GOLFZON Leadbetter Education | Weekly Blog | For coaches and aspiring coaches
Ask an amateur how they could get better, and what most of them think will not actually be what they need. That gap – between what golfers think they need and what actually works – is one of the most interesting teaching problems in our profession.
It has long been our principle to learn as much as possible and teach as simply as possible – simplifying the mechanics for our students and developing a repeatable swing.
The golf swing takes roughly 1.3 seconds from takeaway to finish. Once the motion starts, whatever you have trained is what happens. Every extra moving part in a swing is another thing that has to fire in the right sequence, at the right time, every time.
This is why tour players look so different from amateurs. Not because their swings are more complicated. Because they are less. There are fewer compensations and less timing needed to make up for sequence and positional issues.
Amateurs, meanwhile, are almost always carrying two or three extra moves they do not need. A fan-open takeaway. A reroute at the top, needing a hand flip at impact to match.
The GOLFZON Leadbetter principle
Our teaching philosophy has always started from a simple question: what is the smallest number of moves that will produce a repeatable shot for this golfer? How do we get the club from A to B in the simplest way, no detours – as David would say.
Our founder David principle has been for many years to try and create a simplified approach, to reduce the complexity of the outer circle (arms, wrists and club) so the inner circle (body pivot) can do its job. The principle is, fewer things to synchronize means better chances of synchronizing them.
We build this into our certification from the first level. Young coaches have a habit of wanting to add to a student’s swing – new positions, new feels, new drills. Experienced coaches almost always do the opposite. They subtract.
Principles we teach, players we adapt to
Simplifying does not mean every student ends up with the same swing. It means every student ends up with fewer moving parts than they started with – on the way to their own efficient motion.
A tall player and a short player will not swing the same club on the same arc. A player with tight hips will not pivot like a gymnast. Our job is not to force a model. It is to create fewer parts, matched to the athlete.
We spend a lot of time on this in the GOLFZON Leadbetter Certification because it is the habit that separates coaches, and coaches that can develop simple lessons that work. Anyone can teach the same lesson to every student. Few can teach the right one, but is not that difficult!
Why this matters for the coach
There is a temptation in this profession to impress students with complexity – to show them you know more positions than the last coach did. Resist it. The student who gets better is the student whose swing has been made simpler, not more informed. A coach who can make a motion feel easier, cleaner, and more repeatable will always be more valuable than a coach who can describe more of it.
The coaches who go through our certification and are successful with their students tend to have one thing in common. They subtract. Their students stop carrying around a list of swing thoughts and start owning a motion.
For the golfer reading this
If you take one thing away from this article, take this. The next time you are on the range and your swing is not working, resist the urge to add something. Do not stretch further, try harder, hinge more, or think more. Take something away instead. An arm swing moving in sequence with the body – which is normally a shorter arm swing for most. Maintain a good wind-up (coil) but shorten the arm swing to match.
Almost every golfer we meet has a simpler, better swing buried under years of well-intentioned advice. Coaching, at its best, helps you find it. That is the craft we are passing on at GOLFZON Leadbetter Education.
