Does Modern Golf Instruction Always Help?

[Don Golfo]

13 hours ago, ncates00 said:

Maybe. But launch monitors provide the valuable and measurable data as a way to gauge progress other than seeing the actual flight. I don’t like the technical teaching method either. I just swing the clubhead and feel the clubhead weight throughout the swing. But I use my gc2 to measure whether my feelings are working. I know my ball speeds, launch angles, spins, etc for every club. I don’t use the machine to teach myself. I use the machine as a way of “looking in the back of the textbook to check my answers” so to speak. 

I’d love a GC2.  It looks fantastic in terms of capability. I bought the ES14 from Ernest Sports which is a lot cheaper (£500 in the UK I think from memory).  It measures the clubhead and ball speed with doppler radar and calculates launch angle, spin rate, carry and total distance.  Obviously It's a bit approximate, but it works ok providing you set up each of your clubs properly.  Judging from markers at my range its quite accurate on well hit shots, but sometimes gives a false reading on a miss hit.  The big downside is a lack of directional information.  It does though give you quite a lot of insight, particularly on the consistency of carry distance.  It's also been interesting to understand Driver performance; a major advantage is that you can review shot statistics after a range session?

[Don Golfo]

20 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Swinging a golf club is not a natural motion for humans. Through our evolution we learned to run and throw for hunting and our bodies adapted to that

I'm guessing that we also smacked the odd snake on the head with a stick too? Anthropologists generally agree that sports are a surrogate for hunting.  As we no longer have to hunt for our food we need something to fill the vacuum. Hence why golf and football (soccer) were invented in the first place. 

[Don Golfo]

20 hours ago, boogielicious said:

Swinging a golf club is not a natural motion for humans.

Not sure tennis, baseball or cricket are that much different really?  When you start playing cricket as a youngster the emphasis is on holding the bat and setting up properly at the stumps (which is remarkably like golf) and then trying to mimic the movement and strokes of better players.  Nobody tries to fill your head with too much technical detail and video analysis doesn't feature at all.  The result is that most kids are playing proficiently and more importantly enjoying the game after a single summer of practise.  In addition they all have batting strokes that look pretty good and naturally shift their weight forwards to hit the oncoming ball without thinking about it.  In comparison golf instruction seems to immediately become technical.

11 hours ago, iacas said:

No, we don't.

Yes we do.  Human beings have immense hand eye coordination,  spatial awareness and fine motor skills that are completely unparalleled amongst any other creature on earth.  Without that skill and these innate attributes we would never have invented sports and games in the first place?

[Don Golfo]

11 hours ago, iacas said:

It depends on what you mean by "better at the end of it," but if you mean "hits better shots at the end" then I disagree on occasion.

What I mean is you are hitting the ball better at the end of the lesson period.  Otherwise, what was the point of the lesson? I have definitely taken lessons where the instructor has identified a fault and helped me correct it with a lasting improvement. On the other hand I've had plenty of lessons that made me much worse.  I find grip changes for example to be very difficult.

11 hours ago, iacas said:

So I could have gone two ways with her, and I chose what I considered "Way A" - a tougher but ultimately more "correct" way. The rest of the lesson went poorly, I thought, but she was getting the motion down better and better, so I kept going with it.

At the end, feeling as if maybe I should have gone with the "easier" but "less correct" "Way B," I told her I wanted to see her in two weeks and I'd give her a half price lesson.

I think that's exactly the thought process that I would like my instructor to use. That takes intelligence and the ability to weigh up the student? Do you ask the student about which ”Way” you are going to go up front? I honestly prefer the instructor to tell me what they're doing and why.

[Don Golfo]

11 hours ago, iacas said:

You shouldn't be, as strict adherence to that standard will lead you to value band-aid fixes over actual golf instruction.

