While the saga of Tiger Woods’ latest swing change plays out on the PGA Tour, Golf Digest’s Jaime Diaz interviews the oracle of golf swing instruction, England’s John Jacobs.
“The golf swing has only one purpose: to deliver the head of the club to the ball correctly, and to achieve such impact repeatedly.” With that statement, the 86 year-old Jacobs really hatched the profession of teaching the golf swing during the 1950’s and 60’s, and then served as a mentor to many of the best golf instructors of the past generation, including Houston’s Jim Hardy. The entire interview is essential reading for anyone interested in the golf swing, in particular, or teaching, in general. The following are just a few of Jacobs’ pearls of wisdom:
“Ben Hogan’s The Modern Fundamentals of Golf kept me in business. . . . The book should have been called How I Play Golf, and it would have been a great anti-hook book. But the title suggested it was good for everyone.”
“The feeling of wanting to take the club straight back, rather than on an arc, is intuitively human, but it’s the core of many faults. We think the longer we can make a straight line, the straighter the ball will go. But golf is a side-on game with the ball on the ground, so it’s the opposite.”
“The hardest thing about golf is that the natural correction is wrong. Slicers see the ball go to the right and aim farther left. It only makes their slices bigger.”
“Although it worked wonderfully for them, I think the team of Nick Faldo and David Leadbetter set a bad precedent for players becoming too dependent on instructors. I preferred that players work alone and ring me when they had a problem. . . . I would say Jack Nicklaus had the right formula with Jack Grout: Meet once a year, with occasional visits for emergencies.”
“When Tiger’s mind was clear, he was probably as good as Jack, but I wouldn’t say better. Jack was not as well equipped in his short game, so he had to be better internally, and that’s where Tiger is being tested now. Tiger hits more bad shots than Jack did, but he has saved them with his putter and short game. Going forward, he should be focused on hitting fewer bad shots and needing his putter less.”
Which, interestingly, appears to be what Woods is currently attempting to do.
The remarkable Salman Khan — the founder of the popular Khan Academy — talks about using video to reinvent education. Enjoy. H/T Paul Kedrosky.
Three articles caught my eye recently regarding America’s health care dilemma.
This LA Times article reports on the declining quality of the end-of-life period of many Americans:
Life expectancy soared over the last part of the 20th century as treatments for major diseases improved and infectious diseases were quelled by vaccines and better treatment. The most recent data, however, hint that life expectancy is no longer growing. According to a new study, we may spend more years sick than we did even a decade ago. [. . .]
According to the analysis, the average age of morbidity – which is defined as the period of life spent with serious illness and lack of functional mobility – has increased in the last two decades. For example, a 20-year-old man in 1998 could be expected to live an additional 45 years without at least one of these diseases: heart disease, cancer or diabetes. That number fell to 43.8 in 2006. For women, the expected years of life without a serious disease fell from 49.2 years to 48 years over the last decade. [. . .]
"There is substantial evidence that we have done little to date to eliminate or delay disease or the physiological changes that are linked to age," the authors wrote.
Meanwhile, a part of that problem is the result of the fact that many Americans have no idea what – or how much – they are eating:
Nearly 90% of respondents to a Consumer Reports telephone survey thought they were eating right — saying that their diet was either somewhat (52.6%), very (31.5%), or extremely healthy (5.6%).
But when they were asked about what they actually eat, far fewer seemed to be in following a healthy diet.
For instance, of the 1,234 people surveyed, only 30% said they eat five servings of fruit and vegetables every day, just 13% step on the scale every morning, and a meager 8% monitor their daily calorie intake. [. . .]
bout a third of those who said they were a healthy weight actually had a body mass index (BMI) in the overweight or obese range (30% and 3%, respectively).
"It’s likely that Americans are thinking about health more, and that’s a good thing," said Keith Ayoob, EdD, RD, of Albert Einstein College of Medicine. "Still, nine out of 10 think they’re doing pretty well, and to that, I’d say let’s talk again."
So, asks this Dana P. Goldman/Darius N. Lakdawalla article, what would be the best investment to generate significant improvement in the health of Americans?:
The first step is to invest–not in the healthcare system, but in education. We should take the $120 billion it might cost for universal coverage, and use it, instead, to provider earlier education and to improve the quality of education. Better-educated people live longer, are less likely to be disabled, and engage in healthier behavior.
For nearly 40 years, distinguished health economists led by Michael Grossman have observed that more-educated people have much more powerful incentives to protect their own ‘investments’ in education by practicing healthier habits and reducing their risks of death. They also are better at self-managing chronic diseases. And, unlike universal coverage, more education has other valuable benefits to a person and to society. Less crime, less divorce, and higher earnings–can universal health insurance promise that?
The second place to invest is prevention. Primary prevention has the capacity to slow or reduce the rising prevalence of chronic disease, and simultaneously attenuate the downstream spending that is associated with it. Equally importantly, however, prevention leads to a life with less disability and more years of an active lifestyle. It simply makes a lot of sense to avoid disease in the first place, rather than try to treat it later.
No question about it, Martin Luther King could flat out give a speech.
And here is Robert F. Kennedy’s moving tribute to Reverend King immediately after his death:
Clear Thinkers favorite Art DeVany (previous posts here) is preparing for the release of his new book, The New Evolution Diet: What Our Paleolithic Ancestors Can Teach Us About Weight Loss, Fitness and Aging (Rodale Dec. 21, 2010), so he presents his basic ideas on nutrition and exercise in the trailer for the book below. Russ Roberts’ longer audio interview of DeVany from earlier this year can be listened to here and Patrick Kiger provides an excellent overview of DeVany’s ideas on nutrition and exercise here.
Check out the University of Arizona College of Medicine’s well-done video and discussion (see also here) of a new approach to CPR.
