Is There Something Wrong with the Way We Learn Golf?

[jc21539]

I have to disagree on one thing: that it takes hours of working on particular drills for your swing to become natural.

That is actually a bit counterintuitive, since nothing could be natural if it takes hours of drilling to ingrain.

I personally think that it is the drills that we are using that is the problem, not that people are not practicing them. When we use drills, we usually isolate one small part of the swing. While this is logical in certain settings (analyzing an IT system, for instance), the golf swing is too unified a motion for the depth of analysis that we are giving it.

I believe that the problem with the way most people choose to swing a club is on a much more basic level than any individual parts of the swing. Here's my analogy:

To fix a burnt-out light bulb, you wouldn't go rewiring all of the switches in the house, would you? That's not to say that after years of trial and error, we can't get the wiring right. Maybe, in the process, we even attempted to replace the light bulb. And, if we were lucky, we replaced the lightbulb at a time when we had, by coincidence, gotten all the wiring right. But if we already screwed with the wiring by the time we replaced the light bulb, the light is never going to work.

Our minds are more capable than golfers seem to think. Look at how quickly we can learn to swing a baseball bat or a tennis racket. Look at how quickly we learn to throw a baseball, or shoot a basketball. We don't nitpick every single thing our muscles are doing when we do those things. We just have one thing in mind, and that is what we want the result to be. Our mind takes care of the rest for us.

And for those of us who can't hit a baseball to save our lives, can't reach first base from home plate, can't hit a tennis ball over the net, or can't reach the rim the foul line, taking all the lessons from every pro on the entire face of the planet is not going to make you a great golfer. With enough practice, we can achieve mediocracy, and you know what? It's really not so bad. Heck, the more shots you hit a round, the better value you are getting for your money.

[JonnyGolf]

As an older dog (48) also new to golf and striving to improve in my first year this is a timely topic for me. I'm happy to practice all aspects of the game for hours per week but I always worry that I'm practicing bad habits that are then going to be more difficult to break so I worry about just working things out myself.

For that level of instruction (basically a "start over" kind of coaching), I would say 6 months of serious practice and coaching. But, if you stick with it, the results can be phenomenal. And, your initial results are pretty typical as your swing thoughts are clouded with "more lag, hip rotation, P1-p10, etc. It becomes very difficult to make a free and easy swing with technical thoughts.

However, the "can't hit the ball" issue can be fixed. My recommendation is during your pre-shot routine, go through all of the swing thoughts your trying to accomplish, taking your practice swings with those thoughts in mind. But, when you step up, only focus on making contact, seeing in your mind the club coming from the inside to make contact. And, maintain that thought through your backswing and swing. If your practice and practice swings are working, you'll make the swing you want. If not, back to the practice tee! But, you'll at least made solid contact from which you can evaluate your swing. Have fun, jg

[Ringer]

I think it is quite a valid point that there is a huge difference on the instructor side between a player who is just starting and a player who has already had a hundred lessons courtesy of Golf Digest.

Fred Shoemaker is pretty much the foremost authority on this. Everyone should get his book "Extraordinary Golf". One of the best books ever written and it describes this drill.

[Ringer]

I suppose it depends on the type of player you are, I am a technically minded player, and as a result have a good swing, good ball striking ability, but my short game is no where near the level my long game is, where as a feel player would have an awesome short game but a slightly worse long game.

What you say about impact is a very common belief. There is a fundamental flaw though. Impact is not achievable as a single position. You must make the WHOLE swing. It isn't even broken down into segments. It's ONE MOTION.. not a series of motions or movements anymore than a circle is an infinite number of dots. Perhaps mathmatically and scientifically it can be disected that way, but in order to CREATE it you have to forget science and math.

Thank you McClain for turning 1 motion into 8 motions :(

[jammer59]

Johnnygolf,

Thanks for the feedback and encouragement. I like your recommendation to do the thinking before the swing but at swing time keep it simple. Pick the target, visualize the club making solid contact from the inside pointing downline to the target, finish on the left side. I'll keep the drills for the garage and the practice swings only.

[TourSpoon]

Swing time has to be simple. My best shots start with clear visualization and then at address I just concentrate on the target. Of course, that is easier said than done.

[geezer]

And for those of us who can't hit a baseball to save our lives, can't reach first base from home plate, can't hit a tennis ball over the net, or can't reach the rim the foul line, taking all the lessons from every pro on the entire face of the planet is not going to make you a great golfer. With enough practice, we can achieve mediocracy, and you know what? It's really not so bad. Heck, the more shots you hit a round, the better value you are getting for your money.

Mediocraty??!!!!! You're a two handicap... Its no Tiger Woods, but its a hell of a lot better than the "average golfer"!

As for those who are arguing that people shouldn't be taught technical aspects of the swing. How else are you supposed to learn? Learn being the operative word. You use these thoughts in practice, at the range. The course is all about not thinking technical. Therefore, I conclude that we are not being taught wrong but that we are learning wrong, implementing our lessons wrongly.

[jc21539]

I used the term "we" because, even if you are Tiger Woods, there is always going to be someone that comes next who is longer, straighter, and better than you. In effect, we all are limited by what our bodies and minds will allow us.

And I think I should probably define what I call technical. Is the grip technical? No, actually it's fairly natural and logical. It gets confusing because of some added extras such as the palm over thumb, overlap/interlock, and index trigger. But other than that, it's just like gripping anything else. In fact, all of the preshot positions make a lot of sense in an athletic way.

