I want to take a minute to say to all, Merry Christmas from Open Stance Academy!
If in the course of play, you want a golf swing dynamic explained, leave your experience or wondering as a comment. I’ll write the explanation for you and anyone else who needs the assist. My book and postings here have pretty much explained all there is to know from an objective perspective. Therefore, subjective adjustments are available for the cost of a query. Call it a change of philosophy. Mix that with a desire to be of service to golfers whose games have been transformed by the Open Stance.
I have students who could probably explain things equally well, but may lose focus talking about our ball-striking contests. Therefore, I will walk the talk for you, whenever you need me. Allow for any initial forgetfulness, please. I’m still trying to make myself more available to friends and family but, for some reason, never seem to answer my phone. Logging into this portal may be less reliable for a bit.
So I’m sitting here listening to Michael Buble. I just returned from attending the funeral of my second father. Here I am choking back tears and wondering how life will ever be as sweet again. You know what I mean? Childhood lasts only as long as your parents and their friends.
Doc leaves an enormous vacuum of personality and leadership to fill in the community. So I thought, if life is ever going to be sweet again, it will be up to me making a greater effort to be there for people who need me. Whether friend, family, or fiddler, I will endeavor here to give, from this season to all that follow, as I have been given. In the mean time, it might be a solid idea to update my other two books, Luck: …. And turning the First Five Years into The First Ten Years.
As Christmas comes and goes, and if I might be so bold to suggest, please remember those you respect and reach out to them. We all need a 1970s type of connection with our loved ones… face to face. Wear your hip-huggers, bell-bottoms or polyesters if you need to, but go with love in your heart, two ears to hear, and only one mouth. And that’s your Merry Christmas from the Open Stance Academy.
Our journey from motivation to mastery is not all that great, actually. Experience dictates how markers pass where time and distance are concerned. When we engage in a process of our own design, even within a framework chosen for our own design, time slows down as problem-solving speeds up. There is nothing more than the next session.
When life is coming at you, we scramble to keep up. Fortunately, life’s sometimes aggressive examinations are relatively infrequent. However, when time does seem to fly by, it always helps to act intentionally along a different timeline. Sharing the slowing experience with loved ones, good friends, and new friends can add to our fulfillment for having begun.
The dynamic may be very much like a time tree. With each additional branch to feed with sun, rain, and nutrients of experience, the less focus nature gives to trunk and leader height. Bringing the whole community of branches and leaves into the light is the purpose of time and intention.
Accelerating life finds its moderation in pursuit of mastery. Moreover, accomplishment or achievement marks time well-spent. Motivation to grow in another direction does not infer success. However, having a personal community of like-minded pursuers, even while struggling to grow toward the light, supports our own efforts and measures our own outcomes.
Opening your stance and playing golf is a offshoot of life, no doubt. In fact, the Open Stance is more like an offshoot of an offshoot. Our motivation to engage in the Open Stance mastery process provides an opportunity to look forward and up toward greater achievement, which our larger and stronger lower branch brethren discovered long ago. Our own motivation will persist or not. We will reach the light or not. Will you become a strong and full lower branch or not?
How many branches will your tree have? What are you growing through? How much slower would you like life to be? Upon what foundation might we build the rest of our golfing life? Will our choice frame and measure our ascension, or will time pass unmarked by the conscious choice shared by champions?
Our journey from motivation to mastery requires the same growth elements as the tallest tree. The Open Stance Academy seeks to be the nutrients of a brighter future for all golfers. Your struggles will be the rain, and your inevitable exhilaration and successes are the sunlight. Mastery comes when the top of your life canopy has the best view in the forest. The strongest trees grow the slowest.
OSaFSGL – Author’s edition is a completely (EVERY PAGE) revised and updated, downloadable .pdf version of the original OSaTSGL currently for sale on A. More. Awkward. Zone. Of. Nuance. with an added fourth lesson – the FLOP SHOT! All for a donation of $7.00.
OSaFSGL – Author’s Edition
After procrastinating for years and justifying it with any and all modes of activity, reworking the original OSaTSGL finally became the priority. Every page is different, whether in story, commentary, or phrasing. OSaFSGL – Author’s Edition is an easier read, to learn the magic, because it eliminates more deductive reasoning. Then, of course, there is the flop shot-fourth short game lesson – complete with photos for easier retention.
The portal through which OSaTSGL is sold wanted to charge $1,900 to replace the original file with a new one, which I thought was outrageous, so I decided I’d save it and link the .pdf with a donation to shorten the shopping trip.
