This little monograph on golf is like no other. Golf books without number provide descriptions of the golf swing but never effectively describe how to put theory into practice. Herein is the way. The advice is cutting edge because it uses recent theories of how the brain works. As a bonus, the cause of the weak slice is described and a fix has been found. Bookish swing theory is only one percent of learning to play golf well. Here is how the 99 percent of needed perspiration effort can be efficiently done. Based on experience, it works.

First, a bit of background.

I left home at 17 for college. There followed two score years of government employment serving at risk of life and limb, surviving being sent hither and yon, and putting up with long distance commuting. Now with a lunch, a handshake, a few medals, and a pension I was put onto the beach. The kids were through college and gone. The first spouse was still with me.

Duty to God and Country had been faithfully performed. However, at 60 years approximately, I still had hopes of 30 more years to go. What to do?

The house in the city was sold, and there was a move to the country. The loving and faithful spouse who prepared breakfast and bag lunches for 30 years would do so no longer — still loved me but not so much as to want me underfoot day after day. I volunteered, watched the new high-definition television, played on the Internet, and went to church. Still, I needed exercise and the company of my peers. Golf was remembered.

Those memories of the occasional golf round are not pleasant — the feeble slice into the rough, the lost balls, the missed shots, and the bad putting and chipping. It was not recalled as a happy time. There was little satisfaction for a thing well done or a sense of impressing our playing partners or of elegance.

In summary, I could not break a 100 even semi-honestly. I sliced weakly, lost balls, and did not have a handicap. Mostly, there was embarrassment and little enjoyment.

Fifteen years later, I found, to my surprise, that at 70-plus years it was not too late to learn to play golf with a measure of success. I now truly believe the information assembled in this volume will help the retired person play a satisfying round of golf.

For those persons who can drive a golf ball 200 yards or more, are accurate with iron play, and can chip and putt such that your handicap is in the teens, this book is not for you. Read no farther.

This monograph is written for seniors who at retirement wish to play the game of golf. It assumes that you really never were very good, and now that you have the time and energy, you want to learn to play well.

It is written by one who has been on the receiving end of professional advice with little to show for it. Someone who feels the pain of those who have tried with limited success to play golf but who after many years of golf lessons, playing golf, teaching golf, thinking about golf, reading the golf literature and personal investigations of golf, has achieved a bit of success. The techniques and skill sets so discovered are found within.

The goals are modest enough: to hit the fairway most of the time, to hit a drive with only a slight fade or draw, to score in the low 90s consistently and semi-honestly, and to achieve a handicap in the low 20s. The wish is to hit a good many satisfactory shots, to achieve the joy that comes from a round well played, and to appreciate the companionship of our fellow competitors.

It will take commitment and practice, a little money, and much time, but retired people can have a golf game that is — in the words of the immortal Nero Wolfe — “satisfactory.”

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Brains on golf

There has been considerable progress in the last decade figuring out how the brain works and this has considerable application to sport in general and golf in particular (1). The brain consists of billions and billions of cells in a three dimensional matrix. Each cell has an arm, so to speak, called an axion that contacts with the surface of another cell. There is a gap at the end of the arm where it touches the next cell called a synapse. When the cell “wishes” to contact its neighbor it sends an electrical impulse down this arm. When the impulse reaches the end of the arm the gap is bridged in a complex way with chemicals and information is transmitted.

To make a simple physical action, much less a complex one such as a golf swing, many cells in the brain must communicate and fire in a precise order to generate commands to the rest of the body to carry out the action. Visualize this brain activity as a “circuit” made up of individual cells.

Now given the number of cells in the brain, the number of circuits possible are infinite, so the question is how to get the right circuits to fire to get anything done at all.

The conscious mind has control over the circuitry in the sense that you can, in slow motion, lay down a golf swing. Yet when swinging with intent to hit the ball, the body is under subconscious or automatic control. Things go to fast too think about in real time.

So how is the trick done? As you practice in slow conscious mode, repeatedly, the brain lays down a substance called myelin on the arms of those cells that you are using to make the motion. As the action is repeated many many times the myelin builds up establishing and defining the circuit so needed.

As the myelin builds things happen. Not only is the circuit defined but the myelin insulates the axion so that the signal does not leak out, so to speak, and the signal is transmitted faster and faster, and with higher and higher accuracy.