My Childhood Role Model: "The Pro" Paul VanLoozen

Just about a year ago, I made the decision to take a leap of faith and move in the direction of my soul's calling.  I left behind my childhood dream job of being a Head Golf Professional in the pursuit of my adult dream job, a full-time teaching professional.  That journey over the past year has been epic in nature.  As I look back on the trials and tribulations of the path that has brought me to my current location and situation, I am so grateful for the many blessings and all the help and encouragement I have received along the way.  As I contemplate the long and winding road of my life and the connection to the game of golf, I reflect back on the man who inspired it all and the impact he has made on my life.

Early on in life I developed a strong attraction to the game of golf.  I loved everything about the game and the solitude and inner reflection that the game offered me as a "lone wolf" personality type.  While much of life overwhelmed my nervous system, the game of golf offered me a place to recalibrate myself and to come to understand and appreciate my inner world.  It was also a game built on fundamental principles of camaraderie, compassion and fairness, a combination that attracted me like the force of gravity.  No matter what path my journey has taken in this life, I have (like a force of nature) been drawn back to this game that has such a firm hold on my soul.

In my early teens, at the encouragement of my grandfather, Earl Tracy, I began the pursuit of the Evans Scholarship (a full-ride college scholarship provided to caddies who excel in scholarship, leadership, work-ethic and community service).  I began this journey by working at Edgewood Country Club in Union Lake, Michigan.  The course was a relatively short walk from my family's home and it served as a wonderful combination of a place where I could earn good money while also being around the game that I already loved so much.  As is the case for many young people around the country who are drawn to the game of golf, the Head Golf Professional very quickly became my greatest role model. 

Paul VanLoozen was a quiet and austere man with a slight build and a flowing, effortless golf swing.  He had an air of solemnity about him and carried himself as a man who took the role of shepherding a golf community as a sacred task.  I admired him and I wanted to be like him.  I bought the same clubs he played with and I strove to make my golf swing as similar to his as I could.  I have no doubt that many of my mannerisms as a teacher are most-likely still unconsciously patterned after the way Mr. VanLoozen walked and talked. 

I worked for a number of years at Edgewood CC and over time I made my way through the ranks to be the highest level of caddy and eventually even into the clubhouse for the sought-after position of bag room staff.  On that journey I was always motivated to catch the attention of "the pro".  After many years of hard work, I became a fixture at the golf course and began to have regular interaction with Mr. VanLoozen.  One fine day, after many rehearsals in my mind, I worked up the courage to ask him if he would mind taking a look at my golf swing.  He agreed and my level of excitement and anxiety reached an apex in my young life as we made the short walk from the clubhouse to the driving range for our one and only lesson.

That short time we spent on the driving range is a blur in my memory.  Although, as I write this, I find that one shot is seared into my memory.  It was a perfectly hit shot with a slight draw that landed on the target green and showed to my idol the pinnacle of my golfing ability at the time.  I will probably never be more proud of any swing I've taken in my life than the one I produced on that day.  In that one moment in time, there was a shared affinity between myself and the man I looked up to above all others.  I don't recall if Mr. VanLoozen gave me any pearls of wisdom that day.  What I do recall is that there was a feeling of appreciation and approval from my role model.  That validation was something that propelled me forward in my passion for the game of golf and is one of those moments that defines my life.

When I was given the opportunity to take the reigns of Carolina Colours Golf Club in New Bern, North Carolina as the Head Golf Professional, it was the culmination of my childhood dream.  I stood in the same role as my childhood role model and I was as proud and excited as I could possibly be to stand in those shoes.

Although my health did not cooperate with the challenges and stresses of being in the Head Golf Professional role, it was an experience that will always stand as a great achievement in my life story.  I was lucky enough to stand in the same place as my childhood idol and to carry the banner of shepherding a golf community, just as Paul VanLoozen did for many years at Edgewood Country Club.

Not only did that experience allow me to fulfill a life-long goal, it also gave me the razor-sharp clarity that I would need to take the leap and move in the direction of where my soul called and my survival demanded. 

Today I am filled with gratitude to Mr. VanLoozen for inspiring me and giving me a clear vision of what it means to be "the pro" and to all the wonderful people at Carolina Colours Golf Club for giving me the opportunity to live my childhood dream.

Putting Process: Let Your Finish Be Your Teacher

“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day.  Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

-Chinese Proverb

When students finish their in-person lesson time with me, I want them to be able to take away self-diagnosis tools so that they can always know what caused a certain result in their game.  A common mantra that I repeat to these students is, “When the teacher is not there, let the finish be your teacher.”

