Roughing it at Avenel - Paula Jagemann plays golf at Tournament Players Club at Avenel - Brief Article
October 30th, 2007
Jagemann and her husband don’t belong to a golf club per se, but they tee it up on many of the public tracks that dot the Washington D.C. area. “One of my favorite courses is the Tournament Players Club at Avenel,” says the head of the Vienna, VA-based firm that employs more than 200 people and is the corporate parent of Online Office Supplies Co. and Internet Office Solutions and Services. “I enjoy playing it before the Kemper Open (a regular PGA Tour event) is held there because they let the rough grow up beforehand, and the course plays so hard. And for me, the best hole at Avenel is the par-three 9th. In fact, it’s my favorite golf hole anywhere.
“The tee on No. 9 is highly elevated, which I really like, and you have to hit over a small stream and pond to what looks like an island green,” says Jagemann, a former executive secretary who now has her former boss serving on the ECI2 board of directors and her husband working for one of her divisions. “Usually, it’s an 8-iron for me when I play it from the whites, which generally measure just under 140 yards. I love looking down on the green from that tee, and I love looking at the pond and stream to the right and the bunkers to the left and back. It gives you all the hazards you can stomach. And there are so many flowers and bushes blooming around the time of the Kemper. It really looks good.”
And therein may lie another reason why the 9th is indeed the golf hole she likes best. “The food house at the turn is right there, and that’s always something to look forward to when I’m out there,” Jagemann says. “If I’m playing badly, at least I can go get a Heineken.”
John Steinbreder is a senior writer for Golf Week magazine and is the author five books, including Golf Courses of the U.S. Open.
PAULA JAGEMANN
CEO, eCommerce Industries (ECI2)
TOURNAMENT PLAYERS CLUB AT AVENEL
LOCATION: Potomac, MD
HOLE: 9th, par-three, 166 yards from the back tees, 150 yards from the blue markers, 136 yards from the whites and 118 yards from the reds.
HOLE DESCRIPTION: It’s a downhill par-three with an elevated tee, a stream and small pond guarding the right side of the green and bunkers on the left and in back. The prevailing wind is usually in the player’s face, and in that case the hole more or less plays its yardage. Otherwise, it plays a bit shorter because of the downhill tee shot.
COURSE ARCHITECT: Ault/Clark & Associates
CLUB DESCRIPTION: Opened in 1986, Avenel is owned and operated by the PGA Tour. The par-71 track measures 7,005 yards from the championship markers and is located just outside the nation’s capital. Avenel is home to the Kemper Open, a PGA Tour event that’s generally held in late May or early June, and its membership roster includes some of the biggest hitters–in business and politics, that is–in the D.C. area.
Author: John Steinbreder
The touch system for better golf / 2005: the secret to a better golf swing is in your hands
October 20th, 2007
I understand your frustration. I’ve been teaching more than 50 years, and the players I’m describing make up more than 90 percent of the folks I teach. The good news is that golf doesn’t have to be that hard. I wrote my book, The Touch System For Better Golf, back in 1971 so players at all levels could understand that you can learn to feel what a good golf swing is like. You can use that feel to produce copy after copy of a good swing. I know it’s possible, because feel and rhythm is the only way a guy my size, 5-feet-7 and 135 pounds, could consistently hit the ball 265 yards and beat players like Sam Snead and Ben Hogan in the 1950s.
How can you make it work for you, too? It’s simple, really. By developing sensitivity in your hands-by learning to feel what the hands are supposed to do during the swing-you’ll get better far more quickly than you would trying to copy mechanical swing positions. I’ve seen so much golf instruction that focuses on what the body is supposed to do (like turn, shift and pivot) that I’m afraid players are going to forget how important the hands are. After all, they’re the only things attached to the club.
The original Touch System
Bob Toski’s book The Touch System for Better Golf was originally published by Golf Digest in 1971. It was one of the first instruction books that focused on teaching how a good golf swing feels, instead of how it looks. It is full of feel images like the one shown here of a swing superimposed over a canoe heading toward a waterfall. Toski still teaches the book’s principles six days a week at his learning center in Boca Raton, Fla. M.R.
visualization
On the tee, a tour player is thinking about this …
A good player already knows how to control the force of the swing. When he’s on the tee with a driver in his hand, he’s just thinking about what direction he wants that force to go.
