"IF YOU LIKE GOLF"
online golf column
by
Chris Dortch

July 26, 2008

Chuck Jabaley was playing in a tournament at Cleveland Golf and Country Club about 20 years ago, and, as usually the case, hitting the ball beautifully from tee to green. But Jabaley was miserable. He couldn’t buy a putt.

“I was playing with an older golfer who’d been a member of Cleveland for a long time,” Jabaley recalls of a day that would prove to be monumental in his golfing career. “And he didn’t pull any punches. He said that was the one of the worst putting rounds he’d ever seen.”

The crafty old member had a solution.

“He played right-handed and putted left-handed,” Jabaley said. “He suggested I try it. What did I have to lose?”

Jabaley borrowed his friend’s old Bullseye putter, the straight blade style that could be used by a right- or left-handed player, and proceeded to the practice green with great haste. He threw down a couple of balls and made a few, tentative left-handed putting strokes. It felt funny—how could it not?—but Jabaley didn’t care. “It was no more awkward than how I’d been putting right-handed,” Jabaley said. “I just couldn’t make short putts. It had gotten to the point where sometimes, it was even difficult to make a stroke. There were times I didn’t even know if I could get the putter back.”

After that first left-handed practice session, Jabaley was intrigued. He dug around through his massive collection of putters and found a Bullseye, and within a few years, made himself into one of the best amateurs in Tennessee. His career zenith came in 1994, when he won the Tennessee Open and advanced to the round of 16 in the U.S. Amateur.

Why did such a seemingly drastic move work for Jabaley? Some would suggest that the switch put his dominant eye into the lead role in his setup. Others might say his wrists were firmer through the stroke as a lefty. Not Jabaley.

“I was all just mental,” Jabaley said. “It’s almost like you use a different part of your brain that’s not infected with all those negative thoughts.”

When Jabaley told me this story a few weeks ago, I seized on it immediately as a column idea, because I’d been thinking for a while about the mental side of golf. Todd McKittrick, the head professional at Chattanooga’s Black Creek Club, got me started on that path when I took a lesson back in June. McKittrick has worked and studied under some of the game’s finest instructors—Tim Mahoney, Doug Hammer, Manuel de la Torre—and has formed the opinion that mental clutter, not physical or mechanical problems, are the biggest enemy of a golfer trying to reach full potential.

“Golf is an easy game,” McKittrick says, “that we make difficult.”

Boy, did that message hit home to me. It brought back memories of the first golf lesson I ever took, at a muni course in Johnson City, Tenn. I didn’t take up golf until after college, but because I played other sports, it didn’t take me long to become fairly proficient. Neither did it take me long to outsmart myself into becoming mediocre.

At that first lesson, I remember hitting power fades with my driver, one after the other. After a few minutes, the instructor just stopped the lesson. “You’ve got a swing that players who have been playing this game for years would love to have,” he said.

If only I’d left it at that. The grief—and money—it would have saved me. Instead of being content with that natural fade, I tried to teach myself how to draw the ball. I bought one instructional book and then another and another. Before too long I had a small library’s worth. I subscribed to Golf and Golf Digest. After a while my reliable fade was gone, replaced by a snap hook I had a difficult time keeping on the planet, let alone a fairway.

A lifelong search was on. I’ll bet I’ve taken lessons from 25 instructors, some of them on the top 100 list compiled by the magazines. And I went to each one hoping—praying—that one simple suggestion might turn my game around. Of course, that was never going to happen.

Luckily for me, McKittrick is one of those from-the-ground-up teachers. If he notices a problem—and he spotted mine after just a couple of swings—he doesn’t slap a band-aid on it. He goes right to the formative stages of the swing—the grip, posture and setup.

In my case, because my brain had long ago sabotaged my natural athletic ability and thus a free-flowing golf swing, tension had crept into my arms at address. Worse, my left-hand grip had slipped into my palm, not in the fingers where it should be.

I’m still working hard to incorporate the changes, but McKittrick convinced me that the game really was simple, and to a certain extent, freed me. I no longer have to check my backswing anytime I pass a surface—a store window, the inside of an elevator—in which I can see my reflection. I’ve stopped reading the golf magazines, for fear an instructional article might catch my eye and bump me off track. And one of these days, I’m going to put my instruction books on eBay and get rid of them all. I pity the poor devil that buys them.

All this brings us back to Mr. Jabaley, who has happily putted left-handed for nearly two decades. The switch didn’t make him a world-beating putter, but it did manage to free his mind, allow him to compete, and win his share of significant tournaments.

“There are certainly times when I’m frustrated because I feel like I’m not making any putts,” he said. “But never to the point where I got right-handed.”

Jabaley has thus stayed competitive even after turning 55 and reaching senior status. In 2006 he finished second in the Tennessee Senior Match Play. A year later, he won that tournament and finished fourth in the Tennessee Senior Amateur. This year, he finished second—along with Mike Jenkins—in the Tennessee Senior Four Ball.

“It’s been fun since I made the switch,” Jabaley said. “I’d played golf and been a poor putter for a long time right-handed. I was never going to quit the game or anything. But I don’t think I ever would have accomplished what I’ve accomplished putting right-handed.”

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