Leslie Nielson's Stupid Little Golf Book - Hardcover

"Leslie Nielsen, America's favorite funnyman and self-proclaimed 'guru of bad golf," delivers the really bad golfer's version of Harvey Penick's Little Red Book -- with genuinely hilarious results. Harvey Penick's Little Red Book has now sold over 1.5 million hardcover copies. It is the best-selling golf book of all time. It is the best-selling sports book of all time. It is, in short, ripe for parody. And who better to parody a golf book than Leslie Nielsen, the Arnold Palmer of bad golf, and Henry Beard, the best parodist now writing? Beard's most recent golf humor book, Mulligan's Laws, has sold over seventy thousand copies and is still going strong. And Leslie Nielsen is, well, Leslie Nielsen. Besides being one of the funniest and most popular actors of our time, Leslie Nielsen is also a bad golfer, usually in front of very large crowds. Besides playing in nationally televised Pro-Ams (including Pebble Beach), Nielsen has a Bad Golf Made Easy video that has sold 350,000 copies; his Bad Golf Made Easy calendar will be released in October. And now, with a little help from Henry Beard, he has written a parody guaranteed to help everyone play their worst golf all the time -- and enjoy it even more.

ARE YOU SWINGING HARD ENOUGH?
        
Bad golfers look at Freddie Couples's slow, deliberate, effortless swing and say to themselves, "Gee, if I could just swing the club like that, I could hit the ball a mile."
        
That's just plain nonsense.  If you get up on the tee and swing that driver as easy as Freddie does, you'll hit the ball fifty-five yards.
        
The only way the average player can get any distance is by swinging the club as hard as possible, and that total-power "killing" swing starts with a good solid death grip.

Sam Snead said he held the club as lightly as he would if he had a live bird in his hands, but I want you to grab that thing as if you were throttling a poisonous snake or trying to squeeze one last bit of toothpaste out of a crowbar.
        
To initiate your swing, clench your teeth in a firm "jaw press" and then pull the club sharply up.  A good way to visualize this critical early part of the "takeaway" is to imagine you're whisking a tablecloth out from under an eleborately set-up banquet table.  It doesn't matter if all the china and glasses end up on the floor -- you just want a nice, fast tugging motion that gets the club headed back in a hurry.
        
The key to really powdering the ball is starting your downswing as early in your backswing as you can -- preferably before the club gets much higher than waist-high, and long before it has been raised into the power-robbing "busboy" position way up around your head.
        
A lot of golfers say to themselves, "One-and-two" to get a sense of when to trigger the downswing.  This is crazy.  If you've got to count, just say "Two!" and smack the ball.
      
The swinging motion you're after is somewhere between that long, lateral move the guy makes when he rings the gong at the beginning of J. Arthur Rank films and the forceful body-powered chopping stroke you'd use if you were demolishing a cinder-block wall with a sledgehammer.
      
How can you tell if you've really gotten every last ounce of oomph at your command into the shot?  Ideally, one or both of your feet should come out of your shoes, your club shaft should bounce sharply off your shoulder (I like to see a callus there), and your watch should stop.
        
You aren't overswinging unless the club actually flies out of your hand (except on the drive, where this is normal), or the head comes off, or you finish your follow-through on your hands and knees (unless it's a long-iron, in which case this position is okay).
        
I know what you're going to say.  Why doesn't Freddie Couples swing hard and really crush the ball?  Well, think about it.  What is the use of a 725-yard drive on a 390-yard par-4?