Some of your golf students I have talked to seem to believe that you have discovered the secret of golf. Have you?
No! (laughing), there is no "secret" to the game, only proven fundamentals and effective strategies. It only seems mysterious and enigmatic when you are looking at the game from a very limited point of view. If you mean have I broken new ground in golf instruction, in both the so-called physical and mental categories, I would say yes, absolutely. A lot of what I teach, both in terms of the physical fundamentals and mental principles, is entirely new information never before seen in golf. I discovered that there really are answers as to why golf appears to be impossible to get really good at, especially in the area of consistency.
A wise philosopher once said, "wisdom is knowing what to do and when to do it." That kind of wisdom is sorely lacking in golf. It really is the starting point for any serious golfer's journey to lasting game improvement. There are rules, if you will, that govern human peak performance in any field. I've discovered how to apply those rules to the game of golf. When you follow the rules, positive results happen automatically. When you break the rules, your game goes south. This is an exciting new paradigm that delivers what every golfer says they want from their game: continual score improvement, consistent shotmaking and more enjoyment.
That sounds a lot like sport psychology. Most of us are used to thinking of a golf instructor as someone who talks exclusively about the mechanical side of the game.
No, it's really not sport psychology per se which I have found to be a somewhat academic, ivory tower, overly clinical approach to golf improvement. With the exception of Bob Rotella, who is really excellent, and a few others, I haven't seen many sport psychologists who impress me with a practical knowledge of the game of golf. And yes, we've all been brainwashed by the dominant mechanistic model to believe that a. the full swing is golf and b. that a simplistic mechanical swing key is the secret to game improvement.
Not to denigrate the importance of the long game, it's clearly of supreme importance, and I do in fact spend more of my time teaching golf swing mechanics than any other part of the the game but it's still only a part of golf, not the whole, and if you can break 100 consistently, it's certainly not the fastest or easiest way to lower your score. The fact is that how you are prepared to learn, practice and play, your overall mindset about how to engage in the improvement process, has far more influence over the outcome than any actual mechanical content. I call this first of golf's fundamentals Preparation. A majority of golfers are not prepared at all and are in fact totally confused, perplexed even, by the game. Intelligent preparation strategies are a simple fact that have been almost completely ignored by the instruction Establishment and golf media. Ben Hogan himself said many times that the one of the secrets to his success, especially in winning majors, was simply that he was the best prepared golfer in the field. Knowing that you are the best prepared gives one tremendous confidence.
