Tom Shea's Golf Is Easy Golf Schools Tips that work, The One Plane vs. Two Plane

Tom uses:

Results Based Teaching Programs

When I get together with new students I start with an evaluation process which includes determining their physical capabilities, checking their golf clubs, finding out what they believe about hitting a golf ball and asking them what they want me to help them with. I want to know what their goals are and what they are willing to do to reach these goals. If I believe that their goals are reasonable and they are willing to do the things I give them to do, which will fit easily into their lifestyle, then I give them a money back guarantee. If they do the things I give them to do and they don’t get what they said they wanted, they get their money back.

I give all new students the same canned speech. I say to them “Don’t believe a word I tell you. That’s how you got in this mess-believing people that were supposed to know what they were talking about. Only believe what you discover for yourself to be true and works in short order. No getting worse to get better. Now as a student you have one job. Do what I tell you when I tell and see if it works. Fair enough?”

Whenever possible, I schedule regular sessions on a golf course to see if my students are applying the things we have been working on and to see what .areas of their game need the most attention. We as teachers need to see that what we give our students to do is working. Make sure the student is clear as to what they are to do. I start each session with my returning students by checking the exercises I gave them for homework to see that they are doing precisely what I gave them to do precisely the way I want them doing it. These are not new ideas. The reason these practices have been around for a long time is that they work.

No practice-no progress.

THE IMPACT ZONE by Bobby Clampett

It will help golfers learn about the most important thing in golf-hitting the ball. Ernest Jones, the famous golf instructor said “There is one imperative in golf-hit the ball.” Bobby doesn’t present his book as a book on hitting the ball but it is. He actually tells you to forget about hitting the ball yet the most important thing that happens in the impact zone is that you hit the ball. He focuses on swing dynamics and he does it very effectively.

He also devotes one of his seven chapters entirely to the importance of fitted clubs. Harvey Pennick said “If you have a bad grip you better have a bad swing.” I say that if you have clubs that don’t fit, you can’t make an effective move and hit a good shot. You have to compensate for the fact that the club doesn’t fit. Golf is easy especially compared to hitting a pitched baseball. The easiest way to make it hard is to have clubs that don’t fit. I had a student last week who had come for her third lesson. In her first lesson we were fortunate enough to free her up from her twenty point check list of swing thoughts and she reported that she hit the ball 30% farther with all of her clubs. Then it became time to develop a more natural hitting action that didn’t require her to compensate for her misfit clubs (we established the fact that her clubs didn’t fit in her first lesson. I don’t work with anybody without checking their clubs in the first lesson.) She couldn’t make her most effective move with her way too upright and too long clubs. We are going to take care of that situation.

Read Bobby’s book. Learn about hitting dynamics. Find a teacher who fits clubs and who can help you hit the ball better in short order.

The Butcher Has His Thumb On The Scale

Many golf professionals, club-fitters and equipment manufacturers’ reps use launch monitors to fit and sell clubs. This equipment can be very useful. It provides information such as launch angle, spin rate, club head speed and much more. It also tells you how far you hit the ball. Here is where the problems begin. These machines have a feature sometimes known as a boost. What this allows the operator to do is to “boost’ the distance readout i.e. if you hit a ball 200 yards, the machine could say hit it 220 yards or more. Some of these machines have four levels of boost. I don’t really understand why these launch monitors have this feature in the first place. I can’t think of one honest reason to have this feature. Golf simulators also have this boost feature.

Unsuspecting consumers buy golf clubs from people using these launch monitors and simulators and go back to their own course and don’t get the results they thought they were getting. The situation is bad for everybody involved except the guy who took their money and ran. Golfers need to know about the possibility of these things occurring.

Most municipalities have an agency known as the Department of Weights and Measures. They check scales in retail establishments such as butcher shops to see se that the scales are accurate. A major brand producer of ice cream was just fined substantially when it was discovered that 80% of the pre-packed pints they were selling were 25% short of a pint. The golf industry needs to police itself before it becomes necessary for the Department of Weights and Measures to include launch monitors and simulators in the things they check. Manufacturers need to tell their reps not to fudge the numbers. Owners of facilities need to see that their staff members are not fudging numbers. Manufacturers of these machines need to stop making these machines with a boost feature in them unless there is a legitimate reason for doing so. It ain’t right!

Monkey See, Monkey Do

Most of us have heard this expression. What does it mean? Most of us believe that even if we see something done we need to understand what is happening and how to do it before we can do it. Not so. Recent studies on monkeys’ brains show that learning is being done in the sub cortex as opposed to the neo cortex. These particular studies are considered radical and more work needs to be done.

