Play with the Pro Day 11-12-10

Who: Each Friday Golf Care Members are treated to playing with me on the Golf Course

Where: Black Lake Golf Course in Nipomo Mesa, Calif.

When: 2pm to 2:45pm

How: With the avg. number of students being anywhere from 2 to 15 I have designed a way to watch and play with them under pressure. We usually get in 1 to 3 holes.

Format: Scramble

2:00 Load the Carts and travel out to one of the 3 Nine Hole Courses

2:05 Introductions and organizing the groups... You use my balls and your clubs and your tees for speed of play...

2:10 I model the warm-up procedure and first tee shot of day keying in on the where I want to hit the ball (this area I call the DART BOARD), correct club, slope of the hill, 10 baseball warmup swings, a flush grass or tee clip before hitting, and then I do some thing to distract myself from thinking about the large crowd (While hitting shot, for audio learners I will whistle, for visual I will keep the target area in my imagination, and for kinesthetic learners I will focus on balance with the hill slope) Today I chose whistling.

2:15 Their turn. I will now pay attention to their alignment of both clubface and feet. Some will line-up accurately, and some will line up to the right naturally (I call righties), and some line up naturally to the left (I call lefties)...

2:25 In the fairway after taking the best drive of the group, I let them hit away with no instruction, but paid attention to their aim. Some neglected the odd slope of the hill and thus fell off balance, which I then proceeded to model the "Hilly Lie Formula". After that how to strategize in finding the approach shot bailout locations around the green vs. becoming short-sided to the pin.

2:30 On the green we started the unique CARE League which is a chance for them to make putts in front of the crowd under pressure... Had them start with a one foot putt and had them be aware of perfect speed for the one footer = swish without hitting the cup liner.

2:35 Went to Hole 2 fairway and layed golf balls down for all of them, on a very sloped hill, about 170 yards away from the green... made sure they were aware of the hill and where the bailout was near the green, at any cost... Paid attention to alignment this time as well as noticed several were freezing up, taking too much time to hit the ball after looking at the target. So I modeled how to make a seemless transition after settling down in the set up and taking one last look at the target, and seemlessly starting the backswing. One commented that I "Connected the dots" seemlessly.

2:40 Took them to a pitching shot over a bunker, on hole 3, to let them experience a seemless takeaway.

What did they learn today: "Make the swing seemless", "Connect the dots", "Keep your mind distracted with humming or the like", "Find the Dart Board for each shot"