Kelvin Miyahira's Thoughts on Jason Day's Back Injury

Here's a video from Kelvin Miyahira (www.kelvinmiyahira.com) explain his thoughts on what is the cause of Jason Day's back injury:







3JACK

3Jack Golf's 2016 PGA Tour Rundown - Houston

Jason Day wins the WGC Match Play and Bay Hill in back-to-back weeks:




Here are my picks for Houston:

Dustin Johnson +1200
Louis Oosthuizen +2000
JB Holmes +2500
Tony Finau +6600
Daniel Berger +8000
Jason Kokrak +8000
Charley Hoffman +8400
Patrick Rodgers +9000
Hudson Swafford +22500

VALUE PICK: Jhonattan Vegas +22500


ADJUSTED DRIVING DISTANCE



1. Bubba Watson
2. J.B. Holmes
3. Dustin Johnson
4. Andrew Loupe
5. Rory McIlroy
6. Gary Woodland
7. Luke List
8. Tony Finau
9. Jason Kokrak
10. Ryan Palmer
11. Patrick Rodgers
12. Jamie Lovemark
13. Robert Garrigus
14. Brooks Koepka
15. Smylie Kaufman
16. Charlie Beljan
17. Justin Thomas
18. Charles Howell III
19. Harold Varner III
20. Jason Day


186. Chad Collins
187. Abraham Ancer
188. Billy Hurley III
189. Kevin Na
190. John Huh
191. K.J. Choi
192. Lucas Lee
193. Ken Duke
194. Dicky Pride
195. Zac Blair
196. Colt Knost
197. Steve Stricker
198. Brian Gay
199. Tim Clark
200. Mark Wilson
201. Brian Davis
202. Justin Leonard
203. David Toms
204. Jon Curran
205. Darron Stiles


ADJUSTED HIT FAIRWAY %




1. Colt Knost
2. Thomas Aiken
3. Jason Bohn
4. David Toms
5. Danny Lee
6. Justin Leonard
7. Emiliano Grillo
8. Zac Blair
9. Mark Wilson
10. Jerry Kelly
11. Brice Garnett
12. Graeme McDowell
13. Darron Stiles
14. Kevin Kisner
15. Tim Clark
16. David Hearn
17. Justin Hicks
18. Russell Knox
19. John Huh
20. Chez Reavie


186. Gary Woodland
187. Camilo Villegas
188. Miguel Angel Carballo
189. Luke Guthrie
190. Charley Hoffman
191. Carlos Ortiz
192. Ricky Barnes
193. Retief Goosen
194. Tony Finau
195. Carl Pettersson
196. Rhein Gibson
197. Ernie Els
198. Seung-Yul Noh
199. Luke List
200. Steven Bowditch
201. Rob Oppenheim
202. Andres Gonzales
203. Robert Garrigus
204. Andrew Loupe
205. Nick Watney


DRIVING EFFECTIVENESS



1. Emiliano Grillo
2. Kevin Kisner
3. Jason Bohn
4. Scott Piercy
5. Rickie Fowler
6. Jordan Spieth
7. Russell Henley
8. Danny Lee
9. Jim Herman
10. Hideki Matsuyama
11. Bubba Watson
12. Justin Rose
13. Boo Weekley
14. Thomas Aiken
15. Colt Knost
16. Russell Knox
17. Rory McIlroy
18. Webb Simpson
19. Keegan Bradley
20. Shane Lowry


186. D.J. Trahan
187. Aaron Baddeley
188. D.H. Lee
189. Billy Hurley III
190. Bronson Burgoon
191. Rhein Gibson
192. Steve Stricker
193. Robert Garrigus
194. Carl Pettersson
195. Ricky Barnes
196. Bud Cauley
197. Luke Guthrie
198. Luke Donald
199. Derek Fathauer
200. Andres Gonzales
201. Robert Allenby
202. Steven Bowditch
203. Retief Goosen
204. Ernie Els
205. Rob Oppenheim


RED ZONE PLAY (175-225 YARDS)



1. Hideki Matsuyama
2. Adam Scott
3. Jason Bohn
4. Ian Poulter
5. Robert Garrigus
6. Rory McIlroy
7. Jason Gore
8. Paul Casey
9. Emiliano Grillo
10. Lucas Lee
11. Justin Thomas
12. Webb Simpson
13. Hudson Swafford
14. Branden Grace
15. Tom Hoge
16. Graeme McDowell
17. William McGirt
18. Kevin Streelman
19. Chez Reavie
20. Graham DeLaet


