Get better in the winter months

Obviously swinging the sticks or putting across the kitchen floor will help keep the rust off during the winter months, somewhat. But those who truly want to improve in the winter months know that there is more to it than that. Over the past couple of months, all of my students have heard me repeating this mantra regarding wintertime: It's the best time to make uncomfortable changes to your swing.

If you don't believe that it is easier to work on your game when are not actually playing golf, look at the PGA Tour -- better yet, look at the best player in the world. Tiger has changed his swing twice since coming on tour, and has experienced slumps during each of those changes (most notably his 2004 season.) However, when Tiger has slumps, he still makes cuts and only wins less tournaments. For most golfers, the whole season is a wash. Another great example is Madison, Wisconsin-native, Steve Stricker, who is one of the few tour players that spends his off-seasons in cooler climates. Last winter, Stricker worked at a heated driving range in Madison to get his backswing back on plane to improve his accuracy. And what do you know? Stricker's hard work came to fruition this season in the form of $2.4 million in earnings and a spot on the Ryder Cup team.

For the average golfer, why wouldn't you copy the habits of the best players on the planet? As much as I have tried to make this point clear, I can already see those students who I haven't seen since the fall rolling back in next spring:

Student: "Hey Nick, so I have my big trip with my buddies I was telling you about to Myrtle Beach in two weeks and I really want to do better than I did last year."

Nick: "Hey, good to hear from you. Have you been working on your game at all this winter?"

Student: "Well I went to the range yesterday and I was still slicing my driver real bad and I was hoping to just straighten that out before the trip. If my driver is better I'll be fine I'm sure."

Nick: "Yeah, no problem. I'll put you on the two-week-fix-my-slice-with-my-driver program and we'll have you ready to roll for the trip."

It's like studying Spanish for two weeks before your annual trip to Mexico and expecting to retain everything, speak conversationally, and then not use the language again until next year two weeks before the trip. Sound ridiculous? Well, it is.

So, what is the best thing to do? Work on the uncomfortable changes over the wintertime without the pressure of taking your new swing to the golf course. Find out what your biggest problem is, find a drill or practice method geared toward fixing it, and work on that drill or position for 15 minutes a day in front of a mirror or at an indoor facility. When you pretend to hit balls, your brain is using 95% of the neurons that it is using when you are actually hitting balls. So, everyone who says, "I need to see the ball flight" is full of shit. You want to see the ball flight, but scientifically speaking you do not need to see ball flight to work on mechanics. All you need is a little direction and a little more conviction.

Breaking the Monotony

Teaching golf, as with every job I've held, is prone to ruts and burnouts. No matter how mentally engaging a job is, at some point you are going to get sick of all the little annoyances of the daily grind. For the past two weeks I have been struggling to ascend from one such lull in the action. Though I recently had a five day vacation and my lesson volume is substantially lower than normal, I have still been feeling like I was going to fly off the handle the next time one of my students started sniveling about how badly they had sliced their driver on the range the other day.

The problem is that I am not a very patient person, nor empathetic. I want everyone to play well and enjoy the game, but hitting the ball badly while you are working on swing changes is simply part of the program sometimes. After hearing that familiar, whining tone, subtly blaming me, the teacher, for the whiner's shortcomings a few hundred times, I was finding it very difficult to pretend to care.

For me, the way to get back out of the lull was not to take time away from work, or to vent my frustrations (that theory was disproved when I took a five-day vacation and went on a bender that would have killed a lesser man.) No, the answer was actually to delve deeper into what I was doing and continue to learn new and more exciting things about how to become a better instructor. Monotony was the culprit, and monotony can only be broken if something changes.

In short, I had to learn new things so that I would be able to do my job a little differently.
Simple enough, right? If you do not like the way things are going, do things differently. But, that does not always mean quitting your job or taking a vacation like most people assume. In fact I think the easiest thing to do is to change the way you do the job you already have, and save some vacation days. As is true in all relationships, you have to keep things fresh or the passion can burnout…cheesy, but true.

