Editorial

30 Jan 2018 admin

A Strong Grip = Slicing… And Other Teaching Paradoxes

By Mark Harman USGTF Course Director, Ridgeland, South Carolina

When I’m not executing my duties for the USGTF, I spend my time teaching this great game that we all love. The other day, a student came to me, saying he was hitting his driver all over the lot, but he especially struggled with a slice. It didn’t take but one swing to easily see what his problem was: He was slicing the ball because he had a very strong grip.

Wait a minute, you might say. What do you mean he was slicing because he had a strong grip? Everyone knows a strong grip leads to hooking the ball!

In most cases that would be true. But there are those golfers who use strong grips and almost never hook or draw the ball, and struggle with slicing. These players tend to be good athletes with decent motions. They can kinesthetically sense that any sort of release with the grip they have could lead to a drastic hook, so they have learned to block their release and prevent the ball from hooking, or even drawing.

Examples in professional that come quickly to mind would be David Duval and Paul Azinger. Both employed a very strong grip with closed clubfaces at the top of their backswings. And interestingly, both faded the ball. They used a fast body rotation throughout the forward swing and a holding off of the release to do so, because a normal release would result in a severe hook. Even a nominal release would result in timing issues, so a fade works best with extremely strong grips.

Players like Duval and Azinger were talented enough, and put enough practice in, that they were able to reach the pinnacle of the game as major champions. But my recent student, while a good athlete, was of course nowhere in their league. While he had enough kinesthetic intelligence to hold off his release to prevent a hook, occasionally he couldn’t hold the release off, and a drastic hook would result. The cure was to give him a neutral grip and get him to release the club fearlessly. He did hit a number of good shots, but I stressed that the changes I was asking him to make were not quick fixes, and would take several weeks, if not months, before he saw some consistency.

That led me to thinking about other teaching paradoxes. Here’s a brief list:

A faster backswing is better than a slow one.

We often hear our students say they “swung too fast.” As noted teacher Hank Haney likes to point out when he hears this, “What? You want to hit the ball shorter?” But often the student is referring to his backswing. And a lot of teachers buy into the “slower backswing is better” school of thought. Infact, studies show that most amateurs actually swing back slower than do the pros, and often considerably slower. A faster backswing has more stability than a slow one – think of a gyroscope. The swing should not be jerked back in order to become faster, but a smooth, quicker backswing can help many players.

A closed stance can lead to slicing.

When I first started teaching, I believed that slicers inevitably had an open stance in order to compensate for their slice. I was also taught that an open stance promoted a swing path to the left of the intended target line for a right-handed player. You also saw this belief printed in the pages of all the golf magazines.

However, when I started teaching, I quickly noted that about half of my slicing students had a closed stance. These golfers often have great backswings as they follow their stance line, but they re-route the club in an over-the-top move to start the downswing. The result is that while they are now swinging towards the target, as they should and as they are attempting to do, they are also swinging outside-in in relation to their alignment. Thus, a slice is born.

In the same family of alignment errors, you also will see some good golfers fight a hook from an open stance because they are swinging towards the target, resulting in an inside-out swing path through impact.

Better mechanics may lead to poorer results.

Golfers with certain swing errors may have their compensations grooved so deeply that fixing the main fault may make them worse, because they are unable to rid themselves of these deeply-embedded compensations. This can be a real problem for the teacher, but one way I’ve found my way around it is to observe what they do on a good shot vs. what they do on a bad shot, and reinforce the behavior that produced the good shot.

A longer club may produce shorter shots.

In the early 1990s, I saw an article that said if a golfer could not hit their driver more than 150 yards, they would actually hit the ball farther if they used a 3-wood. Although I had a hard time believing this, I reasoned then that if this indeed was true, it must be because the golfer didn’t hit the ball hard enough to let the aerodynamics of the ball kick in. With today’s knowledge gleaned from launch monitors and a better understanding of the science behind this, we can see that my rudimentary explanation back then is actually pretty sound today.

I learned in my college physics classes that a projectile launched at 45° would produce the greatest distance. But in golf, when we introduce the concept of lift due to a spinning ball, the optimal launch angle for maximum distance depends on the ball’s initial velocity and amount of spin. In general, a golfer with lower ball speed will need to launch the ball fairly high to achieve maximum distance, while a golfer with faster ball speed will likely need to launch it somewhat lower.

So when your short-hitting students say they hit their 7-iron farther than they hit their 5-iron, believe them. No amount of instruction will overcome this fact of physics. They can probably benefit from adding hybrid clubs to their bag, clubs with lower and deeper centers of gravity, to help them launch the ball higher. A 3-wood may be virtually useless off the ground, so a 5-, 7-, or even a 9-wood can be a better option.

In conclusion, we can see that not all golf instruction tenets are cut and dry. Conventional wisdom can only take us so far, and when it doesn’t apply, we have to have the knowledge and be creative enough to handle the curve balls that some students will throw in our direction.

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.

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.