We need a new dimension for learning and teaching golf that is modern and in keeping with the normal challenges of daily life. We don't learn golf only through the techniques that we have been taught or read in a book. The more we understand the principals behind a certain technique, the more successful we will be.
Technically, we know a lot about golf equipment, golf course design, competitions, golf swing techniques, sending rockets to outer space etc. We are a very sophisticated species but we know very little about ourselves as golfers whose only desire is to hit the ball a long way down the middle of the fairway and not make fools of ourselves.
Why, for example, do we continually practise a particular movement that we completely understand in our heads but our bodies don't, or won't respond to what we want them to do? The answers can't be found in psychology (although sometimes we wish that the answers were psychological because then we would have an excuse). The answers must be found elsewhere and maybe, just maybe, the answers belong within the principles where Control, Touch, Timing, Rhythm, Power, Orientation, etc., reside. None of these principles can be easily identified within a technique and yet these principles justify a good technique. They are included in everything we do and experience: our heart beat, relationships, addictions and phobias, everything. These principles are generally grouped together and placed in the big bucket called 'feelings' but we must be more specific if our golf is going to improve. Our sense of 'touch' for example, gives us the sense of distance about how hard or soft that we need to hit a golf ball to a given target . We wrongly think that our eyes do this for us but our eyes don't 'feel' - they orient us in space. When you hear the phrase 'hand, eye coordination' what is actually meant? It is an intellectual phrase that can't be analyzed and therefore means nothing. Our sense of 'touch' belongs to the principle wherein a good grip (technique) can help us to have a better 'feeling' for the distance to a target. Feeling distance through our sense of touch will always remain a mystery because we cannot own it or put it in a jar and take it to our bank manager and ask for a loan against it and yet our feeling is very real. How we grip the golf club opens up a whole new dimension of thinking about our golf and our practise. We are obviously better informed about the target through our sense of touch (feeling) and therefore we become more affective.
When an athlete practises a particular movement over and over until a rhythm is established, isn't the athlete stepping into another dimension where the movement becomes a habit, ie., accepted by our bodies? It is important for us to understand these 'hidden' principles that underpin a good technique and the reasons why practise is so necessary.
The techniques that are being taught today are not modern because they are based on players’ swings of the 1940s. Today we can analyze golf swings in full colour and in slow-motion with our latest video cameras but the concepts of the 1940's are still being taught so that there is nothing new under the sun. The modern technique systems don't include the human person or their thinking (intelligence) capabilities. People are not blocks of wood whose dimensions can be written on a piece of paper or can be defined through the lens of a video camera. Golfers (athletes, musicians, etc.) are people and people come in all ages, shapes and sizes. The days of practising a technique without understanding the theory that lies behind the technique must be transcended by giving knowledge that includes the human person who still has blood flowing through their veins instead of computer chips. The ability to comprehend, understand and grasp why we practise the things that we do leads us to a new way of thinking about the changes that we need to make in order to improve our golf swings and the way that we can play the game better. The more we know, the more will our confidence grow.
'Knowledge makes the player' is the theme upon which Rocgolf has based its teaching method. No teacher, no book or any outside agency can make a golfer, we do that for ourselves. We can, however, share with one another why we do something and how we can do it within a good technique, providing that the technique complements the hidden principles of rhythm, timing, touch control, etc. These principles are what makes the game of golf so exciting and challenging.
The golfers of the 1940s played with an 'instinctive' style of swinging the golf club. Today some teachers are trying to revive that style again but surely that would be a step backwards to the ignorant days of a bygone time. We need a new philosophy and a new way of thinking about our golf that is based in the 21st century regardless of our age, build or gender. We are all evolving people and we are becoming more efficient with greater success than did our previous generations - our records confirm to this fact. Golf essentially is a 'feeling' game (as it always has been) but now our feelings, our instincts, must be led by our thinking capacities, to plan our golf, the same as a pilot must plan a flight from London to Sydney. He doesn't 'feel' his way, he plans it. Our young players are more astute than those players of the 1940's therefore we as teachers need to respond to this potential within our young players by giving them good information that includes them as people and not machines giving them learnings aids that are more suitable to training animals. College scholarships are normal for the new up-and-coming stars of tomorrow so we as teachers must also keep up with their skills in this highly technical age in which everything is judged materially at the cost of promoting ignorance about the other 'hidden' principles that go to make up golfers as people (not machines) and the game that we love to play.
Our mission at Rocgolf is to describe a new step forward (and is already described in the Rocsolid Golf Technique that will lead us to have more satisfaction and success providing that we make the effort first to understand the 'hidden' principles that lie behind a technique and second to practise that technique. As strange as it may seem, we already know the answers, it's just that we haven't thought of them ... yet.
To be continued ...