Understand the Game You Have,
Before You Make Changes
Golfers need three ball control skills: solid, straight and far.
Developing these skills in an efficient and lasting way requires a solid foundation. John calls this a Foundation of Knowledge and includes clarity of the key concepts governing club delivery, a refined start position, and ensuring the first part of your backswing is setting you up for success.
Once your foundation is either validated or solidified, what is the critical next step?
Where should you start?
As you would imagine, the process for golf improvement needs to be flexible so it can help golfers of all skills and aspirations. While John takes ample time to learn about each student's background and goals for their golf to design a tailored improvement plan, for the ease of demonstration, here is a brief description of John's process for beginners and developing golfers.
Areas of Focus
Foundation of Knowledge
Foundation of Knowledge includes clarity of the key concepts governing club delivery, a refined start position, and ensuring the first part of your backswing is setting you up for success.
Technique
Grip, backswing, wrist conditions, ground forces, etc. All the things we can see on video or measure with other technologies.
Ball Control Skills
The ability to deliver the club through impact well enough, and consistently enough, to create golf shots that satisfy our needs: Solid, Straight, Far.
Performance
The ability to use your skills in all situations, under pressure.
For all golfers, the start of the learning process includes a discussion of the Foundation of Knowledge. For most golfers, a misunderstanding of one or more key concepts is at the root of their struggles.
Starting Out
John likes working with new golfers. As the saying goes, they don't have any bad habits yet!
As a new golfer, you don't really have an established technique yet, so this is where you will start. You will build a foundation based on key concepts, followed by the development of a full swing based on your physical abilities and past athletic experiences.
Once your technique is established, you are ready to develop the ball control skills and then very quickly learn how to play the game on the course.
Already Playing
Developing golfers arrive with technique and concepts already in place, but their results aren't matching what they know they can do.
John's proven approach is as follows:
- ◆Gather shot and club data to establish present swing patterns. Since we are meeting on the lesson tee, we already know you aren't happy with your play on the golf course.
- ◆The big question is where do we need to focus to make the needed improvement in on-course level of play? This step is the most critical one and why John has been so successful helping so many golfers.
- 1Refine your Foundation of Knowledge
- 2Develop your club delivery / ball control skills
- 3Improve your technique to facilitate skill improvement
- 4You already have the needed skills on the range or in non-pressure situations but need guidance on how to access those skills when feeling pressure
Before changing anything about your swing, John looks for faster, easier wins. For many students, a poor foundation of knowledge, aiming issue, flawed approach to skill practice, ill-fitted equipment, or many other “easy things” to change can all be at the root of their struggles.
“If your car won't start, check the gas gauge first before you rebuild the engine.”
The tools behind the method.
Great on the range means nothing until it holds up on the course.
If you've ever hit it great on the driving range and then struggled the moment it counted, you know the pain. Performance training gives you the ability to transfer what you've built to any situation: the first tee, a bet with your buddy, a tournament, or just finishing off a good round.
Adult coaching, junior development, and remote lessons all use the same process.