The golf show's in Orlando. So is Disney World.

How long does it take to learn clubhead speed and apply it on the golf course?

Less than one week, and if you have a hard time with that, ask Jay Lee.

Jay arrived in the States from Korea on Tuesday, was introduced to FastFirst and worked with us at our Performance Center on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. His return flight was delayed in Chicago on Sunday.

He arrived in Tokyo on Monday,  but was delayed one day due to a tropical storm in Korea.

Jet lag and all, Jay faced an important junior tournament on Thursday. Yes, Korean juniors face ranking tournaments regularly. He was competing for playing status, which means advancement, or not.

Did Jay's training transition not only to the golf course, but to the course under severe conditions? Following is the "official" report from our contact in Korea:

He sent his driver shots average 20 meters(21.9 yds.) longer than before he started FastFirst. He sent his iron shots average 12 meters(13 yds.) longer than before he started FastFirst. What a great performance!!!! He did it at an official tournament (under pressure situation/suffering from jet lag).

Playing and scoring better, of course! Speed, length and added confidence will give you that.

That's just the tip of the iceberg for Jay, and thousands of other players like Jay, regardless of nationality, age or current playing status.

Learning clubhead speed is a Keystone Skill - one that, when you learn it, makes a lot of other skills better. Length solves a lot of short-game issues, for instance.

Rather have a 10-foot putt or be chipping from off the green?

Hank Doesn't Get It!

Hank Haney, best known as Tiger Woods' former swing coach, made the following statement in anticipation of instructing one of the world's greatest athletes, Michael Phelps, on his TV gig, The Haney Project.

"...But it's funny, because whenever anyone makes a comment that a guy has a lot of potential, they're always talking about one thing - he hits it a long way. The translation is he hits it everywhere.

The guy with a lot of potential is athletic, long and in search of his golf ball."

Isn't that like saying, "Don't swim fast Michael, because you might swing out of your lane"? Or, go slow for control.

Maybe Hank's trying to be funny after working with the likes of Charles Barkley and comedian Ray Romano. I doubt that Phelps is laughing.

The problem is more than skin deep because Haney's statement is merely reflecting the deeply embedded belief that athleticism must be tamed in the sport of golf. That someone who flies the ball a long way is inherently losing a lot of golf balls.

Maybe that's the major fly in the ointment of conventional golf instruction. Maybe that's why scores aren't improving and players are leaving the sport.

The length of the golf course is overwhelming players, so let's keep the players short. Does that make sense?

Maybe Hank's just flat out wrong!

Phelps at the very least is one of a handful of candidates for the greatest athlete on the planet. He knows speed. He understands explosiveness. He knows rhythm and he knows the value of performing it in world-record time.

Compared to what he's done on the biggest of stages, is there anything in our sport that Phelps can't learn and train to do with excellence?

Here's the problem and it runs deep - speed is discouraged. Length is for a select few, fortunate enough to have the right gene pool. Length and accuracy cannot possibly coexist.

Isn't that like saying 7-footers in the NBA can't possibly be accurate free-throw shooters?

Isn't that like saying that because Phil Michelson and Dustin Johnson are long they can't possibly be good putters? After all, long drivers are some sort of genetic freaks, aren't they?

By the way, how did Haney do with Barkley and Romano? Heard of them winning anything big lately?

This isn't an attack on Haney. He's had his day and he earned it. His reasoning is symptomatic of a much larger problem.

Wake up guys. This is a sport and that makes us athletes. Clap your hands Hank, that you're working with a great one. Now coach him up, not down.





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All together now, one more time - it's the journey!

We love the Olympics.  It's part of our heritage. To stand on the podium while they raise the Stars and Stripes and hear the Anthem is every kid's dream.

We love the medals and the athletes that win them, as we follow the medal count.

It's huge. Know what's bigger?

The story behind the athlete and each athlete has one. It's not the medals that define the athlete; it's the journey that got them there.

It's the journey. Each journey is different, but each has an element of sameness.

What's "the journey"? "It's overcoming the things that keep coming at you", according to Kim Rhode, who just won her fifth medal in five Olympic Games and is only 33 years old. She's a skeet shooter who only hit 99 out of 100 targets in winning the gold.

"I think it's all the people who say you can't, " she went on.

I wonder how many thousands of targets she missed on her journey? How many times she heard "...You can't...?" How many times has she failed to win?

Wonder what price she paid while "paying her dues"?

Wonder how many "better" shooters are strewn by the wayside on the road she took toward excellence?

How many of us knew all three? Probably not many, so I feel fortunate that I did.

This, however, is not about me specifically. It is about a side of our industry that smacks of snake oil peddling.

Ben Hogan accomplished so much against probably the greatest odds ever faced in our sport.

Moe Norman was as close to machine-like in ball striking as the sport has allowed.

Mike Austin was indeed one of  kind - actor, poet, singer, boxer, PhD in Kinesiology, showman, player, instructor. Mike was driving it long before there was long drive.

