I am going to cure this slice if it kills me: Part 1

The lowest moment in my journey so far came last week, when I conducted the following Google search:

“Do any pro golfers scoop?”

You can probably see how I got there—I’m a mediocre golfer (best 18-hole score: 84), I’ve been scooping for literally the entire nine years of my playing life, and it’s so ingrained in me, so firmly entrenched in muscle memory, that at my most desperate moments I think, “maybe it’s fine?” And in these bouts of self-justification, I try to come up with reasons why I don’t actually have to stop scooping, why I can become great at this sport in defiance of the exactly 100% of swing instructors, pros, coaches, and general human population who say that no, you absolutely cannot be a good golfer if you have a scoopy swing. In these moments, I dream of being the poor man’s Jim Furyk of the scoop—a low handicap municipal stud who thumbed his nose at the orthodoxy and followed his own path to greatness. I only needed one example of someone who did it before me.

The Google search turned up zero hits. This is likely because there are, in fact, no professionals who employ a disastrous swing flaw in their arsenal, just as there no pros who—I don’t know—strike the ball with the back side of the club. Who’d have thought?

Before we go any deeper on this journey, let’s define a scoop for those who don’t know. It’s pretty simply: the scoop happens when the proper wrist angle breaks down before impact and you try to literally scoop the ball into the air with your hands. While a player with a good swing has his hands in front of the ball at impact, with full extension to come after the strike, the scooper “achieves” that extension at impact, losing a ton of power and introducing a glaring inconsistency into the motion, making everything harder; welcome to the world of hitting fat and thin, repeat ad nauseam.

Here’s how that looks, from an image taken at my range session two weeks ago:

As you see, this is a really, really bad scoop. Like so much of our human behavior, I can only imagine that it was developed in response to original trauma. I never played as a kid, focusing on baseball, basketball, and football, and only decided when I was writing an actual golf book about the PGA Tour in 2014 that I should probably learn to play, at which point I became addicted. I can’t trace the origin of the scoop with any historical rigor, but in this case I’d have to guess that when I first started hitting, hitting the ball thin frustrated me to such a degree that I unconsciously adopted a sort of cheat code method to get the ball up in the air. And, as you see, it completely ****ed me up forever.

Until now, I never really tried to do anything about it. I knew, instinctively, that to actually fix this part of my game would constitute a major overhaul, take lots of time, and make me miserable in the process. Instead, I adopted the strategy of passively hoping it would go away. Shock of all shocks? That didn’t work.

Now, I’m trying. The reality has set in that although I might be able to get lucky and break 80 one day by my current method, true consistency and my maximum distance won’t be available to me until I get this sorted out. A series of videos by the instructor Danny Maude clarified a few things about the iron swing for me last month, and when I thought I was hitting the ball very well on the range one day, I set up the camera and got the result you see above. That’s when I knew that until I made a conscious effort to rid myself of the scoop, nothing else I did would mean much. It occurred to me at the same time that every day I delayed that work was a day that the scoop would be ingrained in my muscle memory.

It was time to act.

Step 1: The training aids

After some searching, the first thing I did was buy a DST Compressor 8-iron, a well-reviewed training club that is artificially bent backwards along the shaft so that in theory, the only way you can make a clean strike is to have your hands well in front at impact. I took it to the range, struggled initially, and then began hitting some lovely high shots straight down the pipe. Could it be that easy? I set up my camera, and this was the result:

As you see, the scoop is already in effect well before impact, and is, in fact, worse than ever before. Almost immediately, my brain adapted to the shape of the new club, effectively saying, “you think you can get me to stop scooping with a screwy club? Watch this, baby,” and then exaggerating the scoop to get a good result. It was almost impressive, and pissed me off deeply. I don’t for a second think this is any kind of final verdict on the DST Compressor, but it was clear that it wasn’t going to work for me as a first step.

The next thing I bought, on the advice of my pro Karl at Hillandale, was a much cheaper smash bag. Here, the concept is that you fill this bag up with old clothes or birdseed or something, and when you hit it, you can immediately tell where your hands are because the club is going to stop. That way, you can adjust and train your swing. The one negative I kept reading in the reviews is that the stitching tends to break pretty easily, and in fact that happened on the first day I began to use it. But so far, it hasn’t really mattered—it still functions as it’s supposed to. As I found out, it’s wayyyy easier to get your hands out ahead and maintain a wrist angle on the smash bag:

There, the right hand might be a little bit scoopy still, but the hands are successfully out in front at impact. So far, this does not immediately translate to the range, but in terms of training a specific motion and undoing years of muscle memory, I find this aid to be far more useful than the compressor club—even if you can see a pair of old white shorts poking out of the broken seams.

