Less about Golf Tips and more about a Fascinating Game!

I have read more than enough on the theme 'Golf Tips' and I would like to concentrate on the more important theme of learning.

There are thousands of golf books, stacks of videos and mountains of golf magazines which have been produced with one main quest... to help golfers improve at this game. There are also tens of thousands of golf teaching professionals earning a living trying to fulfil the same pursuit. I would like to discuss a huge error that is being made in all of these mediums.

So what is this huge error?

In their wisdom they are all trying to teach golfers to swing like Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Sergio Garcia et al. This may sound feasible or logical but in truth it is a downright and utter foolish mistake. There are two main reasons why I am making this statement and I will gladly explain them in this article.

Tiger Woods and his colleagues are the absolute epitome of excellence in this sport and they spend, on average, at least 6 - 10 hours every day perfecting their swings, and have been for at least two decades. Most of them also have a training regime which includes stretching for an hour or two before exerting their bodies to the inhuman turning motion that is required for their polished swings.

These super professionals could be compared to other athletes at the top of their sport. Like, for example, the sprinters who are able to run 100 metres in under 10 seconds; or the high jumpers l eaping over a 2 metre plus pole; or the javelin throwers lauching their weapons around 100 metres. I am sure most of you would love to excel in any of the many sports concocted by man, but in reality we are very aware of our capabilities and especially of our limitations.

I bet none of you are stupid enough to jump into a racing car and try to overtake another car at 150+ mph driving into a sharp bend. You probably realise that such professionals have devoted many years of prolonged training honing such skills.

So why is it when we play golf we try to emulate the people at the very pinacle of the sport?

The answer to this can be found in the masses of publications on golf tips that have been forced on every golfer, including myself. We have all been brainwashed into believing that we should and could swing like the elites of this sport. In fact, the vast majority of the articles I have ever read are rather adament that there is no other way.

They have however made a simple and very annoying mistake when they have published these golf tips. They have forgotten to mention that the top players need to stretch and practice for hours and hours every single day to achieve consistency for the complicated and intricate movements required for their level of proficiency. Think about this: there are food guidelines letting slimmers know how many calories are in a slice of cake; or health warnings for smokers; or alcohol limits for driving; and more appropriately, health warnings for exercise which could lead to physical problems.

I believe they should make it law that when they are demonstrating certain aspects of the golf swing they must also display the required stretching and training time required for these feats. For example, any aspect of the swing taken from any playing professional in the top 1000, should come with a guideline for the stretching and practise required to achiev e this. A typical example would read like this...

To come within 25% of the proficiency of any top player's backswing (for an average human being), 2 hours per day stretching and 2 - 4 hours per day supervised tuition. For his downswing and impact conditions, there should be an honest guideline stating that this should be treated with care because it is improbable for most humans to achieve any consistency for this, no matter how much time they have.

And lets face it, his precise to the millisecond followthru doesn't really matter if you can't be expected to achieve his downswing conditions. In these golf tips publications, the swings that the top pros are using can be compared to running under 10 seconds for 100 metres and 999,999 people out of a million of you have no problem with this improbability.

So waken up! Ask your pro why he is trying to get you, (a thirty to sixty year old man or woman), to get the club to parallel at the top of th e backswing, or to achieve a, perfect to the millisecond, followthrough which resembles the top players. They need hours and hours, day after day, month after month, year after year for this and these aforementioned publications and many renouned teaching gurus (I'm not naming any names) are trying to encourage you to learn the same movements in a squillionth of that time.

They have been writing about golf tips and the swing for a long time and I believe it is now too late to apologise for this huge mistake. How can all of the experts from these various mediums of instruction, apologise and say, "We forgot to tell you how much time you need to achieve consistency at this level and how remote your chances are of swinging within 25% of the capacity of the golf super humans who can only be compared to 100 metre champions and the like."

There is however another method or swing which is more suited to the normal human being and I have been dedicating my time to its research. I am a devote follower of the great 'Inner Game' coach, Timothy Gallwey, and mainly because of him, I have been able to further develop his 'Doctrine of the Easy for Golf'. I am more concerned with enlightening the masses to the aforementioned misdemeaner, when giving golf tips, and will be striving to correct this.

I hope that I have intrigued you with my rather bold statements and that you have grasped the logic held within. My main target is to simplify the complicated and bring a more natural swing to the masses.