Golf's Mr. Fix-it: To Bill Tindall, the swing's the thing

He never seems to tire of seeing another bad golf swing.

"I love being with people, and I love helping them," said Bill Tindall as he walked off the practice tee at the new Members Club at Aldarra.

Tindall, 58, is as much apart of the golf fabric around here as plugged shots in the winter and mountain vistas in the summer.

He won the Seattle city amateur championship as a 14-year-old. He is a former U.S. Junior Amateur champion who in later years would post a record of 18-1-1 competing in 20 Hudson Cup matches.

For years he coached Washington's men's team.

But it is teaching where Tindall puts his energy. He was the head pro for 22 years at Broadmoor Golf Club before becoming the initial pro at Aldarra, the Tom Fazio-designed track located out past Issaquah on the old Boeing Farm.

"This is working out great," said Tindall, who has a view of the practice range from the pro shop.

Aldarra has younger members with lower handicaps than Broadmoor. The emphasis is on golf and more golf in the presence of an extremely rigorous course.

Tindall contends any good golf teacher can assess a student's golf swing after "no more than three swings, and sometimes as quickly as one swing."

He suggested some changes for me in just talking about the swing.

Tindall pulled a five-iron from a set of clubs in the pro shop as we walked into what will be the library at the new clubhouse at Aldarra.

"I talk better with a club in my hand," he said.

Tindall believes the golfer of today is swinging better and hitting the ball better than ever before. He cites better equipment and better teaching methods as having had an effect.

"But, you know," he said, "`today's players aren't scoring any better than we did years ago. It has to do with less attention on the short game, the shots you need to hit from 100 yards in."

There is, in fact, hitting the ball well and scoring, at times seemingly at odds with each other.

Tindall believes that if the could limit some players to just three clubs — a 6-iron, a sand wedge and a putter — they would score better than with their full complement of Titanium woods and sweet-spot irons.

"The first hole here is a good example," he said. "I tell members if they have more than 200 yards to the green after their drives to hit a 9-iron short of the sand trap on the right and the water on the left, and then hit a wedge to the green.

"The game needs to be fun. I understand people wanting to hit drivers and pound balls on the range, but if they want to score they need to manage what they do."

After more than 30 years of teaching, Tindall talks about many of the same things everyone else does: a good grip, a good stance, proper alignment and, more than anything, good balance.

"I think if I wrote a book on teaching golf it would be, 'A good grip never caused a bad shot.' Compensations that stem from a bad grip can haunt you forever," he said.

Tindall likes students to visualize a gymnast finishing a routine, flipping through the air only to land in perfect, unwavering balance.

He calls it "sticking the swing."

"How many times to do you finish your golf swing in perfect balance," he said. "You might do it 30 or 40 times on the practice range but only three or four times in a round on the course.

"Especially if you have a lot of uphill-downhill and sidehill lies."

Tindall looks for what is causing bad mechanics. It can be a poor grip that stifles a good weight shift. Or improper alignment exacerbating a slice or a hook.

One thing leads to another to the point that fixing "another" often does little good.

"Golfers have tendencies, some built up over the years like scar tissue," he said. "Slicers aim left, and hookers aim right. Both only accentuate the problem.

"Lining up to the target is not easy. You can't trust your eyes. I've lined up to the right forever."

The glut of information available to golfers, from magazines to videos to the Golf Channel, can be a problem, said Tindall.

"Some people get so fixated on doing something they've read or heard that it keeps them from making an on-balance, athletic swing," he said.

Some examples: that the left arm must be straight with the club. Or that the rotation of the hips must be restricted to get more distance.

Or that the elbow must be tucked in, or the weight on the inside of the right foot on the backswing. Or that the club must be "swept back low and slow."

"People say you need to get behind the ball to hit it," said Tindall. "That's fine unless you're hitting a driver and the ball is positioned well forward in your stance. In that case, you need to get behind what is the center of your stance."

Tindall believes that a golfer will never be rewarded for his swing if he doesn't transfer his weight properly back to the right side, and then to the left.

"If you keep your left arm straight with the club then you'll never be able to get your weight off your left side," he said. "Restricting the hips might work for Tiger Woods, but most people don't have that kind of flexibility."

Tindall talks about setting the club on the backswing instead of sweeping it.

He makes complicated stuff sound simple. He knows that we'll all go back to doing it the way we used to if we aren't ever alert to our tendencies.

Off he goes to fix one more bad swing. A life's work well done.