In Advanced Teaching the other day, we were talking about what makes a good golf instructor. We were discussing the fact that no one is teaching people how to teach, and that instruction has gotten away from teaching people how to play golf. PGA Professional Jay Friedman belongs to a Facebook group with some pretty big-time golf instructors, including Bill Harmon.
If the last name sounds familiar, it should. The Harmons are what you would call the First Family of golf instruction. Claude Harmon won the Masters in 1948 and served as the Head Professional at Winged Foot for over 30 years. He had four sons: Dick, Butch, Craig, and Bill. Dick passed away in 2006, and all are considered top golf instructors. Butch, Craig, and Bill are all Golf Digest Top 50 instructors. Bill teaches Bill Haas and caddied for Haas’ dad Jay for ten years.
In South Korea in October, Haas beat local star Sangmoon Bae to give the United States the winning point in the Presidents Cup. It came down to the final match, and the one-point win was Team USA’s sixth-straight Presidents Cup victory. Harmon wrote the following Facebook post in the following days, and the exchange is fascinating. I tried to maintain the integrity of the post as best as I could.
Spent the day with Bill Haas. Haven’t spoken to him in-depth about the way he played coming down the stretch at the Presidents Cup. Walking off the 12th green that day he told me “he had nothing.” He then proceeded to not miss a shot the last six holes.
I have to qualify my comments a bit because of how I was exposed to the game. My dad was a wonderful player and an equally wonderful teacher. He grew up in golf when there were no videos, coaches, computers, etc. Back in his day, you learned by observing better players and working things out yourself. I’m not here to debate the best way to learn, I’m simply expressing the views of a “player.”
I asked Bill to talk me through his last six holes. He never talked about his mechanics. He talked about what he “saw” on each shot, how his play may have dictated the way Sangmoon Bae played. He said the three-quarter pitching wedge he flagged on 14 settled him a little because it wasn’t a full shot. He had to “play a shot.” He hit a 7-iron on 15 into a stiff breeze from 140 that he said was meant for the middle of the green, and he flushed it with perfect trajectory.
Bill’s 3-iron on 16 to 18 feet was “one of the best shots I ever hit,” saying how the day before he fanned the same shot way right. He knew he couldn’t afford to get cute on 17 to a back right pin with water right and a hard right to left wind. He “held” a 5-iron to 20 feet and felt that made Bae’s shot really hard.
I asked him about his tee shot on 18 with water down the entire right side, and he said, “I played quickly but challenged myself to start at the left bunker.” Finally, he said he tried to hit his 3-iron on 18 from 240 right at the flag because he had a hanging lie with the ball below his feet, and he wasn’t comfortable “hanging one over the water.” He smoked it and just trickled in the left bunker.
He said he was asked if he felt bad that Bae chunked his chip, and he said, “The competitor in me didn’t feel bad, but the person in me felt for him.” What I found intriguing was he never talked about his “swing” or “mechanics.” He thought about the shot that was needed and then hit it. I think as teachers, it’s very important to listen to the thoughts of a player. He never once mentioned anything we’ve ever worked on other than “playing golf.”
-Bill Harmon
The PGA Professional who responded to Harmon’s post was none other than Michael Hebron, the PGA of America Teacher of the Year in 1991 and, you guessed it, a man who’s also on Golf Digest’s Top 50 list. Hebron was elected to the PGA Hall of Fame back in 2013.
Yes, Bill. We play golf, not golf swing. The most useful swing model is the golf course. It speaks to the golfer. It tells them what club to use, where to play the ball, what size swing to use, etc., etc. The golf course, not some computer, suggests the game plan. Everything works back from the environment we are faced with.
Any description of a golf swing is a history lesson. It’s already happened. We never have the exact same shot under the exact same conditions, and we never make the exact same swing.
Bill, you mentioned players in the past, like your dad, who didn’t have video, etc. to use, which is different today. But they did have the same human body and brain as today’s players. Everything we do is organized in the brain first before any external physical motion happens.
My point is that the approach to learning, developing, and performing must be brain compatible or player compatible if it expects to be efficient. Some approaches are more comparable than others. The brain learns best from general concepts and not from specific details. Information can be intellectually interesting but educationally vacant.
The brain uses and learns best from patterns and sequences of motions, not parts. Once you cut a whole pie into eight slices, you no longer have a whole pie. It’s lost its integrity as a whole pie. Once you break a golf swing into parts, it’s no longer a whole swing.
We aren’t swinging the club, our memory is. The brain works by making predictions – if this, then that. And the way you described how Bill “played” the last part of his round of golf was pure memory of playing golf, not golf swing. We cannot think and perform up to our potential, according to cognitive research.
Studies have improved golf clubs, golf balls, the grass the game is played on, and physical conditioning. Perhaps all the studies that have uncovered how to improve approaches to learning should also be taken into consideration. Having exact numbers is one thing. Learning to play golf is another story.
Most of the people playing golf are recreational golfers not professionals, and most of the conversations about instruction do not seem to be about the club golfer. In my “for what it’s worth” view, that’s a huge oversight. A mistake of huge proportions.
The golf industry on every level has promoted PERFECTION over participation. Having just the right this or that is a message that may be hurting the game. When we buy milk, we are buying the benefits of milk, not milk. When we buy a coat, we are buying the benefits of a coat, not a coat. Perhaps the golf industry should be promoting the benefits of playing a game and not the need to be perfect.
Also, if we bake a cake and burn it, it cannot be fixed. We must create another one. Same with golf swings. The poor swing and shot is over and cannot be fixed. We must create another one. Fixing is emotionally negative. Creating is emotionally safe. As always, not selling anything, only sharing insights, most of which I learned from others.
-Michael Hebron
Powerball Blues
One of my classmates put together a Powerball pool because Wednesday’s jackpot was up to a record $1.6 billion. Twenty-one guys ponied up at least $10 (some even more), and we ended up with 135 chances to win. When the dust settled, we got five Powerball numbers worth $20 and another three numbers worth $7. Each of us walked away with a whopping $1! I guess we’ll just have to continue on at the Golf Academy. The winners in three states will be splitting the jackpot amongst themselves.