# Old Man Swing



## lefecious (Jul 11, 2007)

I went to the range the other day and was practicing what I've dubbed my OMS (Old Man Swing).

I basically am forcing myself to use nearly half of my swing power, and am also reducing my backswing by about 20%. I've found by doing this, I'm more likely to hit the sweet spot and I'm actually hitting much farther with half power than I do with full power.

Is this a teaching technique that anyone's heard of? I just kind of made it up but it seems to be working for me.

I was hitting it out to the black marker with my 5 wood, but I forgot to look and see what the yardage was on the black marker. I'd guess it was close to 200 yards, but I'm not too good at judging distance yet. Are the colored markers universal? Like does the black marker mean the same yardage no matter which range you go to?


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## Foster4 (May 2, 2007)

umm...idk i knew about it ...its better to swing 80% and hit your driver on the sweet spot then to swing 100% and miss the sweet spot...so hitting the sweet spot is a big added bonus...the more you do it the more consistant you'll be


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## Fourputt (Nov 18, 2006)

lefecious said:


> I went to the range the other day and was practicing what I've dubbed my OMS (Old Man Swing).
> 
> I basically am forcing myself to use nearly half of my swing power, and am also reducing my backswing by about 20%. I've found by doing this, I'm more likely to hit the sweet spot and I'm actually hitting much farther with half power than I do with full power.
> 
> ...


Our range doesn't have any colored markers at all... just the yardages on the signs. And that yardage varies depending on where the hitting line is located. The grass hitting area is at least 100 yards long and 25 yards deep, so you need to pace off from the measured marker or use a rangefinder to know for sure.


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## white_tiger_137 (Mar 23, 2006)

The markers are NOT universal. They're not always accurate either, especially if the range is sloped. There's one range near my house that is a ski hill too. They say that they adjusted for the slope when they put the yardage signs up, but I can barely clear the 200 yd sign.


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## 65nlovenit (Dec 8, 2006)

When a golf course is first designed, the architect will lay out a base yardage for each hole, based on land availability, owner preference and USGA yardage standards. The architect then takes several individual yardages for each hole to represent the different Tee box colors typically Red/White/Blue/Black. These yardages have no preset value and are strictly up to the owners descretion as to their placement. 
The current yardage guidelines are these for men:
Par 3 - Up to 250 yards
Par 4 - 251 to 470 yards
Par 5 - 471 yards to 690 yards
Par 6 - 691 yards or more


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## Foster4 (May 2, 2007)

par 6? ...never seen one of those bad boys


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## Fourputt (Nov 18, 2006)

65nlovenit said:


> When a golf course is first designed, the architect will lay out a base yardage for each hole, based on land availability, owner preference and USGA yardage standards. The architect then takes several individual yardages for each hole to represent the different Tee box colors typically Red/White/Blue/Black. These yardages have no preset value and are strictly up to the owners descretion as to their placement.
> The current yardage guidelines are these for men:
> Par 3 - Up to 250 yards
> Par 4 - 251 to 470 yards
> ...


Not sure if you missed it, but he was talking about RANGE yardages, not on course.


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## lefecious (Jul 11, 2007)

I found out the black marker on this range is 185 yards. I was getting out there pretty consistently with my 5 wood using my old man swing. For some reason, old man swing doesn't work as good on my 3 wood, as I only reached the black marker maybe 2 or 3 times out of a 30 ball bucket.

However, I noticed that this range has a tailwind that always blows the same direction. So however far you hit on this range you have to subtract 10 to 15 yards because that wind helped your distance.


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## 373 (Jun 9, 2006)

Before the quality of range balls improved, up until about 15 years ago, range balls were made to withstand terrible abuse, but they didn't go as far. So, distance markers were often pulled in to equalize the poor reaction the range ball would give you for a well struck shot. For example, if I hit an 8 iron 150 yards, I might only hit those old range balls 140 yards. The sign would be moved in a bit to even things out and I wouldn't go home wondering why I couldn't hit my 8 iron that day.

At the course where I prefer to practice, because they have a grass range, they have flags out in the landing area. Each day, depending where they put the tee area, they will stick a little sign in the ground that says it is such and such distance to the red flag, so and so distance to the black flag, whatever distance to the white flag. It leaves you having to calculate your distances a bit, seeing your ball pass or fall short of a flag, but nobody seems to complain.


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