Less Shots or More Shots? - a hypothetical by Brian Manzella

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Brian Manzella

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I asked this provocative question to several teachers at the GBN Summit in Grand Cypress a few months ago:

If you could go back in a time machine to 1985 and ban the use of any video camera or graph-check camera in the entire world, would the WORLD SCORING AVERAGE from then to now go up or down?

Looking forward to your responses.....
 
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OLIVER1

New
I would say DOWN.
Undoubtedly video camera - in the absence of anything else - helped some individuals who were innately tuned to their own golf swing, BUT I'd wager an awful lot of people got caught up in trying to replicate a position or motion they'd seen on TV that was hopelessly incompatible with their own pattern, nuances, etc.
This whirligig of contradictions surely cannot have been for the better for most people...
 
Dariusz J.

Dariusz J.

New member
Brian Manzella said:
I asked this provocative question to several teachers at the GBN Summit in Grand Cypress a few months ago:

If you could go back in a time machine to 1985 and ban the use of any video camera or graph-check camera in the entire world, would the WORLD SCORING AVERAGE from then to now go up or down?

Looking forward to your responses.....
Click to expand...

I do not know what would have happened starting from 1985 but I know what old Hogan once said. He said if he had got video camera back then he would have literally killed them all on the course. Since he was pretty damn good at killing them all without video camera I presume he knew what he talked about.

Cheers
 
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willgolfer

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Dariusz J. said:
I do not know what would have happened starting from 1985 but I know what old Hogan once said. He said if he had got video camera back then he would have literally killed them all on the course. Since he was pretty damn good at killing them all without video camera I presume he knew what he talked about.

Cheers
Click to expand...


There's plenty of old Hogan footage out there. Are you saying he never looked at any of it?
 
Dariusz J.

Dariusz J.

New member
willgolfer said:
There's plenty of old Hogan footage out there. Are you saying he never looked at any of it?
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Obviously was not possible in the 30-ies or 40-ies or 50-ies. Do you think they had video cameras in the modern sense these days ? Besides, I am not imagining things, I am quoting more or less what the man said.

Cheers
 
coach

coach

New
Two trains of thought.
1.Serious golfers would have spent a lot of time going through a process of trail and error, eventually learning what worked for them and not caring if their swing matched what the pros (who swing was the model at that time) looked like, since they couldn't see their own swing anyways. they would learn to get the ball in the hole. In that case I think they would have a better understanding of their swing and would be able to make subtle improvements and scores would dip lower.
2. The non serious ones would just keep hacking away giving bad advice to there beginner friends which would then create more hackers that would raise the scoring average, resulting in a wash between the serious and hackers......sounds like a Twightlight Zone Episode I once saw
 
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birly-shirly

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If average scoring, as we always hear, hasn't changed in decades - then surely disinventing video would not make a difference.

As an alternative question, if all video since 1985 had been banned - would your current level of golfing-related knowledge be increased or decreased?

[Obviously, we'd all be vastly more widely read and rounded human beings...:) No prizes for guessing that]
 
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SteveT

Guest
Why stop at high speed video.... how about no launch monitors and no doppler radar? Then Jorgenson's D-plane would be a curiosity and the club manufacturers would be the main source of technical knowledge.... and life would so much more simple for golffing clowns.

Oh... and no Newtonian Physics-types too .... :D
 
magicmarker

magicmarker

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down

Technically no video cameras means no 86' masters for most, unless you were there and definitely no Tiger for any audience that couldn't afford to see him in person, without all that publicity I think the sport gets less recreational golfers and are left with the purely obsessed, addictive personality, golf nerds (like ourselves).

Since these guys won't have any video to compare their swings to to make changes, they'll keep on making minor adjustments to 'their' swing based on ball flight and results. On second thought...

WAY DOWN
 
magicmarker

magicmarker

New
side note - Dariusz, that's gotta be a record setting threadjack - post #3

less than five minutes late or your record could've stood forever.
 
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niblick1

New
The world scoring average would be the same -- because far less than 1% of the world golfers used video and line drawing teachers to change their swings.

The US would have more Ryder Cups because it's top players would not have been harmed as much by the line drawers (Europe had the technological advantage by not adopting video and line drawing to the same degree).

Tiger might have already equalled Jack if certain teachers hadn't used video and gotten confused by the "data", including the parallax issues.

On the US Tour the guys who saw a swing coach once a year or were self-taught would have lost their advantage against those guys trying to hit positions on video.

The early video era of golf instruction was like the early science era of medicine in the 19th century, except I suspect fewer golf teachers were guided by the "first do no harm" idea.
 
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Todd Dugan

Todd Dugan

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Video is a tool that can help teachers teach better and players learn better. The problem is not the tool itself, but the users of the tool.............many of whom are absolute "tools".
 
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Jim Kobylinski

Super Moderator
I don't think things would have changed very much, those concerned with a certain "look" would still try to achieve said look even without a video camera. There would be more coaches making the student attain certain positions and more students would just trust their teacher if they were or weren't doing it because they wouldn't have video to verify.
 
ZAP

ZAP

New
I might guess down but I also think that there is a certain segment of golfers who have never seen their swing so they would be flatline.
Then you have good players who figure it out one way or another even with video and it has to have helped some.

So....my definitive answer is I have no idea!
 
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DCgolf

New
Dariusz J. said:
I do not know what would have happened starting from 1985 but I know what old Hogan once said. He said if he had got video camera back then he would have literally killed them all on the course. Since he was pretty damn good at killing them all without video camera I presume he knew what he talked about.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Well I think this is Brian's point here? what if the great man saw his swing and was mislead by the inaccuracies of video. Especially video as primitive as it would have been then. Would he have gotten worse than if he used his "the answer is in the dirt" method? IF video does mislead, and IF he believed in it, it mIGHT have hurt him.
 
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Jared Willerson

Super Moderator
No change.

Because most beginning serious golfers are grown adults...no chance to really get beyond scratch, and only a small percentage (less than 5%) could even achieve that.
 
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