Viewpoint on the USGTF National Golf Teaching Seminar
Las Vegas, NV

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By Dave Reid

It was an opportunity that fit well with my schedule, so I attended the USGTF's national championship tournament (United States Golf Teachers Cup) and National Golf Teaching Seminar in Las Vagas, November 11 -13. Even though I came back to snow and a temperature of -8° C, I was still warmed from the excitement of the event and the confirmation of both the US and World Golf Teachers Federation's respective roles in the continuing growth of golf and the growing impact of our members and supporters world wide.

From the first moments of the National Golf Teaching Seminar, I was instantly aware that this
experience was to be a great one. For those who were unable to attend the day's seminar, I will try to provide you with the main points of each of the presenters, how they relate to us as teaching professionals, and why you should not miss this event in the future. I only hope that this article will do them justice.

Energy-charged and acting years younger than the truth be told, Dr. Gerry Walford is head professor of the physical education department at Alice Lloyd College in Kentucky. He has produced TV documentaries and written a book titled Performance Golf, Developing and Perfecting Your Game. Dr. Walford spoke on the real physics of the golf swing, gave us great insight into coaching youth in any sport, and provided examples of motor learning through visualization.

The pendulum is the focus of his golf swing theory, and he also used a string and paper clip to show how our mind produces minute muscle activity through mind/picture visualization. The more clearly we visualize, the more we are able to be in "automatic" mode (the Zone). Thinking about and visualizing your best swing will help all of us play better. Automatic, that's it - just like walking, no conscious thought, simply reacting to the target. I guess my problem is, I always liked five speeds!

On teaching children, the emphasis must be on fun and trying your best. Winning will come if you let it. Don¹t berate children for not winning, at their level, and don¹t treat winning as the only success. Make them proud to have done their best at each and every activity they do, and you will teach them to be gracious both in winning and in defeat.

He gave us great visualization on C.O.R. (coefficient of restitution), which is really rebound effect. Dropping a basketball from five feet, it rebounded about 60%, and a tennis ball from the same height rebounded 40%. He then placed the tennis ball on top of the basketball and dropped them together. WOW - the tennis ball went 20 feet into the air. The new C.O.R.-limit-breaking drivers (C.O.R.'s higher than the USGA's limit of .83) launch the ball 6-7 m.p.h. faster than others. Does this mean now I can use that Snake Eyes driver and hit it past my shadow?

Our second speaker was Dr. Ralph Mann, assisted by Dave Shaver. Dave is a USGTF Level IV Master Teaching Professional, Director of Instruction at Ahwatukee C.C. in Phoenix, and was a candidate for Golf Magazines Top 100 Teachers list in 2000 and 2002. Dr. Mann is the Olympic Silver Medallist in the 400-meter hurdles at the Munich games in 1972, serves on Golf Digest's Board of Advisors, and is the founder of CompuSport and ModelGolf.

If you are not aware, the results of Dr. Mann¹s documentation and analysis of the swings of 150 touring professionals created the Model Pro, a perfect swinging visual tool based on science, not opinion. The Model Overlay is the skeletal structure which can be re-sized according to the students physical attributes, to show the perfect setup and swing for that student. Although I had heard of ModelGolf, this presentation was a knockout. Dave Shaver made the case for the USGTF, the WGTF, and affiliates to adopt ModelGolf as our full-swing teaching methodology.

I could not agree more. This focused, scientifically-founded and precise learning is light years ahead of - try this, okay, now try this - teaching. Believe me, this is the future of golf teaching for your better students! As a confirmation of this, Mark Harman, now four-time winner of the US Cup, was put on screen with his ModelOverlay, and attained a 90% coefficient to his "model." He won the tournament, enough said! Check it out on the web at www.modelgolf.com. The future is here!

Next to speak was Mark Harman, four-time winner of the US Golf Teachers Cup, two-time winner of the World Cup Individual event, and winner of five other professional events. Mark spoke about and reviewed some of the early instructional authors, namely Percy Boomer and Ben Hogan.

Mark read many quotations from Boomer¹s book On Learning Golf. Boomer was the first to advocate "muscle memory" - the feeling of a correct action. Boomer stated in this instructional book "Everything I have ever done in golf, I have had to learn to do - a statement most average golfers can readily relate to." Boomer, on teaching the golf swing, felt it was a series of connected feelings that the muscles could be taught to learn and repeat. When all the right feels had been learned, starting with the basic turn, the swing would be perfect. Boomer used images and word pictures in his teaching. His most famous being to "turn as if in a barrel." The barrel is about hip-high and big enough to allow the golfer to turn the hips freely, but not so big to allow swaying on either forward or back.

