The Language of Improvement
改进A lot of the national attention I get comes from the kinetic analysis software I developed with Dr. Steven Nesbit at Lafayette College. There’s no doubt that collaborating on that project is one of the things I’m most proud of in my 20+ years as a teacher. But all of that research and study can either sit on the shelf in the form of a paper or book, or it can move out into the world and help real golfers.
One of the common misconceptions people have about research-backed golf instruction by any coach who embraces technology is that it has the potential to be super complicated and intimidating. I guess that’s true in a sense. If all a coach is doing is dumping as much data on you as possible for an hour, that isn’t going to be very useful.
A lot of you reading this have been on the lesson tee with me before, so you know that misconception doesn’t apply at Jacobs3D. Everything I do is backed by what Dr. Nesbit and I have uncovered, but that research works behind the scenes. The lesson you get is you and me, working on getting your game in better shape. Let me give you an example.
Chen came to me the summer he turned 11, when his parents brought him from China to Long Island. He was small (about 100 pounds) but determined to play better golf. We started working together despite the fact that I don’t know a single word of Chinese and he might have known 10 words of English. We built his swing with gestures and signals—and not a single piece of super-technical communication. Chen went back to China at the end of each summer to go to school and play in amateur events. In the last year, he’s grown into a full-sized athlete. He won the China Amateur last summer, and this month finished second in the Boao Open on professional China Tour. He is now ranked about 850 among all the players in the world in the Official World Golf Rankings—as an amateur—and is coming back to Long Island this summer to work with me on his game full time and play college golf on a full scholarship at St. John’s University.
Could Chen give you a lecture on the rotational equations of motion in a golf swing, and how and when the angular momentum changes direction in the alpha, beta or gamma convention? Not on your life. But the best form of those concepts are cooked into his swing through the stuff we do on the lesson tee—just like baking powder in your mom’s cake recipe. It’s there, and does important stuff—even if you don’t specifically taste it in the final product.
In a Golf Digest article, I talked a little bit about some of the things Chen and I have done together (the article also covers Phil Mickelson’s crazy basement fitness studio!).