The Videos

I want to mention a few videos I found helpful from the “feel” perspective. First, this drill from Dan Whitaker that focuses on the idea of driving a nail in with the butt of the club, lead by the left hand; I’m somebody who learns by feel, and this was the kind of proprioceptive idea that helps me remember to get the left hand out front.

Second, the drill from Andrew Rice starting at the 5-minute mark in this video, in which a slight bow of the left wrist helps the face impact, and short punchy swings are taken from a parallel position with an emphasis on moving the body through and keeping the hands in front.

Trying this at the range, it astounded how unbelievably difficult it was to actually strike the ball without scooping, even with a simple punch shot technique. Never was the obstacle more clear—muscle memory was so embedded that it was overriding any directions I was giving it. When you don’t care about making a ball go forward, as when you’re hitting a smash bag, it’s easy to do the right thing. When you’ve got that little white hellion of an orb sitting beneath you, though, the hands and body are going to revert. Finally, after a range session from hell, I managed to capture myself making impact with the hands well ahead of the ball:

This shot squirted to the right about 30 yards, my head is completely turned away from the ball with my eyes seemingly closed, the club is almost comically hooded, and it’s just desperately ugly in 100 different ways, but I still felt like I’d conquered a demon.

Where I am now

This **** is hard. I’m trying to get out and hit a few balls every day when the weather cooperates, but when I do, I’m still scooping when I allow myself to take a full swing. And this presents a conundrum: Do I shut down playing actual golf until I can make some real progress, or is it okay to continue my range practice, but allow myself to swing “normally” on the course so I’m not horrible to play with in the meantime? I think I’m opting for the latter, though it does feel like this is an iffy solution; if I’m scooping on the course when it matters, will I ever truly be cured?

Coming up this week is a sorely needed lesson, at which I want to probe my instructor on why the scoop persists, and continue to hammer at this stone, hoping one day that it finally breaks. For now, the plan is to continue thinking about this more than I think about literally anything else in life, and slowly drive myself mad.

Hello everyone! Welcome to the explainer for Apocalypse Sports Trivia, the head-to-head league taking the nation (read: a few sports nerds) by storm. The simple explanation of our fair enterprise is that for ten days (M-F only), you will face a new opponent each day from within your ten-player division. The individual battles are “games,” and the overall ten-day affair is a “Fortnight” (with apologies to the video game). Along with answering five questions in each game, you will try to stymie your opponent in an attempt to limit the damage he wreaks. If you get more points than your opponent that day, you win the game. If you don’t, you lose. You can also draw! Three points for a win, one point for a draw, zero points for a defeat, just like European soccer. Also just like European soccer, there is promotion and relegation from within your division. At the end of each Series, the top finishers in each division will climb the ladder, and the bottom finishers will be relegated to what lies beneath. New players will be placed in Junior Divisions, and their results will determine which division they enter for the next Series.

Now, some FAQ.

FAQ

1. What’s to stop us from cheating?

Nothing, except the strength of your character. And really, why would you join a league like this, which features no cash prizes, and cheat? What’s the point? Don’t cheat!

2. Can I look up parts of questions that won’t give me the full answer?

Absolutely not! Questions in Apocalypse Sports Trivia are meant to be answered using only the knowledge that’s already in your head. So, if the question was…

Of the 21 schools to have won a Division 1 national championship in men’s hockey, only two are located south of 40 degrees latitude, including the team tied with the second-most titles. Name either of the two schools, which happen to be located in the same state.

…you would not be allowed to look at a map to see which states fall below 40 degrees latitude, even though this would not give you the answer. Or if the question was…

Fill in the blank from a 2011 New York Times feature: “‘________ are going to bite the thunder out of you,’ says 44-year-old Buster Garrett, who took part in the 12th annual Okie Noodling tournament.”

…you would not be allowed to look up the definition of ‘noodling.’ (In this case, it would give you the actual answer.)

3. Are the questions hard?

Our league-wide average in our first fortnight was 47%, 52% for Fortnights Two and Three, and just over 53% for Fortnight Four, so let that be your guide (the goal is to keep a rate slightly above 50%). In my opinion, the questions are hard but not impossible. Your mileage may vary, but we’ll always keep up a certain standard of difficulty.

4. How long do we have to answer?

Twenty-four hours. The questions will come out at 9 p.m. eastern, and will be due by 9 p.m. eastern the next day, which is also when results will be available.

