Your 1st lesson!

[kid2]

Ok before i get things rolling i mean no disrespect to any Teaching Professional on the Forum.

Right,
Some of you may have experienced this and some of you may not.....
Iv never had a lesson and want to keep it that way for as long as i can....I get great satisfaction out of mending things myself....Ill always ask advice and got great help from some of the lads on here (they know who they are) .....

Anyway....My cousin was given a one hour lesson for his birthday for a local young pro and went last night...He worked on the odd thing or 2 with him but after talking with him earlier he seems no more educated than before it......

What im wondering is....If you have a certain issue with whatever part of your game is there a possibility that you can be given just a taste of whats wrong in a lesson so that you'll pay for another and go back for more......

In my opinion if i payed 60 euro's for a 1 hour lesson then i would hope that i was given the right direction to go in rather than just partial information about my game......
Or am i totally off the beaten track.

Again if iv offended anyone im sorry it wasn't my intention.

 

[Tiger]

I've found that you need to have a teaching pro that appeals to your learning style. I've had three but if I'd started with the pro I'm with now I'd be a much better player. That doesn't mean the other two were bad, I just didn't get what they were asking me to do as quickly. The only problem I'm having at the moment is I'm not playing enough golf, especially not enough qualifying competitions to get better and that handicap down.

For me it is a journey, every lesson I've learnt one or two things I've taken them away and worked on them and then, when I've gone back I've looked at a couplemore thing. You can't do it all at once so layering is surely the only way you'll improve.

That said there are lots of people on here that have started playing after me, taken no lessons and have a much lower handicap

 

[ScienceBoy]

My last pro was great! We had a good rapport and I thought him a great communicator of the golf swing.

My current pro has picked up on something my old pro did not, I have reviewed videos and it is something I have always done but corrected for.

Now whether it was intentional by my old pro I am not sure because I could strike the ball well and consistently.

My new pro I struggle to learn from, I have had 3 lessons and I am not making the same kind of progress. OK I admit its not directly comparable because I am at a different place in my golfing life now but I can see the differences and I prefer my old pro!

I could go back and see him again but I cannot afford him at non member rates!

 

[Birchy]

All depends on the teacher and the pupil. Surely in that hour he must of been shown something that he needs to work on? If not then thats not good and he shouldnt go back to him. The key then is to practice what you have been shown like mad. The pro at our course says far too many people just have a lesson one week then go back a week later and theyve not even practiced what he showed them the week before. Like everything some are better than other but imo you only get out of a lesson what you put into practicing what youve been shown.

 

[Alex1975]

I have never found a pro that I actually trusted bar the guy I took my 1st few lessons with who then vanished into where ever.

I have been with a few pros all of whom where very bad business people and were far more interested in my money than my swing or making sure I got the full time I had paid for.

I would love to find someone who I could trust, wanted to know what I wanted out of the game and was as dedicated as I am.

I get alot more out of spending some time with a friend and his camera as we can actually talk about what we see. I then have an understanding of what he is asking of me and that is the key point for me, no point telling me to do something if your not going to tell me why.

I am thinking of getting a course with one of the top 25 teaching pros but I am a little bit sceptical about club pros now so I am not rushing into anything.

It is my understanding that PGA pros do a module on customer relations but I think its not something you can be taught. I feel for the most part that they spend so much time learning, learning to teach and then teaching that there lust for the game goes so they cannot ID with there customers. The pro at the range I use does not even play golf anymore.... WTF???


:rant::sbox:

 

[louise_a]

I did want a full lessonb, just a few pointers on where I was going wrong, so I took "play 3 holes with the pro" option, actually turned out to be 4 holes for £25.
i got a few pointers on errors I was making, the best being my chipping which has improved beyond all recognition.
Yesterday I popped a chip over a stream infront of the green to a foot from the flag, previously it would have either been in the water or thinned to the far side of the green.

 

[Achilles]

I think it's important for lessons to be focussed on a specific area - too much new information is asking for trouble. I had a short game lesson at the start of the season, and arguably everything that was said to me was already in my head. However, with the Pro there to talk me through it and correct the minor faults which I was unaware of, things clicked. A lesson doesn't have to give you new info to be effective. One analogy can be the clincher for some people and make that lesson worthwhile.

 

[swanny32]

I am on my 3rd pro. The first two were unable to fix my slice at all, granted I only gave the first pro one go, the second guy I had 4 or 5 lessons with and he completely misdiagnosed me. My latest pro had me hitting a draw within 5 minutes. Since then I have had about 5 or 6 lessons with him and have another one "in the bin" for sometime soon. He's fantastic, he never leaves anything hanging to address for the next lesson. Generally we'll work on one thing and one thing only, he has probably seen other things wrong with my swing but doesn't mention anything about them at all.

Usually I'll go to him with a fault or something in particular that I want to work on i.e. bunkers, chipping, slice etc but my last lesson all I did was hit some balls in front of him and he picked something out that he wanted me to work on which was sliding my hips and being less "armsy", again, nothing was left for next time, we covered everything in an hour, got it all on tape and I left, as always, very confident with what he wanted me to achieve with clear drills and little things to work on.

