The Venturi Analysis: Learning Better Golf from the Champions

The beauty of receiving instruction in print is, if forgotten or confused, it can be easily and accurately reviewed. Through the able assistance of wordsmith Al Barkow, Ken Venturi has created a one-of-a-kind tool kit for the do-it-yourselfer: crisp, precise explanation accompanying pages of stop-action photographic sequences of the best tour professionals.

Statistics show few golfers take regular lessons from a pro—and even fewer realize the full benefits they should from the instruction. Later, the hapless pupil is mocked by his friend, who sees his erratic play as another example of failed instruction, and vows to “figure it out myself.” How do live lessons work? Assuming the participants are eager to succeed, the pro must assess the pupil accurately, devise a plan proper to the circumstances, and transfer that information. The student must grasp the true meanings of the teacher, internally format the plan, and animate the thoughts in the form of a golf swing. Phew! It is expecting a great deal that all these thoughts and words going back and forth to be understood accurately. The reason why lessons do not take is communication breakdown.*(see below)

The Venturi Analysis succeeds because Ken Venturi is an excellent communicator. He learned to analyze shots with the help of Byron Nelson, a talent that served him well all the way to the top of the CBS broadcast tower, where he honed his verbal skills. As a player, Venturi had to compensate for average length with superior shot-making ability. He was widely known as one who “worked” the ball, shaping it right or left, high or low, as the situation dictated. Venturi brings this combination of skill, experience, analytical powers, and verbal exactitude to critique the best pros and offer powerful instruction.

Since the dawn of golf, the game has been learned through observation and imitation. It is a natural process well suited to mankind’s individualism. Although the top tour pros all have tremendous scoring skills, Venturi knows even these experts all have different swings. The common denominator is their adherence to the fundamentals. The starting and ending points of the book emphasize this thought: Simplicity is good and everyone has a swing unique to them. As a corollary to the first factor—simplicity—Venturi irrevocably asserts that the single most important element of the golf swing is “the position of the body at address before the swing starts.” Tips entitled A Stroke of Venturi are scattered throughout the book and have the importance of proper address as a reccurring theme: good solid advice.

Venturi points out many instances where aspects of top professional’s swings are wrong, awkward, contrary—just like our swings—and explains what else happens to compensate for the deviation from the ideal. The photographs clearly show some very different, complicated swings, which nevertheless work extremely well. There is true confidence built by the knowledge that we are supposed to be individualistic in our swings; it is just the nature of golf. By identifying pros with swing traits similar to our own, The Venturi Analysis offers an enjoyable and timeless way to work on your swing. Always welcome from Venturi is his no-nonsense approach: The reasons the pros are so good is they hit 100 balls to our one and have grooved those quirky hitches in their swings through years of practice; more importantly, they are fierce competitors who like playing for money—especially when it is someone else’s.

* One of the funniest descriptions of the mental side of golf was written by George Plimpton in The Bogey Man (a Classics of Golf title), when he explains: “I often sense as I commit myself to a golf swing that my body changes its corporeal status completely and becomes a mechanical entity, built of tubes and conduits, and boiler rooms here and there, with big dials and gauges to check, a Brobdingnagian structure put together by a team of brilliant engineers but manned largely by a dispirited, eccentric group of dissolutes—men with drinking problems, who do not see very well, and who are plagued by liver complaints.”

The Venturi Analysis: Learning Better Golf from the Champions by Ken Venturi with Al Barkow.
New York: Atheneum, first edition 1981, 160 pages, illustrated, cloth,. Foreword by Byron Nelson.
Norwalk, CT: Classics of Golf 1985, 160 pages, illustrated, cloth. Foreword by Herbert Warren Wind, Afterword by Ed Sneed.

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