How to Learn Golf: The First Complete Guide to Golf Instruction Based on Exclusive Sessions With the Game's Top Teaching Pros - Couverture rigide

Hurt III, Harry

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 0743417267 ISBN 13 : 9780743417266

Editeur : Simon & Schuster, 2002

A propos du livre

Extrait

Chapter 1: Know Yourself: Making a Plan to Improve Your Game

All golfers are divided into two types -- hookers and slicers.

Sure, just about everyone has hit a golf ball straight at some point. But it doesn't happen very often. Not even if you're among the top tour professionals in the world. And especially not if you're an amateur. Each of us has a tendency to hit the ball in one of two directions, either left or right. That tendency forms the essence of our individual golfing personalities, and it has profound implications for how we should go about improving our golf games.

It's easy enough to determine whether you're a hooker or a slicer. All you have to do is watch the prevailing direction in which most of your shots curve. If, as sometimes happens, you tend to hit your iron shots in one direction and your drives in the opposite direction, the curvature of your drives, particularly your bad drives, is definitive. Drivers offer the purest test of prevailing direction because they have less loft than irons, and as a result, impart less of the backspin that helps make balls fly straight.

The odds are almost overwhelming that the prevailing direction of your shots is to the right, which means you're a slicer. Although there has been no formal statistical survey, veteran golf instructors report that well over 85 percent of their students are chronic banana ballers. True hookers, as opposed to those of us who occasionally pull shots to the left, are a rare breed. But hookers often are or have the potential to be better players than their counterparts because they have demonstrated the ability to release the clubface through impact. As Harvey Penick observed in his Little Red Book, a slicer must learn to hook the ball before he can learn to hit the ball straight. (Note: If you are a left-hander, simply reverse these directional dictums -- your hooks curve to the right; your slices curve to the left.)

Hookers and slicers are usually best advised to take opposite tacks in almost everything, including their choice of swing methods, as we'll see in the chapters ahead. But regardless of whether you hit your shots to the left or to the right, your starting point on the road to playing better golf is the same: if you want to make lasting improvements in your game, you have to begin by mapping out an effective learning program. And the key to that is to know yourself.

Both hookers and slicers have two main instructional approaches from which to choose. One is error correction. As the term implies, error correction focuses on a specific swing flaw or problem that needs fixing right away. The second approach is swing development. Here the focus is on building or overhauling your golf swing from top to bottom. Each approach has its pros and cons. Error correction can often produce immediate, visible improvements in your ball flight, but it is by definition short-term in nature, more of a Band-Aid than a lasting cure. Swing development aims to make lasting improvements, but it can be complex, frustrating, and require considerable time and money.

Which instructional approach -- error correction or swing development -- is right for you? The answer depends entirely on who you are.

In fields such as science and medicine, the best researchers typically start by asking a series of probing questions about the subject they are researching. That's a good approach in golf, as well. Unfortunately, it is seldom practiced by the average golfer or the average golf instructor. But several top-ranked teaching pros, among them Mike Adams, Hank Haney, Butch Harmon, David Leadbetter, Jim McLean, Rick Smith, and Mitchell Spearman, endeavor to gather relevant background information on their students, either through formal written questionnaires, informal conversation, and/or on-site observation and exercises.

Here is a composite list of eighteen questions first-rate teaching pros might ask before giving you a lesson. They are also the kind of questions you should ask yourself before taking a lesson.

Eighteen Questions to Ask Yourself Before Taking a Golf Lesson

1 How long have you been playing golf?

2 What is your present handicap?

3 What is the lowest your handicap has been?

4 What is your occupation?

5 How often do you practice and play golf?

6 How much money are you willing to spend on improving your game?

7 How much more time are you willing to spend on improving than you do now?

8 Are you looking to overhaul your golf game or simply to fix a specific fault?

9 What instructors and/or golf schools have you taken lessons from?

10 What are the strengths and weaknesses of your golf game?

11 What is your age?

12 Do you have any physical handicaps or injuries?

13 What is the state of your overall body flexibility and range of motion?

14 Do you have long, short, or average-length arms relative to your torso?

15 Do you tend to hit most shots to the left or to the right?

16 Do you stroke putts straight back and straight through or on an arc?

17 Do you consider yourself a "technical" player or a "feel" player?

18 What long-term and short-term goals have you set for your golf game?

As you can see, these eighteen questions cover more than half a dozen general topic areas pertaining to your golf game and lifestyle. Among them are your frequency of play, playing ability, formal training, learning style, economic status, age and physical condition, and personal aspirations. All of these considerations are interrelated, and each can have a significant influence on the type of instructors and the type of swing methods best suited to you. But when it comes to choosing between the two main instructional approaches -- error correction and swing development -- your frequency of play, your playing ability, and your personal aspirations rank highest on the scale of influence. After examining their influence in more detail, I'll show you how to cross tabulate these factors to identify your personal golf instruction profile.