Hogan had few friends and I wasn't one of them. But, I did play Hogan Company equipment for 20-something years and he was always there at the plant.

Being from the Fort Worth, Texas area, I was at the plant often. He treated all of his players - best to the worst-with respect, too, including me.

I visited with Moe Norman several times over the years, even before he became a legend.
That is, if can call being around Norman a "visit".

I remember the last time we spoke we talked about putting of all things. Moe Norman isn't remembered for his putting, for sure.

I knew Mike Austin well. We talked a lot but with Mike it was more listening than me talking. We debated, too. Mike liked that. I once told him that it wasn't the science in the "Mike Austin Swing", but his own athleticism that held it together and made it work.

He didn't argue with that either. He could have sat on his rear end and out driven most guys!

Each of these three men was a genius in his own right. All three were absolutely unique, both physically and mentally and all were great ball strikers.

No player can swing their swings!

However, plenty of people are hawking the fact that they are the Hogan "expert", or they teach the Moe Norman swing, or they own the Mike Austin swing and will be happy to teach you - for a price, of course.

Funny how all the "experts" come forth after the death of a genius. Funny, too, how industries spring up like dandelions around the "selling" of a genius' swing.

Then they die, like the dandelions.

Look, folks, we're not wired to be Hogan, Norman or Austin. Might as well try to copy Thomas Edison's habits and become the next great inventor.

Here's an idea. Take the technique you own and make it work better. Get the clubhead on the ball and keep it there longer by applying it faster.

Most hurdlers have decent technique. But technique doesn't win golf medals.

Speed over and between the hurdles does. Applying the form you have more efficiently does.

It's not the technique that makes long, accurate shots. It's the motion the technique creates.

It's the force generated by the motion that compresses the ball. That demands speed through the golf ball, and speed is the result of acceleration.

What we can learn from Hogan, Norman and Austin is that each was unique. Their motions were night and day different, yet each was efficient.

Each generated a lot of force in a short period of time. Want to copy something worthwhile? Copy that principle.

And, I'll help you do it.

Here's a bright idea from those who oversee golf - let's have everybody play really short courses, and then tell them they're better.

Golf athletes already suffer from poor self images, so let's emasculate them even further.

Let's ask men to play from the forward tees, and in some cases, forward of the forward tees. Let's set up a mini-course for women too.

While we're at it, let's ask the women to wear pink skirts and ruffled bonnets and the guys to paint their fingernails.

Five governing bodies, including the PGA and the USGA (the czars of the sport in the U.S.) have come up with the solution to golf's dwindling participation, calling it the Tee It Forward Project.

Is that going to grow the sport?

These otherwise intelligent people say that by playing the holes shorter, more people will score lower, have more fun, and thus the joy will spread to others, ultimately growing the sport.

There's more to golf than distance, there's skill," said Glen Nager, current czar of the USGA. On national TV during our country's national championship, he attempted to explain how that concept will grow the sport.

Nager may be known as an expert litigator in front of Supreme Court justices, but he's losing this one.

This just in: Generating distance with one's golf swing is a SKILL!

We humans are great skill learners.

Bad idea folks! Asking a guy to play a 4500-yard course will not make him happier. nor better.

We humans are great skill learners.

Little Johnny's a poor reader, so let's put him in remedial reading and tell all his friends about it. What can be worse than bettering an already battered ego?

We say no! Let's make him better, not bitter. Let's give Johnny some sound instruction. Yes, good teachers do that well.

True, the length of the golf course is the problem, so let;s deal with the problem.

Let's get Joes and Janes longer! Let build some self-images while we're at it. Let's give them an EDGE.

Yes, startup players, including juniors, should play shorter holes than experienced players. Believe me, however, asking "senior" player to move ujp and tee it forward doesn't make them happy.

In fact, any tee markers close to the women's is an embarrassment to most guys. Now you're asking them to move forward of women's marker in some cases?

Let's shorten the holes by getting players longer! Surely those decision makers no longer believe that clubhead speed and distance are gifts of genetics.

Yes, let's grow the game by getting existing players longer. Length and lower scores go hand in hand. While we're at it, let's stop stifling the natural instincts of newer players, and stop preaching the misconception that slow is good.

No player controls the ball by going slow. That concept defies both Mother Nature and Isaac Newton's laws of motion.

I'm told that in our country there are over 50,000 golf instructors who get paid (and about 20 million who don't!). Let's make sure they all know that the club doesn't do the work. Players do.

Golf is a sport. In fact, it's the sport that demands the longest ball flight of any other sport. That's the wake-up call. Those instructors who don't get it better heed the call or get out.


Those who play sports are athletes. Speed matters in the performance of sport-specific skills. Clubhead speed equates to ball control - distance and direction.

Every player can lower scores by learning distance. Distance and ball control demand clubhead speed.

Want proof? Talk to my guy who just nuked a 7-iron 186 yards on #6 at Oakmont. Hasn't been long ago that he flew it 150.

 

A professional gets paid for what he or she knows and does. Sometimes, too, professionals pay for what they don't know or can't do.

