The other day, one of my co-workers and I were discussing the greatest instructional golf books ever written, the must-reads. After we went back-and-forth naming several of the usual suspects such as Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book, Dr. Bob Rotella’s Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect, and Tiger Woods’ How I Play Golf, he asked me if I’d ever read Easier Said Than Done by Dr. Rick Jensen. I told him that I hadn’t, and the book was in my possession before the week was out.
Dr. Rick Jensen is a nationally-recognized sport psychologist and the founder of Dr. Rick Jensen’s Performance Center. He’s worked with more than 50 touring pros on the PGA, LPGA, and Champions Tours, winners of 33 major championships, and winners of all four Grand Slam tennis championships.
Easier Said Than Done is about “the undeniable, tour-tested truths you must know (and apply) to finally play to your potential on the golf course.” It says so right on the cover.
The name of the book is Easier Said Than Done because, as Dr. Jensen writes, “informing you of these truths is the easy part. Encouraging and helping you apply them to your golf game is the ultimate goal.” You may have heard of these 12 Truths before, but it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard of them in this order or presented in this way:
Truth #1: Golf is a Game of Skill, It’s Not About the Swing
Truth #2: All Skills Are Not Created Equal
Truth #3: You Can’t Skip Steps or You’ll Trip and Fall
Truth #4: You Must Stick to Something Long Enough to Master It
Truth #5: There’s No Way Around It, Practice Is a Must
Truth #6: Where Lessons Don’t Work, Coaching Does
Truth #7: Fitness Sets the Ceiling for Your Potential
Truth #8: To Transfer It to the Course, Practice Like You Play
Truth #9: The Weakest Link Breaks Under Pressure
Truth #10: Under Competition, Your Brain Reverts to the Familiar
Truth #11: You Will Play Average of Better Only 50% of the Time
Truth #12: Golf Is a Game of Misses
The book is only 116 pages long, and you can easily read it cover-to-cover in less than an afternoon. My initial takeaway was that Easier Said Than Done is a pretty scathing indictment of the golf instructional paradigm as it’s presently constructed.
Jensen writes, “Interestingly, in most other sports, athletes acknowledge that quick fixes can be hazardous to one’s progress if not their physical health. Let’s say it was your desire to learn how to execute a flip on a balance beam: What would the process be for learning how to do it? Surely, you wouldn’t walk into a gymnastics academy on day one and get videotaped performing your best flip.”
“An instructor wouldn’t show a video of your ill-attempted flip side-by-side with that of an Olympic gymnast just to demonstrate why you fell on your head. Such an approach to learning would not only be extremely dangerous, it would be considered malpractice on the instructor’s part.”
Yet according to Jensen, that’s exactly what most golf instructors do. To illustrate his point, Dr. Jensen, who’d worked with several of the world’s top male and female tennis players at the time of publication back in 2010, relayed the following story:
“As Player Development Consultant to the WTA Tennis Tour, I’ve had the opportunity to attend many Grand Slam championships. One year I was sitting in a box at the U.S. Open in Flushing, New York, with a prominent tennis coach I know well, and I asked him, ‘How come I never see you videotape any of your players to provide them feedback on their technique?’ Well, he just about bounced me onto the court.He turned to me and said, ‘There you go with that golf stuff again.'”
“‘Tennis pros understand how to make people better at tennis,’ he said. ‘We don’t have to analyze every little motion to improve their game. It’s not about their motion, it’s about hitting the ball where you need to hit it in the court.’ He then pointed to one of the women on the court – one of his pupils – and said to me, ‘Look at her knees. I need to get her to bend more at the knees so that she can increase the amount of topspin on her shots.’ He then pointed out to me that when practicing with this player, he would intentionally slice the ball to avoid ever hitting a topspin shot to her.”
“‘When I hit a slice, the ball skids on the court and stays below her waist. She then has to bend her knees substantially to go down and get the ball. I can change her habit by controlling the way she practices.'”
Golf is not about getting your swing to look a certain way, it’s about putting the ball where you intend to put it. Developing the skills to do so is the key to playing better golf, not imitating a pro’s swinging motion or making your swing fit a teacher’s ideal swing model.
At this point in my career, I wholeheartedly agree. That’s why my personal teaching philosophy is to keep it simple and to keep golf as relatable as possible to other sports and/or activities people do in their everyday lives. Not surprisingly, there are a lot of transferable skills from those activities to golf.
Jensen says there are three essential skills that will help you lower your scores: ball control (direction, distance, and trajectory), decision-making (wind, speed/slope of greens, lie), and self-management (controlling emotions, managing attention). Learning golf is a process, and you have to walk an athletic skill up several steps before you can master it. That’s where “The Four Steps to Mastery” comes in.
Step 1 is gaining an understanding of cause and effect. This is where you identify the causes of the errors in your game and their respective solutions. Step 2 is supervised practice with lots of repetition and feedback provided by your coach. Step 3 is transfer training or exposing the skill to conditions that simulate those you’d experience on the golf course under competition. The step may take months and is the one step most golfers fail to complete.
Step 4 is playing with that skill while keeping score on the course. A skill is not completely learned until it can be drawn upon and successfully utilized on the course under competition.
Jensen says that in the golf profession, there are teachers, not coaches. Jensen writes, “Learning a motor skill involves more than just knowing what is wrong and how to fix it. It requires continuous feedback and training over time – supervised practice both on and off the course.”
“Teachers should be helping students transfer skills from the range to the course, make correct on-course decisions, and manage their thoughts, attention, and emotions under the pressure of competition. Coaches do this, teachers do not!”
At the end of the book, Jensen seems to lament the fact that he’s been so harsh on the golf teaching profession. He almost seems to contradict himself when he writes, “I am as guilty as any of them (teaching professionals) at conforming to the existing system, taking the easy route, and delivering a product to students that is not what it should be. Unfortunately, doing so is easy to do when other providers offer nothing better, when golfers are uninformed, and when the public doesn’t expect or demand anything more.”
“Although I’ve become more educated, knowledgeable, and experienced, I continue to struggle with providing a better alternative for golfers looking to learn the game and to play to their potential. It’s easier to criticize what’s wrong with something than it is to fix it and make it right. Yet, there comes a time when we each need to stop behaving like sheep, step out of the flock, and decide to lead.”
Dr. Jensen continues, “You’ve heard of the economic model of supply and demand. Once an informed golfing public demands better coaching, the industry will provide it. If, however, golfers continue living in denial and demanding quick fixes, little will change!”
If you read this book, I think you’ll find that there are at least one or two truths that’ll apply to you and your golf game. It’s definitely caused me to re-evaluate my teaching strategy, which thankfully, is still in the developmental stages and is very capable of evolving. I don’t really have any bad habits because I still don’t have any habits!
This is a video of Dr. Jensen that was uploaded in 2009 before Easier Said Than Done was published. A lot of what he talks about in this short clip is what he writes about in his book:
You can order copies of Easier Said Than Done only through Dr. Jensen’s web site. Ask, and he’ll even sign it for you.
Next On the Shelf
Golf Is Not a Game of Perfect by Dr. Bob Rotella. This is the holy grail of golf “mental” books. I’ve already read it several times but never reviewed it. It’s a classic. While it was published back in the mid-90s (when books still had meaning), there’s still a lot of relevance to the way the game is played today… between the ears.