For over forty years, I have seen people struggle with their golf swing or game, in general, always wondering, “What is missing?” and “Why am I not hitting it as well today?” I have seen great players, like my father, get worse and stop playing the game they love for a period of time because they thought they lost the ability to play. I have seen high handicap players who were content with being mediocre but hoped to improve – rocket into scoring respectability and actual achievement in a VERY short time frame.

For instance, I always told my father that watching bad golf swings would hurt his own, mostly reminding him that he always told me to play with better people. Whether golf, basketball, tennis, whatever the sport, he said I’d get better faster if I learned by losing to more better players. I was fortunate to have a great role model and mentor like dad in all my athletic pursuits. Having watched him quit playing golf in sad resignation, only to rediscover his game in the absence of the bad group of golfers he was playing with, confirmed the knowledge I had all along.

This season, I decided to introduce more experiential golf lessons. The results I’ve witnessed have been dramatic, as I had suspected they would be. I began with my juniors who are motivated to achieve. But, even my juniors who do not practice have improved their ball-striking and scoring.

I first thought to make playing a centerpiece of my teaching while in Florida. My first female student, in Florida, went from being happy to break 100 to shooting 76 (20 hcp. To a 7 hcp.) over the six months I played golf with her. We played three or four times a week, so you know. Their ability to make changes on-course while scoring has emerged as a real asset. Most dramatically, their awareness of movement due to set-up has fostered these benefits and been fostered by their teacher’s own play.

When you play golf with an authority figure, whether senior to you or just a better player, you get nervous when swinging your club. When we are nervous or anxious we gain a hyper-focus, for lack of a better descriptor, an our mind is adapting to our situation at light-speed (This is the central tenet to the Open Stance Philosophy that I teach). In the course of adapting, comfort settles into the learning dynamic from the students’ point of view, and they soak up every morsel of spoken and unspoken feedback they create. Once patterns of cause and effect are established, they are placed on the back-burner in favor of more detailed feedback that comes at the student in bigger and bigger waves as self-imposed limitations on their performance evaporate.

As I continue to conduct solely swing-for-swing playing lessons for my Open Stance students, I am redefining the term as my students’ improvement launches to a far higher level of awareness. The faster they become acclimated to keeping my playing company, the easier it is for them to assimilate information. For those who don’t have access to an excellent role model playing from an open stance, my information is available.

John Wright – Founder
The Open Stance Academy