Instruction: Worse Before Better?

[Nick Clearwater]

There are very few times a student should be worse off than the beginning of the lesson. Howeve, there is NEVER an excuse for having a student leave a lesson without having a plan to practice.

[iacas]

I voted worse before better so I better explain why

None of your explanation included "I hit the ball worse." Hitting is a contact issue - was your contact improved.

And I would say that it was. A ball that flies straight to the right (where you admitted you were aimed) is BETTER. If quality of contact was the same, you were hitting the ball straighter.

The only way a Pro could have made the whole thing better would have been by fixing all three of those things to where they are all working together and that seems impossible.

I disagree... I think you could have easily worked on these things separately without disastrous results to your scoring (which, again, is not really the question being asked).

[DavidFehertysBike]

It depends. If youre trying to change an ingrained bad habit (like a bad grip or set up) then most likley its going to get worse before it gets better. Teaching your body something new always takes a little time.

[rkodavey]

Muscle memory is overstated. If I swing a golf club one way and have for 20,000 swings, yet I'm thinking about swinging one part a different way, muscle memory isn't going to "win." Most often, people have 15 things wrong in their golf swing (let's say), but 12 of those things are a result of three actual faults. A guy swings over the top and has to get the club on the ball, so he spins out his hips, he uncocks his wrists, he flips at the ball, his right knee kicks out... (or some of those could cause the over-the-top bit)... the point is that if you fix something, a lot of other parts clear up. There's no "muscle memory" making the guy's right knee kick out and the hips to spin and his wrists to uncock and flip - he's doing that as compensation for spinning his shoulders out and throwing the club over the top. Again, just an example.

Excellent, well written post. I too watched the Haney Project and started to question whether Haney's method is really that good after all. After Tiger dropped him (or he dropped Tiger, as Haney would have you believe), I think more people are starting to realize that he may not be the God of golf instruction after all.

When I'm on the range or out on the course and I make an adjustment with my swing, if it's the correct adjustment I instantly hit the ball better. I've hit enough good shots in my golfing career that my body "knows" how a good shot feels, but sometimes it's just difficult to make my body do the correct movements every time. So in reality, good adjustments should allow my body to hit the ball better right away. All that muscle memory stuff is hooey.

[nevets88]

Isn't this just a tad of a blanket statement? It really depends on the person. Perhaps for 85% of the people out there, they can get better w/o getting worse with the right instructor, but for some people, it just takes them a while longer?

[sean_miller]

Humans are pretty athletic. Good instruction taps into that . . .

Not all of us are "pretty athletic", but I get what you mean.

If a person has a valid driver's license, puts their bag of clubs in the car, drives the car to the range, changes shoes, then carries said bag to the first tee, they have more than enough phyiscal ability and hand-eye coordinaton to play better than they currently are.

[rkodavey]

Isn't this just a tad of a blanket statement? It really depends on the person. Perhaps for 85% of the people out there, they can get better w/o getting worse with the right instructor, but for some people, it just takes them a while longer?

Well my guess would be that when someone gets worse after a lesson, it's because they're not applying the teachings correctly yet, or maybe they're not applying them consistently enough. I mean, if you make a good swing adjustment, you'll hit the ball better. It's as simple as that. The only reason someone wouldn't get better would be that they aren't consistently making the right adjustments. Maybe one time out of three they will get it right and hit a good shot, and the other two times they'll do it wrong and hit it bad. So in that respect, I can see how perhaps someone would take a step back before going forward. But if you just got out of a lesson and nothing feels right and you're hitting it all over the place, I think it would be time to find a new instructor.

[Williamevanl]

Ok, it depends I guess. To answer this question the way Iacas is looking for:

Yea I could see an instructor improving quality of contact after one lesson, probably pretty simply even. I could see this especially if a student has some weird quark that makes them come off the ball, maybe a reverse pivot of head bob or something. I think just bringing it their attention could help tremendously.

On the other hand...
If you have some guy that's been slinging the club over is right shoulder for 30 years and he's got it ingrained enough that he can find the center of the face every time your probably aren't going to immediately improve his contact by rerouting his swing plane. Even if you can achieve the monumental task of undoing a habit that has been rehearsed for three decades you certainly won't see the same kind of contact that he had before because it will all seem so unfamiliar to him.

[sean_miller]

If you have some guy that's been slinging the club over is right shoulder for 30 years and he's got it ingrained enough that he can find the center of the face every time your probably aren't going to immediately improve his contact by rerouting his swing plane. Even if you can achieve the monumental task of undoing a habit that has been rehearsed for three decades you certainly won't see the same kind of contact that he had before because it will all seem so unfamiliar to him.

A good instructor could probably find some little nugget of wisdom that could help that guy immediately. Maybe they'd agree to work on a rebuild over the winter and just get through the summer with improved consistency (since this is all hypothetical). My opinion is a guy who's been playing for 30 years is running out of time - rebuild now!!

[Ash1974]

You didn't seem to read the question. It didn't ask if you'd improve over the long haul if you practiced - it asked if, at the end of the lesson, you'd expect to be hitting the ball better than at the beginning of the lesson. Not two hours later on the course, but at the lesson.

OK I miss read the question, I would expect to be hitting the ball better at the end of the lesson.

[OrlandoTrader]

Although I just started playing last week, I think there could be something to this. I [think] have a pretty natural feel for most sports and the first two times I hit a local 9-hole course with mostly par 3s I was able to get on the green or 2 shot it to the green (putting would kill me). After watching some videos by David Leadbetter and Hank Haney I have begun over thinking just about everything I do and now I'm lucky if I land on the green within 3 or 4 shots on the same course!

Now I am thinking, "Am I gripping the club correctly?" "Am I shifting my weight right?" "Is my club face facing the imaginary target line?" and much much more. Hopefully with a lot of practice though, everything could become repetitive to me and simply rely on muscle memory to be able to get back to 2 shotting it to the green. Then I can start working on my putt game (terrible)!