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Skills Needed for Effective Golf Coaching?

October 15th, 2011 by John Graham 10 comments »

SkillsWhat skills are needed for effective golf coaching? I think this is an excellent question. I also think that the answers will vary widely across the industry. Maybe not in terms of what those skills should/could be but in what proportion they should be in.  This post will not pretend to serve as an answer to this question but hopefully will continue the discussion that is constantly ongoing within our field.

So, let’s start with a list, in no particular order. I’m going to leave out all the buzzwords like creativity, passion and all that stuff related to sounding appropriate. Just the hard skills for now. Not saying those other things aren’t needed but not really sure I would classify them as skills.

1) Knowledge and understanding of golf swing theory, including short game, putting and everything that includes

2) Communication

3) How to play the game/The ability to compete and demonstrate

4) Mental strength/Process

Ok, so this list doesn’t seem so big yet these categories are huge and can encompass many subcategories. Based on my experience, the only skill that creates debate on whether or not it is a necessary skill is number 3. How important is skill #3 in being an effective golf coach? Remember when thinking of your answer that the question relates directly to golf coaching. I hear all the time how in other sports the coach wasn’t a player so it shouldn’t be necessary in golf.

I struggle with this question. As a coach that didn’t compete at a very high level (just PGA section events), I feel as if I am missing something when it comes to providing help for dealing with on course situations that the high level player encounters. I’m not sure if this feeling is accurate or not but it’s just how I feel. I was asking on twitter this week how people felt about a coaches playing ability and how important it is. As is typical, I heard a good mix of responses.

Here’s my take on it. Because golf is a recreational sport that doesn’t really require all that much athleticism to play, many players can get very good. Not as good as Tour level but very good just the same. Before you get all ramped up, when I say athleticism, I’m talking about the genetics that allows one to compete in speed and size based activities.  Golf doesn’t really have either of those requirements to play it well. That’s not to say that those genetic traits wouldn’t be helpful because they would.

Back to my point. Because it doesn’t require certain things, the expectations of the golf coach are higher in terms of performance. I think most students expect the golf coach to be able to perform at a certain level. To be significantly better than they are, at least at the club level. How many times have you heard the recreational golfer say, “Heck, I can hit shots like that.” when they see a bad shot on TV. It’s for this reason, that I think the golf coach should be able to perform to some level. I’m not really sure what that level is though. I think it may vary depending on the level of student they teach. I’m just not sure but I want my pro to be able to do at least a certain amount of things.

Certainly, the ability of the coach will shift over time and I am quite comfortable doing this on a sliding scale. Not in terms of age, per se, but maybe in terms of life situation or something like that. For example, is it appropriate to expect a coach that is required to fold shirts and answer the phone all day to maintain his skills as well as a coach that is on the lesson tee all day, or the coach that is expected to play with their students all the time? I don’t think so but that’s just me. Even though, I think the coach should still have the ability to hit good shots. It’s the level of his/her good shots that tells me what I need to know.

As golf coaches, I also think that skill #3 is the one we, as a group, tend to put the least importance on.

So, my question to you is, how important is your golf coaches ability to play the game to you?

If you’re a coach reading this, how important do you place skill #3 in your priorities as a golf coach?

Please leave your comments and pass this on if you found some value in it.

10 comments »

Posted in Teaching Techniques

Golf Business Network – Teaching Summit – Review

October 14th, 2011 by John Graham 2 comments »

Golf Business Network LogoGolf Business Network, formerly know as AMF, has their annual teaching summit this week and I thought I would share with you my experience. I’ve been a member of GBN since just before their first instructor summit 4 years ago. It is a group of teaching professionals that get together with some of the greatest minds in the industry to learn and share information. I’ve been quite pleased with the summits and the networking created due to their existence.

This year’s summit was in Orlando at the Grand Cypress Resort. I thought the facility was excellent both inside and out on the range. It was very nice this year to have a bunch of seminars outside instead of always being indoors. I had arrived early this year to spend some time with Mark Sweeney researching some things on green reading. Admittedly, most of my time and attention was spent in that mindset.

The first day had three talks. The first was on club fitting through instruction (by Darren May), the second was a short game seminar (by Fred Griffin) and the last was a talk from David Leadbetter. The first talk from Darren was quite interesting. I’ve never been that up to speed with club fitting and I thought he did an excellent job explaining how he uses it to best meet the needs of his customers.

The short game seminar from Fred Griffin was great information but I felt it lacked the depth needed for the class that was attending. Excellent information but maybe a little below the audience. I wish it had been more in depth. Just my preference.

David Leadbetter did a talk on what all great teachers need. Very little theory in this talk but I thought it was quite funny. He told a bunch of good jokes and stories and it certainly kept my attention. I tweeted a whole bunch of his jokes while I was there. You can go to my twitter feed if you missed them. (John Graham Twitter Feed)

After that was an outdoor demo day type thing. Nothing here interested me much so I spent the time working with some AimPoint instructors on the putting green. That’s always fun. I did take a second to go see the Swinkey folk and place an order for more AimPoint Swinkeys but aside from that, most of my time was spent networking and meeting people in person from twitterland and the like. I must have met 15 or more new tweeps this year over the 3 days. A great time was had by all.

