The Efficient Golfer
The midwinter golf season, at least for players who don’t live in warm climates, is usually limited to a few basic activities.
There’s the occasional 50-degree day that brings dozens of golfers out for a rare chance to play under less than frigid conditions.
There are the opening season events on the PGA Tour to watch, including old favorites like the Pebble Beach Pro-Am and the PBR Open in Phoenix.
And finally, there are the seemingly endless series of TV infomercials for a wide variety of golf gadgets and fixes.
These 30-minute commercials follow a familiar and repetitive format–probably because it works.
There’s the exposition of the particular problem, such as erratic wedge play or bad swings. There’s an expert available, to show us golf rubes how we could fix that problem with just one basic move—buying this “new” model of wedge or a teaching device.
Then there are testimonials from an assortment of professionals and amateurs alike (with helpful notations of their handicaps flashed on the screen), rhapsodizing about the magical qualities of the item on sale.
And, of course, the club or whatever it is can be bought for only x number of payments of only $x, with money-back guarantees. Then the ad repeats the format again and again, until the 30-minute buy-time on the Golf Channel or other cable outlet is used up.
Robert A. Prichard seems to have taken a hint from the marketing approach used by these infomercial merchants. The Efficient Golfer is presented as a new way to use video equipment to identify swing flaws, as well as to promote Prichard’s suggested change in the basic golf swing. After recording your swing with a camcorder set at 1/1000th of a second, you are told to mark up your TV screen during playbacks at different critical points in the swing.
The measurements from those marks are used to determine how far from Prichard’s alignment rules you stray during your current swing. Much of the rest of the book is devoted to explaining why Prichard believes the modern, restricted swing is no match for the flexible swing method he prescribes.
As with the infomercials, Prichard uses various experts in movement, including himself, to make these points. A self-described sports engineer, he runs a training program that specializes in increasing flexibility and movement efficiency in several sports. And as with the infomercials, there are testimonials from satisfied clients. In addition, following the infomercial marketing methods, we are left to guess at what exactly we will be doing with some aspects of the particular remedy Prichard is selling.
In this case, he suggests, repeatedly, that most golfers need to undergo what Prichard calls Microfiber Reduction. While he tells his readers what microfibers are and how they eventually stiffen all but the rarest athlete, he’s not much on describing exactly what folks undergo in achieving this reduction.
The most he says is that MR is an “exclusive form of connective tissue massage that improves flexibility far beyond what stretching alone can do….” (taken from the Somax website). If you want to actually experience Microfiber Reduction, he’s more than happy to schedule an appointment, or to sell you a DVD as a longer introduction to its benefits.
Even for those who aren’t much interested in paying for a particular kind of massage, however, there are some other things to recommend about this book.
I think Prichard has a legitimate point about the drawbacks to weekend golfers who seek to adopt the modern PGA Tour swing. His alternative suggestion, that most amateurs should watch the efficient swings employed by most LPGA players, makes a lot more sense.
Those of us who have been to LPGA events or watched them on the driving range learn far more about how to maximize our own meager talents from watching the lady professionals, compared to most golfers now starring on the PGA Tour.
The segment on putting should also be useful for many golfers, even those who forego the chance to pay for a Microfiber Reduction massage.
Nonetheless, this book should be understood as part of a marketing scheme to convince its readers into signing up for the training and other programs offered by Prichard and his partners.
There’s nothing wrong with that, of course, as long as folks understand the inherent limitations of a book designed for that purpose.
Review date: February 3, 2007