Get to Know Your Pro...

This series of articles will allow you to gain an insight into the Landings Golf Professional Staff’s teaching styles, training preferences and tips.

 

JOHN PHILLIPS, PGA Teaching Professional and Club Repair/Club Fitter at Oakridge

What is your favorite part of the game to practice?

The short game is my favorite to practice. Putting and chipping practice provides the greatest return (saving strokes) for the time spent.

 

What is the part of your game that needs the most attention?

Since I am playing fewer competitive rounds, putting becomes more important for me to practice. Speed control is not as consistent, as number of rounds played is reduced. Speed control is vital to reading putts correctly.

 

What is the one way a student can practice better?

Students should practice chipping and putting three times as much as full swing. These are two areas where the average player can really excel if they commit to practice.

 

List your top 3 teaching specialties or favorite skills to teach:

I enjoy teaching the scoring shots, hybrid and iron swings along with chipping and putting.

 

What are your preferred training tools or technology?

My new favorite teaching tool or technology is "Swing Smart", a small device attached to the golf shaft beneath the grip. It shows an animated 3D figure imitating your last swing. The animation shows swing speed, path of club head on both backswing and downswing, club face position at impact and amount of hand "flip" at impact. It also measures your swing tempo. All of this can be pulled up on your Iphone or Ipad. It's a great teaching tool!

 

What percentage are you teaching a new concept to a student and what percentage are you coaching that student? 

Every student has certain negative tendencies or bad habits which must be identified and corrections made. Once the corrections have been implemented, then the coaching takes over to keep re-enforcing the changes that were made. Every student is "taught" initially and the follow-ups are "coaching".

 

What are your goals as a teacher and coach?

My goal as a teacher is not only to improve the playing ability of my students, but also to give them a better understanding of their swing dynamics and the ability to read ball flight as related to these dynamics.

Get to Know Your Pro…

This series of articles will allow you to gain an insight into the Landings Golf Professional Staff’s teaching styles, training preferences and tips.

RUSSELL ABBOTT, PGA Assistant Professional at Marshwood

What is your favorite part of the game to practice?

I love to working on putting and driving. I have always loved the saying "drive for show and putt for dough". When playing in competition, I love being able to blast the golf ball well past someone to try to "intimidate" them a little for a lack of better wording, however, it makes me  even happier when they see that and then I drain a 20-30 footer on them for a couple of holes. Plus, it sends my confidence through the roof when this happens.

What is the part of your game that needs the most attention?

The part I struggle with the most is my iron game. I am not nearly as consistent as I should be. I do not compress them or hear that sound, like some better iron players get.

 

What is the one way a student can practice better?

I think students should do more situational practice. Instead of hitting 40 7-irons to the blue flag, change angles by hitting to different flags on different sides of the range, change ball flights (high, low, draw, fade). Instead of hitting chip after chip, pick a spot chip to three different pins and then try to make the putt...work on your up and downs....make yourself have some pressure...if you don't get up and down say 40% of the time, you don't get ice cream that week or owe yourself 15 pushups...

List your top 3 teaching specialties or favorite skills to teach:

Putting, short game/bunkers, driving....Driving is such a confidence builder - we only hit 14 (or 18) drives each round but if you are hitting them in play, and well, it infuses your game.  Short game/bunkers and putting are where you can really pick up a few stokes fast with just some simple adjustments. A lot of times we are not even talking about big swing changes or body movements for students to see big differences in results...love to see that light bulb explode in someone's eyes and face.

 

What are your preferred training tools or technology?

I am still very simple here for the most part. I don't think we always need the expensive gadgets to make fixes. I use tees and alignment sticks a lot in my teaching. I have and like to use an Ipad/Iphone for videoing and analysis. It is just so simple to use it for a 3 second swing, turn the device where the student can see it, and then have a 2-5min discussion about the fix. I also like to use a device called the Swingbyte for my more consistent/better students. This device attaches to the club, weighs about an ounce, and provides me with many stats including swing speed, angle of attack, shaft lean, computer generated swing path and more that some people really like to help with their understanding of where they are and where we want to get.

 

What percentage are you teaching a new concept to a student and what percentage are you coaching that student? 

That depends on the student. For me, the higher the handicap, the more I concentrate on concepts/technique. I try to use a lot of encouraging words during this time and try to get the student to see positives.  With the lower handicap player, it is a lot less technique, more fundamentals get out of whack, more coaching and mental toughness are needed here.

 

What are your goals as a teacher and coach?

Keep learning from other teachers/golf players and from personal lessons given to me and then take that knowledge and use in a ways to help my students. I’m always look for better ways to relate to students!

Get to Know Your Pro...

This series of articles will allow you to gain an insight into the Landings Golf Professional Staff’s teaching styles, training preferences and tips.

BRIAN SAMS, PGA Head Professional at Plantation

What is your favorite part of the game to practice:

I most enjoy practicing with the sand wedge shots due to the versatility and creativity required.

What is the part of your game that needs the most attention?

My putting always requires practice to keep the feel and green reading sharpness.

