Dave Johnson PGA

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Golf Cheese!

The Thoughtful golfer: part 1

A couple of years ago a young man who has a resume of All American, NCAA Division II individual champion and Asian tour player and multiple tournament wins, approached me to gather information about the swing. I said to him, “before we discuss anything I want you to know I come from a distinct bias, because I teach and coach golfers I believe that it’s important to present concepts by relating them to a process.”
I knew that this golfer didn’t have a specific coach and I knew he was incredibly creative and curious. I continued, “as you filter my information through the biases of your experiences I expect you to challenge what you are processing and if I have done my work you will understand why I believe what I believe”.

When it comes to discussing golf with amateurs or professionals it is useful to recognize that we are biased! The bias or biases that we present is the accumulation of experiences, education, culture, mentors, goals, needs, and creativity (synthetic or original). So it may not come as surprise that
when I’m being entertained by the posts that appear on Facebook golf groups there are a plethora of biases that are passionately defended by their authors. Some of the topics include:
•Is feel more important than mechanics
•club focus swing versus body centric swing, •technology: is it really beneficial,
•internal focus versus external focus,
•What is fundamental to a golf swing
•coaching versus teaching
•swing plane or no swing plane
•KISS (my personal pet peeve)
Just to name a few. Not too surprising is that opinions/points of view/biases are rarely shifted by the comments from others.
Why is our mind closed to change and being challenged? It’s because we have become comfortable with our bias and to shift a paradigm means we what believe may be based on facts and truths that are not!

To be continued....

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Golf Cheese: “golf ball launch monitors”
Dave Johnson PGA 1/18/19

Here are some comments from from a Facebook post discussing data about golf ball launch monitors: beneficial or delusional. 🏌️

“The world of quantitative analysis considers this premise, “if you can measure it then you can improve it.” It starts with score, if you score lower you have improved your game, score wise! How can we score better? Keeping golf stats, greens in reg, fairways hit, sand save percentage, putting stats, penalty strokes per round etc. How can we improve our golf stats? Understand shot dispersion...knowing each club’s potential distance(s) and standard deviation of accuracy then work on the most pronounced variants. How can we improve the variants? Check our equipment’s essential components (fitting), manage centerness of contact. Distance variant, ball speed and trajectory, club’s angle of attack and path orientation with a side benefit the reduction of of ball flight curvature. How can we do that? Define the parameters of ball speed, angle of attack, clubface, path... How can we do that? Measure those elements? How can we do that? Ball flight monitors!
Quantitative analysis is a process and a journey that uses statistics, Statistics help suggest adjustments to the golfer’s swing and the swing is essential to playing better golf. Quality contact is measurable and essentially the vehicle that lets the golfer have a more pleasant journey through the course. We learn the essentials of driving a car before we take to the highway!
Quality data allows us to make informed decisions, launch monitors provide the data so of course it needs no defending...what needs defending is why you wouldn’t take advantage of that data if its available!! 🤯🤔” Dave Johnson

“So you teach a swing on a range using trackman (a brand if launch monitor) but, then you go to the golf course and discover that the surface is not the same . How can you produce the same angle of attack on a flat lie to a downhill lie. Downhill will be steeper. So training ones self in the same situation it won’t work” . David Recko

“Surprising comment...as the club orbits the body it produces the quantitative elements to a base line situation “the flat lie”. Numbers guide the coach/golfer to verify and relate to the movements that can produce a playable pattern.
Coach/instructor says to mentee, “the golf course is not always flat when you experience an uneven lie (in most situations) maintain the orientation of the club to you, but alter the orientation of your body to the slope until the club contacts the ground (low point) in as nearly a normal spot as possible”. This is a function of having part of the process of address to include a tactic that adjusts for the altering terrain.
The coach/teacher then says, “the changing terrain will alter the ball flight, observe the outcomes in relation to the slopes.”
The coach reminds the mentee, “at least 18 shots are hit from level lies.” For the tour player that’s at least 50% of their full swings...for the bogey golfer that’s at least 33%. That means the most common lie that a golfer plays from is ‘flat’! I hope as a coach you would encourage your students to build a good portion of their positional strategy to include hitting toward level lies.
“So training ones self in the same situation”...creates a baseline.” Dave Johnson

The Golf Cheese : 1/08/19
”To Curve or Not to Curve”
Dave Johnson PGA

An anecdote and an opinion.
Is it better for a golfer to try and hit the ball straight or play an intentional curve as a basic shot?

