table of contents:
I. intro
II. hitting cage
III. hitting cage math
IV. 410 yard walk
V. chipping
VI. putting
VII. good eats
VIII. practice drills
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I. intro
welcome to village golf, which i improvised during the covid-19 lockdown. just like in regular golf, the lower your score, the better. village golf also has 18 holes, for each hole, i will hit 10 shots in the hitting cage, walk 410 yards around the village, then do 7 chips and 5 putts in my living room. each mistake is plus 1 over par.
village golf is a PURE TEST OF TECHNIQUE. on the other hand, playing on the golf course is a test of 1) inborn ability 2) strategic knowledge and 3)technique.
village golf is a great way to develop your golf game because golf is mostly technique. the main goal of golf is to discover and develop the right technique. strategic knowledge is just the easy part. an example of strategic knowledge is knowing what club to use based on the wind speed and direction, another example is knowing the allowance of your putt based on the slope and speed of the green. your caddie can even help you with many of these strategic knowledge even if he/she doesn't know how to swing a golf club.
in other words, if you got good technique, then you are a good golfer. what about inborn ability? it's useless thinking about inborn ability because there's nothing anyone can do about it. unless we have the technology to manipulate our genes to give us stronger muscles, there's nothing we can do about inborn ability. besides, amateur golf is designed to take inborn ability out of the equation. that's why there are red tees for women so a 12 year old girl who has good technique can still kick the ass of an NBA hall of famer like charles barkeley who has the most awful technique in the world.
being able to hit 10 straight shots in a row involves mostly technique but the length of your drive is mostly inborn ability. i'm sure charles barkley has a longer drive than any 12 year old girl. but i'm sure any girl who can hit 10 straight shots in a row will beat him. unlike tennis where there really is no fun way for a quick and powerful hitter to play against a weak hitter with slow footwork.
hand eye coordination is mostly an inborn ability. but as i proved in my golf tutorial (https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2020/03/golf-on-rails.html), there are ways to remedy poor hand eye coordination in golf.
note that when you hit a bad shot when playing on the golf course, you have a chance to recover on your next shot. example if you hit a bad drive on a par 4 that cost you a stroke, you can hit the green and 1 putt on your next 2 shots to still make par. and if you bogey a hole you can birdie the next hole to stay even par. but in village golf, a bad shot is +1 over par and there is nothing you can do to make up for it.
a typical game takes me about 3 hours.
II. hitting cage
for all the 18 holes, the 10 cage shots should always be 2 drives, 4 different scales of wedge shots (120 degree, 90 degree, 67 degree and 45 degree swings), 2 shots using a 3 wood and 2 shots using a 3 iron. hitting outside the 2 feet target is considered an error, or plus 1 over par.
III. hitting cage math
how do i know i hit a good shot inside a hitting cage?
my hitting cage is 4 yards long. the narrow greens are usually 25 yards wide. if the green is 150 yards away, then the width of my target in the hitting cage should be: solve for e, e/4 = 25/150, e = .666 meters or 2 feet. that means if i hit my 6 iron inside the 2 feet wide target, i know i hit a good shot. so i hung some ropes to mark my 2 feet target:
my drive is around 240 yards. the width of average fairway is 40 yards. solve for e, e/4 = 40/240, e = .666 meters or 2 feet. what a coincidence :-). that means if i hit my driver inside the 2 feet wide target, i know i hit a good drive.
narrow fairways are usually 35 yards wide. but usually it's a par 5 or a short par 4, which allows you to hit a rescue or fairway wood. let's say i just want to layup 200 yards. solve for e, e/4 = 35/200, e = .175 meters or 2.1 feet. that means if i hit my 3 wood inside a 2 feet wide target, i know i hit a good shot.
i suggest you use rice sacks to re-enforce the target area. i found out that rice sacks are much more durable than a fishing net. after just a few weeks the net started having holes. but it's been 8 months since i've been using rice sacks and never even came close to having a hole.