If we know what to look for at the end of the swing, whether it is putting, chipping, pitching or the full swing, we can assess what has just happened in that swing and we can begin to train the most efficient and repeatable movement. 

The major challenge in golf, from my perspective, is that we instinctively want to push or hit towards the target with the arms and hands.  This is almost always an instinct to go in a straight line and “help” the ball into the hole.  Unfortunately, everything about golf is in opposition to these natural instincts to think in straight lines.  The most repeatable and consistent swing in golf involves circular or arc movements.  Tell the conscious mind to create a circle to go in a straight line and watch the mind fight with every ounce of energy to resist such rebellious thinking patterns. 

Because of this innate struggle between the conscious “straight-line” thinking and the truth that the circle produces repeatable squareness at impact, we must train ourselves in a kinesthetic and disciplined way to resist these linear tendencies.  The best and quickest way to do this, in my opinion, is to always pay attention to the finish position of every swing and to use that position to train the correct body movement to produce an arc.  We want to train the body on a cellular level or through muscle memory so that our unconscious or subconscious mind can be in control of the process instead of our conscious, linear-thinking mind.

The Finish Position in Putting

Feet – Weight slightly favoring the front foot.  Balanced and quiet.

Common linear mistakes – Weight slightly back on the back foot.

Hips – Quiet.  Resistant to movement.  Stable.

Common linear mistakes – Hip movement side-to-side.

Shoulders – Relaxed, rotational and level to the ground.  The shoulders should finish open to the target.  This is where all the movement happens in a solid putting stroke.

Common linear mistakes – Movement up and down, pushing underneath in a line towards the target.  

Arms – Low, hanging from the shoulder sockets

Common linear mistakes – High arm finish caused by the shoulders dropping and the arms pushing toward the target.

Wrists – Flat top wrist (forearm to back of the hand)

Common linear mistakes – broken down (angled) wrist, angle between forearm and back of hand.  A flipping motion caused by the stopping of rotation in the body.

Head – Centered, quiet, still.  Relaxed shoulders rotating around a still spine.

Side-to-side movement with the head illustrates an overall tendency to sway with the body.

The Challenge of Learning from the Finish

*What I am about to suggest sounds relatively simple.  However, it has been my experience that it is one of the most challenging things to do for most of my students.  The reason is that we are so conditioned to be results-oriented that noticing anything else besides these results is like changing the fundamental way in which the mind relates to the overall process.  It is a massive fundamental change and one that I find 99% of students to be almost completely unable to do at first.

At the end of any swing, whether it be a two foot putt or a 300 yard drive, I suggest that you want to have the bulk of your attention on the body position and sensations of the body at the end of the swing.  Most people, even after I repeat this request to notice the finish, are unable to do it.  The mind is so conditioned to have all the energy invested in the results of what just happened that the process to get there is lost almost entirely.

I express this reality to give you a sense of the challenge of working in this way.  Even if you can start by just noticing a singular part of the body at the end, this is a major accomplishment and begins to retrain the mind in a more productive manner.

Benefits of Learning from the Finish

The relaxed, rotational and rhythmic motion required for a repeatable, effortless golf swing is compromised by the conscious mind’s innate tendency to “control” the results.  Sadly, these controlling instincts produce tension in the body in the misguided effort to manipulate the result.  When we train ourselves to react to these results and to have our assessment of our game connected almost entirely to these results, we set ourselves up for conscious tension in our swing.  It becomes a feedback loop in which the fundamental orientation of being “results-oriented” skews our perception and causes the very thing that we are attempting to avoid with every ounce of our being…a poor swing.

However, when we focus our attention more on the process that produces results and pay attention to the kind of relaxation and rotation required to get to the ideal finish position, our mind now focuses on body sensations and is forced to trust that this process will produce results.  The idea with this is that a solid process will take care of the results.  The results themselves do not carry as much intensity of thought or emotion because we know that they are just a reflection of the process we are creating and nothing more.

When your routine begins to include reflection about the finish of your swing, you create a “full shot routine”.  Now every shot is an opportunity for learning and growth.  You are able to notice subtle tension points in the body and have a good sense of what adjustments are necessary to move in a more relaxed, rotational and rhythmic direction in your golf swing.  Most people are clueless as to what they just did in their body to produce a result.  I often hear, “I have no idea what I just did there.”  That admission is the key and is the awareness of the real problem for the student.

