A few weeks ago, I spent four days in Colorado teaching a series of our one-day Performance Schools. I really like this format for a number of reasons, but perhaps the best, from a teacher's perspective, is that it gives me the opportunity to see so many more students over a short period of time. As you know, the #1 mistake I see amateurs make is with their alignment. You can't possibly make a good PPGS swing if you are improperly aligned. That's why I spend so much time talking about this subject. But as I've gone around the country this year, I've seen a problem that I've talked about for years reach near epidemic proportions. And that is the wearing of bifocals (or even trifocals) while playing golf. Here's a letter from Joe Bernard who attended one of our Denver Performance Schools.
"Don,
Thanks again to you and Dave for a great day of golf in Colorado. I learned a lot about what I need to work on and, as I promised you, I've already been to my eye doctor and have a new set of non-bifocal glasses on order. That is probably worth a mention on one of your daily videos. I didn't realize how much it was affecting my head position and tightening my upper back. As I've heard you say many times, "everything is connected" so when one part of your body is in the wrong place it affects everything else. Thanks again for everything and hope to see you next year when your back in Colorado."
Joe is just one of many people I have convinced to give up playing with their bifocals. Think about it. The bottom area of the lens is usually where the reading prescription is placed. The focal length is usually set about 16 inches in front of your eyes so that you can hold whatever you are reading at a comfortable distance. If you try to look through the reading portion of your glasses at something further away, it will be out of focus. Now imagine yourself at address, looking down the shaft of your club at the ball. When you are at your optimum spine angle of 30 degrees your sight line to the ball will be through the reading portion of your bifocals. To see the ball clearly without distortion, you have to lower your chin to that you can look at the ball through the top half of your lenses. This causes you to round your shoulders and activate muscle groups that take you out of Dynamic Balance. And then if you have any head movement at all during your backswing or the first part of your Forward Upswing the ball will go in and out of focus during this critically important phase of the swing.
So if you need multifocal glasses or contact lenses to read with, do yourself a HUGE favor and get another prescription for single vision lenses that you can wear playing golf. I honestly believe that you can't play your best golf if you don't.
And if you don't believe me, then perhaps you should read The Pro's Edge, a book published a number of years ago, by Dr. Larry Lampert, a nationally recognized sports optometrist who has worked with many professional athletes and elite amateurs over the years. Dr. Lampert discusses this very topic at length in the book which is available as a Kindle Book or can be purchased used from Amazon.com.
Keep it vertical!
The Surge
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Comments
progressive lences
I am a optometrist and have been playing golf for many years with progressiv lences and never have any problem with them! I have many patiens who wear them too! I am sure if you go to an optometrist and ask for this good ( moore expensives ) progressiv lences to play golf with ,you shall have them. A.J. from Finland
progressive Lenses
I haven't had a problem with my new progressive lenses. In fact I thought the PPGS was to have the head up a little more which kind of negates you looking through your reading lens or things being blurry.
Progressive Lenses
Weberg: Not sure I follow your logic. If the reading portion of your lenses is at the bottom, like mine, and most others, holding your head up higher would have you looking through the reading section of the lenses, which is fine, provided your head remains steady.
My problem, as with most, is the most likely time to raise or lower one's head is anywhere from FUS transition to ball contact, especially in the contact area. If the head moves and the eyes cross the transition zone of the lenses, the ball has the appearance of moving which causes the body to institute involuntary and improper adjustments, which leads to poor ball contact. You may not fit into this category, but that is what happens to most of us. The key would be to have a steady head, which you most likely do, but I unfortunately do not.
Terry: Perhaps I should have
Terry: Perhaps I should have detailed it a bit more. In my set up, if I stand closer to the ball as I did in the past, I would be looking on an angle more directly down to the ball and would be looking through the bottom part of the lenses as you indicated. I have altered my stance a bit standing just a tad further from the ball and keeping my head up a tad more then previously. I am not seeing the ball through my close up part of the lenses anymore and it appears to be working ok for me and maybe it's because my head is still as you mentioned. i wouldn't continue to wear the bi-focals if I had to look through the bottom part of the lens. Too blurry for me to do that. Thanks.
