Some similarities with golf and Olympic pistol shooting

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Russ
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Some similarities with golf and Olympic pistol shooting

Post by Russ »

Some similarities with golf and Olympic pistol target shooting.
These are, very accurate ;)

Never try to keep more than 300 separate thoughts in your mind during your swing.

The less skilled the player, the more likely he is to share his ideas about the golf swing.

There is no such thing as a friendly wager.

The stages of golf are Sudden Collapse, Radical Change, Complete Frustration, Slow Improvement, Brief Mastery, and Sudden Collapse.

If you really want to be better at golf, go back and take it up at a much earlier age.

Progress in golf consists of two steps forward and ten miles backward.

It takes 17 holes to really get warmed up.

No matter how badly you are playing, it's always possible to play worse.

Whatever you think you're doing wrong is the one thing you're doing right.

Any change works for three holes.

The odds of hitting a duffed shot increase by the square of the number of people watching.

Never teach golf to your wife.

Never play your son for money.

The statute of limitations on forgotten strokes is two holes.

Confidence evaporates in the presence of fairway water.

The more your opponent quotes the rules, the greater the certainty that he cheats.

The rake is always in the other trap.

The wind is in your face on 16 of the 18 holes.

The rough will be mowed tomorrow.

The ball always lands where the pin was yesterday.

It always takes at least five holes to notice that a club is missing.

The nearest sprinkler head will be blank.

You can hit a 2-acre fairway 10% of the time and a two inch branch 90% of the time.

Out of bounds is always on the right, for right-handed golfers.

Your straightest iron shot of the day will be exactly one club short.

No matter how far its shaft extends, a ball retriever is always a foot too short to reach the ball.
If you seem to be hitting your shots straight on the driving range, it's probably because you're not aiming at anything.

A ball you can see in the rough from 50 yards away is not yours.

The only thing you can learn from golf books is that you can't learn anything from golf books, but you have to read an awful lot of golf books to learn it. ;)
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Doc226
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Post by Doc226 »

Now that is funny
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A74BEDLM
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Post by A74BEDLM »

I've just started golf as a means of relaxing from Pistol Shooting. Its bloody addictive, competitive and I'm not too sure its going to be as relaxing as I hoped!

On a serious side it has many similarities - quiet the mind and let the club do the work and you'll be hitting the FIR and GIRs in no time!
william
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Post by william »

Love it! For those of us who lack the time, inclination or cash for golf the very same principles apply to bowling. Did anybody ever notice that you NEVER miss a single pin spare during practice?
Gwhite
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Post by Gwhite »

I can never think of bowling the same way after a friend of mine told me about his early fencing lessons. His mother was an ex-Olympic fencer, and he started lessons when he was about 5 years old. His instructor was a Hungarian fencing master. Any time my friend was having an off day (which was fairly often by his instructor's judgement), his maestro would bellow "Vy are vasting my time?!! Vy don't you take up bowling?!!"

The same phrase now pops into my head occasionally when I'm struggling with my shooting...
aross007
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Bring-me-backs

Post by aross007 »

It seems to me that almost every round I played, I would hit one perfect shot -the ball would do exactly what I had planned. (Realize that that was out of 110+ shots that it took me to play a round.) I used to call that a "Bring-me-back," because it felt so good and I wanted to do it again. I feel the same way when I call a pinwheel shot. (also unfortunately a 1 in 100 occurence!!!)

Alan
David M
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Substitute Shooting for Golf

Post by David M »

SO, WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL ABOUT GOLF (Shooting)?

