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26 Jan 2018 admin

Teaching Outside the Box

By David Vaught USGTF Master Golf Teaching Professional® – Vista, California

As often happens in other sports or even walks of life, humans tend to naturally repeat behaviors or actions they see at a young age. Far too often, we accept the “way it’s always been done” as our excuse for continuing to do things the same way we have experienced it or seen it done.

As this relates to golf, and more specifically golf instruction, we should ask ourselves why the average lesson looks basically the same today as it did in 1950: Pile of balls, a set amount of time, teacher one-on-one with a golfer hoping to improve, or at least enjoy the game more. For the most part, it is like getting your haircut or getting a manicure. Granted, we do have more technology and more crazy devices than our golf teaching ancestors did, yet essentially, we have just accepted that the 30- to 45-minute lesson on the range is the way you do it. Why do it differently than it has always been done?

If we are truly honest with ourselves, it is just easier to follow the herd. Yet, we see professors and successful instructors in our schools and universities changing and evolving instruction every day. Go into an accomplished teacher’s classroom today and you may not recognize it is school! Your first reaction is to think, what is wrong with the way I learned English or math, a book, a teacher talking at me and me learning verbally? My answer is a lot iswrong with that! People learn all sorts of ways, and golf instructors need to recognize that.

Golf has a history of being behind the times in many aspects. I often like to joke that in golf we are now at about 1980. As an example, we see the USGA and the R&A contemplating big rules changes today, which is very refreshing.

It is important that instruction continues to improve and develop. Challenge old teaching techniques and ideas. That should be your objective as an instructor. How can I reach and assist more students? How can I get them to be excited about learning? How can I improve the experience?

We often think of technique expertise when we imagine what the substance of a good lesson is. And that is valid. But the structure of the lesson, the environment, the adaptive teaching style to the student is just as important. Contemplate your lessons and think outside the box. Help move golf forward into the 21stcentury. After all, we are 18 years in already.

Supervised Practice Times:

Post the times that your paying clients can practice with your supervision. Maybe it’s 6-7p.m., three days a week. Whatever works. Charge a small fee if you feel the need. You are verifying how and what they should be practicing, not giving a personal lesson.

Begin a once- or twice-a-month play league with your paying clients:

Create competition, which will allow you to observe them in a playing setting. That alone will help you tremendously as an instructor if your goal is to help them improve. Nothing brings out “real” like some competition. Plus, they have a great time.

Short Game Competitions:

Use your imagination and set up games, leagues, etc., around the short game for your regular clients. Give away free lessons if they bring a friend. Maybe even putting leagues and challenges. Everyone loves to putt, and you could video their technique under pressure to sell more putting lessons.

Playing the Game Observations:

For beginners or curious golfers, create a once-or twice-a-month follow-along, with the teacher actively on the golf course. They come out to watch you play as you explain the basics of the game for two or three holes. Bring your favorite student along who will help you and be your best advocate. They learn more about what the game is all about, and you create new students.

From these ideas, you get the point. The possibilities are endless. Supervised practice is a great way to help them and to create loyalty with your students. Just use your imagination and remember it is not 1950.

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19 Jan 2018 admin

Balls

By Norm Crerar USGTF Contributing writer – Vernon, British Columbia

I am a casual golfer. I was a 10 handicap at one time, but now am a lot older, creakier and crankier; the handicap is now a multiple of what it once was. As I have mentioned before, I have been teaching skiing for 50 years (some of those years with your esteemed USGTF president). I take golf lessons and really enjoy not only fixing my swing, for at least a short period of time, but discussing the nitty-gritty of teaching and how to be most effective in helping people improve. I read too many golf magazine articles and access too many golf tips on the internet. I have to take a break once in a while and “smell the flowers.”

I also have to confess…I am a bit of a golf ball hound. The resort course my wife and I are members at here in British Columbia, has a lot of knee-high grass next to many of the fairways that would please the eye of any hay farmer. Where there aren’t hay fields, the fairways are surrounded by park like wild lands of trees and shrubs. I have been intimately involved with just about every aspect of this wonderful off-fairways nature offering. When I am having one of those handicap-altering days and am asked, “How was it?” my answer is in the positive: “I had a great day. Lost 12 balls but found 15!”

