Chapter 14 - Teaching (2)

How 1 go about it One thing at a time The positive approach

There is nothing unorthodox about the method I teach. It is based upon simple, sound and well-tried principles and does not ask the player to force himself into contortions in the belief that the club-face is being kept square when in fact it is being shut.

You will have realize d by now that I offer no gimmicks in an attempt to by-pass one fundamental or another.

But while there is nothing unorthodox in the method I teach, I do depart from generally accepted principles in the method of teaching it. My system of instruction is, as I see it, the logical one to follow the detailed and thorough analysis which I have made of the golf swing and the action through the hitting area.

My experience is that players have great difficulty in discarding long-standing habits in favor of more constructive actions, and this system of mine, which starts with the finish and works back through the whole action, has proved most effective in personal instruction.

To follow the same sequence in print would have been out of the question. The reader would have been puzzled and beset by doubt from the very outset, and the whole purpose of this book would have been strangled at birth.

When a pupil, not a complete newcomer to the game but one who has handled a club and already endured some of the trials and tribulations, comes to me for the first time I watch him play a few strokes, then check his grip and stance, advising on such improvements as may be necessary.

Having seen him swing I can decide whether that swing needs a major or a comparatively minor repair, or entire dismantling and re-building. If it is a badly shaped swing there is obviously only one form of treatment the second.

I set to work to give him a poised finish first of all. And this is the way I go about it.

I show him the initial movement in the backswing, the take-away, which, as you know, is performed by moving the club head straight back from the ball, with the arms and hands only, for some twelve to eighteen inches.

From that position I make him swing the club head slowly through the hitting area into the follow-through and on to the poised finish held from the waist-line (Fig. 25). This is a simple, smooth operation which you will see many a tournament professional carry out while he is waiting to play.

I then get the pupil to bring the hands down to hip level and check the angle of the club-face (Fig. 26). He will keep working at this until I am satisfied. Then I allow him to increase the backward movement by stages and so the swing develops, shaped from the poised finish back ultimately to the top of the swing.

Reading this you may at once recall what I have said about the apex of the swing. And you will realize that in this very first lesson I have been guiding the pupil's club-line through into a correct apex on the way to the poised finish.

In doing it I have been gradually breaking down a bad habit and helping him to form a new and a good one.

You may still be wondering just why I go to work in this way. Well, the player with the badly shaped swing has invariably developed the habit of throwing the club head outside the line at the top of the swing and rolling the right shoulder as he comes through the ball from outside to in. He can only lurch through into a flat unbalanced finish. You can see this sort of action perpetrated by scores of players on every golf course, every week-end.

My method of teaching directs his club head along the correct line to its correct destination in the finish of the swing while giving him just sufficient movement back from the address position to set the action going along the required line.

With this initial movement back from the ball, and no more, he is not allowed to reach the position from which he makes his cardinal error the throwing of the club head outside the line at the top.

He is being trained thus early to direct his club-line along the correct path and what comes later will be the more easily learned in consequence.

Eventually when I am satisfied with the swing-shape he has developed I help him to put a delivery into that shape.

My approach to the complete beginner, the newcomer to golf, is rather different. He has not yet fallen into any bad habits and I start him off mapping out the swing without a golf club.

I take him through the complete swing with the right hand grasping the wrist of the extended left arm (Figs. 15, 16 and 17). You will remember that I have recommended this exercise to induce the feeling of upper-left-arm-leverage.

There we have two types of student golfer. Each, performing the movements I have shown him, is etching the first faint outlines of that mental picture of the shaped swing which is going to form the background of his golf. If the shape turns out to be a good one and the mental picture clearly etched, then the background is going to be the ideal one for good golf.

I have already made clear my views on patching up. It will not do. It is quite inconclusive and merely adds bad to bad.

When teaching him a delivery I set him to work on the swing-and-stop exercise, at the same time making certain that he first swings into that vital eight o'clock position of the club head at the entry to the hitting area.

The eight o'clock position is the most difficult part of the whole golf swing to teach. The trouble is that the club cannot be PUT there. It must be swung with the hands into every phase of the movement.

I repeat once more, time spent on mastering the eight o'clock position will pay rich and lasting dividends on the course.

From that stage move into the other vital section of the swing, the apex which you must develop and consolidate. The whole art of the delivery lies in these two phases of the action.

I never have to ask a pupil what we did last time he came for his lesson. To do so would be bad teaching psychology. I can always remember the last lesson of any particular pupil and how he has advanced. Never do I give him more than one thing to concentrate on at any one stage in his development.

