Originally Posted by Mike O
(Post 93596)
Unrelated to this thread - just something some may like - a transcript of audio of Homer: 1-2-3… the preliminary and then going to the identities and the glossary and then start working on relationships as in the …
(inaudible and unrelated to lecture)
NEW SPEAKER: I’ll just come back.
HOMER: The good part about starting out with that curriculum last year is we went out and worked with the students on those things and brought them up in the direction (inaudible) -- I think that's what you guys should be doing is finding people who can come to this class. I think one of the things that they should have is they at least have a bachelor’s degree. There's three certificates you can get. Basic -- no. Basic, intermediate, and advanced. And then this is the normal certificate (inaudible). When they come here they should be qualified so you can give them a passing grade on the full curriculum, the 12 sessions. (inaudible) But the idea is they don't get much out of this (inaudible) and so -- I found that after they've gotten out and they were working and the problems and the things they called me about, the need -- the thing that hadn't been met was a better understanding of the law. They didn't have a good understanding of the bare-bone identity of everything. And they had trouble with how to handle these relationships.
As you recall the relationships are the cross-reference numbers. And until you find the relationships, the more relationships you can hang on to any particular concept the better you understanding in all directions. And it takes time. I don't think you should feel that you should leave here a thoroughly indoctrinated and thoroughly equipped teacher. You're going to be another year or two before you reach the point that you feel – that you want to reach because there's so much stuff to incubate around. And you have to learn to drag it out, look at it, and throw it back in the incubator. Every time you see another relationship. I don't know of any shortcuts. That is the only shortcut.
So if we could get a better understanding of these laws, all of them, and you probably all have questions about them and relationships and all that, but you want to keep in mind that you'll be way ahead of anybody that comes to you for help. You'll be able to help, and you’ll know you can help them, and they will get a great deal of help from you. But I still think it's going to be a year or two before you reach the point where want or think you should be – want to be. There is simply no way to push this stuff or to hurry it except taking it out, looking it over, and throwing it back again. Like a hen turning eggs over in the nest every once in a while. But they sit there and there is nothing you can do about them. You don't open the eggs, the chick does. So when the idea is ready it will appear in full form so it keeps coming up with a little more and a little more passion to it and a little better application and a little wider application.
One thing -- it's one thing to be complex and another thing to be mysterious. And I think it would be a big help if the attitude that you have toward it should change and this is what chapter one is all about -- how you look at the game from a Golf Machine point of view. And that is that it is not a mystery. Actually you're getting all the things in your automobile. You don't know how to make them -- you know they're there if you know anything about an automobile -- but if you're going to be a mechanic you learn about all those things. But to be a good driver you don't have to know a thing about gear ratios. You can be a good little car steerer. And I think this is what most golfers want. Most of your students just want to play golf. They don’t want to be a teacher. So you'll be able to help them a great deal and with the basic motion curriculum -- I think this is going to become more famous than the book (inaudible). It's far superior to the stroke pattern procedures (inaudible) all isolated things. Has anybody seen it?
NEW SPEAKER: I’ve got a copy here, Homer.
HOMER: It's three stages. And all you do is start swinging back and forth with the club. And keep adding on to it, adding on to the swing, and stop and check (inaudible) to get some idea of the address routine across to them in the process. When you stop, you're starting from the address routine. And they stand there and in five minutes you can take them to the first stage and take and run them through and go back over and get them to see a little better what they were doing.
I tell you this Dick Farley, anybody know him at all? You do? He is a fantastic guy. I was tremendously impressed and he has made it part of his swings (inaudible) and went through it very carefully and he came to the realization that I hadn't, that how far can you go before you have to separate the hitters from the swingers. And we realized that if you went at it with teaching all three hinge actions, that you could go clear to the end and actually hitting and swinging are in Zone 3 -- Stage 3. So can take them quite a ways before you have to decide whether they're a hitter or a swinger. It's all the same thing.
Actually there's five stages. The first one you have short shots and you swing about this far and then when you get through that stage you go to a putter and get a putting swing, no ball. And then go to the second stage and swing a little farther. And the third stage is for long strokes and long irons and (inaudible).
But this was one of the things that disturbed me early on in golf -- a guy here named Gordy Richards had a driving range over here about a block and half, two blocks. He's Mr. Golf out here. For 20 years. A very astute teacher and a wonderful guy and I worked out at the driving range a lot and I'd see him all the time and he'd take these guys and take their hands -- back and forth and back and forth. And gosh, it seems to me Gordy knows more about golf (inaudible), but he came to the realization -- and I don't think he really knew it -- that the thing that got me going on this was why do low handicap golfers and pros, especially pros, start out as low handicappers. Most pros -- I bet none of you guys have ever had a handicap higher than these, maybe you have, but most pros have not had to work their way down do the handicappers. They start out as six or eight. But no duffer has ever made the grade. He goes step by painful step. Gets down to 12 and hangs there for a long time. And if he works real hard he might get to a 10. But why don’t these guys become good golfers?