So, I collect these golf balls and wonder what story each one has to tell. When I need a brain break, I quite often wonder into the tall grass areas near the first tee of one of our resort’s courses. There are always golf balls to be found there, and in great numbers. Golfers, especially out-of-town visitors, are more prone to “first-tee jitters” than regular members. They grip the club too hard, swing too fast, rip it off the top, have 10 too many swing thoughts, and the ball is into the grasses. Do they go looking for it? Most times not as the grass is thick, too far from the cart path, and their buddies have just picked themselves up off the tee box from laughing and loudly telling their friend his “skirt got in the way.” Or, the golfer took a mulligan, the second ball hit the fairway and his playing partners have moved on and are not about to wait for him.

Most of the balls I find off that first tee are brand new. Who would think of not using a new ball to start a golf outing? Many have corporate logos on them. I don’t feel bad pocketing these items as they are usually from a tire company, a car company, an insurance company, etc., where I have spent heaps of money. They didn’t give me any FS (free stuff), so when I pick up the ball, I feel like it belongs to me as I have already paid for it!

Then the wondering sets in. This ball is way off-line. Was it a left-handed golfer slicing, or did that right-handed golfer absolutely yank it? How hard did they swing and how disappointed were they right off the first tee? How was the rest of their day? Was this ball – 50 feet off the tee and 50 feet right – from the cigar-puffing chubby chap with the bad shorts and socks pulled up too high I saw on the driving range? And whom I heard talking about the “Titleest schwag” he got instead of “Titleist corporate gifts”? Or this pink ball 280 yards out and 30 yards right? Did a lady golfer actually hit it that far, or was it one of those NHL hockey lads at the course today that had run out of ammunition or had lost a bet?

There is a member at our club who has had to stop playing golf due to a debilitating illness. His only physical attachment to the golf course is when his wife takes him out in the quiet evenings and they look for golf balls near the fairways. The word is he has found some thousand golf balls. Therapy for him.

As a golf teaching pro, your students may need some therapy time. Suggest that the next time they hit it off-line they should spend a few minutes to find the ball. Chances are they will find two more and know that the people leaving them behind were having a worse day than they were!

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16 Jan 2018 admin

Education Of A Golf Teacher

By Mark Harman USGTF Course Director, Ridgeland, South Carolina

What does it take to become an excellent golf teaching professional? Certainly, there are a number of aspects that come into play, among them playing skill, a desire to learn and help others, and a motivation to become the best one can be at this craft.

USGTF Master Teaching Professional David Vaught from Vista, California, one of the most respected members in our organization, has stated that one of his main motivations for being the best he can be is the desire to never give a bad lesson. In talking with David, you get the sense that he takes what he does for a living very seriously, and it comes through in his interactions with his students. He is undoubtedly one of the most knowledgeable people in regard to golf and the teaching of the game that I have come across.

Another professional who I have always been highly impressed with is CGTF professional David Hill from Montreal, Quebec, Canada. When I hear him speak about the mechanics of the game and its techniques, it’s clear that he has a knowledge well above and beyond that of a large majority of teaching pros whom I’ve encountered. I know how rigorously he has studied the game over the years, which is probably the key to his success.

For me, I started teaching the game in my mid-20s, and although I had a good grasp on the mechanics and some basic cause and effect, I had no practical knowledge teaching the game, save for helping out acquaintances and my college team-mates. I was tasked with instructing beginners, an excellent way for someone to get their feet wet in teaching if they have no formal training. In addition, I had a whole stable of talented and experienced golf teaching professionals from whom I could ask advice, and I wasn’t shy with my myriad of questions.

Still, it took me a couple of years to become what I would consider competent on the lesson tee. I still use a lot of the knowledge today that these fine teachers imparted to me many years ago, but learning to teach golf in this manner is somewhat of a random crapshoot. Had my fellow teachers not been competent, or had they unconventional ideas that didn’t stand up to logical scrutiny, I might have been forced out of the profession long ago.

