As an old golfer who has taken lessons from two different pros, I was both startled and amused when they both said that actually watching the ball during the golf swing is unnecessary! While I have heard that blind golfers may do very well, they also have a full-time attendant-caddy who sets them up for each stroke. One might even envision that after the proper set-up is achieved, actually watching the ball beyond that point is not really necessary. If watching the ball serves no particular purpose, then one must have a swing that grooves through pure habit without any distraction. I have yet to see a golfer with a pure groove. But then what do I know? Cluck! Cluck!
The notion smells like a preposterous and off-the-wall suggestion designed to startle the student or gain his undivided attention, right or wrong. It served its purpose in my case, and for the past decade the idea has been bouncing around in my mind like a ping pong ball. For better or worse, I have a totally different notion of its importance.
As a kid that grew up on, or visited farms on a regular basis, I take my first clues from watching and handling chickens. No, chickens don’t play golf, but when they are in the yard or the henhouse feeding, they always watch where they are pecking. Careful scrutiny of their uncanny accuracy suggests that they never miss their target. Each peck generates a winner, a seed, a grain of corn, a crawling thing, or a worm that strays into range. If it’s good enough for chickens, it is good enough for me!
Other birds are exactly the same. Hawks are able to skim a lake like a dive bomber and snatch a fish near the surface with incredible accuracy. It would be the wildest conjecture to suggest that the hawk was able to complete such a maneuver with his eyes closed, or that the target did not need to be in sight. Their target is always in sight!
The second thing of central importance is the automatic stability of the chicken’s head when the body is in motion. Because chickens are visually oriented, when you pick them up some bird-like instinctive behavior takes over when you move their body around somewhat randomly. This is not unlike the golf swing, as the body must rotate while the arms cock back into a full swing, then forward again tracing the route directly to the ball without error. When you move the chicken around in this manner, rotating and twisting simultaneously, the chicken’s head remains fixed like a rock on whatever is the focus of the chicken’s visual field.
I contend it is the object in the visual field that stabilizes the head from a full backswing through contact with the ball, exactly like the chicken. Close your eyes, alter your thoughts, or consciously and deliberately try something new with your swing, and whatever groove you have goes astray.
From years of dedicated focus upon the golf swing, I have noted one invariable rule. When the golf club begins the backswing, the eyes better lock onto the ball like a lazer beam. When they do, all other variations in the golf swing are minimized. One common tendency is to focus (the mind) on the backswing rather than the ball. When this happens there is a strong tendency for the head to go back with the club. This almost invariably produces a slice, because the swing is not fully completed. The eyes are not locked on the target, but rather is locked on some swing-thought attached to the club’s motion or action.
And what is the most common ball trajectory error? You know it! The slice is the most common swing error of duffers.
The answer: Lock your eyes on the ball, and golf like a chicken. Chickens are born with this talent instinctually. Man is not capable of pure chicken golf, but locking your eyes on the ball is the first step to keep the ball in the fairway.
Cluck! Cluck!
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago. Add a comment
Some of Wakefield’s more prominent local characters included a Mr. Cool who sold refrigerators. Mr. Shivers was the ice man, and A. Butcher was the town doctor. That was Dr. Butcher, A. W. Butcher. He was the only doctor in town. Had there been a town prostitute her name would surely have been Miss. Hooker. There must have been hookers in those days, but the boys I ran around with were mostly a lot of talk.
During my junior year at Wakefield Rural High School, I ascended to quarterback on our six-man football team. In this position, I may well have been as notorious as the other town characters. I was the only quarterback in the world to receive the snap from center from a rear-to-rear position. In today’s kinky world there must be a name for this position, but the folks in Wakefield didn’t know it. Mostly, they just snickered when they first saw it. After they got used to it, it seemed to be an almost normal thing for a quarterback to do. It should be mentioned that I am also the only person in the world who ever stood rear-to-rear in public with both Bob and Dick Elkins, the centers on our football team. These hefty and hard working centers have probably made every effort to forget.
This rear-to-rear position was the brainchild of John D. Blackie Lane, Wakefield’s football coach, basketball coach, track coach, softball coach, girls and boys P.E. teacher, and shop instructor. With these school duties, he spent every waking hour around sweaty bodies and noxious locker rooms, an environment which may have altered his figuring ability. Blackie figured that in football it was more important for a quarterback to know where his own players were than to be watching the opponents. Rather than to run backward, he figured you could start faster and run faster if you were facing that direction, – backward. Nor was he particularly concerned with the social consequences of assuming this position in front of a crowd of people on both sides of the field. He also figured that the novelty of the position could have startling powers over the opponents, who would say things like, – “does that quarterback even know which way to run?” So it was born, the rear-to-rear quarterback ball snapping position.
The picture on the right, from the fall of 1948, is a rare shot of the rear-to-rear quarterback position. It has been enlarged, placed into relief, and designations added to depict exactly what is meant. On the far left and middle top are the running backs (RB). In the lower center and far right are the ends (E). The dark vertical line has been drawn to show the point of demarcation between the quarterback on the left (me), and the center (C) on the right (Bob Elkins). As you can see, Bob is watching the camera and has his hand on the ball. I am standing rear-to-rear with Bob, facing the other direction, and waiting for the snap of the ball. This should clear up any possible misunderstanding. Five are facing one way, and I am facing the other. This was the way Blackie figured it.