What is the one way a student can practice better?

Students can practice better by establishing a station to assist with consistency in their set up.

List your top 3 teaching specialties or favorite skills to teach:

Chipping, tee shots, and wedge play.

Helping a player improve chipping often helps the entire game based on the proper fundamentals of correct impact. All players enjoy hitting the ball further off the tee.  A player’s score improves with better wedge play.

 

 

What are your preferred training tools or technology?

Establishing the player’s body limitations is the best tool in helping a player improve. The instructor has to be aware of the player’s mobility to know how to help a player improve. The speed whoosh is a great method to increase a player club head speed for greater distance. Using video can be a wonderful aid or a hindrance, depending on the student’s method of learning and how the video is used.

 

What percentage are you teaching a new concept to a student and what percentage are you coaching that student? 

The new player often needs more concept understanding to improve. Be careful not to overwhelm the player with information. The established player will often benefit more from coaching and mental preparation. The instructor must be careful not to overwhelm the player with too much information. A student walking away from a lesson confused is unproductive, no matter if the student is a beginner or advanced.

 

What are your goals as a teacher and coach?

My goal as a teacher and coach is to allow people to enjoy the game more by having a better understanding of concepts to improve their enjoyment. If their golf game improves, all the better. We need to ask the player what they want to accomplish in order to best help them improve. It is a mistake to assume what the student needs. Always ask how you may best assist them.

Chicken Soup for Golf

We all know how easy it is to veer off course in our mental focus during practice. If something doesn’t work out, it’s easy to try something else and then something else until too many ideas have been tried in practice session. In addition, many amateurs spend time trying to figure out what went wrong or are given ideas from others on what is going wrong. There are many things that can go wrong in a golf swing – it’s not 100% controllable. Your decisions, your pre-shot routine and your set-up are controllable, but it’s very important to streamline your swing goal into a single feel, move or image that keeps you on task. I’ve been using an analogy to help golfers stay focused on their task during practice and hope it will help you remember to stay on task.

First, imagine you have been given the important task of going to the grocery store to purchase ingredients for chicken soup. What 3 things would you be searching for? Name 3 in your mind right now. Where would you find those items? Next, think of 3 things you wouldn’t put in chicken soup.  Again, take a moment to think of those. I might consider horseradish, gum and cereal. When you go to the store, are you more focused on what you need to put into your recipe or what you don’t need? How long would it take you to go shopping if you kept going down the aisles and checking off the items you don’t need? Wouldn’t it be easier to just stay focused on what you need?

Think about this analogy for your golf practice. If you don’t know what you need, you should work with a golf professional to help you build your recipe. Once you have your ingredients, stay focused on the task at hand. If you start mentally wandering, bring yourself back to the task. After each shot, ask yourself if you did it or not (i.e. Did I have my grip over enough or did I feel the pause at the top of the swing?).  Rate it on a scale of 1-5 (1 is pitiful and 5 is awesome). If you can answer that one specific question every shot, you will have better focus.  Stay on task and I hope both your chicken soup and your golf swing turn out well! 

 

 

News from the Summit - 9 (and last!)

Notes from Dr. Paul Schempp, PGA Teaching & Coaching Summit Presentation - A professor and the director of the sport instruction research laboratory at the University of Georgia. Dr. Schempp's message, supported by more than a decade of research into the characteristics and development of expertise, applies to individuals and organizations in business, education, and sport.

http://www.performancemattersinc.com/bio/

If you are passionate enough and willing enough to pay the price, you will get it done. “You can’t think and hit at the same time” (Yogi Berra). Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, be in the precious present moment.

• Learn about relationships in your game. Love is a decision, not an emotion. Care, be responsible and respect as a player and as a coach. Have a game plan. Be motivated and motivate others.
• Have a game plan. If you really want to get better, you need a plan. Experts plan 60% or more of the time. Purpose-Goals-Actions-Implement-Evaluate-Adjust. Goals should keep in mind enjoyment, finances, exercise and work.  Experts are much quicker to abandon a plan if it’s not working.
• Learn what motivates you. Fear and reward are temporary.  SELF MOTIVATION is more permanent. Create an environment in which mastery can be achieved.  Experts motive by showing students what they CAN BE.  Use sport as a vehicle. The students are the passengers. Golf instructors: “I don’t teach golf. I teach people to play golf.”

Notes from an excellent presentation by LPGA Tour Player Stacy Lewis and Coach Joe Hallett

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stacy_Lewis            http://legendsclub.com/staff/joe-hallett

• It’s normal to start to doubt yourself if you’ve done well and you start hitting a few bad shots.  Talk yourself through step by step. Let your body take over and quiet your mind. Golf shots don’t have to be perfect. They just have to be good enough to get it done.
• Stacy has the ability to do what she does based on her workouts. She was diagnosed with scoliosis at age 11, has had 5 vertebrae fused and isn’t physically strong enough to do was Joe wanted so they increased her core strength workouts to 6/week. Stacy practiced 6 months of chipping and putting during surgery recovery. 70% of her practice is now short game and putting and course play. She said it doesn’t matter if she can’t do it the course. She also eats enough protein every morning.   
• Stacy uses AimPoint and went from 88^th to 3^rd in putting stats on Tour. She knows her reads are correct and works mostly on speed. She also thinks that her putts always have a good chance of going in.   