My gripe with my pro is that when I'm hitting shots on the range or out on the course with him, I don't seem to put a foot wrong, every shot is crisp, out the middle of the club and exactly what I'm trying to do......as soon as he's not around I'm doing everything from air shots to massive power fades. It would probably be too expensive to get him to walk around with me every time I played in a competition though.

 

[Airlie_Andy]

I look at it as building your swing. I'd never had a lesson in my life before before last November and swing looked like an Octopus putting a deck chair up. It was mainly arms with loads of swaying of the hips but no real weight transfer. Now I've got my 6th lesson tonight and in that time I've basically eliminated the sway, improved my posture started turning my body more and connecting the arms more. But, each of those things took about a month to learn to the point that I don't need to think too much about it. When youve been swinging the same way for a long time it takes a lot of work to stop the sub-conscious from automatically doing it again. So now each lesson looks at the next piece in the puzzle, this month has been spent trying to get my hips to "fire" earlier so I can get into a better impact position. Hopefully it's improved.

 

[HawkeyeMS]

Sounds like thread for Homer

 

[HomerJSimpson]

Sounds like thread for Homer

Easy tiger.

To be honest I agree with the other comments. It is pretty much all about finding a pro you trust to take your game forward and more importantly can impart that information in a manner that you can understand, take away, work on and then build into your game.

Of the three pros I've used in the last seven years, the first guy was preety good. Young and enthusiastic he never got bogged down to much in being in particular positions, bar getting the basics right and worked hard on using what you had. He got me from 18-12 and then went off and had numerous operations on his knee and hip and so was out of action.

The guy I went to is a top teacher at N1 golf. Much more technical it but without it being a case of blinded by science. It was more about being in the right places but he had the knack of getting it across so I understood it and the drills made the changes very easy to adapt. We got down to 10 and then yo-yoed between 10-14. In the end I just felt we'd reached a point where I was working hard and didn't seem to be making that breakthrough back towards 10 or so I was looking at.

I went to the current guy simply for a fresh view on things. I didn't really want a major change but he is a disciple of the Plane Truth (Jim Hardy) system and from lesson 1 wanted me to swing on more on one plane. The revelations since December have been staggering. There are still a lot of issues to be addressed and it is a swing still being rebuilt. However if you ask Hawkeye or any of the others who play regularly with me then they will all say the ball striking has changed out of all recognition and the bad shot tends to be the same one so it takes one side of the course out of the equation which helps. He is technical but its more a case of telling you what is worng and almost forcing you to solve the puzzle yourself and get the feel for it on your own with him just adding the nips and tucks when required. It is a very strange two way street way of being taught but he has invigorated me and it is working.

On the flip side to this, I have used my club pro from time to time. I know him socially from before I was a member at the club and he is a good teacher with a good following amongst the members He teaches in a very traditional manner but for some reason what he tells me to do will click during the lesson and straight after but never seems to seep in for any duration. Again nothing wrong with what he does but I just don't seem to have that connection

I've never been blessed as a natural golfer and so have always had to have a pros help. I think the best way to find a pro is to ask around and start by word of mouth. If a lot of guys recommend a pro then chances are he's pretty good. Have a chat with him and explain what you want to get out of any lessons. That way he can structure what he shows you around what you want. Ifits a quick look over and a few tweaks he can sort the major issues out but if you are looking to build something more solid and reliable it will take time.

Its like anything though. If you never try you won't know. I've never been a great fan of self-diagnosing but it works for some. It depends on who you are, how you receive information and to a certain degree how prepared you are to work at the changes and put the effort in

 

[Foxholer]

Ok before i get things rolling i mean no disrespect to any Teaching Professional on the Forum.

Right,
Some of you may have experienced this and some of you may not.....
Iv never had a lesson and want to keep it that way for as long as i can....I get great satisfaction out of mending things myself....Ill always ask advice and got great help from some of the lads on here (they know who they are) .....

Anyway....My cousin was given a one hour lesson for his birthday for a local young pro and went last night...He worked on the odd thing or 2 with him but after talking with him earlier he seems no more educated than before it......

What im wondering is....If you have a certain issue with whatever part of your game is there a possibility that you can be given just a taste of whats wrong in a lesson so that you'll pay for another and go back for more......

In my opinion if i payed 60 euro's for a 1 hour lesson then i would hope that i was given the right direction to go in rather than just partial information about my game......
Or am i totally off the beaten track.

Again if iv offended anyone im sorry it wasn't my intention.

I think you are expecting a little too much getting your cousin to explain what he got out of the lesson.

It's pretty much guaranteed that only 1 or 2 things actually 'stick' from any lesson - maybe 3 at most. And while there are some Pros who are simply concerned with 'clocking up the hours', most (good ones) will focus on a particular aspect and, at least try to, communicate the reasons for making any change.

Finding 'the right' Pro is also important. Before starting lessons, I believe they should be interviewed to ensure that they are on the same track as their customer (you or whoever) who is going to be paying them some serious funds and would want to see some return!