This blog isn't really about the D-Plane, as much as it is about what seems to have happened in the golf instruction industry since it's reference has become more commonplace.
It doesn't make you a bad teacher if you don't know the D-Plane right now. It doesn't make you a good teacher just because you do know the D-Plane. However, knowing the D-Plane, just like knowing anything else, will make a teacher better than he/she was before. At least, it can't make you worse. How a teacher chooses to use the information is up to them, and is where the real skill in teaching likely lies.
New information regarding the golf swing is coming out at a pretty steady rate these days. While the D-Plane isn't really "new" since it's been published for a while (Ted Jorgensen, The Physics of Golf. 1993), its measurements (Angle of Attack, Dynamic Loft, etc.) are now more commonly referenced since we have machines (Trackman and Flightscope) that can measure them. There are even more advancements coming out in the field of biomechanics for the same reasons; we now have machines (K-Vest, AMM 3D, etc.) that measure what the entire body does during an elite golfer's swing, as well as have common access to slow motion cameras capturing in video in 1000 frames per second, so that few images are missed. Several researchers, including Dr. Rob Neal and his company, Golf Biodynamics, have measured thousands of swings, and have enough data to make some very concrete assertions about what kinds of things happen in good golf swings.
For example: during the release of the golf club, before the clubhead impacts the ball, the point between the hands is actually moving upwards, helping to release the club downwards. This has been now been measured over and over again. You may have known that, taught that, or both. You may not have known that. It doesn't mean that telling a student to drive their hands "down and through the ball" couldn't help them, it just means that it doesn't actually happen in the most efficient, effective golf swings.
This wave of "new" information does not mean that anything taught beforehand was wrong, but might help explain why the things taught beforehand that worked did so.
My point in this blog is that simply knowing this information or not doesn't necessarily reflect at all on the instructor's ability to make his/her students play better golf. Some instructors have surely used a feel like this with students to try and help their swings. While something like this is fact, and not really up for debate anymore, it doesn't mean that instructing your students to swing your hands "down through the ball" couldn't help them. Many differences between "feel and real" in the golf swing are referred to all the time, and since the goal of instruction is to have the students improve, in my opinion the better teacher is the one who gets the student to improve more, not necessarily the one who told the student the most correct information.
I don't meant to pick on anybody out there, but - to the guy who tells his students that the ball will start to fly along the path that the club was moving on when it hit the ball, and will curve and end up where the face was pointed at impact- if using that phrasing helps your students more than a more correct explanation would, then you've done your job.
By the way, ultra-simplified ball flight explanation: The golf ball will launch roughly 3/4 of the way between the face of the club and the path of the club head through impact, and spin in the direction away from the path. You can get WAY more specific than that, in many different ways, but hopefully that one sentence will be accepted as fact.
Personally, I don't see why, as a teacher, knowing the correct information could ever hurt, but:
1. What the teacher wants the student to do
2. What the student was told to do
3. What the students tries to do
4. What the student actually does
you gotta admit that there's a lot of chances for information to change, and getting #4 to be good as possible is the achievement of an excellent teacher, regardless of what #'s 1, 2, and 3 were.
Those are just my opinions, which sometimes change...but not usually.
:)
-Mark
@StrongerGolf
Well, you know where I stand on this.
ReplyDeleteGreat job and keep them coming.
JG
Mark I really like how you stated your opinion here. I am in total agreement. As coaches our ultimate goal is to improve the student. Our goal should not be to provide information to students just because it is newer or perceived better than another coaches information. At the same time we should be on the constant search for knowledge to give us the resource to best a improve our students. Thanks for sharing and providing such a nice perspective on this.
ReplyDeleteRob McGill, PGA
Nice piece, Mark ... would those insights change if those feel-thruths where portrait in an article or video that was meant to help all golfers (or at least all golfers would be able to access that information) ?
ReplyDeleteI mean, since we are all 'snowflakes' we are likely to all react differently to a feel-tip ... so feel tips should be shared only on a personal level or people should at least understand what should really happen if that feel where applied ..
Thanks guys.
ReplyDeleteMeindert, I would say that the feel-tips you are referring to should definitely be customized to the student, so that they achieve the desired movement. Some students will want to understand exactly what is happening, some will likely not care at all as long as their shots are better.
To get three different students to achieve the same movement (assuming that you would want that to happen), you could very well have to describe it in 3 different (sometimes VERY different) ways.