The Truth About Fairy Dust(Talent)

I have been in the golf business for over 40 years and it was late in my career when  I finally figured out something important. One of them is fairy dust and how it applies to golfers and the other is the truth about golf instruction. 

Fairy Dust

 

Fairy dust is what I call natural talent or potential. I guess it could be described in a lot of different ways but I prefer to call it fairy dust because it doesn't apply only to golfers or just athletic ability.

 At birth everyone has fairy dust sprinkled on them in varying kinds and amounts. Sometimes it's in the form of athletic talent other times it may be in the form of musical talent or a great singing voice but certain individuals are just simply potentially more gifted than others.  They got more more fairy dust.

Truth

 

 The truth that nobody seems to be aware of is that we only get the fairy dust at birth. Nobody else has the ability to sprinkle it on us.  I think one reason golfers get so frustrated is they are often led to believe that with proper instruction or equipment there is no limit to how good they can become and this is a complete falsehood.  Saying that with proper teaching and enough lessons and practice any can become a scratch golfer is like saying with enough work and training everyone can be an accomplished musician, singer, or artist.

Unfortunately that just simply is not true.  When I was younger and played baseball and football I wanted to be able to run faster.  I learned that even with good athletic talent and hard work I could shave of a few tenths of a second off my speed but was never going to be able to run fast.  I didn’t get dusted with the speed potential at birth.

One of the things I did get was the power dust.  Even in little league I led the league in home runs and triples.  In golf I could hit the ball 300 yards as a teenager with balata golf balls and persimmon woods but even at that there were a few that got more of the dust than I did.  I don’t think you can learn it.  You are either born with it or you are not.  On average, most recreational golfers, according to Golf Digest, average somewhere around 195-205 yards with their drivers.

Research shows that most of them can improve by only around 11 percent .  That means 195 yards becomes 216 yards.  That is the amount of fairy dust they got at birth.  This unfortunate truth does not fit well in marketing of golf lessons and golf equipment but it is true nonetheless.  Any time averages are discussed there will be exceptions at both ends but the odds are against you.

The same is true with putting.  If you are a poor putter you can improve but only to a certain level.  If you don’t have the sprinkle of dust you will never be a great putter.

Have Fun

 

Golf is a wonderful game that can be played by all ages for a lifetime and anyone that has not tried is probably missing a wonderful experience.  The point here is to realize and accept your limitations but learn to have more fun doing it.

We hear all the time about lowering scores or hitting the ball better, etc. but how often do you hear anyone promising that you can have more fun.

For all but a very tiny percentage of people golf is just a hobby or a pastime like fishing or painting or many other things.  It is something you do for enjoyment.

Even if you can’t become a long hitter or a scratch player you can learn to have more fun while playing the game.

Think about what you enjoy the most in golf.  Surveys indicate hitting more good shots is more enjoyable for the average golfer but golf instruction seems to be fixated on shooting lower scores.

Which is more fun and gives you a bigger rush, shooting a lower score or hitting it stiff and making birdies and bragging to your buddies?  Since instruction seems to be fixed on scoring you are constantly being encouraged to hit to the middle of the green.  In a recent study it showed that golfers with handicaps in the 15 to 20 range only hit an average of slightly less than 4 greens a round.  If you are aiming at the middle of the green how many birdie putts will you have.  Unless you are a great putter the answer is none.

If you want to have more fun follow spots psychologist Dr. Bob Rotella’s advice.  Always pick a small, well defined target.  If you want to have more fun aim at the flag stick.  If you are successful you will have a short birdie putt.

Conclusion

 

We all have potential in some area and very few end up realizing their full potential .  I think that is the real point of golf instruction.  Helping people develop their potential and not building a perfect swing.  I also think we need to be honest with students and give them realistic expectations.

The talent we are born with is what we have.  Nobody can give us more later no matter what anyone tells you.

Once a player's knowledge level matches their talent level, more knowledge probably does not improve scoring or ball striking much. 

Is Golf Instruction on the Right Path?

                                                   

In golf instruction today there is a battle between simplicity and complexity. The human brain always gravitates naturally to simplicity and it still works that way with students. Apparently that no longer applies to many golf instructors.

Let me state up front that this is only my opinion and it is just simply my personal observation. I would like to think it is as an educated observation based on 40 plus years of teaching golf, studying the golf swing, and the last few years studying how people actually learn complex motor skills.

The Way It Was

Somewhere along the way golf instruction lost its original purpose, that of helping people to learn to “play golf.” For golf instructors there has been a large transition from learning the art of teaching people to play golf to focusing on the science of how to swing the club. I find this interesting since the best players in the world all have their own golf swing that is as identifiable as their face.

