Customer Reviews

Radical Golf: How to Lower Your Score and Raise Your Enjoyment of the Game

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Michael Laughlin has written a terrific book. It's amusing, fun to read, and teaches you not only how to cut strokes from your game, but also how to increase your enjoyment of the game. Most golf books are too technical, discuss the mechanics of the golf swing, and want you to improve by changing your swing. For the vast majority of players, this simply doesn't work well. You are pretty much stuck with the swing you now have, unless you take lessons from a golf pro and practice a lot. You might as well make the best of the swing you have. Michael teaches you the quick way to improve your game - by using course management and working smarter, not harder.

As an example, I played a lot of golf as a kid, and always assumed that it made sense to hit the ball as far down the fairway as possible on each shot. On a 410 yard hole with an elevated green, and an out-of-bounds all the way down the right side of the fairway, I would hit a driver, then a long iron. Sometimes I would be on the green, but more often I would hit into a greenside trap or hit the slope near the green and bounce 30 yards away, into the rough, with a difficult pitch shot to follow. Michael shows that it might make a lot more sense to hit a smooth 5 iron off the tee, then another safe 5 iron down the middle, to set up a simple 80 yard wedge shot onto the green. His point is that the 80 yard full-swing wedge shot from the middle of the fairway may well be easier to get close to the hole than the 30 yard finesse shot from the rough, even though you are hitting the full-swing wedge shot from 50 yards farther away from the hole. Thus, he puts great emphasis on planning, before you tee off, where you want to hit your approach shot from. He even has some great tips about planning your entire round before you tee off, simply by looking at the scorecard. Some sample chapters are titled: "Thinking Your Way Around the Course", "When To Play Short? When To Hit It," and "How To Break Down A Course For Playing A Round."

Michael appears to be a character. He is a writer, producer and director of several Hollywood films, as a kid knew Dean Martin, and was evidently married to Leslie Caron (according to Imdb.com)! I don't know about you, but I just instinctively trust someone with that pedigree. Needless to say, he charms as he goes along, advising the reader to "Dress well - play well," eat chocolate and fall in love. He even has a helpful, very short chapter on how to evaluate your fiancé based on her opinion about the game of golf. This is in addition to his sage advice about how to cure hiccups and "What To Do When You're Not Playing Golf."

The bottom line: I've read a lot of golf books. This is a terrific book. It is fun to read, but make no mistake -- there is plenty of extremely useful information here that will help you improve your score immediately. I believe that for most players, even those who already shoot in the low 80's or high 70's, Michael's approach will immediately lower your score and increase your fun quotient. If you feel the need for a more serious book, pair Michael's book with David Pelz's Short Game Bible, and you have an unbeatable combo.

The book is so good, I would like a lesson. any information you can supply about Michael Laughlin, I would appreciate. I'm sure he's a good player. I'll bet he plays tennis as well.

I've read at least 100 golf books, and I rate this book among the worst 5 I've ever read.

The premise of Radical Golf is to give high handicap golfers a strategy to shoot 79.

This book is 167 double spaced, half sized pages with huge top and bottom margins. There are about 10 real sized pages worth of real information. The rest of the book is full of the uncoordinated ramblings and anecdotes of an average golfer, and even worse writer. You can expect insights such as "Tom Kite is too short to wear a big straw hat with something written all over it. I think he'd win more tournaments with a nice tweed hat, or even sunscreen." That was a tidbit from the "How to Dress for Golf" chapter. There are other dazzling pontifications on the subjects of golf and marriage, smoking and drinking on the course, and (de)mental side of golf. Although some of the book is intended to be humorous, I felt the humor was bettor suited to the over 65 gang - which I am not in.

To save you time (about 2 hours to read) and money here's the radical advice.

1) Don't use woods. 2) Don't use a putter, use a 2 or 3 iron instead (hey Bobby Jones did with Calamity Jane). 3) Find a "Free Throw" golf shot - like a 60 yard wedge - and lay up to that shot as much as possible. 4) Practice your short game and putting. 5) Love your wedge.

That's not bad advice, but now that you know it, go buy a real short game book by Tom Kite, Corey Pavin, Tom Watson, Ray Floyd, or one of the teaching pro's - Toski, Flick, Leadbetter, Kostis, John Jacobs etc. Better yet, get a video!

The premise behind this book is simplicity and it is written so anyone can implement its system. The basic idea is to manage the course and not the other way around. Put yourself in position to hit a short wedge into the green as many times as you can (your free throw shot) and practice your free throw often. The book challenges your traditional thinking of the game (i.e. hit the ball as far as you can). I was a little hesitant at first to try it out but found that while my buddies teed off with woods on every hole, I hit a 3 iron and was in play consistently while they consistently scattered around the course to play their shots. The simplicity of the radical golf concept is to play the ball rather than just hit it. Plan your game so that you are in position to hit failiar shots.

This book is for the average golfer who watches tournaments on TV and thinks (erroneously) that he/she can duplicate what they see on the screen. They can't and end up hacking around the course muttering about their clubs or what ever else they want to blame their game on. You can do more for your golf game with this $12 book than spending hundreds of dollars on oversized clubs and space aged putters. After finishing this book you really begin to realize that golf is 90% between your ears.