I Wasted at Least $3K on Golf Before I Got a Clue

[SAGolfLuvr]

One of the main reasons I am here is because I want to share my wisdom with new golfers so that they don't make the same mistakes I did. I am in my 9th year of serious golfing. For the first 3 years, I thought I could not afford an instructor so I did the following money wasting ventures;

1. Paid full price for rounds of golf and driving ranges, while golfing and practicing 2 or 3 times week. Discounts are everywhere and these days, memberships are affordable. If you ask, dig, read, and research, some deals span across multiple courses.

2. Bought golf clubs that were too advanced and too expensive for me, trying to improve my game without help. I bought the FTi and R7 NEW when I was a 20+ handicap. I lost a fortune trading them in for easier to hit drivers. It took me a year to realize that I should have kept the FTi. I bought 4 iron sets in my first 3 years. I finally started looking at what the good golfers had. Most of them owned their sets for many years and didn't need to chase technology. They also turned me on to used clubs.

3. Subscribing to Golf Digest magazine was both a blessing and a curse. It is the gift that keeps on giving. Hard to cancel, but turned me on to May, the "free" PGA Golf Instruction month. I started taking advantage of the free instructor sessions and then I had my first true Ahah! moment. Yes, Golf Digest taught me the lingo and helped me understand Golf Language. PGA Instructors are helping me to understand the golf swing, and yes I still have MUCH to learn.

4. Investing in training aids without golf instruction. The instruction manuals and videos aren't good enough alone. Analogy, You get more chest workout from a slow bench press with your feet off of the ground than a quick explosive press with your feet on the ground. Doing the latter will require more repetitions to get the same results. There is a better way to use golf training aids than what is advertised.

5. Choosing the right PGA Instructor is tricky.  They assess your swing, develop a instruction plan for you, and then try to teach you. BUT if you don't stick with them for no less than 10 lessons, you won't improve, and it seems like you've wasted money. It's tricky because most of us regress back to the swing we are comfortable with because it produces a lower score on the scorecard than the new technique the Pro just taught us. Yep, lack of trust, patience, understanding, practice, determination, it goes on and on. So if you can find one you really like, it is easier to stick with that person, and hopefully they are teaching a swing that matches your body type. It wish there was a term for Golf Maturity.

So what about money? I wish I had the massive amount of money I spent those first 3 years back so that I could have spent it on a 10 lesson plan at (pick your golf academy) and would have had plenty of money left over. The very new golfers that start right away with PGA instruction are years ahead of my self taught progress in the same 3 year span. The staggering amount of money I spent in the first 3 years proves that I COULD have afforded PGA instruction.

3 or 4 lessons won't cut it. PGA Pro Instructors have so much to teach us and they can't get to the next teaching point until we master the last teaching point. Our instant gratification society makes it hard on PGA instructors.

[iacas]

Originally Posted by SAGolfLuvr

4. Investing in training aids without golf instruction. The instruction manuals and videos aren't good enough alone. Analogy, You get more chest workout from a slow bench press with your feet off of the ground than a quick explosive press with your feet on the ground. Doing the latter will require more repetitions to get the same results. There is a better way to use golf training aids than what is advertised.

I think there are some training aids out there that are okay on their own. But that said there are also household supplies that make good training aids if you know how to use them . So I agree and disagree, both, with this. It's generally best to do drills and things you know will work than to believe the hype on an infomercial. Aids by reputable instructors are a better bet, too.

Originally Posted by SAGolfLuvr

5. Choosing the right PGA Instructor is tricky.  They assess your swing, develop a instruction plan for you, and then try to teach you. BUT if you don't stick with them for no less than 10 lessons, you won't improve, and it seems like you've wasted money. It's tricky because most of us regress back to the swing we are comfortable with because it produces a lower score on the scorecard than the new technique the Pro just taught us. Yep, lack of trust, patience, understanding, practice, determination, it goes on and on. So if you can find one you really like, it is easier to stick with that person, and hopefully they are teaching a swing that matches your body type. It wish there was a term for Golf Maturity.

I disagree completely that you need 10 lessons. Realistically, on the full swing, 2-4 lessons per year is a good number if you're dedicated between them to work on those things . If people come to see us too frequently we'd end up working on too many of the same things because they haven't improved enough to shuffle their priorities around.

Also, unless someone has a bunch of compensations, most people "get better" in that lesson. They shoot lower scores soon after if they keep working on the piece. I've written about this before so I won't belabor the point here now, but the vast majority of our students get better in that lesson, including the ones with two compensations (we just have to work on both at the same time).

10 lessons can run someone $500 to $2000 easily. That's a lot. The better the lesson, the less frequently you need lessons.

