Hubert Green never looked at a video of his swing. He once told a friend that he was afraid he might throw up.
In the 1970s and ’80s, Seve Ballesteros didn’t study moving pictures of his motion. That obsession didn’t come until the late ’90s with the advent of the miniature video camera. Such screenings didn’t serve Seve well. His last win came in 1995 and by 2000 he couldn’t find a fairway with a GPS.
Pick your all-time favorite Hall of Famer – Jones, Sarazen, Hogan, Snead, Watson, Nicklaus, Wright, Whitworth, King. Did any of them spend hours hunched over a video screen studying positions, angles and slow-motion sequences? Of course not. Some teacher with video software surely would have told Byron Nelson that he had to fix that head-dip or insisted that Lee Trevino narrow and square up his stance.
Imagine the heyday one of today’s modern video instructors would have had with Eamon Darcy, Bubba Watson, Jim Furyk, Bob Murphy, Miller Barber, or even John Daly, who can’t get it square from that backswing with that belly.
Video is like morphine. It works in small doses when you’re sick. But it’s a killer once you get addicted.
And withdrawal is a pain you wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Who would have guessed that Sean Foley, a guy who was known in his Tiger Woods days for carrying video equipment in a man-bag on his shoulder, would be the one to break the cycle?
Just ask Lydia Ko, who has gone through a Rolodex of coaches in the last seven years while struggling to get back to winning form. And throughout the process, there was one thing almost all of them had in common – they fed the video habit.
Gary Gilchrist wasn’t bad. He wasn’t on tour driving ranges with his cellphone or an iPad filming three-quarter wedge shots. But he didn’t discourage Lydia from looking, either.
Ted Oh was a pusher. He needed his own server for all the video he shot of Ko during their time together. During a practice round at the KPMG Women’s PGA Championship, one day before the start of a major championship, Oh filmed so many swings that Ko’s playing partner finally looked at him and said, “Really?”
David Whelan and Jorge Parade were better, but they still fed the addiction to one degree or another.
Who would have guessed that Sean Foley, a guy who was known in his Tiger Woods days for carrying video equipment in a man-bag on his shoulder, would be the one to break the cycle?
“I haven’t taken many videos of my swing on the road,” Ko said just a few days before heading to California and the ANA Inspiration. “I might take a video or two and send them to Sean and get his feedback but not look at the videos myself.
“At my best, and even when I was an amateur, I really didn’t take a lot of videos. I felt a lot of things in my swing and I reacted to a lot of things in my ball flight. Now, I think that when you take a lot of videos, you tend to forget that ball flight tells you a lot. The ball might fly great and do what you want but if you focus on the video you might focus on one little thing in your swing where you say, ‘I could get better at that,’ and not focus on feeling the swing and seeing the ball flight.
“I think I’ve looked at one swing in the last few weeks,” Ko said. “But I’m letting the ball tell me what I’m doing.”
As a result of not looking at her swing, her swing looks better than it has in years – maybe the best it has looked since she was a 15-year-old amateur, days when, at impact, she was indistinguishable from a slew of Hall of Famers.
“There were components (of my swing) when I was younger that were good and obviously you want to remember those,” she said. “But you also have to remember that physically I’m not the same now.”
That’s right. She’s not the same. A 15-year-old girl’s body is now that of a mature athlete – stronger, leaner, fitter and more fluid than before. Her results are getting closer to the Ko of old as well. But for a brain fade on the final hole in Ohio, she would have won the Marathon Classic in a trot. After that, as she put it, “I had a good weekend at the Scottish (Open) and I had a great time at Troon. And I feel like I played solid in Arkansas apart from two clumsy holes.
“That’s all a sign of greater confidence. I’m going out and swinging more freely. If I had holed some putts at those events, I would have scored much better. I feel like I was playing better than I was scoring, which can be frustrating but at the same time it gives you more opportunities.
“The more competitive rounds I get to play, the more momentum I build and confidence. Confidence is really a huge key for me.”
She seems more confident now than she has in quite some time. The tense look of worry, even through the smiles, has vanished. Even more important than the golf swing or the putting stroke, Ko looks healthier and happier than she has in some time, a blessing to those who care about her.
“Sean and I pretty much work on the same things,” she said, going back to the feel-based swing she and Foley are perfecting. “I have a tendency for my head to move forward in transition, which gets my body too far ahead. Now, I think I’m getting myself into a position where I’m swinging more freely. There is no manipulation. That is the key for me, getting into a position where I’m free.”
Free from the golf swing as a concept. Free from the burden of believing winning would never stop. Free from the pursuit of perfect. And most importantly of all, free from video addiction.
Let the recovery begin.