Stop Trying to Fix Your Golf Swing

TRAIN. PRACTICE. PLAY.

Golf is an activity that one must develop, not fix. Individuals do not take one piano lesson, stop, and expect to be able to play. The same idea goes with karate. You are very unlikely to find a piano or karate instructor willing to offer one lesson, collect your cash, and say have a nice day. Golf is no different. Additionally, one would be hard pressed to find the individual taking piano lessons walking away from their first lesson frustrated because they aren’t ready to perform at any level. 

At SMART Golf & Fitness Instruction, we have found that by offering a one and done lesson, you can enable the player’s expectations to not match reality. This can set them up for failure in the big picture. This is not to say that it is impossible to help someone in one hour. But it’s not a process that gives the coach or student the best possible chance for improvement. There are also some shared characteristics of the individuals that walked away from an hour lesson “better.” Check out our blog post to take a guess at what the shared characteristics were.

Whether you’re a beginner or someone trying to make it on Tour, the one commonality is that you should be serious about getting better. This means seeking development of one’s game, rather than a simple fix. This is why we only offer long term development programs.

To demonstrate our commitment and ensure the same from our students, we also require them to read our student handbook. There are five required readings that take about 15 minutes to review. A student may not start his or her lesson without having read the material. This information is in place to make sure we get a complementary mindset to aid the process that lies ahead. We want to ensure their expectations always match reality. 

In today’s post, we will discuss the reading: “The Three Tiers of Development.”

We have broken “golf improvement” into:

1. “Training”
2. Practice
3. Playing the Game

The two main objectives for this reading is to

1. Detach students from the emotional connection to the golf ball
2. Avoid the “getting worse before you get better” paradigm.

We have found that by compartmentalizing these 3 “tiers,” students are better able to absorb the appropriate feedback at the appropriate time. This has a tremendous influence on their emotions throughout the process. 

Learning a new skill, especially in a sport such as golf, can be incredibly emotional. This is especially true if a student does not UNDERSTAND HOW LEARNING WORKS. We are built to learn from struggle, challenges, and mistakes. Efficient learners are drawn to struggle like making poor contact or failing in the process. This is because they know that that is where growth comes from. Poor learners resist and avoid the struggle, and in turn, let their emotions get the best of them.

Let’s break down each tier. 

Training Tier

Training is the first tier. We define training as working on “movement.” 

• Objective: Train and execute the movements in which you are being directed. 
• Feedback: Coach, Mirror, Video, Training aid. 

It’s incredibly important to emphasize that, at this point in the development process that The Ball is NOT the Feedback. We know how emotionally attached a student can be to the result of the ball, and when the only objective at hand is to develop a pattern, that can slow or completely stall that from happening. This is where taking lessons on the range, with no video, can really inhibit the process. If the outcome of the shot is undesired, more times than not, the student falls into this loop of believing, sometimes subconsciously, that the coach has given bad direction, they don’t understand, or they are incapable of executing the direction

Note: If your sole objective is to develop a new pattern, ironically, the last place you should be is on the range with no video, mirror, or coach as your feedback.

Note 2: You do not need to get worse before you get better. Additionally, hitting poor shots, or making poor (er) contact with the ball when you are in the “TRAINING” tier, does not mean you are worse. Honestly, you are more than likely giving yourself too much credit. Any student that has had some serious years with their current pattern, I am sorry, but an hour lesson is just not going to result in permanent change. You can put yourself at ease, or not, depending on your skill level, that you are still leaving with the pattern you showed up with.

Practice Tier

Practice is the second tier. Until we enter the Practice Tier, the ball is irrelevant. This tier is where you put the movement to its first stress test.The result does matter at this point.This is also the tier in which we practice distance control, shot shape, routines, trajectory, repeatability, etc.

Play Tier

The final and third tier is Play. Playing the game is just that. Simple. Get the ball in the hole – Fairways, Greens, Scrambling, Putts, Score etc.  Students need to accept that motor pattern change doesn’t happen because you’re thinking about the right stuff. It’s because you have worked on the right stuff, and that can and will take time. Work on the pattern until it is automatic.

Note: It’s common early on in the process for a SMART Golf coach to tell a student to pretend they have never met them after a lesson, when they are asked, “what should I think about when I go play next?”

The reason why is, that for the students “that play worse, before they get better,” are typically the ones that go to the course “thinking” about their “new” pattern or objective. But they are still moving the same way they always have, just with a different focus, less complimentary than before.

With improved practices and better training process we are paving a new path of coaching and coaches. Coaches that not only help more players develop into better golfers, but also are eliminating newcomers and long term players of the game from walking away from it. The is in turn has allowed students to accept failure as necessary, take the frustration level WAY down, and make “breakthroughs” that may have never happened otherwise. 

About the Author

Joe Sheren is an Award winning PGA Professional who has been challenging the status quo for all 11+ years of his coaching. He is the recipient of the 2019 Illinois Player Development Award. Additionally, he has been nominated 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 Illinois PGA Teacher of the Year as well as 2018 Player Development Award. He is a class A member of the PGA of America, as well a graduate from Ferris State Universities Professional Golf Management program.

Joe has extensive training using the world’s best bio-mechanical technology learning that, even though there is a long list of actions that all good players possess, there is no one method or swing style that works for everyone. Joe has a tremendous amount of passion for the game and will never stop learning how he can continue to make this game more enjoyable for everyone knowing that enjoyment in anything is a key element to continue on and in-turn help grow this extraordinary game.

Click here to learn more about Joe.