As this is my favourite subject, I am going to thoroughly enjoy expanding on it. The process has three important factors:
1) Mentally
Be capable of controlling the interference that comes from the conscious mind.
2) Physically
Although most sports require fairly uniform physical attributes, I can quite positively say for golf, although it can help to have a good regime, there are no absolutes. Example: John Daly, Monte and all.
3) Gross motor skills
This is certainly the most important factor to develop a golfer, which is without doubt what moves them to a totally different level.
I will be discussing and devoting all my efforts on this page to gross motor skills development. Be warned, you’ve now got me started on my passion and I hope this spills over to you, the reader.
When I started learning golf at 8 years old, my simple adaptation of my already developed motor skills were transported to an entirely new level by a so called Inner Game coach. His method entailed using these skills and he preached that from the day I was born, long before I could talk, along with all other babies, I was busy developing these skills.
By the age of two, we had more or less learned the basic mechanics for walking, jumping, climbing, throwing, pushing, pulling and many more. From this age until about our sixth year we smooth out these skills and the speed of development had long since reached its peak. A child learns these skills by example and imitates its peers.
It is very important to consider the importance of this learning curve and its significance to developing a golfer. I started at eight, a perfect age where the natural learning process is still achieved through example. If you compare this to an adult’s learning process which is unfortunately hampered through an array of verbal instruction and endless questions and answers.
I always find it amusing the difficulties many adults have when they take up golf. He/she starts this game and hits the ball pretty good with a natural feel for the swing and when adjusted to the ‘model swing’ cannot hit it any more. I see it time and time again. They holler,
"What am I doing wrong?"
Quite simply, nothing is wrong other than the fact that they are trying to control their motor skills with verbal commands. Now take young children, they rarely feels that they are doing anything wrong.
Why?
Easy, because they are still young enough to learn by example and have the patience to make mistakes. Just like when we all started to walk but spent more time picking ourselves up.
Did we get frustrated to the point of asking what we were doing wrong?
Or does every fall lead to an improvement in our motor skills?
Here lies the secret of how to best develop a golfer.