Information Overload, Why Cause and Effect by itself isn't enough: A lesson from Jason Dufner

Here is a lesson from Jason Dufner's career that applies to every player.  I love the story about Jason and golf coach Chuck Cook, who was one of my golf mentors. Chuck took a 32-year-old PGA Tour player who was 650th in the world rankings, and in four years helped make him a PGA Champion.  Is there something you can learn from what Jason Dufner and Chuck Cook have done and apply it tour your own golf game? 

A little background.

Chuck Cook started out as a golf mentor of mine and in 1989 I asked Chuck if I could watch him teach. He graciously agreed.  I knew I wanted to learn from one of the best. I was fortunate to be living in Austin, Texas, an area with such great instructors such as Chuck, Mike Adams and Dave Pelz.

One of the things I loved about Chuck was his approach to teaching something as complex as the golf swing and communicating it simply. I was happy to watch him teach at every level, from him working with amateur golfers to his University of Texas players to PGA Tour players such as Tom Kite. Years later, it was just as rewarding to be able to work with him on my short game when I was an LPGA Tour player, especially since the odds of making it on a major tour is 1 in 7 million.  I continued to work on and develop the skills Chuck taught me until I owned them. I saw a dramatic change with such simple concepts, concepts that held up under the rigors of playing at the highest level on the LPGA Tour and quickly improved my scores. I teach with his concepts even today.

Back to Jason Dufner and Chuck Cook.   According to Alan Shipnuck's interview with Dufner, they started working together and Dufner had a shut club face and other compensating moves.   During the 2008 season, Jason and Chuck Cook worked on making his swing more repeatable. They continually work on the plan they have made for his game.

Jason described that year. "It wasn't always easy," Dufner said. He recalls taking 17 penalty strokes in one tournament, the Mayakoba Classic. That year, Jason Dufner finished 184th on the money list and said, "I've always understood it's a progression."  Even with all those penalty strokes they didn't abandon the plan they had put in place.

Chuck and Dufner knew how to stick to the plan, to make the progressions that were necessary. There are no magic bullets or Chuck would have given them to him. By 2009, Dufner felt as if he finally owned his swing, and he spiked to 33rd on the money list. Now that he had done the work on his swing and felt like he had practiced it enough to own it, he was able to proceed with the next step of their plan.  They spent the next year focusing on improving his wedges and then in 2011 they worked on his putting.

Would you have been faithful to the plan after 17 penalty strokes? 

Most people would have tried to change something immediately and gone in a different direction.  Most amateurs want a quick fix, but the funny thing is it's taking them longer to get rid of the problem than if they would have addressed it and continued to work on it, like Jason did in the first place. You can't think you are going to find the magic solution in one lesson and be able to take it to the golf course.  Just being able to identify cause and effect (what you are doing wrong and why) in your swing doesn't mean your problems are solved and that alone is going to change how you score. 

The best players in the world don't do that. Instead, they find a coach to look at their entire game and make sure they are improving the things that cost them the most strokes. Tour players continually refine their games and test it under playing conditions, don't you think that plan also makes sense for players who don't have their skill level?  Why would you be able to do it in two lessons when even the best players in the world know it doesn't work that way?  Your playing goals are unique to you, what you want to accomplish in your game and how much time you have. It could be as simple as developing one skill to take off the 4 strokes you are looking for.  It's actually a lot easier for an high handicapper to cut down strokes than a top player to shave a half a stroke on their game.

Have you really looked into your scores to see where you lose strokes and know exactly what to fix and how to drive your practice, or is it a guess?

Have you been bombarded and overloaded with information about your swing and did it change your score? Do you have a million swing thoughts and change them every day searching for the magic move? What if your biggest weakness is a simple problem? Did you really need to revamp your entire golf swing?  Instead of revamping your swing when that might not be the problem, doesn't it make sense to keep what works and correct your scoring issues?

Which of the seven golf skills have you fully learned and do you own? Here's an example of a typical scenario. Let's say this player has a slice that really is manageable, he doesn't have too many wasted shots with the slice, but just doesn't like it.  However, every time he chips it ends up costing him a shot because it's his weakest link.  When he goes to analyze his scores and realizes he is only hitting 6 greens a round and has to chip 12 times, did that slice he is standing on the range trying to correct help improve those 12 shots he lost when he played his last round?  Upgrading that chip is a quick solution with impact on his score.

By Jason and Chuck improving all the parts of his game to produce better statistics especially in his weak areas, this is what led Jason to win the PGA Championship. This is the essence of how the best coaches and players in the world make a plan for improvement.  That's also what I did when I was on the LPGA Tour and when I went to see Chuck for my short game. This is the essence of Tour Tested Golf Coaching, I want to save you time and frustration by giving you the truths that I know because I lived them.  I know what it takes to become skilled and to improve your scores.  If you fully learn and follow through with a plan for the weaknesses in your game like Jason and Chuck did, you might be able to make up for the time you have wasted creating a swing full of quick fixes. This plan will help you develop all your skills, keep what works, and improve the issues that cost you the most strokes and see the plan through like Jason Dufner. This is the right way to get out of the quick fix mentality and build a game that produces long term lower scores for every level of player. 