I made someone worse...sort of

Well, not really. It was my first lesson with a new student today, “Lester.” He was really awful to begin with and is so uncoordinated that a small change in his setup turned his world completely upside-down. This may sound a little harsh, but it is the truth. Of the thousands of swings I have seen, this guy’s cadence may have been the worst. That being said, it makes sense why he would not be able to coordinate the changes—anybody who has actually seen a good golf swing should know not to swing the way that he was swinging it.

Each of my new students goes through a thorough interview process where I try to ascertain their skill level, handicap, strengths, weaknesses and so on. I typically hear the same few things over and over such as, “I hit all my irons fine, but I slice my driver off the planet” or “I just need to be more consistent; when I hit it well I do just fine, but sometimes I have a bad day and shoot 120.” Most people are honest enough about their abilities and try to describe their issues as best as possible. Lester is not one of those people. First of all, Lester is about the same age and build as Abe Vigoda, and he professed to hit his 5-iron “about 200 yards.” My bullshit-meter’s needle buried into the red zone and I pretty much quit listening to everything he had to say after that.

Curious to see his swing for the first time, I rushed Lester onto the hitting mat and asked him to loosen up. After a few decent practice swings, he stepped up and hit his first shot. It looked like he was having a seizure while trying to bat away a swarm of killer bees. Truly harrowing. Somehow his violent flailing got the golf club back to the ball, which flew into the net with little determination. I bit my cheek so that I would not laugh. The urge to laugh subsided when I remembered that I was expected to fix this swing at some point in the near future.

After tearing his swing apart in a very polite manner, I showed Lester the proper way to setup to the ball. In my setup method, your feet, hips and shoulders are all aligned with one another—just as they would be if you were an infielder in baseball or a quarterback prepared to take a snap. In Lester’s method your feet aim 20 degrees right of your target, while your hips and shoulders aim 10 and 20 degrees left of your target respectively. Yikes. After a little convincing, he started to see things my way and hit some pretty good shots. We wrapped up our lesson, he bought ten more and then he was on his way. (For the record, I told him that he needed at least 25 lessons and in reality he will need more like 75 to reach his goal of shooting in the 80’s. If you think I’m kidding, you don’t know anything about golf instruction.)

Twenty minutes later, Lester came back in to report that he could not get the ball airborne.

Lester (in his eastern European accent): “I jus’ hit fifty ball and I fucking shank dem all.”

Nick: “All fifty? That’s impressive.”

Lester: “I can get no fucking shot on dee ball. I fucking go shank, shank, sh…”

Nick (interrupting): “-ank. Yeah I got it. OK, let’s go outside real quick and see what’s up.”

We headed right outside onto the range where Lester had been hitting and I watch him hit a couple balls. The setup looked much better, which was nice, but it was obvious that he was trying to make all the changes we had discussed in the breakdown of his swing—the changes that I said would take 25 lessons—right then and there. Not that he was really making any of them, but he was trying. I told him just to focus on the new setup and not to change anything about his swing until we had a lesson about his swing. He hit the next few balls really well.

When I went back inside I realized that Chester had probably believed that he would be able to do in 10 lessons what I was telling him would take 25. I tried to explain to him that the improvement process would not be quick or easy, but maybe I wasn’t firm enough. Or, maybe Chester is just that ignorant. He might be the same person who disregards the doctor’s orders, or thinks that the mechanic is always lying to him. When and if he realizes that he will not be able to reach his goals after ten lessons, he is going to be frustrated again, and then I’ll have to remind him that I told him so. It will be lots of fun.

As an instructor, it is very easy to get caught up in all the mechanics of the golf swing like swing plane and shoulder tilt and rotation or whatever. They are the sexy things that are fun to work on and make the job more interesting. Whenever I fall into this trap I have to remind myself what PGA stands for: Posture, Grip, Alignment. Today there was a great example of one of those situations.

This morning I had a lesson with one of my oldest clients, we will call her Dana. As Dana has taken over 50 lessons from me, her swing has really improved. But her scorecard has not been showing her progress. Though she is much more consistent than before, there has yet to be that big breakthrough (breaking 80 in this case.)

After hearing about another mediocre round, I decided that we would go out onto the driving range and look at some shots. We have been out on the range many times, but we typically work in an indoor setting with high-speed video. It is very easy to align yourself correctly in the indoor bays because the mats are square and there are lines on the mats for assistance. On the driving range, the mats are square and woven with parallel lines—again, very easy to align correctly.