After these couple of years I mentioned earlier, it became clear to me that there were several basic teaching concepts that presented themselves over and over in every lesson, which is where the USGTF comes into the picture. At the time, the USGTF was rapidly growing beyond what had been initially foreseen, and more golf teachers were needed for the examining staff. Fortunately, I was recommended and my career with the USGTF started in April 1991 at Lehigh Acres, Florida.

The USGTF was unique in that it welcomed all who were competent and confident enough in themselves, instead of requiring an apprenticeship of several years that had little, if anything, to do with teaching. It also for the first time put together a structured program that featured these teaching concepts that took me several years and hundreds of hours of lessons to learn on my own, but in fact could be taught in a matter of days.

As my journey as a USGTF professional continued, I realized I had an obligation to learn as much as I could about various teaching techniques and the methodologies of leading instructors. Nothing was off the table: From full-swing mechanics to short-game skills, from the mental game to motor learning, I knew I had to make an effort to become not just competent, but as good as I could become. It also required me to closely study new schools of thought and not to get entrenched in long-held beliefs that may or may not have been valid.

It also required me to learn something from each and every lesson. Sometimes these takeaways were, and still are, harsh. There are times where I have been utterly unable to help a student, de-spite my best efforts. It is after these lessons that I often wonder what I could have done to better get through to them, to get them to understand how to translate my words, pictures and drills into a feel they could kinesthetically comprehend. I wonder where I went wrong and if there was something I could have done to save the lesson.

Then I remember that no less than David Lead-better and USGTF member Bob Toski, two of the most revered names in teaching history, have ad-mitted publicly that there are times that they, too, have been unable to help certain students for what-ever reason. So I figure if it happens to the best of us, it probably happens to all of us, regardless of our skill or experience.

I remember the late Julius Richardson, the US-GTF’s Teacher of the 20th Century, giving a lady a brief lesson. I mentally went through her mechanical faults as I was watching this and wondered what he would address first. Much to my surprise, he told the lady to relax her shoulders at address. What? That’s it? Certainly that can’t be right, Julius, come on! What about her grip, her backswing and forward swing?

But you know what happened? That lady smacked the heck out of that next ball she hit, and she was so excited. She repeatedly hit shot after shot in a similar manner, and afterwards gave Julius a big hug.

What exactly he saw, I’m still not sure to this day. But it certainly taught me that a rigid way of thinking when it comes to teaching golf is a good way to find little success. And that might be the most valuable lesson I’ve ever learned as a teacher myself.

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12 Jan 2018 admin

The Wisdom of Johnny O

Over the years, as in all walks of life, a wonderful cast of characters has inhabited the USGTF, from both the examining side and the candidate side. These people make indelible impressions on all of us with their uniqueness which makes the fabric of our lives all the more colorful.

One such great character was the late USGTF examiner John Nichols, or “Johnny O” to his friends. He always had a positive outlook on life, upbeat even when adversity might defeat a lesser person. His passion for the game of golf was second to none, and he sought to influence each person he met with that same passion.

John passed away much too young in October 1994 at the age of 47, but for those of us at the USGTF, he will always be remembered. He was an excellent player, having played the Tour in the early 1980s, and had some insightful bits of wisdom that are being shared in writing here for the first time.

Course management – “Make your mistake on the green”

John liked to say this to anyone who failed to get a pitch shot or chip shot on the green. What he meant by this is that if you have a tough up-and-down and your chances of getting up-and-down aren’t that great, make sure the second shot that might not go in is a missed putt (a mistake on the green) and not another missed chip or pitch shot. In other words, get that pitch shot or chip on the green and make sure you have a putt, even if it’s a lengthy one.

John reasoned that it’s easier to make a longer putt than a shorter pitch or chip, so it’s imperative that the second shot for the up-and-down be a putt. How many times have we seen golfers – whether the general public, our students or even ourselves – get too “cute” and try to get a tough pitch shot close to the hole? More often than we care to speculate, such a shot attempt leaves us with another pitch or chip, and sometimes in a worse situation than the original shot left us.

