Private Golf Lesson
It's up in lights!
Leela was hitting a
nine-iron
that day during a private golf lesson with me and I was a little surprised at how short it was. She seemed to be swinging with her usual enthusiasm but the ball was flying a lot shorter than usual. I have a wonderful gift when I see a swing fault, a blackboard appears above my student’s head and a word or two pops up on it for me. Words like ‘bad posture’, ‘week grip’ or ‘stiff legs’ etc. That particular day it appeared on one of those florescent glass signs with the simple words, "Does it feel smooth or jerky?”
It was a bit like that moment from Kevin Costner’s ‘Field of Dreams’ when he hears the whisper, "Build it and he will come." This was followed by the question, "Who will come?" And my florescent message was followed by, "What feels smooth or jerky?" For me the answer to this question evolved into what the Samurai Warrior would refer to as a moment of clarity.
Read here how I completely changed my approach to swing improvement.
I needed no further encouragement, I immediately asked Leela,p> "Would you say your swing feels smooth or jerky today?" Without hesitation, she replied, “Quite jerky.” The next question just flowed out and has been the foundation of enticing non-verbal access to those gross motor skills that don’t improve with verbal instruction anyway. I then asked, “What feels jerky?”
I know it’s hardly genius but this was the way of getting her to reach back to the way she had improved her gross motor skills as a baby. "Leela, what feels jerky?" She took a couple of swings and said, “My legs.” I continued, "Take a few swings until your legs feel smoother and then try the same with the ball."
Without noticing that she was now hitting the ball really well, she reported that she felt that her legs were now moving much smoother. Eureka! I had to try this private golf lesson with an adult. My next lesson just happened to be with our club champion, Nico, a young businessman in his mid-thirties. He hit a few shots, which were fairly good, so right on queue, after a couple of miss hits, I asked him, "Did the last couple of swings feel smooth or jerky?"
He replied that his wrists were feeling quite out of sorts and I pounced with a question that could only alert his sense of feel."Take a few practice swings and tell me when your wrists feel a little smoother?" What followed next still makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. The simplicity of the question took him to a place that he had not visited since childhood and he very quickly managed to change jerky into smooth. I then asked him to use the same feeling of smoothness with the ball and he punched the air with delight after we both heard a special sort of crack at impact that belonged to another world.
To this day I honestly couldn’t say how the ball flew but that sound will stay with Nicholas and me forever. Bobby Jones was once accused of possessing some kind of witchcraft because he seemed to have such smoothness in his swing that his ball flight defied the very laws of credibility. When asked about his secret he simply replied, "I extend the speed of centrifugal force to its absolute limit by interfering by the utmost minimum with the golf club’s dynamics." With that statement Jones gives the main clues to the secret of a great private golf lesson.
Learn even more about how this private golf lesson gets even better.
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