I spend a lot of my teaching time with tour players and top college and junior players, so I don’t spend as much time with beginning golfers as I used to. That’s one of the things I love about Old Palm Golf Club – the constant interaction with and opportunity to see and observe golfers of all skill levels.
Recently, however, I had the opportunity to help Justin “Juice” Valakis, a well-known tarpon fishing guide and good friend of mine from Key West, teach him how to play golf again after 12 or 13 years.
Juice simultaneously taught me how to fish for tarpon and gave me a new lease on life as a teacher. It reminded me how to be a good student and how to get the most out of the learning process.
Here are some tips and insights from my golf lessons and fishing trip with Juice that can help you become a better student, too. — Tony Ruggiero, Golf Digest Top 50 Teacher
1. Approach each lesson with an open mind and no preconceived ideas about what you should do.
A story from our fishing trip: Early on, I noticed that Juice didn’t have to pay for a short fishing trip. I asked Juice about it and he said don’t worry, it was nice to spend time with someone who listened and tried to do what I wanted and wanted to learn. Someone who didn’t think they had all the answers. That touched me deeply. I had personally made a commitment to listen and learn when I took on the task of learning to fish for tarpon. I wanted to be what would be, for me, a model student on the tee for the lesson. So if you want to get more out of your lesson, show up with an open mind and listen and communicate as we discuss below.
2. Make sure you know exactly what you want to do
I find that people miss the very basic and simple fundamentals of the task. For fishing, I was concerned with what to do when a fish comes on the line, but for golfers, it can be as basic as understanding how the ball gets in the air and where the club hits the ground. Students often say they didn’t get under it or didn’t pick it up.
This comment shows that the golfer does not fully understand what he is trying to do.
One of the defining moments with Juice was when he understood the fundamental concept that in the golf swing, the club must swing downward toward the ball, and the bottom of the swing is actually in front of the ball. Once Juice understood bottom, his entire perception of what he was trying to do changed. His questions changed dramatically: “In order for the club to hit the ground in front of the ball, do I need to turn my body behind the ball?” It seems simple, but students and teachers often assume they are all on the same page.
Taking the time to go slow and really understand the concept, no matter how simple, can often pay off in the form of faster development as you can see here. Here’s a clip where it clicked when we explained the low point to Juice and how to hit the ball as a result
3. Don’t get lost in the details. The decor is everything!
Many students want to jump straight into things they don’t like about their backswing or foreswing, or maybe learning how to position their feet, hips and core so they are balanced and can move properly is key to improvement. We have developed a process to help Juice learn proper form as well. Golf is a rotational sport and the better balanced we are at address, the better our bodies can rotate back and through.
I have a saying that the body’s most important job is not to fall. If you are off balance from the start, your body will not rotate and will not reach the speed it could if it is afraid of falling and becoming off balance. Many golfers neglect their posture, not because they want bad posture or imbalance, but simply because they do not know how to achieve good, balanced posture.
We helped Juice understand how his hips and core work and showed him a process for receiving the ball in a way that keeps him balanced. This simple process can help you improve your lineup, too.
4. Mark Twain once said, “Write what you know.” The same goes for teaching.
It helps a player “get it” faster if you can relate the new movement to something else they are doing. As I said, golf is a rotational sport, and our job is to help you learn to move the club around your body with the rotation of your body. A rotation! When a pitcher throws, he pivots on his back foot, then pushes off, pivots to the front leg, and releases the ball, just like when you throw a football or medicine ball against the wall at the gym.
It is extremely useful and helpful to relate the golf swing to other movements you do in other sports when learning a new movement. We had a breakthrough with Juice when we explained that swinging the club is similar to throwing a fishing lure into shallow water to catch a tarpon. When he compared the golf swing to something he knows and does, something clicked for him.
What I’m trying to say here is that improving your golf swing can be as simple as learning to apply a twisting motion you already do to your golf swing.
5. Everything you do in a lesson should be able to be written on an index card
I still follow this advice from my long-time mentor, Mark Wood. How often do golfers go to practice after a lesson and can’t get the feel or movement they had in the lesson back? Here’s how to prevent that. Whether you’re a tour player or a beginner, you should take your own notes in your own words at the end of a lesson. I think it should all fit on an index card.
These days, most people just type it into their phone. No matter where it goes, if you write it down and write down “your feelings,” it will help you stick with what you’ve learned and make progress. I encourage students to write down their set keys and cues, their backswing feelings and forwardswing feelings or cues. Dr. Greg Cartin does a great job here of helping Juice summarize his notes and feelings in a way that he can refer back to more easily and quickly. Check out how Dr. Cartin and Juice take notes and feelings so they can do better in the next session.
6. Learn to play golf, not golf swing
Understand the difference between working on your golf swing at the driving range and playing golf and scoring a point. They are completely different tasks. One of the cool things I learned from tarpon fishing that I can apply to golf is that when we were tarpon hunting, Juice didn’t just take us out to find fish and throw bait. Rather, we anticipated where the fish were going once we found them and made a plan to get in the right position to put the bait in front of them.
That’s exactly what better players do. Better players don’t just shoot at the hole, they look at each hole and think about where the best place is to get to the green and then think about which club is the best to put the ball there.
Tour players then look at the greens and think about the best place to leave a ball if they miss. Tour players always have a knack for leaving the ball where it comes up and down easiest. Tour players know they can’t make every shot perfect and navigate their way around the course the way we navigated a boat through the fishing grounds in Key West. If you think like a tour player or a tarpon fisherman, you will play better golf. If you work on your swing like we did with Juice, you will make better shots, develop new and improved movements, and combine that with the way you navigate your way around the course, you will become a better player overall.
Take Juice seriously: He’s learning to play golf again after 12 years and having a blast doing it. He even turns me into a fisherman! Watch the whole episode where we turn Juice into a golfer and he turns us into tarpon fishermen!