That’s easy for a good player to say, you’re probably thinking to yourself right now. But you can learn something from how a tour player approaches his next shot. Good players practice technique at the range, then concentrate on the target on the course.
… while the amateur is thinking about this
The poor player tries to figure out how to make the next swing–from taking his grip to a position-by-position run-down of the mechanics he’s been trying to learn from his teacher–while he’s over the shot he’s trying to hit. That shouldn’t be happening. All those swing thoughts create tension, and tension is an absolute killer in the golf swing.
If you’re a beginner, you’re far better off concentrating on your target and aligning yourself to take into account your natural ball flight than you are aiming straight down the middle and trying to think yourself into hitting a straight shot.
If you’re a better player who gets the urge to work the ball left or right, take my advice: Don’t, unless you really have to. A straight ball will almost always work, and it gives you more room to make a mistake.
grip and takeaway
start neutral to hit it square
I’m sorry to say that in more than 50 years of teaching, I’ve seen far more of the first two examples on this page-strong grips and inside takeaways and weak grips and outside takeaways–than I have of good, grips and on-line takeaways. The more neutral the hands, the more chance they have of coming back to impact neutral. Square contact comes when you hit the ball in the middle of the clubface with the club in a neutral position. A strong grip forces the club to come inside on the takeaway; a weak grip forces it to do the opposite. Great players produce less curvature in either direction, and they make consistent, solid contact because they don’t have to manipulate the club to get it back to square. They also understand a ball hit with an open or closed face is hit with a glancing blow.
Another benefit of the neutral grip shown here is that it lets the club release fully and transmit all the power from the wrists into the ball. With a strong or weak grip, you’re restricting the release of the club and losing out on a big power accumulator.
The hands work together
One of my favorite feel images from the Touch System book is of a pair of dancers superimposed over the hands in the backswing. It’s a great way to think about your grip. Your hands should be like a good dance team–close to each other and moving together without any separation. The left hand leads, while the right responds.
I tried it
Author: Bob Toski
Is it the club or is it the ball? - golf - Brief Article
October 5th, 2007
So what else is new? The game’s traditionalists have been concerned about the threat of new technology since at least as far back as 1907. That year a magazine article warned that if the U.S. Golf Association failed to do something about limiting the power in the “modern” golf ball, the average drive would be 300 yards.
Every 25 years or so since then we’ve heard “Something must be done” to stop the ball from going any farther. This time such critics have been bold enough to suggest not only that distance must be checked but that it must be reduced to keep the classic old courses from being turned into veritable pitch and putts.
It is true that the most accomplished golfers are compromising the architectural integrity of some courses. But is this not what the very elite are expected to do? Are we trying to identify the best golfer at the Open championships? Or are we trying to see how well course designs will hold up when the best players tackle them?
If it is both, we need to hold these championships on those courses designed and set up to test the highest level of skill, rather than reduce the distance of the ball, which will unduly affect the other 99.99 percent of golfers.
The club–specifically the driver–has also become better and longer, particularly since the introduction of the metal wood. In the next five years or so, as manufacturers exploit the “spring-like effect” of thin titanium clubfaces, the best golfers are likely to be able to hit the ball, on average, another 10 yards farther than they can today. And that’s it. Mother Nature will not allow for any more than 15 yards (unless it is the result of improved athletic ability) if potential enhancements to the club and ball are both taken into account.
The game will not be irreparably harmed if the guardians decide to reduce the distance of the ball by 25 to 30 yards, which is the extent of the problem the elite players seem to be creating. On the other hand, will the game be better off by such a reduction? The answer is also probably “no.”
That said, if something has to be done to reduce the distance the elite golfers are getting, then place the limits on the one piece of equipment that only those players with the fastest and most consistent swings can most take advantage of–the driver.
But before such a major disruption takes place, there must be sound data to support it, and we must be sure that such a move is in the best interests of the game.
While this all-important decision is being pondered, the administrators of the game, with the help of all golfers, should tackle the real problems impeding the growth and enjoyment of golf–the lack of facilities for beginning golfers and the curse of slow play, to name two.
After all, what golfer ever gave up the game because he or she was hitting the ball too far?
Author: Frank Thomas