Frequency of Play

Let's start with your frequency of play, arguably the most important variable in the equation of your golf improvement formula. It is also a variable over which you can exercise a fair amount of personal control. Granted, there may be all manner of extenuating circumstances in your life that limit the number of rounds you can play in any given year. Unless you're a professional golfer, you probably have a nongolf day job. You may have family responsibilities and time constraints. You may live in a cold-climate area where golf courses are closed for several months of the year. Your access to nearby courses may be limited by membership restrictions, financial constraints, even overcrowding.

But at least in theory, your frequency of play is something you can increase if you are determined to do so. Ditto your frequency of practice. You can move from a cold-climate area to a warm-climate area where golf is played year-round, or migrate south in the winter. You can seek out publicly accessible golf courses that have modest green fees and fight the attendant overcrowding, or you can invest your life savings in a membership at a private club where there is relatively little daily play. At the end of the day, it becomes a matter of individual choice, albeit a potentially costly and disruptive one, inextricably related to your personal aspirations and your desire to improve.

In reality, the vast majority of golfers in America are recreational golfers, not aspiring tournament champions or dedicated professionals. According to a recent participation study by the National Golf Foundation in Jupiter, Florida, 26.4 million people played 564 million rounds of golf in the United States in calendar year 1999. That is an average of 21.3 rounds per person, or slightly less than 2 rounds per person per month. Confirming conventional wisdom, the NGF reports that more than 80 percent of all golfers are male, with an average age of thirty-nine and an average income of $68,000 a year. The average male golfer played about 5 more rounds annually than the average female golfer.

Relatively few golfers, however, play as often as once a week. In fact, the NGF reports that the greatest number of golfers -- some 10.6 million, or almost 40 percent of the total golfing population -- are "occasional" golfers who play an average of only 3.4 rounds over the span of the entire year. Those people whom the NGF categorizes as "moderate" golfers numbered 7.6 million strong, and played an average of 14.2 rounds, or just a little over once a month. Only 6 million people, roughly 22 percent of the total golfing population, were categorized as "avid" golfers, and they played an average of just 36.6 rounds, roughly 3 rounds per month.

Beginners and golfers at opposite ends of the age spectrum stood out from the rest of their fellow hookers and slicers. There were 3.2 million first-time golfers in 1999, more than twice as many as in 1994. The novices played an average of 10.6 rounds, or three times as often as so-called occasional golfers. The nation's 6.6 million senior golfers, defined as people age fifty and above, played more often than any other demographic group, averaging almost 40 rounds per person annually, but even that was still short of once a week.

Surprisingly enough, the NGF statistics suggest that Tiger Woods's much-heralded role in inspiring young people to take up golf may be overblown or at least rather short-lived. The total number of junior golfers, defined as youth between the ages of twelve and seventeen, actually declined to 2 million in 1999 after rising to a new peak of 2.3 million in 1997, the year Woods won his first Masters. Those junior golfers who stuck with the game played only slightly more often than so-called moderate golfers, averaging just 16.4 round...

Présentation de l'éditeur

Talk to any and all golfers, be they Tour professionals or once-a-month country clubbers, and you'll hear that they want to improve their game in some way. But up until now, most expert books on golf instruction have focused only on the approach advocated by a particular teaching pro or famous player; the authors usually talk about "the golf swing" or "the putting stroke" as if there is only one way to do it -- their way. With How to Learn Golf, the first comprehensive guide to contemporary golf instruction, Harry Hurt III will help you become a better golfer by identifying what type of player you really are, and which of the several leading methods are right for you and your golfing goals.

Based on Hurt's sessions with all of America's top ten instructors, this book helps you choose between the two main types of golf instruction available -- error correction, which offers a quick fix for a specific swing flaw, and swing development, where the focus is on building the swing from top to bottom. Hurt provides illuminating detail on the most effective approaches to improving each aspect of your golf game: putting, the full swing, the short game, and the all-important mental game.

Hurt also includes a biographical listing of the best golf instructors nationwide and where their expertise lies, so you can determine who may be best suited to your needs. And if you've never sought an instructor before or you've had problems communicating with yours, there are two handy worksheets: eighteen questions you should ask your teaching pro and eighteen questions your pro should ask you.

From beginners and high handicappers to scratch players and Tiger Woods wannabes, golfers of all skill levels looking to take the next step to improving their games need only look to How to Learn Golf.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Simon & Schuster
• Date d'édition: 2002
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 0743417267
• ISBN 13: 9780743417266
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 304
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible