Menu
It’s been a few months since Stan, my longtime student, has graced my teaching bay. Stan is the epitome of the struggling golfer, taking lessons here and there, trying tips from magazines and television, falling victim to every infomercial promise. When Stan signs up I know I am going to have to wheel out the proverbial couch, as we will talk about his golf as much as I will look at his swing. Stan wants to figure it out: who doesn’t? He wants to get better, but the pursuit of a good game drives him crazy. He will leave our sessions in good spirits, and then slowly regress into a state of confusion and aimlessness until he returns, seeking new answers to the same questions.
Wayne: Hey, Stan. What’s up?
Stan: Nothing much, really, except my scores.
Wayne: So what’s going on with your game?
Stan: Well, I’m just not very consistent. I hit some good shots, but my bad ones kill me and always seem to come at just the wrong time.
Wayne: Is there ever a good time for a bad shot?
Stan: You know what I mean. If there’s OB left I hook the crap out of it. It’s like, why don’t you spray one right where you still have a shot? Of course if there’s water right and acres left I’ll push it dead into the lake. I don’t know where the thing is going. I’ll make a triple and on the next hole hit two shots a Tour pro would be proud of. Of course, the hole after that I’m back to hitting it like an idiot. It’s driving me crazy. If I am capable of hitting great shots, what’s keeping me from swinging that way all the time?
Wayne: You do swing that way all of the time. That’s the problem.
Stan: What the hell is that supposed to mean?
Wayne: Well, that means exactly what it sounds like. You’re thinking that the swing that hit the great shot is entirely different from the swing that hits the awful shot, right? You also think that the swing you hit the good one with is the one you want to repeat.
Stan: Of course. Why would I think anything different?
Wayne: You wouldn’t, until you hear what I have to say. I’ve been studying swings and giving lessons for more than 25 years. With the video technology and the computer software we have now I can compare swings more completely than ever. I’ve worked with every level of player from beginner to Tour winner, and I can tell you for a fact that your swing does not change any perceptible amount from swing to swing. It is, in fact, quite consistent. This is true for any golfer. If I don’t tell you to think of something or try to do something differently, or if you don’t make a conscious decision to try something different, your swing will map out almost exactly the same on the computer, even though the ball may go in opposite directions. In other words, the same swing hit both shots.
Stan: That’s ridiculous. How could that be possible?
Wayne: It’s true. If I show you two consecutive swings from the same spot you will not be able to see any discernable difference, even though you produce two entirely different shots. The hand action that is required to square the face is so fast it cannot even be measured. When you watch Johnny Miller or Nick Faldo or Peter Kostis analyze a swing by a great player who has just hit an errant shot they always come up with a reason. “He really dipped his head on that one”, or “he got way ahead of it and couldn’t square up the clubface”, or “he got very quick in transition” are typical observations for swings that are so close to identical that I would defy anyone to do a blind test and pick out a bad shot versus a good one. In other words, the announcers are making it up. They can’t see a difference until they know where the shot went. It’s a load of horse manure.
Stan: But like you said, the hand action is different. That makes the swings different.
Wayne: Yes, but the difference is so small you can’t even perceive it (especially on a video) which means you can’t really feel it, which also means that it’s almost impossible to work on it and achieve any lasting results. Players who beat a million balls with no thought who just watch the ball fly are waiting for their talent to kick in. For every Ricky Fowler there are thousands of Stans.
Stan: So how is that supposed to help me?
Wayne: Here’s the point: you and everyone else say that you want to be consistent. I’m saying that you don’t want to be consistent until you’re really good. Who wants to be consistently mediocre, or consistently bad? You don’t want the swing that hit the good shot, because it’s the same one that hit the bad shot. Your problem is that your technique is good enough to hit one or two good shots, but that’s one or two out of thirty or forty, and it’s rarely two in a row. The hands square the clubface at tremendous speed. If your technique is faulty you make an already difficult task more difficult, if not impossible, and definitely impossible to do enough times to consider yourself a good ball striker. If you are not supremely gifted and talented for the game you cannot hope to overcome bad form. In the end it comes down to building techniques that make it easier for you to consistently contact the ball correctly, whether it’s with a driver off the tee, an iron or fairway metal off the ground, or even shorter pitches and, yes, putting as well. Everyone wants to drive it long and straight. Everyone wants to hit solid, compressed shots off the ground. Everyone wants to control the distance, trajectory, and spin in their short games. Everyone wants to roll the ball on the line they choose with correct speed. All of these things, for those of us not lucky enough to have the talent to do them without conscious thought, require good technique, and that means setting up properly and moving the body, arms and wrists in such a fashion as to allow for control of the shaft and clubface.
Stan: I don’t like where this is going. Why do you keep talking about “those who are lucky enough”? Who are these people?