Stacy says “Golf isn’t everything. You need hobbies. There are highs and lows all over. You need something to get away to and need balance in life. Commit to your craft.”  Not every putt will go in.

• Joe works to keep players inside their performance patterns knowing they will navigate to their weaknesses. It’s inevitable. Nothing is a fix in golf, it’s about management. Always give a player movement, don’t take movement away or try to stop movement.  Look to complete rather than compete.

Notes from the Summit - 8

Notes from Michael Breed, PGA Teaching & Coaching Summit Presentation on Branding…

-PGA Golf Professional and Golf Channel Instructor         http://michaelbreed.com/

• How will you brand yourself, even if working as an employee for a company? There are 6.8 billion people in the world. 5.1B have cell phones. 4.2B have toothbrushes, 1.2B use Facebook, 1B have SmartPhones. 91% of adults use Facebook monthly. 98% of adults ages 18-24 use Facebook monthly. How will you get your message across about who you are, what you offer?
• Think about logo / name (colors, size), bragging about yourself a little, being honest, a tag line, knowing subject matter, clear writing skills, appearance (colors, manners, polished shoes), plans of action (what steps and when, have motion with direction), preservation (links and leverage), 3^rd party Recognition (90% trust peer recognition, 14% trust ads).
• The average person has a 7-second attention span. A goldfish has an 8-second attention span. Limit your message, make it worth it. (He also mentioned that’s one of the reasons he’s so fast-paced on the Show… he can only roam 25 feet  from where he was standing as the average person loses interest in speakers who wander… interesting data on good speaking habits!)

Notes from Speaker Panel with Todd Anderson, Mike Bender, Randy Smith, Chuck Cook and Martin Hall

• Focus more on ball flight than body parts and mechanics. Use Trackman for fitting and some teaching. Technology is great but can be overwhelming. Don’t lose yourself in the data and small picture. Have balance. Use video carefully. 
• Use feedback and exaggeration. Work with training stations.
• If there isn’t any power to develop (no chance at increasing distance), work a lot on short game.  Justin Leonard is 100-125 less on than other on driving distance but still won some big events with his short game.
• No re-building. Use what a person has and can do. Great players will make mistakes. Keep it simple. Worst mistake is to make a reclamation on the Tuesday before the U.S. Open.
• Todd Anderson’s Drill: Play for a Wedge Score, a Regular Score and a Short Game Score.
• Mike Bender’s Drill: To stop a slice, move the impact bag out to the right (for a right-handed golfer).
• Randy Smith’s Drill:  To stop chicken wings, play ball in the front of the stance and make divots.

Notes from the Summit - 7

Notes from Dr. Stephen Norris PGA Teaching & Coaching Summit

- The director of sport physiology & strategic planning at the Canadian Sport Centre Calgary, Norris is a consultant for Canada's Winter Olympic sports teams. He also is an adjunct assistant professor of applied physiology within the Human Performance Laboratory (HPL) at the University of Calgary. In addition to his working with several national sports teams, Norris teaches and supervises graduate students specializing in applied physiology and sport science.

http://sleaveconsulting.com/biographies.php

• Neural peaks @ ages 10-15. Expose kids to as many stimuli as possible that include pressure sensitivity, weight transfer (explain vs. sensation of doing), rhythm, Music/Dance.  
• Hormonal development  affects muscle mass and growth spurts. Be very careful with kids doing conditioning and strength training.  
• Girls peak between ages 13-16 and boys 14-18. Ages 12-16 need activity. Continue working with loading forces (brittle bones, fracture periods, check on bone mineral density).  
• Ages 5-8 require movement skills, rhythm, running, kicking, jumping.  
• Ages 10-18 need to be patient and understand the process.
• Kids need to understand and develop physical literacy. Interacting with the ground (golf), water (in, on, unstable surfaces), snow/ice (skateboard), air (moving through space, torso rotation, how body is linked). 

   Gave example of Damian Walters and how many golfers want to be able to do this is the golf world without the training. What kind of training is required to produce what we want?  http://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=damian+walters&mid=DEE0347728B2E7F37007DEE0347728B2E7F37007&view=detail&FORM=VIRE6

• Practice is relentless.
• A 6 year old is not half of a 12 year old. Growth is not linear. Time on a task: spend 1 hour to get 2 hours in competition. Be careful of use. Work hard vs. just being good. Play work other activities and don’t just focus on one.
• Improve by Design, not by Chance. Get totally comfortable with environment. Challenge the norm.  Relentless, purposeful practice while having fun. Excellence is an achieved by training and habituation. High performance, world class, world leading.    
• What do you need to do to achieve a consistency of performance?  Perform under pressure, deliver results. Lay down expectation. Perform on demand anytime, any place, any condition. No 2^nd chances.