I ran into a couple old students...

[Tp]

So I have recently run into a couple old students.
Both played baseball. They were both told not to use their baseball swings to play golf.

I asked them how the pros suggested they do that...

They both looked at me as though he were crazy.

Hey, we have two guys who have played baseball or softball or hockey or basketball and
they have a set of skills that may or may not apply to golf so what are we supposed to do
about that?

Most golf professionals say the golf swing and baseball swing have nothing to do with one another
yet I have collect over six hundred similarities between the two sports, some of them in swinging and others
are in throwing.

I find the action of throwing is much easier to transition a baseball player to golf then hitting and that would
explain why pitchers seem to make better golfers than do hitters but that doesn't mean we cannot use many
movements, skills and sensibilities of the hitter to play great golf.

The best thing I could and have said to a baseball player about transitioning to golf is to set up as if wanting to hit
a grounder to left field, or the third base line.

That's it...once they are able to pull the crap out of the ball we move the grounder to center field.

There you have it. The best thing I could say to any baseball hitter to transition to golf.

If I told the same person to pull the ball they wouldn't know what to do but using a language they understand makes
all the difference.

If I set them up with more level shoulders they would feel awkward and unable because that is working from parts rather
than working with the entire system.

When working in parts you are literally setting a person up for much frustration because they have to hit thousands of balls for
too numerous hours for it to feel comfortable and natural but in one sentence it happens in just a few swings.

Hit a grounder to left field.

They know immediately how to set up their bodies and how to swing.

They know structure and action within seconds because it is already a built in skill.


Learning or teaching in any other way is ineffectual and too time consuming.