Lee Trevino

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Good line from Feherty's show on the Golf Channel by ol' Lee Buck. "The funny thing about teachers......it's like having a leaky shingle on your roof.....they wanna tear the house down....instead of finding the leak and repairing it". Method teachers anyone?
 
Depends on the student at hand. It's usually never as simple as 1 thing...fix it and be done. If it were, there would be a lot more scratch golfers in the world.

I find more often than not it's a chain of things. And the key is find the starting part of the chain. And even then, because you've ingrained that link of compensations, there are likely to be some parts that are now better, but still need some work because you have to get rid of what you've ingrained.

What strict, pop golf instruction method teachers tend to do is if you're springing a leak in the roof, they will try to reconstruct the house to look almost exactly like the other 100 houses they built.






3JACK
 
I think this is about the medium shaping the message.

Each time a new medium arrives, it has an impact.

For many years, word of mouth, TV, books and magazines (and lessons) were the primary method for the delivery of golf info to most golfers.

So, for example, in the 1950s, the arrival of prosperity and TV allows thousands of people to see Ben Hogan for the first time. This is good and people are greatly afected by him.

But TV also creates many illusions in the minds of the viewers. The era of 2D instruction.

(Another effect of Hogan and televised golf 'arriving' in the popular consciousness at the same time is TV's role in creating his 'myth'. The other factor is the shift from matchplay to strokeplay - Hogan arguably developed the first great swing designed not to have things go wrong, rather than have them go right - or 'tournament golf' as he called it in Five Lessons).

In the magazines, we then went through a long period where instructors said stuff like:

'99% of you golfers don't don't turn your body enough' (not true in my case!)

The type of thing you have to say if you are trying to communicate via a mass medium. You have to treat every information recipient as though they are the same.

Some, like Jacobs, saw that not all golfers were the same and resisted the tempation to create a system.

But David Leadbetter inflicted his preferences (early wrist set etc) on everyone.

The internet is changing things again.
 
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Hogan's myth and the teaching of the "lag" concept killed my development. That and the witch hunt against the flip.

I wish that someone would have told me 5yrs ago:
1) generate club head speed
2) release the club down on the ball
3) goals are center clubface hit + as much speed as you can manage whilst retaining balance

It is as simple as that. All this heavy hit, lag, angles, positions bullshit is for the birds.

The temptation for the teacher to go "deep" is high as there is money to be made as long as golfers are terrible (at least temporarily until they quit).
 
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Yeah I was going to say that 'Internet Mark I' was a disaster too.

The arguments and the book that meant you could win them cos you knew 'LAW'!
 
I read 5 Lessons when I was 18. I more or less never took lessons until then. I developed into a somewhat accomplished junior golfer by then, but I started to struggle badly with my swing and couldn't figure out how to fix it. So of course, 5 Lessons was recommended to me. The having the knees inward screwed me up as well as having that left arm so straight like Hogan did. The plane probably did as much good as it did bad...you see, back then I really didn't even know what plane was. But by far and away for me, the grip in 5 Lessons did more bad than good. Took me another 15 years to finally expunge that grip completely from my swing and then reap the rewards.

I like lag and I like shaft lean. I just think it's too often misinterpreted, over done and the ways people go about getting them are too difficult to repeat time after time.

I think every golfer who is semi-serious about getting better should know D-Plane like the back of their hand. We can quibble, philosophize and wax poetically about the biomechanics part. It's not to play down the importance of the biomechanical side, but there are too many variables to get concrete conclusions for every golfer.






3JACK
 
Depends on the student at hand. It's usually never as simple as 1 thing...fix it and be done. If it were, there would be a lot more scratch golfers in the world.

I find more often than not it's a chain of things. And the key is find the starting part of the chain. And even then, because you've ingrained that link of compensations, there are likely to be some parts that are now better, but still need some work because you have to get rid of what you've ingrained.

What strict, pop golf instruction method teachers tend to do is if you're springing a leak in the roof, they will try to reconstruct the house to look almost exactly like the other 100 houses they built.






3JACK

I think a lot of what Lee was talking about was at the professional level. Of course at the amateur level there are often many things to fix, I know I have a lot of things going on in my swing that are far from ideal and would "make Ben Hogan puke" to borrow from another thread.

I like what he said about Tiger. "You're Tiger Woods man......what the h3ll are you doing" etc. Tiger had a shot that he would hit from time to time that he didn't like so he blew the whole thing up (with Haney). He will tell you he got better with the irons and I would agree, but how much of that was just getting older and understanding that you don't need to nuke every iron shot? His driving got SO bad that no matter how good the irons were I would have wondered if I was working on the right stuff long ago, and I'm not Tiger Freaking Woods.
 
The Five Fundamentals created an entire generation of slicers as I see it. It should have be called "how not to hook". Weak grip, open face, lag and turn through is "FORE, right" for the vast majority of people I teach. The answer he found in the dirt was his way of fixing HIS problem, certainly not a Bible for the masses. As for Lee Buck, he said he'd never take a lesson from anyone who couldn't beat him so i dont think he's totally enamored with the "teacher era". Another "in the dirt" guy.
 
The Five Fundamentals created an entire generation of slicers as I see it. It should have be called "how not to hook". Weak grip, open face, lag and turn through is "FORE, right" for the vast majority of people I teach. The answer he found in the dirt was his way of fixing HIS problem, certainly not a Bible for the masses. As for Lee Buck, he said he'd never take a lesson from anyone who couldn't beat him so i dont think he's totally enamored with the "teacher era". Another "in the dirt" guy.

Yeah I've heard that quote, but I must say when it comes to many pros he is right on with his comment. Why tear down the house for a leaky roof?

BTW, I haven't found a teacher I can beat yet so I'll keep taking lessons.
 
I flat out love Lee Trevino, it is a real shame he is not on TV more. The man is the most entertaining Golfer of my lifetime and we will probably never see another superstar player with the charisma and sense of humor as him again.
I really miss following him at Key Biscayne since the Royal Caribbean classic was ended.
 
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