Below is an expanded response to a thread in the Advanced Ball Striking forum. The thread starts by
referring to this article.
Here is a link to the original thread.
We can all agree that the game as it is set up presupposes the man vs, nature battle. This is the nature of the game.
When you slip into that nascent freedom which emerges from ease and trust, formless beyond intention, the pure shot expresses itself. Then you look at this tree and see a it in a unique way. You assess the fractal beauty. The tree takes on the essence of a beautiful form before the mind can assign a title or a name to the object. In fact, it could be called an altered state. This is the state of mind that is known as the Uncarved Block. Normally when I see a tree, it's just a tree. But in the altered state of pure swinging, I see a different thing. For example: Observe the tree pictured above. It's just a tree, on a street, in a yard. When in a zone state, I see a giant neural brain with tentacles of wooden neurons. My point: It is impossible to ignore the aesthetic aspects of the game because the game of golf is itself embedded within the natural world. So I don't see the golf swing so much as battling nature. The battle is already established when one commences to cut out from groves of trees and rolling landscapes a course of play. Instead of hitting a stone into a rabbit hole with a Shepard's crooked staff, we hit a manufactured ball into a standardized hole with a manufactured club. The course is thus a manufactured landscape drawn from a natural canvas. Man vs. Nature is therefore defined. I believe we must become part of nature if we are to master the game ... and ourselves. After all, we already are part of it. Why should we resist?
We learn from nature when we become it ... when we absorb it. However, in the everyday state of mind, our consciousness causes us to analyze and come up with concepts and explanations. We come up with things like the Golf Machine and all manner of method to take us to the Holy Grail. I believe that the original intent of this thread was to explain the appearance of the golden spiral in strobe photography of pure golf swings. My contention is that when the endpoint of the sensuous sphere has a perfect reciprocal relationship with the True Centre, the spiral expresses itself. If you peruse the goldengolf website you will find that I call this final point the "final metacenter." We cannot cause this relationship be correct. We can only allow it to be correct. The nature of the motion creates the form. We can only allow it to work through us. A pure motion will then work through a variety of methods. Nearly any method will work (at least temporarily) so long as there is trust and one can pump through a pure trustful motion. There are people that use the "Natural Golf" method (a Moe Norman inspiration), the "Stack and Tilt," and the "Peak Performance" method. You have "Gravity Golf" and a million others. I like to tout goldengolf.com as the method of no method.
When speaking of a good player, Sir Walter Simpson says, "... he plays well, because his style is a natural product of a single-minded concentration on hitting clean. The duffer got his swing in another way, namely, by mimicry. The copy is fairly good, but not quite exact. The hands are Esau's, but not the club, which, being flat, compels him to add some movements not indulged in by his master." He then goes on to say, "The one thinks of hitting, the other about his manner of threatening to do so." In an earlier passage Simpson says, "Style, in other words, is not nearly of so much importance as accurate hitting." His point is that the development of a style can never eclipse the entrance of the individual into a zone state, whereupon the ball is seen pristine and the action of smiting commences. Seamus Macduff, the visionary golfer in
Golf In The Kingdom, references the same action as occurring when the seven veils of consciousness have been removed. This is the mystical, and dare I say, spiritual side of the game.
If you recall, Seamus Macduff had a fascination with the concept of "True Gravity." I firmly believe that the golden mean and true gravity are connected. At goldengolf.com I lay out how the golden spiral bounces back and forth (at 90 degree intervals) on either side of the true value of phi by obeying
Newton's second law of motion. ... the inverse square law. This layout of the Fibonacci sequence and the manner of its deviation is not meant to show some practical way to apply this perception to the golf swing. This is only done to show that the golden spiral has a connection to "True Gravity" and that the spiral is a significant force in the self correcting action of nature. It refines itself more and more as it grows and grows. This explains why the spiral is so prevalent in nature over grand scales ... from the spiral arm of a galaxy all the way down to the spiral action of our own DNA.