“Know thyself” is the name of the game here in golf.  The more you are mindful of your process (physically, mentally and emotionally), the more hitting a golf ball becomes a process of self-discovery and coming into a deeper relationship with ourselves.  Trusting in and commitment to a process are the keys to learning and developing as a golfer and as a person.

Putting Technique: Feel the Weight of the Pendulum

The concept of finding the correct “weight” for a shot is inconceivable for many amateur players.  They are so used to pushing and efforting with the club through the bottom of the arc that they can only really relate to the force of gravity making their manipulation or pushing/flipping motion harder to control on a bigger swing. 

If, in contrast, you feel like you are cradling the club from underneath, you can feel like you are catching the club in your hands with your shoulders down in the sockets at the bottom of the arc.  This catching sensation puts the focus on the force of gravity or the weight of the pendulum instead of how much to flip or push.

A small arc will produce a smaller amount of gravity or weight at the bottom of the arc.  A big arc (pendulum) will produce a greater amount of gravity at the bottom, without any help from us to add any additional speed to it. 

If your shoulder and arm muscles are relaxed, they can be great instruments of sensing the correct amount of gravity in a shot.  When they are tense and set up to push through the bottom, the concept of feeling the weight of the shot will be very difficult to grasp.

A pendulum always moves the fastest at the bottom of the arc.  Therefore, if we have good fundamentals, we will be set up to be naturally accelerating into the ball at impact.  Many amateurs give the arc too much distance to swing and they instinctively slow down at the bottom.  We call this decelerating into the ball.  One constant in golf is that we always want to let the pendulum swing naturally.  If we do this, and get better and better and judging how much space is required to produce a certain weight at the bottom of the arc, we will always be accelerating into the ball at a very reliable and constant rate.

Putting Drill – Feeling the Weight

Put on some music that fits the tempo of your ideal golf game

Get in the solid fundamental position discussed in earlier sections

Without a ball, start swinging the putter back and forth, just using the big muscles in the shoulders, focusing on keeping the head centered and still and the lower body quiet.  Start with small swings.  See if you can get the sensation that the club is dropping into your fingers underneath the club at the bottom.  If you notice flipping in your wrists (forearm to back of hand angle in the top hand), you are stopping rotation and adding “hit” to the bottom of the arc.  See if you can keep the top wrist flat through impact to the end of the swing.   This will require relaxation and rotation in the shoulders through the bottom of the arc.

As you find the shoulder pendulum that produces a catching feeling underneath the club at the bottom of the arc, begin to slowly add more rotation to the arc.  Make sure you are continuing to stay centered with the head and quiet with the lower body and that you are able to keep the top wrist flat (forearm to back of hand) throughout the stroke.  See if you can notice a change in the amount of weight you are catching at the bottom of the arc.

Putting Technique: Removing “The Flip”

As we discussed earlier, the main difference between professionals and amateurs in putting relates to “the flip” of the wrists at the bottom of the putting stroke.  Professionals remain very stable with their hands and use the big muscles of the shoulders and core to rotate in a pendulum “tick-tock” motion.  Many amateurs flip their hands in a hitting and pushing motion toward the target.  “The Flip” adds variables that are difficult to reliably account for.  It adds additional speed in a very short distance, relying on timing and the touch of a genius in very small muscles in the arms.  It also adds a large amount of rotation to the face of the putter in a short distance.  With “the flip”, we can have moments of brilliance that can fade away at a moment’s notice due to the vast amount of compensations required to square the face at the right speed.

One way to work on removing “the flip” is to put our consciousness into our left hand during the putting stroke.  When we set up correctly, the left hand is in a low position on the inside of the front thigh.  The wrist should be flat from the forearm to the back of the hand and there should be a natural angle in the wrist between the top of the arm and the thumb.  In a solid, rotational, shoulder-turn driven swing, the position of the left hand stays the same throughout the putting stroke.

Putting Drill – Left Hand

Take all this wonderful posture and fundamental setup we have discussed in previous sections and head out to the practice green or putting practice area. 

Practice hitting putts with just the left hand.

Focus on keeping the left hand stable (in the same position) through the entire swing.

Begin noticing the finish position you end up in.  If the left hand is broken down (there is an angle between the back of the hand and the forearm) or the left hand is high in in a lifting motion, you are adding arm effort to the shoulder turn.  When you notice this ending position, see if you can correct the ending position and take a few practice swings that just use relaxed rotation in the shoulders to power the pendulum.

