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Nothing is more daunting for the average golfer than addressing his or her first tee shot of a round. The high anxiety is typically caused by two factors: a lack of confidence due to limited preparation and the pressure of people watching you hit a small white ball with weapons singularly ill-defined for the purpose. I hope the following four tips will limit all of the anxious moments you may encounter on the golf course during the Habitat for Humanity Golf Tournament next Sunday.
TIP ONE
Warm-up: Prior to starting a round, I would highly recommend a 20-30 minute warm-up to reacquaint yourself with your clubs and swing. Notice the emphasis on warm-up. Many times I see golfers tinkering with their swing minutes before their tee time or smacking an industrial size bucket of balls to get loose. These strategies will be both detrimental to your psyche and stamina. Immediately before the round is not the time to make a swing adjustment or compensate for lost practice time. The goal of hitting a few balls (20-30) prior to the round is to loosen your muscles and to establish a positive frame of mind for the ensuing 18 holes. I would recommend starting with your more lofted clubs such as the wedge and working your way to your woods and back down to your lofted clubs. Typically I hit several balls with every third club and work my way from the more lofted clubs to the woods and then back to the lofted clubs (i.e. wedge, 7-iron, 4-iron, three wood, Driver, 3-iron, 8-iron, and wedge).
TIP TWO
Positioning yourself on the tee: Depending on whether your natural shot is a hook or a slice, where you tee up is a key starting point for hitting your drive in a desired spot. As Fig. 1 shows, player A, who has a natural slice to his shot, has teed the ball on the far left side of the tee. Player A hits his shot well but his ball slices into the water hazard. Player B, who has a similar slicing problem, has decided to tee his ball on the far right of the tee to get a better angle to allow for his slice. This strategy pays off for player B as his ball comes to rest in the middle of the fairway. The tee shot is the only time you can position your ball, so remember to give yourself a good angle for your natural shot.
TIP THREE
Club Selection: A common flaw for all golfers is not using the right club to hit the ball the correct distance. This phenomenon is known as under-clubbing. Whether its trying to prove your strength or not realizing how far you hit your clubs, there is no excuse for hitting a good shot 10-%20% short of the required distance.
TIP FOUR
Pitch shots: I would need to write a 20 page document to do this topic justice but a few simple pointers should have you lobbing your wedges within a few feet of the hole next Sunday. Many golfers stub, flub or scull these shots because they take a John Daly like backswing (too long) and decelerate during their follow through. As a rule of thumb your backswing should match the swing of your arm if you had to lob the ball on the green with an underarm throw similar to a softball pitch. In addition your swing should accelerate slightly through the shot. Try a few pitches on the practice green prior to the start of the round to get this feel. You should notice that a short precise swing can hit the ball more than far enough.
Good luck on Sunday!
The Internet. We all know it. We all love it. Some of us (i.e., the Trekkies) can't live without it. But what does this have to do with sports?
First and foremost, it enables all of us to have yet another connection to that mecca of provocative thought and insight, ESPN, through the wonderfully-created, divinely inspired site ESPN.com. I suggest making this page the start-up for your browser. There is a link to ESPN.com that will set it up for you! Is there anything ESPN can't do?
Well ESPN is ESPN, but it doesn't end there. My curiosity was truly piqued when I saw Jeff Gordon win one of his zillion car races, jump out of his car, and celebrate with the rest of the Rainbow Warriors. It was then that I noticed the fine print on the back of his jumpsuit that read www.jeffgordon.com. So I logged on, tuned in, and revved up.
A glaring headline flashed: "Jeff Wins Win$ton Million!" I gather I was supposed to be excited about Jeff's windfall received from the cigarette company that is no longer supposed to sponsor sporting events, but I moved on instead. There was access to former Gordon highlights, links to my other favorite NASCAR drivers, and an advertisement of the upcoming home video "The Million Dollar Date with Jeff Gordon" (which I hope has something to do with the race at Darlington).
None of this was as compelling as the link to the Brooke page. For those of you not in the know, Brooke is Miss Winston 1993. She relays the heartwarming story of meeting Jeff in the winner's circle in 1993, and how he won not only the race, but also stole her heart. Proof once again that behind every great athlete is a great trophy wife. After exhausting Brooke's tales of race day superstitions, I had to check out the Jeff Gordon collectibles page. Maybe I'll go back after I get a job and have some money to spend.
So then I felt compelled to explore other name sites. I started with your friend and mine: Karl Malone. Unfortunately, www.karlmalone.com is under construction. Apparently someone has purchased the rights to this web name, hoping that The Mailman or one of his (two) zealous fans will come running with buckets of money to purchase the name of His Averageness.
Some words of advice to that entrepreneurial individual: divest as soon as possible. You'll be lucky to avoid a negative return on investment. After all, I feel as though there is a negative return on my investment whenever I watch Malone.
Reaching that dead end, I headed to another large member of the NBA: Shaq. Working on a hunch, I typed www.shaw.com, and lo and behold, there he was. Aside from the truly entertaining morphing display (watch Shaq grow before your very eyes), there was plenty of information on Shaq's new movie Steel. Behind the scenes shots, interviews with the star, but for some reason, there were no four star reviews . . . .
From the image of steel to other things ominous that aren't quite up to the hype, I remembered back to Monday Night Football between the Raiders and the Chiefs, when I noticed a banner touting a Raiders symbol with a .com following. Unfortunately, my keyboard does not have a key depicting the one-eyed symbol of a franchise in decay, so I searched on.
