Harvey Penick
He was born in 1904, started off as a caddie at Austin Country Club in the USA at the tender age of eight and ended up the head club pro by 1923. Amazingly, he stayed right there until 1973. A member of the Golf Hall of Fame, Harvey Penick is a legend in the annals of golf instruction.
For almost 30 years, Penick was the golf coach of the University of Texas where he taught and met two modern legends of the game – Ben Crenshaw and Tom Kite. When Crenshaw won the Masters in 1995, it was about a week after Penick’s death and Crenshaw paid homage to his old mentor by saying, “I had a 15th club in my bag this week.”
Fortunately, Penick will always live on not just in memories, but in physical form because the coaching book he published in 1992 remains a classic: Harvey Penick's Little Red Book. It’s more than just an instruction book – but rather a collection of anecdotes, thoughts, words of wisdom and as good a guide to the mental side of the game that’s ever been written.
We asked PGA pro Cameron Venter to give a modern insight into our top 20 tips of all time from Mr Penick – and they’re as valuable now as they ever were…
1 - Warm up by practising without a ball.
Use a middle-iron to aim at a blade of grass or a twig. Do not begin hitting a ball until you can hit the object you are aiming at consistently. This will help your concentration and ease tension.
Cameron Venter:
It’s called the golf swing, not the golf hit. The aim is to make a swing and let the ball get in the way. If you focus on the ball, it makes you lose sight of moving your body correctly.
2 - Do not overswing.
Many golfers worry about hitting the ball a great distance. Create a belief system that the ball will go a long way if you do not worry about it. Just be concerned with making solid contact.
Cameron Venter:
Power comes from being synchronised – all the parts working together. It’s all about timing – and the way clubs are designed these days, you really can trust the club to create the distance.
3 - Without fail, your left arm should be straight when striking the ball.
Cameron Venter:
It comes down to leverage. If your left arm is straight, chances are you will unhinge your wrists through impact. If the left arm is bent at impact, you will always struggle.
4 - Play games on the putting green.
The more time you spend there, the better golf scores you will turn in.
Cameron Venter:
Another old adage, but really, it’s true. Show me a golfer who spends as much time on the practice green as he does smashing a driver and I’ll show you a golfer who’s improving.
5 - When in doubt, check your grip and stance.
Cameron Venter:
Ben Hogan said that golf starts with a good grip. It’s a cliché for a reason! I’d say that the majority of PGA pro lessons start with fixing the player’s grip.
6 - Square your feet, hips and shoulders to the line of flight.
Make certain you are not subconsciously allowing for a slice. Allow for a slice, you will hit a slice.
Cameron Venter:
If you keep allowing for a fault, you will compound the fault – in other words, don’t ever try to fix a fault with a fault.
7 - The waggle is a small practice swing and a way to ease tension, unless you get so involved in waggling you forget your purpose.
Cameron Venter:
The waggle also primes you to get the clubhead moving correctly – especially the feeling of the toe moving around to square up the club. I couldn’t agree more about getting over-involved – the name Sergio comes to mind!
8 - In golf your strengths and weaknesses will always be there.
If you could improve your weaknesses, you would improve your game. The irony is that people prefer to practise their strengths.
Cameron Venter:
Never were truer words spoken! I think it was Gary Player who said you need to take your worst club in your bag and practise with it until it becomes your best friend.
9 - Take dead aim
make a point to do it every time on every shot. Don’t just do it from time to time, when you happen to remember.
Cameron Venter:
The classic Penick line – and it’s a psychological thing really. Focusing on what needs to be done as opposed to what could happen. Always be very specific – a tree, a line, a bunker. A mate of mine always says, “If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time!”
10 - Just as in chipping, the first and foremost fundamental to learn about the putting stroke is: keep the hands even with or ahead of the putter on the follow through.
Cameron Venter:
If the putter-head is ahead of your hands, you’ve basically lost control of it before you hit the ball. Simple as that.
11 - Lock your driver, 1-iron and 2-iron in the closet.
Hit your 3-wood off the tee. The more loft you use, the better you’ll keep it in play.
Cameron Venter:
Any golfer will experience being able to slice a driver or 3-iron far more easily than a wedge. The more loft there is on a club, the more backspin you create – the less loft, the more sidespin. That’s why more lofted clubs get the ball in the air more easily and go straighter.
12 - Try to show me a champion who doesn’t move his head during the golf swing.
You can’t do it. Sam Snead comes as close as anyone ever has, but he moves it too. However, all of these great players move their head slightly backwards before and during impact – never forwards. Stay behind the ball.
Cameron Venter:
People tend not to move at all because they’ve been told to keep their head still – or too much because they’re trying to scoop the ball in the air – or the head gets in front because they are trying too hard to hit down on the ball. What Penick’s really on about is that there should be a subtle movement of the head to allow the body to turn correctly.
13 - No matter which of the three grips you use, one fundamental is that the hands must be touching each other.
They should be joined as one unit. They should feel like they are melted together.
Cameron Venter:
I like to think of the grip as a partnership of control. The reason for wanting the hands to operate in tandem is to avoid one dominating the other.
14 - Remember, the wind is blowing as hard for your opponent as it is for you.
Take your time. Keep your balance. Don’t let the wind make you hurry or swing hard.
Cameron Venter:
Playing in wind is all about controlling spin – and therefore trajectory and ball flight. So what Harvey’s saying is that by swinging smoothly and not attacking the ball too hard, you will always create less spin – and more control.
15 - Because the number of the iron is lower, it doesn’t mean you have to swing the club harder.
Cameron Venter:
Trust the concept of different lofts! The whole reason for a set of clubs is that the same swing speed and rhythm can create different distances depending on the club and loft.
16 - The three most important clubs in the bag are the putter, the driver and the wedge.
Psychologically, nothing is more important than knocking putts into the hole. Sinking putts makes your confidence soar – and it devastates your opponent.
Cameron Venter:
Confidence beats confidence. Tiger once said that all the guys on tour hit it the same – it’s basically one big putting competition.
17 - When I say bring your right arm back to your side, I mean on the downswing, not the backswing.
Cameron Venter:
Everyone looks to hit the ball ‘from the inside’ and create power. If the right elbow comes into the ribs on the downswing, it sets you up in a powerful ‘lag’ position and will always help to avoid coming over the top.
18 - Bunkers: Grip your sandwedge as high on the handle as you would for a normal iron shot.
This encourages you to take a full swing all the way to a high followthrough without quitting on the shot when the club strikes the sand.
Cameron Venter:
The principle he’s trying to convey is that, provided your set-up is good, confidence is key. You need to explode the sand onto the green – and the ball will go with it. And to do that, you need to make a full, committed stroke.
19 - Bobby Jones said he wrote half-a-million words on golf and nowhere near exhausted the subject.
He said, “I cannot imagine that anyone might ever write every word that needs to be written about the golf swing.”
Cameron Venter:
He’s so right – there are a million things you could think about because every golfer is different and so are their swings. If you’re thinking of working on your swing, try to focus and pick one thing at a time.
20 - One thing all great putters have in common, regardless of their style, is that the putting stroke is approximately the same length back and through.
Cameron Venter:
Distance control is about momentum of the putter – you’ll never develop feel with a stabbing stroke.
Cameron Venter is a fully qualified PGA pro who has been teaching for the past three years. Based in Cape Town, he currently operates a golf business called Golf Life, specialising in instruction, seminars and golf tours.
He can be contacted on 082 568 4777 or by e-mail at camventer@hotmail.com
