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Some more
testimonials
George
Hibbard's
Perfect Impact Golf
Complete golf swing
instruction: a good golf swing is
easy unless you're violating the structure of your body, which is exactly what people do. You need to know golf's critical details!
REAL golf instruction here:
and everything is covered and simplified for the beginner or pro. Stop wandering
and wondering. You have come to the right place!
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THE GOLFING MACHINE
by Homer Kelley
The popularity of Homer Kelley's "The Golfing Machine" among some teachers and their followers
for the last thirty five years or so is unparalleled in golf instruction. And that is because it put itself out
as "science based," and of course, "we cannot argue with SCIENCE!" Kelley was an engineer by profession (a Boeing aircraft
design expert), and he couched the book with all the trappings of "the laws" of physics and dynamics. His cult and
followers awarded "degrees" to those who could speak his language and translate his complex descriptions
into everyday English for "the layman."
Since SCIENCE was at the heart of it, its edicts held the
ring of indisputable truth, and those who could unravel its
unbelievably complicated writing style and idiosyncratic
terminology were felt to be the only people who really knew the
golf swing. (Degrees were issued for its "doctors..." -- 'GSED' stands for "Golf Stroke Engineering Doctor.")
After all, its final chapters list 24 Basic Components,
144 Component Variations, Twelve Sections, Three Zones, 12
Components, and a nearly uncountable number of sub-topics, lists
and descriptors. As in WOW, you HAVE to be a genius to know
all that stuff, hence you deserve the elitist stature that you've "been
accused of."
In addition to the fact that its organizational cross-referencing complexity makes it virtually unreadable,
many of its most cherished assumptions, pronouncements, and conclusions are simply and patently wrong. These "wrongs" include the concept or necessity for "a flat left wrist" at key instants
during the swing, the need to strike "the inside aft quadrant of the golf ball," and the rigid classifications
in which he attempted to describe how we move and exert body parts.
Engineers and analysts might enjoy and feel they are given to understand some of the "mechanics" of golf swinging
human bodies, but speaking as a "learner" and putting myself in the shoes of pupils who want things made clear and simple,
its approach and complexity are perhaps the worst of all possible routes to learning how to swing a golf club well.
To sum up the issues with Kelley, I describe the difference between the engineer who has 500 tiny matchsticks
and 500 freeze-frame photos of Tiger Woods' downswing to impact who is placing the matchsticks on paper in
order to recreate the positions Tiger "needs to attain" at every step on the way to the ball to the simplicity of a child using
a compass. Clearly his effort
to make perfect circles will be artificial and contrived. Meanwhile,
his daughter (8 years old) just came home from school with her new pencil case and is playing with the compass
in the kit. SHE not only draws oerfect circles immediately: she INTUITS CIRCLE and in a flash realizes, subsumes,
the concept in its reality. Dad tries to make circles his way, and of course will never be able to reach the perfect circles
she makes. "Pi" for HER is indeed "pi" - its quantification is irrelevant: its essence is intuitive.
But "pi" for Dad is 3.14159..... (an irrational number...)
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