I decided to skip the morning sessions on the last day, choosing to spend time shooting some video for some AimPoint educational products. I arrived at the GBN talks just after lunch and in time to hear Dr Tim Lee and Martin Hall. Dr Lee had a great talk on learning motor skills and wish he had more time to keep going. It gave me a better understanding of how block and random practice related to each other in many areas and how the brain learns and retains a new motor pattern. Very well received and I’d encourage all to investigate his books further. The last part was a talk by Martin Hall on creativity. Martin used a bunch of the same quotes he used at his PGA Coaching and Teaching summit a few years ago. Not too much there new for me. He showed a couple products he had made but everything related to full swing instruction.

On the whole, the GBN Summit was a great event for me. Less so this year from an information point of view but more so from a networking point of view. I can certainly see the seeds of my social media time paying dividends and the friends and contacts it has helped me to create. One person mentioned that as a teaching force, I was virtually unknown and not a big player at the high levels of the instruction industry but because of my social media and blogging I have become an information broker. He said this in a way not to be mean or to minimalize me but rather to indicate how much those writings have created acknowledgement in the industry as someone that may have a fair and honest answer. To me, that was a huge compliment and right in line with what I was hoping to convey.

I look forward to next year.

2 comments »

Posted in Product Reviews

John Graham – AimPoint Radio Interview

October 13th, 2011 by John Graham No comments »

Here’s a radio interview I did on AimPoint with Host Jason Helman (2010 National Canadian Teacher of the Year) a few weeks ago. I thought I would post it here in case you missed it. Also on this premier episode is Jason Sutton (Director of Instruction at Carmel CC).
Hope you enjoy it. Please feel to share using the buttons if you think someone you know might like to hear it as well.

John Graham – AimPoint Radio Interview

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Posted in AimPoint

The Best Golfing App- No Download Required

October 10th, 2011 by amgolfmindcoach No comments »

Steve Jobs sadly passed recently and for many, a modern day genius had been lost. In a world where ‘success’ often parades under it’s real name of mediocrity, Steve Jobs served as a reminder that ‘personal best’ isn’t confined to the chosen few but is in fact available to all of us, all of the time. Steve wanted to be ‘his best’….you’d be hard pushed  to choose anything more worthy

One of Steve’s speeches has been sitting in my list of favourites from the time it was recorded (2005 –Stanford address) such was the effect it had on me. If you’ve not spent 15 minutes in the company of Steve Jobs, I’d strongly encourage you to seek it out. If you want to go find it now no worries…I’ll wait for you.    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UF8uR6Z6KLc

So why did Steve’s message, his personal story which I was never part of, connect with me?

Well, a confession is in order. At first it didn’t!….It was a ‘nice’ speech but then Youtube is full of those; Like I said, mediocrity masquerading as success makes up a big percentage of Youtube’s daily content.

It was many years before I actually ‘got it’….

When was that? When it finally fitted into my own internal app…that’s when! Possibly the only app I use that Steve Jobs didn’t create for me.

It’s an app we all have…..an app we often lose sight off , distratced by all the external tools at our disposal  but one which can skyrocket your golf game and leave you in a space which will have the same effect on you as the Steve Jobs address speech had on me

It’s 100% portable….natural…..sustainable….free….comes with its own in- built source of motivation…requires no anti-virus software….is authentic and totally bespoke to you.

The only golfing app you actually need to build your game on, from the INSIDE-OUT…is WISDOM

Consider your best games…those performances where it ‘just happened’…. what ap was behind that?

WISDOM

Or the times you made a decision and everything turned out well, despite the apparent lack of intellectual evidence?

WISDOM

Maybe even the phone call you made, the person you met , the choices you followed which , on looking back….where pivotal in shaping your game. Choosing the club membership package, the equipment you chose, the coach you hired, the people you surrounded yourself with…..?

WISDOM

Steve Jobs states in his speech ‘You can’t join the dots going forward, you can only join them when you look back’.

Have you found yourself creating success in your own golf game and not knowing why it’s happened? Maybe this sounds like you

‘I played really well, I knew I was going to play well even before I hit the shots I did, it was my day but I can’t quite put my finger on how or why that happened’….have you had experiences just like that?

If you can’t quite put your finger on it, maybe that’s because there’s something else at play….creating success and guiding you outside the frame we call ‘intellect’.

What if, just like Steve Jobs and the choices he made…..the internal guidance system already knows what you want and all you actually need to do is get out of your own way….turn down the ‘noise’ created by all those external apps (Stats, Goal Setting. Reflection Notes, Positive Affirmations etc) and tune into the internal app that someone like Steve Jobs would have surely invented if it weren’t for the fact it was already on the market…..and pretty damn perfect too!

