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12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Powerful info - if you have the patience to read it, May 10, 2003
I had been playing golf about 10 years when I received this book several months ago. Though I don't play often, I had managed to play to a handicap of about 15. I read lots of golf magazines, so I was always trying to apply this tip or that tip. I usually tried to find a swing thought that was working on the range and applied it during my round. Though the book is under 200 pages, I struggled to finish it. The prose reads as though it was dictated rather than writen and edited. There are all sorts of font changes for emphasis: italics, bold, ALL CAPS, underlining. It is truly frustrating. However, while working 12-hour night shifts with nothing better to do, I finally finished the book. When I got off work the day I finished the book, I went to hit balls using some of the ideas that Hibbard presents. They are simple ideas, and not entirely unconventional, but the way the ideas are explained gives you confidence and helps you to understand why things go wrong when they do. It felt strange at first, but eventually I was able to drop my former habits and apply the ideas. The first thing I noticed was that my shots were much straighter, and I quickly lost all instinct to aim my shots during the swing - the setup was doing it for me. The distance seemed about a club longer than before. But when I put the 7-iron back in the bag, I realized I had mistakenly pulled the 8! I had similar results for my other clubs. Imagine my delight as my 3-irons were carrying 200 yards on the fly! Best of all, virtually every time I hit a bad shot, I understood why immediately (most often from "hitting" rather than swinging). Honestly, I am still working with these ideas, trying to calibrate my impact to the sweet spot of my club, but the fun part is it's all in the setup. I now have a free swing that's fun, exuberant, and tension free. I'm playing without a glove for the first time ever. By the time everything settles out, I expect to have dropped my handicap to the single digits! There are some great ideas in this book. It will get you thinking about the golf swing in a way that makes you relax on the course and swing freely. These ideas can enable you to have a carefree swing without so many swing thoughts - you'll be taught to set up for success, then swing away. If the writing were better, I'd give this book 5 stars.
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16 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Most Effective/Efficient Golf Instruction Material Ever, July 17, 2001
This review is from: Perfect Impact : Now Anyone Can Play Par Golf Because Here, Finally, All the Secrets of Perfect Impact, Power and Control Are Revealed (Hardcover)
George Hibbard's Perfect Impact golf instructional material (his 45 minute video, the book, and the 3 set video) are musts if you want breakthrough improvements in your golf swing. I strongly urge simultaneous purchase of all three items. See the short video first, read the book, and then see the 3 set video. The material therein are not duplicative but rather expand on the Perfect Impact swing. I believe this is the most effective and efficient golf instruction material available. George has reached not into the fundamentals of golf, but cuts to the very foundations of the golf swing and explains the elements simply and clearly and shows you easily how to adapt to them and incorporate such fundamentals into your swing. The writing style is a little verbose but the meat is all there with all the trimmings, appetizers, desert, and very full bodied wine. He shows and explains things no one else talks about or writes about or illustrates; things that most top professional are not even clear themselves about or are able to well articulate; or have been not willing to communicate on a mass level. He shows how remarkably easy it is to capture the moves that very efficiently incorporates a correct swing plane. He shows how to hold the club to have a built in delayed release. He provides great drills and tells you clearly the purpose and the feelings you want to develop from those drills. He explains clearly about various phenomena incidental to the clubhead orbit and provides drills to develop a smooth repeating swing. He clearly explains how to easily develop a powerful swing using the full engine of your body mass without having to overexert yourself. He shows you how to fine tune your grip, your swing, your body-weight movements, and ball placement to suit your personal body characteristics, making it so clear and simple that it is easy to self-diagnose and make self-corrective adjustments. George truly cares in helping you build your golf swing and will take time to talk on phone / email you in response to any difficulties or confusion you may have as you read his material, see his videos, practice his methods, develop your swing. Hundreds of golf aficionados are implementing the PI method and the results from online postings at golf online bulletin boards have been raving absolutely phenomenally as to speed of development, ease of swing, power of distance, the pinpoint accuracy to the green - like throwing darts and hitting the flag pole, the clarity of understanding, the clean organized system that comes with his explanations of the PI swing. This material is an unparalled classic. You won't be disappointed.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Many needles of widsom in a haystack of confusing prose, July 30, 2002
...This is not an easy book to read, but there is some good information here. The best idea I took away is that your personal "swinging machine", though it may not be textbook perfect in its mechanics, can be made to pass the club's sweet spot through the same target zone almost every time with a bit of understanding and practice. Your stance and setup is akin to sighting in a rifle. Knowing where your club passes through the target zone, you adjust your body's relationship to the ball so you don't have to manipulate the club head at all. I also liked what George has to say about grip and his little trick for knowing where the club head is at all times. I also appreciated his emphasis on the importance of club head lag and how that is the biggest key to letting the club do the work of striking golf balls for you. "Hitting" the ball hard was how I started this game and now I swing through gently with more clubhead speed (with some relapses to my old ways at times). Using my new found info, I went out and started striking the ball better and unfortunately for my game, much farther than before. I sailed my shots over many greens where before I was worried about getting it to the green. This I can adjust to. I also noticed something new that I had never seen before; a draw. Until I read this book, I was your typical beginning golfer fader/slicer. Now my shots go from drawing usually to hooking at times. This makes me feel better as I've read many times that most good golfers suffered from hooking early in their development. Those are my good points though you may find a few more gems in here. Now the bad part. George is a golf instructor, not a writer. He writes in more a stream of thought style and is hard to follow. Some of the things he says contradict later on. For example, he talks about how damaging it is to learn your golf swing in steps and positions then later says it is very valuable to freeze your swing in various positions to learn how things feel. (???) He says many times that "we'll get to that later", but everything is so unorganized that I have no idea if we ever got there. He uses the verb "dipsy-doodle" repeatedly and even if paid handsomely I could not begin to do one of those for you. He goes from regular font to all caps for emphasis to bold all caps for real emphasis to underlined bold all caps when you really, really need to pay attention. Again, difficult to read. I got the feeling after finishing the book that it almost could have been a really good pocket guide if you took the great ideas and stripped out all the ramblings. Where was George's editor in this publishing process? I don't think there is anything new and revolutionary here. He does have some good ideas on how to get sound swing fundamentals incoporated into your game. Most of this information resides in Ben Hogan's classic "Five Fundamentals" book, but he is also hard to understand. If you like to read golf instruction books and take in varying points of view then give this a go. If you really think this book will do for you what its title suggests then we need to talk about a bridge I have for sale.
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