Capitalizing on Past Experience

by Dr. Richard C. Myers

WWW.THINKANDREACHPAR.COM

When I was in high school, the teacher would make us figure out the proposition for ourselves. I tried conscientiously to get the answer. I did not look in the back of the book and memorize the answers like many of my friends. I finally came to the conclusion that it had taken civilization some million years to discover that parallel lines cut by another line had certain peculiarities, and I could not be expected to discover them overnight.

The same is true of golf. We can save much time if we absorb what is already pretty well known about golf, if we will just use much of the orthodox form of golfers today. It is true there are good golfers who have never taken a lesson, but most of them are good imitators. Also, there are hundreds of thousands who have taken lessons and are still sorry players. 

It can be very frustrating to find out after playing for ten years that a flaw could have been corrected by a competent professional. This does not mean that we should not take lessons or that we should not utilize other available training aids. We should obtain all the visual instruction that we can.

This can come from books, videos, CD's and other learning instruction.

It has taken modern golf as we know it over 500 years to develop the grip, stance, and swing that we use today. We need to take advantage of these other new tools to take advantage of these discoveries.

When you first begin to take golf lessons, it is best to spread the instruction time over many parts of the game, not just one segment. For example if you had the good fortune to be able to take a series of lessons from Tiger Woods, it would be best to have a playing lesson with all broad aspects of the game, rather than just practicing your swing, for example. It has been proven that learning is better if tied to the whole process than piece by piece.

Of course Tiger is not always available to give us lessons. And after we have pretty much learned to play, we need to practice to improve our individual weaknesses or flaws.