Consistently Inconsistent-Why Does Golf Have To Be So Hard? .

If I had a penny for every time someone came to me and told me they wanted to be consistent with their golf game I’d be rich! Truth be told, everyone that comes for coaching is consistent, in general not to be mean or rude, they are consistently bad. They are consistent with their motor patterns a.k.a. movement of their bodies, most times highly dysfunctional. They are consistent with their thoughts (mainly confusion) as well as consistently in pain, not physical but emotional, again, dysfunctional. They are consistent in their emotions for sure and many perceive that conquering the game will take no time at all a few “tweaks” is all they need..you guessed it, dysfunctional and maybe a tad distorted. I shared in a coaching session the other day I have 30+ years in the game being trained by the best teachers and coaches in the world and I am still learning, gaining skills and finally starting to feel like “I get it”. Nobody wants to stink in golf or in life. We like peace. We like happiness and joy, we dislike disruption of schedule and/or adversity for long periods of time. Life and golf can surely offer disruption of peace!  What has always interested and truthfully befuddled me is that we will hire a coach or seek help  for life, business, spiritual  matters, get therapy endlessly, take pills that promise happiness, fat loss, memory gain, hair growth or vitality and spend thousands yet we will not hire the services of a qualified golf coach/instructor to improve our quality of play and enjoyment of the game. We want to “do it on our own” or even worse take “tips” from our friends/loved ones who are  worse than us in many ways maybe score a bit better but are they qualified to assess and teach you… is this functional? The chances of creating long term or really any success in this game without a solid foundation rooted in proper technique, body movement, data collection from practice and on course play and emotional control is, (drum roll)… 0%, I am sorry to write this but this is through experience I have come to this conclusion. I will share golf is like life in many ways and if we don’t have the proper guidance we fail pretty miserably over and over again. We all know the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over yet expecting different results. Fun..said no one ever. Yet we do it because we saw it on the internet or it worked for a friend; I am charged I believe to stop the insanity!

Here is what I see most if not all are inconsistent with, 1. Start point of a shot (we are terrible at best at aim of the club face at address because we don’t understand path to face relationship and how/why the ball curves and if we can’t aim the face we cannot align our body either..disaster looms), 2. Strike on the club face (why can we not hit the center of the face? Ever? Hmmmm..), 3. Turf interaction (too much, too little, behind the ball, ahead of the ball…which is it?),and, 4. Curve of the ball (Nobody hits the ball straight, that should also never be the goal-the ball always curves just less or more curve..any ideas what that curve is based on?)

In the coming weeks, months and years we have LOTS to unpack and I hope you find this weekly blog enlightening and maybe even a catalyst to hire coaches (yes plural golf and fitness for sure and I can help with this process) to help you with your game. I also am happy to answer your questions and love comments as they challenge me to be my best as a coach/teacher/person as well.

Let’s all be our best and that starts with assessing where we are at, where we want to get to and how we can get there in the least amount of time and pain..