Allow me to start this article with some insights from great teachers:
• PGA Teacher of the Year Mike Hebron believes you best learn golf in the winter and skiing in the summer – as the title suggests. He contends that the learning process is quicker and more lasting when one isn’t attached to performance, but is focused on process.
• Famous instructor Jim McLean does much of his teaching indoors, even though he is based in South Florida at Doral. He will video a player outside, and then come inside to make the changes. When the student thinks `swing’ and `feel,’ rather than `where did it go’ their progress is accelerated.
• In 1953 Percy Boomer wrote possibly the best instructional book of all time, On Learning Golf. In it he mentions that the best instruction sessions he ever gave were in front of nets. He says in his book, “If you worry too much about the result, you will tend to forget to swing the club. It is the swinging of the club and that alone that will produce the desired result.”
• The modern classic, The Golfing Machine by Homer Kelly, states: “It will be found that the indoor practice range is unquestionably the most effective place to perfect your swing. Outdoors, the hypnotic effect of distance, line and hazard draws attention away from the hands and induces a compulsion to steer the ball.”
I have been hosting an indoor training facility for 15 years, the last five at 10 Akerley in Burnside. People who have trained here have won:
• Men’s Provincial Championship (two different people)
• Nova Scotia Midget (three different juniors)
• Nova Scotia Junior (two different juniors, total of four wins)
• Nova Scotia Girls Championship (two different girls)
• Nova Scotia long drive Championship (three different golfers)
There have also been many winners of club championships, players of the year, beginners learning for the first time, club golfers lowering their handicap, and – just as important – golfers forgetting winter for an hour and talking/practicing golf!
The Burnside studio has:
• two putting greens with the latest putting training aids
• video cameras for self-assessment
• range practice on your own
• lessons, clinics, longer (nine week) programs, mental game training
• Flightscope Doppler radar system that tells you exactly what you did with your swing and where the ball would have gone.
Join me and the PGA of Canada staff and make this the winter that turned you game around!
The range will open December 1.
Ed Hanczaryk, PGA was voted one of the top 50 teachers in Canada and was CPGA Teacher of the Year for Eastern Canada for the past three years. You can reach him at Ed’s Golf Studio, 10 Akerley, Unit 52, Burnside, 450-0111 or online at www.awarenessgolf.com.