Hit shots with the right hand only

Every now and then, just for fun, John played one-handed using his right hand only. John was remarkably proficient with this method, often making pars and still able to shoot in the 40s for nine holes.

He pointed out that people who come over-the-top are only able to do so because both hands are on the club. If you swing with the right-hand only (for right-handed players), coming over-the-top is virtually impossible. It also teaches the golfer the proper wrist action and late release that so many golfers struggle with.

Swinging with the right hand only produces other benefits. In order to strike the ball cleanly, the golfer must complete his swing to the follow-through. It also teaches the proper clubhead-to-ball relationship at impact. Finally, it helps people learn the proper downswing sequence of lower body, upper body, and arms and hands, because it’s very difficult to swing this way with the arm and hand leading the downswing, as people are able to do with both hands on the club.

Toe the club in for pitch shots from thick rough

Thick rough around the green is a difficult challenge for most players, especially for those who play out of Bermuda grass in the South or in tropical climates. John was okay with the traditional methods of playing this shot, either like a sand explosion shot (where the clubface was opened) or with a square face and a steep angle of descent, but he had a different way of handling this situation. John recommended toeing the club in so that the clubface was closed at a 45° angle, and then taking a normal chip shot swing. By having the toe lead the clubhead into the ball, it would cut through the grass with less resistance. The grass would also open the clubface up to a certain degree, so the golfer doesn’t need to aim farther right to compensate. This shot does take practice, but once you get the hang of it, you might find it ridiculously easy to get the ball fairly close to the hole.

Johnny O’s legacy lives on within the halls of the USGTF and the golfing world. In fact, it’s safe to say that it also lives on in the games of today’s students, because long-timers on the USGTF examining staff are still using his inspiration – and instruction – to influence and teach our current generation of teachers and golfers alike.

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5 Jan 2018 admin

Editorial – Honesty and the Golf Teacher

By: Mark Harman, USGTF National Course Director It’s a dilemma I’ve faced countless times in my golf teaching career, and it’s one that, 28 years later, I still have no good way of handling. I’m referring to how honest I can or should be with some of my students. One of the things that breaks my heart – although only in a teaching sense as this is far from a tragedy – is when a student of mine wants to accomplish something and comes to me for my help, and I can clearly see that they have no hope of doing so. A good example is a former low-handicap older golfer with physical ailments wanting to increase distance and regain their glory days, when it is obvious to me that they cannot do so without undergoing some intense physical therapy and a lot of work away from the driving range. They come to me, hopeful that I can give them the magic move that will instantly create 10-20 more yards off the tee. I collect their clubhead data on my GC Quad (a TrackMan-type device) and look at their video, and see that, well, they pretty much have a decent-enough move that really cannot be improved all that much, especially in their currently-compromised physical state. I ask them if they are in a conditioning program, and the usual response is “no.” When I advise them to see their doctor and start one, they tell me “I will” but I know they probably won’t. I know from firsthand experience that getting motivated at an older age to work hard on a physical regimen to achieve better golf is difficult. A couple of years ago, I suffered a fall from about eight feet off the ground, landing right on my back and rear end. The fall permanently damaged my hip and lower back, and I have great soreness in my hip and tightness in my back virtually every day. So I can’t really get on my older students too much if they don’t do what is necessary to reach their goals. Sometimes I see people who lack coordination to the extent that they frankly will never be able to play anywhere near the level they desire. In these cases, I remain encouraging and help them as much as I can, but again, it breaks my heart (in a golf sense) that I know they cannot reach their goals. Now, some teachers might say that no one is unteachable, and that’s not what I’m saying. Yes, I can give them a plan that will improve their games, and that’s my job and I gladly do it. My dilemma is in how honest can I be. To my fellow teachers, how do you handle such situations? Please write me at mark@usgtf.com, and I will discuss your answers in another editorial later on.

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