Should golf be learnt backwards?

crayon33 wrote:

U guys know about the dan plan? Dan is a guy who at age 30 decided he wanted to be a pro golfer. He quit his job n then started training. He figured he will need 10000 hours of deliberate practice to be a good player. Anyways he started doing nothing but putting and chipping. You can go to his website and see his blog about the tournaments he has played. If he succeeds I am going to make my son do 200 putts everynight before he sleeps.

HAVE YOU SEEN THE BLOG recently. this guy is playing off 5.7 handicap now with a drive averaging 280 yards. all from putting , just putting , for 3 months. then pitching and so on. took a year before he saw 5 clubs in the bag i think.

slinger wrote:

Derek wrote:

I have seen many not so skilled golfers practising and for the large majority, they are making full swings (or swing at 100% or in some cases more) with most of the balls.

Also, most of the time, they are making poor contact (let's not even consider direction for now), and mostly fat (hitting behind the ball) and up to 3 or 4 inches behind the ball.

I observe them going through a whole bucket of balls and can only hear solid contact occasionally and almost never twice in a row. I can only conclude then even when they do it right, they don't know what they are doing right, so it is almost impossible to repeat.

For those that strike up a conversation with me (I never offer unsolicited advice), I normally ask them a bit more about their game, and more often than not, they are very poor at pitching as well (those that play more regularly seem to know what to do when they are around the fringe, but 30m - 80m is where they feel they are very inconsistent).

So when I ask them to try a couple of pitches to various targets at various distances, usually the same flaws show up as in the full swing, the result? ... the same fat shots. Which you can get away with when striking off a driving range mat but not on the course (or god forbid, a fairway bunker)

Food for thought, if you can't achieve good and consistent contact when pitching, i.e. making a limited swing, be it half, 3-quarter, 80% etc etc, it probably means you don't know how to move the club in a smooth and efficient manner to achieve the result you want.

If you don't know how to move the club efficiently, how can increasing the size and effort by making a larger swing help you to learn how to move the club efficiently?

Notice I say effort not speed, largely because:

1) If you don't know the proper way to accelerate a golf clubhead, increasing the amount of strength and effort in the wrong way will probably slow your swing down

2) Even if you manage to achieve a real increase in club speed, striking the mat or ground first is going to send all that energy into the ground, not into the ball, resulting in inconsistent ball speed and irregular distance.

Now, don't get me wrong by thinking I am advocating slowing down the swing to achieve good contact. There are few things worse for ball striking than decelerating the club coming into impact.

What I am suggesting is that by learning how to pitch properly, aside from the immediate benefit of scoring better, it is also likely that your full swing will improve as well.

And as for the correct pitching technique, instead of trying to learn it off the internet or magazines, I would strongly suggest you take a 90min (or 120min) lesson with your local PGA professional to learn a fundamentally correct way to do this.

So just wondering, do you guys think that improving your pitching can help you make better full swings?

Can I sign u up for lessons??!!

I got a good feeling I will be an awesome golfer under your instruction....

Your truly..... Hopeless golfer

my sentiments tooooooooooo!

mythr wrote:

slinger wrote:

Derek wrote:

I have seen many not so skilled golfers practising and for the large majority, they are making full swings (or swing at 100% or in some cases more) with most of the balls.

Also, most of the time, they are making poor contact (let's not even consider direction for now), and mostly fat (hitting behind the ball) and up to 3 or 4 inches behind the ball.

I observe them going through a whole bucket of balls and can only hear solid contact occasionally and almost never twice in a row. I can only conclude then even when they do it right, they don't know what they are doing right, so it is almost impossible to repeat.

For those that strike up a conversation with me (I never offer unsolicited advice), I normally ask them a bit more about their game, and more often than not, they are very poor at pitching as well (those that play more regularly seem to know what to do when they are around the fringe, but 30m - 80m is where they feel they are very inconsistent).

So when I ask them to try a couple of pitches to various targets at various distances, usually the same flaws show up as in the full swing, the result? ... the same fat shots. Which you can get away with when striking off a driving range mat but not on the course (or god forbid, a fairway bunker)

Food for thought, if you can't achieve good and consistent contact when pitching, i.e. making a limited swing, be it half, 3-quarter, 80% etc etc, it probably means you don't know how to move the club in a smooth and efficient manner to achieve the result you want.

If you don't know how to move the club efficiently, how can increasing the size and effort by making a larger swing help you to learn how to move the club efficiently?

Notice I say effort not speed, largely because:

1) If you don't know the proper way to accelerate a golf clubhead, increasing the amount of strength and effort in the wrong way will probably slow your swing down

2) Even if you manage to achieve a real increase in club speed, striking the mat or ground first is going to send all that energy into the ground, not into the ball, resulting in inconsistent ball speed and irregular distance.

Now, don't get me wrong by thinking I am advocating slowing down the swing to achieve good contact. There are few things worse for ball striking than decelerating the club coming into impact.

What I am suggesting is that by learning how to pitch properly, aside from the immediate benefit of scoring better, it is also likely that your full swing will improve as well.

And as for the correct pitching technique, instead of trying to learn it off the internet or magazines, I would strongly suggest you take a 90min (or 120min) lesson with your local PGA professional to learn a fundamentally correct way to do this.

So just wondering, do you guys think that improving your pitching can help you make better full swings?

Can I sign u up for lessons??!!

I got a good feeling I will be an awesome golfer under your instruction....

Your truly..... Hopeless golfer

my sentiments tooooooooooo!

Early sign up got discount??

bloody hell ... few months later still tio suan ...

Bobby Clampett's impact zone starts from the green and works it way back to the full swing.  As a former instructor who has given many hundreds of hours of lessons this is the most logical approach.  Problem is it can be boring for many people.  They are enamored with hitting the golf ball and not learning how to score or play the game.  The 100 yard and in game can make up some 50-80 percent of a golf score depending on the golfer, seems like a place where you should spend a good chunk of your time.

Take Phil Mickelson for example.  He had a short game area in his backyard and was able, through many hours of practice and playing around in his backyard he developed one of the best short games ever.

When I used to practice short game I would try to do it with a buddy and make a contest out of it as there would be the pressure to compete as well as injecting the fun element of goofing around with a friend.

Either way I think it is a sound way to learn the game and wish more students would be interested in learning this way and more instructors attempt to teach it as well.

Dan

i totally disagree with learning fm the back........distance is king!!!!

Someone told me, with enough distance may not be everything, but without it, you are nothing.