I'm not sure Jacobs was all about band aid fixes. I think he was a pragmatist.  He played tournament golf to quite a high standard (Ryder Cup), beat Gary Player in his prime to win the South African Match Play Championship and coached numerous top tour pros including Nicklaus and Olazabal.  Not, to mention that he was the president of the European PGA.  He was certainly regarded as a pioneer of golf instruction and one of the world’s experts on Golf tuition at every level of the game.

Where he was different I think was the realisation that the golf pros’ duty is to help all standards of golfer improve and to taylor instruction to the needs and limitations of the student. There is no point in trying to apply a tour player type of approach to your average Sunday golfer? He doesn't have the time or inclination to beat 1000s of balls every week over a period of years to create a perfect looking swing?  What he needs is an instructor to intelligently help him improve quickly by eliminating obvious swing faults. 

11 hours ago, iacas said:

I'm not insecure, but I'm also not going to say I'm perfect

Humility is a very under rated trait.  No student can reasonably expect perfection, just an honest straight forward approach.

[Don Golfo]

12 hours ago, iacas said:

But the golf swing is not at all a "natural" movement

In retrospect I probably used a poor form of words. I’m not really trying to defend Brian’s philosophy, I’m contrasting it with other more rigid forms of instruction. There seems to be two schools of thought in golf instruction. Those that prefer a methodical, system and tend to analyse movement of the body in quite a lot of detail. By correcting the body movement you correct the swing fault is the paradigm.  This approach has created lots of swings that look better and might function better in the medium and long term? This approach is much more radical and fundamental and takes a lot of commitment and effort? This seems like the dominant form to me currently. The other form starts with the ball flight and seeks to first to understand what’s occurring at impact and to make it better by applying a relatively simple correction. This could be a grip change or changing the swing plane. It doesn't seek to reconstruct the entire golf swing and accepts that individuals will make their own compensations to impact the ball.  This is anathema to most modern instructors who see it as a sticking plaster approach. That said, Brian and his cohort appear to have a lot of happy clients who claim significant improvement in hcp and enjoyment of the game, not to mention a successful and growing golf brand.

[GolfLug]

1 hour ago, Don Golfo said:

 I’m not really trying to defend Brian’s philosophy, I’m contrasting it with other more rigid forms of instruction.

I believe when you say 'rigid', it implies a false dichotomy that is not there. Maybe for poor instructors, but I think it does a great amount of disservice to apply that label to all instructors. 

The only hard line that exist, and has existed is between good and poor instruction.

I grew up playing cricket, both high school and state and have been under @iacas's tutelage for 3 years.

What I have learned is that the highest level of instructors in golf (as in any other sport or walk of life) are extremely intelligent and very effective in using the right blend of tools, and use very workable distilled instructions to suit students who come in all flavors of life. 

A 'non-technical' but poor instructor can confuse the dog do-do out of you too. That has never changed.

 

 

[nevets88]

I took lessons way before instruction underwent its transformation and didn't get that much better and now with video and radar, my swing is by leaps and bounds better even though I'm older and more importantly, I understand a lot more, most lessons circa 2000, I was not quite certain the why of what the they told me what to do. Granted, I think there were good teachers as you go back further in time, but the were much harder to find.

[Vinsk]

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

Yes we do.  Human beings have immense hand eye coordination,  spatial awareness and fine motor skills that are completely unparalleled amongst any other creature on earth.  Without that skill and these innate attributes we would never have invented sports and games in the first place?

I think @iacas is referring to golf here. You’re right in regards to our innate proprioception and fine motor skills. But what that allows us to do is just ‘hit the ball.’ Golf requires a much more skilled task than just hitting a ball. We do not all have an innate ability to time our weight shift and keep proper balance and produce a repetitive, efficient swing that is required to play golf well. Humans have the necessary skills to hit the ball and little beyond that is innate.

[iacas]

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

I'm guessing that we also smacked the odd snake on the head with a stick too?

Doesn't mean that motion is much at all like a golf swing. Since you later admitted that "natural" was a poor choice of words, though, I'm letting all that stuff go, except to re-iterate that things like cricket, tennis, etc. are much, much simpler motions with much, much wider margins of error, with shorter implements.

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

Not sure tennis, baseball or cricket are that much different really?  When you start playing cricket as a youngster the emphasis is on holding the bat and setting up properly at the stumps (which is remarkably like golf) and then trying to mimic the movement and strokes of better players.

I've seen golf taught to beginners in much the same way. I teach a junior camp to pretty much beginners every year.

Where are these teachers filling beginner's minds with "technical mumbo jumbo" like you keep saying? I feel you're creating a straw man here that doesn't often exist in the real world.

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

Nobody tries to fill your head with too much technical detail and video analysis doesn't feature at all.

Nor do we do this much in golf, for beginners. Again, where is this happening?

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

The result is that most kids are playing proficiently and more importantly enjoying the game after a single summer of practise.

The sports are also significantly easier, and since they're often playing against people their own age, their flaws are hidden. Golf doesn't do that - golf basically puts you against a top level opponent every time - the golf course.

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

In addition they all have batting strokes that look pretty good and naturally shift their weight forwards to hit the oncoming ball without thinking about it.

That's not accurate.

I coached my daughter's softball team, and gave them instruction on hitting that yielded stellar results because one of the biggest flaws of girls softball is that they don't swing very well. They don't have speed, they don't use anything but their arms, they don't step into stuff and use their hips.

My instruction didn't use video, but you keep pretending like people become 5 handicap golfers in a summer just by doing what's "natural" and they don't even necessarily become bad softball players doing what's "natural." What's "natural" to a lot of people, or what they "figure out on their own," is often really, really bad.

Let me ask you. I think you're 51 years old, and you're a 22 handicap. I mean no offense here, because trust me as the guy who trademarked the phrase "Golf is Hard®," I know it to be quite true. But you've been playing for many years, I believe, and you're not that old, and you've had lessons… and a good day for you is shooting in the low 90s? That's not that good.

You and I disagree, I think, at a pretty basic level on just what "good" is at this sport.

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

In comparison golf instruction seems to immediately become technical.

I have no idea what beginner golf lessons you've seen that you think they often "immediately become technical." Straw man?

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

Yes we do. Human beings have immense hand eye coordination, spatial awareness and fine motor skills that are completely unparalleled amongst any other creature on earth.

And yet most people, given a year, still can't break 100 reliably.

We are defining things very differently, man. People are not as good as you're thinking, or you have a very low bar for "good." People whiff when given a club, until they don't whiff anymore, but golf requires not only not whiffing, but hitting the ball in a very small area of a club swung properly and at faster than you drive your car. A club that, by the way, is longer than any other sporting implement that I can think of except a hockey stick… and players have a bottom hand that's much closer to the puck than their bottom hand is on a driver or even a 6-iron.

Golf is hard.® Humans are "good" at it, but overall, they still kinda suck.

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

What I mean is you are hitting the ball better at the end of the lesson period.  Otherwise, what was the point of the lesson?

That's not always possible OR best.

That's why I feel like you're possibly a band-aid fan.

Sometimes change is difficult, or foreign, or "weird," and takes more time than the 35 minutes you have in a lesson to work on that new pathway.

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

I have definitely taken lessons where the instructor has identified a fault and helped me correct it with a lasting improvement. On the other hand I've had plenty of lessons that made me much worse.  I find grip changes for example to be very difficult.

This further solidifies in my opinion the idea that you're a band-aid fan.

Obviously it's a guess, but it's an educated one. It's possible that some of the lessons where you got "worse" were actually good lessons, but you gave up on them and didn't put in the work. Not everything is fixable in 35 minutes - like the story I told at the beginning of my first post about the woman.

And I'm of the opinion that grip changes are incredibly easy to make. You're not moving, you have all the time in the world to make them, and you just have to know how to put your hands on the club differently. I could make any grip change instantly, as soon as I understand it.

