Joe Charles is PGA Director of Instruction at the BOYNE Golf Academy in Harbor Springs, Michigan.Joe Charles on the importance of teaching your players to diagnose their own swing faults:
At the BOYNE Golf Academy, our primary goal is to help players enjoy the game to a greater degree. An old line that we tend to use is; “Any coach can get you hitting it good when they are watching you, but an exceptional coach can also get you hitting it good when they are not watching you.” What our PGA Professionals mean by this is that the coach working with a player is not always going to be with them during every round of golf and every practice session. We don’t want coaching sessions to be a crutch for players who may feel they need to have the coach close by at all times, constantly tweaking things with ‘Band-Aid fixes’. Instead, our PGA Professionals prefer to see them improve, accomplish goals, and eventually create new goals, which will allow them to enjoy the game more. We truly want to teach players so well that they don’t need us, but also to treat them so well that they WANT us. In order to do this, we try to educate them as much as possible about the five ball flight laws and how they can easily manage them with their unique swing, body, and skill level. This has become easier over the years with tools like TrackMan and CoachNow, which we utilize in every session. We are also extremely excited about the recent addition of TrackMan Range at our Highlands facility, where players will have the opportunity to practice with this revolutionary technology!
Joe Charles on the business impact of teaching your players to diagnose their own swing faults:
Since adopting this model of teaching with players we have noticed a trend. Players who are constantly improving through understanding their own swing are in turn enjoying the game more, are more engaged with your facility, more likely to invest in top-of-the-line equipment, and play more golf. This trend has benefited our business and is really at the core of why we do what we do creating exceptional value for the BOYNE Golf Academy. We have also noticed that when we measure improvement through goal planning sessions, it is very easy to speak with players about complex swing dynamics because they are so much more educated about their swings. This makes conversations about future improvement much easier, thus making renewals of coaching packages a natural choice for them to make.
If you would like to email the author of this Best Practice directly you may do so at joseph.charles@boyne.com.
