Learning Feel from Mechanics

[JON B]

I cannot understand the alternative to learning a feel from mechanics. A feel is a habit that is ingrained from repetitive acts, that is, mechanics.

This is dead on in my opinion. What exactly happens when a student completely new to the game strolls in to take his/her first lesson and has a horrible grip? Practically every instructor is going to place that students hands on the club in a way so that both hands can work more cohesively. The student is then going make swings with the new grip until it feel more natural. I am not saying that you can't play good golf with a bad grip, but virtually any instructor is going to teach someone new to the game a decent hold on the club and then allow the student to get comfortable with the new grip through practice. If that isn't learning feel from mechanics, I don't know what is.

I'm sure there are a lot of TGM based instructors out there that preach in a highly technical way and try to teach the student every term in the book and quote the odd numbered pages from which the terms come from. I don't think this should be confused as teaching "feel from mechanics" which I think occurs on some level in most golf instruction regardless of whether the "mechanics" come from TGM or the worst pop instruction ever. My instructor is very knowledgeable of both TGM and Morad and he has mentioned technical terminology from either discipline exactly zero times. He has no idea that I even know what the book is.

 

[holeout]

Finally, I had about enough and said to myself 'if you can't stop coming above the plane, let's try and get well under the plane.' I thought about some swings that did this and I came up with Tiger's when he is trying to hit a roundhouse hook around some trees. So I decided to hit a roundhouse hook with a 9-iron. I had a square to the target stance, but I would take the club way inside and then have as much of an in-to-out downswing as I could make. Instantly I started hitting good, crisp shots.

I tried to go back to my old backswing, but with a roundhouse hook downswing and I had ZERO success. Still the same crappy OTT move. I tried it off an on again and couldn't get it. So then I asked myself 'what feels different between the roundhouse hook backswing and the regular backswing? (besides taking it way inside)?' I then noticed that the right elbow felt different and in different positions. From there on I knew that I had to flatten out my backswing and keep that right elbow nearby the body on the backswing.

How is this not learning the mechanics from a feel? You felt like you were making a roundhouse hook backswing and downswing, and thereby discovered the "mechanic" that was going awry.

Look, an instructor's number 1 goal should be to get their student hitting the ball better by the end of the lesson. This thread was meant as a diatribe against those instructors that believe the student must understand the mechanics of what they are doing wrong and what is correct. It doesn't matter if it's a TGM, Leadbetter, Harmon, or Haney. Anyone who teaches like that is completely missing the point of what teaching golf really is.

And just to go ahead and fend off the "but they need to learn how to self-correct!" crowd, I'll say that learning how to fix yourself is good. But this doesn't mean that you need to completely understand all the mechanics of the swing.

And to clarify, some people love to learn about all the mechanics (like a lot of people on this forum), and that's great! But don't expect it to necessarily make you a better player, or anyone else who may look to get better at the game.

 

[Richie3Jack]

I thought there were 3 imperatives according to TGM.A "straight plane line" whatever the heck that means is one of them.Can you explain how to achieve a straight plane line without tracing a straight plane line??Lasers and dowels appear to be very popular items in the tool box of a TGM instructor.

Basically the club has to point at the plane line in the golf swing (except when the clubshaft is parallel to the ground). If it doesn't point at the plane line, in TGM terms that's called a 'bent plane line.'

TGM only has 3 imperatives and basically states that there's almost countless variations to a golf swing that can produce consistent, quality shots. The problem with guys like Haney and Harmon is that they have a lot more imperatives in the method of swing that they teach and they wind up teaching those to student after student. Can it work? Absolutely. Will it work well for everybody? Not even close.

So while TGM is hardly infallible in my mind and many others' mind, the basic concept of there being almost countless variations of the golf swing and then cataloging them is quite powerful.

I honestly believe that Homer Kelley realized that the big issue he had to overcome was that feel was such a key part of the golf swing and to make it repetitive, but he understood that feels are largely subjective. So knowing that, he created a bit that would allow for the reader to develop their own subjective feel. He also wrote throughout the book a bunch of different feels the golfer may experience. That's why I often say that my game took off once I understood that TGM is a book about feel and didn't focus so much on the technical jargon aspect of it.