Ringer absolutely nailed what I was really getting at when he said that the actual swing is one motion and cannot be learned by dissecting it into little segments at a time. Yeah, someone like Jim McClain or David Leadbetter can break down the golf swing into smaller and smaller pieces, and then sell videos that make them a ton of money. But just because they can dissect it that way doesn't mean you can learn it that way, which makes it foolish to teach it that way, unless you want to sell videos and make tons of money.

I think somewhere back in the post, someone talked about Tiger being a 9 technical player and a 1 feel player. Maybe you didn't see the videos of him swinging when he was 2 years old. Here it is for anyone who hasn't seen it: http://www.metacafe.com/watch/59134/...t_2_years_old/ .

How much of a technical player could he have been then? Yes, his swing has changed since then...although not drastically until he started working with Butch Harmon. He only won 3 U.S. Junior Amateurs, 3 U.S. Amateurs, and the Masters with the swing he had since he was 2 years old.

So are you saying that, even though the golf swing is something that has to be learned through hours of drills to learn each individual part of the swing all the way to impact, a 2 year old can do it?

What I'm saying is, if a 2 year old can do it, then it's not as complicated as it's being made out to be.

[tm22721]

Impact is not achievable as a single position. You must make the WHOLE swing. It isn't even broken down into segments. It's ONE MOTION..

You are right. When faced with overwhelming complexity our response is to fall back and punt.

But the golf swing has defied every attempt to simplify it. It takes an entire book to describe the underlying physics. The way that I approach a complex problem is to break it down into manageable pieces. I cannot deal with the entire swing at once. I have had mixed results in trying to simplify my own swing, although I have not yet given up. YMMV

[Ringer]

Mediocraty??!!!!! You're a two handicap... Its no Tiger Woods, but its a hell of a lot better than the "average golfer"!

There is so much more to a swing than it's individual parts.

Just think of all those juniors in the world with beautiful swings and haven't learned a single technical thing about it.

[geezer]

There is so much more to a swing than it's individual parts.

Yes, I agree with you to an extent. But why then, by the time those kids are 20 and playing professional golf, are their swings more technical? If the kind of swing that a two year old can make was good enough for the tour, wouldn't be there?

[Ringer]

It sure helped her..

[JaY_B]

What you say about impact is a very common belief. There is a fundamental flaw though. Impact is not achievable as a single position. You must make the WHOLE swing. It isn't even broken down into segments. It's ONE MOTION.. not a series of motions or movements anymore than a circle is an infinite number of dots. Perhaps mathmatically and scientifically it can be disected that way, but in order to CREATE it you have to forget science and math.

Agreed, but you can and IMO should dissect the swing in order to gain the most from it, there is a learning/teaching method called Whole - Part - Whole which is an effective way of learning, to put it simply, hit 20 balls, identify key area/issue in your swing (whole), work purely on correcting the fault and getting in to the right positions, feeling the right positions etc (part), hit another 20 balls working on feeling yourself in the correct position and 'ingraining' the Incorporated swing move (whole).

This method of learning implements both the technical and the flow aspect of the golf swing.

[jc21539]

I was watching a show on National Geographic Channel about some Dinosaur mummy they found that was preserved for millions of years. Pretty cool, but I do have a point coming up.

To analyze the way the ancient dinosaur walked, they input what they knew about the dinosaur's weight, skeletal design, and muscle mass, and let a super computer run millions of tests to find the most efficient way for it to move.

They knew the computer was accurate because they had tested it before on other species of today that they could actually compare the computer results to, one of which was humans. Now here's what I'm getting at. The motion of a person running is so complex, it took the supercomputer about one hundred and fifty million tries just to get it right. Does that mean that running is complicated? Well, yes, but at the same time, of course not.

Everyone could improve by getting lessons, even tour players. It never hurts to be a little more balanced, to create a little more stability in the lower body, and to have a little more control over distance and ball flight. But these are not the "technical" aspects that many people think of. They are, however, many of the "technical" things that tour players work at improving on a consistent basis.

By the way, Tiger did happen to win the Masters by 12 shots with essentially the same swing he had when he was 2 years old. Granted, he made some major "technical" changes after that, but we will never know whether he was better off for it. It has never been his swing that has made Tiger so dominant, anyway.

[geezer]

Essentially the same swing... in that they both have Tiger Woods swinging the club.

[jc21539]

I guess it depends on whether you choose to focus on the similarities or the differences.

Either way, his swing at 2 years old was a heck of a lot better than the majority of amateurs. He broke 50 for nine holes when he was 3 years old.
He was better than almost everyone on this forum by the time he was 13.

[geezer]

If everyone on this forum started when they were two years old then who knows how good we would all be. I'm referring, of course, to a strength and flexibility standpoint. People who start later in life have the disadvantage of starting with muscles which are not used to performing particular movements. tiger, however started when his muscles were a 'blank slate', and, as such, is athletically more suited to golf.

Tiger is as good as he is because he works constatantly on his fundamentals and other mechanics and has been doing so for the last 30 years.

Don't get me wrong I'm not disagreeing with you, with regards to whether or not people can get too mechanical or whethger Tiger was better at 10 then we (as a collective) are now, I'm disagreeing with you that the golf swing can be performed succesfully without any mechanical thought whatsoever.

You said something about a dinosaur and running and how running is natural. Well the golf swing isn't natural.

[Ringer]

You said something about a dinosaur and running and how running is natural.

This right here says all I need to know about the attitude you bring to your golf game.