Don’t Check Your Ego at the Door!

Trivia: “Where was [2008 FedEx Cup Champion] Vijay Singh born? A) The United States B) Fiji C) India D) Malaysia” Answer below.

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The following article comes from the Globe and Mail. You can find it online here.

It’s interesting. The author, Curtis Gillespie, advocates taking more golf lessons and being sure to park your ego at the door – or greenside – when you do so. The insinuation is of course that golf instruction can be hard on the ego. Perhaps even demeaning and/or depressing.

That’s because almost all golf instruction follows the error correction model. The instructor takes a good look at your golf swing and then eagerly pronounces all that is wrong with said swing. He/she points out the many flaws and errors in your swing before eventually advising you how to swing correctly.

We take a different approach at Parmasters Golf Training Centers. We teach you a brand new swing, from the ground up. We call it Straight-Line Golf. We keep nothing from your past swing. There are no errors and thus no correction. We use highly effective, proven teaching techniques such that each client learns Straight-Line Golf efficiently and effectively.

Since there are no errors, our teaching methods build you up rather than demeaning or depressing. We build up your ego, your golf ego, rather than causing it damage.

Having learned Straight-Line Golf, Parmasters clients feel they can effectively tackle any golf course on the face of this planet. And they’re correct!


SEE A PRO AND CHECK YOUR EGO AT THE DOOR
Golf magazines won't help your swing but a good teacher might - if you're the right kind of student

CURTIS GILLESPIE
From Friday's Globe and Mail
September 26, 2008 at 9:21 AM EDT

There aren't many things I can imagine paying $200 an hour for, and the few that I can are not ones I'm likely to admit to in public. However, there is something I would pay that kind of money for that I'll acknowledge with no shame.

It involves a level of enforced submission, it's true, though I probably deserve it. And yes, it encourages the addict in all of us. But standing in the heat with my master's hand gripping my forearm, his voice stern in its counsel, I realized that this was a weakness I ought to have made peace with long ago.

Suspend your lurid fantasies, because I'm referring to a golf lesson.

Though I'd had a group lesson as a junior and the odd conversation with a pro here and there over the years, I'd never had the kind of attention I received on a recent trip to Scottsdale, Ariz., where I met with Bill Forrest, born and raised in Ontario, but now one of America's best teachers (in 2006 he was named Teacher of the Year by the PGA of America).

He has taught everyone from foreign royalty to tour pros to Kevin Costner, but for one hour his only concern - or perhaps it's more accurate to say the source of his anguish - was my poor stray dog of a golf swing. It was an hour about me.

It was a solipsistic, decadent, narcissistic hour, unrelated to anything of any real importance or value.

I highly recommend it.

Why so few of us take proper instruction is a mystery, since the vast majority of us could really use it (and winter, indoors, is a perfect time for it, since we can focus on form rather than results). Certainly, it doesn't have to cost $200 an hour; most golf instruction is considerably less than that (few teachers are as experienced as Mr. Forrest).

Perhaps we don't pursue real teachers because every golf publication now focuses on the latest theory, the latest tip, the latest trend that's going to "unlock" our potential and effortlessly transform us into scratch handicaps.

Why pay all that money for a live teacher, part of us must think, when I can read a magazine and get better? Answer: Because you won't get better.

Golf magazines will go into mind-numbing detail about the Stack and Tilt swing, the Two Piece Takeaway, the X-Factor Swing, and any of the other thousands of swing theories floating around out there.

A country clubber unsheathing his new Stack and Tilt swing developed on what he's read in a magazine is like a mountain climber heading up Everest after reading a hiking guide; lives could be at risk.

You need a sherpa to guide you through the hazards.

Another factor in why we may not pursue instruction is that some of us sense, or already know, that we are less-than-perfect students.

While we chatted during my lesson, Mr. Forrest told me that he's noticed a few patterns over the decades he's been teaching: There are good students and bad students, he says.

Good students let down their defences, they listen and then they practise.

Bad students are usually men, usually older, usually successful in business and have about a 12 handicap.

Why is this the prototypical bad student?

"Because most men who are pretty fair players, a 12 handicap, for instance, aren't willing to get five shots worse at the start to get 10 shots better in the long run; because the male ego is resistant to instruction; and because successful people aren't used to being told what to do."

The best student, says Mr. Forrest, is the female beginner. "They improve in a hurry because they're so grateful to get some expertise, and because they actually listen to what you're telling them. They don't care if they aren't going to be tour pros."

Men, conversely, sometimes avoid instruction precisely because we need it, because it would be embarrassing to stand in front of a teacher and showcase that spasm that calls itself a golf swing. We shouldn't care; the world is full of hideous golf swings. David Feherty once likened the swing of world-class golfer Jim Furyk to "an octopus falling out of a tree." In any case, as Bruce Grierson points out in his fine book U-Turn, there is an old Turkish proverb that says, "No matter how far down the wrong road you have travelled, it is never too late to turn around."

Time is also a factor. If you have any of the following - children, spouse, job, bills, other hobbies, a life - the likelihood is that a scratch handicap will elude you. But being a little better wouldn't hurt, would it? Most of us would say we could use a little more Zen-like calm in our lives, but not many of us are running off to monasteries to enroll in two-week silent retreats.

Golf can be terrific fun even if you never manage to shoot 68. Keeping the ball in play, hitting the odd good shot, scoring at a level that's at least going to save you from embarrassment should you find yourself in a company tournament - all these things are quite achievable, provided you get the right kind of instruction, focusing on fundamentals.

Check your male ego - or your male - at the door. Find an instructor to teach you a decent grip, proper aim and alignment, a sense of rhythm, and you're ready to play.

Too many of us get our tips from some guy on the range, or we imitate our ill-equipped partners, or we mess ourselves up with every goofy swing theory in the latest golf magazine.

If that's how you learned the game, well, let that be a lesson.

Curtis Gillespie is the author of Playing Through: A Year of Life and Links along the Scottish Coast. His most recent book is the novel Crown Shyness.


And the answer: “B) Fiji”