Golf magazines, commentators and players boast of great teaching pros. The main criteria to be a great instructor appear to be the professional players they work with and how well they are known. It is assumed that if the teaching pro works with a high level professional golfer, he must be an excellent teacher.
What we rarely see or hear is what comprises a top teaching pro. Most of the comments describing the teaching pro appear to be related to the general social attributes. One rarely hears about objective criteria by which teaching pros are evaluated or why one instructor may rank higher than another.
One criterion that doesn’t seem to apply – at least in all the articles and comments that I have witnessed – is an understanding of the golf swing. This too appears to be taken for granted. But shouldn’t this be the essence of a great instructor?
If you pick up any issue of the typical golf magazine you will see conflicting articles by many teaching pros. However, understand that the golf swing is based on levers, production of force, momentum, mass, and specific joint actions to hit the ball well with power and accuracy. Because of this all golfers must execute the same basic actions in order to have an effective swing.
For example, in an effective swing you will see weight shift, hip rotation, shoulder rotation, arm adduction- abduction and rotation and ulna flexion (the wrist break) in the downswing. It is impossible to have a powerful drive without these actions. Thus we see all golfers who hit the ball well and have good distance, execute these actions.
Because these golfers may look different when executing the swing, it is easy to believe think that each one did something differently. However, the swing differences can be found mainly in the range of motion of the joint actions, the amount of force in the joint actions and the sequence of the actions.
The key here is that the actions are still the same. How they are executed is where we see the differences. In other words, the core elements of the swing are still the same. Every great golfer still executes the same basic actions!
From working with many golfers from pros to average players, I have come to the conclusion that it is the job of a good teacher to explain, teach and correct when necessary, these essential actions in order for the golfer to have a good swing. The teaching pro must know how to determine what is lacking in the key actions and how they should be taught and/or corrected. The teaching pro should not just teach “his method” as though it were something new and different. It can never be!
Perhaps even more importantly, the teaching pro should not allude to the fact that their swing is more effective or how different the swing that he is teaching is from what is considered standard or typical for the industry. Thus, in articles dealing with the swing, there should be more agreement in relation to the actions that occur in the swing, not diametrically opposed views.
Can you imagine what would happen if we had schoolteachers, teach the students that nouns are verbs and verbs are nouns? Or to have some math teachers teaching that two and two is equal to five, while others are teaching it is equal to four. In these cases there would be mass confusion — as now exists in golf in regard to an effective swing.
This is why golfers, if they go to a sufficient number of teaching pros, will become more confused rather than enlightened about their swing and understanding the swing. To achieve these objectives there must be a general consensus and agreement among the teaching pros as to the basic factors involved in the swing.
This does not mean that there should not be any disagreements. There can be many but they would deal more with supplementary factors, not the key elements of the swing.
But before this can happen we must have a good understanding of what constitutes the basic golf swing. We already have this knowledge. It just needs greater dissemination and possibly discussion and acceptance. This will lead to more golfers developing a good swing which then leads to greater enjoyment of the game.
For more information on what constitutes an effective swing and the joint actions that occur, based on biomechanics and kinesiology, read Explosive Golf.