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Ravi is a 13 year old who is just starting his freshman year at my old Alma Mater, Langley High School in McLean, Virginia. Ravi is quite large for his age, and his size 14 shoes suggest he will only get a lot bigger. This is not only his first lesson with me, but his first lesson ever, and what you see to start with is what you would call “homemade”, with a lot of common elements I see in young kids left to their own devices. The beauty of this is the natural fluidness of the movement, and the idea is going to be to hone this down without compromising the nice continuous motion.
One of the characteristics of talent is the ability to take suggestions and make changes fairly quickly. Another is to combine multiple new ideas and still come up with a workable action that hits the ball. Ravi demonstrates his high talent level by incorporating the new technique, making swings that look and function much better, and still hitting the ball as well if not better than when he showed up. I work a lot of the time with people who struggle to grasp any new concept and have extreme difficulty changing anything, so when I get to teach a student like Ravi I see it almost as a test of my ability to give him the right instruction and the right amount of instruction. When you look at the way Ravi changes his backswing plane in the course of an hour you will be amazed (and perhaps a little jealous). I can see Ravi becoming an excellent player, and if he comes for lessons on somewhat of a consistent basis I should be able to help him develop at a nice pace.
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