Instruction

What to Expect from a Lesson with Wayne

Every lesson starts with what you, the student, bring to the table. It is up to me to discern the state of your game and your thoughts and feelings regarding what you are presently up to, learn a bit about your history in the game, and assess the part of your game (full swing, short game, putting) that you want to work on. I will talk with you while I watch you hit a few shots and ask you a few questions while I observe your technique and approach. It is important for me to understand what you think about your own abilities, your strengths and weaknesses, and what it is that you really wish to accomplish by taking instruction.

After a few minutes I will almost always go to the video. I usually refrain from commenting on a player’s technique until I have a chance to view the swing from down the line and face-on, use the slow-motion and line-drawing capabilities of the computer system, and formulate an idea of what I want to focus on first and how I want to progress from this moment forward. I like to give the student an overview of how I think their swing works, what is good about it, and then, most importantly, what can be done to make it better.

Overall, the progression goes like this:

1. Learn what your swing does and why it may be difficult for you to achieve the results you strive for.
2. Learn what the best swings do and how they differ from your swing. In other words, I am going to help you to build a model, an image in your own mind of what a good swing should do.
3. Learn to see and feel the movements that you need to incorporate into your swing in order to make it more efficient (you must think about it).
4. Learn ways to practice in order to commit these changes to memory (you would like to take the new ideas from the conscious to the unconscious).
5. Learn to take the changes out onto the golf course and trust the new action (you will use your routine and a few trigger keys to keep you from thinking consciously about everything you are doing).

In the end I feel it is my job to prepare you to approach that first tee shot with a clear idea of what you would like to do in order to hit the ball down the fairway, then to feel the same sense of confident awareness over every shot you face. It is also my job to educate you toward making your own on-course corrections. In other words, if you have knowledge of the golf swing in general, and knowledge of your own swing and its tendencies, then you can make better educated guesses as to what might be going on when things go wrong. This is the magic moment when you no longer feel lost on the course, at the mercy of a cruel and uncompromising game. The key word in all of golf is “control”: control your technique, control the golf ball, control your emotions, and when all is said and done, control your score.