I looked up from the morning paper at the attractive woman who was sitting across from me. 'Pardon?" 'Golf' she repeated. 'You know, a little white ball big green fields, and on TV everybody's whispering all the time. Well I don't understand what the big deal is. Is it really that much fun whacking a ball around a field with a stick?
Why do people like it so much? Why do you like it so much?' There are a few times in life when the universe decides to give you a break. My brain had locked up, and this bright, curious woman was waiting for an answer. That's when the phone rang and it was for her. I gulped the rest of my coffee, put on some clothes, and returned to the kitchen. When she looked up at me, still listening to the voice on the other end of the line, I said, 'Errands,' and she nodded and smiled.
I left and went straight to the library. I'd heard that Tiger Woods had, single-handed, started a new golf boom; instead, he appears to have arrived in the middle of one. Since 1975, the number of golfers in the United States has increased from 13 million to 26 million and the number of golf courses has jumped from more than 11,000 to more than 15,000. But why? I walked past the library’s bank of Internet-tied computers and their mesmerized users, and headed back into the stacks. I stood before six shelves of golf books. It is an almost childishly simple game, but it's been played for more than 500 years, it's played all over the world, and golfers are passionate about it. I considered whether this question was too big, like asking a child why he or she likes Christmas.
I found a book of golf quotations and began thumbing through it. 'God is the great mystery,' writer PG. Woodhouse observed. Not the answer, but at least he was confirming that there is an elusive, maybe indefinable appeal. I kept searching. In another book, Arnold Palmer told me that 'Golf is deceptively simple yet endlessly complicated.' Closer, I thought. A few pages later, Lee Trevino reports 'Golf is the most human game of all.' Now I was onto something. I remember those years ago, someone timed the swings of Palmer and Jack Nicklaus and found that neither of them took longer than two seconds. This meant that, during a four-hour round, these great golfers were actually hitting the ball for less than 2 1/2 minutes. So what were they doing the other three hours, 57 1/2minutes?
They were thinking and this I would tell her is where it gets interesting. Golf is not a reactive sport like tennis, basketball or baseball, it’s a slow game with time to consider every act, to analyze every shot and feel its significance. There is time for our minds and personalities to get involved, there is time for fear and anxiety
I would tell her a scenario like the give ones she'd seen on television: Imagine that you are leading a golf tournament for which the winner gets $1 million. You’ve spent 20 years practicing for this moment. It is the final round, the 18th hole, and you have a one-stroke lead. You are 80 yards from the green and all you have to do is chip on and get down in two putts and you win.
As you stand there, you notice a pond off to the right and you realize that you could shank the ball into it-easily. One bad swing and you lose the tournament. But you are a good golfer you tell yourself, that could not happen to a player as good as you. Then you remember the 1964 Masters, when Nicklaus looked into the crowd and saw Bobby Jones, the legendary Bobby Jones, the only golfer ever to win the Grand Slam, watching him. And Nicklaus shanked the ball.
In front of you now, beyond the 18th green is the clubhouse. If you lift your head just half an inch, you will skull the ball over the green and send it through the picture window. Or you could hook the ball into a deep bunker, or slice it into some trees. Now you are wondering which of these you are going to do-shank it, skull it, slice it, hook it.
Thousands of people are gathered around the green and millions are watching on television and if you choke, every one of them will know it. Couldn’t take the pressure,' 'Choke-artist,' 'Got the big apple,' A little tight-collar action,' they will say. And the truth is that right now, you’re so scared you’re having a hard time breathing.
You stand over the ball put your club down onto the grass, and you keep thinking: shank, skull slice, or hook. You take the club back and you want to close your eyes so you won’t have to see what’s going to happen. You swing down and ...
Well that’s one of golf's allures, isn't it? From one moment to the next, you don’t know whether you’re taking part in a comedy, a drama, or a tragedy You can’t predict whether you’re going to be the hero or the fool or just the supporting actor in someone else's play.
How many things can you do wrong on a golf swing? Well there are thousands of instruction books on golf, so there are enough mistakes for everyone. A few of the available are flame at the elbow, the misaligned stance, the hurried swing, the outside-in swing, the too-weak grip, the too-strong grip, the moving head, the too-short back-swing, the sliding hips, and the all-time favorite - the whiff. So, if you want to play well you just need to do a few thousand things right. Or, to put it another way - you absolutely, positively must do everything exactly right ever time. Otherwise, you lose.