3JACK

 

[Richie3Jack]

How is this not learning the mechanics from a feel? You felt like you were making a roundhouse hook backswing and downswing, and thereby discovered the "mechanic" that was going awry.

I see what you are saying. I just think you are misinterpreting it mainly because it was late and I wasn't explaining it fully.

For *me* I actually had some of the mechanics down in the backswing when I took that roundhouse backswing. Mainly the position of the right elbow, particularly from the takeaway to the top of the swing. I was actually trying to trace the plane line in the 'old backswing' and doing that by fanning the forearm. But I had the mechanics of the 'fanning forearm' all wrong. I actually had to go home and look it up on the web and then I understood the proper mechanics of the fanning forearm.

But that day I did realize that when the right elbow gets too far away from my body, it really gets me into trouble. It didn't take me long to understand and execute the proper mechanics, I just needed to get a feel so I could repeat those mechanics.

Another story is when I was working of 'flipping.' I did this one TGM drill and I used their 'basic' (chip shot swing length) and then their 'acquired' (half swing length) motions while doing this drill. I got those two motions down pat, no problem. Then when I moved onto the full swing, everything broke down again.

So I asked myself 'what feels different when I do it right with the acquired motion vs. when I do it wrong with the full swing?' The main answers were the pressure in one of the pressure points was in my downswing and also feeling a slow startdown. When I flipped in the full swing, I'd lose that pressure point in the downswing and was much faster in the startdown.

Mechanically, all I was working on was trying to keep the left wrist flat at impact. Feel wise it was really even simpler than that.

I'll PM you an article in Golf Digest that I think you may find interesting (it certainly may not change your mind) about a certain golfer who refused to learn any of the mechanics and how it spelled an abrupt ending to his career.




3JACK

 

[ggsjpc]

At the start of the first lesson with new students, I always ask "Are you the kind of person that likes to know why things work the way they work or do you just want to know how to do it?"

I was always a 'why' learner and had a hard time understanding how someone could learn without it. How would they fix themselves, etc. It turns out that how people just know when they aren't doing what they want. They don't need to know why what they aren't doing isn't working. They don't care. I've learned that's just fine and it has helped me deal with these two very different types of people.

As far as feel-mechanics debate goes, I think learning a golf swing is just like learning how to write. There's a part that's information(the shape of the letter's) then there's the part of teaching your hand how to make what you are seeing. Teaching someone golf is like teaching them blindfolded in there opposite hand. You tell them what the letters look like, or you draw them so they can see, or you hold there hand so they can feel it. I don't know which comes first and it really doesn't matter. Just like it doesn't matter how they like their information.

My job is to get them where they want to go.

 

[Brian Manzella]

Feel from Mechanics.

TYPICAL MANZELLA STUDENT IN A LESSON:

"When I do what it is you just told me to do, it feels like I am pinching my last two toes on my left foot together."

Or something like that.

MANZELLA RESPONSE:

"I don't care what it feels like to you, but now that I know, I'll remember, and you'd better remember too, because that was IT!

Sounds like Feel from Mechanics to me.

Now learning a mechanic just BECAUSE it is SUPPOSED TO BE IMPORTANT, is another issue.

Someone would have to find a quote of mine that "Sounds like" I don't like this idea, and I will explain that.

 

[ej20]

Basically the club has to point at the plane line in the golf swing (except when the clubshaft is parallel to the ground). If it doesn't point at the plane line, in TGM terms that's called a 'bent plane line.'

3JACK

I understand that the clubshaft needs to point at the plane line at all times except when it is parallel to the ground to have a straight plane line in accordance with TGM.How is this different to tracing a straight plane line with a laser or a dowel?

And is this REALLY imperative??

 

[Brian Manzella]

I understand that the clubshaft needs to point at the plane line at all times except when it is parallel to the ground to have a straight plane line in accordance with TGM.How is this different to tracing a straight plane line with a laser or a dowel?

And is this REALLY imperative??

A "Straight Plane Line" is really a misnomer.

All PLANE LINES are straight.

So a more correct imperative would be:

You must have your sweetspot "draw" a plane line that is properly positioned to create the proper bottom of your D-Plane for the selected shot.

