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.

Many times golfers come to me complaining that they “can’t put two nines together” – they either play a good front nine and poor back nine, or a bad front nine and a good back nine. Golf is a fickle game, and on any given day that just may happen, but if you start to see a pattern of this occurring, it’s probably something you might want to take a closer look at. My opinion for this is that golfer’s are too focused on their score – a problem for nearly all of us that play this game.

Golfers may start out poorly on the first few holes, get discouraged then play poorly for the rest of the front nine. Then they add up their score for the front nine, realizing that if they shoot the same on the back it will be a poor round.  They then begin to relax and “not really care” and end up playing much better on the back nine. The opposite occurs (good front, bad back) for a different reason. A player gets in the zone on the front and starts really playing well. While making the turn, he or his playing partners add up his score for the front nine and the player realizes how well he is doing.

Then comes the kiss of death – he thinks “if I shoot the same number on the back” I’ll have my best score, or I’ll break 90 or 80, etc. Putting more self-imposed pressure on himself (all pressure in golf is self-imposed); he plays poorly on the back, and “ruins” what could have been a great round.

The moral of the story is, don’t constantly add your score up in your mind. That’s why you always hear tour players, when interviewed about how they feel about tomorrow, with a chance to win the tournament, they respond “I’m going to focus on one shot at time” – they are focusing on staying in the present, not thinking about what happened in the past, or what could happen in the future. It’s an easy thing to say and intellectualize, but a challenge to incorporate into your mental game. But when you do, you’ll be surprised at how well you can play with that mindset.

Over the years I’ve been fortunate to work with several talented collegiate players and many junior golfers (ages 13 – 18). One of the biggest challenges I face with coaching these juniors are their parents. The parents always mean well, and many try to coach the juniors themselves. This should be left to golf professionals, which is a separate topic in and of itself. But the challenge I face is that the parent is giving their own lessons to the students that I’m coaching. I’ll sometimes overhear the parents coaching (many times in a firm tone of voice) ideas and suggestions different than mine.

Obviously this is nothing new, and there is no way I can stop it. But it can be VERY destructive for the student, because they are getting, more times than not, too much instruction, conflicting ideas, and much of what comes from that source is uneducated and ineffective – in other words it gets in the way of the student’s progress. What I try to do, provided the junior is comfortable with it, I invite the father, mother, uncle, or whoever is the person that spends the most “golf time” with the junior, to the lesson. What this allows me to do is make certain that the adult understands what I’m trying to accomplish with the student and he/she can actually act as a “second set of eyes” when the junior is practicing or playing. It also helps me emphasize, to the adult, the areas where the focus needs to be and to not introduce any other ideas.

If you’re a parent, trust in your coach to guide your child, and try to stay out of the way. I know you mean well and are just trying to help, but if you are giving advice that is different than the coach it’s not going to be helpful. Or if you don’t like the progress you and your child are seeing with the coach, you might want to consider finding another one.

As I continue to take guitar lessons, I also continue to analyze the learning process and the relationship between an instructor and the student. There have been a few things that I’ve learned during this process with a new guitar instructor. Just as a reminder, I have been playing guitar for about a year, basically self taught, but of course used resources on the net to try and acquire knowledge that could help me progress. I still take golf lessons and work on my game, but the process with guitar is new to me (I’ve been playing drums since I was a kid). By the way, if you have are thinking about learning a instrument – do it – you won’t regret it. And it’s never too late!

Like most self taught students, especially beginners, there is a tendency to develop some poor fundamentals, which can really become an obstacle in a student learning to improve a skill and for me it was no different with guitar. My “setup”, how I held the guitar both with the right and left hand, my posture, etc, all needed some adjustments. and of course like all golfers (and probably all motor skills), changing something that you have been doing for some time and becomes a “habit”, can be frustrating process as more times than not we can’t perform the skill to the current level we have attained. So this is where patience and determination become a necessary part of the process. For me, I look at playing the guitar, just as golfers look at golf, as something they will hopefully able to enjoy for the rest of their lives. But, and this is the big part, if you choose to improve at golf or any motor skill, you need to enjoy the process and become less focused on the results. While this is certainly easy to say, it’s much harder to do. I’m sure I lost MANY students after the first lesson – they became frustrated, didn’t see the results and improvements that they desired, so decided not to return for a second lesson.

Well, and I’ve said this before, you need to give any instructor a fair shot. If you are struggling with integrating a new idea or change, go back to the instructor and discuss the challenge you’re having and give him or her the opportunity to give you some helpful ideas, or to possibly even take a different approach. As an instructor it’s easy for us to believe that after the lesson the student fully understands and can integrate a change, but then when left on his own he struggles, gets frustrated, and gives up.

Another possible practice recommendation, I have learned through guitar and working on new things and becoming physically uncomfortable (like a grip change in golf), I take a break and start playing a song. As a golfer, if you are working a grip change, you might want to take a break, go hit some chips, putts, or work on your bunker game (all things you should be doing anyway), then go back to the tee and practice the new grip. Change does take time, but if you muster up some patience and determination and learn to execute and integrate the needed changes, over time, the rewards in your improvement will be realized.

