We're sorry, but eCampus.com doesn't work properly without JavaScript.
Either your device does not support JavaScript or you do not have JavaScript enabled.
How to enable JavaScript in your browser.
Need help? Call 1-855-252-4222
The New copy of this book will include any supplemental materials advertised. Please check the title of the book to determine if it should include any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
The Used, Rental and eBook copies of this book are not guaranteed to include any supplemental materials. Typically, only the book itself is included. This is true even if the title states it includes any access cards, study guides, lab manuals, CDs, etc.
I was giving a golf lesson to a female business executive not long ago when, out of the blue, she said something that struck a chord with me. "You know, Cindy," she said, "I work with hundreds of men and women, and it still amazes me. You can say the same thing to a man and a woman and get two totally different interpretations of what was said. It's like we have two separate languages, one for each gender, but nobody will admit it."
At the time I made a joke, saying, "Well, at least woman-speak is more advanced." But the more I thought about it, the more I realized my student was onto something.
It seems so obvious that it shouldn't need to be said, but it's so profound and so often overlooked it can't be said enough. Women and men are different. I know that isn't film-at-eleven news for anybody, but as my student pointed out, a lot of people ignore or forget that men and women process data differently. We communicate differently, analyze things differently, and speak, feel, listen, and learn in distinctly separate ways.
As I pondered this, I realized these differences apply to everything from physics to cooking to simple questions like "How does the pasta taste?" or "What does that feel like?"
Because I relate everything to golf and golf instruction, I started thinking about how these differences affect the way women and men learn to play the game. While most teachers acknowledge the physical differences between men and women, few, if any, modify their teaching to accommodate those differences, nor do they consider the possibility that women learn differently than men.
I see it all the time. A woman takes a lesson from a male instructor and the first thing the teacher tells her is to "fire" her hips through the downswing or to "release the club through impact by pronating and supinating the forearms." Can you imagine anything more useless? The best one I heard was a male instructor telling his petite female student to "Imagine you're swinging at a low, outside curveball." A low, outside curveball! This woman wouldn't have known which end of a baseball bat to hold, but that was the example her golf instructor used to communicate a particular feeling. If I'd been taught that way in the beginning I probably would have said, "To heck with it," and gone back to the ski slopes.
But I was lucky. I learned from the best in the business -- both men and women -- who understood the need to communicate and coach in a language and with methods that I understood.
As a woman, the golf instruction process probably intimidates you. I know it scared the wits out of me when I first started. Fortunately I had a great teacher, a mentor who had worked with great women professionals like Betsy King, Jan Stephenson, and Alice Miller and who understood the anxieties most women have when it comes to learning the game.
Why We Play
The first thing Ed Oldfield asked me when we stood on the lesson tee together for the first time was, "Why do you want to play golf?" It seemed like a simple question, but I didn't have a good answer. "I'm not sure, Ed," I said. "I can't play basketball and softball the rest of my life, so I'm looking for a new game. I see all these people having a great time, they dress well, they obviously love it -- I want to give it a go."
That sufficed because it was an honest answer. Too often, when I ask my students the same question, I get a blank stare or a curious shrug. Even women who have been playing golf for years can't tell me what they hope to accomplish by taking lessons. "What are your goals? What are you hoping to accomplish? Why are you here with me on the lesson tee?" are all questions I ask before I impart the first morsel of advice to one of my students. Unfortunately, I get a lot of I-don't-know-type answers.
Golf is an individual sport. There are thousands of variables in the game and millions of ways to learn. In order to reach your full potential as a golfer you have to find the method and the mechanics that work best for your body type and skill level. But before you can learn anything, you have to determine what kind of golfer you want to be. Are you taking lessons (and reading this book) because you like the outdoors and think spending four hours on a manicured golf course constitutes a well-spent afternoon? Are you learning to play for business? Do you want to win your club championship or Ladies' City Amateur title? Is it your husband or a friend you're trying to impress? Or do you simply want to occasionally win a chit in your Tuesday morning golf/social group? There is no right or wrong answer, but before you venture into any sort of game-improvement plan, you need to be honest with yourself. Answering the "Why am I doing this?" question before you get started makes the process a lot easier and a lot more fun.
