I started playing tournament golf when I was 12 years old. That would be in 1969, some 44 years ago. I got my first teaching job in 1984 (it was a summer camp for juniors), and my first job at a country club in 1986. That’s 27 years ago. There have been a lot of tournaments and a lot of lessons in that time, and as you can imagine I have picked up a few tidbits of wisdom along the way. Now, you might consider some of these ideas wise, and some of them foolish, but they are representative of what I have come to believe about golf and the search for improvement.
- The people I teach want to improve. They are willing to pay me for my advice regarding any and everything concerning the game. The people I play against want to beat me. Period.
- Competitive golf is not fun. Winning is fun. I have played in 9 major championships. I made one cut. Every practice round was a blast. Every actual round was more like torture.
- Success breeds confidence. You can’t invent confidence without success. Success comes through a lot of hard work and little bit of luck. If you can’t take failure you will never be successful at golf, because you are going to fail way more than you succeed.
- It’s a good idea to keep track of what you do when you play, but don’t get the idea that taking good notes makes you hit better shots. Knowing that you miss most of your fairways to the right doesn’t make the ball stay straight.
- Great golf is either talent or technique oriented. Great technique is evidenced by results. It has little to do with the conventional idea of what a good swing is or does. Talent makes incredibly variable techniques work.
- If you want to play golf without thinking and you want to be a champion you had better be winning regularly from the get go. If you think you are going to improve without conscious thought you are wrong.
- I read where sport psychologists help players become champions. Luke Donald and Padraig Harrington come to mind. I happen to think that if a player thinks listening to someone tell him that he can be great help them be great, then that’s fine. I also think that I could line up 10 of the best of the sport shrinks and nothing they say would make any difference to me at all if I can’t hit the ball in the fairway off the tee or hit a wedge close to the hole (and make the putt).
- If you have a weird swing and you’re not already really good then you are probably going to have to try to make it more conventional. In other words, there are ways to make it more likely that you will be able to consistently put the club on the ball. You will now be working on your swing mechanics, and it will be crucial to find a teacher who will lead you down the right path.
- Golf is a long term project. Your game evolves just as your physical body evolves. If you can come up with an idea of how you believe the swing works you will be ahead of the game.
- The short game is 50% technique and 50% hard work. Once you know how you want to hit every shot, and every variation of every shot, it is up to you to practice it enough so that you have no fear when you face one under pressure.
- Having total faith in your mechanics is the best way to feel confident under pressure.
- Everybody wants to know what and how much to practice. The answer is everything and as much as you can.
- There are no unimportant shots in golf. They all count the same.
- When you think about how good you would like to become, focus on reaching the next level. If you have never won your club championship, don’t make your goal winning the State Open. Do what you can to win that club championship. If you can’t win your State Am or Open (or at least come close), it’s probably not a good idea to turn pro and try to play the mini-tours.
- To keep juniors from thinking that every event is the end of the world I tell them that it’s all practice until you play for a living.
- Take what you are working on out to the course and use it. What is the point of taking lessons and learning better mechanics if you aren’t going to put it into action on the course? The more time you get under your belt trying to do what you are supposed to be doing the faster you will be able to do it when it counts.
- Debating the golf swing is like debating religion or politics. It doesn’t matter and is a giant waste of time.
- Put the time in on the range or the course, and when you’re done, call it a day. Tell yourself “nice work today” and pack it in. It’s about accumulating effective practice time, not about “getting it”.
- Teachers who don’t play competitively have a tendency to fall in love with theories. It is easy to talk about the golf swing, it is brutally hard to take one out on the course and post a score.
- If you are going to make golf a part of your life it is a good idea to fall in love with the game. There is no place I’d rather be in the late afternoon than on a golf course. I am as fascinated by the golf swing as anything else I can think of. I love to compete, probably because I learned early on that there is no feeling quite like winning at a game so maddeningly difficult. I truly enjoy helping other people with their games. I have never experienced the level of appreciation that my students show me when I help them do well, not to mention that I make a living doing it.
- When you fail there is always tomorrow. If you can wake up and lose the swing you had yesterday, then why can’t you wake up with one that will be way better than yesterday’s?
- It is easy to become obsessed with the game, to think that how you play is a measure of your worth as a human being. Try to maintain perspective and to simply put in the effort. It is certainly a cliché’, but you can only do your best.