Hype, hype, what else falls into that category? I tried www.keyshawnjohnson.com and ended up somewhere called Internet City. This misadventure was only assuaged by the presence of a Yasmine Bleeth Street in Internet City, but I couldn't find poor Keyshawn. Just give him the damn website!
Appropriately enough, when attempting www.albertbelle.com, I was greeted with a very bold warning: "Forbidden!" Apparently I did not have permission or access to this server. I'm sure Albert was virtually throwing a fastball in my direction.
That fate was better than the one suffered by Shawn Bradley. An attempt to reach www.shawnbradley.com earned the reply of, "unable to locate host." I have the same problem when I watch him on the court..
Continuing to reminisce on Sixers draft picks of the past, I had to go to www.reebok.com to find Allen Iverson. He had his own listing under "Sport & Fitness," which included links to his shoe, his biography, his commercials, and the Sixers schedule. Unfortunately, I could find no link to current litigation.
His biography mentioned that during his earlier prison stay "when he awoke to four walls, a steel sink, and a clogged toilet, Allen Iverson continued to believe that this was his planet." Here's to hoping that he never has to wake up to that again.
After that, the blind guessing was becoming fruitless, so I hopped onto www.yahoo.com searched for athlete homepages. I was kindly directed to www.olympic.att.com. Now, I thought the Atlanta Olympics closed over a year ago, but in the Internet, sites have a shelf-life longer than Twinkies. "The Eye on Centennial Olympic Park" is still a feature on the site. Clicking on it, I was rewarded with a live shot of Richard Jewell picking up the pieces of his life. Maybe he should check out Iverson's bio. After all, it's Richard's planet too.
After that depressing visage, I went back to prospecting, blindly guessing www.tigerwoods.com This site, too, was under construction. Apparently, my entrepreneurial young friend had finally backed a winner. But this got me to thinking, I better get on the stick before someone grabs www.patrickmesa.com. I would hate to think that could be virtually co-opted.
I've been staring at a monitor for too long. I have a www.headache.com, but there is simple cure: www.excedrin.com.
Pete Sampras is arguably the greatest American sports champion of our time.
Baseball is in trouble.
Bill Gates needs Netscape.
Let me explain.
Over the past five years, no American athlete has dominated his sport as convincingly as tennis champion Pete Sampras (Apologies to Greg Maddux; Michael Jordan's foray into baseball removes him from consideration under the criteria). Sampras has won almost fifty percent of the sport's Grand Slam tournaments since 1993 and will finish 1997 as the world's top- ranked player for the fifth straight year. Not only is his play outstanding, but he handles himself with grace and humility on and off the court. While many of today's athletes shun the title of "role model", Sampras provides a shining example of sportsmanship to our youths.
Yet, despite these achievements and accolades, Sampras is probably the least recognized legend of all time. The public has characterized him as dull and lackadaisical. Insiders (including John McEnroe) have gone so far as to say that Sampras' perceived lack of personality is hurting the game of tennis. There are clamorings for Sampras to be more emotive on the court and to be more outspoken off of it.
Without going into a tirade about skewed American values (which could consume a whole issue of this paper), it is obvious that Sampras' personality is not the issue. Actually, he has quite a bit of charisma, as witnessed through his multiple appearances with David Letterman. The fact that Sampras currently has no rival on the men's tour is what is bringing the game down. Think about it. Would we have loved Chris so much if it hadn't been for Martina? Would we have tolerated Mr. McEnroe if Jimmy and Ivan hadn't counterbalanced him? That would be, "No" and "No."
All leaders need rivals in order to push them to the limits of their capabilities, and beyond. Otherwise, they run the risk of complacency, and in the sports world, the loss of public interest.
Before Andre Agassi swam into the blue lagoon and before Jim Courier decided reading captivated him more than playing a tennis match, there was hope that Sampras would have an enduring rival. And there is hope that those two, who have both held the #1 ranking, will once again rise toward the top. Until they do, or Michael Chang, Yevgeny Kafelnikov, and others can step it up a notch, men's tennis will continue to suffer from a lack of fan interest.
I raise the issue of the importance of rivalry as Major League Baseball considers realignment of its teams. Briefly, the structure of the American and National Leagues must necessarily change in 1998 due to the entrance of two expansion teams, the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays. The initial proposal put Arizona in the NL and Tampa Bay in the AL, with Detroit and Kansas City shifting divisions within the AL. The Royals got enough support to veto this move. That opened the floodgates to a myriad of realignment proposals, the most radical of which would have fifteen teams switching leagues next year in an effort to regionalize the divisions.
Without going into a tirade about which of the several proposals makes most sense (which could consume a whole issue of this paper, plus flipcharts), let's not lose sight of the opportunity that baseball has before it. Once the undoubted king of American sports, baseball has been slipping behind basketball and football in terms of fan favoritism since the mid-1980s. Currently lacking the excitement to compete with those two sports, baseball needs to exploit its natural rivalries?the regional ones.
Interleague play proved that nothing in the game can generate more chills and thrills than a Mets-Yankees, Cubs-White Sox, Blue Jays-Expos series. These teams need each other to bring out their best. The problem is, under the current interleague play plan, these teams will only play one series every three years. So, the solution is to either revise the provisions for future interleague play, or to realign along regional boundaries.
Of course, this throws traditionalists into a tizzy fit. The traditionalists, however, must understand that their beloved pastime sorely needs a shot of adrenaline. I hope that baseball's "powers that be" consider the importance of rivalry as they make their realignment ruling.
Oh, and Bill Gates needs Netscape. But we don't need to get into details on that . . . .