Blog

9 Jul 2014 Corina Pelloni

Helping your business by helping your student

One of the things that fascinates me the most about the golf business, and there is a lot, is that even golf teachers and golf professionals don’t understand the avenues available through the big name original equipment manufacturers to acquire the correct equipment without buying thousands of dollars of poorly matched equipment. It is an established fact that, through years of research by many different research firms, that the average golf consumer has a ”golf budget”:  greens fees, lessons, and equipment. Golf teaching professionals that do not help their students get the right equipment are unwittingly hurting their own business. How? Very simple. When the average golfer buys a mass-produced golf club that doesn’t work with their swing and ball flight, they are wasting a good chunk of their golf budget. Once again, through research, we know that these “off-the-rack golfers” don’t take that many lessons. So, the answer is very simple, and most long-term teachers know this. If they don’t buy the right equipment, they buy more clubs. Hooray for the massive corporations; bad news for the teaching professional. That fourth driver in the last year that Joe Golfer bought could have been spent on instruction. Now, not everyone would spend that on lessons, but a surprising majority would. Personally, I can tell you honestly there were hundreds of times over the years students would pay for a series a lessons after a club fitting session with me, relieved at finding the correct equipment and the specs that worked with their swing and ball flight. They spent that extra golf money with ME! Not for the third set of irons in six months at the mammoth golf retail store. It’s the same as you may have heard about the large casinos in Vegas. How do you think they got so big? The most pressing problem is that even golf professionals don’t know that every OEM has a custom department in their assembly facility. Two companies, Ping and Mizuno, generate 80% of their sales through their custom department. Basically, iron sets, drivers, wedges, hybrids, and even putters are assembled two ways, not counting the tour department that takes care of the obvious. One of the components, and the most profitable one, for all companies is the component of the company that produces one type of shaft, one lie angle, one length, one static weight, one swing weight, one loft, one grip size and one set makeup – the dreaded “off-the-rack” set: mass-produced, boxed up and sent to the large big box stores to sell off the shelf to the uneducated golfer by the uneducated retail clerk. Or, even worse, by the uninformed golf professional. One of the worst things about these clubs is the inexpensive and poorly designed “stock” shafts used. Of course, among other things, they just have one-size-fits-all specifications. Let me ask you something. Have you ever seen two identical golf swings? Same path and face angle? Same angle of attack, same tempo? Same club head speed? Same toe deflection? Take all of those variables and mix them up. Are you serious? Do you really think there are two golfers that have all of those variables exactly the same? The other component of the OEMs’ manufacturing occurs in the custom department. To the average golfer, this sounds expensive, right? Wrong. Most OEMs offer no-charge shaft upgrades on many shafts. For example, one of the largest companies in the history of the golf equipment industry offers five different aftermarket shafts on all of their iron sets for FREE. You could fit you your students to a different lie, different loft, upgraded aftermarket shafts that fits them better (and better quality, by the way), different size grip, and the cost would be…FREE! Yes, that’s right, for those that don’t know. All the OEMs offer no-extra-charge custom-made clubs, woods, irons, putters, and hybrids through their CUSTOM department. Some OEMs charge a minimal amount for some shafts, $3 to $10 per club. All other specs, including grip size, are FREE. Do they make the same profit on the custom department sets? Of course not. That’s why they don’t advertise it. Even the sales reps push off-the-rack clubs at demo days. Educate yourself. Educated your golfer. Sell more series, and at the same time, make your golfer better by helping them get better-fit equipment. They will be grateful, and you will be a better teaching professional. The massive-size conglomerates will make a little less profit. So, the star tour player gets 8 mil this year instead of 9 mil. Do you really care? I know your student won’t.

2 Jul 2014 Thomas Wartelle, USGTF Level IV Member

LEARNING A SKILL

LEARNING A SKILL, PART 1 A successful teacher can transmit his information to the student in the most effective manner possible. To help achieve this goal, it is important to understand how the student receives the information the teachers is sending him. Rather than delve into theories of learning a skill, use simple techniques to reach a student without the scientific clutter, although the goals are the same. Sports performance is basically how one’s psychomotor skills react to achieve a goal. The term “muscle memory” is misleading. Information is stored in the body’s computer – the brain. The brain is what stores memories. Many sports have similar actions and movements. All sports that require body rotation rely on the same core muscles as the source of stability and power. Therefore, when a student has already performed other sports, often it is easy to transmit the same images to the golf swing. Too often a teacher pushes a student with excessive images and thoughts that lead to “overload.” Try this experiment. Hand a beginning golfer a golf club and tell him to hit the ball. That’s all. Most of the time, they will make contact. LEARNING A SKILL, PART 2 The golf swing is basically a natural movement. When a child picks up a stick and swings at a pine cone, nobody explains the techniques of “hitting a pine cone.” Therefore, in your teaching, try to start as basic as possible. Let the movement begin naturally and let it ingrain with repetition. In many cases, less is more. The same can be said with advanced golfers. Often, good golfer feels as if a swing change is a huge undertaking, when in reality, it might be as simple as a few centimeters. Even advanced golfers should work on simple drills and exercises to “age” a swing change. For example, I have a client who is a scratch golfer. Since he was a child, he had a huge loop in his swing. He came to me one day and said, “The loop in my swing is gone! I have worked it out! Watch me hit some balls, Pro.” As I watched a few shots, every ball was straight down the middle, but the loop was still there. In his mind it was gone and his performance was elevated. For the next year, we didn’t let him see his video and I gradually worked the loop out little by little. He was hardly aware of it because I kept the drills simple, never more than one exercise at a time. Important points to remember when teaching a skill: • Let natural ability guide your students. • Limit the amount of information, especially with beginner golfers. Old ingrained habits can be changed. It is simply a matter of: • Understanding the fault. • Finding a simple, effective exercise or thought to correct the fault. • Repeating and aging the correct movement. The brain is a powerful instrument. If we can find a simple way to correct a fault, we can have immediate results. But, often when a golfer finds a way to correct a fault, he thinks that after a few shots that all is cured. In reality, to produce a correct repeating motion one has to: • Age the correct motion until it is ingrained, and / or • Have a clear mental focus with a simple thought to produce the correct movement.