Notes

Most players that are accustomed to flipping at the bottom the swing are used to creating power with this flipping motion.  When that flip is taken away, they tend to come up short with their putts.  Because you will be just getting your power from the swing of the pendulum, you may find that you have to train yourself to give a little more room for the pendulum to swing so you don’t feel tempted to hit at the bottom of the arc.  The pendulum doesn’t need any additional help.  No hitting motion at the bottom is required.  Just find the right “tick-tock” to cover the distance.

Putting Technique: Tick-Tock Goes the Clock

Musically speaking, I think of the putting stroke as the true pendulum rhythm of “tick-tock” and the full swing as a waltzing “1,2,3..1,2,3” dance.  In both instances there is a balance and equality to both sides of a beautiful, graceful and effortless golf swing.

Because it is a smaller swing and the motion is limited to the singularity of one body part moving (the shoulders) the pure pendulum rhythm of “tick-tock” works very well in putting.  It is truly the image of the grandfather clock’s timing arm swinging effortlessly and eternally back and forth.

That being said, there is a difference between rhythm and tempo.  Rhythm refers to an organization of beats and a repeatable reference to those beats.  Tempo refers to the amount of time (slow or fast) within which these beats take place.  All great golfers have great rhythm.  They hit the beat in their swings with regularity and ease.  Tempo, on the other hand, varies greatly from player to player.

In music, the measurement of tempo is in bpm (beats per minute).  When we apply this to a golf swing, for example, a fast swing registers in the 120 bpm range and a slower tempo would fall into the 90 bpm range.  Therefore, what is important is not that you have a specific tempo, what is important is that you find a tempo that fits your body type and your personality.  Basically, it should be something that feels very natural and repeatable.

The following are some general principles to find your ideal tempo in the game of golf.

·         Taller people generally gravitate towards slower tempos (nearer the 90bpm range).  Shorter individuals generally have quicker tempos (nearer the 120bpm range).

·         More energetic individuals tend to feel better with a quick tempo.  It is how they move through life and this tempo fits the pace that they experience life.  More languid, flowing types generally prefer the feeling of a slower pace for the same reasons.

·         The pace with which we walk generally speaks to our preferences for tempo in life.  If we tend to speed walk like there is someplace to go and not a whole lot of time to get there, a quicker tempo in golf will tend to suit us well.  If we enjoy strolls that meander and have no general rush, a slower tempo in golf will fit this preference better.

Tick-Tock Drill:  Finding your Ideal Tempo

In the modern age there are numerous smart phone apps the give us free access to a metronome.  I use one called “Mobile Metronome” developed by Gabriel Simoes for working on my own tempo and for helping my students discover their own, ideal tempo.  If you have a smart phone, I encourage you to download one of these apps on your phone.  If you don’t, a real version of the metronome works wonderfully as well.  If neither of these is possible, here are some musical references to help you find the tempo that “fits your soul” the best. 

120 bpm songs (Allegro)

Are you a mover and a shaker?  This playlist is for those with pep in their step.

http://www.youtube.com/playlist?feature=edit_ok&list=PLxrJvSHDg9H6dgI2xayPe4DGwosl7-tr3

110 bpm songs (Moderato)

You move with purpose in life.  This playlist is for those marching along to the beat in your soul.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rPxUukyTI2I&list=PLxrJvSHDg9H7rKbxmwRn13DaWullHvLcB

100 bpm songs (Andante)

You are walking the middle path in life.  This playlist is for those that move not too fast and not too slow.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uKVp-atyiVA&list=PLxrJvSHDg9H4SYgpqAIJpfaH_DrWBMzie

90 bpm songs (Andante)

Strolling through life.  This playlist is for those who mossy along with a bounce in their step.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oA8UEWLUkd0&list=PLxrJvSHDg9H7cEu11nUUF7OFKRz5AXu34

Whether you use a smart phone metronome app, a real metronome or one of the musical playlists from above, I suggest that you spend some time paying attention to your ideal tempo. 

·         Go for a walk and find the stride that fits your body the best.  Tap your steps into the metronome app or notice how it falls with the beat of the music.

·         Practice putting with a variety of beats using a metronome or music.  Notice the rhythm of the pendulum that feels most natural and effortless to you.

·         Listen to the playlists above and notice which tempo feels like the most comfortable and “homey” for you.

Once you determine your ideal tempo, create your own playlist of songs that fit into the ideal bpm for you and bring some headphones to the course with you.  You might be surprised how enjoyable putting practice can become when you add the harmonies, rhythm and ideal tempo of music to it.