Saturday, November 22, 2008

How To Play Your Best Golf All The Time

To the side is my dog eared copy of Tommy Armour’s fantastic book How to Play Your Best Golf All The Time. I did a Blogpost about Tommy Armour in October and said I would say more about him in future. Well here it is.

The brilliance of this book is Armour’s straight-forwardness (is that a word?) and his simplicity. The sort of simplicity that you will only find coming from a very confident and capable instructor and Armour surely was this and more. In his day he was one of the most sought out instructors in the world, charging also some of the highest fees imaginable at the time, but Armour could deliver the goods.

The first time I read the book many years ago I was astounded at what a stiking resemblance between some of the address position images advocated by Armour and Fred Couples.

Here's images I dug up of Armour and Couples for reference: Spooky!

About the only thing that I question in Armour’s book is the chapter called “The Pause That Means Good Timing” which goes against my idea that the transition can be automated and in a properly sequenced swing will simply trigger itself. His chapters “the Grip Holds The Swing Together” and “Footwork, The Foundation of Best Golf”, however, are must reads.

Chapter 1 is called “Why This Book Is as Short and Simple as It Is”. What could be better than that?!?!


First published in 1953 the book is still in print. You can pick it up at most bookstores or online at Amazon.com. Oh, and this is a link to previous Blog on Tommy Armour: http://sevam1.blogspot.com/2008_10_01_archive.html

5 comments:

CAMERAMAN, Co-Founder www.secretgolf.com said...

sevam,
If you look at the drawing and compare the feet. It looks like Couples is clearly more supine with with his feet and the drawing is more prone it looks like his heals are off the ground. Look at the ball and compare the leading foot.
Your comments please.

CAMERAMAN (still in Convalescence)

CAMERAMAN, Co-Founder www.secretgolf.com said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
SEVAM1 said...

In each case the ball is set up precisely off of the left heel. The feet appear different because the illustration is drawn from an angle looking slightly down on the golfer while the view of Couples is taken from a more level position. Other than the fact that these are depictions from different elevations I don't really see what you are saying.

trashpar said...

I remember this photo, as it was a swing sequence in Golf Digest of Fred around fall of 92 or spring of 93. Harvey Penick did the swing analysis and actually stated that Fred's address positions looked very much like Armour's.

brianuk said...

I agree with SEVAM1 keep up the good work