Why a Website?

I am often asked why I chose to start the website, and I can honestly say that it just occurred to me one day that it would be a cool thing to do. I had been using the V1 to send video summaries of lessons to students, and it seemed like it would nice to have a bigger repository for those and for the information I had been coming up with over the years as a player and a teacher. I feel that a lot of what I do is original (seeking to be original is the main reason I have mostly avoided either taking lessons or watching other teachers teach, and I have noticed that our business is one rife with plagiarism and sadly lacking in originality), and that if I began to put down what I know for people to see that at least it would be somewhat different from the mainstream and thus people might find it interesting.

One thing my business partner, Rick, and I decided from the beginning was that we were not interested in quick fixes, promises of easy progress, or selling instant success with heavy marketing. We agreed that the game was difficult and fairly laden with details, and that instead of ignoring the details or pretending they didn’t exist we would try to deal with them head on and try to give our viewers a more comprehensive overview of how the swing operated and how a player might take what seemed like too much information and use his overall knowledge to distill the too many thoughts into a usable few. Swing keys always emerge from things that are correct in a swing. Once a player understands what he is doing throughout the motion he should then be more capable of choosing things to think consciously about. I know that in my playing career I always approach a competition with the idea in mind to come up with a swing thought game plan which limits my conscious thoughts to just a few.

Reducing swing thoughts and making them more effective is all part of achieving what I like to call “advanced awareness”. When great players speak of having “no thought” it is my opinion that they certainly do have thought, but that the type of thought they have is of a higher order than those who would still be verbally instructing themselves to take it back a certain way or to try to get the club to pass through a series of positions. If you watch any science fiction movie where the present day is presented simultaneously with the future, those beings from the future rarely talk as much as the present day folks, having figured out how to eliminate verbal communication and replace it with mental telepathy. Golfers who use mental images, visualization, or tactile sense (feel) rather than running through a checklist of items to accomplish are using advanced awareness. Before that is possible, however, there must be either great talent (which belies the need for knowledge) or great knowledge. In other words, in order to eliminate a necessary thought you must be thoroughly familiar with it, then practice it to the point where you can take it for granted and blend it with other thoughts. You may have a list of 5 things you need to do to make a better backswing, but when those 5 things simply become “backswing”, and when you trigger your swing they all happen at once, you now have a backswing that will work under pressure with a minimum of effort.

Another reason I have come to enjoy providing the content for the website is that it provides me an outlet for thoughts I am having anyway. Instead of the ideas being lost, the internet affords me the opportunity to record all the stuff that is happening on a daily basis with a busy teaching and playing schedule. Like everyone who watches I am trying to play, practice, compete and improve, in addition to helping all the people who pay me to help them get better, whether face to face or online. I have compiled a large amount of experience over 40+ years of competition and 25+ years of teaching, and we figured that there would be golfers who might agree that access to that knowledge and experience would be worth a small fee. It is not my goal to be a superstar teacher, or to make everyone think I know everything about golf, and I know this is not going to make anyone rich, but it is a lot of fun to do and I look forward to continuing well into the future, with a goal of continuing to improve the website itself in order to make your experience even better.

As we start 2013 I want to thank all the club members, and indeed anyone who has contributed over the last couple of years, for your support. We are just about to unveil a new site platform which we think will raise the bar and make the site run even faster and more efficiently and thus be even more enjoyable. I look forward to continuing my efforts and I hope you stick with us as well.