Dana grabbed a club and started dropping shots right onto the target, which was directly in line with the angles on the mat. As I was watching this exhibition of consistency, I could not believe how she could manage to play so badly on the golf course. Something wasn’t right. Then it dawned on me that we have only been hitting on these mats where parallel lines provide Dana with a visual alignment aid. I gave Dana a different club and had her hit to a different target—one that was not in line with the lines on the hitting mats.

Sure enough, Dana aimed 20 yards right of her intended target, and proceeded to come over the top in an effort to pull the ball toward her target. Unreal! What happened? She sliced it, of course. And the ball ended up about 15 yards right of the target. Without proper alignment, Dana’s brain compensated by trying to steer the ball back on the intended target line. As a result, the “perfect golf swing” we have building together was thrown right out the window. We spent the rest of the lesson discussing alignment techniques on the course and how to practice while using proper alignment. She hit the ball great the rest of the day and will probably continue to do so in tomorrow’s round.

This is by no means the first time I have some across this issue, but I just got lazy and missed this somehow, which is what really pisses me off. I would say that the most common alignment/compensation scenario is the slicer-who-aims-left scenario. It goes like this: As soon as the slice occurs, the slicer (usually subconsciously) begins to open up their stance—aiming their hips, shoulder, and in some cases, feet left of their intended target line. Makes since right? The ball is going right, so I will aim left. WRONG. This “compensation” actually results in a more outside-in swing path, which imparts even more slice spin. Maddening right? Absolutely. The more I learn about golf the more I realize that it truly is a game of opposites.

Here let me just help you with that....WHACK!

I finally got hit by a golf club. Thankfully it was just a backswing, and a teenage girl was swinging the club, and she couldn't break an egg. But still, it hurt.

It was only a matter of time really. At some point I was bound to get lazy and forget to say all the little cautionary things that I'm supposed to say to protect myself like, "Don't swing", or "I'm right here, don't hit me." And that's exactly what happened. I told her to setup and right when I stepped in to make an adjustment she started her backswing and caught me on the inside of the right knee. It was all tendons and ligaments, just off to the right of where the doctor hits you to test your reflexes.

It hurt a little at first but not too bad. The girl I was teaching is already extremely nervous around me so I tried to shake it off right away like it was nothing. A few minutes later I squatted down to move a ball or something and almost cried. Once it started to swell and bruise, the pain was BRUTAL. I have absolutely no idea what we worked on at any point in the lesson, or if we worked on anything after she hit me. I think I just stood there and watched her hit balls while I stared at the driving range.

I had five or six more lessons that day and was completely paranoid that I would be beaten with a club in every lesson, and rightfully so. People are like deer in the headlights when the club is in their hands. It's partly my fault--I'm always walking into and out of their swing space to do demonstrations or make adjustments and I often forget to say things like "go slow" or "don't hit this ball." And I know my clients don't really think of their golf club as a hunk of steel at the end of a stick. I felt like one of those crocodile wranglers on Animal Planet. Now ima jump on 'is back an nen tape up 'is mouf real fass.

Luckily I teach indoors with video, so it was easy to spend the rest of the day teaching from the safety of my computer desk chair. I am pretty sure nobody got worse that day, and there were no foregone demonstrations that would have had a huge impact on any of the lessons. On the bright side, this little scare will renew my cautiousness so that I don't get my head cracked open this winter.

Getting the Most Out of the Golf Course Staff?

Here are some tips that will endear you as a patron and maximize what the golf course staff has to offer:

#1. Tip the outside service staff

That is fine if you do not want your clubs cleaned. Maybe they really don’t deserve it. Tip anyway. Club cleaning is just the interaction that allows you to tip the person responsible for so many of things that we as golfers take for granted.

The kid who scrubs your hammers at the end of the round is also the kid who made sure your cart was clean, scorecard was new, pencil was sharp, sand bottles were filled, etc. He set up the driving range area, gathered the range balls, and then picked the range again after you left. An average tip is around $2/bag or $5/cart depending on the level of service and the amenities of the golf course. If you would not stiff a server at a restaurant, do not stiff the kid who is trying to shine your hooks either—in many cases they get paid about the same hourly wage.

