After a bit of encouragement from my buddy Cliff, we decided to take a trip from New York to see Brian in Kentucky this past weekend and to see if there was any hope for our somewhat suspect golf swings. I post here occasionally and my friend is a big TGM believer, so I thought "what the heck," especially due to the fact that I have family in Louisville and I'm always down for a golf road trip.
Just for background, Cliff is a 9 handicap and is pretty technically sound in his game, while I'm a 14 with a pretty unorthodox swing and like most of the free world, I can put together a round of an 82, followed promptly by a 92...go figure.
Our plan was to travel out Thurs eve, take a 4 hour lesson each day for 3 days, sprinkle in a round or two after the lessons, do some gambling in Indiana and take in the local bar action at night (can you say "guys' weekend"??!!). We lined up Caesars' Run in Indiana for Friday, the famous Valhalla for Sat and left Sunday open.
We first met Brian, who I can tell you is every bit as colorful as his virtual persona, but he is also happens to be affable, warm and very compassionate about his teaching and most importantly, about you as a student. He also has about 100 golf stories per minute, which for me, made all my lessons as entertaining as they were enlightening.
I will not bore anyone with the lesson plan for each day, but I will tell you this: for two guys who thought they had half decent games, Brian showed us how we were fundamentally wrong about just about everything we thought we knew about our games and showed us, in a very powerful fashion, how to strike the ball in a dramatically diffent way than we ever experienced....and this was only after DAY ONE!!
We thought, "great stuff for range play, but will what we just learned translate to the golf course," so on we went that afternoon to play at Caesars'. I have to be honest, I was still in the mode of thinking either this guy Mazella was a madman or a genius, but I soon proved this one out based on the shots we both made that day. Cliff was actually hitting his irons two club lengths further and was smokin' his driver. I hit shots that I have never even dreamed of hitting before this lesson, and Cliff actually said my swing looked terrific (trust me, I don't hear these words too often!). Yes, we also hit a few goofy shots and we also took a couple liberties (aka mulligans) along the way, but hey, we were on a mission to turn a decade old swing around in a day and some degree of experimentation and error were part of the days' venue.
We then celebrated our new found swings by gambling at Caesars topped off by a terrific meal and a couple brews at Neros.
Day two Brian focused more on our individual games, and gave laser focus to each of our games. Again, we came out of our lessons thinking we had just come down from Mt Sinai with the stone tablets firmly in hand. Unfortunately, we may have hit a wall of sensory overload in that while we really enjoyed Valhalla, it ate us up alive and the magic that we discovered on day one worked for me for only about 2 or 3 holes. I then went back to my old bastardized swing, or tried unsuccessfully to get my body to do far too many new tricks. More succinctly, I was probably in some funky transitional stage between my old and new swing and hopefully the new one will exorcise the old and I can begin to feel that terrific feel again.
Saturday night we hooked up with Brian at a terrific local bar and learned that Brian has some pretty serious Karaoke talents!
Sunday was leaving day, so my buddy Cliff was intent on squeezing every ounce of Brian magic out of the day, with question after question, fix after fix, until he felt comfortable that he could retain some of what he was taught. In my case, I generally have a case of golf ADD in that I don't do a terrific job of either paying attention to what is taught, or "getting it" immediately, but do have a knack for distilling the most meaningful nuggets and tailoring those to my game. For me it's the "in the dirt" concept from Hogan and going out to hit 10,000 balls before something sinks in. In either case, Cliff and I nervously spent most of the early morning before our lesson at the Waffle House (love that joint), preparing notes that we were sure to forget upon touchdown at LaGuardia.
But alas, Brian did one of those "Brian things" in that he spent the last hour of of lessons creating a very personalized video (no, not that kind!) for us to take home. So, we now have a video that is very specific to each of our swings, that we can fire up at home any time day or night as a reminder of what we need to work on vs some generic swing tape....that was HUGE for both of us. In the past I've seen my swing on video and we've all bought our share of instructional videos, but this sucker intersects those two worlds in that my specific swing and fixes for that swing have been captured "live" and will bring back some very succinct images.
All in all, this was REALLY money well spent. Brian never once gave me a canned fix for my swing and he always knew from day to day where we last left off. He had a terrific "eye" in that he could look at my swing and very quickly assess where the problem was and what the remedy was. He is also a consumate professional in that he was always on time, always prepared for the lesson, knows just the right mix of humor and serious lesson time and was a pleasure to take lessons from.
