The Pro’s Edge: Vision Training for Golf
Here’s a short quiz. When your six to 12 foot putt misses, is it usually short of the hole, or past it?
The reason for the miss might not be your technique. It might just be based on what you see.
That’s the point of this interesting, practical, dare I say focused book on vision and golf.
Dr. Lampert is an optometrist in south Florida and an avid golfer. He conducts vision-training exercises for professional golfers and others to improve their performance, not only on the greens but also on the tee and in the fairway. This book outlines how and why these training methods can help many golfers.
Dr. Lampert breaks down the basic visual needs for golfers into five categories: good eye-aiming ability, depth perception, knowledge of eye dominance, eye-hand coordination, and visualization skills. He also compares the visual needs for golf to other sports.
His description of these needs for other athletic pursuits rings true, and lends credibility to what he says about golf.
For example, you may have read in golf magazines and elsewhere about “eye dominance” and how it affects your game. Dr. Lampert’s explanation of this genetic trait is clearly described and easy to understand. He uses several good illustrations and simple exercises to enable the reader to determine easily whether the left or right eye is dominant.
With this knowledge, he then shows how to use it in putting, chipping, and driving. Some of the suggested exercises require better weather than what is currently available to some of us, but several others can easily be done indoors.
There’s a great segment on reading greens. With the fairly liberal use of masking tape, one training exercise will help train your eyes to track a ball smoothly from its spot on the green to the hole. When he described the normal process your eyes use, with their choppy movements for tracking, I recognized what he was saying.
On the other hand, I’ll resist the temptation to tape over my carpeting, and use my basement floor instead.
The tips that are sprinkled throughout the book are easy to grasp. He wrote about the clearest explanation how to “plumb-bob” for putting that I’ve ever read. It’s not a technique I normally use, but for those who swear by it, his explanation has to help.
Dr. Lampert also has some nice suggestions for visualization skill development. The search for “the zone” continues, and his advice should help.
The recommendations made in this book should help many golfers. I’m looking forward to trying some of them in my next practice session.
Review date: January 2, 1999