Launch Monitors For Today’s Teaching Professional
Most teaching professionals today are giving lessons much the same way that their counterparts from years ago did. They meet with a student, observe their faults, and then give them a program to improve. Many teachers still do not use training aids or video, but they are still teaching effectively for the most part.
Teaching golf doesn’t have to be rocket science, but as the 21st century marches on, it seems more and more instructors are going that route. The innovation that is gaining more attention is the launch monitor. The launch monitor has been around for many years, but it seems only recently has the device gained notoriety for teaching.
Launch monitors come in many different types and price points. Traditionally, they came in larger units hooked up to computers, and were very expensive. Some still are. TrackMan® with indoor-outdoor capability costs more than $20,000. FlightScope®, the other launch monitor that is considered high-end, is about half that price, with a newer portable model for around $2,500.
Ernest Sports makes a launch monitor in the $550 range which has much of the same features that the more expensive models have. Other lesser expensive options include the Voice Caddy SC100 model, and Opti-shot markets an indoor simulator for about $350 that measures various aspects of ball flight. There are also devices that can be attached to a club and the information is fed into a smartphone or a tablet app.
Are launch monitors or other devices that measure ball flight necessary for today’s teaching professional? Some teachers would say yes and some would say no. When teaching beginning or novice golfers, they are certainly not needed. For the vast majority of players, they probably are not “needed” in the sense that most of these players have problems that are rooted in fundamentals, and these should be easy to diagnose for the qualified instructor.
When it comes to better players, launch monitors can certainly be very helpful. Let’s say a player is not hitting the ball exactly as he would like. Even with video, sometimes the exact problem is hard to detect. With a good launch monitor, there is no guesswork. You will know exactly what the club did at impact, along with what the exact ball flight was. You can use the information to dial in an improvement program for this particular player.
No good clubfitter today would be caught without using a launch monitor, and a teaching professional can also use one to see if a club or a set of clubs is correct for his or her student. Generally, if a player is hitting the driver too low, the player’s driver has too little loft. If a player is not putting enough spin on the ball with the driver, the shaft may have too high of a kickpoint, or the tip may be too stiff (most of the time, those two aspects go together).
A common complaint by shorter-hitting players is that their long irons often don’t go as far as their middle irons. You can use a launch monitor to get the exact reasons why this might be so. Of course, most of our players should be using hybrids instead of long irons in the first place.
Launch monitors certainly take the guesswork out of exactly what the club was doingduring impact, but most qualified instructors can do very well without. One of the benefits is simply marketing. If you have and promote the use of a launch monitor during your lessons, it’s possible that your business will increase on that basis alone.
As teachers found out years ago with video, one of the drawbacks to using a launch monitor is that a particular student may become obsessed with the technology. Just as there are students who can’t seem to make a swing without looking at a videotape replay, there are students who want the results of each and every ball they hit measured by a launch monitor. Of course, the teacher knows better and should temper these students’ desires.
Launch monitors have their place in today’s golf teaching industry, and they can be a great benefit to any teacher’s programs. Used the correct way, they are a valuable tool for the 21st century student.
Do you think most teachers would try to “fix” the top of the backswing position? Undoubtedly. And those teachers would be wrong. What would be the correct fix? Well, we have some clues. This player normally hits draws, but his misses to the right are straight, and to the left they are hooks. He plays from an open stance with the ball in the middle.
The open stance is encouraging him to swing inside-out towards the target (this is somewhat common for good players), and the ball position is farther back than it should be, further encouraging an inside-out swing. His shots, both good and bad, are indicative of a swing path that is to the right of the target line. Thus, the best course of action for this player would be to get his stance more square (getting to completely square might be pushing it), along with the ball position a little more forward. These fixes would directly help his ball flight, and hopefully provide the golfer with the consistency he is looking for.
The other aspect to consider is that if a player has a move that is so far from the norm, chances are he will never be able to fix it. If it does not really directly affect his ball flight, leave it alone; if it does, then you need to proceed very cautiously and incrementally, but there may be a point where the player simply can’t change it anymore.
The bottom line is that if we gear our teaching towards optimizing the five ball flight laws, clubhead path, clubface angle, angle of approach, hitting the clubface squarely, and clubhead speed, we should be able to work around any idiosyncrasies our students may bring to the lesson tee.