If it's working
If it's working for you, that's great. I'd want to see your setup and swing to know if you're actually now standing too far from the ball, forcing you to bend too much and have to swing around yourself not to lose balance, rather than swinging on a maximum vertical plane around the base of your neck.
Totally concur with Surge
I used my once every two year new set of glasses opportunity (with my insurance) and got both sun glasses and regular glasses that are progressive and cover both distance, mid length and reading. Conclusion after three months??.................... Hate them, especially. ESPECIALLY while playing golf! And, I rate them about a 6 out of 10 (or just okay) for both reading and driving. So A.J. I'm glad they work for you and your clients but I now actually do as Don recommends in todays daily and wear large aviator type sun glasses. They are polorized and reflect most of the extreme sun light we have here in the desert.
Of course, now that Don has relayed the story about upside down bi-focals I wish I had made them that way to test that theory.
It seems that Don's experience shows that it is better to with some blindness than wear tri/bi-focals. Though that doesn't sound logical I still concur and now choose to wear regular sunglasses as stated and have had better results on the golf course.
As I like to say, "I can't see close, I can't see far, I'm losing my hearing but at least my hair is falling out!" Also, " What's that you say? I can't see your lips so I don't know what you're saying".
Actually the last few times I played with only sun glasses I scored fairly well and was striking the ball pretty good so perhaps vision is over rated any how in my case.
BTW on another note, I want to mention I really like the new sites way of allowing us to PREVIEW our comments as a way to edit them before saving and posting. Kudos to Tom, Brady and the Swing Surgeon team. I am starting to adjust and like many aspects of the new site:)
Progressives
I am a single digit golfer, have been forever. I learned a long time ago that the ball does not move no matter how you look at it. I have double vision with a lazy eye (bummer). I really don't feel sorry for people who complain about there vision not being perfect. I am 61 now, still a single digit and love my transition progressives! I also love the Peak Performance Golf Swing, I used there basics long before I read about them!
Contacts
Surge,
As we discussed at golf school in Atlanta, I wear multi-focal contacts. You were going to check with your "eye guy" to see what he thought about them. Any thoughts or words on them?
Shop
Wow, I see all the training videos are 50% off in the Surge Shop through the end of the month. If I didn't already own every video, I'd fill out my collection. Those of you who've been trying to learn this swing just by following the Dailies, do yourselves a favor and pick up at least the basic package if not the special extra videos for short game, putting, specialty shots, etc.
Split Screen Videos
Since the new web site I am unable to find the split screen swing videos of Don and DJ. Anyone know if they are still on the web site and/or how to find them? Thanks.
RandyF
Those videos are not
Those videos are not available at this time. They never were an actual product and were only available to "Inner Circle" members. We are reworking the membership services for the site and that represents version 2.0 of the site actually.
JUST CURIOUS
Just wondering if you are going to follow in the foot steps of the other site and charge a monthly fee to access the daily videos ?
Split screen swing videos of Don and DJ
Rfreisi: Try these Utube sites for their swings.
Don SWINGS EVERY CLUB 18 JAN 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jmOaQk220nM
DJ 18 JAN 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XhNv9VGYg3I
Yeah....
Those shouldn't be there... But....
DON and DJ swing videos
Hopefully they will remain there, but, I now download everything available on utube , the dailies, and my purchased videos to a private video player, Just in case any disappear again. My advice is for all to do likewise and then use another backup system. It's the only almost sure way to ensure you'll always have a copy of them. Memory is very cheap these days. You can purchase portable hard drives of 500GB for around $50.00 on line or at WalMart, not much bigger than a deck of cards and can be used on any system with a USB Port. Even thumb drives are getting larger and larger in storage capacity while remaining very small in actual size. I think they are about 32GB now for around $20.00.
I did say you're smart ?...
Of course I had nearly everything dating back to spring 2009 but .......
Talk about losses, Had my lap top at work about a month ago and it slipped off the table and took a hard bounce off a hard tile floor. I am living proof of why your advice is so very true. Yes you guessed right, my hard drive was fried from the impact, gone/ history. Everything I have saved (on that computer only) including hundreds of videos collected over thr last nearly four years are gone. My 'favorites' alone comprised a complete golf library not only from Surge. Ultimate dummy and not proud. After I get my new computer I will start over and yes I will get the extra memory to store everything seperately . A difficult lesson at my stage and enough to make one sick. Thank God that many of the items I need are still floating in syber space and inderectly available. I may need your help down the road Terry.
