Golf Instructors are Not Chemists

[dennyjones]

Interesting thread..I've taken winter lessons indoors twice within the last 4 years with the same instructor.   Each lesson I am given a video of the initial swing and the final corrected product.  If I am having difficulty, not understanding, no..accomplishing the change, he will introduce a different way of thinking to get his point across.   I have a booklet of each lesson plan, what we attempted to achieve, drill to focus on the skill and small reminders to help with each drill.  I believe I have found a good instructor and would recommend him highly.  

 

[jkelley9]

I don't think you'll ever be able to get there with all the different types of people (students) you may pick up. People have varying abilities of communication reception, interpretation, reason, logic, understanding, etc. 

Not everyone is going to buy what you say, for several potential reasons. Some I'm aware of: EX they heard "xyz" from someone else who taught so-and-so and he's successful, or they have the delusion that they're going to hit a much better round immediately following a lesson (think "Well I missed a 3 ft putt so obviously what I was taught was wrong..." when everyone misses 3 ft. putts at some point or "I had 40 putts my next round so my putting must suck when in reality they averaged something like 50 ft from the pin each hole on putt #1), or they go to someone else and show an immediate improvement so "this instructor must be much better!"

Hell I'm sure there's a boatload of golfers that think they SHOULD be able to shoot in the low 80's after a couple lessons. Madness.

Even if folks are TRYING to really get better and put in some work, I feel like the general public is pretty limited when it comes to quantitative and qualitative data interpretation. I've done the same thing myself on numerous occasions, and I should know better. Goodness, that must be frustrating for you pros.

Unfortunately, there's almost always more than one way to skin a cat in almost all aspects of golf. Unlike in your chemistry analogy; the same thing will happen every time. For God's sake look at Jim Furyk's swing. Like what the heck. But it works, and someone's gunna point it out.

A (possibly unqualified) suggestion of mine would be when someone questions your method on anything and argues a point, maybe go towards a response of how you agree with them in that you have personally seen it work (even if you completely disagree, or have never seen it work) but that in your experience the chances of true success will come from your method because of the <insert stats/numbers here>. 

I was a Calculus tutor for several years and was pretty good at it. Math is very straightforward. There's only one way to skin a cat there, just like in chemistry. But even with that, a much larger part of being a successful tutor is adapting to a student's learning style, and modestly shifting their BRAIN towards the right direction, not just show them how to do it your way. If you try to hammer "this is how you do it," a lot of students will shut down. It's a neural response mechanism. 

[iacas]

On July 19, 2016 at 11:28 PM, Patch said:

You can't place all the blame on the instructor. The student has some responsibility for failures also.

Granted some instructors are too full of themselves to make the extra effort to insure a positive learning process. The old my way or the highway scenario. However some students probably do not know how learn from instruction. Their ego gets in the way too. 

I'd say 60/40 or maybe 70/30 with the instructor having the most responsibility in the process. The instructor has seen more students than the student has seen instructors. 

For bad instructors, it might be closer to 95/5 the instructor's fault. Heck, I've seen some instruction where the student is better off not doing anything asked of them.

For good instructors, it might be almost the opposite: the student can't be forced to practice properly. The instructor can only do so much.