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Clinic - Problems with Golf Instruction
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The problems with modern golf instruction are covered in this clinic presentation by RST Founder Chuck Quinton.
So, what has your experience been with golf lessons?
You said it earlier, You You get better for a short time, and then you just revert back to what was.
Anybody else experience that?
Static positions.
Static positions?
If you make it look like Trevor Emmerlin at this position, that's where you're supposed to be.
That was one I got, but things like that.
Yeah, really common.
What happens typically after your golf lesson?
You revert back.
Revert back.
It's pretty common.
That's pretty much been most everybody's experience.
They take a golf lesson and you're going to learn exactly why.
It may help for a second because they see a fault.
They look at a symptom.
A ball flight is typically the judgment scale, right?
You're slicing it.
Well, let's strengthen your grip insanely strong.
It's going to be really hard to slice it.
And now you develop a massive hook or you can't release the club, you lose power, so on and so forth.
And so, it's like treating cancer with putting a band-aid over it.
And your golf swing has a lot of cancer in it.
That's the problem with it.
Instead of cutting out the cancer and just taking your medicine and learning how to swing correctly, everybody just wants to slap band-aids on it.
And the problem is golfers suck for a reason.
Golf, if you think about it, people spend an insane amount of money and time and energy into learning how to play golf.
And yet the handicaps have stayed virtually exactly the same for the last, what, 60 years?
Something insane like that.
Look at the improvements in equipment.
The golf balls that I started out playing, I learned how to play with tour balladas with a wooden set of clubs.
And my irons were literally Lee Trevino butter knife blades from the 70s.
That's what I learned how to play on.
Now, these giant bobble heads, the balls that don't spin that much.
And yet the golf swing, the golf scores are the same.
The golf courses, dude, the golf course I learned how to play on didn't even have grass on half of it.
Yet the scores are the same.
Look at how much better the conditions are, how much purer the greens are.
Everybody still stinks.
So the problem is not getting better equipment and getting a bigger head on the club and so on.
It doesn't help anything.
If the club face is open at impact, the club face is open at impact.
It does not care that it's a $400 driver.
It's very simple, basic physics.
So a big problem with it is that golf instruction typically looks at a very symptomatic approach.
And they teach you exactly what he learned to follow.
Whoever that instructor happens to think has a great golf swing.
And this has not happened for just a short period of time.
It's always been like this.
When you look at this collage of pictures, what's the first thing that comes to your mind?
We know who we got up there?
Everybody, we got Jones on the top left.
Who do we got here?
Hogan.
Hogan, of course, right?
Famous Marion, one iron.
Nicholas.
Norman.
And Tiger, right?
What's the first thing that comes to your mind when you see all of those guys group together?
These guys were all the best of their era, hands down.
Nobody could hold a candle to them.
They dominated, right?
These guys absolutely were the best of the best of the best.
What's more interesting to me is that every single one of these guys completely changed the face of golf instruction.
You may not realize that.
This was the original Michael Breed of his day.
Bobby Jones was the first guy on television schlepping golf tips.
And everybody tried to swing like Bobby Jones, right?
Because he was the best.
How many people swing like Bobby Jones today?
Absolutely zero.
Not a single person at any elite level swings anything remotely like Bobby.
You couldn't even come even remotely close.
It's like he's a dinosaur compared to everybody else.
How about Hogan?
We got Jonathan Byrd's kind of close, right?
It was Hogan had a huge impact, relatively later in life, later era of golfer.
How about Nicholas?
How many guys swing like Nicholas?
How many guys swung like Nicholas in the 70s and 60s on the PGA Tour?
Pretty much all of them.
Everybody had this classic reverse C, with the funky looking knickers on with the plaid pants and the horrible attire that these are.
Weisskopf, Watson, Nicholas.
All these guys had this massive reverse C.
Johnny Miller.
That was the thing in the 70s was to have this massive reverse C.
So many golfers did what I did and followed the greatest guy who's dominating everybody.
Well, this must be how it's done.
Let's swing like him.
Nobody has this big reverse C anymore hardly.
If they do, they have hip problems, right?
They're maybe on the seniors tour and they were on their fourth or fifth hip replacement.
The shark comes out.
He's kind of a hybrid of Hogan, a little bit flatter, but a little bit more body oriented.
He's on the top of the number one golf rankings for what, 330 weeks or something insane like that.
Everybody starts trying to follow Norma a little bit.
And then, of course, the big game changer when Tiger comes on board.
How many of you have ever had your swing up next to Tiger's in a lesson on a video, right?
