Why you’re running out of excuses if you’ve been holding off booking a lesson
I can’t say I hadn’t been warned.
When my father retired a decade ago, he filled part of his suddenly empty schedule with lessons at his home club in Coffs Harbour.
“Should have done it years ago!” he declared. “I’ve been doing it wrong for more than 30 years.”
I recently celebrated my 46th trip round the sun and weighed up whether to use some birthday money on a new driver or a new putter (my two most temperamental clubs on an alternating basis). Then it hit me. I’d spend my money on something I truly needed: a lesson.
With an association with Australian Golf Digest that stretches back to 2004, I have been exposed to countless tips, conversed with coaches and played with professionals.
During a Covid-19 lockdown, Jason Laws kindly conducted lessons with me via Skillest; a 30-minute chipping lesson with Michael Sim delivered a three-shot per round improvement and PGA graduate and DP World Tour player Deyen Lawson ingrained a swing feel that provided instant improvement to my ball-striking.
But until last month I’d never submitted my swing to the full examination of a PGA professional.
Part of it was fear. A large part was embarrassment at a swing I was aware didn’t match what appears on PGA Tour packaging. Part of it was the misconception that embarking on lessons would, for a time, render an average swing virtually unusable in a public setting.
Yet after just one hour with Todd Sleep at his golf academy at The Glades on the Gold Coast, I could feel my flat, rounded heave evolving into something resembling an actual golf swing.
I could feel genuine compression as club met ball; my stock standard slinging draw showing signs of straightening into a fade that landed oh so softly.
Time. Money. Fear. Embarrassment. These are all excuses we trot out to convince ourselves we don’t need formal coaching.
Here are six reasons why – no matter where you are in your golf journey – a lesson with a PGA professional is the single best investment you can make to improve your game.
1. It’s fundamental
The cornerstones to any efficient golf swing are your grip, stance and posture. Get these fundamentals established and you give yourself the best chance of making solid contact on a consistent basis. Club golfers can struggle for their entire golf life blissfully unaware that the most basic tenets of their swing have been out of whack from the get-go. If they need adjusting, this is where your PGA professional will begin your journey to better golf.
“The thing that I hear most often from clients is that they had no idea that small changes would make such a big difference,” says Sienna Voglis, PGA professional and club manager at cluBarham Golf and Sports Club on the Murray River.
“Setup, posture and alignment are the first things that I look at when giving a lesson,” adds James Single, PGA professional at Port Macquarie Golf Club and the 2021 PGA National Club Professional of the Year. “From there I then look at ball position, weight transfer and the swing direction, typically the follow-through.”
2. A swing for every body
PGA professionals will have their own basis for what they believe constitutes a good golf swing, but they all understand that a person’s physical characteristics will determine what’s possible. Watching YouTube videos or trying to replicate Rory McIlroy’s swing in the mirror will only work if you are built like Rory with the same range of motion. (Quick hint: you’re not.) In my first lesson, Todd showed a comparison between my swing and Adam Scott’s, primarily to highlight the fact that his physical abilities allow him to move the golf club in a way that very few on the planet can.
“All golfers have their own unique body functionality, and therefore should have a swing that matches their characteristics,” says Adrian Wickstein, PGA professional at Glenelg Golf Club and the Golf Australia State High Performance Manager in South Australia. “When working with any level of player, I will always look for limitations in movement or strength in specific areas and ensure the best functionality of movement to create the most repetitive swing, and even more importantly reduce the risk of injury.”
PGA professionals aren’t trained to impart a particular golf swing but to help uncover the best swing for you.
3. Equipped to succeed
Whether we blindly buy off the rack or – God forbid – purchase clubs online, almost every golfer has been guilty of buying equipment ill-suited to their swing. By engaging with a PGA professional, not only will you be guided in how to swing your clubs better but you have at hand a trusted source of information when it comes to equipment purchases. PGA professionals can make adjustments to your existing set to help maximise what the ball does off the clubface and, when the time comes, custom-fit the clubs that can take your game to a new level.
In a single example of the difference a fitting can make, Paul Jenner from PureForm Golf in Sydney cites a 20-metre gain in driver distance along with improved accuracy, 23 metres more carry with the irons and an increase of ball speed from 118.6mph to 131.4mph. “Shaft is the most important component for the timing of your strike,” explains Jenner, PGA professional and managing director of PureForm Golf. “There are many different types of shaft profiles, weights and flexes that match different swing types, swing speeds and swing tempos. Matching these correctly using the latest technology will improve your strike of the ball along with maximising your ball speed. The head is more about dialling in the launch, spin and dispersion; different heads in different brands in different models will produce different launch and spin conditions. Using TrackMan, you can create the ideal launch, spin, height and landing angle for each golfer.”
Don’t buy a suit off the rack and hope that it fits; see a PGA professional and get your clubs custom-built to your exact specifications.
4. Knowledge is power
A confession: I tried to self-solve my so-flat-it-was-almost-horizontal swing… and I thought I was making progress. That was until Todd pointed out that what I thought was the solution – keeping my hands out in front of my body on the backswing – was actually making my right-to-left ball flight tendency even worse. Almost 20 years of reading tips and tricks will do that to you. Not only was Todd able to break down what I was doing wrong so that I could understand it, he imparted his knowledge on what we needed to do to correct it. In time, that understanding will allow me to self-correct should the swing mis-fire mid-round.
5. A path to progression
A weight-loss program does not consist of a single session at the gym. You have a regular doctor you trust with your health and a mechanic to keep your car running. If you are going to invest time and money into a pastime, why would you not use a service that will make that precious leisure time so much more enjoyable? Jack MacLeod at X-Golf Mentone in Melbourne markets himself not as a golf coach as such but as a golf trainer, someone to help golfers get a little more golf-fit every time they see him. “In a modern golf lesson, everything is measured,” MacLeod explains. “We are able to show them their initial starting point – whether that be a distance or club dynamic – and then display the improvement in our session. We then go about setting short and long-term goals. This keeps a player focused on the process to achieve the desired result.”
Imagine how much better you’ll be in 10 years if you start getting lessons today.
6. Getting better is good for you
Whatever your interest, improving a chosen skill can be a great way to keep your brain healthy as you age. A report released last year by the Harvard Medical School specifically referenced golfers working towards lowering their handicap as having a positive impact on concentration and memory recall. “You don’t have the challenge of learning something new, but rather the challenge of increasing your skill set and knowledge,” said Dr John N. Morris, director of social and health policy research at the Harvard-affiliated Institute for Aging Research, in reference to golfers’ search for improvement. “It is the constant repetition of working to improve, and not the quest for mastery, that can have the greatest impact.”
So have a lesson with a PGA pro; your brain will thank you for it.
• To find the PGA professional closest to you, visit pga.org.au/find-a-pga-pro/