There are many pearls of wisdom in
The Art of Golf. "Imitating one's own style is only less bad than copying a neighbor's." My favorite, of course, is this one, "Either may go astray, or either may discover the
golden mean (emphasis mine) before becoming set in the tricks they have excogitated." I believe Simpson is expressing the opinion that says, "when we enter into a true state of leisure, encompassed by a truly playful state of mind, all of our intent can be directed at smiting the ball. We have then discovered the golden mean. We don't create the motion ... we tap into a motion that already exists. We don't create the motion ... the motion creates us!
Further, I believe the whole discussion of swinging vs. hitting is just a semantic distraction. So long as there is "slogging" and "smiting" all is well. Sir Walter Simpson put it this way, "...and if the beginner must have advice, let him consult a really first-class player, who will probably tell him he knows nothing about grips, or elbows, or following, and that all he has to do is to stand firm and smite hard." So these words, beyond reminding me that I am far from a first-class player, points to the inconsequential nature of specific forms. The pure motion, working through any form, will edify it and correct it through a real time intuitive process. This is the meaning of Simpson's words.
When we are swinging from a pure initial condition, there is harmony and ease. When we tweak our initial state with the zygote of a formless thought, there is disharmony and struggle. When I speak of initial conditions, I am specifically referencing chaos theory and the propensity of golfers to press through the entropy barrier. This is why mastery in golf is so fleeting. Slight changes in our emotional or mental substrates can result in wildness and big numbers ... the dreaded "disaster hole." This is why the bell curve in golf scores remains. Despite all the advances in technology, breaking 100, breaking 90, and breaking 80, still remain significant barriers for most players.
I believe one of these zygotes of thought revolve around the insistence on validity of the Vardon grip. Part of the answer to dismantling the tension of thought requires a dismantling of the Vardon grip. This has to do with the telephone game advice I indirectly gave to Michael Allen the week before he won at Canterbury. He has been a pretty hot player on both the Senior and PGA Tours ever since. I believe he has two runner ups in Majors this year on the senior circuit.
I see Michael Allen is on top of his game today out in San Fransisco. He just shot a 61 out there today for a tournament record. I noticed that he has switched to the split grip putter. I am not aware of when he made the switch. But based on what I passed on to Mr. Allen through Stephanie (his caddy's girlfriend), this putter change completely makes sense.I myself may move in that direction.
I refer to my advice to him, back in 2009, as The Jelly Doughnut Insight. He went on to win the Senior PGA that weekend. Stephanie and Michael introduced me to Mr. Allen, and I got to shake his hand at the practice round and plug the goldengolf site to him. I like to keep alive the idea that I somehow influenced his play. I don't know. What I do know is ... that he bought his caddy Michael a brand new Harley after he won the Senior PGA ... Me? ... I got nothing! ... It's OK ... I'm not bitter. ;~)
The Jelly Doughnut Insight deconstructs Vardon and puts it back together in a reasonable manner. Only upon reconstruction is there hope for a revelation in the game.
I know that I subject myself to criticism for bringing up Vardon. To do so enters into a field of speculation that Sir Walter Simpson himself derided. I could criticize myself for falling into the belief that the Stack and Tilt was the answer ... or that any particular aspect of form was important. It just so happened that by attending to this Stack and Tilt form on a particular day, one of the veils of consciousness was lifted for me. I was able to see the ball pure for a window of time. The eureka moment was soon replaced by the disappointment I encountered upon the attempt to replicate that form. Hence the veil was immediately replaced. Simpson addresses these issues in chapter 4 when he says, "Even minor sensations, too earnestly attended to, may, however, do a great deal of harm. When, by patiently keeping his attention fixed on hitting, the golfer has got into his best driving form, he is tempted to luxuriate in the sweet balls; to note how he gets his shoulders into the work; or how he feels like a whipcord, from the point of his toe to the head of his club; and to determine that in the future these joys shall be repeated every shot. Fool!"
So long as we golfers luxuriate on the physical effects of pure motion, we are doomed to struggle. We are prone to invent opinions on the nature of mechanics and delusional ideas as to what is considered good form. We can never forget that golf remains as: Einstein space in a Van Gogh sky.