Wayne: You’re watching them on TV. I would say that the majority of players on the Tour are a combination of talent and work ethic, and tend to have instructors and coaches to help them along. They work on specific areas of their games they consider weak by analyzing and incorporating changes just like most golfers who aren’t on that high a level. On the other hand, anyone who is a top level player and professes to be thinking of nothing when they play is lucky to have been blessed somehow with an affinity for the game, a “knack” that the vast majority of people don’t have. These players tend to view all instruction as overly “technical”, and wonder why people (everyone else) don’t just get up and hit it and stop thinking about how to do it. That would be nice, but what happens when you think of nothing and shank it, or top it, or hit it fat, or snap it out of bounds? When you shoot 100, are you going to continue to not think about what you are doing, or are you going to try to figure out how to get better?
Stan: So it goes right back to making the swing better.
Wayne: Exactly. Improve your swing, hit more shots better, make your worst shots less bad, strike your short shots better, and watch your scores begin to come down.
Stan: I know when we put my swing up on the video that there are going to be a whole slew of problems. I’ve seen it too many times before. It gets so I don’t even want to look at it. Can’t you come up with another way to help other than to get into the nuts and bolts of the swing? It just seems like it’s too hard to manage. You give me a list of things to try to improve on, and I fill my head up so much over the ball it’s like I’m paralyzed. I know we can always work on the short game, but that gets to be the same thing. I hit so many fat or skulled pitches that I just want to putt from everywhere. Then you tell me that we have to work on technique there, too. What about trying to feel the shots? I don’t know. It’s so much to think about, so much to do. It gives me a headache.
Wayne: Look, if your car isn’t running well and you bring it to me and I wax it up and make it look real nice and shiny it still isn’t going to run well, and you’ll only be happy until you have to merge onto the highway. My job is to give you the information, understanding, and feel that you need to improve. I look at your technique and assess why I think you can’t hit the ball the way you would like and make recommendations. Then I show you what it looks like, move you around to help you feel it, give you ways to practice it, and try to explain how best to take it out onto the course. I don’t know of any other way. I have played at a fairly high level for 40 years. I started off relying on my talent for the game, and when injuries got to me I had to figure out how I was going to compete with my limited physical ability. Because teaching is my job I had to take what I was learning while working on my own game and apply it to the manner in which I try to help others. Everything I show you is based on what the most successful players of the past and present have done. I have played with some of them and have studied the swings of almost all of them. Nothing I show you is out of the ordinary. It may seem that way when the way you do it is way off, but if you can just get your technique to look a little bit more like a good player’s, you’ll have gotten better. It will probably take a while to feel comfortable with it, but you have to trust me that if we can get it to look better it will eventually work better.
Stan: You know, I always understand what you want me to do because you are good at explaining and showing me. You can even get me to do it differently by the end of the lesson. I usually have some good practice sessions and even some good results on the course, but over time I just lose it. I get back to screwing everything up and don’t know how to fix it.
Wayne: One thing you can be sure of, and our use of the video proves this out: if you are doing poorly there is a very good chance that you are making the same mistakes that you always do. If I want you to take the club away a certain way and cock your wrists a certain way because the way you do it and the compensations that result make it impossible for you to hit the shots you would like to hit, and you revert back to the poor backswing in spite of all our efforts, it just means that you still have work to do. I can’t hit it for you. I can only give you a full understanding of your problems and an arsenal of thoughts and feelings to choose from in order to overcome them. It is up to you to find a way to incorporate what you learn. It is anything but easy, and it is incredibly frustrating to watch yourself make the same mistakes over and over again. The reality is that your inability to change something that is obviously wrong means you either have to keep grinding away at it or find somebody else to try to help you. There is only so much I can do. I can’t reinvent the wheel and come up with a whole new way to work around your problem and get you to hit the ball with the type of quality you are looking for. If you are watching a player with a funky swing on television or on my computer it means that whoever that player is has been highly successful, and that he or she has the talent to overcome what would normally be viewed as flaws with an absurdly high level of talent. You are no world beater. You are like everybody else. Your flaws keep you from reaching the next level or other levels beyond. You need better technique because you have proven that you can’t be as good as you want to be without changing what you already do. I take it for granted that that is precisely why you decided to come to me for lessons. You want me to help you. This is how I do it. If you don’t want to do what I’m asking or if you think you will never be able to do it then I’m not the guy for you. It’s pretty simple: I look at everything you do from your clubs, your set-up routine, your grip, your alignment, your swings with every club in your bag, and I decide why you aren’t good enough to be happy with your game. Then I try to help you get better. That means you are going to have to change something. I take what you have and try to make it better. I have more teaching and playing experience than just about anyone you could go to. I’m telling you that if you trust me and stick with it that you will improve. It’s entirely up to you. I know how hard it is. I’ve quit the game 3 times in my life, and each time I came back and decided that I just had to work at it harder and more intelligently.
Stan: OK, I hear you loud and clear. Now, let’s take a look at this swing.