You likely find them "difficult" because you give up on the instruction quickly, because after 35 minutes you're not hitting the ball very well.

This is somewhat common. A guy has a ridiculously weak grip. It's palmy. He swings over the top and flips because if he doesn't, the ball goes way right. It still goes right, but at least with the over the top move and the flip, it starts a little to the left and then curves way right.

Sometimes all this player needs is a grip change. Make the grip stronger, the clubface feels "shut" to the player, and he starts swinging out to the right.

That doesn't always happen inside of 35 minutes. At first, that guy often hits some nasty little low pull-hooks. Then instinctively (but not correctly per ball flight laws), he starts swinging out to the right a bit more.

Everything you keep saying further solidifies to me that you're a band-aid kinda guy. You want some tiny little thing, maybe even just "move your change into your left pocket" type stuff, that makes you better inside of 35 minutes, and that's a good lesson to you.

But - and again, not demeaning at all, because the sport is damned difficult - you're a 22. So I don't know that you know what a good lesson is like, or how to be a good student, or a combination of both.

4 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

I'm not sure Jacobs was all about band aid fixes. I think he was a pragmatist. He played tournament golf to quite a high standard (Ryder Cup), beat Gary Player in his prime to win the South African Match Play Championship and coached numerous top tour pros including Nicklaus and Olazabal.  Not, to mention that he was the president of the European PGA.  He was certainly regarded as a pioneer of golf instruction and one of the world’s experts on Golf tuition at every level of the game.

And I think that John Jacobs would have used more technology had it been available to him.

4 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

Where he was different I think was the realisation that the golf pros’ duty is to help all standards of golfer improve and to taylor instruction to the needs and limitations of the student.

I don't think that made him all that "different," because there really wasn't much "golf instruction" as a profession back when he started it. There was nobody for him to be "different than."

4 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

There is no point in trying to apply a tour player type of approach to your average Sunday golfer?

Sentences like that make no real sense to me. You have some image constructed in your mind, and I have an entirely different image in my mind.

Tour players and all good golfers do five things well. We call them the 5 Simple Keys®. Every lesson on the full swing that I've ever given has been with the aim of getting that golfer to do one of those things (or multiple) better. Because those are the things all good golfers do. Including Tour players.

4 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

He doesn't have the time or inclination to beat 1000s of balls every week over a period of years to create a perfect looking swing?

My students often have five minutes per day, though, or 10. And my students get better, not always with band-aid fixes, but with real, good, prioritized "pieces."

You're a band-aid guy. I'm pretty sure of it now.

4 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

What he needs is an instructor to intelligently help him improve quickly by eliminating obvious swing faults.

Not all "obvious swing faults" can be fixed in 35 minutes to the point where the golfer is "better" right then.

3 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

There seems to be two schools of thought in golf instruction.

You're creating a dichotomy when a spectrum is probably more truthful.

3 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

Those that prefer a methodical, system and tend to analyse movement of the body…

You're setting this one up as the "bad" one (because of the words I left off), but who wouldn't want an instructor who has a system in place for improving their students? You want someone who has no system? No methods? That just randomly gives advice?

Every good profession has systems and methods. Doctors don't just say "Oh, let's try this this time to fix this same heart condition we've seen a million times." No, they have a method. A system. Those are good things.

The words I chopped off were "in quite a lot of detail," but again you're assuming that a lot of that detail is exposed to the student in every lesson. I rarely expose students to too many details, but you're damned sure I know them.

3 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

The other form starts with the ball flight and seeks to first to understand what’s occurring at impact and to make it better by applying a relatively simple correction.

No, I reject this entirely. There is no dichotomy here, and ultimately every golf lesson, every good lesson anyway, is about fixing the ball flight.

You're a band-aid fan. That's fine. But it's very clear to me now. You want something "simple" that probably doesn't even involve changing your grip (one of the simplest changes anyone could make), and you want to be better almost immediately, even if that improvement doesn't last very long, and you return to shooting roughly the same scores you've always shot.

