Academy makes golfers focus on putts

The Press-Enterprise

Tuesday, April 4, 2006

By MIRJAM SWANSON
The Press-Enterprise

MIRA LOMA - This isn't an ordinary visit to the doctor.

It's not a regular class with your local teaching professional, either.

This won't hurt.

Photo:William Wilson Lewis III / The Press-Enterprise Brian Schwartz (left) and Dr. Andrew Bock O. D. (center) of the Vision Putting Academy instruct George Boyer to employ a technique where he must putt straight along a string line and catch a beanbag with his left hand.

A typical clinic course at the Vision Putting Academy at Goose Creek Golf Club won't address proper grip, and it won't try to sell you on the correct stroke.

It will, however, require you to play with uncooked sticks of pasta, beanbags and buckets full of water, among other seemingly random everyday items.

The props are used in exercises created by Dr. Andrew Bock and Brian Schwartz, who teach the course together.

Bock is an optometrist and sports vision specialist, and Schwartz is a certified instructor based at Goose Creek.

Photo:William Wilson Lewis III / The Press-Enterprise John Johnson, 42, practices a hand-eye coordination exercise at the Vision Putting Academy called "pasta in the straw."

"It's very powerful stuff," Bock said. "Anything that improves vision improves the brain.

"The stronger the visual cues are, the better the brain will help with the putting motion, and vice versa."

It really isn't complicated. Bock and Schwartz won't let it be.

They're intent on making their classes fun.

Take the "one-hand-stroke-with-bean-bag-toss-and-math drill."

Students are asked to hold the putter with one hand, throw the bean bag with the other hand and putt.

When that becomes easy, they're asked to putt with one hand, catch the bean bag and do a simple math problem.

The purpose is to overload the golfer's senses so that putting eventually becomes second nature.

"If they can practice under those situations, the overloading gets easier," Bock said. "If they go out on the course, and they're worried about that $10,000 putt or if it's going to rain, there's less chance of them being taken out of the zone."

Then there's the "pasta-in-straw routine," which is exactly what it sounds like it is.

Golfers are given a straw and a piece of pasta, which they're to hold parallel until instructed to put the pasta inside of the straw.

"It seems real easy," Schwartz said. "But their hands are shaking. It really tests their eye-hand coordination because when you're in your putting position, you need good eye-hand coordination."

You also need to be able to visualize what you want the putt to do, which is where the bucket comes in.

"One of the most difficult things is for people to really visualize the putt with the curve of the green," Schwartz said.

That's true even when Schwartz pours a trickle of water out of a bucket to represent the direction the putt might take; everyone guesses the ball's path incorrectly.

Then Schwartz empties the entire bucket and the class can see the water heads with more force toward the hole before veering suddenly right.

Schwartz wants his pupils to understand the ball is going to go the same direction as the larger amount of water would and plan accordingly.

These all are tricks golfers can practice at home, as Vision Putting Academy students are encouraged to do.

The benefit of paying the $75 to actually attend a course, according to student John Johnson, is to draw on Bock and Schwartz's expertise.

"I thought it was kind of corny at first," said Johnson, a Riverside resident who won a new Titleist 3-wood in a putting contest soon after attending the academy.

"But when they explained that if you change your brain it lets you visualize what you have to do, and once your brain's trained, you just don't think about it anymore -- the putt just happens."

Reach Mirjam Swanson at mswanson@PE.com