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Whenever I have the opportunity to advise an amateur golfer on their game, I always make the same recommendation: if you’re serious about improving your level and becoming a better player, you need to find a good teacher. It’s important to have an expert pair of eyes analyse your game, and the best way to do this is through private golf lessons. A good coach will give you the keys to unlock your golf performance, lower your score, and have more fun with higher quality shots.
The question now is how to find a teacher who effectively helps you and offers a professional service? In this post, I’ll provide you with some useful points to help you with the task.
Firstly, the coach does not need to be a great player; but they must be a skilled teacher who can help us improve. For this, communication is key. They must be able to handle theoretical concepts and abstract principles and effectively explain and implement them. In short, our golf instructor must be an open and effective communicator.
Professionalism, dedication and passion are essential. During your golf lessons, mobile phones should be switched off to allow the class to be a time of sacred dedication for both teacher and student. It goes without saying that punctuality is a key issue; Whether it’s implementing a high-performance program or beginner lessons, the instructor will want to assess these positions: front, target line, body line, and back. They will then give you objectives and outline a strategy on how to achieve them.
It is also crucial to have a good relationship and connection with your teacher if you want to improve your golf performance.
Although our coach doesn’t need to be an excellent golfer, they must have the basic skills to be able to demonstrate what they are trying to explain. Watching demos is extremely useful, as visual stimulation is often much more important than oral stimulation. As the saying goes, “a picture is worth a thousand words. ” Through my experience working with children at our Black Iron Golf Academy on the Costa del Sol, I’ve discovered that kids sometimes struggle to understand verbal explanations. That’s why the instructor should have a good swing. That’s whay the instructor should have a good swing. Children’s eyes are like cameras, and they repeat everything they see. Another important point is technology.
It is important that you get the right advice when buying equipment so that they are tools that really help your game. If you find yourself at a point where you think you need a change of equipment, my advice is to ask an expert who understands fitting, biomechanics and can measure you with a launch monitor to get more accurate data about your swing and recommend equipment that will enhance your game; Maybe you are in a process of technical changes and therefore it is better to wait, or by making a slight change to your clubs you can continue to use them without having to spend a large amount of money; It can also happen that you change them and they are not exactly what you need, so I recommend investing in a good fitting before making hasty decisions;
Nowadays, technology exists and it is also a differentiating factor; While it is true that not all schools can or choose to invest in it, it is ideal to complement training with technology that helps to get more accurate data on what is happening; This information helps our teacher to understand and make better decisions and to measure progress; You start to see results sooner and more consistently;
From something as simple as a video analysis with a mobile camera to launch monitors like TrackMan. We will do another post on the different types of technology being used but ultimately, what I want to get across to you is that, from free swing analysis using your mobile phone camera to the latest technology, technology, albeit at different levels, is available to our golf teachers and it is up to the player to decide if they want to incorporate it and accelerate their learning as much as possible while enjoying a different golf lesson experience; And in relation to the above, a golf teacher has to be up-to-date, and read about advances, discoveries and new trends that can help his students. If a golf teaching professional has been out of date for 20 years, it’s like a history teacher teaching your children that what lies to the east of Germany is the USSR; In the old days it was taught with the naked eye, transmitting sensations described by good players, the problem is that technology shows that there is a huge difference between the sensations of good players and what is actually happening in the golf swing; Advances such as TrackMan or research and analysis software such as Jacobs3D have revolutionised what we knew about the laws of ball flight or the biomechanics of the swing and anyone who is not up to date on this, for example, doesn’t understand the swing golf. If the teacher in question is not up to date, the value of all the experience accumulated over the years in a field of practice will have largely vanished;
We must not forget that cheap is often expensive; If the price of a class is not worthy of what a professional would charge, it is very likely that the service they are going to provide will not be up to the mark either;.
It is desirable that the professional in question has some training other than golf; This is a complex and very different task from playing, which is not only within the reach of an educated person, but it can be a good start; Furthermore, if we are going to put children in their hands, the golf teacher must be an educator and transmit values to the pupils;
A neat and tidy appearance is often the calling card of serious and disciplined people, just the kind of professional you need to commit to trying to help you.
Last but not least, take advice from results: ask golfers at your level who are improving who is helping them, ask expert players who they trust for advice. If you start hearing a name often, you may be on track.
Once you have a name, you can make an appointment with him or her (don’t be afraid to teach with women, as they are often more communicative and understandable), have a golf talk, should be interested in your claimslisten to his diagnosis and what work plan he proposes, what method he uses, etc. If you hit it off and his or her personal and professional profile suits you, you may be the person to help you take your golf to where you want it to be;
Don’t forget that in a discipline as complex as golf nothing and nobody guarantees immediate success, be patient, your development will depend on your time available to practice, your skills and many other factors that do not necessarily depend on your teacher. Therefore, try to find the path that you think will best help you to enjoy this exciting sport;
Daniel Colomar
