Nelson and Peete are the only 2 I can think of who started playing in their 20's.
Jerry Kelly didn't get serious till college.
I have been on a quest to get this questioned answered for 2 years.
I know it is different. How does an adult go about learning an efficient golf swing? Kids have it easy....the power of imitation is great, but we start losing it when we turn 18 or so. Then our analytical side takes over and when that happens you are doomed at high level golf unless there was a system to overcome it. It has been said that you need to be really smart or really stuipid to play golf at a high level.
I picked up a club for the first time when I was 20 and my college baseball team went to the driving range for fun. I got serious about golf when I turned 25.
Here I am 7 yrs. later and I am a 5 handicap. But...I still piece it together every round. Some days I putt great, some days I hit a lot of greens. The only thing I can really say I am "good" at is chipping and pitching.
To me this would be the holy grail of golf....how to get an adult to regain the imitative powers of youth. Would hypnosis work? Or a detailed program to learn as an adult?
This document (page 12) discusses performance for juggling and lacrosse pre-test and post-instruction for various ages. Pretty interesting. A similar study on golf is definetely out there - somewhere.
Sidenotes:
Remember that someone (Yoda?) once told me that he had observed how 3-year olds would pick up a club & automatically swing it with a straight left arm and extensor action. Except the hitters, maybe. LOL
Obviuosly good or great results can be obtained with practice. But how good?
Obviously golf is the game of games played on (almost) any level, but don't give me that
I believe Larry Nelson began sometime in his 20's!
True.
Larry Nelson began playing golf at age 21 upon his return from Army service in Vietnam. He broke 70 in his first year and won the PGA Championship twelve years later (and the U.S. Open two years after that).
I asked him in his prime if his goal was to become the game's greatest player.
"Well," he said with a little smile, "maybe the greatest player who ever started at 21."
I think that great golf becomes more difficult as you pick up the game in your 20s/30s/40s is that you're too intellectually involved and too physically strong to stay out of your own way. Little kids swing the way they do in large part because of a lack of strength, flexibility to burn, and they aren't trying to follow a multitude of swing thoughts. From what I've seen and read, adults who experience a lot of success quickly are almost all application, and very little theory. They spend more time making the ball do what they want it to do, and less time reading about it in magazines, etc. I've not only read about it, I've experienced it first hand.
Hybrid Mode
