When scores are kept, winning is important.

Winning means playing at a higher level, and in golf, the sport demanding the longest ball flight of all sports, playing at a higher level demands distance.

Barry is a former assistant club professional, who regained his amateur status.

Working at a real job, however, didn’t diminish his resolve to improve. 

In a recent visit at FastFirst Performance Center, Barry improved from 106 mph to 123 mph in 2.5 hours.

His last 12 swings averaged 121 mph.  That’s just for starters, too, as is continuing to work in FastFirst online, and planning periodical returns to work face to face.

Bits and pieces left over from the PGA Merchandise Show in Orlando:

·         Well attended and most positive vibe in three or four years

·         The vendors we checked with indicated that they were writing orders, too.

·         Our longtime friend and assistant Dean Simmons’ wife, Cheryl, gave birth prematurely Thursday night to their second son, Joshua Tanner.  All are doing well including Dean, who raced back from Orlando to be with the family.

·         Without doubt the clubs shown by Callaway, TaylorMade, Titleist, and others are simply off the charts.  The technology is amazing—maybe three times better than even three years ago.  Equipment allows sport to evolve, and this gear, including golf balls, is right out there to be taken advantage of, but only by those players with speed enough to compress the ball and keep the clubface on the ball longer. 

·         Yes, speed was the hot topic.  All of a sudden the instructional industry is onto what I’ve been advocating since 1995 and that puts our FastFirst program in demand as other professionals are in a catch-up mode. 

·         Many training programs talk about speed building, but speed isn’t strength, nor flexibility, nor swing technique, nor knowledge of degrees of hip rotation.  It’s not the equipment, nor the training tools, it’s the program of instruction and training that includes the equipment and training tools.

·         Joe Average can buy the same stick used by Dustin Johnson, but while expecting an increase of 20 yards, he will be fortunate to add 20 inches if he continues to swing at his current level of efficiency.

·         Golf’s new 2.0 initiative certainly has merit in growing the sport, and partnering with the Boys’ and Girls’ Clubs is a great idea.  Another good idea is that of adding synthetic greens to public parks.

·         Jack Nicklaus was featured and spoke of holding a 12-hole tournament at his Muirfield Village course while using 8” holes instead of the regulation 4.25” holes.  Not so sure how that is the way to grow the sport.  And, I’m not crazy about asking players to play from teeing areas far forward of current tees.  Supposedly, those are time savers and interest tweakers.

·         Here’s a better idea.  In addition to attracting new players, the first step is to keep the players we have from leaving the sport.  How?  By getting them better!  Instruction has to actually lower scores, of all things.  Players who are improving aren’t going to quit the sport.  In fact, I doubt you could chase them away with a stick. 

·         We visited with many friends, former colleagues, current players, and future players who are coming to learn FastFirst at our facility, and/or working in our FastFirst online training.  My sincere thanks to every one of them and to you for reading this.

·         Maybe the biggest request we got was to write more blogs, and I will admit that far too often I have let other things get in the way.  I promise to be a better blogster moving forward.  (This one’s for you, Mike.)

Who said golf is fair?

Bubba Watson, by PGA tour standards a reasonably long driver, averages leaving 158.4 yards to the hole, including all par 4 and par 5 holes.

Over the course of a season in which 600 drives are struck, Martin Laird has to navigate 2.1 miles more golf course, and he’s just 10 places below Watson in the category (Average To The Hole After Tee Shots).

Don’t feel sorry for Laird until you consider the following players, each 10 places down the category in descending order:

• Davis Love III          2.8 miles
• Chris Couch           3.27 mi.
• Joe Olgivie             3.76
• Zach Miller             4.15
• Bill Lunde              4.43
• Ernie Els               4.70
• Blake Adams         4.97
• Brendt Snedeker    5.26
• Ben Martin             5.48
• Troy Merritt            5.93
• Brendon de Jong    6.20 miles
  

·         Forget for one second all other “yeah buts…” that you might be thinking right now, and be honest with yourself.

Make sure you understand the metrics—in the process of playing 600 drives, in reaching the holes, Ernie Els has 4.70 miles of more golf course to cover than Watson.

"Shorter" players are forced to play "longer" courses.

The facts are screamingly clear, the obstacle is length—and we’re meaning length in miles over the course of several tournament rounds. 