after the hitting cage, i walk 410 yards around the village. it usually takes me 5 minutes to walk 410 yards. walking is the most important part in golf because walking is the best exercise and health is the most important thing in life.
the most amazing thing i found out about village golf is that it's a surprisingly precise barometer for my health or energy level. so i use it to measure the effectiveness of certain health foods and regiments. example i experimented on drinking a can of soda (high content of added sugar) everyday. after only a week, i became easily fatigued and can barely finish 18 holes of village golf (7,380 yards). my IBS came back and i frequently felt tired and depressed. but after i entirely got rid of added sugar in my diet, after a month i can easily play 18 holes 3 days in a row before feeling tired. and it's a kind of tired feeling that feels very good when i lie down in bed to rest. don't get me wrong i still eat lots of sweet delicious food like mango and grape juice but i take absolutely zero processed or added sugar (i make sure the grape juice says zero added sugar in the label)
i read online that scientists are beginning to discover that processed sugar is even more destructive to your health than smoking. i learned in one of those ted talks that processed sugar kills good bacteria in your gut that are responsible for producing serotonin, a hormone that makes you feel happy and energetic. it also kills the good bacteria responsible for digesting your food properly which causes many of the important nutrients in your food to be wasted so you don't get the proper nourishment. this leads to health problems worth billions of dollars worth of quality of life.
that means anyone can be a billionaire in terms of quality of life by simply getting rid of added sugar in their diet. i designed a diet that is very healthy without compromising food pleasure - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2020/10/make-filipinos-healthy-again.html
village golf not only develops your physical and emotional health (promotes serotonin production) but it can also develop your intellect if during the 410 yard walk you listen to a good audio book. i like audio books that immerses me in different worlds which virtually increases my life span by hundreds of years (https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2018/09/how-to-live-longer.html). i like listening to leo tolstoy narrated in russian because it hones my russian. immersing myself in different cultures also opens up my mind and improves my ability to write more knowledge bombs.
V. chipping
after walking 410 yards, i chip 7 times in my living room: 3 chips to hit the couch pillow, 1 chip that bounces once on the floor, 2 chips that bounces off the wall, and 1 chip that bounces twice on the floor.
during the months i was playing village golf, there were times when i can hardly hit the ball high enough to hit the couch pillow or the wall. i thought there was something wrong with my technique or i was having a bad day. turns out it was just the ball. i found out that some balls like prov 1's and range balls have a much lower trajectory when chipping. so make sure to consistently use the high trajectory balls to get consistent feedback on your chipping performance. to find out if a ball is high trajectory, do 5 chips using that ball then do 5 chips using a ball that you know is low trajectory and compare the 2. usually high trajectory balls have a sharp pinging sound when you bounce it on the floor while low trajectory balls have a dull sound.
this means i just invented a technique in golf that gives you an advantage. whenever the green for that hole is a table top or an island green, use a high trajectory ball like top flight excel2000.
VI. putting
after chipping, i do 5 putts. i try to hit a duct tape strip 2 inches wide on the wall 9 feet away. i also use a strip of duct tape on the floor to guide my putting stroke. you might think the duct tape on the floor will spoil me, but remember village golf is a test of one's technique, not ability. i was tempted to vary the angle for each putt and not always depend on the strip of duct tape and lines on the floor, but that would be testing my ability to line up my putt, not testing my technique.
a hole is 4.25 inches in diameter. so even if the edge of the ball barely hits the edge of the duct tape, i consider it a good putt. but outside of that, it counts as an error or +1 over par.
VII. golf eats
here's how i gas up before the 1st hole, after the 6th hole, after the 12th hold and after the 18th hole - https://ian-crystal.blogspot.com/2022/08/golf-eats.html
VIII. practice drills
click on the following links to watch my practice drills:
HAVE FUN !!!
(for more of my knowledge bombs, click the "ian's knowledge bombs" banner at the top of this article and choose any article in the table of contents that piques your interest)
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