Opinion & Analysis
Is video passé in golf instruction?
Golf instruction has seen a swell of technological advances such as ball-flight measuring devices, 3-D systems and other high-tech training aids that have given us the much-needed boost in our ever-growing body of knowledge of how best to play the game. Without one shred of doubt these advances have expanded our potential to know more and have only served golf instruction well. But as with all industry trends, the advent of something new will inevitably take the place of something else. Will our video equipment be what becomes the new paperweight?
Recently I’ve heard murmurs that video is passé and doesn’t give accurate enough feedback to be of use. It left me to think, “Is this correct? Should all of us be tossing out our cameras and replacing them with launch monitors?” I personally like my video setup and treat it much like any other training aid: It’s not going to solve everything, but if used correctly at the proper time, it can be very helpful. However, my feelings about video are biased and only serve as one example of why it should remain in our teaching tool kit. So in order to learn more, I looked into the research on physical education and kinesiology for a more objective perspective.
Sport psychologists call it observational learning or modeling when a learner watches something and then uses that to learn a skill or behavior. In golf instruction, we use modeling as a form of feedback by showing students video of themselves or showing them examples of others. We also use demonstration as a form of modeling to show others what the movement looks like. The famed psychologist Albert Bandura cites modeling as “one of the most powerful means of transmitting values, attitudes and patterns of thought and behavior.” In fact, years and years of research on observational learning have placed modeling firmly as one of the most important means for helping individuals learn or modify skills.
But exactly what kinds of models are useful and how are they to be used? According to two kinesiology professors, Penny McCullagh and Maureen Weiss, the skill level of the learner should be considered first when using video modeling. Their research, combined with others on demonstration characteristics relevant to acquiring skills, suggests that coaches and teachers consider two types of models:
- The tour pro, or a “correct model,” which shows an ideal movement.
- A “learning model,” or an example of someone who is attempting to learn the skill but has not yet achieved exemplary performance.
The research suggests that using the “correct model” as an example was better than using no model at all. However, for certain types of students, such as juniors or those in the early stages of learning, the “learning model” combined with corrective verbal feedback from the instructor was the most successful combination (This learning model could also be the student himself video taped performing the desired movement, and then comparing him to himself). In other words, students who were far from swinging like a tour player responded better to examples that were similar to them.
The root of why “the learning model” works well is based in what Bandura calls self-efficacy, or self-confidence. It’s the feeling that we can successfully do something that we are attempting to learn how to do. He adds that self-efficacy is highly influential in shaping what we decide to work on. So if a golfer sees himself making progress on his golf swing, he is more inclined to choose to work on it. This also means if he thinks he will never be able to do something, he could lose motivation and feel less motivated.
Although video certainly cannot tell us the angle of attack, or the X-factor stretch, it does have an important place in our teaching tool kits. Even if we are not using it to collect information about what is happening in throughout a swing, the benefit of a learner seeing an example can provide a profound effect both psychologically and with performance. In other words, keep the video in lessons — if not for you, for the benefit of your students.
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The PGA TOUR heads to New Orleans to play the 2023 Zurich Classic of New Orleans. In a welcome change from the usual stroke play, the Zurich Classic is a team event. On Thursday and Saturday, the teams play best ball, and on Friday and Sunday the teams play alternate shot.
TPC Louisiana is a par 72 that measures 7,425 yards. The course features some short par 4s and plenty of water and bunkers, which makes for a lot of exciting risk/reward scenarios for competitors. Pete Dye designed the course in 2004 specifically for the Zurich Classic, although the event didn’t make its debut until 2007 because of Hurricane Katrina.
Coming off of the Masters and a signature event in consecutive weeks, the field this week is a step down, and understandably so. Many of the world’s top players will be using this time to rest after a busy stretch.
However, there are some interesting teams this season with some stars making surprise appearances in the team event. Some notable teams include Patrick Cantlay and Xander Schauffele, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry, Collin Morikawa and Kurt Kitayama, Will Zalatoris and Sahith Theegala as well as a few Canadian teams, Nick Taylor and Adam Hadwin and Taylor Pendrith and Corey Conners.
