September Newsletter
Watching Charles Barkley's Game Rebound
It's been an exciting few weeks to end the summer season in Aspen. My friends from Golf Digest came for a visit to capture some of the work Charles has been doing on his swing. I can't tell you how thrilled I am at how much Charles is enjoying the game now—playing every day and just smashing it with his great hands. We shot for three hours, and Charles hit sand wedges through driver and barely left a divot. It means he's been releasing the club well and it comes in shallow—unlike the issues he was having before.
One thing I can absolutely say after hitting balls next to him for the day is that he might be a retired athlete, but he's still an athlete with a capital A. He produces tremendous clubhead speed, and his drivers sound like something you hear on a PGA Tour range. I've never had those fast-twitch muscles. I appreciate your comments on Instagram about my smooth swing, but smoothness is all I have!
The progress Charles has been making—he's consistently shooting in the low 80s again—is amazing for a few reasons. One, he has some serious shoulder problems from his long career as a basketball player, so he's not able to get them to rotate externally. That means he's going to have some steepness to his swing because he can't get his arms to move any differently. The other is that I don't know if I have a handful of students who work as hard as he does. Everybody wants to improve, but few people are willing to put in the work it really requires to shoot in the 70s. Charles is doing that grinding, and it's so fun to see. He's seeing progress both on the scorecard and in what I consider to be the best barometer of improvement—the number of good holes he plays during a round. That's a good way for you to look at it, too. Instead of being mad about making a bad score on a few holes that turns the 85 you hoped to shoot into a 91, look at the number of good holes you played. Did you make a lot of pars? A birdie or two? That should be your measure for the day.
Is it Your Mind or Your Skills?
The one question I get more than others when it comes to Charles is what I did to fix his mental game. How was it possible to remove all that mental scar tissue? My response is that Charles didn't have a mind problem. He had a swing skill problem. Most people who don't play with confidence are doing that because they don't have enough skill to merit confidence. There's no reason to be embarrassed about that! All you have to do is chase better skills, and that's pretty easy to do.
One example? I'm working with a former college athlete who has competed in triathlons—but doesn't have much golf experience. She's extremely strong and fit, and is totally open to being coached. She sees hitting some strange shots as a necessary path toward hitting good shots. We worked on how to release the club, and she spent some time twisting the face too much and hitting some hard low-left shots. But by then end of the lesson, she was really using her pivot and starting to bomb it. She just needed to acquire some skills. You can do the same thing!
Back to Scottsdale
My season at Grayhawk starts up again at the end of October. If you're making some plans to come out in late fall, I'd love to see you. Bring three of your friends and make a golf trip out of it.