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How to Learn Single-Plane Golf
You are witnessing one of my proudest moments in the role as SportsEdTV’s editor that is occurring right now as I keystroke a welcoming blog about one of golf's unsung heroes, a friend and longtime colleague, Todd Graves.
Todd is SportsEdTV’s newest senior contributor and a quiet, consistent disrupter in the game of golf.
He is undoubtedly the authority on the single-plane way of striking a golf ball that many will recognize as the newly popular way that Bryson De Chambeau hits his amazing golf shots.
Well, when Bryson was two years old, Todd Graves showed the world the single-plane way to golf.
As Todd’s better-than-most golfing career plateaued after collegiate competition with the golf renowned Oklahoma Sooner team and a pro career on Asian and Canadian tours, he turned to golf gurus for help, to no avail.
Serendipity introduced Todd Graves to Murray “Moe” Norman, whose self-taught single-plane way of hitting a ball on the ground with a stick comes within a hairsbreadth of golf nirvana.
Moe Norman, to aficionados of golf, is famous for his unerring ball striking, as testified by others of similar ilk, including Lee Trevino, Ken Venturi, and even Tiger Woods who said he wanted to own his swing like Moe did.
Moe Norman's quirky behavior brought him disfavor from golf bishops and the media treated him as a golfing enigma—a perfect mentoring pairing when the two challenge-the-status-quo personalities collided in a continuing passionate pursuit of golf’s Holy Grail.
Todd and I met in 1995 when introduced by Jack Kuykendall, a 20th Century brainiac version of Chambeau without Bryson’s talent who was in the process of being bailed out by salt-of-the-earth investor Larry Olson of Chicago.
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Larry put up the money for Todd and me to make Golf Reform Is At Hand instruction, which soon blew past Larry’s financial pain point, and another investor group paid us to develop A Lifetime of Better Golf a refined package of Moe’s single plane in a production partnership with Golf Digest.
Promoted on a budget-busting Golf Channel infomercial, the project and its fallible you-can't-play-single plane-without-our-special-golf-clubs flopped into eventual bankruptcy.
It was during that painful time that Todd and I fell away from the project, me to my keyboard, and Todd, to create a golf school teaching Moe’s way.
Todd’s microscopic understanding of Moe’s Way and single plane golf has today been absorbed in one form or another by a million and a half single-plane curious golfers, and personally hands-on experienced by more than 7,000 golfers in Graves Golf clinics, lectures, and camps in Florida, Oklahoma, and across North America.
Todd’s nearly 25 years of study, dissection, and personal Moe Norman absorption begat, The Single Plane Golf Swing a must-own impeccably produced compilation with stunning understandable graphics.
Todd’s relationship with Moe Norman continued until Moe left to enjoy other holy grails in 2004 and their last round together is recounted in an archive that Todd curates which holds a granular collection of Moe Norman stories many of which constitute the legendary pearls accorded only an eager protégé.
Many of those stories and other Todd and Moe Norman salutes are part of a docu/movie The Feeling of Greatness which Rainman Oscar winner Barry Murrow and Todd are leading.
For SportsEdTV golf audiences, our presentation of single plane sharing by Todd nearly completes the circle of golf learning, an all ways and always commitment to our community.
And if nothing else, this will illuminate yet another of the fascinating allures of golf that has historically captivated the curiosity, imagination, and passion of players since colf moved from the frozen Netherland canals to the Scottish lowlands.