 Brendon de Jong is  6.20 miles behind Bubba Watson!

That means he must fire longer, less accurate clubs into greens.

That projects the he will miss more greens, be in more bunkers, have longer putts, and chip far more often.

That means his chances of making birdies are lessened, which means for a tour player, higher scores, missed cuts, and less money.

As you would guess, Watson is leading this list in victories and money earnings.  He certainly should, given that he plays “shorter” par four and par five holes.

NOTE:  In playing a four round tournament, a player will have about 56 opportunities from the tee, so 600 is not a huge number of drives.  Obviously, all players are not in the same events, and don’t play the same number of tournaments.  In selecting players, I used those in a succession every tenth player down the list.  Watson does not lead the tour in this category.  Relative to amateur players, even “short” tour players are long—de Jong averages 287.7 yards on drives.  A scratch amateur averages about 20 yards less on drives than the tour driving average (290.9 yards).  A single digit amateur averages about 20 yards less than a scratch amateur, and a 10-16 handicap player averages another 20 yards less.  Obviously, Watson’s advantage doesn’t begin and end with driver.  He flies 7-iron, for instance, 195 yards.  (These statistics are from the PGA Tour, the USGA, Golf Magazine, Golf Digest, Golfweek, and from personal observation.)

If one can get it from a book, he or she would already have it, right?

If one can get it from a video, he or she would already have it, too.

If one could improve significantly by practicing what he or she already knows, he or she would already have it, correct?

If one desires to beat an elite player, then he or she must do some things better than elite players, right?

Chances are great, too, that the something better is also going to be something different, don’t you agree?

That something different is going to be something that you don’t yet know—something you must learn, right?

Expert coaches ask us to do two things: Things we don’t yet know how to do, and things we don’t want to do.  And, that’s why we need expert coaches.

Expert coaches are accountable for what they ask players to do.

Players must, too, become accountable for their own improvement.

Einstein told us years ago that if we keep on doing what we’ve always been doing then we’re going to keep on getting what we have always been getting.

So, if what you are doing hasn’t already gotten you the level to which you aspire and are capable of reaching, maybe it’s time for you to seriously consider learning something better.

Flying the golf ball deeper is something better.  Adding length to your shots doesn’t detract from you accuracy, it improves your ball control. 

Clubhead speed either compresses the ball or it doesn’t.  Those who have it do it.

Those who don’t have it remain short and inaccurate. 

Improving length improves every other aspect of the sport—greens in regulation because of shorter, more accurate clubs on approaches;  putting because one has shorter, more makeable putts; pitching because of the ability to compress and spin the ball, and chipping, too, because one won’t be chipping on virtually every hole.

Putting for birdies is a whole lot better than putting for pars, bogies, and doubles!

The only real obstacle we face in this sport is the length of the golf course.  Doesn’t that make overcoming the length of the course the direct route to lower scores?

Length does have its advantages.

In the sport of golf, the advantage of generating distance is borderless.  Length has its rewards on the Korean professional tours, too. 

The players who generate more distance from the tee hit more greens in regulation and make more putts than those professionals who are shorter off the tee.  They have shorter putts.  It’s that simple.

On the men’s tour, the 14 yards difference in length between the top player and the fifth ranked player equates to 2.8 strokes per round!

Length creates scoring opportunities.  On the ladies tour, the top player with only a four-yard advantage off the tee hits 3.56 more greens in regulation than the fifth ranked player.  That’s a huge advantage in scoring opportunities.

Statistics of Top 5 of both PGA and LPGA Tours

 Stats of both tours are based on 7 tournaments in 2011 season.

Don’t think for one second that the sport is all about just driving the golf ball.  But, also don’t forget that the ability to compress the golf ball with a driver extends to every other club. 

What a huge advantage it is to have a 7-iron in your hands on a 190-yard par 3 while others have to hit 4 irons.  Another great advantage, too, is the capacity of a powerful swing with wedges to control spin, distance, and trajectory.

Success is all about ball compression and ball compression is more than just swing technique.   Compressing the ball and sustaining compression from impact through ball separation requires skill learning and training—the heart of FastFirst.

The adversary in golf is the length of the course, and since low score is rewarded, length is a huge advantage. 

There is no tradeoff between distance and accuracy.