I recently had the opportunity to share our FASTFIRST Golf program, what I know and do,  with another professional, working at his facility with his players. And, I got paid.

Maybe I should have paid him! I learned more than I shared with them.

The most gratifying thing to me was leaving with renewed hope in our sport. For too long golf has taken hit after hit - scores rising, number of players dwindling, and courses closing.

For too long the czars of golf, in essence, have sat on their hands with the usual pie-in-the-sky attitudes.

Not this man, however. Not Rob Noel.

Here's one of the country's top teachers wanting to learn what he doesn't know. Here's a guy who by every standard is a huge success in raising the level of play by helping his players learn and perform golf skills.

Here's a prominent professional with his own successful golf academy located at a great golf facility, who is willing to put pride aside and admit that there is much he doesn't know about learning and developing players.

Here's a man who must have said to himself "...What I know isn't good enough..."

That's rare in our sport. If you only knew how rare...

Rob Noel's attitude and willingness to go above and beyond the rights and wrongs and the dos and don'ts of golf are part of what has made him successful, but are really really rare.

Thanks Rob. You've renewed my faith...now how much do I owe you?

It's not very pretty, but Bubba Watson always brings it.

Need a sweeping 40-yard hooked gap wedge from deep in the pine forest, 150-something yards to an elevated green? Bubba's your man.

He can't tell you how he did it, but he did it - and won The Masters.

Textbook technique? Hardly - much of what he doesn flies in the face of "conventional" swing do's and don't's. It was actually kind of amusing listening to Nick Faldo attempting to analyze Bubba's motion.

In many ways his game serves as a golf model - he's a grown up version of the kid who was never told to slow down. Here's the club, here's the ball, now rip it.

Swing thoughts? Repeat the above. Here's the club, here's the ball, now rip it.

Fear of failure? No guy wielding a pink driver fears much of anything. He's averaging well over 300 yards with that stick. He doesn't back off either, with any club.

"...I attack. I always attack," Watson said. "...I don't like to go to the center of the greens. I want to hit the incredible shot. Who doesn't? That's why we play the game of golf, to pull off the amazing shot."

Bubba is near perfect in the one place that really counts - through impact. He controls the ball's direction while producing huge length with ball compression.

Yes, Bubba has speed, and speed never slumps. Congrats, big Bubba.

This is no Cinderella story. Tiger won at Bay Hill the old fashioned way - he earned it.

Like him  or not, there's a lot to be gained by studying what went into Tiger Woods' first PGA Tour victory since 2009.

First of all, I doubt Tiger ever doubted for one minute that he would win again. With his steel-willed approach, he's more likely to doubt the sun rising in the east.

Tiger was never satisfied with his swing technique prior to remake number three (and counting). Champions are never satisfied. They never think they've "got" it.

Famous TV guys with playing backgrounds themselves kept asking during the remake, "Why does a Tiger Woods keep changing his swing?"

The answer to that might tell us why those guys are talking about playing rather than playing themselves.

It's pretty simple. Tiger sought out changes because he wasn't happy with what he had. For one thing, he had become subject to the kiss of death in this sport - the infamous two-way miss with his driver. He got to the point where he couldn't trust his driver swing.

Again, great acheivers are never satisfied with what they know. You simply can't perfect something that you know is flawed, and a player like Tiger isn't going to keep patching up a leaky valve.

Tiger doesn't want to play like he did in 2005, he wants to play better. Of course, that's not easy especially considering the injuries, surgeries and self-inflicted chaos surrounding his personal life (if there is such a thing as a personal life nowadays).

Think it's easy to go from Number One to Number 150-something in world ranking?

It's all about the process. Everyone talks about it, but few understand that staying in the process is itself the master skill.

No one survives and prospers without the process of improvement. What's involved in the process?
The first thing is a lot of mental and physical self-imposed stress in trying to learn something different.

It starts with dealing with a lot of failure while focusing on one single thing at a time. While many things make up a swing change, only the mentally strong can ignore a dozen of them and maintain focus on just one without leaving until it is learned.

Change takes time yeah, one bit at a time, and in a logical sequence...no sense in attacking algebra until you've got multipication down pat.

The process involves testing the player's resolve in training within the strive/fail/strive again cycle.

Success is not a shot in the dark, it's a result of the process. There are no magic bullets. You don't have a magic wand to wave.

You have to know the difference between what neuroscience calls the illusion of competence and genuine learning, and that difference is pretty hard to recognize in the traditional golf instruction environment where magic bullets are the norm.

Magic bullet fixes last about three swings on the golf course when strokes are counted!

You must get lost in the process, step by step. You must be consumed by the process, not with immediate results.

Otherwise, you will jump ship again, and end up searching for another magic bullet, and then
another illusion of competence.

A legitimate process leads to legitimate improvement. Without new learning there will be no legitimate improvement.

In FastFirst we call the process Training on the Edge.

"The best way to predict the future is to invent it."...Steve Jobs