 

[Zztop]

TYPICAL MANZELLA STUDENT IN A LESSON:

"When I do what it is you just told me to do, it feels like I am pinching my last two toes on my left foot together."

Or something like that.

MANZELLA RESPONSE:

"I don't care what it feels like to you, but now that I know, I'll remember, and you'd better remember too, because that was IT!

Sounds like Feel from Mechanics to me.

Now learning a mechanic just BECAUSE it is SUPPOSED TO BE IMPORTANT, is another issue.

Someone would have to find a quote of mine that "Sounds like" I don't like this idea, and I will explain that.

How would you teach someone that's blind from birth? You can't show them. You can tell them, but since their blind they might not have a picture. How do they develop mechanics? How do they learn to read? I asked a dozen people how a blind person would learn to play golf, they all said by feel! How else would you know if your grip is right if you had no feel in your hands? Mechanics are nothing in sport without feel, real or imagined. How else can the signals get to your brain.
Whether your feel is correct is a different thing, but you need that input, feel is king, like cash.

 

[JonWil]

TYPICAL MANZELLA STUDENT IN A LESSON:

"When I do what it is you just told me to do, it feels like I am pinching my last two toes on my left foot together."

Or something like that.

MANZELLA RESPONSE:

"I don't care what it feels like to you, but now that I know, I'll remember, and you'd better remember too, because that was IT!

Sounds like Feel from Mechanics to me.

This is great

It has to move that way. The teacher, by position has the better grasp of design.
Mechanics are about harmonizing a system within that design; the feels the player develops are arbitrary.

 

[Richie3Jack]

How would you teach someone that's blind from birth? You can't show them. You can tell them, but since their blind they might not have a picture. How do they develop mechanics? How do they learn to read? I asked a dozen people how a blind person would learn to play golf, they all said by feel! How else would you know if your grip is right if you had no feel in your hands? Mechanics are nothing in sport without feel, real or imagined. How else can the signals get to your brain.
Whether your feel is correct is a different thing, but you need that input, feel is king, like cash.

If a blind person is struggling, I would imagine that the teacher would physically put them in the mechanical alignments that they want them in and then ask what that feels like to them.

From my experience a teacher can try and give a feel for the student to use and see if it may work, but usualy the student gets to 'own it' once they get the feel by themself. I can pretty much execute proper mechanics without focusing on a feel. But repeating those proper mechanics without feel is almost impossible for me.




3JACK

 

[Zztop]

This is great

It has to move that way. The teacher, by position has the better grasp of design.
Mechanics are about harmonizing a system within that design; the feels the player develops are arbitrary.

Your brain uses your senses like you know, sight , hearing, feel or touch, taste & smell for feedback last time i looked mechanics wasn't one of the senses, and that ain't arbitrary, that's a fact. Ever hear of Helen Keller?

How come almost everyone learned to walk without a detailed description? You learned to walk before you could talk and comprehend detailed instruction, good thing because if the instruction was like a lot of golf instruction we'd all would be still crawling!

 

[cal7426]

How come almost everyone learned to walk without a detailed description? You learned to walk before you could talk and comprehend detailed instruction, good thing because if the instruction was like a lot of golf instruction we'd all would be still crawling!

This is a false syllogism . Walking is instinctive, a requirement for survival in our purest form. Golf is a skill acquired by those who choose to play the game. The learning processes are not really the same. Your instinctive understanding of the world can help your golf game (see Geoff Mangum), but your instincts will not "teach" you to play golf (well or otherwise) left to their own devices.

I'm not saying your overall argument is wrong, I'm just not comfortable with this particular analogy.

 

[Zztop]

This is a false syllogism . Walking is instinctive, a requirement for survival in our purest form. Golf is a skill acquired by those who choose to play the game. The learning processes are not really the same. Your instinctive understanding of the world can help your golf game (see Geoff Mangum), but your instincts will not "teach" you to play golf (well or otherwise) left to their own devices.

I'm not saying your overall argument is wrong, I'm just not comfortable with this particular analogy.

Golf is a game of survival. lol. My so called analogy was just a sarcastic comment. As BirdieMan once said sarcasm doesn't translate well over the net.