(I know a guy who charges $30. People see him almost weekly. They don't get better and he teaches them nothing. They might spend $500 a year on lessons while our students take a lesson or two or three, spend half as much, and drop strokes from their handicap like it's going out of style.)

[Shorty]

Originally Posted by iacas

I disagree completely that you need 10 lessons. Realistically, on the full swing, 2-4 lessons per year is a good number if you're dedicated between them to work on those things.

snip.....

The better the lesson, the less frequently you need lessons.

Exactly.

Some lessons really only need to take a few minutes.

A good teacher with a good student might need one minute and will only need to look at a couple of swings.

Because, as has been pointed out, bad swings are as "repeatable" as good ones and the faults and positives are visible every swing.

The instructor doesn't need to watch you hit 100 balls. He (or she) will ideally focus on one thing and spot where you're at straight away.

You will be given a drill to work on and then it's up to you.

A lot of people pay for a lesson and get upset when half of the lesson is spent picking up balls.

Wrong approach.

[Grumpter]

Quote:

Exactly.

Some lessons really only need to take a few minutes.

A good teacher with a good student might need one minute and will only need to look at a couple of swings.

Because, as has been pointed out, bad swings are as "repeatable" as good ones and the faults and positives are visible every swing.

The instructor doesn't need to watch you hit 100 balls. He (or she) will ideally focus on one thing and spot where you're at straight away.

You will be given a drill to work on and then it's up to you.

A lot of people pay for a lesson and get upset when half of the lesson is spent picking up balls.

Wrong approach.

That was my experience with a recent lesson. The instructor had one of my problems sized up in a few swings. The lesson could have been done in five minutes and I would have been fine with the service provided. A few days later I got a more detailed video analysis from the same lesson with a few more things I needed to work on. Now it's up to me to work on the areas we determined to be problems. The first few practice sessions on my own were uncomfortable but I am making progress. Once I feel a little more comfortable with the changes it will be time to go back for lesson 2 of 3.

[iacas]

There's a quote out there that a good instructor spends five minutes of an hour-long lesson figuring out what the student needs to do and the next 55 minutes justifying their hourly rate.

That's true more often than you think.

(I just don't really care for that saying because my hour-long lessons often go 1:15 or longer because I really want to make sure people feel they fully understand the piece they're working on, have plenty of drills to improve, know what their checkpoints are, etc.)

[The_Pharaoh]

Originally Posted by Shorty

Some lessons really only need to take a few minutes.

A good teacher with a good student might need one minute and will only need to look at a couple of swings.

A lot of people pay for a lesson and get upset when half of the lesson is spent picking up balls.

I agree with you, Shorty, however it is not very practical in theory. Some of my students drive over 30 mins for a lesson with me. They are hardly going to come and see me for a "few minutes" or to hit only a few balls. They want their hours worth! ;-) It would be better for them to see me for 10 minutes a day for 6 days in a row, but that is never going to happen.

What do you mean by "half of the lesson is spent picking up balls"?

[johnclayton1982]

Quote:

3 or 4 lessons won't cut it. PGA Pro Instructors have so much to teach us and they can't get to the next teaching point until we master the last teaching point. Our instant gratification society makes it hard on PGA instructors.

As detailed in another post, I went from 130 to around 88 with 5 lessons from a PGA pro.  It was a package deal for $800.  Lesson one was grip and backswing, two was plane and follow through, three driver, four putting and five pitching/chip/bunker.  My instructor is fantastic and I really like him.  But yeah, not 10.  Also, videotape your lessons.  That was a big key for me.  I still watch those basic beginner lessons.  The other day my driver went haywire, and I needed to watch the lesson video to remember to pivot my left foot open a little in the setup.  The slice disappeared.

Anyway, lessons are really important.  I think a package is the best way to do it.  Since then, I've been back for two lessons because I couldn't stop slicing my driver and because my putter went haywire.  If there is something I can't fix on my own, I go take a lesson.

That said, I tried a few other pros before I went to the one I use now.  If you feel like you didn't get better after the first lesson, you should think about a change.  Finding the right instructor is hard - I went to a golf digest top 100 instructor in my area and the guy had "his swing" that I had to do.  Due to a long-term rotator cuff injury suffered playing tennis, I can't swing "his way" without pain.  So, I think there are right instructors for certain people.  Now I'm with another guy, not as many accolades, but he worked with me to develop a swing that doesn't rely at all on "turning the club over" - that move hurts.  So we developed a tight fade.  A good instructor can work with what you have.

Golf is an insanely difficult sport to get better at.  Its maddening.  Sometimes I will go shoot 79, 80, 79 and think "I've got this game by the balls!" and then I promptly shoot 90, 95, 97.  My advice to anyone looking to get better is that once you get the fundamentals of the long game down (consistent contact and relatively consistent direction), its short game, short game, short game.  Good luck!