I have gone from saying "Brian who?" to thinking that this is one (of few) pros that actually has a differentiated approach and only wish that someone would have taught me these concepts years ago. I simply cannot wait to put a few more hours in at the range and start to carve my name in our home course.
Just for background, Cliff is a 9 handicap and is pretty technically sound in his game, while I'm a 14 with a pretty unorthodox swing and like most of the free world, I can put together a round of an 82, followed promptly by a 92...go figure.
Our plan was to travel out Thurs eve, take a 4 hour lesson each day for 3 days, sprinkle in a round or two after the lessons, do some gambling in Indiana and take in the local bar action at night (can you say "guys' weekend"??!!). We lined up Caesars' Run in Indiana for Friday, the famous Valhalla for Sat and left Sunday open.
We first met Brian, who I can tell you is every bit as colorful as his virtual persona, but he is also happens to be affable, warm and very compassionate about his teaching and most importantly, about you as a student. He also has about 100 golf stories per minute, which for me, made all my lessons as entertaining as they were enlightening.
I will not bore anyone with the lesson plan for each day, but I will tell you this: for two guys who thought they had half decent games, Brian showed us how we were fundamentally wrong about just about everything we thought we knew about our games and showed us, in a very powerful fashion, how to strike the ball in a dramatically diffent way than we ever experienced....and this was only after DAY ONE!!
We thought, "great stuff for range play, but will what we just learned translate to the golf course," so on we went that afternoon to play at Caesars'. I have to be honest, I was still in the mode of thinking either this guy Mazella was a madman or a genius, but I soon proved this one out based on the shots we both made that day. Cliff was actually hitting his irons two club lengths further and was smokin' his driver. I hit shots that I have never even dreamed of hitting before this lesson, and Cliff actually said my swing looked terrific (trust me, I don't hear these words too often!). Yes, we also hit a few goofy shots and we also took a couple liberties (aka mulligans) along the way, but hey, we were on a mission to turn a decade old swing around in a day and some degree of experimentation and error were part of the days' venue.
We then celebrated our new found swings by gambling at Caesars topped off by a terrific meal and a couple brews at Neros.
Day two Brian focused more on our individual games, and gave laser focus to each of our games. Again, we came out of our lessons thinking we had just come down from Mt Sinai with the stone tablets firmly in hand. Unfortunately, we may have hit a wall of sensory overload in that while we really enjoyed Valhalla, it ate us up alive and the magic that we discovered on day one worked for me for only about 2 or 3 holes. I then went back to my old bastardized swing, or tried unsuccessfully to get my body to do far too many new tricks. More succinctly, I was probably in some funky transitional stage between my old and new swing and hopefully the new one will exorcise the old and I can begin to feel that terrific feel again.
Saturday night we hooked up with Brian at a terrific local bar and learned that Brian has some pretty serious Karaoke talents!
Sunday was leaving day, so my buddy Cliff was intent on squeezing every ounce of Brian magic out of the day, with question after question, fix after fix, until he felt comfortable that he could retain some of what he was taught. In my case, I generally have a case of golf ADD in that I don't do a terrific job of either paying attention to what is taught, or "getting it" immediately, but do have a knack for distilling the most meaningful nuggets and tailoring those to my game. For me it's the "in the dirt" concept from Hogan and going out to hit 10,000 balls before something sinks in. In either case, Cliff and I nervously spent most of the early morning before our lesson at the Waffle House (love that joint), preparing notes that we were sure to forget upon touchdown at LaGuardia.
But alas, Brian did one of those "Brian things" in that he spent the last hour of of lessons creating a very personalized video (no, not that kind!) for us to take home. So, we now have a video that is very specific to each of our swings, that we can fire up at home any time day or night as a reminder of what we need to work on vs some generic swing tape....that was HUGE for both of us. In the past I've seen my swing on video and we've all bought our share of instructional videos, but this sucker intersects those two worlds in that my specific swing and fixes for that swing have been captured "live" and will bring back some very succinct images.
All in all, this was REALLY money well spent. Brian never once gave me a canned fix for my swing and he always knew from day to day where we last left off. He had a terrific "eye" in that he could look at my swing and very quickly assess where the problem was and what the remedy was. He is also a consumate professional in that he was always on time, always prepared for the lesson, knows just the right mix of humor and serious lesson time and was a pleasure to take lessons from.
I have gone from saying "Brian who?" to thinking that this is one (of few) pros that actually has a differentiated approach and only wish that someone would have taught me these concepts years ago. I simply cannot wait to put a few more hours in at the range and start to carve my name in our home course.