Don’t forget to check back periodically for new posts, as more will follow. Subscribe to get them automatically, if you like. It’s important to get this information out into the world of golf more expansively to help others help themselves. The goal of the Open Stance Academy has always been to break the yoke of golf lessons for the ambitious golfer. After all, God helps those who help themselves.
Master’s Radio thinks Speith and Thomas Have a Problem. I don’t.
I don’t know who one of the personalities doing the talking was. But, one of them was Colt Knost. They obviously care about Jordan and Justin’s success, which is great. However, their discussion was myopic.
At one point, one of the personalities began talking about how they had become too analytical, or left-brained, or whatever I may not remember from days ago. They rationalized it with Jordan being left-handed (Right-brained, whatever). And, that’s where the analysis ended. You see, one of the commentators was self-acknowledging his own dyslexia which, of course, must give him special insight into what is at issue with Speith and Thomas.
Mr. Dyslexia’s unassailable tower of victimhood should keep him from contrary opinion, right? Almost. Here’s my contrary opinion. Feel free to disagree. First, let me preface my comments with my view that victimhood is mental weakness disguised as social disadvantage, which is idiocy disguised as helplessness, which is laziness disguised as unfairness. It’s all a passive aggressive attempt to manipulate the other person and win without competing. And, “Homey don’t play dat.”
There is NOTHING wrong with Jordan and Justin. They began to live life. They fell in love with their girl(s), got married, had children, and played golf throughout. The only thing that didn’t change was their circle of mouths to feed telling them they are still the greatest golfer playing, they could do no wrong, and they could do everything just as well as they could pre-‘life’.
Imagine a fully-developed ego based on past success. I know this dynamic as well as anyone. At my best, I could fit a two-iron between a caddy’s wingspan 9 out of 10 times while hitting the sweet spot 10 out of 10 times. Then came another point in my golf career, when I could make four putts in a row on the chosen side of “the tee”. Choose any break you like and in doing so, I would NEVER miss the sweet spot. My path and AoA was THE SAME every. single. time. And at yet another point, I could chip and pitch without EVER missing the sweet spot – from any depth of rough. Blah, blah, blah. I practiced until I could not miss… like Jordan and Justin.
Then, life got in the way. I never got worse in my mind. Only my skills degraded, and they did it without my knowledge and permission. Unfortunately, my memory stayed the same. Therefore, with degraded skills, I was still trying to pull off shots from memory instead of reality. I didn’t even have the refined sugar of “Team” telling me how great I was, and I couldn’t detect an atrophied game. Ultimately, it translates into higher scores and a worsening malaise.
Jordan and Justin, who are immensely talented, and who have each been #1 in the World, are just starting to realize their “teams” have done them no good. Justin has jettisoned Bones. Jordan will probably soon do the same with Mike – all because neither has a voice pointing them in the right direction. All they have are eager mouths to feed. They SHOULD jettison their teams, corporate and personal, and get back to basics. It’s not like they need the money. Jack never needed anyone but Barbara and much later Mark McCormack. Arnie?… Forget about it. He and Winnie took on the World.
Winning is the best agent. Majors are the best Sports Psychologist. Their competition is their best trainers. Need is the teacher. All a “Team” does for a player is insulate them from what is supposed to be an exposed competitive dynamic. Furthermore, it’s all controlled by their sponsors. Sad. However, I believe Speith and Thomas are on the cusp of lightening their life load and regaining their prominence soon.
Ever wonder why everyone must get a trophy? I think I found out. This will bake your cookie. It came to me as I was listening to Wayne Dyer on YouTube. Here is what I came up with.
Wayne got rid of all his trophies, awards, memorabilia, etc. to begin a new walk. Then, I remembered, in the Bible, that Jesus told his disciples to give up everything they had to follow him. In both cases, tying ourselves to the past through our collections and icons of glory keeps us from greater consciousness and a higher vibration in the present. LIVING IN THE PRESENT is the thing.
We make excuses for holding onto our past as if our age determines our worth, and our youth was spent and without the evidence of trophies is now, somehow gone. How did we get into trophy mode in the first place?How far back can we trace the race for hardware? To me, at least… the Olympics comes to mind. The Greeks began the contests and then the Roman Empires, which peaked around 98AD, presided over Olympic games. The Coliseum of Rome became the home of all added Circus in progressive regularity – serving alcohol to numb the minds of the bloodthirsty spectators, who were most inclined to revolt.
The modern Olympic games date back to 1896, reintroduced after an absence of a millennia and a half. Why? What happened that something necessary during the Roman Empire was not necessary for the next 1,500 years, only to be necessary in modern times?
