What makes a sport a sport? Is a hot dog eating contest a sport? What about foosball, hunting, bobsled, bowling, or breakdancing? In Why Baseball Is a Sport and Golf Is Not: Separating the Players from the Poseurs, Aaron S. Bayley and Luigi Di Serio argue that an activity isn't a sport just because society says it is: it first must meet a definitive set of criteria. The results aren't always what you'd expect.
While drying your sparkling clean ball on the dirty towel hanging from the ball washer, you take a deep breath and survey the scene. After teeing up your ball, you're immediately confronted with the first of many questions of detail-the nagging minutiae of golf. What's my target? Where do I stand? How do I stand? For many, learning traditional golf is often confusing and complicated. Conflicting tips and extraneous motion produce a difficult, high-maintenance sport that few golfers master. Combining the techniques of baseball and golf may be the answer. Hitting a ninety-five-mile-an-hour fastball is arguably one of the most difficult tasks in sports. But many golfers have trouble hitting a tiny golf ball lying motionless in the grass. Why? Author Tom Pezzuti offers a solution. Baseball does not use a backswing technique, and Pezzuti suggests this procedure lies at the root of many golf swing problems. Topstart Golf shows you how baseballs hitting principles apply to your power stroke, and your pitch shots. If you are not a touring pro who practices six to eight hours a day, then you need low-maintenance, simpler methods of playing golf. Try Topstart Golf and watch your game soar!
For golf's true enthusiasts, the game is far more--and far more complex--than a simple hobby, commodity, or slice of the sports industry. It is a physical and mental place to be, a community. It has a history, a hierarchy, laws, a language, and a literature. And in Richard J. Moss, it has a chronicler. From its beginnings in the northeastern United States in the 1880s, golf has seen its popularity, and its fortunes, wax and wane, affected by politics and economics, reflecting tensions between aristocratic and democratic impulses. The Kingdom of Golf in America traces these ups and downs, ins and outs, in the growth of golf as a community. Moss describes the development of the private club and public course and the impact of wealth and the consumer culture on those who play golf and those who watch. He shows that factors like race, gender, technology, suburbanization, and the transformation of the South that shaped the nation also shaped golf. The result is a unique, and uniquely entertaining, work of cultural history that shows us golf as a community whose story resonates far beyond the confines of the course. Purchase the audio edition.
In Maroon & Gold: A History of Sun Devil Athletics, veteran sportswriter Bob Eger recounts not only the most celebrated moments but many little-known items from the university's colorful sports history. From turn-of-the-century football legend Charlie Haigler to the electrifying Whizzer White to latterday star Jake Plummer, the rich football lineage is well documented. But this is much more than a football book. Who could forget coach Ned Wulk's great basketball teams of the early 1960s or the five national basketball titles? It's a little-known fact that women were participating in an early form of aerobics on campus as early as 1891 and playing basketball in 1898, though the school didn't begin attracting national attention for women's athletics until golfer JoAnne Gunderson and diver Patsy Willard began to dominate their sports in the late 1950s and early 1960s. Maroon & Gold: A History of Sun Devil Athletics is must reading for any true Sun Devil fan from any generation.
The world of golf is at a crossroads. As technological innovations displace traditional philosophies, the golfing community has splintered into two deeply combative factions: the old-school teachers and players who believe in feel, artistry, and imagination, and the technical minded who want to remake the game around data. In Golf's Holy War, Brett Cyrgalis takes readers inside the heated battle playing out from weekend hackers to PGA Tour pros. At the Titleist Performance Institute in Oceanside, California, golfers clad in full-body sensors target weaknesses in their biomechanics, while others take part in mental exercises designed to test their brain's psychological resilience. Meanwhile, coaches like Michael Hebron purge golfers of all technical information, tapping into the power of intuitive physical learning by playing rudimentary games. From historic St. Andrews to manicured Augusta, experimental communes in California to corporatized conferences in Orlando, William James to Ben Hogan to theoretical physics, the factions of the spiritual and technical push to redefine the boundaries of the game.
Most golfers seek to get better by making their swing as simple as possible to produce distance, control, and consistency. The ESPY technique is like riding a bicycle: once you learn, you don't forget. Based on fundamental sprocket mechanics, the ESPY is an acronym for three simple Ergonomic movements, consisting of the Synch, Protract, and Yaw elements. The E is the ergonomics used to set up each S.P.Y. element of the golf swing. By learning what these mechanics are and how they create power, speed, and control, you'll be able to: control backspin, loft, and trajectory; eliminate the negative effects of downtime and nerves; overcome common obstacles to develop a consistent swing
