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I thought I would give everybody a better insight into what I do on any given day on the lesson tee. I happened to have these 5 hour long lessons back to back on a 24 degree day in early February, and as is always the case each student presents an entirely new set of circumstances to deal with, which is exactly why I truly enjoy teaching golf. It’s like starting a new job every time a new face shows up, and whether it’s a first time lesson or someone I’ve been teaching for years it is always fresh and challenging.
One of the things you will note here is the amount of physical activity that goes on when I teach. I recently saw a teacher who is regarded as a Trackman expert teach for 5 hours and never get out of his chair. I rarely spend more than 5 or 10 minutes in a chair, and spend the rest of the time either demonstrating something or with my hands on the student trying to move them around in order to give them a feel for what they need to do, which in most cases is not happening naturally. All this prattling on about the destructive nature of video and launch monitor use results from teachers who become overly dependent on the technology part of it rather than the old fashioned hands on method which is used after the diagnosis has been made (with the help of slow motion analysis and ball flight data). A poor teacher is a poor teacher, regardless of what they use or don’t use. I think the worst I have seen don’t use anything, and then sit around making suggestions based on things they can’t even see (although they pretend to be able to see just what the hands are doing through the impact area, which is impossible). I don’t think I ever give a lesson without touching the student at some point, and usually I am putting them into places they don’t (or wouldn’t) normally go. My experience tells me that you can understand something well enough to explain it but have no clue how to do it because you don’t know what it feels like. Me telling someone to get their hands forward at impact and hit down on the ball sounds like a good idea, but what if you have played golf for 20 years and scooped every iron shot you ever hit? If I don’t grab you and do it with you, you may not ever feel what it’s like to do it.
Here we have an older (55) scratch player I have been teaching for years, a newer golfer in his late 30’s who is joining the club and wants to learn how to be decent (he’s not), two 10 year- olds just getting started with golf, and a 15 year- old lefty who went from not being able to break 100 to shooting in the low 80’s and making his high school team in less than a year.
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