No offence bros and sis. Personally I think to play better golf is to understand the fundamentals of golf swing.
If you do thorough research, you may understand the proper golf swing and fundamentals but that may take a lot of time and effort as compared to approaching Teaching/Touring Pros.
Nonetheless, it is very beneficial to understand the proper golf swing. If you have a mistake, you will know what is that and able to rectify on the spot. Thus making less mistakes and become more consistence.
As golf is a precision game, it demands accuracy and precision for every single shot, which is why it is quite impossible to achieve perfection. However if you practice the proper swing more often, you will definitely be a better golfer in no time. I must say that there is no short cut for golf except practice, practice and practice, until your brain and body has incorporate the golf swing as a habit. Just look at how much the Touring Pros practice and you will know the answer.
Below is my understanding of the different Pros.
The Teaching Pros was taught with the fundamentals basically to teach the beginners and intermediate golfers. Which is why the requirement is 12 hcp and below. How good they are depends on how much they know about the golf swing, able to spot your mistakes and rectify them.
The Touring Pros has a bit more experience that the Teaching Pros, hence they will teach you more tips and tricks in the course, besides the fundamentals. They may relate their personal experience with you and what they learn from Professional Pro Trainers.
Professional Pro Trainers are those very experienced ex-tour Pros, they teach mostly only to Touring Pros becoz their charges are very high.
One thing you need to understand is that these Pros are here to make a living, they may not teach you all they know in one lesson or a series of lessons unless you keep paying them to teach you. Ultimately it also depends on yourself to execute the proper golf swing and keep practicing.
Let me share with you my personal quest for improvement in golf.
I started learning golf from a local Pro in 2000, 10 lessons for beginner. I learn the fundamentals of grip, stand, swing, then mainly 7 irons practices. 1 lesson on driver, 1 lesson on short game, 1 lesson on bunker and putting. Then followed by a PC test. All sound too familiar? I guess this is what we all get when we started. The rest is on us to practice and practice.
In the first few years, I think is just practice without understanding. Go to range and whack 100 and 100 of balls. Because of our inconsistency, we ask friends for improvement tips, then some tell you this and some tell you that and in the course of practice, I changed my swing and fundamentals. Strangely it appear to be working fine and I am hitting further and better. However it come to a stage whereby I am stuck at a certain level, 100 +- and couldn't improve.
Then I decided to look for a Touring Pro to rectify my problems and hope to improve. But I only go for an hour type of coaching which the Pro will do a video analyst on my swing then start to correct me. After the lesson, I am back to practice on the new swing again.
Somehow, all these practice and coaching come over and over again. But my standard is still there, 90+ 100+. I really feel I am wasting my money. So I decided to learn on my own.
I started to search on internet for tips and tricks, free lessons, you tube videos, etc. Then I came across a Golf Swing video and bought to see it. It was really good, teaching me some very good ways to have solid consistent swing. Then I want to improve my driver distance, I search and found The Swing man golf from a website posted by Golfman. I subscribed to the program and understand a fair bit on how to increase speed and distance. Well, my driver distance increased from 200m to about 230m.
Then I went to to look for short game and putting. There were so many teachings on pitching and chipping out there, it is really confusing. So I practice a few types and select the best type that suits me. All I can say is you really need to practice to get best out of it.
Now I am pursuing on the best putting methods, yet to find it though.
However throughout these research, I realized that it is back to the basic of fundamentals which the local Pros has taught me. It is just that I now understand better the golf swing and why I need to do it in a certain way.
Whereas back then I was just swinging with what I was told.
And now, if something goes wrong, i know my mistake and can rectify on the spot.
My 2 cents to those who wants to improve is that... to find out the golf swing and understand it fully. Like why you need to have back swing, why you must stand leg bend, where should the weight and transition of your body, what must you do at impact and after, etc, etc. Then get a Pro to teach you the techniques how to hit further and more accurately (to save time).
Alternatively join SSG as members and you will be entitled to what Golfman is doing... FREE Pro coaching. Actually I wanted to join him for the coaching too, but because the timing clashes with my sons' swimming lesson.
In any case, these are just my opinions. Cheers!
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Mon Mar 01, 2010 4:35 pm
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