Pressure has affected every golfer who's ever played the game. Jones achieved the Grand Slam in 1930 and quit, retiring from competition at the age of 28. He retired, he said because of 'the neurological nightmare that is championship golf.'
And, if you dropped a golf ball onto a putting green, placed it three feet from the hole, then summoned from golf heaven the ghosts of Harry Vardon (the six-time British Open champion) and Ben Hogan (the winner of nine major titles) and asked them to putt the ball into the hole. First you’d learn whether ghosts can sweat, and then you would probably have to watch one or both of them miss that little putt.
You see, over their careers, the pressure got to both Vardon and Hogan, for they developed the dreaded yips - an uncontrollable flinching of the hands that destroys the delicate touch needed for short putts. Does it happen during any other shot? No. And it’s a terrible thing to watch. I've played with someone who had a two-foot putt and knocked it seven feet past the cup. And the degree to which a simple three-footer ceases to be simple is the degree to which golf is a mental game. The most difficult distance in golf, someone once pointed out, is the six inches between your cars.
At some point, in every round, you embarrass yourself with a terrible shot and most of us do it more than once, but it's remarkable how much compassion there is in golf-certainly more than in any other sport. You offer words of consolation after your opponent’s bad shots and you help him look for his lost golf ball - even though you’re trying to beat him. This is not baseball where you cheer the opposing player's bad throws and strike- outs. Imagine slicing your tee shot out of bounds and having your opponent shout: 'It's over the fence! Far right! You’re starting to fall apart now! I can see it!'
If you don’t show compassion for your fellow player, the golf gods will get you. Lets say you top a ball off the tee and it rolls 10 feet. No one will laugh because they know the golf gods will hear them-and if someone did laugh, on one of the remaining holes, he or she would top a tee shot to four feet and know that it wasn’t because of a bad swing, but because the golf gods are quick to exact their revenge.
I know people who don’t go to church and who don’t believe in the Almighty but are deeply respectful of the golf gods. And these off-course atheists are the same people who will sprint back down a fairway 450 yards to retrieve a lucky putter left leaning against a tree, for they believe deeply in that putter’s magic.
And so I am collecting parts of my answer. Outside the library, in my car, I use my cell phone. I call a friend who, despite being a 2-handicap golfer, is well-liked. “What do you like about golf” I ask.
“It’s the hardest game I've ever played,” he says. Anyone can walk out onto a basketball court, shoot the ball, and it might go in, but you can’t just walk out and start hitting golf balls and shoot par. Look at Michael Jordan - he's a great athlete, the best basketball player who ever lived, and he loves golf and plays a lot and yet he's only a 7- or 8-handicap.
'But,' he continued and there was some hesitation in his voice, the truth is that the thing I like best about golf. Is walking outdoors with friends in a beautiful place.
I'm impressed, for he really is telling the truth and on this subject men aren’t usually so honest. After all, you call up three guys and say- "It's a great day. Let's get together, take a walk in the country-side, and enjoy each other's company.' That would sound a little weird. But call them up and say, 'Lets play golf,' and they will all say, 'Sure, I'm there.' Its the same thing- the game is just the excuse.
And I've always wondered if, for men, there wasn’t something atavistic about golf, something more deeply rooted than we understand. After all, a million years ago we were walking through the countryside, shoulder to shoulder, armed with sticks, hunting for dinner. Now we're searching for instincts. I make another call. Another friend says that he thinks golf is satisfying for so many people because 'there are a lot of different kinds of success.
For some people, Just hitting the ball a distance is a success. For others, it's breaking 100, or 90, or 80. Or, when you were a kid you might never have been able to hit your tee shot over a certain brook-then, as you were growing up and getting stronger, suddenly, one day you could do It. The incremental improvement in golf can be very exciting, and it's easy to measure, by your shots and by your score.'
I make one more call. Another friend, 'When you ask the same question.', he says, "When you’re out on the course you’re away from everything else. You can forget about all the other things going on in your life except what's right in front of you.
And, it's a game where anyone can play with anyone else. Because of the different tees, men and women can play together, and because of the handicap system, a 5-handicap can have a match with a 15-handicapper, and they'll both have a good time because the fact is that their real opponent is the course."
