Greetings Golfers,

So, they just announced that the US Open will be played at Winged Foot GC on Sept 17-20.

And, it will not have spectators in attendance. The PGA Championship – which takes place next week – will also be held without fans.

I’m glad those Majors are happening. Looks like the Masters will be held in November. Since I’ll be watching television … I don’t really care if there are spectators in attendance.

Have you watched a televised baseball this year? I haven’t … but I’ve heard that they have fake crowds. Why? I don’t get it. How does that add to the game?

Do you like “laugh tracks” on tv shows? Why would they do that to sporting events?

I think televised sports have a great opportunity to mic up the players so we can hear the game on the field.

And golf should do it too. How good would it be to hear the conversations between players and their caddies?

Hmmm. I don’t think it’s a tough choice between hearing intelligent discussion or people yelling in a crowd. If viewers miss yelling … I’m sure they can invite over some neighbors who just enjoy yelling … then everybody can be happy.

However, I think the live mic thing should not happen at the Majors. The Majors should be as serious as possible … though I think normal weekly PGA Tour golf is more about entertainment.

We all know recreational golfers who think every round they play is the US Open. They might have more fun and even play better if they realized it’s just entertainment.

PGA Tour commissioner Jay Monahan has said that he remains hopeful to have fans by the end of the year. Well, he does have fans … watching on television. A lot of us would like to hear what’s really happening on the golf course.

This could a great opportunity for televised sports.

Cheers,

Tom Abts
GM/Head PGA Professional
tabts@deerrungolf.com

Deer Run Golf Club
8661 Deer Run Drive
Victoria, MN 55386
(952) 443-2351
www.deerrungolf.com
www.facebook.com/DeerRunGolf
www.twitter.com/DeerRunGolfClub

Greetings Golfers,

Just read an article in a local business magazine that said restaurants in the Mpls-St.Paul area are really struggling. Not only struggling … but quite a few are closing.

The big reason is that they can only operate at 50% capacity. That doesn’t mean that they’re making 50% less profit … they aren’t making a profit. The cost for them to open the doors and operate depends on at least 75% capacity. So, it’s not worth opening if it means losing money.

Most things work like that. Golf courses sure do. But, it’s not just capacity … it’s capacity at a certain green fee. We could be packed with $10 green fees … and lose an incredible amount of money.

That’s where it gets tricky … how many rounds at what price is enough to stay afloat? You need to know the revenue number that’s needed to pay the bills.

The rounds/green fee combo works like this: more rounds at a lower fee means more wear & tear on the course. But, if you’re going for fewer rounds, obviously you need a higher green fee which probably depends a lot on the condition of the course.

Either way … course maintenance expense is a big number.

But if you choose to be a course that is not in good shape … hopefully your cheap green fees will bring in enough rounds so that you can pay the bills. But if it’s really bad, no one will play even if it’s cheap. And, it’s still risky, because no matter how bad the condition, you still need labor and machines and fertilizers, etc. Also maintaining greens – even bad greens are expensive. You know how expensive it is to maintain your lawn … think about a golf course!

So, to try to make these numbers work … some golf courses offer a variety of rates … and try to get maximum at peak times and less at weak times. That’s tricky too. That means the peak times are basically subsidizing the weak times. Sort of like flying on an airplane – the first class seats subsidize the coach seats.

I fly coach. I’m glad to have people subsidize my fare. For me, flying is just a means to an end … not an experience. And, I’m sort of narcoleptic … so I’m already asleep by the time the plane is in the air. So the first-class experience would be wasted on me.

However, we can’t have some people subsidizing other people at the golf course. Can you imagine the vibe if we had “first-class players” and “coach players”? It’d be a nightmare. Talk about a disrespectful atmosphere. People would cut in front of people at the counter, etc. Think about it.

So, our goal is to have everyone pay a fair price (the necessary price) and run a nice friendly place that can pay the bills. Everyone is “special” … not “more special”.

I’m very sorry that restaurants are closing. That’s not a good thing. And it would be really terrible if more golf courses were closing. Unlike a restaurant, a golf course needs a lot of land. If that land goes to development … golf keeps shrinking.

Most privately owned golf courses are providing a public service. They are not gouging the customers to make money. Any profit, is reinvested.

