Golf Students Fall Into Three Categories – Which One Are You?

When I first started as a young assistant it became obvious to me that I had a great deal of difficulty getting my knowledge across to my students.

This started me on a quest of picking the brains of the best Teaching Professionals I could find. The list of people I spent time with includes some great teachers that you have never heard of and some great ones you have, such as Harvey Penick.

The one thing I learned quickly, much to my surprise, was that there was almost no correlation between being able to do and being able to teach. Being able to teach the average golfer is a learned skill and not something you can accomplish easily. I thought the fact that I was good enough to be awarded a golf scholarship to a major college and later qualify for a PGA Tour event qualified me to teach golf.


It didn’t — here’s a link to a website that explains why.

Basically being able to do has little or nothing to do with being able to teach. The way we (the brain) learns changes dramatically as we get older. It also points out that hitting balls is a waste of time unless you are working on something you personally can relate to. Wish I had found this out years ago.

Basically it turns out that if that golfer has learned to play golf well as a teenager and then grew up, he or she does not have a clue as to how to instruct someone else to learn to play in the same manner unless the student is a teenager.

It turns out that there are three categories of golfers. Teaching juniors, adults, and tour players require three distinctly different abilities. I find this really interesting since success with tour players is how you get on to all the Top 100, Top 50, etc. lists of instructors put out by the major golf publications.

The point behind this article is to try to get people to understand that just because someone has a low handicap or plays at a high level doesn’t mean they can help you or your game— kind of sheds new light on all the instructional DVDs and learning aides endorsed by tour players and instructors to the tour players.

The bottom line is that if you want to improve you need to find an instructor with success with students similar to yourself. Unfortunately this is no easy thing since we don’t have an “Angie’s List” for golf instruction.

I do my best on my blog and my website to give good simple advice and tips to help the average golfer. If you would like more help or information please leave a comment and I will get back to you..