5. What if someone fails to answer in the time allotted?

That’s a default, meaning the other player gets a three-point victory and the highest possible points for each correct answer. For the defaulting player, it just counts as a normal loss, but too many defaults (the usual standard is two within a fortnight) and you’ll be booted from the league.

6. How are standings determined?

First by points for wins and losses and draws, then by differential of points within a match, then by correct answers.

7. How do points within a game work?

In each game, a correct answer is worth two points…with two exceptions. As you answer, you’ll also mark one question with a K, and one question with an HR—that’s baseball notation for strikeout and home run. If your opponent gets the question marked “K” correct, he or she will receive 0 points—you’ve effectively nullified the question. However, if he or she gets the “HR” question correct, it will be worth 4 points. Clearly, you want to assign a K to the question you believe to be easiest, and an HR to the hardest.

8. What’s with the division names?

Each conference, starting with the original Armageddon Conference, will eventually be populated by 60 players, separated into six divisions of ten players each based on performance in past fortnights. The names of the six divisions—Premiership, Liga Two, Serie Three, Fourdivisie, Deildin Five, Sixligaen—are borrowed from European soccer. New players will be placed in “Junior” divisions for their first fortnight, with their performance there dictating which division they’re placed in for the next fortnight.

9. What’s the format within a fortnight?

The first nine days of each fortnight will feature round robin play within each division, with every player in a division facing every other player in that division in a head-to-head match. Based on the standings after those nine days, players will be matched against each other on Day Ten in battles for championships, promotions, relegations, and honor matches. The first nine days constitute the “regular season,” while Day Ten is known as Championship Day.

10. What if I fail to play defense? 

Playing defense is not mandatory in the sense that failing to do so results in an automatic default, but if any player neglects to play defense, his opponent will get the maximum points for the questions he answers correctly. Even if that opponent only gets one answer right, it will be worth four points (the HR value), and no answers will be zero’ed out (the K value). If only the K is neglected, all correct answers will be worth 2 points except the HR question, which will still be worth 4. If only the HR is neglected, the first correct answer not K’ed will be worth 4 points. So it’s very beneficial to play defense, and neglecting it can only result in a worse outcome.

11. What about spelling, and names, and all that?

Unless otherwise stated, last names are fine for answers. In fact, we’ve had situations where someone unnecessarily attempted a first name, bungled it, and got the answer wrong even though they had the last name right. Beware! Spelling is a little trickier. You don’t have to spell your answer correctly, but it has to “sound” right even with the incorrect spelling. So if the answer to one question was “Jurgen Klopp,” “Yirgin Clahp” would be fine, but “Klopper” would be wrong since it sounds different. Some of this comes down to a judgment call, and the commish has the final call, but that’s the basic rule.

12. Any other minutiae?

Sure—if a question asks for one response, and you list more than one, your first response will count, regardless of what comes after. If a question asks for two or more answers, and you list only one, you will get the question wrong even if the answer you provided is correct—no partial credit.

13. Can defaults be a draw?

No. If you default and your opponent submits and gets zero correct answers, that will be a victory for your opponent and a loss for you. The opponent will be credited with the full three points, but zero correct answers and zero margin of victory.

14. What are the categories for questions?

Glad you asked…

The Categories

Note: As you’ll soon discover, there’s a good deal of overlap between certain categories. Many of the sports covered in other categories are also in the Olympics, for instance. I’ll make sure to balance the questions accordingly, so that, for instance, if there are two tennis questions in the “Country Club” category, there won’t be any in the Olympics category. And if there’s a question about Olympic Hockey, that will likely go under the Hockey category to avoid having too many hockey questions in one Series.

New for Fortnight Two: The categories will no longer be listed in front of the questions. Rest assured that each Series of 50 questions will still contain four to six questions from each category. The reason for this is that some questions are designed to test your knowledge in ways that would be given away if the category was listed.

Sub-Categories: Each set of five questions throughout a Series in a specific category will be separated into broad sub-categories such as history, current events, rules, entertainment, and business.

1. Football – Self-explanatory

2. Soccer – Self-explanatory

3. Baseball – Self-explanatory

4. Basketball – Self-explanatory

5. Hockey – Self-explanatory

6. Obscure sports – For the foreign and the uncommon, and also for general knowledge questions that don’t fit into a specific sport.

7. Racing & Combat – An admittedly odd couple that includes motor sports, horse racing, boxing, MMA, wrestling, etc.

8. The Country Club – For sports we associate with money, from tennis to golf to lacrosse to polo to fox hunting. Expect many fox hunting questions.

9. Olympic Sports – Sports that are contested in the Olympics that generally don’t appear in another category, such as swimming or track & field.

