A Re-Print...edited for 2007....
TEACH 'EM WHAT THEY NEED TO DO..and that they can!
by Brian Manzella
I gave my first golf lesson in 1982. It was a clinic to a group of about two dozen really young junior golfers and their moms. I was put in charge of the near defunct, City Park (New Orleans) Summer Junior Program. We were to meet ten more times that summer. This was the little ones (and the big ones) introduction to what I was going to teach them. I have long forgotten what I said. But I do remember what I didn’t say. I didn’t talk about how we were going to learn to stand ‘square’ to the target. I didn’t say anything about getting the club to parallel. I said something about golf being very ‘do-able’ and they all were going to learn. They did.
25,000 or so golf instruction hours later, I’d say pretty much the same thing. Something like you have to hit the ball on the way down to make it go up, and you have swing in a circle to make it go straight. I might add that the grip and left wrist control the clubface and that’s what makes the ball curve-or not.
Giving a good golf lesson has as much to do with what you don’t say as what you do.
The golf ball only knows what the club is doing, so that’s the place to start. For example: A 72 year old great grandmother who has only played golf for two years comes to you for a lesson. She tops almost every shot. She bends her left arm a bunch on every extra-flat backswing. She looks like she lifts her head through the ball. She has no forward weight ‘shift.’ What would you do?
I love watching teachers teach golf. But sometimes all I get out of it is disappointment. Lots of instructors would straighten the lady’s left arm, have her keep her head down and shift that weight. After she topped it again they might tell her to “stay down.”
What that lady really needs is to know is that the ball must be hit on the way down. That if you do that correctly, you’ll make a divot in front of the ball and to do that you have to swing the club up enough, so you can hit down enough. That if you unwind correctly and wind up standing on your left foot, you can reach the spot in front of the ball where the club should bottom out.
Of course getting her to do all of that is the hard part-and the fun part. That’s the part you get to try to figure out how to teach her to ‘do it.’ With and by any means possible.
No matter how poorly it looks like a student is learning it is often just an illusion.
The one doing poorly is usually you.
That’s when you really learn to teach. When you have to find a way to get the student to get the club to do what it needs to do. No matter what the student looks like they can’t do, they can get the club to hit the inside of the ball on the way down and square up the face by the time it comes off the face. Figure out a way.
When I taught that junior program I made sure that every kid thought, that I thought, they could do it. That way they kept trying to do whatever I was trying to get them to do.
My last time teaching at The City Park Junior Golf program was in 1996. By then it had grown to nearly 500 junior golfers every summer. Due to varoius reasons—but mostly the opposite of what made it so popular—it was slowly dieing before Katrina killed it.
I never received one bit of credit in the press, or from the PGA for what I did. But, about 8 or so years ago, one of the kids from the very early years (early 80's), now a Doctor, saw my name in the paper in Ohio for a US Open qualifiing, and came to caddy for me. More than enough credit for me.