My educated guess is that the Olympics are used by empires in need of them. Introduced at a peak and added to in decline to draw and pit maximum viewership, one against the other, along racial and national lines. Empires need cover for the business of enriching the powerful. Therefore, the ‘powerful’, needed to distract their populations while they rob them daily through usury and debasement of their currencies. Sound familiar?
“Give the people BREAD AND CIRCUS, and they will never revolt.” – attributed to the Poet, Juvenal (55AD to 128AD)
We could argue the same dynamic is underway today. The insidiousness of the rollout of Tennis, Golf, Soccer, Fencing, Badminton, etc., and don’t forget the Winter Olympics’ Luge, Bobsled, and Curling! draw in hundreds of millions of potential viewers while having no practical value at all. In my view, that’s kind of the point.
By multiplying the offerings of “qualified” Olympic sports, they (reign) in millions more kids to undertake a life of Curling. Competitions are devised that offer them all trophies for being ordinary. A years-long path to a payoff uses up their formative years better spent studying Civics, Latin, Math, and Science. Kids grow up pursuing trophies in the world instead of solutions for the world.
Modern emperors couldn’t get enough children to the finish line first, so they decided to bring the finish line to each, individual child. What better way to indoctrinate the children, not into believing they are the best or came in first, no. It was to use trophies to hook them on their past and keep them looking backwards. And that maybe then, their contributions to the present and hope for a future might pale by comparison. If true, they are demoralizing and shaming our entire population, by hook or crook, into submission to the celebrated… the celebrity class… the “Influencers”.
The powerful can turn anyone with an attitude and the ability to play a few chords on a guitar into an idol to worship. Taylor Swift is the best modern example. Please understand this is not an offensive on Taylor Swift. She’s lovely. But, she has no discernable talent other than being pretty and that which is retroactively attributed to her celebrity. If you’ve heard her without the benefit of “Autotune” you know it’s true. Her fans would say, “Well if she’s so untalented, why is she so famous and rich?” I would respond, “Because your parents weren’t paying attention while Taylor’s corporate promoters were stealing your brain.”
And, then there’s golf. The PGA Junior Leage, Operation 36, and whatever program is next, keep on coming under the auspices of “Growing the Game”. On its face, these are noble enterprises. After all, golf is fun. However, when the programs are taken from the golf professionals who devise them and made worldwide initiatives by a self-serving corporate dynamic, money becomes the lynchpin of something far more destructive to our social fabric.
Parents are tricked into spending money to have their children play an ‘outdoor, healthy, wholesome game’ while readying the trophies for tens of thousands more children than would otherwise win them. Then, by repeating the dynamic enough times for enough years, you have entire families paying into a system designed not to instill self-worth and life goal-achievement into our kids. But, rather, to flood our world with athletic supporters instead of architects, midfielders instead of medics, and Esports(mixed-reality) gamers instead of engineers. The First Tee Program is the only exception I know of (Props to Jack Barrett of the South Florida First Tee). We do it because in our current world, we have allowed celebrity to matter more than conscience.
Truly this must be the end of the American Empire. I mean, really. The intellectually insulting ridiculousness of every next ‘big’ thing is so extreme, it makes me kida sick to my stomach. Are you aware of shows called ‘The Masked Singer’ and ‘Deal or No Deal Island’? O.M.G! Do people really watch that pap? I equate it to a sick kind of anticipation, like readying yourself for a public flogging. You watch just to have the public assurance that you are not participating – never realizing that our present and future are taking the lash instead of our bodies.
Here is my solution for parent and pip-squeak alike…. Stop participating in celebrity of any kind. Stop asking for autographs and high-fives, fist-bumps, and sweat-soaked towels and gloves. Don’t let your kids have their own phone. No more joining. Individualize competition. Understand integrity and demand it in everyone and everything – especially in exchange for dollars spent.
Frame your sporting activities as opportunities to test physical and mental toughness instead of pursuing professional status. Besides, only rich kids, who would never otherwise have to work a day in their lives, are free enough to pursue icons of glory. There are no poor kids on the PGA Tour.
Open Stance and The Fade Experience is part of a mastery process, to sharpen ball-striking while measuring adaptive expertise. I begin by setting the ball outside my forward foot with the intention to make perfect contact and insist my ball finishes on my target… all from an open stance. The adaptation required in club face, path, set position, and takeaway is extreme.
I do this to regain control of my motion in all regards, intellectual, mechanical, and sensual, and carry it forward into my regular sessions and play. The result is absolute comfort on-course, knowing there is NO SITUATION I cannot handle immediately… aside from big Florida Alligators.