Again, not saying that in a mean way in the slightest. I'm glad you're a golfer who enjoys the game… but I think you have a very limited perspective on golf instruction, and that's made pretty clear by your bottling of instruction into two boxes.

3 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

It doesn't seek to reconstruct the entire golf swing and accepts that individuals will make their own compensations to impact the ball.

Who f***ing "reconstructs the entire golf swing"? This is the problem with your limited perspective. You've created this straw man argument here, and have lumped in all sorts of things together, all with this underlying (mis)belief that if you're "technical" you automatically spew it all at your student and now, apparently, "reconstruct the entire golf swing," even - to go back a bit - if the student is a beginner in his first year of playing golf.

C'mon man…

3 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

This is anathema to most modern instructors who see it as a sticking plaster approach. That said, Brian and his cohort appear to have a lot of happy clients who claim significant improvement in hcp and enjoyment of the game, not to mention a successful and growing golf brand.

So do I.

So does Sean Foley. So does Chris Como. So do a ton of instructors who you'd automatically assume are "bad" because they understand technical things and/or use video or draw lines or have a GEARS system or use high-speed video or launch monitors or pressure plates or SAM PuttLab.

5 hours ago, Don Golfo said:

I think that's exactly the thought process that I would like my instructor to use. That takes intelligence and the ability to weigh up the student? Do you ask the student about which ”Way” you are going to go up front? I honestly prefer the instructor to tell me what they're doing and why.

No, I don't ask the student which way to go, because they're not the educated one in the equation, they're the student. It's on me to make the judgment call. If I did ask them, you'd just blame me with trying to throw too much mumbo jumbo at them. She's not in a position to make a good decision there… and some students don't want to or need to know the "why". They want the "what" and the "how." But I always, always have a "why." And that reason is never "because a Tour player does it" or "because it looks better."

21 minutes ago, Vinsk said:

I think @iacas is referring to golf here. You’re right in regards to our innate proprioception and fine motor skills. But what that allows us to do is just ‘hit the ball.’ Golf requires a much more skilled task than just hitting a ball. We do not all have an innate ability to time our weight shift and keep proper balance and produce a repetitive, efficient swing that is required to play golf well. Humans have the necessary skills to hit the ball and little beyond that is innate.

Yeah, and a lot of the "just hit the ball" mechanics are horrible for golf. Yes, we can pretty quickly learn to swing a club and hit a ball without whiffing every time. Those swings might not let most people break 200, though, because the goal of golf goes beyond "swing this stick and hit that ball."

Golf is hard.®

Band-aid instruction can make some people feel better about their games, and might even help them long term… but it's not how every lesson can or should go.

[TRUCKER]

Iacas what are you're thoughts on "group" lessons vs. "private" lessons. Girl 11 boy 12 have had private lessons 3 years ago and have since been in group lessons 1X/week. I've watched other kids kind of plateau so I'm thinking of switching from group to private 1X/week. The instructor says at there age group is better because having peers practice together keeps them more engaged.

[dennyjones]

@TRUCKER to get someone's attention, use the "@" symbol before their handle.   That will leave a notification when they log back in.  

[Don Golfo]

3 hours ago, iacas said:

cricket, tennis, etc. are much, much simpler motions with much, much wider margins of error, with shorter implements.

I’ve seen plenty of professionals in Cricket draw a “duck” (Bowled out on the first ball with no runs more or less).  It’s not an easy game. In fact it’s a very difficult game. Fast balls arrive at nearly 100 mph, often with an unpredictable bounce, deliberately delivered long and short of the wicket to vary the height on arrival at the batsman.  Spin bowlers can deliver the ball at 70-80 mph but deliver the ball so that it dramatically changes direction directly in front of the batsman after the bounce.  The change in direction happens in roughly 1/10th of a second after the bounce.  Add to that the impact of changing wicket conditions which makes a massive difference to how the ball performs.  Make no mistake cricketers are amazing athletes and the game requires very quick reflexes and excellent hand-eye coordination.  You could debate whether or not it’s easier or harder than golf I think. 