So anyone else reading this who has not taken the precautions Terry speaks of better get it done. Anything can happen and very well might. That's a version of Murphy's Law.
Oh, and the end of the world is coming when? ... in December right? .. so we better save it all asap for future civizations of 2090 golfers after the Earth is re inhabited and the smoke clears. (lol, some sick humor)
Oh ya, thousands of photos were also lost and that is why I have not reposted an avatar picture. I did have most of them saved on my droid chjp so I will "have that going" for me asap.
I am not a expert with
I am not a expert with computers but. I had a hard drive go bad on me at work with quick books on it and thought I lost everything all the work that I done that day was in the process of backing it up when it happened. I called the Geek Squad at Best Buy and they came out and were able to remove the hard drive and pony it in on another computer and was able to save everything I needed. If that did not work I would have had to send it to a lab and had them extract the info for a cost of 3000.00 I would just done the work over before I paid that amount.
Contact Lens
Hi Don, Just got thru viewing your video on bifocals and was wondering if wearing monvision contact lens would cause the same problems as bifocal glasses. Mono vision contacts are wearing one lens for distance and one for close up.
Thanks for all the videos they have been very helpful.
Joe M.
Bi-focal glasses
Hi Surge
Completely agree with your comments. I found progressive lenses gave the same problems. I also found that when lining up on the putting green I could see the hole "move" if I moved my head to align the hole - ball - and stroke. Needless to say there were more misses than sinks.
My solution was to buy a long vision lens for golf, and a progressive lens for reading and long distance. The long vision lens has made a difference in all aspects of my game.
Stan
Music Opening
I would like to purchase a CD of the theme song if possible
Opening Music of the Dialies
I'll get back to you on that one. I had an MP3 of it laying somewhere, we purchased just that song royalty free from some website a long time ago.
Bifocals, Trifocals, Single focal
For everything but Golf and Movies at a theater, I wear tri-focals. About 15 years ago I had a pair of glasses made with both lenses cut with single vision--the long distance vision on my regular trifocals. So, my eyewear is not the problem with my inconsistent golf. When I write the scores I just look over the tops. I do recommend using single vision glasses or contacts for Golf and theaters--theaters so I can lean back an not look thru the one of the other focals.
Thanks Surge for all the great lessons.
New glasses yesterday.
I have been wearing progressive lenses for a long time, (15+) years?, and yesterday I had new glasses made and also had a pair of single vision taller glasses made. Don't know yet if they will help but will give them a try.
One thing I noticed on my old glasses, they were a smaller square shaped lens, and while I never noticed a movement, I did notice that the bottom of the frame did go across the ball with some clubs and thus necessitated a slight more head bend. Since I could also see the straight line of the bottom of the frames, I also would use that for an alignment aid.
We shall see if anything improves or regresses.
Last week I won first place in my flight and also won a closest to the pin on one of the par threes. I know the PPGS has helped me a lot with alignment as I have been winning fairly regularly closest to the pin holes. Really working on my short game now.
My biggest problem is still inconsistency. I can shoot a par, a birdie, a couple doubles and then back to several pars. I usually manage to screw up about 4/5 holes a round that transforms my score from acceptable to my full bogey round. Some holes I play as well as anyone on tour and then the others drop in to make it ugly. Until they make brain transplants available, I suspect I will just try to work on concentration to help improve that situation. ;-)
Bifocals
I'm in year 2 of the PPG swing. I started this year playing well, but my game went south about halfway thru the year. After watching this video, I realized I had bought new bifocals late June, and since they were also Transitions, I started to wear them for golf. I switched back to my prescription, non-bifocal sunglasses, and what a difference. I'm hitting the ball good again like I did earlier in the season. It never occurred to me that the glasses were the issue while I was struggling to get my game back. Thank You!
Bifocals
Strangely, I have gone back to using bifocals for golf rather than single lens specs. I am sure my recent improvement is nothing to do with what glasses I wear but I find it more comfortable and it certainly hasn't hindered my game. Try different solutions and use the one that best suits.