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Golf Lessons: Why, when, with who and how often?

Here at PAR Academy, we are really lucky to have some fantastic resources at our disposal, as well as a diverse range of coaches. But how do you go about picking the right coach for you and deciding how frequently you have sessions?

Set…Then asses your goals

The first way to evaluate how often you should see your coach comes down to what you’re hoping to achieve. What do you want from the lesson/s? If your idea is to lower your handicap this is a long term goal that requires time and investment in your golf. If your looking to improve just your chipping technique for instance this could be sorted in a shorter space of time. Choosing some short term and long term goals are a great way to plan and strategise improvement. Keeping them realistic is vial though. Playing off 18 and hoping to play in this years Open is slightly far fetched…But competing/qualifying for your Club Championship is a great one.

Advice from your Professional

This is where finding a coach that you trust, have a rapport with and you feel they can help you is essential. When picking a coach here are some questions to ask yourself.

“Does the coach teach a specific method only? Does the coach work with your existing motion or are they going to overhaul? Do you feel more comfortable with a Male of Female? How much experience does the teacher have? Have they helped other golfers you know? What about technology? Is it important for your learning style that your coach has technology to help you?”

Personally with my students I like to offer the different options of lessons available to see how they think they will learn best. This can be 30 minute, 1 hour or 1 & 2 hour sessions on technology where they can see what they are doing with Video or Biofeedback.

My advice, depending on how long you’ve been playing/how often you play or how often you get to practice… breaking down your whole swing and starting fresh is not usually the most productive method.’

Plan of how to improve with effective practice

If your goal is to improve your scores and handicap it is vital that the correct areas of your game are targeted to improve. Working on your weakness’ rather than your strength is what your going to be doing in lesson. Having a coach you trust is important as you’ll be working on his suggestions rather than the latest tip you’ve seen on YouTube or in a magazine.

Leaving the session with a clear understanding, practice drills and goals to refine the skill we have talked about in my session is paramount. You’re not going to be able to remember everything discussed in a session so keeping a lesson diary, me leaving a voice note on a phone or a follow up email with lesson notes can aid you.

 

Time between sessions

Depending how difficult/challenging the skill chosen is to refine will dictate when I next suggest we have a lesson. Ideally 5/6 opportunities to practice (whether it be range sessions or playing on the course) between sessions is a sufficient amount to start to see/ gain feedback on the change we are trying to implement.

If the initial lesson is just a “one-off”, quick fix type of thing, then it makes sense to do your own thing until you have trouble again. If you’re looking for help with your golf game, a single, one-off lesson isn’t going to do much good. So often, the problem that catches your attention most of the time is rooted more deeply and can take some work to resolve in the long term.

If you’re interested in lesson have a look at our ‘Golf Lessons’ page where you can see we have different packages, lesson and coaches to tailor to your needs.

Rob Wilkinson

PGA Professional

rob@peterfieldgolf.uk