4 hours ago, iacas said:

Let me ask you. I think you're 51 years old, and you're a 22 handicap. I mean no offense here, because trust me as the guy who trademarked the phrase "Golf is Hard®," I know it to be quite true. But you've been playing for many years, I believe, and you're not that old, and you've had lessons… and a good day for you is shooting in the low 90s? That's not that good.

Ok pal I won’t waste anymore of your time. Take it easy.

[iacas]

3 hours ago, TRUCKER said:

Iacas what are you're thoughts on "group" lessons vs. "private" lessons. Girl 11 boy 12 have had private lessons 3 years ago and have since been in group lessons 1X/week. I've watched other kids kind of plateau so I'm thinking of switching from group to private 1X/week. The instructor says at there age group is better because having peers practice together keeps them more engaged.

Not really the topic for it, but group lessons can be good in that they lower the pressure, but the obvious "bad" parts are that the individuals don't get the same amount of attention as they would get individually.

Adults often do them because they're cheaper, they can do them with friends, and they are less pressure. Kids often do them because they're good babysitting.

1 hour ago, Don Golfo said:

It’s not an easy game.

That's not the point I was making at all. My point was that beginning golfers don't get to face a "beginner" opponent - the golf course and the equipment is pretty much pro-level right from the start.

Beginners in cricket would not fare very well nor would they develop any good habits at all if they faced professional cricket bowlers right from the start, but unfortunately that's basically what happens in golf - they're given a golf ball, a driver, and a hole that's 4.25" away. About the only concession we make as "golf" is to sometimes tee them up 150 yards away instead of 450 yards away, but the actual act is still incredibly difficult, with virtually no margin for error.

Cricket and virtually all other sports:

• Have a simpler motion with shorter implements at slower speeds.
• Have more margin for error.
• Are played against other human beings, who can make mistakes and who are, particularly when someone is starting out, often at about the same level.

Golf:

• Has a complex motion with longer implements swung at higher speeds.
• Have virtually no margin for error.
• Is played right away to a 4.25" hole 150+ yards away.

1 hour ago, Don Golfo said:

Ok pal I won’t waste anymore of your time. Take it easy.

🤦‍♂️

I think you've completely missed the context, not to mention the bit about meaning no offense. Being happy to shoot a 92 doesn't mean you're a bad person, your handicap is not a value judgment of any kind. Hell, half of my students probably started with me when they were at your level or worse. It's not a value judgment of any kind.

But it does shed some light on your perspective here. It does lend weight to how strongly others might wish to weigh your opinions. Imagine if this was a court of law, and you were called to the stand as an expert witness. What insights could you offer into what it takes to play golf at a high level? Have you been a single digit golfer within the last 20 years? Ever? Have you been a 3, with a small but annoying miss, that required a few months to iron out? Something you couldn't see with the naked eye, that maybe required the use of a little technology to see or measure?

I don't know the answer to these things. I guessed at your age based on the year in your email address. For all I know you're 88 and you were married in 1967, and so shooting 92 right now is pretty good, but back in the day you maintained a +1 handicap. I don't know. That would certainly give a bit more weight to your opinion, wouldn't you agree?

Think about how this looks from my perspective. You're a 22 handicapper, and I'm a +1 and a pretty good instructor. You're posting here telling me (and others) a bunch of stuff about what makes for a good lesson and how people truly get "good" at golf. If I am right about the 51/22 stuff… (and tell me if I've gotten it wrong, please), imagine walking into an auto body shop having flipped through the pages of Car Mechanic magazine and telling the guys who worked there all about what's wrong with the auto body industry. Or talking to a bunch of Fortune 500 CEOs about how they should run their businesses because you took a few college business classes. Your opinions might be weighed a bit - outsider perspective is by its very nature often "fresh" and different - but most likely, what you don't know would limit the applicability and merits of your position/opinion. (And trust me, man, I hate bad instruction more than you probably do, and I would agree that there's a ton of it out there.)

