Thankfully there is not a ton of golf instructors reading my little articles, they may not like my hypothesis. It’s really easy to be a golf instructor these days. Here is the formula I have seen repeated…
Steps To Be An Instructor
Step 1, be young, and a reasonably decent player. Like maybe you were great in high school, and in college you had some stretches where it went pretty good.
Step 2, watch a bunch of YouTube videos. Since you haven’t actually mentored under anyone who could teach, you will need to regurgitate what the internet talking heads are saying.
Step 3, buy a launch monitor. When you don’t really know how the swing is supposed to work, you can always look at the screen and say “we just gotta tweak those numbers a little bit”. Hopefully the student doesn’t ask how that should be done, right? Dazzle with gadgets as I like to say.
Step 4. Shit on all those who have come before you. Leadbetter, Foley, Harmon, Mclean, Jacobs, Hardy, Adams, Bender, Hall, Malaska, Anderson, Cook, Smith, Haney, Gankas, Plummer, Dahlquist, even Michael Breed. Instead of paying homage to the decades of research, and the lists of accomplishments, it’s way better to nit-pick their methodology, and rip them as knowing nothing. That is sure to lift your position.
Step 5, get some outrageous stuff on social media. Nothing gets the consumer more excited then hearing you have found the secret, and of course you want to share it with us. But how many secrets are there, and why do you need $8.99 every month?
What Instructors Need?
In the end…this probably isn’t a formula that works. You need to be a decent player, but probably a better communicator. You need to have formed your own ideas about the swing, but of course you’ve borrowed most of it from the best resources. If you don’t actually believe what you are saying, why would someone else?
Golf Course Owner Guy is not absolutely convinced you need a launch monitor either. A vast majority of people simply want to hit it better. We can all see these people have bad numbers, but you better know how to change the numbers. I think all fledgling teachers would be smarter to be filling divots on the ranges of the 100 greatest teachers as opposed to criticizing them. Lastly, there are no secrets, you sound like an idiot.
