[Bagger Lance]

Bagger,

In the spirit of Bucket's question about how best to learn the information contained in The Golfing Machine, how much of your swing did you learn exclusively from your study of the book before you started getting lessons and explanations from Ben and Lynn.

RWH,

The way the book is written, I don't think it can be fully understood without help. These forums are invaluable for armchair work and I'm privileged to do what I do here. I bought the book two years after picking up my first set of clubs. I have always had the supplemental resource of a TGM forum to fall back on. I learned about The Golfing Machine from the very first forum that Chuck Evans started (ezboard) and later the TGM home office forum (both now closed). That was 6 years ago.

For three years, the TGM forum and Chucks forum were all I had to help decipher the book. Without them I wouldn't have made much progress. My scoring dropped from the high-90's to mid-80's during that period and golf became much more enjoyable. But I was stuck and couldn't seem to ever break 80. Ben Doyle was the first AI I spent time with. I would have continued with Ben, but Lynn and I were just beginning to develop a friendship at that time, so I visited him 9 months after seeing Ben.

I went to Lynn with a decent swing, and he corrected many alignment errors I simply couldn't see. It wasn't an overhaul but I had some very common faults. Inside takeaway, misaligned flying wedges at the top, and steering were the biggies. We also worked on short game. I still have it all on video. I've had hands-on lessons with Ben once, twice with Lynn, and once with Steve Ferguson. The second time I saw Lynn was when I met you and we had a memorable dinner at the Atlanta CC.

I'm shooting in the 70's now. Anything over 79 is a bad day. I play a couple times a month and practice when I can. If I could get out more I know I could go low. I've got to get my priorities straight!!! So for a middle aged guy that took up the game late in life and has been golfing 8 years, I'm very happy with my decision to base everything swing related on TGM.

Book reading in combination with the forums helped shave a ton of strokes off my game, and hands-on instruction is making me a player. If the book were my only resource from the beginning, it would probably be gathering dust and so would my swing.