186. Rory Sabbatini
187. David Hearn
188. Ken Duke
189. Miguel Angel Carballo
190. Derek Ernst
191. Hunter Mahan
192. J.J. Henry
193. Thomas Aiken
194. Carl Pettersson
195. Brian Harman
196. Anirban Lahiri
197. Morgan Hoffmann
198. Scott Pinckney
199. Stuart Appleby
200. Steve Marino
201. Chad Collins
202. Brendon Todd
203. Robert Allenby
204. Bo Van Pelt
205. Brian Gay


YELLOW ZONE PLAY (125-175 YARDS)



1. Henrik Stenson
2. Ken Duke
3. Kevin Na
4. Brian Davis
5. Robert Garrigus
6. Luke Donald
7. Phil Mickelson
8. Kyle Stanley
9. Billy Horschel
10. Padraig Harrington
11. Marc Leishman
12. Greg Owen
13. Jon Curran
14. Adam Scott
15. Bryce Molder
16. Webb Simpson
17. Dustin Johnson
18. K.J. Choi
19. Bubba Watson
20. Kevin Kisner


186. Michael Kim
187. Charl Schwartzel
188. Brian Harman
189. D.H. Lee
190. J.J. Henry
191. D.A. Points
192. Stuart Appleby
193. Wes Roach
194. Ryan Moore
195. Geoff Ogilvy
196. Jordan Spieth
197. Hunter Mahan
198. Derek Ernst
199. Steve Marino
200. Robert Allenby
201. Andrew Landry
202. Billy Hurley III
203. Jarrod Lyle
204. Steve Stricker
205. Bud Cauley


GREEN ZONE PLAY (75-125 YARDS)



1. Charl Schwartzel
2. Andrew Landry
3. Vaughn Taylor
4. Will MacKenzie
5. Stewart Cink
6. Justin Leonard
7. Matt Every
8. Justin Hicks
9. Luke Guthrie
10. Greg Owen
11. Darron Stiles
12. Henrik Norlander
13. Rob Oppenheim
14. Jimmy Walker
15. J.B. Holmes
16. Derek Fathauer
17. Dawie van der Walt
18. Scott Piercy
19. Brendon de Jonge
20. Steve Stricker


186. Miguel Angel Carballo
187. Brian Gay
188. Adam Hadwin
189. Bo Van Pelt
190. Chesson Hadley
191. Jason Day
192. Hiroshi Iwata
193. Will Wilcox
194. Jhonattan Vegas
195. Sung Kang
196. Sean O'Hair
197. Chad Campbell
198. Keegan Bradley
199. Charlie Beljan
200. Blayne Barber
201. Webb Simpson
202. Morgan Hoffmann
203. Angel Cabrera
204. Andres Gonzales
205. D.H. Lee


SHORT GAME PLAY

1. Bud Cauley
2. Rickie Fowler
3. Padraig Harrington
4. Tim Wilkinson
5. Brice Garnett
6. Luke List
7. Jarrod Lyle
8. Scott Langley
9. Hideki Matsuyama
10. Jordan Spieth
11. Fabian Gomez
12. Retief Goosen
13. Patrick Rodgers
14. Brian Gay
15. Chad Campbell
16. Gary Woodland
17. Jon Curran
18. David Toms
19. Kevin Na
20. Freddie Jacobson


186. Ryo Ishikawa
187. Carlos Ortiz
188. Miguel Angel Carballo
189. Russell Henley
190. Charlie Beljan
191. William McGirt
192. Scott Stallings
193. Martin Laird
194. Brett Stegmaier
195. Hudson Swafford
196. Jhonattan Vegas
197. Scott Pinckney
198. Charl Schwartzel
199. Andres Gonzales
200. Daniel Summerhays
201. Graeme McDowell
202. Johnson Wagner
203. Matt Kuchar
204. Chesson Hadley
205. Pat Perez







3JACK

A New Mindset for Golf

With the news of Nick Watney being out for the year with a back injury and Jason Day re-injuring his back, the world of back injuries in pro golf has gotten me back to some concepts that I could see being very beneficial to future of golf. This was reinforced even more as a friend of mine sent me this video from David Epstein at TED Talk.



Epstein's speech covers a wide range of topics, but one of the key sticking points for me was idea that there have been advancements in sports technology and understanding of the sport that has led to athletes performing better even if they are not necessarily 'bigger, stronger and faster.'  One of the concepts that he mentions is how the *mindset* of sports has changed.  For instance, Roger Bannister breaking the 4-minute mile barrier.  Not only did people think it was impossible for a human to physically break that barrier, but just attempting to break the 4-minute mile would lead to death from cardiac arrest.  Then Bannister broke the barrier and other runners followed suit.  Even with the new technology as Epstein describes, there are runners that would have broken the 4-minute mile using the same technology as Bannister.  Bannister broke the mold and now the mindset was established that it was possible to run a mile in under 4-minutes and to survive that endeavor.

