Are you getting better?

One of the biggest problems that most amateurs make in their quest to improve their swing is to try one 'tip' after another. But if you haven't diagnosed the problem and what is causing it, the tip may actually create more problems instead of helping it.


One of the reasons I am so busy is that people have followed the latest tips or watched the 'just released' golf video and their swings have gotten worse. For example, I had a client that came to me and said that he was coming 'over the top', as his ball flight was going left. Since this article described his ball flight, he assumed that this must be his problem. He worked harder and harder on coming from the inside as the article suggested, but his ball flight continued to get worse. The real problem was that he was coming too far from the inside resulting in a clubhead closing to early, and therefore causing his ball to hook. But in a attenpt to fix it he now was coming into the ball even more inside than when he started, causing him to hook the ball even worse.

Instruction is so difficult to write. I either want to make it so basic that it applies to everyone, or I need to make sure that the reader understands exactly what problem is that I am addressing, and exactly what has caused that problem. And even then, if the reader has mis-analyzed his own problems, he will be making 'corrections' that are not appropriate for him.

Another problem instructors make is teaching what they are personally working on. For example an instructor that is working on straightening his left leg through impact. Most of his students may need to be straightening their left leg through impact, but it is probably not the foremost problem of most of his clients. Instructors should make it a point of not teaching what they are working on unless it is truly relevent to a particular student. Eventually most swings will look somewhat the same, i.e. the grip, swinging on-plane, the club face square at impact, etc. But how one gets to that point can vary dramatically from one individual to another.

An instructor also needs to be brutally honest. Even if someone is making their best effort, I don't say, "Hey that's it", if it's only about 20% better. If I'm not brutally honest, I may give the impression that they have it, and they will stop making any more correction. Their thinking, "Wow, I fixed that quickly, but my ball flight isn't that much different. This doesn't make any sense." What I say is, "Hey, your headed in the right direction, that's about 20% better." That way they know they have made some change, but that it needs to be much more dramatic.