Book Review: The
Scientific Golfer: Baselining Basics
- Rick Adams Senior
Editor
To improve at golf, like almost
any endeavor, you must first understand your current level of skill
– your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. You may say, “I slice
my tee shots,” but do you know how much fade to allow for? You may
think you hit a 7-iron 155 yards, but more likely you hit it anywhere
from 142 to 162 yards and between 5 and 15 yards wide of the target.
Understanding your typical shot patterns and true
distance ranges for every club in the bag can make a big difference
in how you plan your way around a golf course. Just look at what
smart golf has done for Phil Mickelson in the past year – a Masters
title, three victories earlier this year, and a return to ranking
among the top 5 players in the world.
Long-lasting game improvement doesn’t necessarily
come from taking a lesson or two, nor from occasional sessions
blasting drivers all over the range. Steady progress requires a
systematic approach, and now there’s a workbook that can help you
focus your practice.
A guy who has applied the scientific method a few
times in his career, aerospace engineer John Griffith, has created a
“benchmarking” kit aimed at serious golfers who want to
intelligently analyze their shotmaking skills. “I wrote this for the
20% of golfers who want a deeper understanding of the mechanics of
the game,” Griffith notes. The complete process takes some time – it
involves hitting a total of 860 balls spread over three different
days -- but in 2-3 hours you can do partial benchmarking on some of
your clubs and extrapolate the data to other clubs in between.
Structured for Success
The benchmarking kit includes
a 200-page book, The Scientific Golfer: Baselining Basics,
a 100-page workbook of the same name with various fill-in-the-blank
templates, and a “Pocket Caddy” which visually depicts your shot
“scatter pattern” for each club.
For each club, you hit 10 shots a session. Using a
simple graphic symbol, you record the result of each shot –
distance, how far off center, and how well you struck the shot (on a
scale of A to F) -- on a preprinted grid in the workbook. You record
similar data for the same club during your 2nd and 3rd sessions but
using different graphic symbols. At the end of the 3 sessions, you
“connect the dots” of outer, inner and middle shot results to create
your personal distance ranges and scatter patterns for each
club.
The distance ranges and scatter patterns get
transferred to the Pocket Caddy, which you use on the course to help
determine what club to use in each situation.
Ideally, to get the best data, you would do your
benchmarking sessions with good golf balls on a well-marked,
accurate range in relatively calm conditions. We all know that
windless days are rare in Texas, perhaps 3 in 10 range balls fly
true, and yardage markers are haphazardly placed at best. Griffith
is lobbying members of the US Driving Range Association as well as
club pros to adopt his system and set aside special benchmarking
areas, including accurately lasered markers every 10 yards.
Another option is for retailers and instructional
facilities with golf simulators to rent their indoor device by the
hour for golfers who want to benchmark a few clubs. Many simulators
calculate both carry and roll yardage, distance off target, and even
launch trajectory and spin rates. The data from a session could be
printed out or copied to disc and plotted on the workbook template
at your convenience.
Late in the day when no one is playing behind me,
I’ve benchmarked individual clubs on par 3 holes or approach shots.
Knowing the distance to the front, middle and back of the green,
I’ll hit as many as 10-12 shots with the same club to determine my
range and accuracy.
Game Management Data
If nothing else, the exercise of pausing after
every practice shot on the range -- to record how you hit it and the
result – will help you better understand the physics of striking the
ball … a shot struck near the heel of the club, for example, will
lose distance and send the ball to the right … an over-the-top pull
will drill the ball left and the de-lofting effect will cause it to
fly farther than normal … a slightly “fat” shot will come up 20
yards short, not the 10 you always thought.
More important, you will see your shot tendencies
emerge on the workbook charts – how many times out of 10 you hit an
“A” shot (if you’re honest with yourself), how many degrees you
normally stray to the right (few righthanders consistently miss
left), how much variance there is between your best shots and your
worst (almost 30 yards for me with a 7 iron, as much as 50 with a
5-wood).
The resulting scatter patterns on your Pocket Caddy
are similar to the “target box” concept I wrote about previously:
“Score Well Without Perfect Shots." By understanding your minimum
carry, maximum carry & roll, and offline tendencies for each
club, you can select the right stick and the target area that offers
you the best risk/reward option for your game. Much smarter than
firing at every flag, hoping for a perfect shot, and suffering a
scorecard filled with double-bogeys and worse.
The Scientific Golfer workbook also includes
sections for benchmarking distance control on approach shots of 10,
20, 30 and 50 yards, as well as putts of 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 feet.
There are also hole diagrams for tracking the results of each shot
during rounds on the course.
Because of the extensive note-taking required, the
process is easier and more fun with a “benchmarking buddy.” You hit,
he writes. He hits, you write. Better than picking the workbook and
pencil off the ground after every swing. (Maybe Griffith will
produce a software version for a Palm Pilot so you just touch the
spot on a screen diagram where the ball lands and the PDA does the
calculations for you.)
Scientist Tricks
Gauging the distance of a shot is not usually
difficult, but calculating how far offline can be, so Griffith has
included a couple of simple techniques that are free and always
available. Both use your hand. In the first, make a fist and extend
your arm. Align your rightmost knuckle with the target – your
leftmost knuckle represents 10 degrees from the target.
For the second trick, you use different
combinations of extended fingers. For example, extending the index
finger and little finger only (the “Hook ‘Em Horns” symbol for
University of Texas fans) represents a 15-degree angle. A fully
extended thumb to little finger span is 25 degrees – which you can
test some night by matching it with the end stars of the Big Dipper
constellation.
Griffith plans additional products under the
Scientific Golfer brand and his “smart golf through simple science”
theme. “This is a brand of products for those serious golfers who
want to totally understand their game and the principles that affect
their ability to conquer it,” he explains. “No gadgets,
endorsements, marketing promises, but facts, statistics, and proven
science-based methods.”
The Scientific Golfer: Baselining
Basics by John A. Griffith Rosetta Stone
Communications, Thousand Oaks CA
$49.95 plus $6.95 S/H through
To improve at golf, like almost
any endeavor, you must first understand your current level of skill
– your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. You may say, “I slice
my tee shots,” but do you know how much fade to allow for? You may
think you hit a 7-iron 155 yards, but more likely you hit it anywhere
from 142 to 162 yards and between 5 and 15 yards wide of the target.
The benchmarking kit includes
a 200-page book, The Scientific Golfer: Baselining Basics,
a 100-page workbook of the same name with various fill-in-the-blank
templates, and a “Pocket Caddy” which visually depicts your shot
“scatter pattern” for each club.