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15 May 2017 USGTF Admin

Intentional Reflection

The new school year started a few weeks earlier than normal this year in Tampa, Florida, where I teach high school and coach the boys’ golf team. I was a little worried, because our team lost two of our top players to graduation and the previous season had not gone well. I had spent a great deal of time thinking about what had gone wrong last season. Were the players getting what they needed out of our practices? Was I giving the feedback and support each player required? Was I pushing the team too much? Whether I realized it or not, I was engaging in reflection. Reflection is a process that has helped me look back on experiences and apply that knowledge to my instruction. It has helped me improve what I do and how I do it. Great coaches learn from their experiences, and as a result, expand their coaching to new situations. After all, we all reflect on our life experiences. But developing intentional reflection as a golf coach and instructor takes practice. Below are some practical steps coaches can take to make intentional reflection work for you:

1. Dialogue journals– After each practice or lesson, take time to document observations or questions you can ask your players or clients at the next session. Your observations can be formal, such as which drills each player did, or what they wanted the focus of the lesson to be, or they can be informal such as the mood your player might have been in or something that happened to them during the day. Keeping track of this information after each practice while the information is fresh and going over it again the next day can be a great asset.

2. Mentor relationship– Endeavor to develop a relationship with coaches and instructors with more experience than you. It’s important to be able to have a fresh set of eyes to look at a situation. Even if you disagree with some aspect of their coaching style, someone who has been doing things longer than you may have a wealth of information they can share.

3. Professional development– Make it a point at least once a year to attend some type of professional development course. It’s great to keep up to date with the latest ideas in coaching and instruction to augment your own repertoire, but more importantly, it helps to rekindle the passion and drive that all coaches and instructors need to succeed.

4. Client questionnaires– Although this can make us feel vulnerable, it can be a valuable tool for intentional reflection because it allows you to identify trends in the feedback you get from your players and clients. Do all of their comments suggest you are off-topic too much? Should you be giving more guidance during practice and one-on-one lessons? How do you make your players feel? If there is a way to give this questionnaire anonymously, the feedback will be even more valuable.

5. Set aside intentional reflection time– This is probably the most important technique that all professionals should work into their schedule. It’s important when taking this time for there to be as little distraction as possible, so a great time might be at the end of the day when things are winding down and your cell phone should be nowhere in sight!

Being an effective golf coach requires that we occasionally take a step back and ask ourselves difficult questions about our instruction. The more reflective we become, the more we notice about our students. That insight allows us to connect with them, making instruction a positive and rewarding experience.  

12 May 2017 USGTF Admin

Something Old, Something New…Something Borrowed, Something Blue

It is what every bride is told to wear on the day of her wedding – something old, new, borrowed and blue. It can very well apply to the gentlemen and gentlewomen who assemble each year at the USGTF-sponsored World Hickory Open in Scotland. Some take to the links with clubs that have been aged for a century. Others wield modern authentics crafted by companies that still make clubs in the old tradition. Some have to borrow clubs to compete as they are entering for the first time, and many are blue when a wayward mashie shot finds the gorse or pot bunker. It is all part of the challenge we refer to as hickory golf. I would dare say that the mention of Panmure Golf Club would just pass over the heads of most golfers these days. But the layout just minutes down the road from Carnoustie Championship has a storied history and provided a perfect venue for the 12th World Hickory Open. It is the16th-oldest course in Scotland, dating to 1845, with renovations over the years by the great James Braid. The club was one of the first to help purchase the trophy for the Amateur Championship, which was first played in 1885. It is used as a qualifying site for the Open Championship when ever played at Carnoustie. Not especially long at 6,500 yards, it always proves to be the hardest qualifying course of those used. The sixth is known as the Hogan Hole because Ben Hogan practiced at Panmure for his only appearance at the Open Championship. I parred it both days, but we’ll forgo how. He said it was one of the finest holes ever created. He even suggested the addition of a bunker just to the right and short of the green, which was added and has subsequently been named the Hogan Bunker. One of the things I love about Scottish courses is how they name holes and features such as bunkers, hills and hollows. Hogan spent much of his time hitting shots to the 17th green, and one day he asked that the green be cut shorter to better simulate the conditions at Carnoustie. The head greenkeeper handed him a mower, and Hogan cut the grass himself, even cleaning the mower before returning it. This year, about 130 hickory players from around the world participated in the championship, and several stayed for the team triangular match on two subsequent days following the tournament. It is a tribute to the popularity and growth of the old form over the past several years. The chairman, Lionel Freedman of Musselburgh, has created a first-class competition that has grown to be the premier hickory event on the annual calendar. When a major champion like Sandy Lyle dons the traditional plus-fours, you get the feeling it is a special event. Hickory golf is still a small niche of the golf landscape, but it has steadily grown over the past decade, and playing on centuries-old courses as they were played back then is a special treat. There is nothing like ripping a mashie over a narrow burn to the heart of the green. Knowing that that shot was the culmination of your skill as a golfer is invigorating. Not to all, but certainly to those who recognize the challenge presented by hickory golf. I get a huge lift of spirit playing the game and seeing my hickory friends each year. This was one of my better ones as I finished 5th pro and collected a few more memories to take forward into the future.