The "Ah Ha" Moment
Unfortunately, golf isn't a paint-by-numbers sport. There is no step-one, -two, and -three to the process. It's not a cake we're baking where the recipe is written down, nor is it like following the assembly instructions in the Christmas box, even the ones an MIT mechanical engineer couldn't follow. You can't simply put peg "A" into peg hole "B" and become a good golfer.
Golf is not easy. It's not a game you or anyone else will ever master. That's a big part of why so many people love it. One day you will take a lesson or read a tip in a book or magazine and you'll say to yourself, "Voilà! I've got it." You will be convinced that you understand everything there is to know about the game and you're on your way to great scores. Then, two days later, you feel like you've never held a club in your life. Your shots go everywhere, your swing feels awful, and you can't find any motion that feels remotely comfortable. I'd love to tell you that this is a problem I can easily remedy, but it's not. It's just the way golf is.
What I can do is help you learn how to learn.
Have you ever taken a class where the material was so foreign to you that you had no idea what the instructor was saying? There are few things in the world more frustrating. I know; I've had my share of those experiences. You're listening, concentrating, hoping that something will eventually make sense, but nothing does. You wonder if you're alone in this quandary. Then you wonder if you're just plain dumb. Anxiety sets in and soon your head begins to throb.
Then, out of nowhere, your teacher says one thing, gives one example or makes one analogy, and everything clicks. You get it. It's like the blinders have been lifted and all the gobbledygook suddenly makes perfect sense. You lift your head and raise your eyebrows in amazement that what had seemed mind-numbing only moments before now looks perfectly logical and orderly, simple even.
I call this the "Ah Ha" moment, the moment the lightbulb flickers on and you see everything you couldn't see before. You want to stand up and scream, "Eureka!" when this happens, but you usually just sit back, cross your arms, and let a satisfied smile creep onto your face.
So, what causes these "Ah Ha" moments? Why is it that we can be bewildered by a concept one minute and see everything so clearly mere seconds later? The information hasn't changed. The concepts aren't any easier, and our IQs didn't magically inch up a few points while we were listening. So, what makes us understand now what we didn't get a minute ago?
The answer is in the delivery. Your teacher finally said or did something that your brain registered. It might have been a visual cue or a mental image or a technical explanation that finally made sense. The trigger, whatever it was, allowed your brain to process the information.
Golf instruction is no different than the classroom. I've seen students who have attended clinics or taken private lessons from less experienced instructors who walk away without learning a thing. The teacher might as well have been speaking Swahili.
I'm as guilty of this as anyone. There have been plenty of times I've been in the middle of the lesson, explaining everything I know about the nuances of the swing and loving the tenor of my own voice while I'm saying it, when I see a glazed blank mask falling over my student's face. At that point I know I've lost her.
Fortunately I've been teaching long enough to stop when I see my student's eyes cross. At that point I try a different route. I know that people absorb information about golf in different ways. If I fail to connect with a student -- that is, if the student doesn't understand anything I'm saying -- I know that the student processes information differently from the way I'm teaching, so I change methods.
There are four ways you process information about the golf swing. They are:
• Visual
• Feel
• Technical
• Auditory
Visual
Visual learning is just that -- learning by seeing. Most of the students I've encountered learn to one degree or another through visuals. That's why video lessons have become so popular. If I can show a student what her golf swing looks like, she has a better chance of understanding what she needs to change and what she needs to work on to make her a better player.