In the meantime I’ll ask you to run an experiment. Place a golf ball on a tee about two inches off the ground. If you are inside, place the ball on the floor. Stand about three feet away. Take another golf ball and hold it in your dominant hand. Toss it gently at the target ball and see if you can hit it. In your first toss try really hard to hit it. Notice what happens. When I do this with my students I usually bet them $5 or $10 in order to see if I can get them to choke. Now take a second ball. Place the target ball in such a way that the ball’s logo is facing you. Look at the ball’s logo and “see” if you hit it. Don’t “try” to hit it. Simply look and toss. No betting on this one. What usually happens is that when people “try” to hit the ball they miss, sometimes by quite a bit. When they focus on the logo and simply look and toss, they usually hit the ball right on the logo, if not on the first toss, on subsequent tosses. “Trying” and “seeing if” are actually different physiological experiences. You can feel the difference. You can eventually place five or six balls on the ground in random fashion and start tossing balls at them. You might be surprised at how accurate you can become in short order.

What is happening is that you are becoming task oriented. Take this to the golf course. Use your pre-shot routine, get up to the ball and hit it. Allow your organism to function without interference from the intellect. Maria Montessori, the famous educator said “The hand teaches the mind.” Let it.

Practice

According to George Leonard, in his book MASTERY, the second key to mastering anything is practice. Well, what do you practice? Hopefully, something that works to get you what you want. I suggest that you make what you want a result, not a technique. For instance, more distance is a result. A full shoulder turn is a technique. Now you may need to have more rotation in order to get more distance. You may not be able to rotate more because of your physical condition. You might need to do a little training in order to perform a technique that will give you more distance. Check out www.tourtempo.com . This website has a number of training devices, most of which I use myself. They actually work Too many students want to get different results but they don’t want to change their behavior. They think that if they get just the right tip they will hit it better without doing any practicing. There are also students who are willing to practice but they don’t know what to practice. If you practice ineffective things you’ll get worse. If you are practicing something and it isn’t helping you in short order stop. You are either not doing what you think you are doing or what you’re doing isn’t for you. Oh, by the way, I forgot to tell you. George Leonard says the first key to mastering anything is to find a teacher.

Why Do I Say Golf Is Easy?

Easy is a relative term. Almost anybody can play golf. Young kids, old people, men, women, amputees, blind people, special needs people-the list goes on. I don’t think the same thing can be said of hockey or lacrosse to name two sports. Ben Hogan said in his famous book FIVE LESSONS, The Modern Fundamentals of Golf on page 15, paragraph two, ”Up to a considerable point, as I see it, there’s nothing difficult about golf, nothing. I see no reason; truly, why the average golfer, if he goes about it intelligently, shouldn’t play in the 70s-and I mean by playing the type of shots a fine golfer plays.”...

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The Perfect Swing

A student went to his pro and said “I want you to teach me to swing like Sam Snead.” The pro said “Sure. Come on out to the putting green.” The pro put a ball into one of the holes on the green and told the student to take the ball out of the hole without bending his knees. The student said “I can’t do that.” The pro said “Sam Snead can, so much for swinging like Sam Snead.”..

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Learning To Hit Shots Before Attempting To Learn To Play

I played golf a couple of days after Christmas in Rutland MA. The temperature was 38 degrees. A father was out playing with his high school age daughter who had never played before. Apparently, he had gotten her a new set of clubs for Christmas including a driver with a nice pink graphite shaft. Her clubs appeared to be an unfitted, inexpensive set of knockoffs. The father stood over the girl on each shot giving her a list of instructions. She was unable to make contact with the ball a good percentage of the time. Unfortunately, this scene gets repeated all over the golf world, except for the temperature. That had to make the experience even less fun. This type of experience is one of the reasons a lot of people think golf is hard...

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When You Play Golf, Play Golf Not Golf Swing

Almost every amateur I observe on the golf course has several swing thoughts, including a backswing thought, on every shot. Almost none of them have a consistent pre-shot routine, even though every time they watch pros playing on T.V., every pro goes through his or her pre-shot routine every time...

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“Difficult Lies”-Imagination Rules

“Difficult” is in the eye of the beholder. If your ball is in a position where you cannot get the clubface on the ball with your “normal swing”, consider it “difficult i.e., a downhill lie for a player whose normal motion is a sweeping motion...

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Attachment To The Outcome

I have many students who are attached to the outcome of their golf shots. They fail to surrender to the process of doing the simple things they need to do in order to get what they say they want. I pay a lot of attention to pre-shot routine and setup. Anybody can do these things, regardless of athletic abilities. The hardest job I have is getting my students to practice these two things. Most of them think that the key to their success is going to be some “mechanical’ tip. I tell them that mechanics are guys who work on their car...

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Phil Mickelson’s Meltdown 2006 US Open

Human beings, under stress, revert to unilateral functioning. What does that mean? Let me see if I can explain. Our brains have two hemispheres (left and right). The left hemisphere contains, among other things, our analytical abilities. Our right hemispheres are home to our response to emotion. Almost all humans have a dominant hemisphere. In Phil’s case, I believe it is his right hemisphere. That’s where his Riverboat Gambler lives...

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Tom Shea's Golf is Easy Golf Schools