In his discussion of Hogan, Mark referred to changes from Hogan's earlier book, Power Golf, to the later and more popular Five Lessons - the Modern Fundamentals of Golf. In truth, Five Lessons is one of the most enduring and popular instruction books ever written. The ink-line drawings were unique to the time and Hogan, without telling everyone to copy his flat swing, emphasized swinging the club on plane, and developed the popular pane of glass image to show millions of golfers the simplicity of the concept.

If you do not have copies of these early texts, I would encourage you to find them in your local library or get a copy of Hogan's books, which have been re-released. The masters of instruction are always of the classic genre.

The next speaker was Arlen Bento, a Class A member of the PGA, Level IV USGTF Master Teaching Professional, and National Director of the Professional Golf Clubfitting Association. He is considered an expert in computer golf instruction, laser analysis, video capture, and holds advisory positions with A-Star Learning Systems and Wilson Golf. The PGCA is a new organization housed in the USGTF headquarters, and is dedicated to having the teaching professional use fitting as a means to improve students golf skills. A fitted set of golf clubs gives the golfer a distinct advantage at any skill level, and always consider your student's set make up to be sure the 14 clubs they carry are suitable to the student's development level and improvement. The PGCA offers certification to golf teaching professionals, and through its own and associated companies web sites, enables the teaching pro to stay up to date with companies, shafts, new golf clubs and emerging technology as it relates to teaching and helping your students play their best.

Arlen predicts 2003 to be "the year of the wedge." Short game guru Dave Pelz has recently unveiled a set of wedges with varying groove spacing, to produce optimum stop-spin throughout the set - no more backing the ball off the green. The surface treatment of the Pelz wedges is claimed to extend their life by five times over the normal wedge. Taylor Made, Ping, Callaway and Titleist all have new wedge series on the market. Arlen may be on the right track, since a recent national survey indicated the average golfer buys wedges almost on an annual basis. It's time to call my Callaway rep and get those new forged babies!

The last speaker was Dr. Gregg Steinberg, a professor of health and human performance at Austin Peay State University in Tennessee, and sport psychology consultant to the USGTF. He has worked with prominent athletes in many sports. His enthusiastically delivered seminar was entitled, "Mental Rules of Golf, Defeating Anxiety - Public Enemy #1." He provided us with eight rules and threw in tips to analyze and play your best under pressure. I will relate only two of his rules, but I encourage you to buy his new book to gain the inside edge on your next fellow-competitors.

His talk hit home for many of us, for his Mental Rule #1, "Golf is 100% physical and 100% mental," makes so much sense. One without the other leaves us with only half a chance to succeed. He illustrated this with two cola cans, one empty, one full. The empty one represented the golfer with all the skills but no mental strength. It was easily crushed with a minimal amount of pressure, whereas, the full can was a golfer of skill and equal mental strength, and it was able to withstand considerable pressure and resist collapse.

The second rule I want to relay to you was his Mental Rule #7, "Serenity Now." This translates to staying in the present. Don¹t we all try to do that! What he did in this segment however, was he related it to both our teaching and our playing. He asked each of us to jot down eight things we feared in our teaching and then separate the things we had no control over and the things we could control. This confirmed that the majority of our fears were beyond our control, things like: the student not improving, the student not liking us, the student's attitude, and the student not understanding our instructions. In these, we have virtually no control, except perhaps the latter, where we attempt to get the message across in different ways; and yet, sometimes the student still doesn¹t get it. We must learn to let go of the things we cannot control. Try this experiment on yourself, both from teaching and playing aspects.

Coincidentally, on the way home I met the author, and purchased a copy of, Combat Golf, from Captain Bruce Warren Ollstein, who is currently working with Tiger Woods. The opening quote from Combat Golf is credited to the late tour player Lawson Little: "I say without any reservation whatsoever: it is impossible to outplay an opponent you can't out-think." How about that endorsement of the mind¹s role in golf!

Make no mistake, events like this only make us stronger as teaching professionals, and if we fail to gain new knowledge each and every day, with each lesson or with each practice session, we have wasted that day and that time. My congratulations to the organizers, the USGTF and the speakers, for this great learning opportunity.

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