Golf Instruction -
History of Golf Instruction
Various authorities
have credited any number of peoples - Celts, Romans, Huns, or a band of
leisure loving Visigoths - with the invention of
golf in its earliest
form. But the story of golf instruction begins rightly in the medieval
era (no later than 1353), when golfers adopted the principle of allowing
each team to hit a second uninterrupted shot. Previously, teams of
players would alternate hitting a ball back and forth across a field.
Strategy and technique went no further than devising the most efficient
means of bashing a ball over the heads of the opposition, preferably in
the direction of the goal line, or at least into some abyss from which
the other team could not extract itself.
With the adoption of the second shot, and with the principle of each
team playing it’s own ball, this primeval game became golf and at the
same time acquired a strategy, something that it’s medieval rival,
football, did not until the invention of the scrimmage in the 19th
century. It also rapidly acquired such a popularity, which so utterly
eclipsed the sport of archery (which was vital to Scotland's preparation
for national defense), that playing golf in Scotland was made a criminal
offense punishable by hanging. No idle threat that, for at least one
poor golfer did pay this sorry price for his round - but ultimately a
peace with England was achieved and the Scots devoted their renowned
intensity to the study of what would become their national game.
Since that time, there doesn’t seem to be any aspect of ball-striking or
mental technique that hasn’t come under scrutiny, particularly in our
own highly scientific 21st century. Stance, grip alignment, swing plane,
waggle, wrist cock, shoulder turn, and angle of attack have all been
addressed by the parade of teachers, visionaries, kinesthetic,
scientists, engineers, mystics, duffers, and well-meaning Uncle Bobs who
have over the past 600 years plunked a ball on the turf and offered the
magic phrase "let me show you…"
19th century
The show-and-tell of golf instruction took on new importance in 1848
when, with the invention of the gutta percha ball (or "guttie"), golf
became both exportable and cheap. Prior to 1848, golf ball construction
was a laborious and costly art practiced by a handful of cottage
manufacturers in the vicinity of Edinburgh - and if a ball was
expensive, freight was prohibitive. Golf at this time simply had no
chance to expand beyond the Scottish lowlands. Since all of golf was
compacted into such a tiny area, golfers were able to learn simply by
imitating the great players of the day on the handful of courses then in
existence.
The guttie changed all that. By 1865, the game had expanded to England,
Ireland, France, and India. These new clubs hired full-time
professionals, many of them expatriate Scots, and with them came the
flowering of formal golf instruction as the canny professionals
undertook the task of teaching golf in foreign lands and foreign
conditions. The first book of golf instruction can be firmly dated to
this period, with the publication in 1857 of A Keen Hand, by H. B.
Farnie. The 19th century was a time of slow advancement in technique,
with concentration primarily on a long-running disagreement as to
whether an open stance or a closed stance was the better way to address
the guttie, which for all it’s low cost was something of a dodo and
difficult to put into the air. The controversy was only truly resolved
when the modern wound (Haskell) ball appeared in the early 1900’s and
made the guttie obsolete.
At roughly the same point in time as the Haskell, golf instruction was
advanced even more directly by the arrival of the touring professional
golfer. Soaring popularity and plummeting travel costs ushered in the
barnstorming era when golfers such as Harry Vardon could earn a living
from personal appearances, tournament purses, and exhibition matches,
avoiding the low status and even lower pay of the golf club
professional.
Vardon's tournament success and his proselytizing work in far-flung
places such as Canada and the United States led to popular adoption of
two of his innovative techniques- a steady, rhythmic, and utterly simple
swing technique, and the overlapping (Vardon) grip, which is still the
most popular method of gripping a club. Vardon did not personally invent
either – but his success stamped them first with legitimacy and finally
with a certain inevitability as he racked up six British Open crowns and
the 1900 U.S. Open title.
20th Century
Although both the first golf magazines and the British and American
Professional Golf Associations appeared early in the 20th century,
barnstorming professionals and Bobby Jones would continue to dominate
golf instruction right up to the Great Depression. Huge crowds flocked
to see Jones and Walter Hagen on both sides of the Atlantic, learning
such secrets as Hagen’ straight-line putting: drawing the clubface back
from the ball in a straight line rather than a slight arc popular at
this time. His innovation was important in the 1920’s and allowed him to
win many tournaments - but it is even important today with the increased
emphasis on fast difficult putting surfaces.