 

Why You Have to Put Pressure on Your Practice

If you practice and don't test yourself with simulated pressure, it will be tough to transfer your game to the golf course. Instead of grading your practice by how well you struck the golf ball, after you have practiced and are hitting the ball well, you should then add more pressure to simulate what the golf course will be adding.  It's not enough to stand there and hit great shots one after another to make your ego feel better. How many times has it stayed with you when you went out on the course? The reason is how you practice.  Most amateurs can't accept a bad shot.  "What am I doing incorrect"? Isn't that the typical internal dialogue? If you ask that after every shot, you really can go down an erroneous path.  Once you are hitting the ball consistently for your skill level you need to change your lie, change your targets and go through your routine. If you want the skill to show up on the golf course, you have to expose it during practice to different simulated on-course variables that you will encounter. You have to practice from bare lies to fluffy lies.  You have to practice to different targets and practice full shots and in between yardage shots.  The secret is adding variability because that simulates what you will be having to calculate when you are on the golf course facing the same situation. You want the shots that you practice to be a set of different variables each time.  Then you can add the pressure to your practice which is easy to do. Set a goal for the shot you are practicing and establish a consequence for success or failure or you can make a bet with a friend.  The pressure that you add will enhance the transfer of the skill to the golf course.   When you are in the comfort of the practice range, the flaws in your game are not so apparant. When you place pressure on your practice, suddenly your weak link will be exposed and usually whatever is your weakest link will break down.  That's why when you go to the golf course anything that adds a little bit of pressure can expose your weaknesses, for example, a four foot putt to win a bet with your friend, wind, a hole that is intimidating, anything that puts a mental strain on you during the round. Most people assume they are choking on the golf course.  What it means most of the time is that pressure does expose your weaknesses and most likely the skill that breaks down on the golf course is the one that is the weakest in your game.  Work on repairing that weakness in your game through practicing by integrating mental demands of decision making, pressure and simulating on course conditions.  Exposing your practice to pressure over time will lead to that skill performing consistently well under pressure and ultimately lead to transferring it to hold up on the golf course.

drrickjensen.com

What's New in Golf Instruction for 2013?

GOLF COACHING:  Coaching golf is about much more than perfecting the swing. There are tour-tested, sport science-based strategies that coaches use to help tour players score at the highest level.  What the focus will be is differentiating coaching from teaching, practical applications of motor learning & motor performance, using feedback to accelerate learning all of which are used to help the best players perform under pressure.  Most amateurs are just concerned with changing their golf swing.  We need to make the shift from perfect technique to learning how to score.  How do you turn that knowledge about your swing as a habit so you can transfer it to the golf course. You need to be able to control the golf ball and have enough technique to hit different shots to get around a golf course. It doesn't make much sense to try and swing like Tiger, its not about getting your swing to look a certain way, how does that help if you don't have a technique that will help you score.  The constant fallacy is that the reason you shot a high score is because of some technical issue in your swing you need work out on the range.  This isn't necessarily the answer to why your score added up the way it did. What other skills in your game are lacking?  How often do you get up and down?  How many 3 putts did you have? Do you hit enough fairways? Its about putting the ball where you intend to put it and having practiced the skills to do so.

As an LPGA Tour Player, for me to compete every week against the best players in the world requires highly finely tuned skills in each area of my game and a precise practice routine to be able to take those skills and have them come out under tournament pressure on the golf course.  I had a team that I worked with of golf instructor, golf fitness professional and golf coach/psychologist. What most amateurs aren't aware of is that becoming a good scorer on the course requires training that is geared toward transferring skills to the course. This is much different than standing on the driving range hitting balls and changing swing thoughts on every ball.  There is no correlation to taking that out to the golf course.  Just because you did it on the range doesn't mean it will immediately work on the golf course. There is science based on this, and it is called motor learning and motor development.  You will begin to hear more about golf coaching now, finally, thanks to Dr. Rick Jensen and Henry Brunton.  I worked with Dr. Jensen starting in 1993, and he helped me successfully get onto the LPGA Tour and stay out there. He changed me from playing golf swing on the golf course and taught me how to score through getting out of being such a technical expert with my swing; we worked on all the skills of my game to tour level and managed my game on the golf course, through strategy, how I practiced simulating golf course conditions and shots I would face. We put pressure on my practice so it would be no different once the tournament came, I had prepared for that.  He currently has developed the Golf Coaching Track for Titleist Performance Institute (TPI) and now golf instruction can finally shift out of all mechanics and into how to get the ball in the hole and transfer the swing you are practicing on the range to the golf course. This is what golf coaching is about. It's a long term understanding that making a change in your technique requires different practice than just beating balls on the range.

 To be able to take it to the course and own it so it will hold up under pressure, there is more to it than understanding the cause for the problems in your swing and what to do to fix them.  Since golf is a motor skill and requires not only repetition to store the skill as a habit,  you must also practice it and have feedback from your coach, once you are training the skill with that feedback, then you need to expose it to different conditions to simulate those you would encounter on the golf course.  Can you perform successfully from all kinds of lies and conditions?  When you first attempt to do this, it will be difficult because it will take many repetitions to get rid of your old habit to develop the new skill enough to see it come out on the golf course.  This step will take some time and is where most golfers give up or switch to another thought because they don't think it is working.  That is why they never get any better, they abandon it before they have trained it well enough through all the conditions necessary. This is such and important part of skill development where if you continue to build that skill under these conditions, it will transfer to the golf course and if most amateurs understood this about how a golf skill is learned they wouldn't abandon it looking for the next quick fix. Once you have transferred it to the course, and you can draw upon it under pressure you know you have completely learned the skill.  This is the essence of golf coaching; you learn that quick fixes are an illusion, it takes time to master a skill and how to train it to hold up on the golf course; you will have the skills to play to your potential.


http://www.pbjgolf.com