Golfing Machine

Rating:
Summary: A must for any golf library
Review: As an Authorized Instructor of "The Golfing Machine" my opinions are slightly baised. However, until I read and learned the book I was going nowhere as a golf professional. My teaching "method" was based on whatever came out in the latest edition of Golf Digest. This is not a book of how but one of why. Mr Kelley spent 40 years of his life researching the golf swing and found things that the majority of teaching professionals have not found until recently using high tech gadgets. Mr Kelley did this with no video cameras, biomechanic aparatus, etc. He used just plain geometry, and physics. The most important part of the book deals with how to read and study it. Mr Kelley tells the reader exactly how to do this on roman numerial page X. I have yet to meet anyone that followed his instructions! So if you buy this book make sure that you do.

Rating:
Summary: Long Journey
Review: I have a medical degree, am a life master in bridge, and have studied classical music and piano for 40 years and despite these self-confessed credentials and experience, I must say that this book is the most incomprehensible thing I've ever attempted to read in my life. If I'd been told it was a hoax, I'd have believed it. From reading this book you would think that the golf swing is more complicated than quantum mechanics, relativity and string theory combined, or that the editor and author were both manic and high on crack cocaine. All right that's a bit strong but you get the point. And continuing in that line, if you have nothing better to do than to attempt to read this book, I would suggest that you need a therapist.

Rating:
Summary: The Force of Golf -- How to understand it
Review: I have been a student of Homer Kelley's Golfing Machine since 1977. The problem some people have with the book is following directions. When a student follows Homer's directions on Roman numeral X (in the preface) they will find the book easy to understand. Yes it takes patience and yes it takes time, however, like Homer says "if you work out one step each week -- or month -- for the next two years ... at the very worst it's the guided struggle versus a blind struggle. With this book you can do a lot of learning in your armchair." Thanks Homer for all your help!! This is the only book I and my staff use to teach golf.

Rating:
Summary: Long Journey
Review: This book is not for the faint of heart. You truly have to be a detailed/meticulous person who has many years of concentrated devotion to the game of golf to understand this book and the physics behind the golf swing. It is a great handbook for INSTRUCTORS, which is where most of its praise comes from, not casual players of the game who don't have their entire life devoted to the sport. Any truly great player that has become successful with this book has done so through hours of instruction with a certified golfing machine instructor. Its a waste of time and money for someone to go about it by himself.

Rating:
Summary: Difficult read, and odd writing style
Review: Ths book contains lots of information about what 'ought to' happen in order to make a good golf swing. However, the writing style is so ungrammatical as to make the information inaccessible to me. I had to focus so hard on reading the words that I was unable to grasp the essential concepts that Kelly is trying to get across.

Rating:
Summary: Mr. Kelley is the Charles Darwin and Isaac Newton of golf
Review: Words cannot express what this book has done for golf. Kelley's work is masterpiece. Golf instruction tends to be theory and opinion. There is absolutely no theory or opinion in the book. It is completely fact, it will remain that way as long as the basic laws of physics and geometry hold true. Just as there are thousands of philosophies and religons but only one science, there is also thousands of different golf books but only one Golfing Machine. It is not an easy read but that is because so much information is reduced to a 200 page handbook. It is basically golf swing engineering. All golf strokes have been divided into 24 components, three zones, 12 sections and three functions. Unfortunatly, just as the only people who can truly appreciate Einstein are those who have studied relativity, the only people who can appreciate the genious of Homer Kelley are the ones who have unlocked the information held within this book. Needless to say, I highly recommend it.