golfweloveit

See this golf course in Las Vegas, which a DJ plays non stop Kiss music and hosts trivia events about the band. We need a Freddie Mercury course here in the UK, see the next post.

Sam Snead’s swing is still the gold standard – technically as near perfect as you can get, and yet it is the beauty of his swing that makes it so outstanding. The fluid rhythm and tempo combined with the huge power that it generated.

He still holds the record for most wins on the PGA Tour – 82, two more than Tiger -which included seven majors. Here’s a picture of them together, Sam signing an autograph for young Tiger. 162 PGA Tour titles between them

Sam Snead  had great longevity winning tournaments in six different decades including a 3rd place in the 1974 PGA Championship when he was 62 years old. That is some champion.

But looking at his swing, just for pleasure, I noticed something interesting. Sam Snead’s key move during the downswing is the transfer of power through his feet.

Now I’m not just a golfer, I learned to figure skate at the same young age that I began to play golf and learning the two sports side by side helped with balance and learning how the feet generate power.

So freeze framing Sam Snead’s swing as the club approaches the ball I saw how his knees were widely spread apart with the weight completely equal between the feet as he hits the ball before the knees come more together in the follow through. It’s a position you will see again and again with skaters. So next time you see Torvill and Dean on television, take a look at Jayne Torvill’s deep knee bend which enables her to move her feet so effectively. That’s the same position that Sam Snead got in his golf swing at impact.

Justin Rose yesterday consolidated his World No 1 position with a 2 stroke victory at the Farmers Insurance Open. It capped off a sustained run of exceptional golf. He’s had a win in Turkey, tied second in The Open, the BMW Championship and Dell Technologies and T4 in the Tour Championship which led to him winning the FedEx Cup title.

At Torrey Pines South Course Justin began the final round with a three shot lead but soon lost that in a shaky start. With bogeys on 3 of the first 5 holes he pulled himself together telling himself:

”You’re No 1 in the world for a reason so start playing like it please”.

His nearesr rivals Adam Scott and Jon Rahm weren’t gaining any ground on him so he began to grind his round out. And then he birdied 5 of the last 12 holes to hold off Scott for his 10th PGA Tour victory. And with brand new Homma clubs and a different caddie, Gareth Lord, on the bag. He said he “always felt in control, I stayed patient and never started panicking”.

Rose’s career turnaround seems to have begun when he lost the playoff to Sergio Garcia in the 2017 Masters. At this time he was 136th in strokes gained in putting. Last year he was 21st. He has worked this out and is now a complete player. He has since won 6 times in 31 starts with 3 runner ups and 3 3rd places.

Justin now heads to this week’s Saudi International on the European Tour before taking 3 weeks off. He’ll be taking with him the surfboard given to the winner of the Farmers Insurance Open. He says he doesn’t surf and doesn’t plan to start, even though he lives in Bermuda.

This week former PGA Champion Hal Sutton announced that he will be returning to the Champions Tour and playing 20 tournaments. He wants to “Quit the game correctly”. “I have unfinished business and I’m doing this for me. Failure brought me back I need to finish this the way I should have done. This last hill is a personal hill, I’ve got to find the best version of Hal.

Hal, 60, has been running his Academy outside of Houston, but began to think about returning when his fellow professionals had said they missed seeing him on tour.

It’s a long way since he won the PGA Championship and 13 other tournaments on rhe PGA Tour, when he looked like this

He has since had a mild heart attack, two hip replacements and four divorces. He is now remarried to his fifth wife. He was battered after his captaincy of the United States team at the 2004 Ryder Cup at Oakland Hills, Detroit, not least by Phil Mickelson for pairing him and arch rival Tiger Woods together. During that Ryder Cup at the Opening Ceremony he couldn’t remember how many children he and current wife Ashley had together. “Four” she corrected him.

He spoke about that captaincy and the way that he had spoken to his side when they fell behind: “my job as the captain of this team is to fall somewhere between loving you and beating the shit out of you”.

Interesting.

He said that he took the failure on himself and felt that he let his whole team down. In hindsight he wouldn’t have paired Woods and Mickelson together.

”I quit the game as a failure” he said “and I’m back to finish my career and get closure on my own terms”.

The best of British luck to him. Really not sure about this unfortunate painting of him at the top. That hand is not connected to his body. It reminds me of the hand called thing that came out of the box in the TV version of the Addams Family. Either that or it’s someone else handing him a drink.