10. Games – Another broad category which can include anything from billiards to chess to video/arcade games to cards.

Official Terminology

To force a draw with one fewer correct answer is called a COTTOM.

To win with the same number of correct answers is a WHIPWIN.

To win with fewer correct answers is called a BUIE.

To draw with two fewer correct answers is called a FLOWE.

DAY ONE

1. Soccer

Between them, Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi won every Ballon D’Or—an annual award given to the world’s best player—from 2008 to 2017. Who broke their streak, and became the first winner from Croatia, in 2018?

Click here to reveal a spoiler

2. Football

In NCAA football, there are two ways to score exactly one point. The first is a point after touchdown (PAT) kick, and the second is a _______ safety. These latter events, also called “one-point safeties,” can be scored by the offense or defense, and are incredibly rare. (In fact, the defensive variety has never occurred.) What word fills in the blank above?

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2. Fighting

On July 6, 2019, at UFC 239, titles were awarded in the women’s bantamweight and men’s light heavyweight divisions. The losers of those bouts were Holly Holm and Thiago Santos, respectively. Name both winners.

Click here to reveal a spoiler

3. Baseball

What was Theo Epstein’s Halloween costume in 2005?

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4. Entertainment/Business

The Great Court at Trinity College, Cambridge, boasts the Trinity College Clock, which takes approximately 43.6 seconds to chime 24 hour times each day at noon. Two men have successfully finished a perimeter sprint of the Great Court before the final chime—the first in 1927, the second in 2007. A third successful run, albeit apocryphal, was depicted in what 1981 film?

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5. Basketball

In 1966, the Texas Western Miners became the first team to win the NCAA University Division basketball championship with an all black starting lineup. The losing team in the final game was led by two different players who each scored a team-leading 19 points. Name either one.

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DAY THREE

1. Hockey

In 2000, Larry Robinson became the first interim head coach to guide his team, the New Jersey Devils, to a Stanley Cup championship. Who became the second, in 2019, as interim head coach of the St. Louis Blues?

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2. Baseball

A team with the nickname “Giants” has won the Japan Series—the championship of the country’s top league, Nippon Professional Baseball—a record 22 times. Name the Japanese media group that owns the franchise.

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3. Entertainment/Business

“Howard gratefully claims it. Distribution brilliant…Landon Donovan, are things on here for the USA? Can they do it here? Cross — and Dempsey is denied again! And Donovan has scored! Oh, can you believe this?!”

What were the next three words spoken by ESPN announcer Ian Darke when he called Donovan’s dramatic goal against Algeria in the 2010 World Cup? “I did feel like an honorary American for a few seconds there,” he’d say later.

Click here to reveal a spoiler

4. Foreign/Obscure Sports

One of the most famous traditional “village football” or “mob football” games is contested twice yearly, on Christmas Day and New Year’s Day, between the “uppies” and “doonies” in Kirkwall, the largest city in Scotland’s Orkney Islands. This communal sport, and others like it throughout Scotland, are  commonly referred to by what two-letter word?

Click here to reveal a spoiler

5. Individual Sports

Name the only tennis player to win the “Golden Slam”—all four slams and an Olympic gold—in a single calendar year.

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DAY FOUR

1. Basketball

Shaquille O’Neal is 8th on the NBA all-time scoring list, and 10th on the combined NBA/ABA all-time scoring list (which compiles career totals of points scored in both leagues). Name the two players who jump ahead of Shaq to place 8th and 9th on the combined list. These men are 70th and 9th, respectively, on the NBA-only list.

Click here to reveal a spoiler

2. Soccer

In 1970, Brazil won its third World Cup, becoming the winningest nation in that competition from South America. Which other South American country did they overtake?

Click here to reveal a spoiler

3. Fighting

Name the professional wrestler who holds the longest single reign as WWWF/WWF/WWE heavyweight champion at 2,803 days. Born in Pizzoferrato, Italy, he passed away in 2018 at the age of 82.

Click here to reveal a spoiler

4. Olympic Sports

Only one American village has hosted two Winter Olympic games, and was the venue for arguably the most impactful moment in U.S. Olympic history. Name that village (which, for the record, is home to exactly zero crocodiles).

Click here to reveal a spoiler

5. Football

A few years ago, Brandon Gardner, Spike Friedman, and I wrote a pilot called Dutchmen. Our idea was “Veep meets the NBA,” with a focus on the front office of a struggling team with a terrible owner in New York City. Click the link below to check it out!

Dutchmen

RULES for the GREAT SATAN pool:

—You will pick 15 specific Winter Olympic events (ie, “biathlon 12.5km pursuit men,” not just “biathlon”), and choose the country you believe will win that event. You may choose each country only once. You may not choose America. You MUST choose South Korea once. The research is on you.

