Two excellent posts, one by Martee and one by 6BMike's that followed- Two posters that over the last couple of years have earned my respect. Just to throw my perspective and/or "my nitpicking"- not to take away from the overall post.
For Martee's post- Regardless of the number of drills/excercises real or implied- I'm pretty sure that Homer felt that the closest thing to a drill or excercise would be in 6-B-3- where he suggests that you use a flat surface and see that the release motions happen on plane- he really saw himself laying out the principles/groundwork and letting the AI's with their imagination come up with drills/excercises-"you guys are alot better at coming up with that kind of stuff than I am". He was anti drill in that regard in relation to how the book was written- certainly not anti drill in regards to learning the concepts. Just a little refinement to your post- in regards to how I would think Homer would interpret it.
6BMike- The "classic" patterns 12-1/12-2- touches on another pet peave of mine- that those sample patterns are somehow ideal, or hold a higher value than the other trillion patterns available. Much like the section of Martee's post that I commented on - your comment isn't wrong- you could easily call them classic- but just given the history of people's perception of the stroke patterns- and my perspective of how Homer would view them- just touches a nerve ending - and for those people that are "into" getting it right- I think it's an important clarification to make. It wasn't really until 1969 just before the book was published that he thought of putting stroke patterns in the book- Ben Doyle brought over a number (6 or so) PGA members for a week long class- Ben: "I'll have a group here next week!", that included Don Shaw. Only Ben and Don lasted the week- but as Homer told them all that there was millions or trillions of workable patterns- all the pros kept on wanting to just know "one"- you can imagine that many didn't want to understand all the theory- "Just tell us what to do"- or "Just tell us which one is better- i.e. horizontal hinging or angled hinging?"-out of that class came the concept of the stroke pattern- not the best one, nor the most classic, but just a stroke pattern- one of many possible ones. In fact in that regard- most if not all of Chapter 12 was the result of feedback from people Homer was working with- to put something in the book that isolated and pinpointed what he was trying to say- something specific. It wasn't his approach or wouldn't be his method of operation- for he was always looking at the principle and thought that the reader could apply it- in any number of situations- and certainly his fear of listing anything specific- or anything as an example that may too narrowly define or lead the reader into a implied specific location was warranted because that's what alot of people think when they look at the stroke patterns.
Thanks guys for letting me input the seemingly trivial stuff- You've allowed me to sleep peacefully now- off to bed!
Great post! I was waiting for you to make your presence felt in this thread. Thanks for the insight on Ch. 12.
Hope you don't wake up with bed head . . . or better yet a head in the bed.
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