Back in 1995 I was here in Northern California, working at the Presidio, teaching golf and focusing on playing. I won the apprentice championship that year and the win got me a bye to the second stage of Q-School. My friend wanted to help me in the venture and in preparation he suggested that we start playing all the more difficult and long golf courses that we could.
He didn't have a PGA Tour card and I figured out that he was just as much in it for the chance to play some great tracks for free in most cases. Our schedule took us down to Stanford University one beautiful morning. We checked in and we were on the tee waiting for the fairway to clear and there was an announcement from the golf shop. They asked us to hold up on the tee because there was a twosome that was about to join us.
Out from the old brick building came a little old man and his wife. I will never forget it. They both had these bucket caps and they had there pull-carts with them. They walked over in front of us to the forward tee, oblivious of the two of us back at the tips. It wasn't a great distance from the two separated tee boxes, perhaps great enough for two people in their eighties. I was about to bomb a tee shot off over their heads, my friend cautioned me not to. A wise decision. They teed off without a second glance back to us.
We finally caught their attention and off we went. After a death march up the first fairway, he rapped in a 12-foot putt for a 10 on the first hole, pumped his fist, said, 'nice birdie,' to his wife and she finished hers off for a 13 or 14. I was having trouble breathing as I walked to the next tee. That was when the old fella piped up, "she's not much of a golfer but boy can she cook."
They both turned out to be wonderful people. I just had to get over myself before I was able to see that. I'm sure you know what I mean. We spoke a bit in between shots that morning and he was truly a fascinating person. I asked him what he did for his life's work and he asked me if I was familiar with that two-mile long building out on the 280 freeway.
I happen to know about it and feeling a little cocky I said, "The Linear Accelerator building?"
He nodded his head and told me that was the one. There was a pause, as if he didn't want to be boastful. It turned out that he was one of the men that invented it. He had spent most of his life in think tanks developing the infrastructure of the computer world as we know it today. He asked me if I would like to know what they found out when they split the atom, being facsinated by him I was all ears. He told me that 99.999 percent of the atom was empty space, and he then said the real important part -- the other .0001, well that was empty space too.
I thought that it was another joke. He went on to explain that the smallest sub quirk of a particle could not be seen yet they knew it was there because they could see the trail that it left. I asked, "How can that possibly be? If that were true you and I would be nothing."
He said what we are -- and this is the part that has stuck with me long after that day -- what we are is simply energy, information and memory. Energy, Information and Memory, and that's it, that's all we are. He was a nice enough person not to just bomb that over my head. He didn't leave me hanging. He explained things so clearly, the jist of it is simply this"
The day they split the atom things changed in this world. They learned to shrink a computer down, telephones changed, everything that you see out there in the techno world changed that day. The world of technology had an epiphany.
Now, it became crystal clear to me how this was correlated to why I would struggle with the changes I wanted to make in my golf swing. I realized that when I try to change something, there is already this stuff in the way, some of it has been there for a long, long time and I had to get past this old information and memory that became my swing. My energy level was always off a bit when I needed to change something. I'm not sure which pain is worse -- losing, or trying to make a change. Let's face it, usually when you're trying to change something with your swing you have to deal with a level of disturbance. Things don't change right away.
To deal with a frustrated golfer is part of the lessons that I teach as an instructor. It's a huge part of the process, I find it interesting how different a tour pro looks at a swing change comparative to a high handicapper. The tour pro almost welcomes the bad shots as a sign of the change taking effect. With this type of attitude they never limit themselves to how good they may get. The average amateur fights the change, sometimes constantly complaining that the old swing works better than this.
Their commitment is unstable at best and this just causes a reverse effect to their already wobbly energy level. A bad shot just seems to crush them. I sometimes believe that in order for some of the students to play better golf they have to change their life first. I don't mean all together, this is just for the four or five hours that they are at the course playing. In some cases the change may help their lifestyle as well.
Most of the member students that I meet are successful professionals. They belong to one of the finest country clubs in Northern California. They got that way by being goal-oriented, organized and often very meticulous. However, to be reborn to the athlete inside of all of us or the child that still exists, if we haven't bored him or her to death with our goal-oriented nature we must get a bit unconscious, oblivious, and reckless to a degree.
I feel that once you can really feel like a golf shot just doesn't matter, that is when it will all come together. The power within is unbounded by the controlling nature of the ego. Caring has the opposite effect in golf, yet we can't help ourselves to care. It's like getting stuck in some black hole and you can't find the way out. Until you let yourself go there you will be in that black hole.
The whole question of imagination in golf is often misunderstood by people with other limitations. Can we seriously allow ourselves to imagine things that are obviously in contradiction to the known methods of hitting a golf ball? This is the problem with creating something which is new with swinging a golf club at a ball. So far everything out there that is trying to be new is at the same time consistent with everything that has been seen before. That is why it is extremely difficulty to trust something that is really new and really different. The next myths are in the works.
If you would like to learn more on the swing they really use on the PGA Tour go to 7mythsofgolf.com.
Bill Bondaruk is a PGA Class A member. After traveling the mini tours, Bondaruk taught for a few world-renowned golf schools, including John Jacobs, Jim McLean and Scott Sackett's Resort Golf. He was Director of Instruction at Arizona National and swing instructor for the University of Arizona men's and women's golf teams. He has worked with a list of tour professionals as well as collegiate stars.
