Playing around in the lab

So there I was, surrounded by posters of Tiger Woods, Ernie Els, Annika Sorenstam and Gary Player, an array of flickering screens and computer keyboards, strapped into something resembling a flak jacket, trying to find the perfect golf swing.

You know the scenario. The holiday had come and gone and the golfing bliss anticipated last December had not materialized – to be replaced by the sheer frustration of a game gone bad.

No feel. No timing. No direction. No cure. As if the rainy weather and lightning breaks that was golf on the Highveld were not bad enough my clubs felt like broomsticks and, worst of all, there was no pattern to the malaise.

Pulled shots. Pushed shots. Fat shots. Thin shots. Smother hooks. Reverse pivot slices. Duffed pitches. Skulled chips. Missed putts. If you’re making one mistake it’s easy to fix but when, to use a contradiction in terms, there’s no consistency to the rubbish you’re playing golf becomes a game that could only have been invented by some mean old Scotsman hitting bits of dung with his crook while shepherding sheep in the heather.

At the start of the holiday the intention had been to buy some new clubs in the new way - with the assistance of digital cameras, sensors and computers to get exactly the right fit.

The aim would have been to use the machines to match new-fangled things such as launch angle and spin rate (of the ball, not the mind!) to shaft and loft but what’s the point of all that if there’s no repetitiveness in the swing.

Something had to be done but being well into the post-50 back nine of golf and set in my ways I wasn’t keen on having a lesson and it was while trudging out of the World of Golf after another session of trying to “dig it out of the dirt,” as Ben Hogan recommended, that I bumped into Danny Baleson who suggested a session at, to give it it’s full name, the Gary Player Golf Experience Tech Lab.

Having been won over by the wonders of high tech when I bought my Titleist driver, probably the best club I’ve owned, I was keen to give it a go; hence the sensor laden flak jacket and the feeling of being in golf’s equivalent of a flight simulator.

The machines measure your spine angle, the wind up of your shoulders and hips and even your weight transference and where it is centered.

One of the key modern insights into the golf swing is the angle of the spine – i.e. whether you straighten or dip in making the swing; something that even Tiger Woods struggles with.

The other is the relationship between your shoulder turn and hip turn – with the bigger the separation between the two signaling the kind of swing speed you can generate.

We now understand that that the golf swing is a dynamic “turn” rather than a lunge with the knees that generations misunderstood by studying still photographs – a technicality that can be as erroneous as the old saw of keeping your head down.

My score, or X-factor, was way off, in part caused by a chronically stiff back and sore hip (which I was assured can be greatly helped by a personalized fitness progamme which one can do under supervision at the World of Golf) but for me the most telling revelation was from the balance machine that showed that my weight was too much on my heels rather than on the balls of my feet; from address and throughout the entire swing.

It immediately accounted for the inconsistency I had been experiencing, the habit of “falling out” of the shot, and with just this in my mind my next round produced my best score for many a month – or was it something else I picked up?

There’s also a machine called the SAM PuttLab and it revealed that at address my putter was 2° open (i.e. facing ever so slightly to the right of the intended line) and that it returned to exactly that position on every putt I made – instantly accounting for why I felt I was “pushing” my putts and making an immediate difference to my success rate.

Unsurprisingly, from something that carries Gary Player’s name, my analyst (or should that be shrink?) Travis Fraser felt there was “an upper body flexibility issue” with my swing that could be very much improved with a personalized exercise programme.

A session on the slab in the lab is not cheap – R1500 for the first two hour examination – but I felt it was most worthwhile; especially because, if you’re willing to make the commitment, you can return to measure and check on what difference you might be making.

For me, I don’t know about that arthritic shoulder turn but I definitely intend to play with more balls!

Dan Retief’s columns on golf also appear in the Financial Mail.