Entry 25.40

I am so pumped right now. There I am just minding my own business on a Saturday evening watching Skeleton Crew on Disney+ with Shelby. Don’t ask me, she threw it on right as I got home from teaching and guess what? It was pretty good. I mean good enough that we binge watched the whole thing instead of getting bored with it and switching back to college football or golf. But that’s not why I’m pumped. My brother texted me and all I saw flash across my watch was “I’m in shock.” Now I’m scrambling for my phone. This is my brother who just got married in July and is figuring out what it means to be an adult. Like my brain likes to do, I’m immediately thinking the worst. I open his message as I hold my breath. A quick scan tells me this is not an emergency. Exhale. Not an emergency. Thank goodness. What I find waiting for me is screenshot of whatever golf app my brother uses. Then I see why he’s “in shock”. He must have just finished playing Summer Grove Golf Club and realized how well he had been playing. I see a large +13 above a smaller “Gross: 85”. Talk about a swing of emotions. One second, I’m freaking out that I’m about to make an emergency trip down to Atlanta and the next I’m pumping my fist like I’m Tiger Woods making a big-time putt. My brother just started playing golf while on spring break this year. So about six months. He’s gone from never having played golf to breaking ninety in that span. I just scrolled back to the last time he sent me an update. On 02 September, he played for Pebble Creek Golf Club. He shot thirteen over on the front nine alone. Then twelve over on the back. That happens to be the first time he broke triple digits. In the span of thirty-two days, he broke two big milestones for a new golfer. Now he had been knocking on the door of breaking one hundred for a while. So, I understand why he didn’t go into shock that day. But I also understand why he couldn’t believe it yesterday.

He sent me a video of his swing last week and it was honestly hard to believe this was the same kid that came up to work with me for a couple of days around Independence Day. That’s the only instruction he has ever had, and we did a lot of it. Full swing, short game, putting and two eighteen hole playing lessons. In two days. That is information overload for a new golfer. Really for any golfer. And I have been found guilty quite a few times of creating information overload in a one-hour lesson. Never mind in that many hours. But I did tell him that was going to be the case. And we recorded everything except for the playing lessons. That way he felt comfortable not remembering everything and could go back to rewatch his lessons and keep doing technical work on his own. One of the best decisions I have ever made for my players. Doesn’t mean I stopped working on not overloading players with information. That has been a priority for improvement in my teaching. Not for me. For my players. That’s what they asked of me. I do my very best to be responsive to my players’ needs. And seeing a player take advantage of something I came up with on my own is really cool. I really wasn’t sure if it was worth spending that much money on a couple of GoPro’s, different lenses and microphones, and the hardware to mount them. It absolutely has been. Now I can go back and watch my lessons and critique myself as I teach. If the upload takes a little longer (I have to upload it to GoPro and then I have to wait for it to be processed on their servers) or there is an issue with the link, players are reaching out. The first time it happened, it was all I needed to know. One player is using the option. Mission accomplished. I told another coach about it and was counseled not to because I was losing money because if they couldn’t remember, that means they would need to come back for another lesson which is means I make more money. Not how I operate. Would the extra cash in the bank be nice? Absolutely. Especially after last weekend (big things are coming to my instruction. You aren’t going to want to miss it). But my focus is on my athletes playing better golf and enjoying the game more, not on more money in the bank. I believe the more money part will come as my players find more success and so far, I haven’t been disappointed in my approach.

How did you guys let me get so far off track? In my debrief with my brother about his round, he said some really interesting and important things. He said Tuesday he played one of the worst rounds of his short golfing career. And instead of trying to come out and keep the ball in the fairway or hit more greens, or make more putts, he said he “just came out here to try and feel a little bit better…” The result? Comes at the end of that first phrase: “and then I was just smoking it”. He then followed that up with “I was just trying not to lose 10 golf balls so I was just like I’m gonna hit the three wood maybe hit driver on long par five and just see where it goes and I pared 4/6 of the first holes and just let it go”. I mean not exactly a lofty goal going out there to not lose ten balls. But sometimes finding some success is all that matters. But those last few words. He just let it go. Not what you would expect out of someone who hasn’t been playing the game very long. Usually new players are all about doing everything exactly right and trying to control as much as they can. Instead, he focused on feeling a little better instead of trying to play better. Even my more experienced players struggle with that pitfall. They are “trying to take one side of the golf course out of play” or “trying to make more putts.” The results matter. I get it. The whole point of the game is to score well. No one says “I’m going to out there and hit as many shots as I can.” But if you go out there with the mentality of control, that’s exactly what is going to happen. You are focused on results, just the wrong kind of results. But that pitfall doesn’t just happen when you are playing poorly. It can also trap you when you are playing well. You want to continue playing well so you start trying to make things happen. You might as well start penciling in an extra stroke or two on the next few holes. Until you are playing so poorly you just give up trying. And all of a sudden, you are right back in rhythm and back to playing well. I made sure to let my brother know that trap was hiding in the shadows. It would be so easy just to encourage him to keep playing well. But that would just be setting him up for failure. His response? “Such a great thing about the sport because when you want it, the most is when it ain’t happening and when you just let it happen and play your game and it feels even better that way.” He gets it despite his poor typing and grammatical skills while texting. I gave him some of the best advice I could think of. “I’d save what you just said and pull it out whenever you play. That’s gold”

