Why do more golfers not take professional coaching? You’ve probably already got an instinctive answer in your head. My gut reaction would be ‘they’ve never felt the benefits of a coach before’ in other words they have never experienced a rise in their play that they believed a coach helped them gain.
There are a multitude of other reasons I’ve heard over the years as to why a high percentage of golfers don’t take lessons. A few of the common ones are ‘they are too expensive’ to ‘I like doing things myself’.
At Johnny Foster Golf we naturally promote tuition and to those two claims in particular I’d say ‘it’s not an expense, it’s an investment in yourself and how much more you’ll get out of the game.’ We all recognise the feeling of pride we get from doing something really well like getting our handicap cut or holing a put to win a match. That’s the return on your investment and as you know, it feels priceless.
As for ‘I like doing things myself’, we can relate to this solo pursuit because golf does seem to attract individuals who enjoy their own company. However, I promise you the game is more easily learned if you’re guided by someone who is professionally trained. Imagine sitting your first exam at school having had no teacher, or next time you’re on a flight would you want the pilot to have taught himself? You’d feel underprepared and nervous to say the least. Ever felt like that over a shot you don’t really know how to play?
Now, before you think it – I’ll say it. Yes there are benefits to self-discovered learning or being self-taught in sport (it’s actually one of the big themes in our coaching) and we know lessons can get pricey depending on where you shop. I just wish I could convey to you the feeling of joy students have felt when they were helped with the game after initially being sceptical. I’m hoping that after you’ve finished reading you’ll have a feel for how rich the experience of learning and improving can be. And you’ll reach out and contact us if you want to shape you’re golfing future, either in person by visiting our academy or utilising the online elessons we now offer.
So how does the journey to better golf and improved confidence begin? Well firstly we connect, usually by a phone call, email or a chat somewhere. Believe me, we ‘get’ that you want to find out a little about us and how we can help you. We are so aware of the choices available to golfers nowadays that we welcome any enquiry and pride ourselves in returning correspondence quickly. We value that you’ve taken the time to consider us, especially so if it’s your children.
Once we communicate, we’ll try and find out what you’d like help with by asking some general questions – ‘what would you like to be better at?’, ‘what are the good parts of your game?’ and ‘what do want to get out of the coaching?’ And it’s ok not to have answers right away. We as coaches still can’t answer all these questions about ourselves when we go to education workshops. But I can tell you the questions make us think and start us off down a road of improvement. I believe a good coach will encourage you to answer as many questions as provide you with answers. We’ll help you set some exciting goals and directions to move towards. We’ll help you find where you’d like to go.
In your own time you’ll also find what it is you want help with if you don’t know straight away. We can help you understand your own game by keeping a diary, using stats, encouraging you to analyse your round or just gently show you the hidden power of ‘reflection’. These simple tools give you a sense of reality and answer the question ‘where am I now?’
When we have a good idea of where you are now and we’ve found ‘where you want to go’ we liken the process to a sat nav – as soon as you have a fixed location (ie where you are now) we type in the destination (ie where you’d like to go) and hit enter. The coaching plan appears.
We consider coaching so individual and bespoke that every journey is different in duration, location and nature. Sometimes it’s better to guide students for 30 mins and they’ll go off on their own and ‘self discover’. Other times I personally have spent a week working with one student in a dedicated training camp, immersed in their environment at the other side of the world. It has to fit the individual. Our coaching will fit whatever our coaching plan suggests.
We as a group of coaches at Johnny Foster Golf pride ourselves in putting the student first. We’d love to hear from you about where you are now and where you’d like to go. Get in touch…
