Fairways For Warriors Making A Difference
USGTF Certified Golf Teaching Professional Dennis Daugherty from Clermont, Florida, has a passion for giving back. Through his work organizing golf events for the American Cancer Society, United Way, Make A Wish Foundation and others, Daugherty’s efforts reap rewards for those who face life’s difficulties.
Most recently, he has worked with a group called Fairways for Warriors, an organization that has as its mission providing golf instruction, equipment, and outings for combat-wounded veterans. This helps with the rehabilitation process through physical, cognitive, social, and emotional health benefits through the game of golf. In addition, families are aided through their participation in the programs.
According to its website, “Warriors can’t heal alone, so Fairways for Warriors events and support community is open to the families of wounded warriors, as well. We provide golf equipment, instruction, and outings to wounded warriors and all their family members who wish to participate in the spirit of fun and healing.”
When it comes to rehabilitation, Fairways for Warriors says the most significant injuries aren’t seen, and include depression, post-traumatic stress, and brain injury. The program is designed to help men and women heal from such injuries and the wounded warriors “experience a sense of support and community again.”
In regards to physical health benefits, Fairways for Warriors aims to improve hand-eye coordination and increase functional independence, balance, strength, endurance, fine motor skills, and flexibility, with the goal of reducing the risk of secondary medical complications. Cognitive health benefits include enhanced self-esteem, assisting with managing stress and anxiety, alleviating and decreasing the risk of depression, and increasing coordination skills, focus, and attention. Social health benefits are enhanced relationships among fellow veterans, families and friends; creating networks and providing accessible resources while giving veterans a sense of belonging, and creating a shared space and experience that helps breakdown negative perceptions, allowing individuals to focus on their commonalities. Finally, the emotional health benefits allow veterans the freedom to make choices that lead to meaningful leisure experiences, and draw on their strengths and assets of energy, enthusiasm, skills, and the desire to excel.
A number of veterans sing the praises of Fairways for Warriors. Steven Allberry said, “Fairways for Warriors has changed my life in so many ways…. And I am now part of the biggest family and support team ever. All of the members of Fairways for Warriors are my brothers and sisters.”
Jack Wiseman, a Vietnam War veteran, commented, “Fairways gives the older vets an opportunity to share our experience, strength, and hope, to the younger vets, not just in golf, but in life.”
Bryan C. Coons stated, “This group of people has allowed me to live again through fellowship, friendship, and lastly golf. I love the game of golf and it allows me the camaraderie that I need in the aspect that it mimics life and military state of friendship. Fairways for Warriors has made me a better Christian, husband/father, and all-around person.”
Fairways for Warriors currently has three chapters in Orlando, Florida; San Antonio, Texas; and Jacksonville, Florida. Tom Underdown is the founder and director, and his e-mail address is tom@fairwaysforwarriorsorg.
For more information on the organization, please visit www.FairwaysForWarriors.com.
Growing The Game
The Power of Mindset and Positive Self-Talk
Getting Worse Before Getting Better (more to the story)
Golf professional helping young man with his swing
You might see someone undergoing a swing change who hits almost every ball poorly, but they stick with it under the guise of getting worse before getting better. However in fact, this person may not actually be on the right path. The question becomes, how can we distinguish between someone getting worse who will eventually get better, as opposed to someone getting worse before…staying that way?
We can start with these two tenets: 1) Students who execute our instruction properly during a given swing should hit the ball better with that swing. 2) Students who execute our instruction properly, but either don’t see improvement or hit the ball worse, means that our instruction is incorrect.
Now, the student who sees ball striking improvement with our instruction may get worse in terms of consistency. That’s the key word. In most cases they’re still going to hit more poor shots than good ones initially, but as long as they’re hitting some good shots and seeing a better ball flight on occasion, then we’re on the right track. Here’s an example:
Bob is chicken-winging his left elbow through impact, which we diagnose to be his major problem. We get Bob to turn his body better through impact, eliminating the chicken wing. He hits some good shots, but also some bad ones. Do the bad shots mean he’s not executing our instruction correctly? In a very narrow sense, yes, but that’s too strict of a measure. The key here is that Bob is seeing an improvement in his ballstriking on some shots, but he has yet to learn the nuances involved in the new move, making it understandable why he hits many poor shots initially. We’re on the right path. Bob’s scores may suffer for a while, but eventually he’ll turn it around and start improving. Here’s where “getting worse before getting better” makes sense.
We’ll use the same example for the second tenet mentioned earlier. We get Bob to turn his body better through impact, eliminating the chicken wing, but he can’t hit a good shot to save his life. Should we just tell Bob he needs to just grin and bear it, that you have to get worse before you get better? No. And what’s worse, that’s lazy teaching. We may have correctly diagnosed Bob’s problem and come up with the correct solution, but people aren’t like robots that we can program to be automatic.
