of the most famous professional golfers of the era in big-money matches including Ben Hogan, Sam Snead and Byron Nelson. It was Thompson who arranged a famous match involving Ray Floyd and Lee Trevino with $100,000 on the line.

Wherever big money and gambling were, Titanic Thompson was around. When mobster Arnold Rothstein was murdered after a poker game where he refused to pay up, thinking the game was fixed, Thompson was one of the players at the table. Whether you approve or not, his life story is fascinating and worth the read. He’ll be forever known as the man who would bet on everything.

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1 Aug 2020 admin

Improve Your Golf Practice Training Using P-M-I Miss Identifiers

By Arlen Bento Jr., USGTF Member, Jensen Beach, Florida

Do you or your students still have a lot of mistakes on holes that are keeping your score from being lower? You may need to look at how you miss on the golf course to make improvements.

For many players, understanding how and why they miss on the golf course is a very important part of game improvement. If you study your golf game as we do in our golf instruction programs, including my “Bento Golf Method,” you start to see tendencies. These tendencies define a player’s game and show how them how to make improvements.

Years ago, I came up with a concept that I call “P-M-I Miss Identifiers.” This concept has been very successful in the development of my players. When you play golf, you miss shots. Over time, the idea is that you need to identify and categorize those missed shots and eliminate them from your scorecard.

For example, I once had a player who was stuck at scoring in the low 80s. After looking over a few scorecards and using my P-M-I Miss Identifier system, we determined that his 3-wood was costing him 3-4 shots a round. Before his next round, we took out the 3-wood, used a 5- wood instead, and he shot a 75. We spent time working on the 3-wood over the next few weeks to figure out why the 3-wood was not working well. We made improvements and inserted the 3-wood back into his bag. This is a simple example, but the concept is powerful and creates the basis for my P-M-I Miss Identifier system.

Another example of how the P-M-I Miss Identifier system works is we had a good player who was having a tough time backing up a low- 70s score on the second day of a 36-hole golf tournament. The player would score a 73 on the first day, then come back the next day with an 81. This is very common in golf.

We broke down his golf scorecard using P-M-I Miss Identifiers and found that the majority of his misses were coming with his 6-, 5- and 4- irons that he was using to hit at the flag on longer par-4 holes and longer par-3 holes. We developed a strategy for him not to hit at any flags with those clubs, play for the middle of the green, and making sure that if he caught a really good hit that the shot could not get to the back of the green. This strategy eliminated 2-3 shots per round and protected his birdies from bogeys or worse on these long shots. His scores went down and he was able to shoot more tournament rounds back-to-back in the low 70s that earned him a college scholarship.

My P-M-I Miss Identifier system offers an analysis of your golf round by looking at how many misses you create on your scorecard. To use this system, you need to go back through your round and identify every miss or mistake that you made during your round – anything that costs you a stroke!

There are three types of misses in every golf round in my P-M-I Miss Identifier system. The first miss is a physical miss (P). A physical miss is just a bad swing or bad technique. When you analyze your scorecard, you label every physical miss with a “P.” An example of a physical miss could be a slice swing out of bounds, a fat shot from the middle of the fairway with an iron, or a chili-dip on a chip shot.

The second kind of miss is a mental miss (M). A mental miss is any time you just did not have the proper focus on a shot. Examples of mental misses include getting distracted by people talking or a golf cart moving close by. Even a course worker driving a mower across the fairway 200 yards away that catches your eye, if you were distracted and you were not focused on your shot and missed, is a mental miss. When you analyze your scorecard, you label every mental miss with an “M,”

The third kind of miss is an intellectual miss (I). An intellectual miss happens when you try to hit a shot that is just not a good decision based on your skill set, or a shot that has a very low probability for success. Examples of intellectual misses including trying to hit a low-lofted club out of the rough, or trying to hit a delicate flop shot off a hardpan lie. When you analyze your scorecard, you label every intellectual miss with the letter “I.”

Breaking down your golf game with my P-M-I Miss Identifiers is a very powerful tool to help with golf improvement. As players break down their golf rounds, we find tendencies based on my P-M-I Miss Identifier system.

