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.

As I continue to share the hockey learning experience with my son, I’m watching closely on how he learns and how I help him learn to do things.

Along with us skating together, we also play some foot hockey with a ball in the driveway. So my son has been hitting slap shots, but all of them roll, with some speed, along the ground. So last week I started telling him at he needed to start seeing if he can start hitting the ball up into the upper parts of the net (he know what that is as he does it on his NHL 10 PS game). 

So we went out the other night and he was hitting slap shots and I was standing on the side of the net stopping his shots that were rolling on the ground. So I asked him to try and hit the shots higher and see if he could hit the middle of the net – but he struggled and couldn’t do it.

So I took the opportunity to try to help him. I moved his lowered hand so that it was lower on the stick to help him get more power, than I took his stick and tilted the face of the stick slightly toward the ground and asked him if I hit a shot like that what would the ball do, and he responded it would go along the ground. I then turned the face of the stick toward the sky and asked if I hit a shot with the stick like that what where would the ball go, and he responded it would go in the air. So said let’s try and hit some shots with the stick looking like that.  Well within three shots he starting getting the ball up in the air and within 10 shots he was hitting them in the upper part of the net, with one of the shots hitting the crossbar. He was very excited about his progress – as was I.

The moral of the story is the same. When you’re playing a stick and ball game, which is essentially what golf is, once the student learns the relationship with golf club and how it impacts the flight of the ball, he or she can then start experimenting to make the ball do something different then it currently does when the student hits it – it’s what the learning experience is all about.

This works well with kids, but many times this approach is a struggle for adults, because as we mature intellectually many individuals what more information. We want more details, about how the body moves and so on, which more times than not, while the answers make the student feel better as they feel they understand it more, in actually slows down their learning process and the potential progress they can make.

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.

Happy New Year! Is this the year that you finally take your game to another level? For most golfers, at least those that want to improve, a new year always seems to bring with it hope and inspiration for our golf games. But will this year really be different than years past?
The answer is, it depends. To improve at anything, whether it is business or a physical skill, it basically takes a few things: a plan, time, and money. Well, many of us are limited in the areas of time and resources so we need to try make and budget our time. It’s like working out; one of the easiest excuses to not working out is lack of time. But the reality is if we really want something, we find ways to make it happen. And improving your golf game is no different.
So here is one foolproof way that you can improve your game, without money and practicing – improve your understanding of the ball flight laws – the laws that govern the flight of the golf ball as the club moves through impact. These laws are non-negotiable and a necessary part of learning through feedback. When you fully understand what the club did to produce the ball flight, you can work to change what the club does to produce a different ball flight if it was undesirable, or change it to produce something more desirable. You’ll hear me repeat the importance of this over and over again. And until human beings start to learn in a different way other than feedback, I won’t stop pounding this message out to anyone that’s willing to listen! Let’s put it this way, if you took the ball-flight chapter out of my book, you might as well throw it in the fireplace – it would serve a better purpose than to read the rest of it without the ball-flight chapter.
I’ll be sharing some other things here on my blog that I hope will help you in your pursuit of better golf, but in the meantime — here’s to you having the best golfing year ever!