I’ve been coaching golf for some time now and the one thing that is most challenging is figuring out the most effective way to coach someone – everyone is different. By far the easiest group I work with is juniors – from the ages of 10 to 17. The reason why is their minds have not been filled with a lot of information. They’re not constantly watching the golf channel or reading golf instruction books and magazine. So when they come to me I’m more or less working with a blank slate. It’s amazing how simple my approach is with juniors. I focus on setup, then getting them to learn how to move the club, while understanding the relationship of the club and ball by reading their ball flight. And amazing things happen with these juniors.

Most adults are completely different. As we evolve intellectually many of us have the tendency to analyze everything we do. I know I’m an analytical thinker. Unfortunately, this type of thinking, when it comes to learning any motor skills, especially golf, is arguably the least effective way to learn the game and to make progress. And I get these types of thinkers all the time – they’re worried about keeping their head down, where is their elbow at the top, starting to move and clear their hips on the downswing – the list goes on and on and on.

Over time what I’ve come to realize is that as much as I want to – I can’t change that. As much as I want to use the same simple approach with juniors, the one that focuses on how we learn all physical activities, it’s just not enough for an analytical thinker. So I need to make a compromise – I give them a little of what they want and A LOT of what they need. What furthers the challenge is that many of their swing thoughts are burned in their belief system. They think if they keep their head down, which is more detrimental than helpful, they will hit a good shot. So I spend a good deal of time, trying to convince them of why their ideas are not really helping, but rather hurting them, or if possible, reshape the idea so that I can get them to use it in a positive way.

The ironic thing is that giving them a lot of what they need is not necessarily a lot of information. In fact, it’s more like pulling the thoughts out of their brains, throwing them in them in the garbage, and then reshaping and inserting the most effective approaches that will help the student. Coaching golf will always be a challenge, because how each student thinks, what the current shape of their swing, their physical limitations and desire to improve, vary greatly from student to student and therefore each approach has to be different.

As a Head Golf Professional at a club that has many tournaments, I’m very actively involved in marking the golf course, making local rules, and refereeing those tournaments. I’ve been asked my opinion on the ruling at the PGA Championship.

First, there’s no doubt that Johnston grounded his club for that shot, and I had no idea that Johnston was standing in a bunker when he hit his approach shot on #18 – it looked like he was hitting from a sandy, trampled down part of the course, along with the fact that spectators were standing in this so-called “bunker” and here-in is where the question really lies. There’s no doubt that he was hitting from sand, what might be considered a “waste bunker”. These areas are usually played as part of the course, not a hazard, and a player is permitted to ground his club. However, in the supplementary rules given to the players stated that “all bunkers” would be played as hazards, a rule that was made due to an incident with Stuart Appleby the last time the event was played at Whistling Straits.

Anyway, and of course in hindsight, this is where I think the PGA erred. Hazards need to be defined very clearly by a clean edge, something that is very easy to see in a “normal” bunker, and with water the boundaries are clearly defined by paint (yellow or red). So the problem I have with the way these bunkers were defined, are not really definable  – the edges are part sand and part grass thereby leaving the beginnings and ends of the hazard subjective to whether the player is in or out of the hazard –so I don’t believed they should be marked as such.  Of course the responsibility of knowing the rules lies with the player and the PGA did notify the players of this ruling.

However, the part that doesn’t really seem right along with declaring these areas hazards, is that PGA allowed the spectators to walk and stand in these bunkers. On top of it the Marshalls allowed the spectators to be in the bunker that Johnson was hitting from, thereby making this so-called bunker look like a trampled down area that was created by the spectators (Johnson’s ball was way off line and a good distance from the fairway.) Also, if you are going to have such a rule, there is a rules official with each group and just as is the case when any ball is in a hazard the official is close by to notify the player of his options. In this case the official could have notified Johnson that he was in the bunker.

In the end, I think it’s the fault of the PGA for ruling those waste bunkers as regular hazards and in this case, an area surrounded by spectators standing in it, led Johnson to never think he was in a bunker – did you think he was in a bunker?  Going forward, when an event returns to Whistling Straits, I believe they will again mark these areas as waste bunkers.

Of course none of this matters to Johnson, who I thought took this punishment like a great sportsman, and who lost his opportunity to win his first major championship. As he said the only thing that could have made it worse was that he made that putt on 18, and thought he won the championship. At times the Rules of Golf, which are supposed to be there “to help a player”, at times, can be very cruel.

More times than not, making adjustments and changes to your golf swing, after doing it a certain way, can be uncomfortable to say the least. One of the most fundamental changes I try to make with students, and one of the hardest, is a grip adjustment. And generally speaking, no matter how little the change, it seems to be one of the greatest challenges for golfers. But the grip is a very important fundamental as it has the most influence on the clubface at impact, which determines how well you can control the direction of your golf ball. And while the grip is negotiable, it does mean you can hold it anyway you want, the important thing is to find the MOST effective way for you to hold it.

I learned the challenge of making the change recently with my guitar playing. I was holding the pick in a relatively unorthodox way, one that still allowed me to be able to play, but I didn’t feel like I had the maximum amount of control of the pick that I could. It’s similar to golfers who hold their club, with their left hand (right-handed golfer), too much in the palm. Evidence of this usually is the wearing out of the glove, but more importantly while you can hit good shots with the club in your palm, you will have more control of the club if it’s more in your fingers (with both hands) and very possibly better control of your ball flight.

