Being A Little "Selfish!" – On Purpose….
This week’s post is being written as I attend a U.S. Golf Teaching Federation (USGTF) certification class being held in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Tomorrow is the last day and it has been a great experience. My purpose (more on that word later) in attending is to learn more about the golf swing to help support my custom fitting efforts for players. There have been a lot of times in fittings where suggesting some small modifications – for example, moving the ball more forward in a player’s stance – can help the player hit the ball better and improve the total quality of the fitting. It is also important to know when it is not appropriate to do a fitting and to refer a player to my partner Des Mahoney for some lessons before an effective fitting can be done.
One of the pleasures of attending this training is that there are a number of good players in the class. One in fact – when we were all asked what is the lowest score we have ever had (mine is 71….) said 58. I thought ARE YOU KIDDING ME! The 58 was not from the back tees, but 58 is 58!!!!!
It has been a pleasure to watch him swing the golf club but also watch his golf practice ethic during the certification class (he had dropped out of playing golf for a few years but is now back playing). It gave me a better sense of what the really great players have to do to make it to the top, how very difficult that is.
At about the same time this week, I read a blog post from John Graham Golf (post actually by Andy Morrison), related to that Purpose word again, the link to it is below….
http://johngrahamgolf.com/blog/time-play-golf-purpose-2/
One of the points of the post is to suggest that we – if we want to truly improve playing golf – truly go after those areas where we do not do well. For me that is easy – the sand game and 15 to 30 yard pitch shots to the green.
We have had the opportunity to play 18 holes of golf each day while here – but for me, taking two of these days to work on my sand and short pitch game has been something that has been well worth the effort. My short game has improved more this week than at any time I can remember in the past.
So why not ensure that you are playing golf clubs that really fit your game, why not get the right instruction to help you swing the golf club in a consistent manner, why not get maximum enjoyment out of every round of golf you play? On purpose….
The Fit Is IT!!
Tony
