My Best LessonI had a wonderful enlightening experience when a professional baseball player gave me the best lesson of my life. It was a complete life changer, a moment of clarity, one of those ah-ha moments and basically a genious lesson. This happened while I was actually giving a golf lesson to him. During that lesson, he simply said to me, "Did you know that a professional batter in baseball decides before swinging on which level he is going to swing the bat? He looks at the pitcher and stands in readiness, waiting on the coming throw and has already decided where to swing." "You see Sandy, professional pitchers are so talented, we have no time to react to his throw so we have to do a bit of guess work."
I could understand what he meant and said,
"Just like goalkeepers facing a penalty in many sports, they try to guess which side the shooter will take and throw themselves in that direction." I followed this up by asking him, "So the powerful swing you make in baseball is the same whether you make contact with the ball or not, isn't it?" "You've got it Sandy, and these swings more often than not don't make contact with the ball." This conversation inspired me to ask him to demonstrate swinging his golf club on a plane lower than the ideal baseball height and higher than the grass. He waggled his clubhead smoothly through a plane about 8" above the ground and then made a lovely swing and the clubhead swooshed through that plane. For a split second I could see the smooth arc that had been painted by his clubhead. I asked him if he had also seen this arc and he confirmed that he always seen this when he swung his baseball bat and had also just seen it with the golfclub. I knew this was going to be the best lesson ever and that it was going somewhere very special, so I continued... Can you now swing your club through a plane that whips through the grass but does not grab too much earth and tell me if you can see the trail again. He took his usual waggle moving the club sole gently over the grass and then executed a perfect swing swooshing a long arc through the grass. I seen the arc, he seen it and I could see that he was entering his home territory. Without me saying anything else, he knew what was coming next and said, "Very clever Sandy, now you want me to swoosh the club through the ball the same way and report whether I saw the arc or not." And this evolved into the best lesson I ever got and apparently ever gave.
You can delve further into this best lesson on this link .
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