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My lesson tee often does double duty as clinic and confessional: A student is hitting balls. The video camera records their swing. Before I can offer any advice, they blurt out: "I know, I have a baseball swing!" This is a bad thing? Why do most adults think that having playing baseball will hurt their golf. That hitting a golf ball the same way they hit a baseball in the past is now a problem. It's not. I wish more new students would draw upon their good memories of baseball swings and ball tosses to help them get comfortable hitting golf balls. The two swings are very similar in form. Both swings rely on the arms and body working together along with a dynamic weight shift to produce power. The head positions and arm extensions are very similar. You can learn a lot about the golf swing from watching a good baseball swing. Learning golf is hard enough without placing it in a complete vacuum. Many students come to golf later as adults and after a childhood spent playing other sports. Everyone knows that it's easier to learn a sport when you are young and innocent. Many view the golf swing as an alien life form and utterly incomprehensible. I take an inclusive approach when teaching a first time player. I want to know all about other sports a student has played in hopes of tapping into latent muscle memory formed from hitting a baseball, throwing a softball, or swinging a tennis racquet. Golf has long been viewed as a sport reserved for adults who can finally appreciate the pleasures of knocking around a little white ball. While grown-ups may have the energy and resources to play the game, they aren't as supple physically or mentally as they once were. Students often express their frustration by lamenting; "I wish I had started golf when I was younger." It's true we can't turn back the clock. What's helpful is to go back and retrieve some of the moves we used to play the games of our youth. One of my favorite drills used to rekindle such memories is called The Underhand Ball Toss. By recalling leg and hip motion used to toss a ball, students more readily grasp how the body moves in the golf swing. (Getting adults to use their hips and legs along with the arms is a huge challenge every teacher faces) Just clutching an imaginary ball will conjure up pleasant memories of childhood summer days spent tossing a ball back and forth with friends. By connecting the past with the present in this way, students relax and swinging a golf club becomes something familiar and natural.
The pace of learning accelerates when a student can draw upon personal experience. That's why, when a student starts talking baseball, I like to shout; "Play Ball!"
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