MDP1555, on 05 November 2012 - 05:31 PM, said:
With all good natured intent and respect for your opinion I have to ask;
"Play their best" as opposed to what? I don’t try to turn club players into tour players. Give me a break! Like with all things there are degrees of efficiency.
I kind of took from what you stated that you suggest a pro should teach based on the best a high handicapper can do with the swing they have when they come to you despite the fact they came to me to learn to swing more efficiently. If this is the case you want me or other pros to concede right out the gate and tell a player that comes to me and books lessons that the best thing I could do for him is to not change anything but yet make him better? Exactly what is that process?
So you had a two plane swing that you thought was efficient yet you could not time it from day to day. Well then I propose to you that it was not efficient at all because an efficient swing is repeatable by trained muscle memory. if you are making a concoius effort to try to time any event in the swing you are wasting energy, or if it works one day and not the next then it is not efficent.
An efficient swing is one you can repeat with ease because you got into good positions from the get go and one that wastes the least amount of energy in order to create the most amounts of energy transfer and control. The degree of efficiency will vary from player to player. Like I said I’m not talking about trying to turn a high handicapper into a tour pro here. I’m talking about helping them build a fundamental foundation they can grow with.
That said I would think you are intelligent enough to have deduced that prior to your reply So I assume you don’t much like teaching pro teaching good fundamentals or or just don’t like us in general. Either way I am sorry you feel that way I assure you every teaching pros intent is to show a player how to play better.
With all due respect, it is easy to be correct, when you get to define terms in ways that automatically make one so. I do not accept that there is only ONE way to correctly swing a golf club or only one set of speficially correct fundamentals. There is a RANGE of what is fundamentally correct...and certain sets of fundamentals tend to match up to certain ways of swinging the club.
An
efficient swing is one that
delivers power to the ball in a fashion that maximizes energy transfer. A swing with a flippy releease, or a chicken-winged left arm is an inefficient motion. TIMING and repeatability is a manifestation of balance between athletic ability and swing method. You can teach me to swing EXACTLY like Luke Donald...but he will still hit the ball better than I could because he has a degree of natural rhythm, timing and small-muscle coordination that I lack. JIm Furyk's address and backswing is HIGHLY idiosyncratic...but is one of the most repeatable motions in the game of golf today, because of Furyk's sheer athleticism. Lee Westwood hits more fairways and greens than Bubba Watson or Phil Mickelson because he uses a swing method that is not as dependant upon the small-muscles to square up the club-face at impact...and therefore is less-timing dependant from day-to-day.
As Jim Hardy paraphrase Jim Hardy, there are different ways to get to repeatability. One is to not have a great deal of athletic ability (be a "dog"), but have a very fundamentally sound technique that minimizes the need for timing (Lee Westwood). The other is to simply have a great deal of athletic ability (be a 'cat') and simply master the timing requirements of the swing motion you use. Like Fred Couples, Jim Furyk, and Bubba Watson do.
Most devastatingly, is when you get a tremendous athlete (cat) who also develops a very sound technique...but then you are in Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy territory.
The fact of the matter is that my two swings were EQUALLY efficient. I can hit the ball JUST as far swinging as two-planer as I can a one-planer. But the one-plane swing---and the body-release---are a better match to my athletic strengths. So I am more accurate, and I can play more consistently from day to day playing this way. Because this method doesn't call for a lot of forearm rotation through the hitting area. Which I lack the athletic ability to time on a day-in and day-out basis to play to the level that I wish to play. Even if you got me to cultivate a swing that looked like Tow Watson's.
Bottomline, I am a better ball-striker as a one-plane swinger than I was as a two-planer because that swing method is a better match to the talents that I bring to the game. Not because my one plane swing is more "efficient" than my two-plane swing was.
My point is that different people come to the game with different talents. Different strengths...and different weaknesses....and as long as they come with a grip that is within the acceptable RANGE of what is fundamentally sound. (1.5-3 knuckles on the left hand) that
any adjustments to their grip should be based upon what it is that they are trying to do with their swing, and what their ballflight is doing.
IOW, it makes no sense to take someone who is a slicer with a 3-knuckle grip on his left hand...
and neutralize his grip. The first thing that you need to do with him is fix swing path problems, and teach him to release the club properly. Once he can do that...if there is a problem with the ball going to the left...THEN set about altering his grip to correct that problem.
In my case, fortunately, I had a teacher who took the approach of tailoring the swing she was teaching me to those things that I could do well athletically. (IOW, she leveraged my athletic ability and years of playing baseball at a high level...and turned me from a two planer to a one-planer) Or as I heard one of her partners say on the range one day to a student (and it brought a huge smile to my face) "
There are lots of different ways to swing a golf club well. My job is to find the right set of fundamentals, right combination of swing keys and swing feels necessary to get you to have a swing that unfolds in a fundamentally sound fashion."
When I heard him say that, all I could do was think to myself, "YESSSS!!!!".
Edited by kellygreen, 06 November 2012 - 09:22 AM.
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