I do lots of research. More time than my wife can appreciate. I do this research because I don’t like sucking. If someone is going to work all day, and that amount of money is going to go toward a golf lesson, I want them better when they leave. At the very least, I want them to hit one shot better during the lesson and to have an idea and set of drills to do to make that happen more often.

Virtually every lesson has multiple routes for approaching the issue. Part of becoming a great teacher is diagnosing the issue. The other part is prescribing the right ‘medicine’ to cure what ails. After that, you need to have a long term plan for where this golfer should end up if they stay with you for awhile.

For me, the real trick is blending all of these things together in the span of 30 minutes or an hour. The better I feel I become as a teacher, the more time I feel I need to help the player in these three areas.

I was taught that if you can’t fix a person in 10-15 minutes, you didn’t know what you were doing. An hour lesson is way too long because you spend most of the time watching them hit after the lesson. This all made sense so I did mainly 30 minute lessons.

Granted, there is a cost issue as well. The 30 minute lessons are cheaper and more popular yet the hour or longer lessons produce better and longer lasting results. For me, the longer lessons give me more time to see more of what they do.

Is it better to have 2 or 3 hours lessons that cover a wide array of topics or is that just too much? I continue to struggle with this one.

My main goal for writing this blog is to inform my students that I cam constantly trying to improve. Both in the factuality of the information I am giving and in the order of the information given. This second area is where I still see the greatest room for improvement.