Technology Bites  

I spent some time recently catching up on exams for coaching, and it struck me how, as teachers, we have become prisoners of our own curiosity. Just as many people question the wisdom of our school's education system today, where you are judged on a mark received for effectively learning something off by heart, the latest exams being produced by technology companies are what is known as “live” exams. This means that they are constantly being upgraded and you can never pass the exam and be done with it! Certification is based on continual learning which has to be a good thing when one considers the rate of change of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the world today. The biggest problem lies for the coach that uses a number of pieces of technology to teach, theirs is a never-ending world of continual change as more and more is learned about how the golf swing and putting stroke truely function in a 3D world. 

 The annual technology fest for the golf world was held at the PGA Show in Orlando a couple of weeks ago.  Reports by those on the ground suggest a plethora of innovation is on the way especially in the world of putting where a number of new green reading and analysis tools were showcased for the first time.  Again, this has to be exciting news for the consumer, for the teacher, it is an expensive business, but with weather conditions as they are in Ireland, probably a necessary expense as consumers expect better analysis in the comfort of an indoor facility. Coffee anyone?

 If fairness to the technology companies, a common complaint from the consumer has been, "we don’t understand what we see," these graphs and numbers make no sense.  This is being addressed as more and more product is being designed to be consumer friendly. A case in point would be the latest K-Motion software, which now features an evaluation report. The client hits ten golf shots, five drivers and five 6 irons. A report is then produced which shows the client in plain language, where his swing might be letting him down, and suggests some areas in which he is outside the parameters of his peers! The coach can then work on a solution with the client, taking into account any physical limitations or injuries he may have. They shift is towards teaching the person in front of you, and not teaching a particular swing type or comparing the client to a professional.  I am always so wary when a new client starts talking about buzzwords like p1 to p5. Why would any golfer need to know about this terminology? How about learning how to play golf? 

Trying to solve problems in a golf swing by fixing them is the worst approach to teaching golf, and it is why handicaps have continued to rise and not fall. My dog Toby can tell you that you are “over the top,” my first question is why? The answer normally is a long way from where Toby is looking. This goes back to the heart of long term coaching; I have time to operate, the 30 minutes for 30 quid brigade only have time to prescribe an aspirin. 

​This leads us to the great debate about what is the best way to teach someone to play golf. Proponents of old school past will argue that ball flight and the sound of the shot, the eyes, and experience of someone who has given thousands of lessons are the keys to success while so-called “modern teachers” rely on data accumulation to access and decipher the problem. Brandel Chamblee in his book, “Anatomy of Greatness,” argues that modern golf instruction lost its way back in the '80’s. He further argues that modern teachers are creating a generation of players with pretty looking swings that don’t function well and won’t last. I’m not sure that either Claude Harmon or Sean Foley would agree, both technology advocates who currently teach the world number one and two players. Claudes take of the latest K-Motion technology is, “it’s a valuable tool, like all technology, that you can use to help improve students faster, it removes the guesswork, so there’s less wasted time.” Ben Hogan once famously said, “The secret is in the dirt” and while I am an avowed admirer of Hogan, you could wonder at how much quicker he would have improved with the aid of technology? 

 So, what to the future? I see bright days ahead for teaching and learning golf.  “Nervana” from Intel has just been released, the so-called “machine learning” chip. This will bring much-needed competition to the dominance in the market of the Nvidia chipset, and will speed up (excuse the pun) the arrival of machine learning applications. As the price of online teaching platforms continue to fall and the imminent arrival of 5G, I think some physical lessons and an online element will be the future. I am presently trialing this with a client who appropriately works for the technology behemoth, Amazon. I also see some scaled down client versions of certain technologies that can be rented out to the client so that they can accelerate their learning and groove in motor patterns under the watchful online eye of their coach. One of these technologies will undoubtedly be here by year end. 

Finally, whatever your take on technology in golf, my experience having taught everyone from Tour pros, to scratch players, to handicap golfers and junior camps, is each group requires a totally different mindset. All students are unique, they require different handling and certainly different levels of information. So, a combination of the teacher “knowing their numbers” and ‘experiential learning” is the perfect storm for me in a modern society where the next generation of golfers live daily on smartphones and are already super tech savvy. Technology is here to stay!  

Rickie Fowler picked up nearly 1.3 million dollars last weekend for winning; professional players now know that if they play ten events, missing the cut in nine and winning once is way preferable to ten top ten places, especially for access to future tournaments and world ranking points. So, it is to their advantage to try and hole everything they look at. If they go six feet by from thirty feet, they are prepared for that and practice accordingly. It's just a matter of wait your turn if you are playing well on Tour. Amateur players, by definition,  just do not have the ability to putt this well or fearlessly. They think that putting from 30 feet is the same as putting from 4 feet, it is a totally different skill set. Putting from long range is a skill that needs to be learned, most amateurs answer to this is a few four footers before they tee off and then wonder why they can't remember the last round of golf they played without a three-putt. Can you remember that round? The first port of call for any amateur player is not three-putting from reasonable distances.