Tip Of The Month

By John Pallot
Director of Instruction

November 08: Professors of the PGA

Since it's founding in 1916, The PGA of America has stood firm in its mission to elevate the standards by which members conduct themselves. Recently I attended the 11th biennial PGA Teaching and Coaching Summit in Port St.Lucie, Florida which carried the theme "Leading Instructional Growth into the Future. Messages consistent with the theme and of special interest to teaching pros were delivered by qualfied, competant presenters. To those unable to attend, I'm happy to share a review of the lectures.

Topic 1) Physical Motion: Dave Phillips PGA and Dr. Greg Rose, co-founders of the Titleist Performance Institute , heralded as "The Ultimate Golf Experience" a combination of Titleist 's golf club fitting expertise with a digital analysis of a golfer's physical attributes vis-a-vis the subject's swing technique deficiencies to define physical exercises combined with golf swing instruction as ways to improvement in playing golf.

Topic 2) Learning and High Performance Coaching: Mike Hebron, PGA, expoused the thesis that golf instruction that failed to provide the pleasure one should expect from playing the game was responsible for declining interest. Hebron believes golf should be pleasurable and confidence building for all, not just for gifted athletes. He suggests golf teachers should create an atmosphere of "playing to learn" which promotes aspirations and pleasant pathways to learning rather than the dreary, depressing environment of learning to play through rote practice of technical details to promote unattainable perfection.

Topic 3) Technology to Enhance High Performance Coaching: Chris Welch,welch-e technologies and Chris Hart, CEO of Interactive Frontiers, the developers of V1 Pro Digital Coaching System presented a look at the systems they've innovated .Welch, a biomedical engineer, digitizes 2-D video into raw 3-D data. Proprietary software is used to first create the anatomical model of the patient(golfer) performing the activity followed by a biomechanical analysis of functional performance and injury potential. Chris Hart showed how easy it is to send the student his lesson through V1 on the affordable outdoor readable notebook Dell Latitude E4600 ATG and capturing the video with the latest high speed video capture-Casio Exilim EX-F1 @300 frames per second vs. traditional video at 60 frames per second.

We were also treated during the week to a demonstration by Dennis Walters, a paraplegic who has thrilled crowds with his shot making and performed more than 2700 golf shows ; Errie Ball, one of 72 men invited to the first Augusta National Invitational by Bobby Jones in 1934 and soon and forever after known as the Masters ; three PGA Teachers of the Year, Bill Forrest, Jim Hardy, and Martin Hall ; and Top Ten teacher Mike Bender.

This month's tip comes from Mike Bender. After working with Zach Johnson, 07Masters champ, Seon Hwa Lee,2 LPGA wins in 08 and Jonathan Byrd among others, we bring you three tips from the Tour:

1. Take-away.Stick shaft in ground parallel to club at address. Ride club up shaft on backswing.

2. Practice impact. Hands well forward of club-head.

3. Use a Swingyde. This keeps the club-shaft from bouncing at top and keeps the butt of the club pointing at the target line.

Thanks PGA for helping us enjoy this wonderful game.

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