Kids are great visual learners, because they mimic so well. You've probably heard the story of Tiger Woods, who before he was two, watched his father hit balls into a net in the family's garage. Young Tiger then crawled down from his highchair, grabbed his plastic club, and made a perfect golf swing. It sounds unreal, but I've seen it more than once. Young children absorb visual information much better than hard-wired adults. They can mimic almost anything. That's why when I'm giving a lesson to a junior I hit more balls than I do when I'm teaching an adult. I want the junior to see and copy the proper technique.
Most of us lose a little of that kidlike knack for imitation as we grow older, but visual learning is still the number-one way golfers learn. Korean superstar Mi Hyun Kim, who won Rookie of the Year honors on the LPGA Tour and racked up three wins in her first two years on tour, said she watched John Daly when she was young and decided she wanted to hit the ball like John. If you see Mi Hyun's swing today you'll see she was successful. Her long, loose backswing is unconventional, but it's almost identical to the grip-it-and-rip-it swing John Daly has been using for years.
Another Korean star, Se Ri Pak, studies videos of her swing from all angles as part of her game-improvement regimen. She, too, is a visual learner.
The problem with visual learning is few people recognize how much information they process visually. Witnesses to crimes often say things like, "I didn't get a good look at him. I'm not sure I can describe what I saw." But when investigators methodically walk the witness through the process, taking step-by-step notes, the results are stunning. Sketch artists have come up with incredible likenesses of criminals because of the recollections of witnesses who "didn't get a good look."
I see the same thing with many of my female students on the lesson tee. I'll say things like, "Can you see how your hands are working too much on the takeaway?" and the student will answer, "Oh, I really can't learn much by looking. I'm a feel player." When I probe a little further, I find that the golfer in question is not a feel player at all, but someone who learns by watching without realizing it.
Recently I taught a woman who had a terrible problem with laying the club off on the backswing. She rotated her hands on the takeaway in such a fashion that the club could never get high enough to make a good swing. She looked like she was swinging a baseball bat. Despite her insistence that she was a feel player, when I asked her about this swing flaw she said, "I just can't feel it." So, I broke out the camera and showed her a video of her swing. "Oh," she said. "I had no idea that was what I was doing." Within minutes she fixed her backswing.
This is just one example. I've seen it hundreds of times. People assume that because they can differentiate good shots from bad shots through feel that they are feel players when, in fact, they learn better through visuals.
Golfers of all ages and skill levels use visual aids to improve their games. How many times have you seen a golfer taking mock practice swings in front of a full-length mirror? I notice it almost every time I'm in a store where plenty of mirrors are available. If no one else is doing it, I usually take a few clubless practice swings of my own.
There's a good chance that you can learn a great deal about golf from visual aids. If you find yourself wondering what you look like with a club in your hands, or if you watch pros on television on the weekend and find yourself trying to mimic certain moves or positions, you are, at least in part, a visual learner.
Feel
Of course some players couldn't care less what they look like on video. I remember Hubert Green, the noted Senior PGA Tour player, saying that he watched a video of his swing once in his life and he almost threw up, so he never did it again.
Nancy Lopez is another player who doesn't take much stock in how her swing looks, and it's hard to argue with her success. Lopez learned the game from her father, and according to Nancy, the lessons she learned on the fundamentals of the swing were, "Bring the club up real slow; bring it up real high; extend your arms real far; hit the ball right on the sweet spot; and send it into the middle of the fairway." Simple advice, but it worked. Nancy won forty-eight professional events and is in the LPGA Hall of Fame.
Both Hubert Green and Nancy Lopez arefeelplayers, players who don't take much stock in finding the perfect, classic swing. They feel what works for them, and they work on that feeling.
A lot of teachers give their pupils analogies of what something should feel like, but that often tells you more about the teacher than the pupil. If a teacher says something like, "You need to feel like you're cracking a whip with your right hand as you bring the club down," that tells you the teacher has created a mental image of himself cracking a whip. It's what the teacher feels and what the teacher uses as a mental cue. The student might not have any idea what a bullwhip looks like.