Past Winners at TPC Louisiana
- 2023: Riley/Hardy (-30)
- 2022: Cantlay/Schauffele (-29)
- 2021: Leishman/Smith (-20)
- 2019: Palmer/Rahm (-26)
- 2018: Horschel/Piercy (-22)
- 2017: Blixt/Smith (-27)
2024 Zurich Classic of New Orleans Picks
Tom Hoge/Maverick McNealy +2500 (DraftKings)
Tom Hoge is coming off of a solid T18 finish at the RBC Heritage and finished T13 at last year’s Zurich Classic alongside Harris English.
This season, Hoge is having one of his best years on Tour in terms of Strokes Gained: Approach. In his last 24 rounds, the only player to top him on the category is Scottie Scheffler. Hoge has been solid on Pete Dye designs, ranking 28th in the field over his past 36 rounds.
McNealy is also having a solid season. He’s finished T6 at the Waste Management Phoenix Open and T9 at the PLAYERS Championship. He recently started working with world renowned swing coach, Butch Harmon, and its seemingly paid dividends in 2024.
Keith Mitchell/Joel Dahmen +4000 (DraftKings)
Keith Mitchell is having a fantastic season, finishing in the top-20 of five of his past seven starts on Tour. Most recently, Mitchell finished T14 at the Valero Texas Open and gained a whopping 6.0 strokes off the tee. He finished 6th at last year’s Zurich Classic.
Joel Dahmen is having a resurgent year and has been dialed in with his irons. He also has a T11 finish at the PLAYERS Championship at TPC Sawgrass which is another Pete Dye track. With Mitchell’s length and Dahmen’s ability to put it close with his short irons, the Mitchell/Dahmen combination will be dangerous this week.
Taylor Moore/Matt NeSmith +6500 (DraftKings)
Taylor Moore has quickly developed into one of the more consistent players on Tour. He’s finished in the top-20 in three of his past four starts, including a very impressive showing at The Masters, finishing T20. He’s also finished T4 at this event in consecutive seasons alongside Matt NeSmith.
NeSmith isn’t having a great 2024, but has seemed to elevate his game in this format. He finished T26 at Pete Dye’s TPC Sawgrass, which gives the 30-year-old something to build off of. NeSmith is also a great putter on Bermudagrass, which could help elevate Moore’s ball striking prowess.
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After having four of the top twelve players on the leaderboard at The Masters, LIV Golf is set for their fifth event of the season: LIV Adelaide.
For both LIV fans and golf fans in Australia, LIV Adelaide is one of the most anticipated events of the year. With 35,000 people expected to attend each day of the tournament, the Grange Golf Club will be crawling with fans who are passionate about the sport of golf. The 12th hole, better known as “the watering hole”, is sure to have the rowdiest of the fans cheering after a long day of drinking some Leishman Lager.
The Grange Golf Club is a par-72 that measures 6,946 yards. The course features minimal resistance, as golfers went extremely low last season. In 2023, Talor Gooch shot consecutive rounds of 62 on Thursday and Friday, giving himself a gigantic cushion heading into championship Sunday. Things got tight for a while, but in the end, the Oklahoma State product was able to hold off The Crushers’ Anirban Lahiri for a three-shot victory.
The Four Aces won the team competition with the Range Goats finishing second.
*All Images Courtesy of LIV Golf*
Past Winners at LIV Adelaide
- 2023: Talor Gooch (-19)
Stat Leaders Through LIV Miami
Green in Regulation
- Richard Bland
- Jon Rahm
- Paul Casey
Fairways Hit
- Abraham Ancer
- Graeme McDowell
- Henrik Stenson
Driving Distance
- Bryson DeChambeau
- Joaquin Niemann
- Dean Burmester
Putting
- Cameron Smith
- Louis Oosthuizen
- Matt Jones
2024 LIV Adelaide Picks
Cameron Smith +1400 (DraftKings)
When I pulled up the odds for LIV Adelaide, I was more than a little surprised to see multiple golfers listed ahead of Cameron Smith on the betting board. A few starts ago, Cam finished runner-up at LIV Hong Kong, which is a golf course that absolutely suits his eye. Augusta National in another course that Smith could roll out of bed and finish in the top-ten at, and he did so two weeks ago at The Masters, finishing T6.
At Augusta, he gained strokes on the field on approach, off the tee (slightly), and of course, around the green and putting. Smith able to get in the mix at a major championship despite coming into the week feeling under the weather tells me that his game is once again rounding into form.