"One thing at a time" is an inviolable rule in golf instruction.

My pupils vary in age from eleven to seventy-five. At one end of the scale I have a tiny girl of eleven, the daughter of Harry Bentley, former English Amateur Champion and Walker Cup player.

This extremely promising child was playing shots in my practice net when a good amateur golfer dropped into my school. After watching her for less than a minute he remarked that he had never seen a child with such a classical swing at so tender an age.

There have been players aged fifty and more come to me with handicaps around 18. I have succeeded in getting some of them down to £, 4 and even 3.

This rather gives the lie to the old adage that you cannot teach an old dog new tricks. Perhaps not, but I know that an elderly golfer can be given an entirely new and much sounder golf game.

One difficulty invariably crops up where elderly players make marked advance. Old mannerisms and habits which have been dominant for a long time have a tendency to keep creeping back. They refuse to be discarded for good as I am always finding when players come to me from time to time for a checkup. Hence the necessity for re-shaped swings to be checked over at intervals.

One of my present pupils, a young woman, will be less troubled than some by old habits recurring. She had yet to play round a course when she came to me half-way through the winter and had not fallen into dangerous ways.

I set to work giving her a shaped swing and when the spring came and she played her very first rounds of golf she immediately put in three cards and earned an initial handicap not of 36, nor even 30 but 18.

I have found that the positive way to remove a player's bad habits is to guide him into good ones.

Dwell on the right. That makes a positive approach to both teaching and learning. I may tell a pupil his faults to satisfy his own natural curiosity and to prevent his mind from puzzling over what he may be doing wrong when all the time I want him to devote his undivided attention to learning and mastering the correct movements.

Trying to avoid the wrong thing is the incorrect approach. Far better to concentrate on developing a good swing and delivery.

The pupil must put in constructive work on the practice ground and in front of his mirror between one lesson and the next. On his own he must consolidate what he and his instructor together have achieved. And as he advances his game by acquiring a shaped swing which he knows from experience WILL work if only he will let it, he must heed my repeated warning to leave the shape alone and refrain from dabbling with this or that section of the swing.

I thought at one time that Max Faulkner, a player of outstanding gifts, would become one of the greatest players in the history of the game., I feel he has failed to reach the exalted position which should have been his solely because he tinkered about with a good method.

Faulkner placed his feet in the most exaggerated positions from which only a player as gifted as he is could hope to hit the ball even reasonably well. Why on earth did this remarkably talented player make things difficult for himself?

Another top golfer who I feel must have tinkered with an excellent method, to his own detriment, is the American Lloyd Mangrum.

I saw Mangrum when he came to this country in 1949 with Ben Hogan's Ryder Cup team which retained the trophy at Ganton. I could not fail to be impressed. At that time Mangrum played from a slightly closed club-face at the top of the swing with the shaft off-line and a very fine body poise. He struck the ball splendidly.

The next time I saw him was four years later when he led the American team which won the Ryder Cup at Wentworth. What a different player he was. That year he had his wrists more under the shaft at the top of the swing, the club-face was consequently opened up and the shaft pointing slightly across the line of the feet.

He had lost his admirable body poise and was not nearly so impressive.

It was obvious to me that he was uncomfortable with his hands because at impact with the ball his left heel rose off the ground. As a result, that beautiful long-arm drive through the ball, so noticeable on his previous visit, was missing. Excessive cupping at the top of the swing with too much play on the wrists had deprived him of his old forearm drive and entirely spoiled his movement into the ball.

I was not in the least surprised when a mutual friend told me that Mangrum was not at all happy about his game. He had cause for misgiving.

Players less gifted than Faulkner and Mangrum suffer still more through fiddling about with their method. I would urge you once more to acquire a shape and cherish it. If it has served you well, let it continue to do so.

Finally, let me remind you of what you must resort to when you are unhappy about the way you are playing and there is not time to seek sound advice.

The American tournament pros have a saying that if a player hasn't got it when he arrives at the tournament course he won't find it there. By that they mean it is worse than useless to rush out on to the practice-ground and start tinkering with the swing.

The only chance, and a good one it is too, lies in concentrating on the delivery of the club head firmly into the back of the ball and through into the apex.

That was Archie Compston's salvation years ago in America. It could be yours tomorrow.

Youre About To Learn Secrets Most Golfers Will Never Know About Golf... Sign up to my golf tips & tricks newsletter. Just enter your name & email - then click the Free Sign Up! button. (All information kept 100% confidential). Name Email I respect your privacy and will never share your email address with anyone and you can easily unsubscribe at any time.