For generations golf instructors taught people to swing the club and hit the ball. The message was simple. People were taught the purpose of the grip and generally how to grip the club so that the hands could square the club up at impact. People were taught how to use their hands properly and shown generally how to hit a golf ball, but it was primarily about ball striking and controlling the ball.

During this era of golf instruction which lasted well over a hundred years, we had some of the greatest golfers to ever play the game. Most of them actually learned by watching other good players and experimenting with how to produce the shots they wanted. Many did it with equipment most people today couldn’t even get the ball airborne with. There were no golf schools and being a golf instructor wasn’t even a profession.

Then It All Changed

With the advent of high speed photography the ability to analyses the swings of the top players started the golf instruction in a different direction - analyzing positions in the golf swing. There developed a belief that the secret to a good golf swing could be found in studying and duplicating the positions of the golf club and body parts throughout the swing.

I have to admit that I was originally fascinated by this technology. Early in my career, I was living and working in Atlanta. I was offered the opportunity to use and study the state of the art Sony Motion Analyzer. They wanted to break into the golf market, but the product cost what a Trackman would cost today. After a couple of weeks I realized that the detail it provided didn’t provide me with anything I really needed. I wasn’t going to invest that type of money in a piece of technology just to be the first in my area to have it. I would have had to raise my lesson rates to pay for it and other than showing my student’s incredibly detailed video of their swing it didn’t really provide anything I needed.

Fortunately Sony never launched a campaign saying if you didn’t have one of these devices you were relegated to a second tier golf instructor.

This trend has continued to the point that much time and money is spent analyzing the exact angles of the club face as it approaches impact with the golf ball. Today many are studying the bio-mechanics of the golf swing in order to gain a greater understanding of athletic performance through mathematical modeling, computer simulation and measurement. They are focused on computer generated images of how the entire body is moving while swinging a golf club.

The Result

In a desire to create a profitable niche in the golf instruction field much of this information has been disseminated to golfers in order to prove that someone has discovered a “secret” or “key” to the golf swing.

This has given birth to instructors using terms such as:

    “The external rotation of the trail arm is a hot topic among instructors right now to try to help 'lay the shaft down' and create the correct hand path relative to the sweet spot of the club, but I think the timing of this trail arm external rotation/amount of trail arm external rotation during the swing could also be a big factor to creating the results we are looking for.”

    “Here's a suggestion...divide your body in two at the pelvis. Upper and lower MASS distribution. While the upper MASS is rotating the legs must manage the upper MASS. Your CORE (center of     MASS) is to vertical - tilt the torso out moving your CORE towards the golf ball.”

To make it even worse golfers are hearing and reading this and are out there giving their buddies tips about creating lag, maintaining spine angle, core rotation, angle of attack, etc. When you go to the range and ask golfers what they are working on today the vast majority will usually list off at least three things they are working on that are all about the position of the club or the body.

It is time to step back and take a deep breath and realize that gaining detailed knowledge is of very little benefit unless it can be communicated to a student in a form that they can understand and use. Golf instruction is not about who has the most knowledge or data, but who can communicate their knowledge best to the student and help them quickly.

All of the best teachers that I have studied have or had a highly developed ability to communicate with the student. Technology is not going to teach us that.
As far as discovering secrets or something truly new about the swinging of a golf club; as long as we are standing facing the ball and aligned to the target we are not likely to discover anything that we haven’t known for at least fifty years.

I do still find video a very useful tool and have used it since it replaced movie film, but I do not need to break it down into frame by frame extreme detail to fix a slice or any of the problems the average golfer has.

The Bottom Line

The bottom line is that we need to go back to teaching people about swinging the club and striking the ball. Not about what position everything needs to be in based on our personal opinion.

Has Golf Instruction Gone Wrong

I will add this disclaimer to my dissertation – I focus on and write about the average golfer. Highly motivated low handicappers and elite players are completely different than the average golfer and only comprise a tiny fraction of the people that play golf. While it may be necessary to teach the average golfer how to use his hands properly, an elite player that has been playing since shortly after learning to walk already knows this. They should not necessarily be taught the same things or the same way as average golfers.

I also realize that I probably will not get much agreement from golf instructors that have never been exposed to or studied anything other than technology and positions, but it doesn’t change my opinion that we need to move back toward the teaching style of the Harvey Penick’s, Claude Harmon's, and John Jacobs of the world

If I only get a few more teachers considering this or thinking this way the time and research I put into this will be well spent. PGA Hall of Famer Bill Strausbaugh once told me that a golf professional should never teach a method, but he should have a method of teaching and that's what I am advocating. We need to examine our present method of teaching this wonderful game.

Conclusion

Changes are usually customer driven so if you are an average golfer and I define that as anyone in the mid-teens or higher handicap. You do not need to pay extra for technology and you need to interview a prospective teacher and ask about his teaching methods.