2 Jul 2014 Corina Pelloni

LEARNING A SKILL

LEARNING A SKILL, PART 1 A successful teacher can transmit his information to the student in the most effective manner possible. To help achieve this goal, it is important to understand how the student receives the information the teachers is sending him. Rather than delve into theories of learning a skill, use simple techniques to reach a student without the scientific clutter, although the goals are the same. Sports performance is basically how one’s psychomotor skills react to achieve a goal. The term “muscle memory” is misleading. Information is stored in the body’s computer – the brain. The brain is what stores memories. Many sports have similar actions and movements. All sports that require body rotation rely on the same core muscles as the source of stability and power. Therefore, when a student has already performed other sports, often it is easy to transmit the same images to the golf swing. Too often a teacher pushes a student with excessive images and thoughts that lead to “overload.” Try this experiment. Hand a beginning golfer a golf club and tell him to hit the ball. That’s all. Most of the time, they will make contact. LEARNING A SKILL, PART 2 The golf swing is basically a natural movement. When a child picks up a stick and swings at a pine cone, nobody explains the techniques of “hitting a pine cone.” Therefore, in your teaching, try to start as basic as possible. Let the movement begin naturally and let it ingrain with repetition. In many cases, less is more. The same can be said with advanced golfers. Often, good golfer feels as if a swing change is a huge undertaking, when in reality, it might be as simple as a few centimeters. Even advanced golfers should work on simple drills and exercises to “age” a swing change. For example, I have a client who is a scratch golfer. Since he was a child, he had a huge loop in his swing. He came to me one day and said, “The loop in my swing is gone! I have worked it out! Watch me hit some balls, Pro.” As I watched a few shots, every ball was straight down the middle, but the loop was still there. In his mind it was gone and his performance was elevated. For the next year, we didn’t let him see his video and I gradually worked the loop out little by little. He was hardly aware of it because I kept the drills simple, never more than one exercise at a time. Important points to remember when teaching a skill: • Let natural ability guide your students. • Limit the amount of information, especially with beginner golfers. Old ingrained habits can be changed. It is simply a matter of: • Understanding the fault. • Finding a simple, effective exercise or thought to correct the fault. • Repeating and aging the correct movement. The brain is a powerful instrument. If we can find a simple way to correct a fault, we can have immediate results. But, often when a golfer finds a way to correct a fault, he thinks that after a few shots that all is cured. In reality, to produce a correct repeating motion one has to: • Age the correct motion until it is ingrained, and / or • Have a clear mental focus with a simple thought to produce the correct movement.

2 Jul 2014 Corina Pelloni

PINEHURST PROVES LUSH IS NOT A NECESSITY

There was a lot of brown showing in the recent U.S. Opens hosted at Pinehurst #2, along with several weeds around the edges of the course. On television, it looked a little ragged compared to most American golf courses that host tournaments on a weekly basis. In reality, most municipal courses in the country look more like Pinehurst than Augusta, and experience unfair criticism as a result. It takes a lot of water to keep grass green on the fairways, and water is becoming more and more a commodity we should not waste. Pinehurst now uses 70 percent less water per year, and from what I could see, the course played very well and was enjoyed by all the participants. The golf courses I grew up on did not get irrigation systems until the late ‘60s, and it was common for the fairways to turn brown during hot, dry summers. No one complained as long as the greens were good. Oftentimes, we looked forward to the browning, because 230-yard drives were rolling out to 260 or more. In 1968, the primary course I grew up on got a new watering system. After all, back then everything was cheap. Hershey bars were a nickel. Water was free, or at least we thought so. Within a few years, if so much as a brown spot showed up on the course, the members were screaming. The term “dirt track” became the tag on any course that did not drown their fairways with liquid refreshment. We got spoiled and failed to think of the future. Even now, very few want to bite the bullet and step back a bit. Maybe it will take something like a brown U.S. Open to open our eyes.