We all love golf and want to see it survive. The reality is that it costs a lot of money to operate a golf course. We all have to face reality to make it work.

Cheers!

Tom Abts
GM/Head PGA Professional
tabts@deerrungolf.com

Deer Run Golf Club
8661 Deer Run Drive
Victoria, MN 55386
(952) 443-2351
www.deerrungolf.com
www.facebook.com/DeerRunGolf
www.twitter.com/DeerRunGolfClub

Greetings Golfers,

There are lots of ideas about how to swing a golf club.

Hopefully those ideas will lead to hitting good shots. I’ve seen lots of pretty practice swings by people who can’t hit good golf shots.

I’m not knocking pretty swings … I think good rhythm and tempo are very important factors in hitting good shots.

Important factors. Hmmm.  What does that mean? Well, what REALLY does matter to produce good golf shots. Is it the grip? Or stance? Or weight shift? Or path? Or …?

The answer is … contact. Solid contact produces solid shots. Solid contact with a square club face on a path to the target produces solid shots going at the target. But, are they the right distance? So you need: solid shots with a square club face on the correct path and the club moving at the right speed so the ball flies the proper distance.

I know people who think that if they make a pretty swing that all of those factors will naturally happen and will produce a perfect shot.  Not so.

If the player knows how to make solid contact … with a square face … on the correct path … a rhythmic swing will help produce those desired parts of the golf swing.I believe that those desired parts of the golf swing need to be understood.

When I used to give lessons … my students hit very few golf balls. It was a lesson – not supervised practice. Most of my students didn’t really understand the golf swing – that’s why they wanted a lesson. Sometimes, very good players get a little off, so their lessons are more supervised practice … the instructor needs to see why they’ve gotten off their game.

However, most of my students did not have a clear understanding of the golf swing. In fact, they were over-loaded with information.

They needed to put that information into a hierarchy … much of the information was irrelevant to what they needed to learn.

So, I wanted my lessons to make sense. I didn’t want the student to just memorize some information … I wanted them to logically understand how a good golf swing works.

People came to me obsessed with head movement or body turn or a straight left arm … no one ever came with any concept of contact.

So, we went immediately to contact. Once that was understood … then it got interesting. How does a player get the club to proper contact? That’s the biggie. I believe that before impact, the club has to get into the “slot” … that from the “slot” the player can get to a good impact position. And, that it’s almost impossible to get to proper impact if the club doesn’t get into the “slot”.

So what it this mysterious “slot”? Well, it’s a position about halfway into the downswing. If you came to a stop, the hands would be about waist-high and the wrists would still be cocked … the right elbow would be almost hitting the right hip …and the weight would be more on the left foot.

No matter what your set-up looks like or what type of backswing you make … to be a consistent player … you need to get into this “slot” position.

Like anything … a good golf swing has a system of priorities. Of course everything has an effect: grip, stance, posture, turn, weight shift, etc.

However, they can not all be weighted equally. That is misguided. And, is why most people don’t understand the golf swing.

The purpose of the golf swing is to hit good golf shots. Good golf shots depend on good contact/impact. A good golf swing needs to get into the proper position…to then get to good contact/impact.

I love golf swing discussions. However, too often we can’t see the forest for the trees. All players need to understand impact … and how to get to impact.

Please spread the word.

Tom Abts
GM/Head PGA Professional
tabts@deerrungolf.com

Deer Run Golf Club
8661 Deer Run Drive
Victoria, MN 55386
(952) 443-2351
www.deerrungolf.com
www.facebook.com/DeerRunGolf
www.twitter.com/DeerRunGolfClub

Greetings Golfers,

I just watched a video of a tennis instructor talking about the nasty remarks regarding his latest teaching video.

He’d been talking about strategy … and using his 4.0 student in his examples. People couldn’t believe the student was a 4.0 player. Why? … well, the guy was middle-age, chubby, and moved a little awkwardly.

So, I went back watched the referred to video. The guy looked to me like a good 4.0 player. Sort of like golf handicaps. Some golfers are a good 12 hcp and some are a bad 12 hcp. This guy was a good 4.0 tennis player.

