Rinker’s Golf Tips Johnny Miller had a really weak left and right hand grip when he was known as the best short iron player in the game. The advantage was he was already in a supinated position with his left hand starting out and his distance control was incredible. The disadvantage was distance. Johnny grew up in San Francisco and hit balls for two and a half years in the basement of his home. His dad didn’t pick up the game until he was 28 but soon became a decent player and took Johnny to see the pro, John Geertsen Sr., at the very private San Francisco Golf Club. Soon the club would adopt Johnny and he would also become the first junior member at the Olympic Club, without a father who wasn’t already a member. Johnny would “click off everything he should” as an amateur including the Northern California Amateur and the U.S. Junior, before finishing second at the PGA Tour Kaiser Open and 8th in the U.S. Open at Olympic as an amateur. “All good things for strong confidence. Can’t buy confidence.”
I asked Johnny what were the differences in the way the game was taught when he played the Tour vs today and he said they were from the ground up. Yardage books today have fall lines in the greens, and lasered yardages from every conceivable position. In the old days on a par three one caddie would give 149, the next 152, and maybe the third 155. Caddies messed around a little more in the old days and they were not as professional at the caddies today. The teaching today is so much more sophisticated with all the tools they have to use including video, impact stuff, flight, and spin data. The ball goes a lot further today, distance is kind of God-given, and the guys are hitting it 20 yards further with every club.
We had a caller ask how to fix his blocks and duck hooks and Johnny said that “if you get swinging too much inside out you’re hosed” because when you get tired of hitting it to the right you start closing the face too much and lose the ball left. Johnny came up with a nine shot game with his 6-iron to help get his swing neutral or where his path was closer to the target line. He would hit three shots normal trajectory, straight, cut, draw, then a low series of three shots, straight, fade, draw, and then a high series of shots, straight, fade, draw. He would get a score of eight out of nine with the 6-iron and then could get a seven out of nine with his driver. “If you can hit some of those shots on call, it will bring your swing back to neutral, and you won’t be swinging inside out as much. Can’t play the game if you are doing it. Find out which shots you can hit every time and those are the ones you want to hit under pressure or on holes that are tight. Have two to three go to shots, not just hopeful shots.” Johnny would do this game right before he went to the first tee and he would walk over there with confidence. So he had the Trevino Lema fade, crossover Chi Chi shot for draw, Tony Lema draw, and his own swing which went straight. So Johnny had more shots grooved and four people playing. “Figured under pressure all four of them wouldn’t choke.”