Throughout my junior year, it really didn’t seem to matter whether I was facing the front or the rear, so I adopted the rear-facing position, or rear-to-rear position to be most precise. Blackie figured I was also better equipped to keep my eye on our scat back, Vance Lumb, because if I took my eye off him, he could end up somewhere else. Sure enough, he ended up on the Kansas All-State Football Team. Facing aft gave me the perfect view of Vance and the other running backs. What Blackie didn’t figure was that from my perspective, all the other men on the field were out of sight until I got turned around. By that time it could be too late! That day was not long arriving.
In our third game in the fall of 1949 we were playing Bennington. It was a home game Friday afternoon to accommodate travel time for Bennington. We knew nothing about the Bennington team, as we had never played them before. One outstanding feature of their team was their center who played either just to the right of, or left of my rear. He was about six feet tall and weighed 300 pounds. I called him Paul Bunyan.
I could not see if he lined up to my right or left because I was facing the other way. As a result, I did not know which way to go to get out of the way. I discussed this situation with the center, Dick Elkins, who was no small fry himself. When we would get set for each play, Dick would say “right”, and I would know that Bunyan was lined up to Dick’s right side. If he said “left” I would know that Bunyan was to Dick’s left side. The system worked perfectly except for one small detail from my perspective. As soon as I turned around into the rear-to-rear position, Dick’s right side became my left, and Dick’s left side became my right. It was an accident waiting to happen.
On one of the first snaps of the game Dick said “right” and I went wrong. I ended up face down on the ground, and Bunyan fell like a redwood tree, knee first, in the middle of my back. After regaining the ability to breath I discovered a sharp pain in my low back. I was dragged off the field and spent the rest of the game on the sidelines. By that time it was late Friday afternoon, and Dr Butcher’s office was closed with a long weekend immediately ahead.
Over the weekend I could not do anything without sharp pain. If I was flat on my back on the floor doing nothing, I was free of pain. Getting up or down from the floor was impossible. Then I discovered a miraculous cure, an old roller-type ink blotter. If I put this rigid blotter, curved side inward, inside my belt on the left side, the pain in my back was almost eliminated. After that the rest of the weekend was tolerable until Dr. Butcher’s office opened Monday morning.
Following a short examination, Dr Butcher supposed that I had injured something. Rather than jump to any conclusions, he opted for a second opinion. and referred me to a chiropractor in Clay Center with the nearest x-ray machine. I managed to get onto his examining table, complete with swivel joints. His x-rays showed fractured 4th and 5th lumbar vertebrae on the left side. As the cracked bones were still attached to the main body of each vertebrae, a cast was all that was needed. The cast would prevent movement until the bones healed, and hopefully would eliminate all pain during the process.
The doctor asked me to sit up straight on a metal stool with no back, naked as a jay bird. Until a metal stool seat gets warm, you sit up pretty straight. First he pulled a sleeve of heavy stretch muslin over my entire trunk. Then he got a huge box of plaster wrap to fashion the cast. He wrapped round and round, roll after roll, until I was covered with plaster wrap half an inch thick from shoulder to rear. Following a few adjustments here and there, the plaster dried, and I was entombed from tail to breakfast. As this was my first such experience, I really didn’t know what to expect, but I knew it was going to be exciting.
The instructions were quite simple. No exercising. No running or jumping. No bending over. But keep the cast dry no matter what you do. No bathing or showering. After the first few weeks when others are nearby, always stand down-wind. Follow these instructions until the cast is removed. Little did I anticipate the consequences which followed. There is no air circulation in a cast for either heating or cooling. Like a snake, the skin seems to shed completely every day. When it sheds it has no place to go, so it collects in the cast. On a hot day you sweat. The sweat converts the accumulated skin in the muslin to a moist goo. Then the itching begins. Oh! the itching, the itching.
Itching is only a problem when you can’t scratch, you can’t get wet, you can’t get dry, you can’t wash, and you can’t get rid of dead skin. I couldn’t. There were only two holes in the cast for scratching. The one at the top was filled with back and chest to the arm pits. The other at the bottom of the cast fit like an iron corset. During the last few weeks I was able to bend a metal coat hanger to reach and scratch almost anywhere in the cast. In spite of the suffering, the healing process had started, and I returned to school the following day cast and all.
As for the football team, Bill Ogg had been an attentive understudy for the quarterback position, and had witnessed the rear-to-rear ball snapping for an ample period of time. In particular he wished to avoid a body cast like the one I was wearing on the sideline at the next ball game. Bill concluded that the rear-to-rear ball snapping was not only socially awkward, but was fundamentally flawed. He refused even the thought of assuming this position while in public. With this astute and final decision, Blackie’s brainchild was rendered stone dead, and since that fateful fall of 1949 was never again witnessed in Wakefield.
Posted 2 years, 7 months ago. Add a comment