Interesting debate😎. It seems that some factors to assess are, age, equipment, strategies and tendencies.
One of my students who competed in the 1990’s, Won her age group in the Junior World Championship, carried a +4 index, ranked number 5 in the world, received a full ride to a D1 college, lead the nation in driving accuracy (89%) her sophomore year and earned status on the LPGA in her first attempt. Our strategy was to keep the ball over the golf course by curving the ball (both directions).... Introduce the modification of the ball and clubs, the ball spins less and the club has a more stable MOI, reducing deflection and uneven compression of the ball. The evolving equipment took away her advantage of the curving creative ability. The old ball spun more and it was necessary to manage the side spin to attack the course. Older golfers or those trained by older mentors, seem to still lean toward a shot shape. The evolution of the ball, club and immediate feed back, optimizes trajectories and spins, based on ball speed and club orientation. Greater carry, less curve and more distance are the by product.
Where dominant shot shape may make sense, the gain in distance and the likelihood of a double cross being reduced may make the straight shot appealing because a pull or a push are smaller errors than at pull draw/hook or push fade/slice.
Personally I encourage/train a straight shot or minimize curvature. Managing trajectory helps to keep the ball in play, increase carry or use the ground to attack the course based on today’s equipment and availability of data. My opinion take advantage of today’s technology and learn to hit the ball as straight as you can!

Golf Cheese / implicit and explicit learning.
Dave Jonson PGA
1/05/19

This is a few posts about some observations made by Jake Hutt a teaching professional at the Stanford GC, Palo Alto, CA.

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Jake Hutt very interesting conversation with Craig Parker regarding explicit and implicit learning. I would suggest Post Modern Golf is predominately explicit in its communication. Are you not learning from it? I believe many coaches use implicit styles because they have not challenged themselves to use explicit styles effectively. One my first teachers,an excellent player, received lessons from a pro who was quadriplegic. He had to become a master of verbal communication. Could you sit on your hands and teach someone to hold the golf club, produce impact....? Have you coached a blind golfer yet? The more tools you can possess when teaching the more choices are at your disposal to present an idea/concept to a student . If your tools are a hammer and a screwdriver then hopefully your students are nails and screws.
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Dave Johnson I’m absolutely learning from everyone and everything!

How I understand explicit learning is when the student is given a verbal cue and expected to perform an action based on that interpretation ex) Coach observes golfer with slice. Coach gives the verbal cues to, “roll arms through impact, drop hands from top of backswing, swing to right field.” Student now has 3 conscious rules to invest in - all being verbal cues.

Coach B sends student to the tree in the back of the range and says come back and see me once you can get the ball to curve right to left around the tree.

The research I’ve done says, while it might take more time, the student who goes to the tree is more likely to perform the new action under pressure. He has 1 rule to invest in (get ball curving around tree). The subconscious part of the brain has learned the action via implicit learning.

The student given the verbal cues is less likely to perform the action under pressure because he has 3 sets of rules to invest in, all of which are verbal cues. He is relying on his conscious brain to perform the actions because he learned explicitly. This is the student sitting at #1 tee box going through his checklist of things before he hits a slice into the woods.

I know there is far more to it than this and I may be off, curious to hear your thoughts!🙏🏼

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Jake Hutt thanks for providing an in-depth answer. I find it interesting that the comparison of subconscious vs conscious learning has the bias that subconscious is superior to conscious. From that it is deduced that implicit learning is better than explicit. Just because studies seem to justify an outcome the research often is drawn to outcomes that support a point of view. This is defined as ‘confirmation bias’.
What you are reporting I’m sure is what is portrayed in the opinions and details of the studies.
Let’s relate to coach B. Student goes to back of range and attempts curve the ball around the tree with nothing more than the request. If there are no cues or basic information to affect the change. The 1 rule ‘to curve the ball”, will require multiple conscious changes all of which require conscious intervention. Conscious envisioning a new shot shape, conscious understanding of spin and ballistics, conscious adjustment to posture and its components and conscious understanding of club design and conscious application of force to the club. Until that information is understood sending a golfer out to curve a ball around a tree using subconscious implicit learning is folly.

Regarding Coach A, explicit learning can lead to subconscious acquisition via conscious cues. The experiences created by the ‘explicit rules’ will/can leave an impression on the subconscious (btw the mind takes words and turns most of them into pictures, therefore verbal cues become visual). If the 3 conscious rules are similar or exactly the ones suggested to student A to remove a slice. Then the student is destined to fail, IMO and experience, those would be awful rules to provide the golfer. Adding anti slice info into a flawed system does remove the flaws that produce the undesirable outcome. But it does requires conscious application of the rules to hold off the slice. Therefore, if the explicit rules are omitted the slice returns. That shouldn’t be an indictment of explicit learning, but rather a criticism of teaching/coaching beliefs.
I suggest we learn just as effectively implicitly as explicitly and perform effectively consciously and subconsciously.
It’s sometimes necessary to challenge the status quo to grow.
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This is open for conversation🏌️⛳️🤔