"Two sides to every Swing"

The following is an excerpt from the latest Golf Link edition article, "Two sides to every Swing" by Sam Letourneau http://www.golflink.com.au/news/golf-magazine/2015/01/two-sides-to-every-swing.aspx I am no coach and since returning to golfing in 2009 have relied upon two coaching professionals for my education and lessons. Both of them taught the same principles of golfing and worked on various identified areas of my golf technique. As wel as reading assorted treatise's on golfing by playing and coaching professionals my golf brain has been informed and educated over time. This article is exactly what my informed opinion is of the way forward for a golfer through coaching is. For me with my physical restraints from the various broken bits, the same applies to other golfers injured or not. Every engine (body) which powers a golf club is different. Some are high performance turbo charged F1 or Indy class engines others are 1970's air cooled VW Kombi Van engines. They all work but have limits. Some have on-board computers and others don't and that is unrelated to this discussion. The essence of p[laying golf is getting the contact between the club and ball to a reliable and consistent standard. Once that is establish you have a solid base for your game. Thankyou for your time and attention "GOLF is a lot easier to get better at once you realise there are two distinctly different avenues to improvement. The trick is to find the one that suits your personality and learning approach best. Most people don’t improve at golf as fast or as much as they could. In teaching golf, I encounter an endless stream of students who are frustrated at their lack of progress, confused about what they should be working on, or how to go about it. These days I pick up pretty quickly on the best approach to take with a new student, and once I’ve sorted them into one of two categories, I can almost guarantee they will start to see real improvement. So, what are the two categories that golfers fall into, and, more importantly, how might you go about identifying the one that suits you best and maximise your chance of reaching your full potential in the fastest possible time frame? Before the grand reveal, please don’t let the simplicity of the following statements deceive you, as after ten years of giving over 50 golf lessons a week (yes that’s 2500 lessons a year, and double yes, that really is a total of over 25,000 lessons), I’m convinced that understanding this information, and basing your improvement plan around it, is the key thing to get right. What’s more, I’ve proven it over and over again to myself and my students. Now a second word of warning; I have to write one before the other, but in no way does that mean I have a preference, or should you, for one over the other. Remember I said that both methods of improvement have been used effectively by many good players. So here goes. In my opinion, to improve at golf you either have to: Totally disregard any perceived faults in your game and work only on making your technique as textbook and technically strong as you possibly can; that is, disregard your ball flight errors and contact issues and bring your swing—and techniques within every department of your game—as closely into line with accepted golf fundamentals as you can, work purely on making your technique better. If you’re not quite sure what these fundamentals might be, have a look at a lot of Tour players’ games and pick out the most common aspects. If you think this approach might be for you, later I’ll give you some well known player examples, and a psychological profile of who this approach generally suits so you can make an educated guess as to whether it suits you . Totally disregard accepted textbook technique and make improvements based only on the feedback your ball flight and contact gives you. Likewise, if you think this way might be the way for you, I’ll be giving you some famous players who’ve taken this approach, and indicate the sort of personality this approach tends to suit." Geoff