Because, like in my golf lessons, I like to tailor whatever I'm saying to the audience, to the person I'm talking to. Admittedly here I'm talking to a few people, anyone who might read this, but I'm also trying to understand where you're coming from, and I'm talking at least a little more to you than the others who might read it.

You want to know how someone else put it?

Quote

He is one of those guys that won’t listen and will never improve. He just wants validation for his dislike of instruction or his like of band-aid fix type lessons that make him feel good but don't actually deliver improvement.

That's how someone else put it. And your reaction to my questions above, which again, man I trademarked the phrase "Golf is Hard®" - it is, I get it… anyway, your reaction to that doesn't dissuade me from agreeing with my friend here.

• What are your qualifications for telling us what a "good lesson" is?
• What are your qualifications for telling us what it takes to be "good" at golf?

That's not to say you need a sparkling résumé for each of those. If you've taken lessons at all, from anyone, you will have opinions on what makes for a good lesson and a bad lesson. And that feedback and those opinions are welcome; I welcome feedback from all corners, from anyone who has something to say, new or old, rich or poor, +6 to 36 handicap… etc. But understanding where you're coming from helps us to understand the context of your opinion.

If I'm right about the 51/22 stuff… maybe we're not that far off here.

---

In other words:

• If I got the 51/22 stuff wrong, then please correct me. Please share some background info so that others know where you're coming from, and what your perspective might be.
• Being a bad golfer isn't a value judgment. I teach bad golfers. I don't think they're "bad people." The game is ridiculously hard. The first chapter in LSW says that an alien would probably imagine it would take 30 shots to get the ball in the hole, and we're ticked about doing it in 5 or 6.
• You skipped over all the actual content of my post because you chose to be offended by something that I took the time to write out a few times that was not written or intended to offend at all.

[Phil McGleno]

@iacas-Why do you waste your time? Why waste your time when this guy is clearly-As you said-A band-aid guy?

You help real golfers who want to get better every day. He was not talking about you-He has never met you. And he does not know what he is talking about because he has either never gotten a good lesson or he has been a bad student. Look at his handicap.

I am sure he had lessons where he felt good at the end-but clearly none of them actually made him better at golf. I can give those golf lessons too-Just let the student hit a 7-iron for 45 minutes. By the end-Unless they get tired-They are hitting it better because they have been hitting a 7-iron for 45 minutes.

[iacas]

2 minutes ago, Phil McGleno said:

@iacas-Why do you waste your time?

Cuz I don't see it as a waste of time, and because I enjoy talking about this stuff, thinking about this stuff, hearing other sides of the argument, and everything - golf is my passion, my life, my drive and purpose. It's my small way of making the world a little bit better place.

Everyone's opinion has value, but that value depends on a lot of things…

[Vinsk]

@Don Golfo I was actually enjoying this discussion. As @iacas just said he enjoys hearing people’s POV, experiences and ideas. You’re discussing this with one of the best golf minds out there (yeah, it’s true). If you really want to see some changes in your golf game, real and lasting changes, you’ve come to the right place. You can even post a video of your swing and get excellent advice. It can totally void of tech talk or all the tech talk you want. Just wanted to say this. Cheers.

[billchao]

On 12/15/2018 at 5:15 AM, Don Golfo said:

We have natural god given talent to hit the ball.

I disagree, but for arguments sake, let's say that's true. There are other skills we have the natural ability to do: running, throwing, jumping, etc. Some people naturally do them better than others and everyone can be taught to do them better.

A skills coach will teach someone mechanics to improve their throwing or running technique. The same applies in golf. Nobody is ever going to tell you that to run faster you need to visualize yourself being faster or whatever mumbo jumbo these natural swing types like to promote.