#2. If you like seeing the beverage cart girl, come hard early

This is a no-brainer, or so I would hope. Yes, she has a whole golf course to cover, but she will find her way over to your group a lot more often if properly greased. Ask the starter or concession stand attendant in the clubhouse if there is a beverage cart, if they say yes, tell them that you would like to see her as soon as possible. Be polite, but serious. When the beverage cart shows up, get your concessions and leave a nice tip. Finish up with something along the lines of, “Thanks for getting to us so quickly. Will we see you again in a few holes?” After that you can tip more normally if you want, but the first interaction will ensure that your group does not go without libation for hours on end.

#3. Back scratching will never die

The mob doesn’t run Vegas anymore, but you can still probably do a little service trading and under the table negotiating at your local golf course.

Now, this one really varies by facility and by staff member. To avoid an awkward situation, you need to have a pretty good read on your golf pro. If the club is managed vigilantly by a third party company, you might be out of luck. But at a majority of courses you would be surprised what kind of deals you can strike.

I could really go on all day with specific examples, but let’s just say that if you like to golf and have something to offer in return, you might be able to save a lot of money on greens fees.

#4. Ask questions

The golf professional staff loves to talk about equipment, courses, training aids, and the newest gadgets—that is why they are in the business. Before you pop for your next new toy, do a little homework. You may feel silly seeking their advice, but you look just as bad with a $400 driver that could not be more wrong for your swing. Save yourself some time and money by asking a question here or there.

There will be more posts like this one later on, but I wanted to get these points out of the way. I might end up going into detail on a few of these subjects, or maybe making similar posts with different themes. I haven't decided, so this will do for now.

Add 40 Yards To Your Tee Shots Now!

For many of my beginning years in golf, I would buy the major golf publications, comb the pages for tips, and head to the range to pound balls and weigh each tip’s respective merit. I would hit a few balls trying some drill or swing thought with mixed results, then quickly move to the next to do more of the same.

I was an idiot.

The error of my ways is so blatantly obvious now, but at the time it seemed like an affordable way to improve my game. After years of this futility, I took my first series of golf lessons and truly found out what golf instruction was all about.

Now, let me just say that I am a huge fan of golf magazines and still read them to this day. The articles provide well-written, well-illustrated advice from some of the greatest teachers in the world. That being said, the problem is that the advice is not customized and is largely presented as an immediate fix to the aforementioned problem.

Most articles begin with a qualifying statement that goes something like, “this article is for you if…(insert short list of symptoms).” The first problem is that the symptoms are not specific enough. Here is an example:

This article is for you if you are…

- Lacking distance off the tee

- Inconsistent with your irons

- Struggling with direction

What golfer in the world wouldn’t agree to those symptoms? Every major swing flaw could be linked to the symptoms described above. Every one. It seems ridiculous, but if you pick up a golf magazine, I guarantee you will find something eerily similar to this list of symptoms. This means golfers will end up trying every tip and drill because every tip and drill seems fitting, resulting in an unfocused, flip-flopping practice session. You leave the range frustrated or possibly believing that you have found “the answer” and the next time you play there is no noticeable change in your game.

Secondly, let’s just say that the article is tailor-made for your swing flaw, and that you understand how to do the drill correctly (not a given.) How do you know when you are doing it correctly? How often should you do the drill? I never bothered asking these questions, but rather assumed that doing a drill correctly would result in fantastic golf shots and immediate results. Wrong. Making a big change (even if executed correctly) does not guarantee an immediate improvement in ball flight.

The second point is probably the most troubling hurdle to improvement, and as I tell my students, “that is why Tiger Woods has a swing coach.” Real and lasting improvement takes lots of hard work, and ideally lots of professionally supervised hard work. If you could truly add 40 yards to your tee shots now by simply reading an article and applying its doctrine, golf lessons would be replaced by handbooks and I would be a young, struggling author.

In the end, it was not that the articles were incorrect. They were completely legitimate. It was about identifying the true flaw, finding a dynamic drill to help eliminate that flaw, and then working diligently until my instructor felt it was time to move on to the next flaw.

Though I still read the magazines and pull the occasional tip, I would like to think I am better at recognizing the work of a good marketing team when I see it.