It’s always better when it is your own advice that you’re taking. That’s how I encourage my players to use their CoachNow space. After lessons, go in and type up your thoughts and feels. When you practice and find something that is doing it for you, go create a new note for yourself. The bonus is that I get to see what is going on in between seeing you. It helps me prepare better for your next session. One thing my players have taught me is that my teaching and coaching needs to be two-way communication (Thank you Man in the Mirror!). I want that to go beyond just when we are in person. We can keep that open line communication going thanks to technology. No, I may not respond to everything that you put in your CoachNow, but I see it. I promise. And it makes a difference. Every evening, I sit down to prepare for my lessons the next day. If you are a new to DGS, I reread our communication about why you are coming to see me. If you are one of my university players, I look at my Calendly to know why you booked a session. If this isn’t your first lesson, I go back to our last lesson wrap up on CoachNow. If you are coming back to continue working on something, I pull up video of your swing. I get a general sense of what the overall movement looks like. Then I look at what we worked on specifically. How it changed from the beginning of the session to the end. That way in our session, I can see if the change stuck. Well, really I’m looking to see if any learning took place.

I’m not talking about knowledge learning; I’m talking about motor learning. In motor learning, we are looking for a “relatively permanent” change. So, if the next day your motion looks more like the one at the beginning of our last session and not the one at the end, then I know where on the learning continuum you are. There is always going to be some change. That’s the really cool thing about us as humans. We are always adapting. That’s what we are supposed to do. Sometimes those adaptations are desired and sometimes they aren’t. You may work on your clubface control since you are slicing the ball and suddenly you are hitting straight pulls. Sometimes they are driven internally or externally. If it has been raining a lot and the ground is saturated, you may change the way you play tee shots or your approach shots. Sometimes we mean for them to happen and sometimes they are a result of something else we are trying to change. You may be trying to shallow out the club but as a result you start hitting behind the ball. The important thing to note is that they are happening. Whether you are trying to make them happen or not. You should be thankful for that. If we didn’t have the ability to adapt subconsciously, playing golf would be so much harder. As much as people want a “repeatable” swing, you really don’t. You aren’t a robot. Every swing you every make is going to be different. It’s important that they are. You wouldn’t want to use the same swing on the tee that you do from just off the green. The amazing thing is that you have to consciously think about way less than you comprehend. A robot has to take in every possible variable and calculate for each one. It’s the only way for a robot to ever hit a decent golf shot. But you? You don’t. You can focus on a few variables and go from there (distance and direction are great options if you aren’t sure where to begin). Your subconscious will calculate more variables than you could ever hope to imagine in the forty seconds you have to hit your shot. The tiny imperceptible changes that occur as a result are you adapting whether you know it or not. Sometimes they work out and sometimes they don’t. Your conscious brain is going to grab ahold of some variable and blame or praise it for the result. But guess what? Your conscious brain has zero idea if that variable actually was the root cause. It might seem like it, but there’s a lot going on that it doesn’t see that has to match up with that one variable to produce the result it does see. Once you realize that, it makes it a lot easier to just let it happen. You can’t account for everything no matter how hard you try. That mental effort of trying manifests in unwanted tension. Unwanted tension kills swings.

When I told my brother how pumped I was to see him break ninety, it would’ve been easy to let his response fuel my ego. “Best teacher!” In reality, it was all him. And I let him know it. He did the work. And “he who does the work, does the learning.” I say this all the time. If I do the work, then I’m doing the learning. If you are using a training aid that assists you, then the amount of learning taking place is slim to none. Use one that you have to work against and the amount of learning skyrockets. Sure, there’s a lot that had to go right for my brother. More than he or I could ever take into account. But one thing is for sure. I’m pumped for him. Keep up the good work bro!