Lorne Rubenstein

Keep It Simple
February 15, 2006

Not to call a hiccup a trend, but has a new type of golfer emerged at the highest levels of the game? Call him the thoughtless player, somebody who, as John Daly did and does, grips it and rips it.

Just now at least three such players are doing their thoughtless thing, and they're doing it rather well. A couple of them are winning, in fact.

Photo © Robert Cianflone/Getty Images Lefties like Bubba Watson often don't fill their head with swing thoughts. Too much converting left to right and right to left.

The threesome in the ring: Bubba Watson, who finished fourth at his first rounament at the Sony Open; J.B. Holmes, who won the FBR Open in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Kevin Stadler, who won the European Tour's Johnnie Walker Classic the other day in Perth, Australia.

These guys are quintessential feel players. When it comes to mechanics, they'd rather wear earplugs than hear anybody on the matter.

"People say quiet your hips, do [something with] your elbow," long-knocker Watson says. "I don't have a clue what that means. I just hit it."

Heresy, that's what this is, heresy. Doesn't Bubba want to know what pronation and supination mean? Wouldn't he enjoy the answer Nick Faldo once offered when I asked if he could define the swing in one sentence? Faldo was on top of the golfing world then.

Photo © Harry How/Getty Images No telling what J.B. Holmes could be thinking between shots.

"It's the turning of the upper body against the resistance of the lower body back and through," Faldo fired back. I mean that. He fired back. Faldo knew. He was Hogan a couple of generations later. Of course when he visited Hogan and asked the great one the secret to winning the U.S. Open, Hogan answered, "Shoot the lowest score."

Holmes shot the lowest score and won the FBR Open. He smashed drives 350 yards and more. In the air. Come on. He's up there in Bubba territory.

Watson thinks nobody can hang with him as far as hang time goes when he hits it big, and Holmes thinks the same thing. Sounds like a mystery to me, starring Watson and Holmes. Shades of Sherlock Holmes, to be sure. (Sorry, I had to work in the reference).

"God-given ability," Holmes said when asked whether he can explain his long-balling. "I picked up a club when I was 14 months old and my dad said my swing hasn't changed very much since then. I've swung like this my whole life."

"Like this," is with a three-quarter swing, a hit it as hard as you can cut action, what he calls a "big upper body," and then it's all target, target, target.

"I knew I didn't take a full swing," Holmes said to a question about whether he's aware he doesn't get his club to parallel“ah, that classic position the textbooks say every golfer should try to attain.

"Basically I just don't stretch back that far...If I go back this much further I'd hit it everywhere. I'm peaked out, as long as my swing is going to get.’

As for Stadler, well, all he did was eagle the par-five 18th hole each of the last three rounds far out there on the west coast of Australia. He whipped a 3-iron over water and up against the hole in the last round to seal the deal.

Swing thoughts? No chance for Stadler, who agreed that he's an old-style player, all hands and feel, free of self or other-imposed technique.

"I obviously don't have a very typical swing," Stadler said. "I couldn't tell you the first thing about it. I've only had a handful of lessons in my life, really. I think I'm what you could call a quote, unquote, feel player, which pretty much takes you back to 10, 20 years ago."

Photo © Justin Sullivan/Getty Images Kevin Stadler shares more than physical appearance of his father, Craig Stadler.

But even then, well, actually in 1972, one Mindy Blake wrote a famous book called The Golf Swing of the Future. He claimed, "To understand golf, you need the kind of mind which is good at mathematics and physics. Golf is purely a matter of technique."

But what's wrong with the way Watson, Holmes and Stadler swing? Their techniques have been working. It's just that they don't think about what they do. All they have to do, as that master instructor Buck Owens advised, is Act naturally.

So what's old is new again. What goes around comes around. See target, see ball, feel swing, make swing.

Think Craig Stadler, Kevin's dad, for one. Think Irishman Eamon Darcy, the man who looks like he's trying to whack himself in the head with his elbow when he swings; the marvellous English writer Peter Dobereiner observed that the Darce's swing is like a man "picking a five-pound note from a grate with tongs." Beautiful. Finally, think Chi-Chi Rodriguez, with his spaghetti-like swing. Think Doug Sander, the man whose swing was so short he could swing in a telephone booth.

Definitely, also, think, or don't think, about practice. Watson said the only reason he hits balls is so his caddie will figure he's doing something. Stadler and Holmes certainly aren't ball-beaters. They'd get along well with that live it up and swing away fellow Walter Hagen.

"[Hagen] said to me during a recent meeting we had that if he had needed to slog at the game like the present-day golfers in order to reach his form he would have chosen another profession," the great English professional Henry Cotton wrote.

Walter Hagen was more likely to be thinking about where that evening's party was than how to finish his round.

You'd think players who aren't fond of practice, and don't know anything about the swing, might worry that they could fall into a slump and never recover. Not Watson, for one.

"I never see myself in a slump," he says. "I can't think of any time I played bad for more than two weeks, three weeks. I'd say there's bad days. Yeah, there's going to be times when I'm going to miss short putts or hit a ball out of bounds, all this stuff is going to happen. I never see it as the putter's fault or the driver's fault, I just see it as a bad day and I'll play tomorrow. If I play two bad days, well, hey, next week, I mean, life is too short to worry about all that stuff."

Then, to top it off, Watson said, solving the mystery if he'll ever resort to a lesson, "You know, if it ever comes down to where I need a lesson, I'm retiring. I'm never going to have a lesson."

Excellent. Watson, Holmes and Stadler are demonstrating the value of golf without thought. They're golfing by instinct. Publishers will soon be clamouring for them to join and write an instructional book.

The only problem: It would be full of empty pages. Maybe, just maybe, that would be an antidote to the age of TMI“too much information. Can't you just see it? Open the book, see not a word, empty your mind, and play golf the Watson/Holmes/ Stadler way.

The thoughtless way. And for them, the better way.

PGA Tour Stats

Note: Kevin Stadler does not have enough rounds in 2006 to be ranked in the statistical categories. His stats for 2005 are included for comparison.

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