| Thank you for providing me the opportunity to help you become a better golfer! My goal as an instructor is to make the game of golf more enjoyable for you. Making the game more enjoyable requires a team effort! That team consists of you and me! I can provide you with the information necessary to improve your game. You have to take that information and make it useful. Making it useful requires practice! Learning golf is like learning a language. If you don’t practice often, you might learn lots of words, but you can never hold a conversation. If you don’t practice your golf swing, you might learn to hit a couple of shots better than you ever have, but you probably won’t be able to do it on a consistent basis. Take it from someone who has walked in your shoes…..Me!!!! My story… Back in 2000, I had a handicap index of 14.6. I was a lousy golfer who occasionally could really hit a long, great shot. For the most part, my shots were pretty bad! Every golf teacher I went to, told me the same thing….”you swing too fast!.” Every time I slowed my swing down, my shot got worse! In retrospect, my problem wasn’t that I had swung too fast; I had to swing fast to compensate for my real problem (releasing the club too soon in the downswing). My instructors hadn’t diagnosed my true problem, they diagnosed the result of my problem! At one point in my life, I decided to step back a little bit, and really work on the mechanics of the golf swing. I went to the range and never made a full swing! I hit as many as three hundred balls a day with my feet together and a half swing. I concentrated on the fundamentals. The result… When I played (during this period) my game got worse!! My full swing on the golf course gave me worse results than my “half swing” on the driving range!! I actually started using my half swing on the golf course! The half swing provided me with better results. I learned that with my nice easy half swing, I actually hit the ball much more accurately than I did with my full swing. The real news, however, was that I actually got some pretty good distance from my little half swing! How could that be?????!!!! With my full swing, I huffed and puffed and swung out of my shoes and all of that work only provided me with a little more distance (and a lot less accuracy) than my nice easy half-swing!!! “Upon further review,” I realized that my full swing had lots and lots of wasted effort!! My technique was incorrect! This bad technique required a lot more energy than my little half swing, which had good technique! I realized, I needed to incorporate the same principles of my half swing into my full swing. So I did! The result was that in the next 6 months, my handicap index dropped from a 14.6 to an 8.4!!!!! I was now shooting in the 80s pretty consistently!!!! Life was good!!! I learned that proper technique beats brawn! I learned why Ernie Els, Fred Couples, etc. could appear to swing so slowly and so effortlessly and hit their driver over 300 yards! They were using the correct technique and I wasn’t. They were swinging efficiently and I wasn’t. The more efficient my swing became, the lower my handicap index got! My goal as an instructor is to teach you the correct technique. Will this be as simple as me telling you the technique and you going out and doing it correctly and shooting the best scores of your life????? Maybe…. Your body and mind has been pre-programmed from the caveman days to be able to swing a club efficiently to kill our food, but not efficiently to swing a golf club. A caveman raised his stick high and came down at a very steep angle to kill his food. That method does not work well with the golf swing. We have to reprogram your brain and body mechanics to make a good golf swing. To do this requires: * the need to want to do it * the persistence to do it * the ability to stay positive and realize that this process takes time and effort Just like learning a language, the people who make the commitment and put in the time to practice become fluent. The people who give minimal effort merely learn some words. My handicap is now 2. During the period when I decided to take a step back, my game got worse!! In fact, trying to do the right technique had me hitting lots of “shanks” into the pond just right of the driving range. I could have given up and went back to my old swing, but (fortunately for me) I stayed persistent even through the tough times. My commitment to learning and practicing has remained constant. My goal is to break par more than I shoot over it. The nice thing about golf…it’s never too old to learn. Right now in my 50s, I play the best golf I have ever played in my life!! Baseball came easy to me. Golf does not! Persistence in life, brings benefits! If you are committed to a goal and you work hard at it, you have a better chance of achieving that goal! I am here to help you! Please use me as a resource as much as you like! Set your goal and work hard to achieve it. If you are ready to make the commitment, I am here to help you! |
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| "Commitment" The Teacher/Student Understanding... |