—You will rank these 15 picks by priority. The one you are most confident about should be ranked 15, and the one you feel least secure about should be 1.

—You should submit by typing your picks into gmail, single-spaced, from 15 down to 1. Do not paste from Word or Excel or anywhere else, because this makes it a huge pain to enter in the spreadsheet. One of you will do this, and we will harass you to the death. Picks should look like this:

15. Snowball Fighting, 12-Hour Melee: Luxembourg
14. Ice Fishing, Bare-Handed: Mongolia
13. Snow Angels, Blindfolded: Brazil
…
1. Erotic 4-person luge, nude: Italy

—There are 15 disciplines in the Winter Games. In making your 15 picks, you must use 13 of those disciplines.

—If you use all 15 disciplines and never once get Satan’d, you earn the DANTE’S JOURNEY bonus of 15 points.

—If you choose to double up in a discipline (ie, two speed skating events), and you get Satan’d in either event, your penalty doubles for that one event (no extra points for succeeding). If you triple up in a discipline, penalty values triple

Scoring: If your country wins gold, you win 4x your priority value. Silver: 2x. Bronze: 1x. Nothing: 0 points. No bonus points if your country has multiple podium placements.

—You may ONLY pick events in which an American is participating. Luckily, the U.S. has athletes in 97 of 102 events, excluding these five:

Freestyle Skiing – Men’s Ski Cross
Freestyle Skiing – Women’s Ski Cross
Long-Track Speed Skating – Men’s 10,000m
Short-Track Speed Skating – Women’s 3,000m Relay
Snowboarding – Women’s Parallel Giant Slalom

THE GREAT SATAN CLAUSE: If America beats your country and makes the medal stand, you just got Satan’d, son. Not only do you lose any points for that event: You lose 1x the value of your pick if America takes bronze, 2x if they take silver, 4x if they take gold. If neither your country or America makes the medal stand, it’s just zero points flat even if America beats you.

THE ROCKET MAN CLAUSE: You must pick South Korea as one of your 15 countries, but if they don’t medal in the discipline you pick, this displeases DEAR LEADER Kim Jong-Un, who has unified with South Korea for these Olympics. He doesn’t have the arsenal of the Great Satan, but he can certainly stage a devastating one-time attack. Should South Korea fail to medal in your discipline, you lose 4x the priority pick.

THE DANGEROUS DONALD EJECTION SPECTACULAR: If you get Rocket Man’d and Satan’d at the same time, you are eliminated from the pool. (Note: In a situation where your South Korean pick wins a medal but gets beat on the podium by an American, this is a Great Satan, but not a Rocket Man, and therefore not a Dangerous Donald.)

Hangovers get physically worse with age, but the raw quality of the brain doesn’t change—it’s just the same low-level misery as ever. It’s like having an open psychic wound for a day, where even a light breeze can affect me in ways I’d be fortified against on a normal day. There’s a sad irony here, in that the only time I seem to get drunk anymore is when stress overwhelms me by accumulation, and suddenly it’s over and I’m experiencing something fun, usually something social. And I want to heighten it, to exaggerate it, because I feel deprived of joy for so long that I want it in abundance. And then the next morning, there’s only sadness and anxiety. I’d do better to skip the drink entirely and just go running, read a book outside, go to a museum, do all the things of the idealized day that never quite occurs. It sometimes feels as though it’s been too long since I’ve had the end-of-day feeling of accomplishment, that I was productive in a way that also made me happy. And it seems like such stupidity, such a crime, that I’m letting stress chip away at me in a life that’s temporary. But of course we get swept along in a tide, we have been forever, and just as foolish as succumbing to stress is believing that the point of life is happiness and joy. But at times like these, I could really go for a bit more satisfaction. The reason standing in place feels so bad is that you are never actually standing in place—time is moving, you’re always closer to dying. So any day when you go to bed with a feeling of stagnation is a day that can only be described with the words “time passed.” You’ve lost a day, and gained nothing. I don’t advocate for the mindset that you must accomplish something concrete every single day, because that’s too fundamentally American-psychotic and will only lead to more stress and more failures to meet ridiculous expectations. But spiritual enrichment is a different matter. If I walk around my neighborhood tomorrow for one hour with my architecture encyclopedia book, and learn one or two new terms, it will still be the best thing I’ve done in a week. I’ll forget the new words before I get home, but I’ll settle for the temporary feeling—freedom to step outside the rip tide, to ignore everything, to seize something for myself, to be something other than a life that is speeding toward death while losing control of the story.