Feel players are tougher to teach, because feelings are so subjective. One of the funniest stories from the golf instruction world is an old tale Bob Toski tells on himself. Toski, an excellent tour player in his day and one of the most respected instructors in the world for decades after he retired from competition, was teaching a student who simply couldn't grasp what Toski was saying. "I can't feel it. I can't feel it," the student kept saying. Finally, in utter frustration, Toski leaned over and bit the student on the forearm. "There," he said, "can you feel that?"
The best teachers, the ones who understand that their students are feel players, design drills and exercises that give the student the feelings they need for a good golf swing. I have a bag full of swing training aids -- everything from a weighted club to a club with an extra-long shaft that swats you in the side if you swing it the wrong way -- all designed to give players the feel of making a good golf swing.
If you're more interested in how something should feel instead of how it should look, then your brain probably responds better to feel than to visual input. And if that's the case, you need to find a teacher who understands your needs and who will give you the drills and teaching aids you need in order to improve.
Technical
Other people can't do anything until they know why. If they swing at a golf ball and it rolls down the fairway, they want to know the physics of what caused the ball to roll the way it did. If the ball slices they have to know the exact causes of that ball flight, from where the club was at impact to what path the club took to get into that position, to what the body was doing to get the club there in the first place.
Hall of Fame running back Marcus Allen is one of those. Marcus has been one of my students for years, so I understand how he processes information. If a ball slices, he wants to know why. What combination of factors contributed to the curvature of the ball during flight? What physical laws were in play? What swing mechanics led to that result? There are times when I've said, "Jeez, Marcus, I have no idea how this watch works, but I can tell you what time it is. Do you have to know everything? Can't you just take my word for it every now and then?"
The answer to that is always, "No." Marcus, like a lot of other golfers, is a technician. Before he can correct a problem, he has to fully understand it. It's an admirable trait, one that usually denotes a strong analytical mind, but Marcus and people like him tend to overanalyze their golf games.
You've seen them. They're the people who go through the mental checklist every time they hit a shot. (1) Light grip. (2) Left arm straight. (3) Head down. (4) Chin up. (5) Rear end out. (6) Right arm tucked. (7) Okay, now relax and make a great swing. It never quite works out the way they've planned, but you can't fault their thoroughness.
There are plenty of great players who are technical thinkers. Karrie Webb analyzes her swing mechanics and ball flight with the diligence and efficiency of a surgeon. She also won twenty-six professional titles, including a career Grand Slam (all four major championships) before her twenty-seventh birthday. It's hard to argue with that kind of success.
If you feel the need to know "why" in golf as much or more than the "what" or the "how to," then you might be a technical learner. There's nothing wrong with that. It's just something you should know before embarking on a campaign to become a better golfer.
You need a teacher who can communicate the basics of the golf swing in logical, progressive steps. If you get someone who tells you how the swing should look or how it should feel without first explaining the laws and principles that make it work, you've picked the wrong teacher.
Auditory
Auditory learners are rare, but they also learn faster than the rest of us. People who respond to audio feedback tend to make physical adjustments quicker than those who have to see, feel, or analyze their situation. Why do you think football and basketball coaches carry whistles? It's not because they don't like to yell. They've learned over the years that audio conditioning gets results faster than other stimuli.
Auditory response is one of the most basic of human instincts. If you hear a baby cry, you instinctively react. If an alarm goes off, you stop what you're doing and turn your attention toward the sound. If a coach has trained you to stop or start on the sound of a whistle, you react when you hear that whistle blow. Studies show that behavior modification occurs forty percent faster when stimulated with auditory feedback. That's why a gun goes off to start the 100-meter dash instead of a green light flashing or a flag dropping. Runners get out of the gate quicker on the sound of a gun.
Golfers can have similar reactions. The sound of a good crisp iron shot, for example, provides instant feedback. You know you've hit a good shot before your eyes ever find the ball. Likewise, the thud or thwack of a poorly hit shot sends chills up your spine. I've had students turn away in disgust after hearing the clunk of a poor shot and never see their balls roll onto the green and into the hole. They knew they didn't hit the ball well, so the results were irrelevant.