That is another part of the answer, the average golf course has between 70 and 120 bunkers, thousands of trees, some water hazards, dogleg-shaped fairways with rough on both sides, contoured greens, blind shots, and yet, despite all those obstacles, every summer at many public courses a line has already formed by 6 a.m.
Well, longtime touring pro Chi Rodriguez said that golf "is a game of endless predicaments." And he was right. We are drawn to golf for the same reason that crossword puzzles exist: We seek problems. We are a problem solving species. Take away all the irritating parts of a golf course -remove the rough, the trees, the bunkers, and the water hazards, straighten out the fairways and flatten the greens- and no one would ever play golf again. ' In most other sports- tennis, basketball, baseball, football- the playing area is basically uniform. It's always 60 feet, 6 inches from the pitching rubber to home plate, a football field is always 100 yards between end zones, and the basketball hoop is always 10 feet high. In golf, no two courses in the world are exactly alike.
Imagine if there were only one accepted design for golf courses and if, everywhere, they fired up the bulldozers and pushed the land around to fit, so that the third hole was always a 146-yard par 3 with a bunker in front and the twelfth was always an easy 460-yard par 5 with a green that sloped from left to right. Gone would be our sense of discovery as we walk onto a new course, onto new land. And we would miss that, for there is a wandering instinct in all of us, and our curiosity about what’s around the next bend or over the next hill never goes away.
Different terrain creates different problems for golfers, and golf-course architects’ delight in providing difficulties. Donald Ross, who designed nearly 400 courses, including Pinehurst, once said, 'It has been my good fortune to bring great happiness to many men, and to bring great trouble to many men.'
Every golf shot is a puzzle to be solved. Look at your lie, note the distance, feel the wind, gauge your skill weigh the odds, and pick a club. Find the ball and do it again.
It would be one thing if you could walk along a golf course, casually hitting your shots, never caring whether they were good or bad but that goes against human nature. Remember, we are a problem-solving species. We get intrigued, we start trying, we try harder, and then there is that anguish when we don't succeed, so we go back again and again and again. Someone once said that 'Golf is like a love affair. If you don't take it seriously, it's no fun; if you do take it seriously, it breaks your heart.'
So what's the answer? It's completely personal, of course, but I will tell her that golf gives us time with friends, time to laugh and talk, and hours outdoors in the countryside, under the sky and feeling the breeze, and it gives us that 'endless series, of predicaments physical and emotional - that we never know how we will meet.
Every time we play, golf takes our hand and reads our palm and tells us something true about ourselves, and that, I'll explain, is why we're always looking forward to tomorrow's round.
I walk back into the house, and as I'm hanging up my coat I hear the telephone in the kitchen being placed back on its hook. She comes out into the hallway.
"So?' she smiles. 'What’s the answer to my question?'
'The answer?'
'Golf. Why do you all play it so much?' 'You know,' I said, 'I'm glad you asked me that question.'
Now re-read and substitute Shooting for Golf!!!
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Freepistol
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Post by Freepistol »

Did anyone actually read ALL of David M's post?
madmax
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Post by madmax »

YES - it's right on the spot!!

I've copied it, and Russ's first posting, and placed the in our clubhouse for everyone to read.

I've also put this on the noticeboard.
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CR10X
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Post by CR10X »

Who knows, Russ may eventually come to understand the post I made from "Tin Cup" describing the golf swing and how it compares to how I shoot. Then again......

Cecil
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crankythunder
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I love golf!

Post by crankythunder »

the fresh air

the open spaces


golf is awsome




Cause it keeps all the idiots offa the shooting range saturday morning!!!!

Regards,
Cranky
philip_T
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Golf or shooting

Post by philip_T »

Shooting won. All seasons. Only 5 meters needed. And as many
problems to do well. Now a walk around Field target or silhouette
course for rifle or pistol is as enjoyable for me as any golf course.
To bad we cannot combine the two somehow----or can we???
Par is 5 shots this hole.
FredB
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Location: Northern California, USA

interesting similarities

Post by FredB »

Here's another article that goes even further (and is more helpful) in discussing a golf problem that's very similar to a problem shooters face: http://onpar.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/ ... the-choke/
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