The challenge for players is that the ‘conditions’ necessary for producing their personal best is counter-intuitive and presents a strange irony.

The performances which where EFFORTLESS….SIMPLE…..PRECISE…..INTUITIVE…..AUTHENTIC ,are for me, when a player is being guided by the internal app of wisdom. The player literally has turned down….(and sometimes off altogether) the external apps that they’ve been led to believe make the difference.

And what do most players do immediately AFTER a wonderful performance?

They go into analysis mode, get encouraged to write down reams of ‘reflection notes’, get back in touch with their ‘smart goals’, in the intellectual quest to reproduce it over and over again.

And that for me is the counter-intuitive nature of performance

As soon as you attempt to control what is in effect something which takes place OUTSIDE the intellectual reasoning….it becomes just as elusive as before.

Again, I know there is a huge body of evidence, opinion, science, data,….whatever label you wish to give it, that will point to the facts that excellence in any pursuit is more likely it you follow the steps which have been laid by others who’ve ‘gained success’ before

I don’t get that! If I followed the EXACT steps that Steve Jobs followed would  I get his results….?

No! Because I’m not Steve Jobs. I’m me.. and every bit entitled to pursue my personal best as he was.

I’m also pretty sure, listening to his speech that whilst he may have used an array of external apps to help him with the content of his vision…..the real driver was the internal app of wisdom…..the one app that Steve Jobs didn’t ever need to invent.

I’d encourage you to listen to his speech….not as an exercise to take notes…..not as an exercise to be a clone of one of the giants of our generation….but to listen with nothing on your mind……to allow the words he speaks to wash over you…. the source of inspiration you feel is NOT coming from Steve Jobs….his wisdom is meeting you on your terms….INSIDE you.

If you sense the feelings you get are somewhat familiar….you’re spot on. They are the same feelings you experience when your personal best is close by.

By all means collect the array of external apps that are out there….they are a brilliant legacy left behind by Steve Jobs and his merry band of innovators and for that we are forever grateful for Steve’s vision.

Your legacy is still being written…you want to be your personal best…..dial into the best app on the market.

In changing times….it’s something that never goes out of date, requires no warranty and I’ve yet see anyone take it back and ask for a refund.

Enjoy the unique nature of being YOU… INNER WISDOM….An app Steve Jobs would have been thrilled to market.

Thank you Steve Jobs….a timely reminder that all we really need is closer than we first realised.

Stay Hungry…Stay Foolish.

Your best is yet to come.

Andy    info@progolfmindcoach.co.uk Share your stories of inner guidance.

No comments »

Posted in Uncategorized

Golf Facts

October 8th, 2011 by John Graham 13 comments »

Golf FactsGolf Facts. What are they? How many are there? These are questions I am constantly searching for. Golf Facts are the only things that teachers should be able to agree on. I certainly don’t claim to know what they are, how many there are but I think it will make for an interesting discussion.

Like any topic, there should be some things that are agreed upon by virtually everyone. Then there will be things that I’ve heard called as preferences. It’s usually these preferences that most teachers argue over.

This post will not be about the preferences. This will be about the facts. My goal is to list a few things that I consider as facts. Please feel free to add any or dispute my findings. Also accept the idea that if you (the reader) add a fact that it may get disputed by myself or someone else.

I don’t think the golf facts list is very long. At least the list that teachers can be using on a daily basis to help all golfers. So here goes.

Ball Flight - This is slowly starting to be accepted as a fact that the ball starts closer to the face than it does the path. For the most part, I just say it starts very near the face and curves if the face and path are different. Inside this is how draws and fades are created by the face and path relationship. Certainly, this all assumes centered contact. Which brings me to my next fact.

Gear Effect – The change in spin axis created when the ball is hit off the center of gravity of the club head. A fact that everyone should know and understand as it has a large influence on fact #1. Basically, a ball hit on the toe will shift the spin axis of the ball toward a draw and a ball struck on the heel toward a fade. That doesn’t mean all toe shots draw and all heel shots fade. It simply effects whatever spin axis was created by the face and path relationship and alters it in some amount in the respective direction.

Putts Break Downhill – The fact I have to actually write this down on “paper” is a little scary but here it is. Putts do not break toward mystical places or bodies of water. If they curve at all it is because they are rolling across a slope at a different angle than the slope is and the curve is always toward the downhill direction.

Honestly, this is pretty much what I have. As teachers and players, we all should be able to agree on these things. That they exist and we need to know and understand them.

Please add to this list. Remember. Just the Facts.

JG

Here are some updates. One tweep felt that less than 70% shouldn’t be called close when it comes to initial starting direction. Fair enough. He also mentioned that gear effect is 3d which is also correct. Relative to the CoG hits lower than that will increase spin rates and above the CoG will decrease spin rates.

13 comments »

Posted in Golf Lesson