I've seen and used several different audio training tools as part of my teaching. One that is particularly effective is a windmill on the end of a golf club that gives a distinct "swish" sound at the point of impact. If a student is swinging the club faster at the top of the swing than at the impact position, the swish won't happen. The only time you hear the sound is when you've released the golf club at the right spot in the swing. This is a great tool for audio-sensitive learners. All I have to do is say, "Swing until you hear the swish." And it works! Auditory learners improve quicker by using this simple teaching aid than they would if I stood on the range and talked to them all afternoon.
Another less popular but equally effective tool is the beeping shoe insole. This tool fits into the insole of your shoe and is pressure sensitive. It has an antenna and a monitor (similar to a baby monitor). You program the monitor to set off an alarm when a certain percentage of your body weight is on a particular foot. So if I have a student who isn't getting on her left side quickly or fully enough, I simply set the monitor to beep when seventy to seventy-five percent of her weight is applied to the insole. Then I say, "Shift your weight until you hear the beep." It's amazing how quickly students respond.
Why Is This Important?
So why is it important to know what kind of learner you are? When I was playing golf not long ago at the TPC at Sawgrass I saw a man and his wife a hole ahead of me. But I heard them as if they were sitting in the golf cart with me.
"Why in the world can't you do it?" the man said. "Your club is dropping way below parallel at the top of your backswing. It looks terrible!"
The woman, obviously having gotten this little tip before, said, "I can't feel it, and I don't care what it looks like. I just hit it farther than you, so why don't you try a backswing like mine."
"You'll never be consistent," he insisted. "As long as your swing looks like that, you'll hit it good one minute and bad the next."
"When I start hitting it worse than you, you can criticize," she said. "Right now, it feels fine, and I'm sticking with it."
"Stubborn," he said.
"Jackass," she said.
I'm glad I was behind that group and not playing in their foursome. The problem with this couple -- in addition to both of them being strong-willed personalities -- was that the man was telling his wife what her swing "looked" like and she was telling him how it "felt." They might have gotten along well in every other aspect of life, but because of the different ways each of them learned, they were never going to get along on the golf course.
Picking an Instructor
No matter what your skill level, you need to find a golf instructor you trust and understand, and one who improves your game. Golf instruction comes from numerous sources (including the book you're now reading). As a woman, I doubt you'll ever play or practice golf around men when you aren't offered at least one tip. Family and friends are the worst at this. If I hear one more husband tell his wife to keep her head down, I think I'll scream. All these pseudo-teachers are well meaning, but the majority of them don't have the technical expertise or communication skills to be effective golf instructors. For that you need a professional.
Too many women I know are intimidated by the prospect of learning golf, so they take the easy route. They go to the local recreation center and sign up for a group clinic from some guy they've never heard of whose credentials aren't available. Or they go to their local golf course or driving range and ask something like, "Do you have anyone here who gives lessons?" When a young kid who looks like the boy who bagged your groceries last week says, "Sure," these impressionable women sign up for a lesson without further delay.
Nothing could be worse for your game. Golf instructors are like any other working professionals; if they're worth their salt, they won't mind you asking a few questions. Among the things you need to ask any teachers you're considering are:
1. How long have you been teaching?
2. How many lessons do you give in a day, a week, a month, or a year?
3. What is your experience outside this course or club?
4. How many women do you teach?
5. What success stories can you tell me about your other students?
6. Tell me about your philosophy of teaching.
7. What would be the first thing you would do with me if I became your student?
8. Do you use video?
9. What other training tools do you use when teaching?
10. Can you provide a list of references?
You might want to probe deeper, but these are the must-ask questions you should put to any golf instructor. If the pro is put off by these questions, he or she isn't worth hiring.