My particular, historical error is over-rotating into my backswing (Due to a hyper-flexible spine), which flattens my swing too much. I left Virginia under-practiced and over-hooky. I knew I had to go back to the steepening process initiated the last time I was wonky (2001 Florida). The added benefit is total confidence in my ability to adapt quickly to any ball position change.
If you can reliably associate your ball position with clubface, path, motion, and takeaway necessities, and you can pure it every time and make your ball go exactly where you want, then you too can consider yourself a master of the golf swing. Then, the Fade Experience becomes YOUR expression of mastery.
“Microgament” is Michael Scott’s nod to the Peter Principal, once the only way to do the kind of business that inevitably shrinks demand, demoralizes employees, and runs once-viable entities out of business. Now it is the description of the level of stupidity inherent in all supplicants to its purposeful distortions of the free market. And if all that doesn’t make you nod off, this will….
We have just entered the Age of Aquarius – once only a song – but now a scheduled set of expectations inherent in interplanetary and interpersonal relationships as dictated by non-human creation. Once stigmatized as mysticism, its derogatory monikers no doubt emerged from a genuine hubris of church and state officialdom. Their desire to control and aggrandize themselves is bad enough. But to do it by sublimating thought, freedom, and any theory of natural philosophy and our creator, wholesale, is unconscionable.
“Microgament” is an example in modern culture of a smart man’s way to confuse language to dupe the innocent or sleeping masses. It’s passed off as a fun or comedic jab at the idiocy of modern management theory. Similarly, it holds up a mirror to real life in many ways and in many disciplines and businesses. I’ve discussed them at length. However, just for the sake of reminder, I’ll recover the golf instructor corollary.
Words matter. There are words that build knowledge. There are words that destroy knowledge. And, there are words that hide a lack of knowledge. The golf industry has concerned itself with the latter two..
The words used to promote lesson-taking and celebrity over learning and self-improvement have destroyed years of golfers intellect via unwitting neglect of golfing philosophy. And the wordsmiths have imprisoned generations of golfers and tethered erstwhile rational minds to their bank accounts.
You might remember me discussing terms like stack and tilt. I’m not capitalizing it because it’s preeminent among confused golf swing thinking and use of language. It doesn’t deserve the respect of capital letters. Marketing that uses such abstract terminology or, as I call it, definitions without a difference, depends on our ignorance to succeed. Of course there are a myriad examples of the subterfuge-in-word by charlatans-in-fact. I am only pointing out words.
Using words without definitions led to our passive acceptance of any drivel emanating from the warm body on the range telling you how much more they know about moving YOUR ball. I gotta wrap this up…. Here is the thing…. It’s entirely possible that you could learn more about a golf swing by reading through the posts here on openstanceacademy.com than ANY instructor or so-called ”Expert” could accumulate in a lifetime of immersion in “Microgament “-theory. And I don’t need to see you make one swing to get it done.
“Where do you think you’re going? Nobody’s leaving! Nobody’s walking out on this fun, old-fashioned, family Christmas! Nooo, no! We’re all in this together! This is a full-blown, four-alarm holiday emergency here! We’re going to press on, and have the hap-hap-happiest Christmas since Bing Crosby tapped danced with Danny F****** Kaye! And when Santa squeezes his fat, white ass down that chimney tonight, he’s gonna find the jolliest bunch of assholes this side of the nuthouse!!
You’re goofy!
Don’t piss me off, Art.”
Everyone, have a blessed Christmas and a Happy New Year.
The actual reason the U.S. keeps losing the Ryder cup has nothing to do with the players, the strategy, the coaches, or the golf course. The reason we keep losing seems obvious to someone like me, who likes to analyze things using the entire continuum of interrelated disciplines. I believe no individual or geographical argument is plausible. I’ll take a deep breath to prove my point, which is that television is to blame.
Get your laughing and eye-rolling done before you read the rest, because you’re soon likely to be kicking yourself for not realizing it earlier. What comes next is an illustration why they call a T.V. the “Idiot Box”. Don’t take it personally. It cultural, not individual. Our emotions and our fidelities are actively manipulated through this technology.
Every contest is decided before it begins in the realm of Karl Jung’s often-eschewed concept of “Collective Unconscious”, which I believe not only exists as a cosmic tumbler, but that the media was developed to harness it. Furthermore, my opinion is that media actively focus its power to directly affect results which, in turn, create icons of glory, or ‘Heros’.
Jack Nicklaus’ “Golden Bear”, Tiger Woods’ wry and toothy boyish grin, and every other media darling have a decided advantage not by virtue of superior skill, but rather subtle media marketing – tantamount to luck powered by Jung’s theory. And the mass media want revenue almost as much as they want control. Therefore, they hop on the coattail of any emerging talent to sell their influence – directly BECAUSE they know the power of the collective unconscious.
