Are you changing your swing as much as Tiger?????

Tiger is changing his swing - again.

Remember Scotty, the cantankerous engine room genius in Star Trek. Captain Kirk would get in a jam and order Scotty to apply full power. Invariably, Scotty would plead, "I need more time, Captain, I need more time!" Well Tiger needs more time – and he can’t recover the time over the years spent chasing new swings. Just last year it seemed he was 22, a young gun with a new swing given to him by Butch Harmon – and he was unbeatable. Now as amazing as it seems Tiger will be 35 in December.


As an amateur golfer what could that possible mean to you? The answer is a lot -- if you are taking lessons from a bad teacher -- because it means that you receive a blast of different swing information every time a new guru and his method gets hot. Now you may not be aware of this because your bad teacher won’t admit it, but if you take lessons from a bad teacher you have changed your swing every time Tiger has --- and all those changes weren’t good for Tiger and they certainly are not be good for you.

If you take lessons from a bad teacher, over the last ten years, you would have been taught the Harmon Swing, the Haney Swing, Stack and Tilt, the One Plane Swing, Natural Golf with Moe Norman, Natural Golf without Moe Norman and now get ready to make another change, the Foley Swing – the bad teachers are currently waiting for the CD and the book so they can start teaching ‘Foley.’

Now please don’t misconstrue that I’m saying these teaching guru’s are bad teachers – most of them are wonderful teachers, but to prosper you can’t be jumping ship – where would Hogan have been had he listened to anyone or Nicklaus had he dumped Jack Grout or Faldo if he dumped David Ledbetter [ok so he did dump Ledbetter but look at his record post-David.]

I once taught along side a teacher who changed his swing theory, like he changed his socks -- and with each new theory he would watch a CD and then teach it to his students. His teaching model was a Frankenstein. He sounded very knowledgeable but he knew very little once the 45 minute CD info ran out. He’d drop names so heavy that if they landed on you, you’d be crushed but when it came to really knowing how to help his students using his au current method -- he couldn’t do it. He’d shake his head and complain that so and so ‘just didn’t get it’ but there were too many head shakes to be so-and-so’s fault.

Teaching is not the same as fashion. If you are a good teacher, you have a base which has taken you years to build up -- your model is alive and ever evolving but it’s not completely disposable.



===============================================================

Is it Show up then Sign up or ….?


In what could be a 10 million dollar mistake [The FedEx first prize] Chad Campbell's is out of the FedEx Cup because he forgot to register for the Deutsche Bank Championship – he showed up but didn’t sign up. He did the same thing last year and was DQ’ed from the Sony Open.

Chad it’s Sign up then Show Up


 
==================================================

Avoid being ‘Laired’



Martin Laird on the 18th hole of the Barclays, blasted his 23 foot down-hill putt seven feet past the cup then left it short coming back up the hill to give away the championship with a three putt. He was a victim of the too-hard, too-soft combo that troubles most golfers. The next time you ram your downhill putt by the hole remind yourself to hit the up hill come-backer a bit more firmly to prevent being "Laired."

And yes I know he got the putt a little past the cup but had he hit it harder it would have held its line, so although it finished past the cup it was effectively short.