My name is Richard Cartwright, and I’m a PGA Professional in the UK. I’m excited to announce a new series that I’m working on with GolfWRX called “Learn from the Best,” and I think GolfWRX readers will enjoy it very much.

I teach golf for a living, and I’ve always made it a point in my career to seek out the best and brightest minds in the game so I can pick their brains. I thought, why not share what I learn with the GolfWRX Community?

For my first installment, I spoke to Adam Young, an internationally renowned golf coach and author of the best-selling golf book, The Practice Manual: The Ultimate Guide for Golfers. He’s known for his research and expertise in helping golfers of all skill levels lower their scores.

Richard Cartwright: What should golfers be focusing on when they practice?

Adam Young: The concepts. They need to be aware of what they’re doing in three key areas:

1. Ground Strike: Their ability to strike a divot in the correct place with an iron and control the height of their swing arc with a driver.
2. Face Strike: Are they hitting their shots off the toe, heel, center, bottom or top? It’s very important to recognize where the ball is struck.
3. Controlling Club Face Aim at Impact and Swing Path. They need to be able to use ball flight to determine what happened at impact.

We can all recognize when we’ve hit a poor shot, but rarely can a high-handicap golfer indicate exactly what happened at impact to produce that shot. I’ve had golfers shank the ball during sessions. I’ve asked them what they think they did with the shot, and they believed they’ve topped it as it didn’t get airborne.

A lower-handicap golfer needs to focus on face and path relationships, as they generally have learned better turf and sweet spot strikes… although not always.

I recently had a good player who was pull-hooking it, but I noticed the path was anywhere between 5-10 degrees right; he was shutting the face down substantially. His answer to fix the ball from going left was to swing even more to the right. This is an example of poor concept, where his correction caused the ball to curve more left and also affected the low point of the swing (resulting in more fat and thin shots). Often, giving the player more accurate feedback on the true cause of their poor shot can help them automatically solve the issue.

RC: Let’s talk skill versus technique. What’s the difference and why is it important to distinguish between?

AY: Throwing a ball into bucket. The skill is getting the ball in the bucket. Technique would be the bending of the arm or the angle you released the ball; it’s the method employed to produce the skill. A skilled person can get the ball into the bucket with numerous techniques.

Too much stock is put in the swing motion and not enough in the skill. Very commonly, when I ask an amateur what they need to do to hit the ball better, they mention things such as turning shoulders to 90 degrees or following through. They often don’t understand that they can still miss the ball with gross motor patterns (big movements), which look pro-like. Working on skills such as ground contact, centeredness of strike and club face control will always improve results, regardless of their current swing technique.

I change technique when it correlates to inhibiting skills. For example, if someone is moving their head around all over the place and struggling to strike the ground correctly, we may look at changing this directly, although a better head movement can often be reverse engineered from improvements in the skill of ground contact.

When working on club face control, I would tend to favor more external feedback when helping achieve better face position at impact such as a constraint (e.g. a gateway), which shows the starting direction of the golf ball.

Higher-handicap golfers and beginners need to develop awareness of concepts and coordination. Take the example of a beginner who tops it all the time. Something as simple as identifying if they are able to strike the tee and watch that fly in the air: that will enable the ball to also fly in the air. Guiding their concepts through better feedback is very important. Better players often know what to do, but I have found they are often poor at knowing whether they have done it. Seeing what their weakest link is (skill, technique or concept) helps me guide their improvement process.

To the coaches out there: never overestimate what a pupil knows. Always test them to gain insight into their current concepts and ideas behind why the ball did what it did. Always question to gauge their current beliefs.

RC: What two or three things do you feel are the magic formula to break 80?

AY: It completely depends on the individual. I’ve seen some great swings, but their strategy is terrible. They often don’t know how far they hit the ball. That’s probably the first thing; you have to know how far you hit each club.

The second is to play as safe as you can, and that doesn’t mean not using driver. Aim to different parts of fairway: aim away from trouble; miss in the right place; play to the heart of the green. For example, if you hit a shot into the green away from hole, you might three-putt 20 percent of the time, which will cost you 0.2 shots. Now let’s say you hit it into water and drop; the average player will get up and down 20 percent of the time, which will cost you 1.8 shots. That’s nine times the value (going in the water) compared to going for the heart of the green with the risk of a three-putt. Even if you hit it close to the hole, say 10 feet away, the average amateur is only holing 10 percent of those.

Let your mistakes work for you and not cost you. Avoid the big numbers, don’t necessarily go for the hero shot. Patience pays off. Those are the big two.

RC: When golfers ask you, “What level can I get to,” what do you say?

AY: I would look at their athleticism and awareness. You can often tell who will be the quicker learners just from how they can move their body, as well as how well they can identify something as simple as where they struck a shot on the face of the club. There are so many factors involved in reaching your potential, but one of the biggest I see is patience.

A person who understands how to learn things can go a long way in any endeavor, but many people are so wrapped up in wanting to hit their best shots now that they are unable to learn how to hit something better than their current best. A player who can deny the pitfalls of instant gratification and who knows how to learn a movement pattern will usually have a good success rate in the game.

RC: Thank you for your time, Adam.

Adam Young is also a widely GolfWRX Featured Writer; you can read his GolfWRX here. You can also learn more about Adam Young and his coaching philosophies at www.adamyounggolf.com.