While I could use this to say in golf we could create a mindset to do many great things that we never thought of being possible (Tour player with legitimately 135+ mph club speed dominating the Tour, hitting putting make % records, iron play performance, etc), I wanted to go more into the aspect of golf injury prevention and optimizing practice time instead.


THE LEGEND OF LIETZKE



If there's one thing I've grown frustrated as a golfer and a consumer of golf instruction is the constant practicing in order to achieve new swing mechanics and then to sustain new swing mechanics.  It often seems that golf is the only endeavor where it is needed so much.  If you have an expert guitar player that hasn't touched a guitar in over a month, they may not be quite sharp at first, but they'll still be proficient and after a little while they will start to play like they have never took any time off.  The same with a good free throw shooter in basketball.  With golfers often times we see drastic differences from day-to-day, even if they have been practicing.

Back in the 80's and 90's, one of the finest ballstrikers on Tour was Bruce Lietzke.  In fact, I did an article in 2013 Pro Golf Synopsis looking at all of the players since 1980 that were 1 standard deviation above the mean in both driving distance and hit fairway percentage in the same year.  It was a select group and nobody has accomplished that feat since 2001.  Lietzke did it twice.  So did Jack Nicklaus (1980 and 1982) and David Duval. 

The thing about Lietzke is that he was known for NEVER practicing.  In fact, there's an old story where his caddie wanted to see if it was true and at the end of the season left a banana inside Bruce's bag and when the season started up again months later, the banana (now spoiled) was still in his bag.

Furthermore, we look at the players of yesteryear and have to remember that driving ranges were not nearly as common nor were they filled with golf balls for golfers today.  As one famous retired Tour player once told me, if he could find a range the problem was that he and his caddie would have to pick up their own golf balls.  And I think it would be hard to contend that the great ballstrikers of yesteryear of Hogan, Snead, Nelson, Watson, Nicklaus, Trevino were not as good if not better than today's great ballstrikers.  Again, the last time somebody was better than 1-standard deviation from the mean in both distance and fairway percentage on Tour was 2001.

Experienced golfers are practicing more but it can be argued they are not better than experienced golfers of yesteryear.  And they seem to be getting injured more despite all of the advances in medicine, exercise and transportation.  To me, something doesn't quite add up.  I would expect at the very least the case of Usain Bolt and Jesse Owens described by Epstein...Bolt being technically faster time wise, but mostly thru the technology of running surfaces, shoes, etc. If everything was on the same level, Bolt and Owens would be in a dead heat. 

I don't think we have a dead heat these days.  As much as I like the guys on top of the golfing world right now, I don't believe any of them could are better than Nicklaus if they had the same equipment. I would easily argue for Tom Watson against and the same with Hogan and Snead.

To me, one of the major differences is in how we practice.

***

A few weeks ago, I got this message from a reader who had read my thoughts on utilizing slow motion practice to improve his swing.

Richie,

I just wanted to say I've started slow motion training and am seeing results like I never thought were possible. I thought of you, because I remembered reading your posts advocating it last year.

Anyway I've come up with a pretty solid practice routine where I use a ball every time, I hit seven different positions in slow motion, pause at impact, then release the club pushing the ball a few feet and holding into the finish position. It seems to help if all practice swings include a ball so when it's time to hit a shot your brain doesn't know the difference.

At impact to get into a tour pro looking impact position took a little time. My hips did not want to go there, but after hundreds of perfect reps it started to feel normal. What's interesting is there is absolutely no chance I could have hit that position at full speed consciously.

This whole thing is mind boggling. The only swing thought I still have is to get the takeaway right then I am just picturing the shot and where I want it to land. To my surprise most of the time the shot comes off how I imagined. The ball has a high penetrating flight when no swing thoughts are involved. The club is truly released. So if any swing thoughts are involved I know I'm manipulating the club and that needs to be avoided. Anyway I'm still in the honeymoon phase with this, but I know I'm on the right track.

I'm not a golf instructor, so I'm not trying to sell any type of practice or swing methodology.  But, I had seen the benefits of slow motion practice and here we see a golfer that was diligent enough to follow and he is now seeing those same benefits.  The big thing is that we both have cut out or swing thoughts from the swing.  It not only allows us to perform better on the course, but we are essentially grooving in the mechanics we wish to achieve.  Which brings me back to the Ikkos Advanced Motor Learning System.  I wrote a review about them here:

http://www.3jack.blogspot.com/2016/03/ikkos-advanced-motor-learning-review.html

The Ikkos system is based on slow motion practice and also uses a visual element to help.  What I've found is that you can get the mechanics you want, but still have some initial struggles with your ballstriking because your brain is not used to the timing of your body being in different positions than normal.  But with enough repetition, it starts to adapt unless you adjust your mechanics because you're initially not hitting it as well as hoped.