The following comes from this link. Take it for what its worth.
Jung believed that the collective unconscious is expressed through universal archetypes. Archetypes are signs, symbols, or patterns of thinking and/or behaving that are inherited from our ancestors.
According to Jung, these mythological images or cultural symbols are not static or fixed. Instead, many different archetypes may overlap or combine at any given time. Some common archetypes that Jung proposed for explaining the unconscious mind include:4
Anima: Symbolized by an idealized woman who compels man to engage in feminine behaviors
Animus: Woman’s source of meaning and power that both creates animosity toward man but also increases self-knowledge
Hero: Starting with a humble birth, then overcoming evil and death
Persona: The mask we use to conceal our inner selves to the outside world
Self: The whole personality; the core of the total psyche
Shadow: The psyche’s immoral and dark aspects
Trickster: The child seeking self-gratification, sometimes being cruel and unfeeling in the process
Wise old man: The self as a figure of wisdom or knowledge. For example, wizards and revered teachers frequently appear in the media and marketing messages to reflect this archetype.5
Notice, in particular, the animus, hero, and wise old man archetypes for present day applications. However, for our purposes, we’ll stick with the ‘Hero’ and “Wise old man’, since the politics of animus is beneath us all. If we can agree on the undue influence of television on our culture, then we might agree that the media uses the medium for their own benefit and not ours. As a result, THEY choose what WE see. Yes? Fine.
Now, for a moment, put away any judgement or preconception of personalities observed, since each is a construct of the media. Golf media, in particular, design programming to use personality both as a canvas and a brush. Nance, Azinger, producers and storytellers, etal., who hold their positions by virtue of demonstrating the ability to create narratives, paint a picture for our emotional and literal consumption, and coincidental construction of, our chosen archetypes.
As for the application of the narratives, the U.S. viewer is the target audience. We are the consumers… the eaters – colloquially derided by those feeding our emotional and literal lives. We blindly follow the trough in whichever direction it moves, never realizing it is we they want to move – not the trough.
Now, consider the personalities fed to us. Over the past thirty to forty years, golfers like the charming Seve Ballesteros, and Nick Faldo, the emotional Colin Montgomerie, happy Padraig Harrington and more, began playing the majority of, if not all their golf, in the U.S. That means, of course, we got to know them pretty well. I like all of them. Seve is immortal. And I can say that Nick Faldo is my favorite commentator ever. In fact, all my favorites are English. That doesn’t happen without television.
Europe is a different place altogether. Their lives don’t revolve around entertainment like ours. They know their players, not ours. They adore their players, not ours. Ours are their enemy. But theirs are not our enemy. When equally-skilled opponents meet, the result is swayed by luck focused by the collective unconscious.
If everybody in the U.S. and Europe knows and likes their players, but all of Europe sees U.S. players as the enemy, then the balance will always favor Europe. You can bet the Ryder Cup is not-to-be-missed programming in Europe. Therefore, European players will become the ‘Hero’ of all of Europe and a smattering of America. U.S. players will be ‘Hero’ to a smattering of America and NONE of Europe. THAT doesn’t happen without television.
I’d bring in the Patrick Cantlay hatless story the media created, but it’s too undignified to air. Suffice it to say the collective unconscious is on the side currently most unaffected by media, which is not an accident. The media wins when they get opposing viewership, which has nothing to do with who wins and loses the match.
We, in the U.S. are already hooked on sport T.V. Sports media has been working to get Europeans hooked on the Bread-and-Circus television spectacle now for forty years, which is much longer in other respects. Here is a video you should watch.
That doesn’t happen without Ryder Cup, World Cup, Olympics, Football, Basketball, Baseball, and Tennis wins by the media darling over an arch enemy (US). Those collective ‘Victories’, in turn, produce personalities they can then market into archetypal ‘Heros’ for a burgeoning European consumer base.
If the collective unconscious of Europe turns to television (the trough), then control of the collective unconscious, and the population, in general, is just an eventuality. Fortunately, Europe could give a damn about golf. But that won’t stop mass media from trying. That’s enough, I guess. You can thank me later.
Oh, one more thing. As for the wise old man archetype….
Ben Hogan, Homer Kelley, Harvey Penick, any Harmon, Ledbetter, McLean, Suttie, Como, Foley, Cowan, Flick, and every other instructor featured in any medium are media’s choices, not yours. These ‘Wise Old Men’ are proof positive that the media matters more than knowledge. You don’t need their help. You need to open your stance and play golf.
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