The modern sand wedge and bunker techniques were also a by-product of
the era - this popular innovation the work of several golfers, most
notably Gene Sarazen. But the Great Depression had a devastating effect
on touring professionals, and the age of coast-to-coast exhibition tours
came to a close. The years between 1932 and 1956 are not celebrated in
golf instruction lore, but that isn’t to say that the instructors of the
era weren’t any good. In fact, club-level and local instruction were
better in this era than at any time during golf’s history, as aging tour
pros such as Tommy Armour retired to club jobs while young pros like Tom
Harmon decided not to join the nascent PGA tour, owing to it’s low
purses and often appalling conditions.
Ernest T. Jones was at his studio on Fifth Avenue in New York City,
preaching the virtues of "swing the clubhead" at five dollars a lesson
to all comers. In addition, the best northern pros would travel to
Florida in the winter and pick up new teaching styles and techniques in
winter teaching meetings, or on the winter tournament circuit. Finally,
modern golf range equipment began to appear, eliminating the need for a
ball-shagging caddie, and sparked a boom in driving-range construction.
College-based instructional programs were also adopted by many major
universities during these years, attracting future stars such as Arnold
Palmer.
In the mid-1950’s, largely due to television, a new golf boom began, and
with tournament purses soaring and golf acquiring a certain cachet,
younger amateurs and club pros abandoned careers in insurance, or on the
practice tee, for glory on the PGA Tour. Prize money and endorsement
income made millionaires out of Arnold Palmer and Jack Nicklaus, and
with thousands of dollars now resting on the success of this putt in the
Masters or that five-iron in the Open, leading professionals began to
openly seek the advice of golf gurus such as Gardner Dickinson, Bob
Toski, Harvey Penick, and Jack Grout.
At the same time, Palmer, Nicklaus, and Gary Player parlayed their
tournament success into an empire of instructional publications-
magazine articles, television tips, and ghost written, handsomely
illustrated books. National magazines such as Golf and Golf Digest
capitalized on the newfound popularity of the game to achieve relatively
mass circulations and a national forum of cutting-edge instructional
techniques. Golf instructors too, found that golf magazines, and their
increasingly visible work with touring professionals, brought them more
business than they could handle on a local level. So, although golf
schools had been in existence since just after the war, in 1968 the
first national golf schools would evolve.
Golf did not sustain in the 1970’s the same level of popularity it had
enjoyed in the 1960’s, but significant changes were looming for the game
as golf’s expansion had created a large enough golf economy to allow for
substantial investment in research and development. The groundwork was
laid in the 1970’s for radical transformation of turf preparation, golf
club technology, and instructional technique. The cavity-backed iron,
the metal wood, the graphite shaft, as well as revolutionary changes in
irrigation technique and turf-laying, date to the 1970’s. All would have
substantial impact on the game as golfers achieved better and better
control over the golf ball (in flight direction, overall distance, and
spin characteristics.)
Golf instruction, particularly golf schools, would not enjoy a real
economic boom until the 1980’s but the influential theory of connection,
video analysis of the golf swing, and the emphasis on big-muscle
leadership date to the pioneering work of David Leadbetter, Jimmy
Ballard and others in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s. Golf instruction
also became more specialized, as teachers by the mid 1980’s began to
emphasize their expertise with "practical instruction" (John Jacobs),
"short game instruction" (Dave Pelz), "women’s instruction" (Penny
Zavichas and Linda Craft), or "mental conditioning" (Bob Rotella and
Chuck Hogan).
Today
By the 1990’s, and into the new millennium, golf instruction in the U.S.
had boomed to the point that there are now a multitude of national golf
schools offering hundreds of programs across the country, with a
cornucopia of techniques, price points, regimens, and training goals.
The largest of these is America’s Favorite Golf Schools with more than
40 locations nationwide. Virtually all of the national golf schools
offer books and videotapes for sale. Prominent golf gurus such as Dave
Pelz, Bob Toski, Rick Smith, and Jim Flick are in demand not only with
the touring pros but at skyrocketing master class rates at the finest
resorts. Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book also became the biggest selling
sports book of all time. In short, golf instruction has expanded into
one of the largest and most vibrant sectors of the substantial golf
economy.
Looking back over the entire grand parade of gurus and teachers, if one
were to assign a grade to golf instruction as a whole, six centuries
into it, one would pencil "I" for "incomplete". It’s well-worth knowing
that even in this day of gurus and their technical wizardry, fewer than
half of the world’s players can regularly break 100. It’s also fitting
to mention that when James Durham recorded 94 at the Old Course at St
Andrews in 1767, he set a course record that lasted 86 years. Golf
instruction has indeed come a long way.
From:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_golf_instruction
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