Gov. John Connally Grips His White Stetson Hat at Z-272

[John Corbett]

That is, of course, former Masters champion Hideki Matsuyama. There are reams of golf articles about the extent to which pros turn their shoulders while restricting their hip turn. It's called the X Factor. You're right, there's nothing I don't know.

I've known about the X-factor for years. I believe Jim McLain was the one who first talked about it back in the 1980s. Hideki Matsuyama is a well-conditioned professional athlete and most pro golfers spend hours in the fitness trailer working on their flexibility to allow them to move their bodies in ways the human body wasn't evolved to doing. Even at that Matsuyama's hips are not stationary. They have turned. Just not as much as the shoulders. My comment had to do with the relation of the shoulders to the torso, not the hips.  As your photo shows, Matsuyama's shoulders and torso have turned as a unit.

I just got done watching the PGA championship. Unbelievable performance by Aaron Rai. Throughout the weekend, CBS used technology to measure the shoulder and hip turns of various golfers and how they compared to the Tour average. It was interesting but not of much use to me. If I tried to make that big a turn, I would end up in traction.

[Lance Payette]

I've known about the X-factor for years. I believe Jim McLain was the one who first talked about it back in the 1980s. Hideki Matsuyama is a well-conditioned professional athlete and most pro golfers spend hours in the fitness trailer working on their flexibility to allow them to move their bodies in ways the human body wasn't evolved to doing. Even at that Matsuyama's hips are not stationary. They have turned. Just not as much as the shoulders. My comment had to do with the relation of the shoulders to the torso, not the hips.  As your photo shows, Matsuyama's shoulders and torso have turned as a unit.

I just got done watching the PGA championship. Unbelievable performance by Aaron Rai. Throughout the weekend, CBS used technology to measure the shoulder and hip turns of various golfers and how they compared to the Tour average. It was interesting but not of much use to me. If I tried to make that big a turn, I would end up in traction.

As they used to say when I was an avid runner, "If you want to be an elite runner, choose your parents carefully." At the elite level of all sports, genetics is the one factor that can't be overcome. My father and half-brother were both professional golfers (not tour players) and I worked at PING, but I was never better than "sometimes I break 80" due largely to vision and back problems. There are sooooo many players who are "really good" or even "really, really good" but just do not have what it takes to play at the elite level - something that's difficult to admit to yourself. I used to stand in front of a mirror and try to contort myself into Ben Hogan's positions in his Power Golf-era swing before the bus accident. Not swinging, just standing there. I couldn't come close. When Tiger Woods was tested at the Stanford athletic department, he was off the scale in comparison to other athletes, not just golfers. Most modern instruction is for 20-year-olds and irrelevant (or harmful) for the rest of us.

Butch Harmon once said "Give me 100 six-year-olds who have never seen a golf club. I will tell you at the end of a week which of them, if any, has the potential to play tour-level golf." I also had a funny experience when I was 14. I visited my grandmother, who was a member of Kansas City Country Club. I played the course twice, thought it was harder than hell, and probably shot 97 or higher; I remember I ran out of balls the first round. Looking at the handicap sheet in the locker room, one guy had posted consistently 67-67-67-64-65 and was a +3 handicap. I asked "What's a +3 handicap?" (having no idea there even was such a thing as + handicap). The pro, Stan Thirsk, said "Oh, that means he averages several strokes under par - and the funny thing is, he's exactly the same age as you." Tom Watson. Genetics.

I always had a dream that technology would create some sort of plastic shell I could step into that would duplicate Tiger Woods' swing so I could experience what it felt like for five balls. Even those of us who worked at PING and saw pros every day agreed that it all seemed almost magical when a long-hitting pro took a swing that looked not much different from ours but the results looked jaw-droppingly different (and this was in the persimmon driver, balata ball era).

[Zeon Mason]

If it’s fact that a whole bullet went thru JC’s right hand shattering his wrist bone and exited from the bottom of his palm, then a Z270 bullet exiting the right side of his chest and going thru his right hand has maybe about 1.5 ft? to travel to hit JC’s left inner thigh IF his left leg was turned right just as his right leg probably was.

What I’m suggesting is that maybe a Z190 shot exiting JFK missed JC entirely not even hitting his thigh because both his legs were turned right. Thus the rotated shoulder position at Z190 as per Andrew’s 3d figure drawing would be a much less strenuous on the torso.

And if that is plausible, then at Z270, JC’s left leg turned right also, would theoretically be in line of the Z270 bullet skewing thru JCs chest, and exiting and then it goes thru the right hand which was UP and NEXT to his chest with the palm rotated facing outwards as he held that hat upside down.