The point being?

I don't think it's impossible for golfers to learn mechanics much more quickly and to be able to do so with far less repetition.  I think there is room for practicing less and putting less stress on a player's back and striking the ball just as well, if not better.  We may not see the second coming of Bruce Lietzke, but I do not see any reason why players cannot have something where their main purpose of practicing on the range each day is to get in a small amount of practice to help with their timing and then they can head to the practice green and work on putting and short game practice. 

I think players like Lietzke had that innate ability to visualize and sense what they needed to do and players like Hogan, Nicklaus and Watson knew what to work on and how to work on it and get the most out of their practice time.  So a new mindset for golf may just end up being an old mindset for golf.





3JACK

Deciphering DeChambeau - The Driver

US Amateur Champ, Bryson DeChambeau made it to Bay Hill this past week and finished t-27th with a final round of 66.  I had the pleasure of watching Bryson in person and came away impressed.  He was also gaming a new driver which was out of the ordinary...but that's the ordinary for DeChambeau.

Bunkersparadise.com wrote an article about DeChambeau's driver that can be found here:

http://www.bunkersparadise.com/48568/bryson-dechambeaus-radical-new-driver/

What makes this really interesting is that DeChambeau had them remove the weight completely in order to make the club extremely light. A swing weight scale runs from A0 to G10 and Bubba Watson swings a driver that is D3. Bryson’s new driver is B9 which gives you some idea of how super light it is.

In addition to removing weight from the head the driver also has a JumboMax XL grip that weighs a whopping 121 grams vs normal grips at 50 grams. This puts even more of the weight away from the club head.

***

As many know, I do not use swingweight and prefer MOI measurement (total club MOI) to determine the heft of the club.  Although B-9 is very light, but not all B-9 swingweights are the same.  Also, the theory that adding weight to the grip will create a lighter feeling of heft is very misguided which is where the biggest flaw in the swingweight measurement resides.  It does not account for the total weight of the club and therefore it is saying that a club becomes lighter when you add weight to the total mass.

I tried the JumboMax Grips on my 3-iron a few months ago.  The JumboMax grips are exactly like they sound, they are far larger and heavier than your standard grip:

One of the interesting things I found with the JumboMax grips is how it actually increased the MOI (made it heftier).  I had my 3-iron set to 2,725 MOI with a Pure Grips P2 Wrap model.  Adding the JumboMax XL and the MOI shot up to 2,755 MOI.

What we know about swingweight is that adding 10 grams to the grip will change the swingweight by roughly 1.5 points.  So with a 70 gram difference between the JumboMax Grip and a normal grip, the swingweight would roughly be at D-0 if there was a regular grip on the head.  And with the difference that the JumboMax grips make on the MOI, it's a 'heavier' D-0 swingweight.  Still light for a Tour player, but not actually as light as the B-9 swingweight implies.

The big thing about Bryson's driver is that static weight of the club should be rather heavy.  I play my 45-1/2" driver at 2,825 which is at about D-4 swingweight (relatively heavy).  The static weight comes out to 318 grams (203 head weight + 50 gram grip weight + 65 gram trimmed shaft weight).

Bryson's driver should come out to roughly 375 grams.

180 gram head weight (estimated, we'll say 198 grams is Cobra headweight and remove the 18 gram weight)

120 gram grip weight

75 gram shaft weight (estimated after trimming)

So perhaps with the JumboMax grips, Bryson may have needed some weight taken off or he would have close to a 400+ gram driver.

Also remember that Bryson utilizes the JumboMax grips as he grips the club in the palms.  And when you look at his swing, it does not have much wrist-cock in the backswing.



So perhaps with a club that is as long as the driver, the weighting has to change in order for him to feel comfortable due to his grip in the palms and less wrist-cock in the backswing.  Either way, Mr. DeChambeau keeps it interesting for sure.






3JACK

Golf Smart Academy Video on Bowing the Left Wrist and Closing the Clubface

Here's a video from Golf Smart Academy explaining the bowing of the left wrist and its effect on the clubface and the club head path in the golf swing:







3JACK

How Jason Day Used FocusBand to Help Him Get Rid of the Yips

Interesting video on Jason Day's use of the FocusBand on how it helped him get rid of the yips:







3JACK

Pressure Plates vs. Force Plates with Golf Smart Academy

Here's a video from Golf Smart Academy discussing the differences between Force Plates and Pressure Plates.







3JACK