What Looks Obvious May Not Be Obvious
In his book Golf: The Professional Approach, British professional Bernard Cooke recalls the first lesson he gave as a 16-year-old apprentice. Not knowing anything about teaching, he saw what his female student was doing, compared it to the picture of a good golf swing that he had in his mind, and corrected the main difference. He went on to say that, as he recalled, the lesson went well.
How many teachers teach like this? Probably quite a few. And yet, it’s the wrong approach. Why?
The reason is that the most visually obvious “fault” in a person’s golf swing may not be the thing that needs correcting. Here are a couple of reallife examples, as related by a teaching veteran who, at the time, was a fairly new instructor:
1) A male student had a very fast swing, both back and through. In fact, it was the fastest swing the teacher had ever seen. Visually, this was the most obvious “fault,” or so it would seem. The teacher spent three days of the golf school trying to slow the student down, with little success.
2) A female student had a pronounced dip in her swing through impact, something akin to what Paula Creamer and Natalie Gulbis do. To the teacher, this was the most critical “fault” because it was so visually obvious. Again, the teacher spent three days trying to fix the “fault,” and for three days he was unsuccessful.
In many cases, it is true that the biggest visual difference between a student’s swing and one that is considered correct is the main problem in the swing. For example, if you see someone coming severely over the top, you can be sure that’s their main issue. Or, if someone falls back on their back foot through impact, that not only is the most visually obvious thing, but also their biggest problem. But, what happens when the most visually striking “error” in a person’s swing is not really their biggest problem? How can we tell?
Let’s go back to the two previous examples. Where did the teacher go wrong? What was the common denominator? The teacher didn’t hone in on the one aspect that mattered: ball flight. He really didn’t even pay any attention to this. Instead, he compared the biggest visual difference in their swings to that of a fundamentally-sound swing, and decided that was the problem.
What he should have done was to closely examine the ball flights and ask questions, such as: “When you hit a good shot, what does it do?” “When you hit a bad shot, what does it tend to do?” “What are you trying to improve about your ball flight?” He should have then seen if there was a correlation to the visually obvious fault to the ball flight. If he couldn’t find one, he should have then gone back to the basic understanding of the ball flight laws to know exactly what the club was doing through impact. At this point, the teacher could have used basic understanding of faults and cures to fix whatever problem existed.
For example, if the lady who dipped was fighting a slice, he could have seen if her setup was proper; he could have seen if she was failing to properly release the club through impact, etc. – all the things you normally would do to correct a slice. At the time, this wasn’t obvious to the new instructor, but the question must be asked: Would it also be obvious to an experienced instructor?
Maybe not. The veteran instructor recently asked another veteran instructor for feedback on his swing, and the other veteran teacher told him that he was taking the club inside too far and then lifting it up to reach the top of the backswing. The other veteran teacher’s advice was to take it back more in a consistent path to the top.
Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong. What the second veteran teacher missed was that the veteran teacher actually was in a correct position at the top of the backswing and in an optimal position to start down. You might also recall that there was a great champion who swung like this by the name of Ray Floyd.
Let’s use Jim Furyk as an example. He has always had a backswing that is not recommended, yet, if Jim Furyk came to you for a lesson, would you tell him to change his backswing? His father Mike was, and is, his only instructor, and Mike was very careful to not let anyone mess with Jim’s backswing, as he knew it didn’t have any effect on Jim’s ball flight. Kenny Perry, another noted golfer with an unusual backswing, said he would work with any instructor as long as he or she didn’t mess with his backswing.
Here’s another real-life example: Suppose a 6-handicap player came to you for help. He normally hit a draw, but when he hit a bad shot, the ball would go straight out to the right or hook to the left. He wanted to develop more consistency. You see that he played from an open stance with the ball in the middle of his stance, but he also had a very peculiar position at the top of his backswing: His club was pointed, not parallel down the target line, but actually perpendicular right of the target line, 90° from where it should have been.