There would no end over end spinning of the bullet entering JCs wrist because his hand is  against his chest or very close to it  at Z270. Then it’s a question if it can be aligned to hit JCs left thigh if there was some more deflection cause by the wrist bone.

So a revised LN scenario is as follows:

1. Z190 bullet went  thru JFK, exited , and missed JC entirely because he had both his legs turned right.  The bullet went into the middle lower front seat cushion and springs at 1500ft/sec, was slowed down enough to either stop there or continued thru and stopped in the lower dashboard. That bullet was not found.

2. Z270 bullet goes thru JCs chest, then immediately thru his right hand as it was up and next to his chest. The bullet then exited and defected (or not) and hit  JCs left thigh at the reduced velocity. The bullet fell out then latter on the stretcher as in the conventional WC theory.

[John Corbett]

As they used to say when I was an avid runner, "If you want to be an elite runner, choose your parents carefully." At the elite level of all sports, genetics is the one factor that can't be overcome. My father and half-brother were both professional golfers (not tour players) and I worked at PING, but I was never better than "sometimes I break 80" due largely to vision and back problems. There are sooooo many players who are "really good" or even "really, really good" but just do not have what it takes to play at the elite level - something that's difficult to admit to yourself. I used to stand in front of a mirror and try to contort myself into Ben Hogan's positions in his Power Golf-era swing before the bus accident. Not swinging, just standing there. I couldn't come close. When Tiger Woods was tested at the Stanford athletic department, he was off the scale in comparison to other athletes, not just golfers. Most modern instruction is for 20-year-olds and irrelevant (or harmful) for the rest of us.

Butch Harmon once said "Give me 100 six-year-olds who have never seen a golf club. I will tell you at the end of a week which of them, if any, has the potential to play tour-level golf." I also had a funny experience when I was 14. I visited my grandmother, who was a member of Kansas City Country Club. I played the course twice, thought it was harder than hell, and probably shot 97 or higher; I remember I ran out of balls the first round. Looking at the handicap sheet in the locker room, one guy had posted consistently 67-67-67-64-65 and was a +3 handicap. I asked "What's a +3 handicap?" (having no idea there even was such a thing as + handicap). The pro, Stan Thirsk, said "Oh, that means he averages several strokes under par - and the funny thing is, he's exactly the same age as you." Tom Watson. Genetics.

I always had a dream that technology would create some sort of plastic shell I could step into that would duplicate Tiger Woods' swing so I could experience what it felt like for five balls. Even those of us who worked at PING and saw pros every day agreed that it all seemed almost magical when a long-hitting pro took a swing that looked not much different from ours but the results looked jaw-droppingly different (and this was in the persimmon driver, balata ball era).

I briefly got down to a 3 handicap and kept a 4 for a couple years but as I aged, I gradually went up to double digits. I came close to shooting my age a couple years ago. I missed a 25 footer for birdie to miss by a stroke. Another time I birdied 2 of the last 3 holes to miss by a shot. The final hole I chipped in from about 15 years right of the green so I never threatened to hit the magic number. I've always thought golf was one sport where you could become very good through acquired skill rather than innate athletic ability but as you observed, there is a ceiling that most people could never break through. I read a long time ago that if you can't consistently shoot 65 on your home course, don't even bother going to the Q-school. I used to be part of a pot game on weekends of guys 40+ years old. One of them had a son who won a high school state championship, played college golf for a few years then tried it on the mini-tours. He would occasionally come out and play with us and had no trouble breaking 70. I saw him come out one day with a bad hangover. Our first hole is a 500 yard par-5 and he cold topped his first two shots. He than took out a 3 wood and knocked his third shot on the green from about 270 and made birdie. He shot 67 that day. He played on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour. I think it started out as the Hogan Tour. He never won enough to break even. He never came close to getting his card on the big tour. He did become pals with Nolan Henke on the Hogan Tour and caddied for him for a while but that was the only way he got on the big tour.

[John Corbett]

If it’s fact that a whole bullet went thru JC’s right hand shattering his wrist bone and exited from the bottom of his palm, then a Z270 bullet exiting the right side of his chest and going thru his right hand has maybe about 1.5 ft? to travel to hit JC’s left inner thigh IF his left leg was turned right just as his right leg probably was.

What I’m suggesting is that maybe a Z190 shot exiting JFK missed JC entirely not even hitting his thigh because both his legs were turned right. Thus the rotated shoulder position at Z190 as per Andrew’s 3d figure drawing would be a much less strenuous on the torso.