You are the client. You wouldn't hire a housekeeper, a gardener, an accountant, a lawyer, and you certainly wouldn't let a surgeon operate on you without asking a few questions. You shouldn't let your golf pro get off any easier.
Free Advice Is Worth Exactly What You Pay for It
In pondering how to broach the subject of husbands, boyfriends, and other companions and acquaintances offering free advice on the golf course, I decided to ask a group of experts. During one of my weekly women's golf clinics, I asked: "What should I say in my book about husbands giving golf advice to their wives?" The responses ranged from "Tell them to shut up and mind their own business," to "Unless they want our advice on how to fix the sink or change the oil in the car, tell them to keep their opinions to themselves."
This went on for a couple of minutes with laughter after each biting comeback. In the end, the most sanguine advice from my group was: "Women should smile, nod, say, 'Yes, dear,' and completely ignore them."
Men feel compelled to give women advice about golf. It's in their genes, like hunting, gathering, and clicking the television remote. Unless your husband, boyfriend, or male playing partner is also your teaching pro, the best advice is to ignore any free advice. Free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. You should always be polite, even when the advice you're getting is something as silly as, "You're looking up!" or "You're not throwing the clubhead through the ball enough!" Just smile, nod, and ignore it.
Your golf swing is between you and your instructor. Part of making the game your own is taking command of the advice you will and will not accept. You should never be stubborn or rude. But you should take charge of your game. Once you do, you'll have a lot more fun on the course.
Managing Expectations
Once you've hired a teacher, the next conversation you need to have is on the subject of expectations. Both you and your instructor have to be reasonable in terms of how good you want to be and how much work you plan to put into your golf game.
I can't tell you the number of times I've been snookered by a student with unrealistic expectations. She will invariably tell me how desperately she wants to improve and how she's willing to do whatever it takes to get better. So I work with her, getting her to make better swings, then I prescribe a number of drills, some exercises, and a reasonable practice regimen to train the body on the new moves. A couple of weeks later I see this student again and she is swinging the same way she did before our first lesson. "Did you practice what we went over last time?" I ask.
"Well, I didn't get out to the practice tee as much as I would have liked," she answers.
"How about the drills? Did you do what we discussed?"
"Well...not really."
"Any exercises?"
"No."
Yet she wonders why she's making the same abysmal swings and hitting the same poor shots she did the last time we had a lesson.
Golf takes practice. Good golf takes lots of practice, and great golf requires more hard work than most people are willing to accept. Before you become too immersed in your newfound love for the game, you need to sit down with your instructor and map out a reasonable strategy for practicing and playing that includes all the distractions you have in your life.
Most of us don't have two hours a day to hit balls, but that's okay. If you're realistic about what you can and can't do in terms of practicing, playing, exercising, and drilling, you won't fall victim to false expectations. And you're less likely to become frustrated when the game doesn't come to you in a snap.
Keeping It Fun
Anyone who tells you that you can lay off this game for a couple of years, head out to the first tee, and have a wonderful experience has either never played the game or is intentionally trying to deceive you. There's no more anxious feeling in the world than standing on that first tee and wondering who's going to see you make a fool of yourself. And there's no more frustrating feeling than spending all afternoon on the course without hitting at least one or two good shots.
That's why I suggest that when my students are working on swing changes or making certain setup adjustments that they forget about playing by the rules for a while. Don't keep score when you're trying to learn something new, and don't worry if you hit an errant shot into the bushes. Drop another ball, forget about the one you lost, and play on. If you feel you've been on a hole too long, pick up and go to the next tee. If you're tired, quit. You aren't competing in the U.S. Women's Open, and if you're worried that your friends might snicker at your inability to finish a round, you need to reevaluate your friends.
Golf isn't easy, but it shouldn't be torture either. Enter it with a good attitude, and you'll never grow tired of learning.
Copyright © 2003 by Cindy Reid
Excerpted from Cindy Reid's Ultimate Guide to Golf for Women by Cindy Reid, Steve Eubanks All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