So now we have to find a way for Bob to start seeing some good results at least once in a while. For example, maybe he had to stand too close to the ball with his old swing because of the reduced radius; now he’s got a bigger radius and is not used to it. Standing farther away may help his cause. Whatever the reason Bob is struggling, we have to come up with a way for him to hit the ball better– at least occasionally – before the lesson ends. More often than not, this involves giving him an additional key to focus on, or making a secondary change to go with the main one.
One aspect that needs to be discussed is when we accurately diagnose the problem, give the proper cure, and the student just cannot get it, no matter what. It’s tempting to send the student on his way, telling him to just keep working on it and to remember that you have to get worse before you get better. But such action is akin to teaching malpractice. It may be hard to abandon what we know to be the correct solution, but if it becomes obvious the student will never get it, we must change course.
Three Ways To Boost Confidence In Your Athletes
- Help them become aware of — and challenge — their core beliefs.
Is Teaching Golf Getting Too Complicated?
Working With A New Student
Feel Is Real…Or Is It?
Healthy human beings are gifted with five senses: sight, sound, feel, smell, and taste. And three of those can be used in imparting golf instruction, unless someone has found a way to also incorporate smell and taste into a lesson. Now, wouldn’t that be interesting!
In many lesson scenarios, it’s common to hear the teacher keep up a running monologue for the duration of the lesson. Such teachers are sound-based, or audio-based, where most of the instruction is imparted via the spoken word.
Other teachers like to demonstrate often during the lesson by hitting many shots. One has to wonder whether they’re just trying to sneak in some practice on their own games by teaching this way. However, there actually may be some merit in this type of teaching, as it addresses the visual portion of our senses.
Less common is the lesson where the teacher is actively putting the students into swing positions, helping them move throughout the swing, or having them do drills for the majority of the lesson. This is a feel-based lesson, and for some reason it seems to be the least-used method of teaching.
Teachers who teach mainly with a sight-based or sound-based method of communicating should realize that the student needs to eventually translate this instruction into feel. Regardless if the student learns best by sight or sound, or is analytical, he or she uses feel to move the club throughout the swing.
Speaking of which, the teacher needs to determine which sense the student learns best with. Some players only need to hear what they need to do and can then translate this into feel; others need to see it in action.
The sense of sight
The two ways for a student to gather information in regards to sight are watching others or watching themselves, such as through video or still pictures. Students who learn best through sight can benefit from a teacher who hits many shots during the lesson, especially if the teacher has a fine swing. Think about it: A lot of people love to hang out at the range at a tour event, watching the players hit shot after shot. The late Moe Norman used to give clinics where he mainly hit shots for a couple of hours, with a minimum of instruction and speaking. People were fascinated with his abilities, and were content to just watch.
Some clues that may indicate a student learns best by sight is if they like to watch golf on television, like to look at swing sequence pictures, or are often videoing their own swings. Such students may benefit with the teacher also videoing the student’s swing throughout the lesson, instead of just filming a couple of swings to start the lesson, which is more the norm.
When giving demonstrations, teachers should take great care in making sure the demonstration is accurate, and that the demonstration matches up with the verbal explanation.
The sense of sound
Some students prefer to hear what they need to do. Highly-skilled players are experts at this, as they tend to have all their senses heightened when it comes to golf. Amateurs and club players may also tend to prefer verbal instruction if their overall comprehension skills are at a high level. Such people may include writers, editors, and people who do a lot of public speaking in their jobs. People who love to read books about golf may also be verbal-based learners.
When giving verbal instruction, the teacher needs to make sure the instruction is easily understood and accurate, and that the communication is clear. A good way to do this is for the teacher to speak to his or her students as if they are in grade school. This is not to say the students should be spoken to in a condescending manner, but rather, in a simplified manner.
The sense of feel
As was mentioned earlier, all instruction needs to eventually be translated into feel by the student, and feel is an individual thing. Two golfers may be making the same move and yet feel it in totally different ways. In helping a student translate visual and verbal instruction into feel, the teacher needs to ask the student what it feels like, instead of telling them what it should feel like. It’s okay to give some suggested feels, but the final judge is the student.
The headline of this article asks whether feel is real or not. A lot of teachers have pointed out that throughout the years, various tour players aren’t really doing what they say they are doing. With video being so prevalent, this doesn’t happen as much as in the past, but you still hear it. Mark O’Meara, in a Golf Magazine cover story a number of years ago, said he started his downswing with his arms and hands, although any video analysis clearly showed he started it with his lower body.
Another case where feel isn’t real is the student who drags the club back inside and then comes over the top. To them, they may well feel like they’re taking it back and through on the same plane. When they actually do take it back and through on the same plane, it will in all likelihood feel as if they’re taking the club back outside and looping it to the inside.
We can conclude feel is real when the student makes a move different than he or she is used to, but may not be when it comes to making their normal move. Golfers often give a feel-based analysis of what they did wrong after a poor shot, and generally this is an accurate feel of what went wrong. Our jobs as teachers involves not only making sure the student has the right feels, but feels them accurately. If we can do this, the student will have the minimum of trouble making the desired change.
