Why Take a Golf Lesson?

I have had several people ask me about why they should take a golf lesson. Golf lessons should be very personal and should adapt to the student. I believe that every one of my students should have a personalized program that works for them.

There are several effective ways to swing the golf club. Just look at the PGA Tour and all the different ways those guys get it done. Now don't get me wrong, those guys spend countless hours crafting their skills. My goal in the first lesson with a student is to define what type of swing is easily repeatable by the student.

Understand that all golf instruction on television or in magazines is developed for the masses. There are two general types of swings when it comes to golf. There is the upright swing where the hands are very high at the top of the golf swing and the arms move slightly independent of the body. The other type is the flat swing where the golf swing is very rotational and the body creates the speed. When there is a tip given to the masses it will work for one type of swing, but not both.

This is why I recommend to anyone looking to take a lesson, to sign up for a package of lessons. We can make incremental improvements in one lesson, be it takes time to understand the students swing. The second and third lesson becomes larger improvements as I don't have to take time to understand the swing, and the student already knows the expectations.

When I started teaching, my mentor would sit in on lessons that I was teaching. After the lesson we would sit down and talk about the lesson. The one question I always knew that was coming was "Why". He was a strong believer that I needed to be able to predict the future. I was able to get very strong at making a change and explaining why the change was needed and what the student should expect.

Ultimately the reason to take a lesson is to be able to play better golf quicker. There is no doubt in my mind that if a student spends hours on the range each day that there are enough resources at their fingertips that they will figure it out. Some of those tips will work and some will not. Imagine that the student needs to try 10 tips and and each tip takes 1-2 hours of dedicated practice to give them a try. Half of those tips will not be compatible to the student's golf swing so you have wasted about 8-10 hours of practice on something that will simply not work for the students golf swing. My job is to give the student 2-3 tips a lesson that will work for their golf game. This will cut down the practice time and allow the student to enjoy the game.