And if that is plausible, then at Z270, JC’s left leg turned right also, would theoretically be in line of the Z270 bullet skewing thru JCs chest, and exiting and then it goes thru the right hand which was UP and NEXT to his chest with the palm rotated facing outwards as he held that hat upside down.

There would no end over end spinning of the bullet entering JCs wrist because his hand is  against his chest or very close to it  at Z270. Then it’s a question if it can be aligned to hit JCs left thigh if there was some more deflection cause by the wrist bone.

So a revised LN scenario is as follows:

1. Z190 bullet went  thru JFK, exited , and missed JC entirely because he had both his legs turned right.  The bullet went into the middle lower front seat cushion and springs at 1500ft/sec, was slowed down enough to either stop there or continued thru and stopped in the lower dashboard. That bullet was not found.

2. Z270 bullet goes thru JCs chest, then immediately thru his right hand as it was up and next to his chest. The bullet then exited and defected (or not) and hit  JCs left thigh at the reduced velocity. The bullet fell out then latter on the stretcher as in the conventional WC theory.

I don't think it is remotely plausible that happened. For one, Oswald would have to shoot through the tree at Z190. Why would he do that when he'd have a clear shot a little more than 1 second later. It would also mean Oswald fired a precise head shot in the bare minimum of 2.3 seconds after firing his second shot. I don't see any way the bullet that exited JFK's throat could have missed JBC on either side of him. Most of all, the Z-film shows us JFK and JBC both reacting simultaneously at Z226 when the both flipped their arms upward. That is the clincher for the SBT and shoots down all alternative scenarios.

[Andrew Mason]

I don't think it is remotely plausible that happened. For one, Oswald would have to shoot through the tree at Z190. Why would he do that when he'd have a clear shot a little more than 1 second later. It would also mean Oswald fired a precise head shot in the bare minimum of 2.3 seconds after firing his second shot. I don't see any way the bullet that exited JFK's throat could have missed JBC on either side of him. Most of all, the Z-film shows us JFK and JBC both reacting simultaneously at Z226 when the both flipped their arms upward. That is the clincher for the SBT and shoots down all alternative scenarios.

You must be right because if that was the first shot that JFK is reacting to then JBC would not be reacting to being hit by it as he "clearly" is doing by z228.  If it was the first shot JBC would be reacting to it by turning around to try to see JFK and then shouting "oh, no, no" (as Nellie said he did before the second shot and, as Jackie said, this drew her attention to the Governor). And we can see that there is nothing like that occurring after z226.

[Lance Payette]

I briefly got down to a 3 handicap and kept a 4 for a couple years but as I aged, I gradually went up to double digits. I came close to shooting my age a couple years ago. I missed a 25 footer for birdie to miss by a stroke. Another time I birdied 2 of the last 3 holes to miss by a shot. The final hole I chipped in from about 15 years right of the green so I never threatened to hit the magic number. I've always thought golf was one sport where you could become very good through acquired skill rather than innate athletic ability but as you observed, there is a ceiling that most people could never break through. I read a long time ago that if you can't consistently shoot 65 on your home course, don't even bother going to the Q-school. I used to be part of a pot game on weekends of guys 40+ years old. One of them had a son who won a high school state championship, played college golf for a few years then tried it on the mini-tours. He would occasionally come out and play with us and had no trouble breaking 70. I saw him come out one day with a bad hangover. Our first hole is a 500 yard par-5 and he cold topped his first two shots. He than took out a 3 wood and knocked his third shot on the green from about 270 and made birdie. He shot 67 that day. He played on what is now the Korn Ferry Tour. I think it started out as the Hogan Tour. He never won enough to break even. He never came close to getting his card on the big tour. He did become pals with Nolan Henke on the Hogan Tour and caddied for him for a while but that was the only way he got on the big tour.

And then you look at the career of someone like Kuchar or Furyk and say, "How is this possible?"

One of my favorite stories is from the early says of the senior tour, when unlikely characters like Walt Zembriski were winning. There was a phenomenon of 50+ year olds who said, "I've played to a 2 handicap for years just hitting balls on Wednesday and playing on Sunday. I'll bet if I worked at it 7 days a week, I could compete out there." So they'd quit their insurance jobs and study, practice and play 7 days a week. At the end of the year, their handicap was now 5.  I'm going to play today at a course where I have shot par 72 once and 73 numerous times. 76 would be my age. I will be happy with 85.