The Grange Golf Club is another course that undoubtedly suits the Australian. Smith is obviously incredibly comfortable playing in front of the Aussie faithful and has won three Australian PGA Championship’s. The course is very short and will allow Smith to play conservative off the tee, mitigating his most glaring weakness. With birdies available all over the golf course, there’s a chance the event turns into a putting contest, and there’s no one on the planet I’d rather have in one of those than Cam Smith.
Louis Oosthuizen +2200 (DraftKings)
Louis Oosthuizen has simply been one of the best players on LIV in the 2024 seas0n. The South African has finished in the top-10 on the LIV leaderboard in three of his five starts, with his best coming in Jeddah, where he finished T2. Perhaps more impressively, Oosthuizen finished T7 at LIV Miami, which took place at Doral’s “Blue Monster”, an absolutely massive golf course. Given that Louis is on the shorter side in terms of distance off the tee, his ability to play well in Miami shows how dialed he is with the irons this season.
In addition to the LIV finishes, Oosthuizen won back-to-back starts on the DP World Tour in December at the Alfred Dunhill Championship and the Mauritus Open. He also finished runner-up at the end of February in the International Series Oman. The 41-year-old has been one of the most consistent performers of 2024, regardless of tour.
For the season, Louis ranks 4th on LIV in birdies made, T9 in fairways hit and first in putting. He ranks 32nd in driving distance, but that won’t be an issue at this short course. Last season, he finished T11 at the event, but was in decent position going into the final round but fell back after shooting 70 while the rest of the field went low. This season, Oosthuizen comes into the event in peak form, and the course should be a perfect fit for his smooth swing and hot putter this week.
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Of all the clubs in our bags, wedges are almost always the simplest in construction and, therefore, the easiest to analyze what might make one work differently from another if you know what to look for.
Wedges are a lot less mysterious than drivers, of course, as the major brands are working with a lot of “pixie dust” inside these modern marvels. That’s carrying over more to irons now, with so many new models featuring internal multi-material technologies, and almost all of them having a “badge” or insert in the back to allow more complex graphics while hiding the actual distribution of mass.
But when it comes to wedges, most on the market today are still single pieces of molded steel, either cast or forged into that shape. So, if you look closely at where the mass is distributed, it’s pretty clear how that wedge is going to perform.
To start, because of their wider soles, the majority of the mass of almost any wedge is along the bottom third of the clubhead. So, the best wedge shots are always those hit between the 2nd and 5th grooves so that more mass is directly behind that impact. Elite tour professionals practice incessantly to learn to do that consistently, wearing out a spot about the size of a penny right there. If impact moves higher than that, the face is dramatically thinner, so smash factor is compromised significantly, which reduces the overall distance the ball will fly.
Every one of us, tour players included, knows that maddening shot that we feel a bit high on the face and it doesn’t go anywhere, it’s not your fault.
If your wedges show a wear pattern the size of a silver dollar, and centered above the 3rd or 4th groove, you are not getting anywhere near the same performance from shot to shot. Robot testing proves impact even two to three grooves higher in the face can cause distance loss of up to 35 to 55 feet with modern ‘tour design’ wedges.
In addition, as impact moves above the center of mass, the golf club principle of gear effect causes the ball to fly higher with less spin. Think of modern drivers for a minute. The “holy grail” of driving is high launch and low spin, and the driver engineers are pulling out all stops to get the mass as low in the clubhead as possible to optimize this combination.
Where is all the mass in your wedges? Low. So, disregarding the higher lofts, wedges “want” to launch the ball high with low spin – exactly the opposite of what good wedge play requires penetrating ball flight with high spin.
While almost all major brand wedges have begun putting a tiny bit more thickness in the top portion of the clubhead, conventional and modern ‘tour design’ wedges perform pretty much like they always have. Elite players learn to hit those crisp, spinny penetrating wedge shots by spending lots of practice time learning to consistently make contact low in the face.
So, what about grooves and face texture?
Grooves on any club can only do so much, and no one has any material advantage here. The USGA tightly defines what we manufacturers can do with grooves and face texture, and modern manufacturing techniques allow all of us to push those limits ever closer. And we all do. End of story.
Then there’s the topic of bounce and grinds, the most complex and confusing part of the wedge formula. Many top brands offer a complex array of sole configurations, all of them admittedly specialized to a particular kind of lie or turf conditions, and/or a particular divot pattern.