But change is sometimes very challenging. I have been playing guitar for awhile now with a certain grip, and then tried to make the change and while I could play a little with the new grip, my playing took a little step backwards – the improvement was not seen immediately. But I stuck with it and after a couple of weeks I really started to see some speed and control movement in my playing.

The thing is, provided that you know that a change you are making is going to be more effective, you need to have a certain level of stick-to-it-iveness to make a change. But if you do persevere, and it may take some time, you will be rewarded.

Every golf tournament I watch, it’s inevitable and only a matter of time, before one of the broadcasters, whoever is the “expert’ on the golf swing, will say something about a player’s missed shots or even the positive analysis of a player’s swing, to make me so mad I want to throw my drink at the TV. There are two problems here -one is that damn “Biz-Cam” that does video playback at 1 zillion frames per second. The other is commentators that don’t know much or anything about the golf swing.

The combination of these two things can cause disaster for the average golfer. Breaking down great player’s motions at that speed inevitably leads to over analysis, and to be honest, analysis sometimes I don’t even understand. But that’s easy to do – if you watch something that’s in SUPER slow-motion it’s simple to go “look at this” and “look at that”. Soon they’ll be talking about Tigers right pinky and how it moves in the golf swing – and you should be doing that. To me, the most infuriating thing is when a player misses a shot and they go right to the video playback, then someone offers the reason that the shot was missed. And comments by former tour players (with exception to maybe Nick Faldo) are worse than the swing analysts, because honestly, just because you can play doesn’t mean you know about the golf swing – it just means you can play.

At least the guys that are instructors are fairly knowledgeable, and in their defense, many times I think they need to fill in dead space and constantly offer explanations for why a guy with 130 mile an hour clubhead speed missed a fairway by 15 yards – maybe it was just the clubface was slightly open at impact? At that speed it doesn’t take much to cause the ball to go offline. But that would be boring after awhile, so there’s the need to look at how the hips are rotating and stopping, the shoulders are moving to slow or too open, the hands are not “releasing”, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile anyone who knows about video playback also knows that if you put two swings up on the screen side by side, many times it’s very difficult to see the minute differences between the swing of a good shot and a bad one. But this doesn’t stop them – and maybe it can’t. If they want to keep their jobs, the swing commentators need to offer an analysis to the reasons why – even if those reasons are inaccurate. Now I’m suggesting they are not sincere in the analysis, I’m suggesting they’re pressured to say something and fill in the blanks.

Now if this sounded like a rant…well, it was. And it’s not because I think they know nothing and I know everything, but rather because golfers listen to them, because they are “experts” in the golf swing. They are like talking magazines, or Golf Channel shows, that offer tidbits of information, more times than not unrelated to the listener’s golf swings. This just continues this cycle of passing around bad information and confusion that circulates with golfers, and eventually they come and see me. So I guess I shouldn’t complain too much about the swing analysts, I think they might be helping to keep me in business.

When talking about the movement of the body there are what are called errors and compensations.  If something happens, something else will happen as a result of that – if an error occurs, many times compensation will be created. I’ll use myself as an example. I’ve been plagued by the same “issues” for several years. In my backswing, I tend to “stand up” and lose my posture. This was caused by a physical limitation in my right hip. On the downswing, of course, I need to go “down” to compensate the amount I stood up in the backswing. This “bobbing” effect is relatively common, and while not ideal, if the down offsets the up – things seem to be okay. But I went one step farther – on the down I would go down too much, thereby creating another error and compensation. With me going down too much, I would stick the club in the ground – so to speak – behind the ball, hitting it fat. So I then created compensation – a shortening, or “pulling in” of my arms through impact. Wow – were you able to follow that?

Anyway, the first thing I did was got my hip in better working condition, and now I’ve set out to try and get my swing to be a little more consistent. While there are many things that are negotiable, when there are a series of things going on, like in my case, I just can’t get be consistent enough, and it’s basically preventing me from taking my game to another level (remember I’m a golfer first). So now I’ve got my posture much more level going back, so shouldn’t the other cause and effects also adjust themselves? The answer, I think in most cases, including mine is “no”. I believe the reason for this is that most of our compensations are on a subconscious level – in other words, when I started to go up – then down just worked its way into my swing – otherwise I would have missed the ball completely, as I would have been too far away from the ball. And just because I now have erased the error, the compensation is still going to take some time to erase. In fact, when the error is erased, and the compensation still exists, the compensation now becomes an error (and you thought it was easy to be a golf coach!) Some of the changes for my compensation will be on a conscious level, and some on a subconscious one. And of course I have multiples, so this could take some time.

If you found this post to be complicated and confusing – I apologize. So here’s my point. If you have discovered an “error” in your swing that is preventing you from swinging the club more effectively (and it should ONLY be addressed if this is a case), be patient, you probably have developed a compensation to help offset that error, so it may take some time (and attention) for the compensation to erase itself. Like me, you need to be patient, and if your goal is to improve, embrace and enjoy the process of working to negotiate your own effective golf swing.