Pitching

[GPStyles]

teach, since discovering the wonderful world of TGM i have often wondered the same thing - how do golfers play certain shots without knowing they are playing horizontal, angled or vertical hinges?

After pondering it for a while, I thought of how Harvey Pennick would teach. I remember reading a story of how Tom Kite and Ben Crenshaw came to him and asked him how to hit a shot over a bunker that would land softly on a green. Harvey told them to picture a little tree in the bunker and to make a swing that made the ball go up over the tree. After they had mastered that he had them visualise the tree getting taller. And taller. And taller. Until finally they could hit cut lob shots. When they asked 'how' they did it, he just said 'I dunno, you just do what you did jsut now'.

In Harvey's wonderful way, he taught them how to play a cut lob shot using a vertical hinge - but he would never call it that because he didn't speak 'TGM'.

Similarly, I used to play a fade using what I would describe to you then as an action were I felt I was 'holding off' the face. Basically I was preventing it from closing to a horizontal hinge, or using an angled hinge. Again I did not know how to describe this using TGM speak until recently.

What I think is really great about TGM is that once you know how to play the various hinges and once you know the various shapes each hinge will produce, you can then have an intention for your golf shots that gives you precision or the potential of precision that your competitors can only dream about.

[teach]

Food for thought, GPStyles, but as a high school teacher (for 40 years and counting), I know that people learn in many different ways. Frankly, I see a great deal of merit in good ol' Harvey's approach.

My own approach to teaching is to relate events in our past to the kids' lives, to "hit the kids over the head" with dramatizations of American history, and to make them *feel* it. Therefore, I will probably get better at golf when I can relate the swing to actions that I commonly perform in my every-day life.

Nevertheless, I will ponder what you wrote.

teach