And it just dawned on me last summer what the reason was -- what Gordy was doing. They all hit at the ball. And none of you guys do that. You all go through it. All go through it. And one of the requirements of this thing is you keep swinging. All right now, flatten your left wrist. Okay, they flatten their left wrist. Now roll your hand. Keep the wrist vertical. And on and on through these steps. While you’re doing -- there is no intrusion by impact. And with myself it took me right over the -- I don't do it yet, I'm still working on these things, but when I've checked it out to see, there's all the difference in the world. But you have to be ready at the top. You can't get halfway down and say, well, I’m going to go through it. And it really starts at the address. And I'm totally convinced, and I think you will be with the results, that if you can get them to swing through you can make a good golfer out of them. If you can’t, they will be hackers forever.
And I think a lot of -- oh, say 8 to 10 handicappers, around there and maybe even lower, and even some of the pros throw the club. Impact is still the big point. And my three -- my triad of the three stations -- impact is not a station. Be sure that there is no consideration given to the hitting of the ball. That hitting the ball is part of this total motion. You make the motion and not a shot. Because I can't care how much information you give them, if they can't hit past impact they're going to be hackers. I think if you check back your best students are those that swung through. So I would take the stand that if they can have a flat left wrist and swing through, they don't need my help or anybody's (inaudible).
But you can't just get them to do that. I’ve spent untold hours trying to get people not to bend their left wrist. And they argue with me that they didn't bend their left wrist. But I've checked and I think most pros and almost all of the better amateurs throw the club to some extent. They have learned to throw it with great accuracy. I think they have a feeling that, like almost everybody’s had, that uncocking the wrist is what gave the clubhead velocity for impact. And that isn't it at all. When you stop and realize that the club does not pass the hand as it goes through impact. It never does. It's in position before it gets to impact and the -- so that the flat left wrist, if you maintain a flat left wrist, this kind of action is not going to give the clubhead impact velocity because by the time you get to the impact it has to be this way, going through on a straight line. The left arm flying wedge, it can only cock or roll, it can not bend. (inaudible) The left-hand flying wedge is always as if there was a panel right behind the hand and the club so the club, if it moves, moves on this plane. Or moves on this plane or on this plane. That’s the idea of the two golfer's flails. One is on the side with the pin to the top so the flail goes this way and one has a flail on top of the pin going through so it won't bend. It will do this. But it won't do this. The clubhead's velocity if you pick up is strictly the velocity of extension – goes out like this.
And a have what I call a golfer’s flail and you can throw it down so it goes this way and it uncocks. And you know you can also go around this way. But if you go this way it will uncock like that. But with a flat left wrist, if the wrist is flat, the club can never get ahead of this inline condition of (inaudible). And once you get that idea across, there's no urge to go like this.
But one of the things you have to do to get that idea across is realize that wrist action is a downward motion. Even when it's going this way. When you turn and the arm swings, your hand comes back to this position before -- at release. So it is going down as far as the wrist motion is concerned. And in trying to check that out and see how valid it was, I found that if you start from the top by throwing the club to the ground out here, you come (inaudible) because it isn't going any place else anyway. And you get the same velocity, but the thing is that the flying clubhead has a velocity from that radius extension and actually at release it's going down, but the clubhead velocity must be sustained by not allowing the wrist to reach – the lever assembly to reach full extension like this. It has to -- see you come in to the impact with the wrist flat, level, and vertical. And after impact it goes on down the rest of the way. And this prevents you from running out of centrifugal force, it sustains this tremendous clubhead velocity. And if you learn to get it inline before impact you have control over it. And you will have velocity for the rolling of the Number 3 accumulator.
And I was so excited about the Number 3 accumulator when I found it. I went out with my little model and said, “Oh, I got something big here.” And I was working with that and watching that and I got a par nine holes which I don't do very often. I go out there and play nine balls, just something like that. But I couldn't get away with it that day so …. But then in trying to establish the basic idea of the Number 3 accumulator -- what is it and what is it doing and all that -- to support this idea, I got side tracked for a while, coming and going, and I kind of lost it and thought I might even have made a mistake in designating it. But now I've come to the conclusion that it is the chief number one factor of the release and the power source. It is the best thing for bending the plane right, if you don’t do it right.
One of the most difficult applications and one of the most difficult things to learn is to swivel in the impact and let the hinge action go off through impact and still keep the clubhead flying in a straight line. This is the key. If you have a flat left wrist and just uncock it and come through like that, you'll hit the ball well.
