dozu

you need to read the sand, and imagine how the bounce will interact with the stuff. if the sand is firm, then you need to use the leading edge to enter the sand 1-2 inches behind the ball.... with a low bounce SW or a LW. do not open up the face.... you would bounce that blade right into the equator of the ball and mess up the shot.

if you read EA Tischler's work, I think the term is 'right anchored swing'.... which is what I use. the principles are the same - being on plane, rotation, weight shift.

club face at impact, wrist action for the 'release'.. just to name a couple..... anyway, that's not important. I just think he, like many other instructors, knows only 1 way to swing the club and 1 way to teach.... therefore the chance of student success is slim. I'd recommend EA Tischler's work.... great stuff for helping amateurs understand the golf swing.

speak for yourself then

who is 'we' ?

agreed.... he gets a lot of things wrong... avoid him.

the average exaggeration factor on the internet is 30%, which is about right for club distances on golf forums, and serve speed on tennis forums. take 30% off and you get the real distances.

there is a lot of bullsh1t in this thread

there is always a balance to be made between the 'leave-alone' and 'guide-along'. have to give the kid room to experiment, to collect her own sensations, to communicate with the teacher. but also have to stress the key coaching points - grip, balance, distance to the ball, hand action, body clearance, weight shift...... you let her see good results, she will come back for more.... some kids are so much into experimenting, they may not be so keen to ask for help... the result is bad shots repeated over and over and frustration will set in.

dude you are making this so complicated. try this - go to an open field, make sure nobody around... see if you can toss the club far and high down the target line.... now, put a ball there, repeat the same motion but don't let go the club. you have a perfect golf swing.

The other question I have for the OP is - how good is the instructor? how is his experience in teaching kids of that age? I have made a post in another thread speaking quite low of most of the instructors out there... I have coached junior golfers from 4-16 in the past few years and we take them to some pros during the summer. results are generally quite disappointing - most of them are 1-trick ponies, they either teach you 'golf swing is a body rotation' or 'golf swing is an arm swing', what's worse is that they'd mix these instructions and confuse the hell out of the students. most of them teach these artificial positions by showing slo-mo of tiger or whoever, without telling students what a golf swing should feel like. I think I benefitted a lot from watching some instruction videos by some good teachers on the internet, combined with reading some great books, combined with my own athletic background (played tennis for 20 years), and came up with a very simple method to build a swing for a child. It's very important for a child to see improvement - otherwise frustration will set in.... it happens to adults even, very easy happens to a child. There was a period between when my daughter was 6-7 when she just doesn't want to practice anymore, because she is not seeing results from the teaching of those so-called pros, and her exact words were 'I hate golf' and 'golf is stupid'. You can't blame the kid.. the teacher and the parents are the ones to blame. Of course golf is stupid if the student at that age keeps hitting the ball fat/thin/crooked. Finally I had seen enough and had to take over the coaching... she now has a repeatable swing - drives fly high and straight 8 out of 10 times... irons are crisp with 6-inch divot 8 out of 10 times... golf is fun again for her and she is happy to go to practices. If you'd like more details, feel free to PM me.

after seeing so-called pros teaching some junior golfers for the past 4 years, I just don't have a good feel about them in general. These people teach too many artificial stuff. golf may feel difficult and complicated, but it's completely natural if you know what the intent should be. get a 5lb dumb bell, go out to an open field, make sure there is nobody around. now swing that mother into a back swing, and toss it as far and high as you can down the target line. you will naturally - use your hips/legs have the optimal swing plane, because the mother is so heavy it doesnt allow you to swing along any 'artificial' plane swing from the inside if you toss it high. what's so damn difficult about it? I see all these people on the driving range, trying to check if back swing is on plane etc..... all this bull shit taught by the so called pros.. laughable at best.

question - does he have other sports background? which could help a lot. otherwise, if this is the first sport he takes on seriously, then welcome to the wonderful game of golf.... he's gonna have to put in the work to get good. there is typically the 10,000 hour rule (to become good at anything) - and 'good' in golf means scratch... so at 3-hours per day, that's about 10 years worth of practice.... 4 months hasn't scratched the surface yet. my daughter started 4 years ago and her swing has finally come into decent shape (she started at 4 and there is only so much you can teach to a very young kid). it takes a lot of patience... and I have to say the most rewarding thing about teaching a child is really the time I get to spend with her, and the communication channels this golf thing opens up for us. Just enjoy the jouney... don't worry 2 much about the score.

take a golf stance... let both arms hang relaxed, palms facing each other. no need for a club. now use the body rotation to toss the arms back. when the arms reach parallel to the ground, you should feel like shaking hands with a person to your right. now, start the downswing with the left hip, toss the 2 arms forward. when they pass the ball position, they should be square. when they reach parallel to the ground, you should feel like shaking hands with a person to your left. your goal should be tossing them high (imagine the PGA logo). if you finish high, you will swing from the inside, guaranteed. If your hands and arms are relaxed, you will have the hand-shake positions happen naturally without you trying. now go repeat the samething, but this time holding a club with light grip pressure, so light that it can almost fly out of your hands when you reach the downswing handshake position. There you have it, a perfect golf swing.

