The Problem with the “Occasional Golf Lesson”

Why don’t we offer the occasional “one-off” golf lesson?

To put it simply, it’s because we don’t believe they are beneficial in the long term.  Of course we can see some immediate changes and possibly some improvements in your on-course play, however, we don’t expect those changes to last more than a couple rounds.  Regardless of how much instruction you have or have not had in the past, your swing has been “built” over a long period of time by trial and error until you have developed “your swing”.  This brings us to today: you are having difficulties playing the way you would like to, and now you want to make a change.

The golf industry as a whole is promoting the idea that the occasional one hour lesson can improve your game. There is some truth to that.  The truth is that most people seeking a golf lesson have a “big miss” that they are trying to avoid on the golf course.  An hour long lesson can provide a sort of band-aid in order to prevent that miss from showing itself out on the course, but more likely than not it’s going to feel extremely unnatural and difficult to put into play effectively.  So, while a lesson here or there can help prevent a big miss, the chance of reoccurrence is extremely high, as is the chance of overcorrection and creating a new “big miss”.

We prefer to see our students at least once a week for a golf lesson and once a week for a fitness session.  In addition to that, we prefer that the student practices what they worked on with their coach at least one time per week on their own.  The programs that we set forth are all based around the student’s lesson with their PGA Professional.  The Fitness Instructor will help engrain those same movements during the workout, and then the student is expected to practice using the technology that we have available in our facility for feedback.  At the end of the week the student will have potentially done thousands of high quality repetitions in order to make the new movement feel more natural, which significantly increases the likelihood of a permanent change and improvement without the high risk of overcorrection or reoccurrence of bad habits.