5 May 2017 USGTF Admin

Why Golf Will Never Die

“Today’s kids just want to spend their time playing video games,” say the naysayers about golf, “and on top of that, the game takes too long to play and is too expensive. In addition, with the course closures the past few years, golf is definitely in decline.” Well! That’s a lot of negativity there, so we have to ask ourselves if there’s any merit to what some people are saying. While it is true that the number of courses and players have contracted over the past decade in the United States, all signs point to a leveling out, especially in terms of participants. The National Golf Foundation reports that in 2015 (the last year statistics are available), 2.2 million people took up the game, with the biggest group of beginners coming from the Millennial generation. That 2.2million is just shy of the all-time high of 2.4 million new golfers in 2000, the year Tiger Woods was at the height of his game. But it doesn’t stop there. Over one in four Americans watched golf at some point in 2015,and one in three did some sort of golf-related activity. Interest in the game is increasing, and with the economy continuing to lumber out of its malaise the past decade, undoubtedly the health of the game will continue to gain strength. Golf is a relatively slow game for these fast-paced times, so what attracts 21st century people to the game in the first place? The answer is the same as it has been for centuries:

• The chance to socialize with friends and meet new people
•  Getting outside and enjoying a scenic setting
•  Enjoying the challenge of self-improvement, of you vs. you
•  Being able to compete at a game that allows for all skill levels, not just elite athletes
• The inherent enjoyment of a well-struck shot
•  Watching the flight of the ball, akin to art forsome (e.g., the late Arnold Palmer)
•  Unique playing fields that vary from hole to hole, from course to course
• A chance to unwind and slow down from the daily grind of life
• The physical, mental and spiritual benefits

Even in our modern society, people can’t just be on “go” 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. They need to find a way to relax and move at a different pace than they are used to. But while golf can be relaxing, the heat of battle can establish an intensity that is every bit as high as the final moment of the Super Bowl, or the bottom of the ninth in game seven of the World Series. In other words, golf is what the player wants it to be! Golfers travel thousands of miles to play a specific course or courses. How many people travel to play a particular tennis court? People may travel for a tennis vacation, but the court itself is not the attraction. And that game requires an opponent, unless you’re content to enjoy a mechanical “opponent” firing balls at you. New avenues such as Top Golf offer a different model than the traditional to enjoy the sport, and there is evidence that Top Golf devotees are making their way, slowly but surely, to the golf course itself. Anything that brings people to golf-related activities is a good sign for the industry. As was noted in the Summer 2016 edition of Golf Teaching Pro by Ben Bryant (“How Head In-juries Cause Parents to Turn to Golf,” page 36), concussions in other sports make golf an attractive option. Even soccer (or football, to non-Americans) is receiving attention for brain injuries, as heading the ball over a period of time has been shown to produce such injuries. The beginning of this article highlighted some of the perceived problems with golf. As far as taking too much time, golf has always taken about four to five hours to play on a weekend. But playing 18holes isn’t the only option; nine holes are viable for many, and takes maybe two hours to complete. And have you seen how many people are willing to attend a professional sporting event? A lot of people think nothing of driving or commuting 45minutes to the venue, getting there an hour before game time, watching a three-hour contest, and taking another 45 minutes to return home. That’s a total time investment of five-and-a-half hours, and many of these people have season tickets! So it’s not a matter of too much time; it’s a matter of apriority of time. As far as expenses go, golf requires specialized equipment, but there are numerous low-cost options available to players. Green fees at municipal courses, and even at many privately-owned public facilities, are well under $50, and in many cases walking can be done for as little as $10 to$20 (mainly in Midwest and Southeast locations in smaller towns). For those who want to play more, memberships make it possible for a greatly reduced per-round cost. A bucket of range balls is still around $5 to $7 in most places for those who just want to practice. Finally, we can turn to the professional game for evidence that golf will never die. Look how many people attend events, and in many cases record-breaking crowds are attained each year. The tournament at TPC Scottsdale in Arizona is now drawing a total attendance of half a million people, making it the largest-attended single sports event in the world. And we all know sponsors would not continue to pour increasing millions of dollars into a dying sport. Not much in life is consistent, and the game of golf is no exception. As Mark Twain famously wrote, “The report of my death was an exaggeration.” The game of golf can accurately say the same.