Book Review: The Scientific Golfer: Baselining Basics
- Rick Adams
Senior Editor
To improve at golf, like almost any endeavor, you must first understand your current level of skill – your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. You may say, “I slice my tee shots,” but do you know how much fade to allow for? You may think you hit a 7-iron 155 yards, but more likely you hit it anywhere from 142 to 162 yards and between 5 and 15 yards wide of the target.
Understanding your typical shot patterns and true distance ranges for every club in the bag can make a big difference in how you plan your way around a golf course. Just look at what smart golf has done for Phil Mickelson in the past year – a Masters title, three victories earlier this year, and a return to ranking among the top 5 players in the world.
Long-lasting game improvement doesn’t necessarily come from taking a lesson or two, nor from occasional sessions blasting drivers all over the range. Steady progress requires a systematic approach, and now there’s a workbook that can help you focus your practice.
A guy who has applied the scientific method a few times in his career, aerospace engineer John Griffith, has created a “benchmarking” kit aimed at serious golfers who want to intelligently analyze their shotmaking skills. “I wrote this for the 20% of golfers who want a deeper understanding of the mechanics of the game,” Griffith notes. The complete process takes some time – it involves hitting a total of 860 balls spread over three different days -- but in 2-3 hours you can do partial benchmarking on some of your clubs and extrapolate the data to other clubs in between.
Structured for Success
The benchmarking kit includes a 200-page book, The Scientific Golfer: Baselining Basics, a 100-page workbook of the same name with various fill-in-the-blank templates, and a “Pocket Caddy” which visually depicts your shot “scatter pattern” for each club.
For each club, you hit 10 shots a session. Using a simple graphic symbol, you record the result of each shot – distance, how far off center, and how well you struck the shot (on a scale of A to F) -- on a preprinted grid in the workbook. You record similar data for the same club during your 2nd and 3rd sessions but using different graphic symbols. At the end of the 3 sessions, you “connect the dots” of outer, inner and middle shot results to create your personal distance ranges and scatter patterns for each club.
The distance ranges and scatter patterns get transferred to the Pocket Caddy, which you use on the course to help determine what club to use in each situation.
Ideally, to get the best data, you would do your benchmarking sessions with good golf balls on a well-marked, accurate range in relatively calm conditions. We all know that windless days are rare in Texas, perhaps 3 in 10 range balls fly true, and yardage markers are haphazardly placed at best. Griffith is lobbying members of the US Driving Range Association as well as club pros to adopt his system and set aside special benchmarking areas, including accurately lasered markers every 10 yards.
Another option is for retailers and instructional facilities with golf simulators to rent their indoor device by the hour for golfers who want to benchmark a few clubs. Many simulators calculate both carry and roll yardage, distance off target, and even launch trajectory and spin rates. The data from a session could be printed out or copied to disc and plotted on the workbook template at your convenience.
Late in the day when no one is playing behind me, I’ve benchmarked individual clubs on par 3 holes or approach shots. Knowing the distance to the front, middle and back of the green, I’ll hit as many as 10-12 shots with the same club to determine my range and accuracy.
Game Management Data
If nothing else, the exercise of pausing after every practice shot on the range -- to record how you hit it and the result – will help you better understand the physics of striking the ball … a shot struck near the heel of the club, for example, will lose distance and send the ball to the right … an over-the-top pull will drill the ball left and the de-lofting effect will cause it to fly farther than normal … a slightly “fat” shot will come up 20 yards short, not the 10 you always thought.
More important, you will see your shot tendencies emerge on the workbook charts – how many times out of 10 you hit an “A” shot (if you’re honest with yourself), how many degrees you normally stray to the right (few righthanders consistently miss left), how much variance there is between your best shots and your worst (almost 30 yards for me with a 7 iron, as much as 50 with a 5-wood).
The resulting scatter patterns on your Pocket Caddy are similar to the “target box” concept I wrote about previously: “Score Well Without Perfect Shots." By understanding your minimum carry, maximum carry & roll, and offline tendencies for each club, you can select the right stick and the target area that offers you the best risk/reward option for your game. Much smarter than firing at every flag, hoping for a perfect shot, and suffering a scorecard filled with double-bogeys and worse.
The Scientific Golfer workbook also includes sections for benchmarking distance control on approach shots of 10, 20, 30 and 50 yards, as well as putts of 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 feet. There are also hole diagrams for tracking the results of each shot during rounds on the course.
Because of the extensive note-taking required, the process is easier and more fun with a “benchmarking buddy.” You hit, he writes. He hits, you write. Better than picking the workbook and pencil off the ground after every swing. (Maybe Griffith will produce a software version for a Palm Pilot so you just touch the spot on a screen diagram where the ball lands and the PDA does the calculations for you.)
Scientist Tricks
Gauging the distance of a shot is not usually difficult, but calculating how far offline can be, so Griffith has included a couple of simple techniques that are free and always available. Both use your hand. In the first, make a fist and extend your arm. Align your rightmost knuckle with the target – your leftmost knuckle represents 10 degrees from the target.
For the second trick, you use different combinations of extended fingers. For example, extending the index finger and little finger only (the “Hook ‘Em Horns” symbol for University of Texas fans) represents a 15-degree angle. A fully extended thumb to little finger span is 25 degrees – which you can test some night by matching it with the end stars of the Big Dipper constellation.
Griffith plans additional products under the Scientific Golfer brand and his “smart golf through simple science” theme. “This is a brand of products for those serious golfers who want to totally understand their game and the principles that affect their ability to conquer it,” he explains. “No gadgets, endorsements, marketing promises, but facts, statistics, and proven science-based methods.”
The Scientific Golfer: Baselining Basics
by John A. Griffith
Rosetta Stone Communications, Thousand Oaks CA
$49.95 plus $6.95 S/H through www.scientificgolfer.com
To improve at golf, like almost any endeavor, you must first understand your current level of skill – your strengths, weaknesses, and tendencies. You may say, “I slice my tee shots,” but do you know how much fade to allow for? You may think you hit a 7-iron 155 yards, but more likely you hit it anywhere from 142 to 162 yards and between 5 and 15 yards wide of the target.
The benchmarking kit includes a 200-page book, The Scientific Golfer: Baselining Basics, a 100-page workbook of the same name with various fill-in-the-blank templates, and a “Pocket Caddy” which visually depicts your shot “scatter pattern” for each club.