I love to teach. Wait. This isn’t completely true.

I love to teach students who are willing to learn. Hold on. That isn’t absolutely true either.

I love to teach students who are willing to do whatever it takes to get better. Ok, I love to teach everyone but this is where I see have the most success.

The students that are willing to make sacrifices in their golf games and their lives to improve are the easiest to teach – and they make progress faster than any other group. I’ve learned that real and lasting improvement is a mindset. Students who develop this mindset are more likely to succeed. It’s worth looking at this group to learn from them and how they improve so rapidly. Here is what these students have in common.

They build a plan to build a swing.

Willing students have a game plan. They strategize. This includes having Moe as their model and getting coaching and feedback to help navigate their plans. This reduces wasted time.

They love the process.

Willing students have a game plan. They strategize. This includes having Moe as their model and getting coaching and feedback to help navigate their plans. This reduces wasted time.

They pursue technique perfection, not scores.

Of course, scores are important but hey are a result of great processes. Good golf swings increase the opportunity to hit better shots. Nobody is perfect and good golf swings also increase the bad shots being statistically better.

Details Matter.

To the willing student, the little things matter. Starting at the address position, they pay attention to the details knowing that the specific details are the key to perfection.

They realize that they can always be better, that the process is never complete.

This is hard for students to accept.  That the process is a lifestyle. Swing purity is a gradual artistic process. When you reach a new milestone, you are able to reach for the next one. This is what I experienced. Every time my technique improved, I was able to reach another level of competence. One example of this is speed and distance. As my technique improved I was able to speed it up. Refining the technique allowed me to speed up the movement.

They are willing to get “worse” to get better.

When students say “I’m getting worse” they almost always refer to results of their ball-striking. When you are building a golf swing, the swing is all that matters and results are what is visible in the technique, not in ball flight. As long as your technique is improving progress is being made. You might actually hit the ball “worse” at first but willing students know that pure technique will result in ideal results once the technique matches the model.

There are no time limitations.

So many students say “How long is this going to take?” I call it the unanswerable question. I usually answer it as “How much time would you give your child to learn to walk? “.  Can you imagine after a few weeks of falling down you say “We’ll kid; you’re going to have to crawl your entire life”. Learning anything is a process. It takes dedication, grit, and commitment. Quitting cannot be an option.

Finally, I want to summarize this blog with a story from Daniel Coyle’s book “The Talent Code”. In Coyle’s groundbreaking book, he tells of a study about kids who were learning to play the clarinet. To summarize, in 1997 Gary McPherson studied why some students progressed faster than others. He started analyzing data such as math skills, income levels, and IQ. What he discovered was that none of these factors mattered. Then he started asking a question. The question was:

“How long do you think you’ll play your new instrument?” The answers were condensed into three categories, Short-Term, Medium-Term and Long-Term Commitments. Then he measured how much each child practiced per week.

What he discovered what that the Long Term committed students practiced more.  This meant that as McPherson put it a “tiny idea” determined the students’ progress. The idea that they planned to make a Long-Term commitment and practiced – their skills skyrocketed.

McPherson concluded that students’ progress is a “Perception of Self”.