I recently purchased the newly released Stack and tilt book and gave it quick read. I plan to give it a closer read – their were parts I liked and of course parts I didn’t like as much. I’m also considering giving the book an in-depth review here on my blog.

But with my recent book purchases (I also purchased the new Jim McClean and Hank Haney book), I started to think about the possibility of writing a second book. In fact, I’ve already had some preliminary conversations with my literary agent about it. So why another book and how would this one be different? Well, to start, I certainly haven’t changed my philosophy since the first one, but rather it would be delivering the same philosophy in a different way.

First, let me state that there is no one book that is the “end all” of golf instruction for golfers. If you’re looking for a book that has all the answers – forget it – it doesn’t exist, and this is an author stating this. Just as one method can’t work for all golfers, one book can’t have all the answers for all golfers. One book can be really helpful for one golfer and be disastrous for another and the same can be both for the same golfer – depending on how the material is interpreted and applied. I’ve read a lot of golf books and have pulled “gems” out of a book that I felt – for me – was 95% useless. I’ve read others where I felt the much of the information was very helpful.

There’s what one of my Amazon reviewers, who gave my book 3 stars, called a “reader-book mismatch”. My interpretation of this is that I was just not connecting with the reader and while I have been very fortunate that my book, “The Negotiable Golf Swing”, has received overwhelmingly positive reviews on Amazon, I’m sure there are readers out there that found my book not as helpful and disappointing and just didn’t bother to write a review.

So how can I help all of the golfers in the world? Well, I can’t. But I do believe if the next treatment of my philosophy is different then possibly I can help some of those golfers that missed my message the first time (if they give me a second chance), help golfers similar to them, and provide more help to the golfers that found my first book helpful, and help golfers who will read my second book, but didn’t read my first. And when, and if, I do write the second book, it will be with the understanding that it can’t be helpful for every golfer – that’s just something I have to accept and try to deliver a message that can help a “majority” of the golfers seeking help with their game.

I’m currently looking for a GUITAR instructor. I’ve been playing for a little more that a year and I’m basically been teaching myself through material I’ve found on the internet. And while learning guitar and golf has it’s similarities, it also has it’s differences. But the one thing it has in common is that students are looking for the best instructor they can find. So how do you go about it?

Well, the one thing I’ve learned about guitar instructors is that they don’t need much credentials to call themselves “guitar teachers”. It appears that all you have to do is be able to play and you can hang a sign outside your shop (or basement of their home) that reads “Guitar Teacher” and start giving lessons and getting paid to do just that. To me this is very scary, and it makes me think about how students seek out an instructor. After all students, whether you are a golfer or guitarist, are going to be spending their hard earned money and dedicate precious time to practice what the instructor gives to them. So I started searching the net and doing some research on some guitar instructors – who they’ve worked with and whether they have any “certifications” and/or were educated in the area of education. I’ve found someone and will be starting with him this week, with hope that he will work out well. But the fact is he might not.

And so the search for a golf instructor should not be much different. If you are currently in search of a golf instructor you can start by asking your fellow golfers who they have worked with (I didn’t have the benefit of knowing a lot of guitarist who take lessons) and which ones they have liked. But keep in mind that one golfer can think a particular professional is a genius and another golfer thinks that same professional is a terribly ineffective instructor. You could also go online and start doing some research there. Some things to factor in are credentials – most golf instructors, at least in the Metro NY area are PGA Members, or at least, PGA Apprentices. Now this certainly has some value, but due to the fact that, in my opinion, the PGA does not require enough studying in the area of instruction, that credential by itself can only be weighted so much. There are PGA Members who I consider very good instructors and others who, well let’s just say are not as good – just like in any profession. If you belong to a private club, you could start with the instructors at your club and they may or may not be good for you (my fellow pros are going to hate that I said that). The fact of the matter is that I have a handful of members at my club who seek the help of professionals not at my facility – and I have to accept that I or my other assistants can’t be the right instructor for everyone or it could be as simple as we don’t have a female professional and some women prefer to take a lesson from a woman. Other members have found other instructors that work for them – that’s just the way it goes and to me all that really matters is that the golfer is finding someone they are comfortable and confident with.

Now, even if you do find someone you think you might want to start taking lessons from, you should at least make the commitment to do a handful of lessons before you start to evaluate whether it’s a good fit or not, unless you find the communication skills of the professional just doesn’t work for you. If that’s communication between you and the instructor isn’t good then you might want to start looking for another one sooner rather than later. But trying a few lessons is really the only fair way to see if the relationship is going to be a beneficial one. I’ve more than few times where I was working with the same student and it wasn’t until the third or fourth lesson where we were really able to make a breakthrough. I’ve also had many golfers come to me for one lesson – then to never see them again. We’ll never if our relationship could have worked if given a little more time.

Finding an instructor can be similar to find a therapist. You may have to work with a few before you find the right one for you. So I’m excited to work with this guitar teacher, but also realize that he may not be the last one I work with.