I was going to write about Bryson DeChambeau this week … but, I’ll save it for another time. Everybody’s writing about him now – you don’t need my thoughts. However, Bryson is an example of what I’m talking about. His swing and putting stroke look awkward … but they work.

We all need to find a golf swing that works. Too often we get on the path to the “perfect swing” but don’t have the time or talent to develop it.

Most of us want a low maintenance swing that works pretty well most of the time. That’s about all we can ask for. We need to realistic.

Over the years, I’ve had some assistant pros who had high maintenance golf games. I tried to explain to them that as they progressed in the golf business, that they wouldn’t have much time to play or practice, but still needed to shoot decent scores.

And to do that, they needed a swing that was more of an old Volvo than a Ferrari. The old Volvo could sit outside all Winter and still start in the Spring. Could the Ferrari do that? Probably not. Would the old Volvo beat a tuned-up Ferrari? No. But it would beat an out-of-whack Ferrari.

Of course, one young guy thought that I didn’t know what I was talking about. But he thought everything I did was wrong – not just about playing golf but also how to run a golf course.

A few years later – when he was working somewhere else … his group was playing right in front of me in a ProAm tournament. It was in April, and his Ferrari struggled to get around the golf course. The old Volvo beat the out-of-tune Ferrari by over 10 shots.

College players and Tour players need to be tuned-up sports cars. And it takes a lot of maintenance.

The rest of us should be happy to be old Volvos.

Cheers,

Tom Abts
GM/Head PGA Professional
tabts@deerrungolf.com

Deer Run Golf Club
8661 Deer Run Drive
Victoria, MN 55386
(952) 443-2351
www.deerrungolf.com
www.facebook.com/DeerRunGolf
www.twitter.com/DeerRunGolfClub

Greetings Golfers,

As you get into golf, you can’t help turning into a  detective … sort of a Sherlock Holmes of the golf swing.

It can be a lot of fun … but it can also drive you crazy. People can get more obsessed with the golf swing than with the game of golf.

The other night, I watched my favorite television detective – William Murdoch – get obsessed with the golf swing. The writers handled it perfectly.

The show (Murdoch Mysteries) is a Canadian series set in Toronto from 1895 to almost 1910. It’s starting its 14th season and moves up a year as it begins each new season.

Because of COVID, my wife and I have been watching a lot of television – it’s become our social life. Murdoch doesn’t have much of a social life – he’s pretty obsessive and works on his cases at the expense of doing anything else.

Murdoch is a bright guy, sort of a loner, but not anti-social. He’s kind and holds himself to high standards of behavior. He knows a lot about everything … but is especially keen on science.

So he’s always inventing variations of famous scientific inventions … it’s pretty clever and pretty funny. Of course he has dealings with Thomas Edison and Nikolei Tesla and Henry Ford … because we all know that they were involved in criminal activity in Toronto at the turn of the century.

I’m not doing a great job of describing the show. It’s charming and not cliche and doesn’t take itself too seriously … though it is intelligent and has good dialog and characters.

And, the mysteries are really interesting and solvable for the viewer. That’s why it was so much fun watching Murdoch get sucked into the mysteries of golf – especially the golf swing.

Did he solve the mystery of the golf swing? Yes and no. While at the driving range, his wife takes a swing and hits a beautiful shot. He was at the range struggling because his swing plane invention had ruined his swing. So he asks his wife to try again. She hits another beauty. But when he asked her what she was thinking about to hit such a perfect shot … she said “Nothing. I just cleared my head and swung.”

Murdoch couldn’t believe it. She calmly insisted that’s what she did. He got really agitated. This is a guy who never loses his cool. He told her that her answer makes no sense. He needs answers. He solves mysteries. He’s a scientist. He can’t accept that not thinking could be an answer to anything.

The next and final scene … is Murdoch calmly throwing each of his golf clubs into a pond.

You know that he’ll be back. You can’t quit golf – not really.

Take care,

Tom Abts
GM/Head PGA Professional
tabts@deerrungolf.com

Deer Run Golf Club
8661 Deer Run Drive
Victoria, MN 55386
(952) 443-2351
www.deerrungolf.com
www.facebook.com/DeerRunGolf
www.twitter.com/DeerRunGolfClub