Tiger's the be all end all, right?
If you swing like Tiger, then he's the greatest and that's what you should do.
Every single guy has completely changed the way that you've been taught.
And it's been maybe at a subconscious level, but this is the problem with golf instruction is that it's a lost puppy dog.
It doesn't have a set of fundamentals.
It's based on science and fact.
It's based on whoever happens to swing really well at that time.
Now, look at Tiger.
What did Tiger shoot yesterday?
A couple 76ers back to back, missed the cut, right?
At Torrey Pines, a place that he's absolutely dominated.
Maybe he won there seven times or something insane, like eight times at Torrey Pines.
The guy can't even make a cut now.
Are you kidding me?
So how many people are going to teach you to swing like Tiger now?
Not a very good sales tactic.
Oh, come in.
I'll teach you how to swing like Tiger.
Who's going to be the next one?
There'll be another guy on this slide before long.
Don't know who it's going to be yet, but there will be another one.
That is the problem with golf instruction.
The bigger problem is that, and the reason this is this way, is that there's very little to no understanding of anatomy and kinesiology.
That's not something you typically hear at a golf lesson, right?
But the reality is that golf is anatomy and kinesiology.
The most important thing is understanding how your body moves and why it's supposed to move that way.
The golf club by itself is not a fundamental of the golf swing.
That's something that's going to upset some people.
If any of the golfing machine guys in here, anybody read that book, Homer Kelly's book?
Nobody?
Wow.
You guys aren't real serious, diehard golf nuts.
That's good.
The golfing machine guys only care about what this golf club does for the most part.
Whatever this golf club does is going to dictate what that ball does.
I completely agree with that.
Nothing else impacts what the ball is going to do other than the club.
But this club by itself is useless.
Swing yourself.
Go hit the ball.
Come on.
No matter how much I sit here and yell at it, it's not going to do anything.
What's going to move that golf club?
You are, right?
Your body.
What's going to tell your body what to do?
Your brain.
If your brain doesn't give your body the right information, that golf club can't do the right thing.
How could it?
Is it just going to magically figure it out?
The golf club is stupid.
There's nothing that golf club can do on its own.
It's not a fundamental of the golf swing, believe it or not.
So what you've got to do is understand how the body works, because the body is the only thing that's going to move the club.
And to get the body to do what you want it to do, you have to understand how the brain actually learns a new movement pattern.
Because that's exactly what you're here to do, whether you realize it or not, is to tell your brain how to do what you're asking it to do.
Because right now, it doesn't know.
Most people, the reason that all of us have gone through the same experiences with golf lessons, is that you've taken a lesson, your instructor hasn't made you follow along with the laws of how your brain actually learns, you practice for a little bit, you kind of get into a little rhythm and groove, and then the next day you wake up and it's gone.
You might go out and shoot the best round of your life, and the next day shoot 20 shots worse, because you're not communicating with your brain the right way.
It only learns one way.
And that's what we're going to spend this entire morning focusing on, a big part of this morning, is helping you understand this.
Because the anatomy and kinesiology, and the physics of the club, and the movement of all that stuff, is not that complex.
Honestly, none of it's that complex.
But understanding how your brain learns is going to be the biggest game changer.
Because everything that you've been trying to do to practice the way that you've been practicing, is the reason you're at another golf clinic.
Or maybe this is your first golf clinic, and hopefully your last.
Because once you understand this, it's going to be very, very simple to teach yourself how to swing a golf club.
Out of all of this is what rotary swing is really all about.
How your body moves is black and white.
You and I all have the same muscles.
They all attach in the same place.
And they all move the bones the same way, at the same joints.
Now everybody seems to think that we should all swing different.
And that everybody has their own golf swing DNA, and that's just how you swing, and it just is what it is.
And that's not true.
We all should swing the same way.
Unless your body has different muscles that attach to different places that move different joints.
Does anybody have different muscles and different attachment points in this room?
None of us, right?
We're all built the same way.
Some of us may have a little bit different flexibility, or different strength, or whatever that stuff is.
None of that matters.
The stuff I'm going to show you to do, and I'm going to prove it to all of you today, that all of you have enough flexibility and strength to swing like Tiger Woods.
To get into the same positions, to accomplish the same look that he's doing.
Now you may not be able to do it very fast yet, but you will be able to achieve those positions.
Because the flexibility and the amount of mobility that's required to swing the golf club biomechanically properly is not very much.
It's very normal, average mechanics.
Tom
Craig (Certified RST Instructor)