If a player has a lot of physical misses, we need to take a look at instruction, working on how to better hit the clubs that are causing the misses. If a player has a lot of mental misses, we need to take a look at a better pre-shot routine, or recognizing when we lose our focus and develop a plan to refocus before we hit a golf shot. If a player has a lot of intellectual misses, we need to talk about shots and the ability to pull shots off, how and why shots work and learning more about the percentages of execution.

Normally, when we do an analysis for P-M-I Miss Identifiers, we find 10-15 misses per round for most mid-handicappers. Once we have identified these misses, we come up with a strategy to eliminate these misses from the scorecard, ultimately lowering the score of the player.

Arlen Bento Jr. is an award winning golf coach and “Top 100” world-recognized golf instructor. He is the former head golf professional of the PGA Country Club in PGA Village, Florida, and former director of golf/general manager of Eagle Marsh Golf Club in Jensen Beach, Florida. He operates his indoor golf center in Stuart, Florida, and his outdoor golf academy in Port St. Lucie, Florida, where he specializes in player development and offers his highly successful “Bento Golf Method” to players that want to learn how to get better. For more information, you can contact him via his website https://arlenbentojrgolflessons.com.

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1 Aug 2020 admin

Editorial – The Bryson DeChambeau Experiment

Unless you truly don’t follow professional golf at all, you know that the distances professional players are hitting the ball these days has been a major topic of conversation. The USGA and R&A are making rumblings in trying to reign in the long bombs that some of the modern players launch.

Professional golfer Bryson DeChambeau has taken his quest for distance to a new extreme, dramatically transforming his body this past offseason in gaining weight and muscle. The recent COVID-19 shutdown also helped DeChambeau in his quest as he bulked up even more. His victory recently at the Rocket Mortgage Classic was fueled by a driving distance average of over 350 yards. Traditionally, that type of distance was the domain of those on the long drive circuit, but they use 48-inch drivers, the maximum allowed. I wouldn’t bet against DeChambeau from being competitive against those guys if he too, hit a driver that long.

There is no doubt that hitting the ball farther is a great asset, as long as the golfer has the skill to pull it off. There was a long-hitting professional golfer named Victor Shwamkrug 15-20 years ago who blasted the ball far past his fellow competitors, but he did not possess the game that DeChambeau did. As long as DeChambeau can keep his tee ball reasonably in play, he stands to be a major force.

Should those of us who don’t play for a living strive to hit the ball farther, provided we have the time and energy to pursue it? Well, look at it this way. My clubhead speed, once I’m warmed up, is 94 mph. (That’s a 7 mph drop-off from my younger days, but we won’t talk about that!) The average PGA Tour pro is at 113 mph, so that’s 1.202 times faster than what I can do. We can use that figure, 1.202, as a multiplier and divisor. If I were to play a 7,200-yard course, that would be like the average tour player playing from 8,654 yards. Dividing 7,200 yards by 1.202, I would have to play at 5,990 yards to have the same experience as a tour pro. When I played professionally in the mid-1990s, I could drive the ball about 250 yards with a good strike. That was still about 20 yards behind the average guy back then, and even though I won some mini-tour events and defeated guys who later played on the PGA Tour, it was a major factor in my inability to play at a higher level.

If an average male golfer, who typically has a 90 mph swing speed, were to go up to 100 mph through training, what could he expect to score, based purely on the increase in distance? The USGA course rating formula, which says every 220-yard difference in a course is equal to one stroke, offers a key. A golfer who swings at 90 mph playing a 6,000-yard course would effectively shorten the course by approximately 600 yards if he could gain 10 mph of driver clubhead speed, which would be almost a three-shot difference.

However, most golfers have little interest in working that hard physically to gain distance. Instead, they want a quick “tip,” but it takes more than that. If they’re willing to do a complete program, including optimizing their equipment for distance, working on technique and putting in the physical training, they can indeed gain some distance, and in the end, produce lower scores.

By Mark Harman, USGTF National Course Director

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