 

[JonWil]

This is a false syllogism . Walking is instinctive, a requirement for survival in our purest form. Golf is a skill acquired by those who choose to play the game. The learning processes are not really the same. Your instinctive understanding of the world can help your golf game (see Geoff Mangum), but your instincts will not "teach" you to play golf (well or otherwise) left to their own devices.

I'm not saying your overall argument is wrong, I'm just not comfortable with this particular analogy.

Cal7426 : Nice observation.

Zztop : By arbitrary I am claiming the feels developed will be individualized, as opposed to being the same for everyone learning the game.

 

[Zztop]

Cal7426 : Nice observation.

Zztop : By arbitrary I am claiming the feels developed will be individualized, as opposed to being the same for everyone learning the game.

I was making reference to what i said, not what you said, like an exclamation point, and the analogy was like i said sarcasm. The little eekie face after it kind of says that...lol.

 

[Zztop]

This is a false syllogism . Walking is instinctive, a requirement for survival in our purest form. Golf is a skill acquired by those who choose to play the game. The learning processes are not really the same. Your instinctive understanding of the world can help your golf game (see Geoff Mangum), but your instincts will not "teach" you to play golf (well or otherwise) left to their own devices.

I'm not saying your overall argument is wrong, I'm just not comfortable with this particular analogy.

Actually walking is not instinctive for humans if that were true we would be walking as soon as we popped out, like a horse, as you state it's a requirement for survival. You need to study this further. Also i never said you learn golf by instinct, i said feel is a major part of it. Brian's old forum logo say's a lot.

 

[holeout]

TYPICAL MANZELLA STUDENT IN A LESSON:

"When I do what it is you just told me to do, it feels like I am pinching my last two toes on my left foot together."

Or something like that.

MANZELLA RESPONSE:

"I don't care what it feels like to you, but now that I know, I'll remember, and you'd better remember too, because that was IT!

Sounds like Feel from Mechanics to me.

Now learning a mechanic just BECAUSE it is SUPPOSED TO BE IMPORTANT, is another issue.

Someone would have to find a quote of mine that "Sounds like" I don't like this idea, and I will explain that.

Fair enough, Brian.

But when I took a lesson from you, you found the root cause of my problems (not enough axis tilt, too much early hip rotation in the downswing) first. Then, you showed me what was going on with the video camera. You still hadn't mentioned anything about axis tilt, or what the solution was. You simply said I was turning my hips out of the way too much, too fast and that my flexibility and good hands were saving me.

Then, you physically put me into the right position on the downswing by having me swing to the top, and then slowly start the downswing as you grabbed my hips and put them where you wanted them by impact. No mechanics, no talking about what you were doing. You showed me what I needed to feel like on the downswing.

From there, we had a few adjustments with where the club was trying to go in the finish and voila, I was hitting it great.

At least in my case, it was very much a "mechanics from feel" lesson. But I could be misinterpreting. Interested in whether my lesson was uncommon or if I'm looking at it the wrong way.

 

[Zztop]

Fair enough, Brian.

But when I took a lesson from you, you found the root cause of my problems (not enough axis tilt, too much early hip rotation in the downswing) first. Then, you showed me what was going on with the video camera. You still hadn't mentioned anything about axis tilt, or what the solution was. You simply said I was turning my hips out of the way too much, too fast and that my flexibility and good hands were saving me.

Then, you physically put me into the right position on the downswing by having me swing to the top, and then slowly start the downswing as you grabbed my hips and put them where you wanted them by impact. No mechanics, no talking about what you were doing. You showed me what I needed to feel like on the downswing.

From there, we had a few adjustments with where the club was trying to go in the finish and voila, I was hitting it great.

At least in my case, it was very much a "mechanics from feel" lesson. But I could be misinterpreting. Interested in whether my lesson was uncommon or if I'm looking at it the wrong way.

Brian's old forum logo say's a lot.

 

[willgolfer]

Actually walking is not instinctive for humans if that were true we would be walking as soon as we popped out, like a horse, as you state it's a requirement for survival. You need to study this further.

cal7426 is correct. Walking "is" instinctive for humans. It is a natural survival mechanism that is present in the newborn (see "Stepping Reflex"). However, it takes on average about 13 1/2 months before the newborn/infant is "physically mature" enough to walk.