there are basic stuff such as grip and how you initiate the motion etc.... then everything else is feel. when you practice, try to take a practice putt, and hold your finish and imagine the ball roll to the hole - ask yourself, is that the right line? was that enough pace or 2 much pace?... repeat the practice stroke until you can envison it die in the hole... the go to the ball, take the same amount of back swing and trust it and let it go.

this game is indeed a past time for the retired.... having played tennis for the past 20 years and golf for the past 5, I have to say that golf is a little rediculous game compared to tennis. With tennis, I can grab a buddy and run each other's ass all over the court for 1.5 hours and that is enough endorphine good for a couple of days. With golf, 1.5 hours you'd be luck you are on the 5th hole. A game like tennis is more versatile- different shots require completely different techniques.. Golf is like having to hit a tennis forehand on a dime everytime. The dimension of the tennis court is build more reasonable for the human brain. a slight miss-hit can still produce enjoyable results. the size of the racket and the ball are built more reasonable also. The golf equipment however, with the small ball and the small club head, and you are required to swing the thing at 100mph and hit the ball thru the gut of a worm (that's what golf courses look like on google earth). That's why at the driving range, all these people do look like goof-offs, they all repeat the same motion, over and over and over. The reason why golf is so addicting, simply has to do with human brain's dopamine release mechanism - the release dose is the heaviest upon 'random' rewards.... in other words, if golf is designed to use a tennis racket size club head to hit a tennis ball size object into a tennis court like dimension of course, every shot will always be hit on the sweet spot with balls always land in the fairway, the human brain will lose interest, and the dopamine release will be much lower. We all have this experience, you can wack a bucket of balls left and right, and it's that 1 ball you drill on the screw straight and far that makes you feel like on top of the world and that makes you come back the next day. That's what golf is... a game designed to be addictive for the goof-off people.

lol, 2 lazy to update my profile, real index is about a 8.... I have another thread titled 'forget about body parts' covering more details of this simple method.... it's mostly based on George Knudson's method, but I added some elements from other teachers, and also created a simple training aid myself.

where do you hang the projector? what model is it?

wife and me both are in our 40s and I'd beg to differ from the concensus.... me as a consulting professional, it's challenging and fun for me to identify and solve problems in the most efficient way. If you can approach the teaching part with a professional manner, and act like a real golf teacher would, there is very little risk here, even if the student is somebody you really care about. teach them with the most simple way - I told her to toss her arms 45 degrees into the air towards the target... 20min later she's got a release that looks like somebody who's played long time.... just this 1 swing thought eliminate so many beginner errors - can't take it 2 far back inside or outside, can't have open club face, can't hit from over the top, lag happens naturally (hands infront of the club head). with the proper release, the bottom of the swing is so big, it gives a very large margin for error to hit crisp iron shots, and the impact sounds professional too. come on guys - golf is so easy. it's just too many people play it the complicated ways, making it very frustrating for beginners to pick up.

I used to take my daughter to a roller coaster ride when she was 3-4 years old.. the ride goes 45 degrees up to the sky. now when I try to build her a swing, I ask her to imagine that the left hip is the roller coaster, her arms are herself and dad :).... the 2 passengers are grabbing the safety bar (the club). The golf swing is the roller coaster taking the 2 passengers for a good ride into the sky. If she had any attempt to use the shoulders/arms to hit at the ball - I tell her it's like passengers trying to jump from the back row to the front row during the ride - no can do!

i actually believe that for adults learning the game, we all have some athletic background to leverage with. if hitting is natural for you, you can make it work, without necessarity have to change to swinging. i can feel like I am hitting the ball like a tennis forehand (hence like hitting), or can feel like I am just tossing my arm to the target (swinging). both can work. don't overcome.... leverage.

+1 here. if you truely can hit the 7w to 200y, then good for you, just use the 7w. keep in mind the average male golfer's driving distance is only 195y. (don't believe for a second all the hackers on this forum say they drive the ball 300+)

major head movement forward during the down swing.. you can see she is fighting hard to stay behind the ball but still had to cast the club close, hence the loss of lag. imagine swing high into the sky, with arms tossing the club over the clouds... this will encourage a deepened tilt thru impact.

I just figured out the most effective training aid that is gonna give you a perfect swing - and it's gonna cost you $12 1) get a old tennis racket from yard sale for $5 - better if you get an old wooden racket without the open neck. 2) get a 16 oz baseball swing weight for &7 and slide that sucker on the handle. now. keep your eye on the spot where the ball would be, and swing this mother.... try to swing it to a hand shake position.. and if you let go, the racket would fly high 45 degrees into the air. feel the rythm.... feel when you would apply the juice... use the shawn clement 'pushing kid on the swing analogy'. just engrain this feel, you have a perfect swing - perfect spine tilt, club can't go off plane, can't go over the top if you apply juice at the right time, can't leave club face open because you are trying to swing into a handshake. there is nothing to fight against, or to hold on. no artificial wrist bow, no artifical holding on to so called lag and at the last moment have to throw it away due to open racket face. no artificial trying to get the sucker on plane - the 16 oz circular piece of metal does that for you. (between the weight and the racket, it's about 28 oz) everything happens naturally. shit - I just saved you $1000's of lessions and frustration - now just send 15% of that to my paypal account. let my 8-year old daughter swing this thing for 30min, now she's got a release that looks like Sorenstam. :)

well, I see your point.... but notice that I didn't say what the arm/hip/hands should do individually by themselves.... the feel of tossing takes care of what they need to do.