Are you curious about coaching?

Coach Dom coined the phrase that “it all comes back to golf.” Everything we do eventually reconnects with the fundamental aspects of being a golfer. As an example, the Sixtyone coaching philosophy is based on integrity.

Integrity is regarded as the honesty and truthfulness or accuracy of one’s actions, showing a consistent and uncompromising adherence to strong moral and ethical principles and values. As a Sixtyone ICTM member, if we ask the students to do something, we need to, with honesty and truthfulness, ask ourselves to do the same. We must meet the same standards we set for the students.

We ask students to be curious about golf. How curious are we about coaching golf?

Our goal is to help others learn how to learn to play golf. However, none of us are currently certified golf instructors. Therefore, we intentionally stay away from trying to teach the golf swing from a technical perspective. But that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t be curious about how the golf swing works. We can help students learn to be better golfers by sharing what we ourselves learn. We coach by doing. The more we know, the better we can help others learn.

There are approximately 25 million golfers in the U.S. Each one swings the golf club differently, and over 20 million of them most likely suck at it. There are a lot of ways to move the ball forward. We start with the little things first.

Objective

We want to make golf simple. Mike Malaska has a simple, non-traditional way of thinking about the golf swing. His isn’t the only way. He says so in the first video below. His doesn’t have to be your way. However, a) you should be curious about finding a way and b) until we find something simpler, we use a lot of his way to start most students. Take a look at following videos to get an idea about the Malaska philosophy:

1. In this first video Mike talks about the four basic ways to swing a golf club. Which one works best for you?
2. This video talks about the importance of their hands at impact. The hands control the face.
3. Harder is not helpful. This video discusses the art of effortlessly swinging the club.
4. We already know how to swing a club. Here and here making the swing about tasks.
5. Here and here he talks about how the golf swing is an arc. It’s not a straight line, and that the body simply follows the task the hands want to achieve to run the club into the back of the ball.
6. There are others. This guy isn’t bad. This guy is decent, too. One of the first students to start using Youtube to help his game liked to watch this guy.

Expected outcome

The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. The better each of us get at golf increases the effectiveness of our entire Sixtyone Academy program. The better each of us gets:

• The more we will be able to stay away from the typical keep-your-head-down level of driving range advice and be able to offer valuable insight we have learned about the golf swing.
• The more we will be able to identify swing tendencies and then direct students to curated content on the interwebs that will help them advance as young golfers.
• The more we will encourage curiosity among Academy students by sharing our own experiences.
• The more we will change the way people think about golf, creating more complete and independent young golfers.

Activities

• The key word for today’s session is curious (read: a desire to investigate and know).
• Ask the kids what they want to learn today about putting, chipping and full swings.
• On the range drive home the idea of the swing sequence, starting from the beginning, controlling the clubface and finishing on balance.
• Again, let’s let the kids be in control as much as possible, but make sure to keep driving home the curiosity question. The Middle College students should be a big help here.