Now one of the things that started me on this – I don’t know whether you read the first edition or I've talked to you about it -- but how I got into golf was I worked in a place where the guy, the owner, a wonderful guy (inaudible), played golf and I'd tease him about “stupid game.” So this guy came along and set up a little indoor driving range and (inaudible). And so he says, “Al Dunn up there will give a course of lessons. If I buy you a course of lessons will you take them”? I said, “Sure, nothing to lose.” And he said you’ll get as good as anybody. I use to laugh. And by the time I got through my five lessons, I was hitting the ball beautifully. I thought this is going to be great. You should be getting (inaudible), tee shots and wood shots. Fine. So I'd never been on a golf course. Never had. So he and my friend that got paid for the lessons and I go out one morning and we're going to play a round of golf. So we get up on the first tee and he says now you go ahead. And so I teed up and I looked around and I said, “Where do we go? And he says right straight ahead – flag. What flag? I don’t see any flag. And I looked off through the trees. Way out there. This is a par four? That was that (inaudible), because I got up there and I said I got to hit this thing as hard as I can hit it. About 5 times as hard as I can hit it. I shot two -- I still got the card -- I don't know whether I got two 60's or two 66’s or something or like that. And he was very disappointed. So was I. But I couldn't put it all together.
NEW SPEAKER: This was after some success on the driving range?
HOMER: Yeah. On his little driving range. I was hitting the ball, oh, the easiest thing in the world. What's so tough about this thing? Four months later I had this five over par, 77 on a 72 course, and I went back and said, “How come I don’t do that every day”? And he started telling me that I was relaxed and all that kind of stuff. So I said, “No, I wasn’t. I was up all night and I was a nervous wreck and I was out at the putting green because I couldn't sleep.” And these friends of mine came through and said, “Well, there’s no use standing there. Come on and go a round with us.” And, God, I could hardly stand up. So I went out and all I can remember is a slow, sweeping swing. Slow sweeping swing (inaudible). And right at the green and right into the cup. And the next day I couldn't do it. I couldn't remember what I did. I couldn't get that strong, sweeping swing.
So, you know, it wasn't till four or five years ago that I realized he had told me exactly what to do. And if I had known and if he had been able to tell me that you were actually doing what I told you about the hands, I would never have had any trouble with golf and there would never have been a book. But I completely forget it. Just wiped out. And he never thought of it, but he told me when you come through you uncock your wrist and you semilock your wrist so you don't move as it comes to the ball. And the flat left wrist. Took me another 25 years with that. So I feel that a flat left wrist and not hacking at the ball anybody can play good golf. But you can't get them to do that. Right-handers, whenever they throw something or swing something, their wrist flattens out. Left-handers the same way. But they don't do with it with their right hand. That’s what I think. Now left-handed golfers make the best -- are so good at golf and do so well is they don't have this urge to flatten the right wrist. They always flatten the left wrist when they threw something. That's the only solution I come up with.
NEW SPEAKER: What was the first thing you discovered? Your first major relationship? First breakthrough?
HOMER: I worked for 15 years and didn't find a thing. I talked to pros and read the magazines and the books and my hands I could hardly close them, they were all blistered and cracked. And I had a golf bag full of old balls from out in the woods. I never knew where my ball went. So I just went on with that. I worked my handicap down to 12, but I hadn’t found anything. It was a struggle. And then one day I noticed when I swung at a dandelion, my hand came by, I could see it out of the corner of my eye, it made a straight line. Then later on I noticed that every time I swung at a ball it made a curved line. So I hit a dandelion -- straight line; a ball -- curved line. So what does it mean? I don't know what it means. The thing was don't steer a dandelion. Flat left wrist gave me more trouble then anything else. Months with that.
And the thing that had me scared silly was how am a going to catalog -- categorize all these swings? And here's where -- I use the incubator a lot. Boy, these things come up, I don't see it, I don't get it, I'll just throw it back in and take it out some other time. And I was telling the guys coming in last night, I was just walking through the kitchen on the way out to the garage to check out something (inaudible) in the living room most of the time, and I was walking through the kitchen and it came to me just like that. But I had to reach a certain point in my discovery before I could and the thing that occurred to me was that there was 4 accumulators and you can use any one, any two, any three, or all four and that's all there is. So there's 15 variations. There’s nothing you can do about that, that’s all there is. You can have deviations from these. You can get them all scrambled up and don’t really use them intelligently. Number 2 accumulator, that left wrist, throw it away at the top and that kind of stuff. And you get variations like I mentioned in Chapter 1 that I can't categorize or catalog that kind of stuff so I have plenty of confusion just getting down to the bare facts. And just like that I could see all the variations of swings taken care of.
In the basic motion curriculum, I have ??? to the left, ??? to the right, two columns. One, the reference number where it’s discussed in the book and if it’s applicable I have the item in one “L”, if it’s applicable. So if you want to study it you can do that -- but there's no -- nothing there for them to start throwing the club bending their left wrist. Nothing there to make them hack at the ball. And there's no two more important things. And that's why I think quite a few of your students aren't trying to be teachers. They just want to learn to hit the ball a little better. And they don’t expect a whole lot because nobody ever gets very much out of a pro anyway. So when they see the success of these two things, the flattened left wrist and the swinging through does, they get excited.
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