But if you don’t play the same turf all the time, and make the same size divot on every swing, how would you ever figure this out?
The only way is to take any wedge you are considering and play it a few rounds, hitting all the shots you face and observing the results. There’s simply no other way.
So, hopefully this will inspire a lively conversation in our comments section, and I’ll chime in to answer any questions you might have.
And next week, I’ll dive into the rest of the wedge formula. Yes, shafts, grips and specifications are essential, too.
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Andrew Cooper
Feb 11, 2014 at 6:22 pm
Video is a limited tool, especially up against Trackman, 3D imaging and force plates, which capture the really important, and unarguable, info about the golf swing. By contrast 2D video is largely superficial (even assuming it’s been correctly set-up), often misleading, and potentially harmful.
From video we have the amazing resource of footage of all the best players from the last 100 years or so. Every swing effective, but every one unique-many with all sorts of quirks, “off plane” postitions and “moving parts”. However, so much video coaching promotes perfect plane and positions, losing the moving parts, trying to copy a tour player’s (unique) swing e.t.c.-and this can really mess up a golfer’s feel and natural athleticism. Video can be useful, but I think we’re more aware of it’s limitations and advancing beyond it.
James
Feb 10, 2014 at 4:19 pm
Best video lesson I ever had was swinging with a high speed camera looking down at my swing path and contact with the ball. Showed face angle of the club at impact, swing path, shaft lean. What it showed for me is that the face was slightly open at impact on a consistent basis but everything else was fine. Solution: take a stronger grip.
What this article seems to say is that video, sort of like the old Syber Vision, works for most people. But I wonder if it works better if you see yourself side by side with the model swing? And, wouldn’t a person’s model swing be different based on body type, height, etc?
Joe
Feb 10, 2014 at 3:42 pm
I work with a phenomenal instructor who blends video, launch monitor data, and physical feedback in a way that has been amazingly helpful to me. My golf life has been full of tips and “truisms” that pre dated use of these technology tools. With the ability to see my motion and the results it has on the ball, we’ve been able to work on developing a new “feel” for me that in many ways counteracts what I “learned” previously from tips. What I felt was a shift of the weight was a sway, and what I felt like was a reverse pivot was actually a coiled and much better position at the top. Video made it much easier to see that was creating too much out-to-in path and a massive throw of the club. The video gave me an image of what I was doing. The launch monitor numbers helped quantify some target measurements, and the physical feedback gave me the model to put together a new motion.
We made a few setup changes, and he sent me on my way to work on it. What’s really revolutionary about modern instruction is that instead of immediately signing me up for another session, he encouraged me to break out my phone at the range and get some swings on tape as a way to monitor my progress. Using the Trackman software and video, we went over what to look for. Using my iPhone 5s, I can capture perfect slow motion swings at the range and use free utilities (Ubersense) to draw lines and angles and compare multiple swings in sync with one another.
10+ years ago, you would have needed resources that less than 1% of golfers had regular access to. Now, it sits in my pocket.
Video is hardly passé – it has remarkable value and has become democratized in a way that can help more golfers in more meaningful ways.
tom stickney
Feb 10, 2014 at 12:47 pm
Video is also a necessity….good article
tom stickney
Feb 10, 2014 at 12:46 pm
Video will always help us to attach feels to our movements…most people are visual learners anyway. Good article.
Don
Feb 10, 2014 at 12:38 pm
Video and launch monitors, K Vests etc. should all be considered complimentary techniques. Trackman data is great for club delivery and ball flight data but it can’t show you whether the swing that delivered the numbers is physically sound or likely to cause fatigue or even injury.
In addition different students are likely to respond to different methods, pro’s are more likely to be able to work from just trackman data because they have a greater awareness of what movements or feelings influence the numbers. For the less physically aware video provides instant visual feedback and model comparisons can illustrate clearly the changes that may be required.
However, the worst PGA instructors I’ve experienced are those insistent on moving every aspect of a swing toward a perfect model and forget the need for functionality over aesthetic perfection. Beware the robo-pro.
Jon
Feb 10, 2014 at 11:46 am
I agree with your reference to modeling. Furthermore, modeling is most effective when the person is similar to the model, and this is important when dealing with diverse populations of learners. The difference between feel and real is easier to display with video.
Mike
Feb 10, 2014 at 11:03 am
Video will never become passé. It’s the best way to get instant feedback.