I feel so sorry for golf instructors, who feel the need to spend $25,000 on a Trackman to give their teaching credibility. It’s a weird thing. As an instructor, you have this “thought” that players want to see their data, and they will only seek out a lesson from someone who can provide data, and I’m not sure that is true.
Let me make a case for why Trackman (though useful in clubfitting) is really nothing more than a glorified distance machine when it comes to teaching. You take a lesson from me, and you hit a shot that starts right and curves left. Because ball flight laws exist, I can teach you that your face was pointed slightly right and your path was right of the face angle. If you would have closed your face more, or had a path further right, you would have gotten a different ball flight. When I tell you that is 7 degrees to the right, you don’t give a shit because you can’t feel 7 degrees.
Did you see the key phrase in that description. “I can teach you”. You can’t take me with you to read your flight, you don’t have $25,000, and even if you do have $25,000, it takes too much work to set it up before every shot and then go and analyze the data after. You don’t need to. The ball tells you everything.
Masking Other Problems
Sometimes these Trackman teachers have another problem they are covering. Thanks to the machine, they can tell you exactly what is wrong, but they don’t understand how to fix it. Sure they know you need to close your face, but they don’t know why your face is open, and what you need to do to get it closed based on the other funky match-ups that might be happening in your swing. It simply becomes a lesson of “look at this cool data”, and you never actually learn a remedy.
I Don’t Feel The Need
Golf Course Owner Guy gives old school lessons when he has time to give lessons. Which is pretty much never. Everyone who wants to be wowed with numbers can find a machine teacher, those who want to “be the ball, Danny” can come here. The world is abundant, there is enough to go around.
