Why Weekly Lessons Often Don't Improve Tournament Scores

What is going on, guys? In today's video, I'm going to be talking about why most lessons, or many lessons, don't translate over to better tournament results. This is one of the most common things that I see with junior golfers, is something that I lived myself. And this is no knock on swing coaches, this is just kind of an inherent problem that exists within the way that most people approach golf instruction. So Um, it's going to be a good video. Um, if you're new to the channel, that's all we talk about is helping junior golfers improve and specifically to play Division I golf. And so if you're welcome, if you're coming back, um, welcome back in. Um, good to have you here. It's gonna be a good one. So most junior golfers have had some variation of this experience. You go see a swing coach and you want to get better. The swing coach has you hit a few balls. They eventually film your swing. They look at your swing, they say, hey, I don't like this particular element of your swing based off of, you know, maybe some feedback that you've given, say, hey, you know, I struggle with this or what have you. They analyze it through that lens and they say, hey, I want to make these changes, go through a lesson, try to make those changes. And you either leave where you're hitting it good and everyone's happy, or maybe you're not hitting it so good and it's kind of like, well, you know, we just gotta, you know, work on it and, you know, keep grinding. And we layer that onto, okay, I've got a tournament coming up, right? I've got a tournament coming up, um, and either we play good, in which case everybody's happy, we text our coach and we're happy, um, or we don't play good and we're kind of frustrated, we don't know what's going on, and then it's, you know, go get another lesson to try and sort out whatever the thing was and, you know, continue to go work on the swing. And this is something that I've experienced myself, this is something that I have experienced working with junior golfers, um, this is something that I experience all the time talking to parents on essentially a weekly basis. And this is just something that's really important to understand is that if we want to improve something, we need to make sure that we're measuring the right things, and our incentives are aligned. So what do I mean by that? If our goal with getting a lesson is to improve tournament performance, then we need to evaluate tournament performance relative to those lessons, right? So it's like, hey, we start taking this lesson, these lessons, we have to know how are these lessons specifically going to help that tournament performance. And so for example, if your child, you know, is getting swing lessons, right, we kind of are starting off with the hypothesis that it's like the reason they can't score better in tournaments, or the most efficient way for them to score better in tournaments, would be for them to hit the ball better. That's essentially the assessment that we're making there. And, you know, to some degree that makes some sense because a lot of whether a player is going to be able to score has a lot to do with their ability to hit the ball well. At the same time though, a lot of time we're just kind of picking a random club. You know, we might be hitting like an 8-iron or a 7-iron, and you know, most of our lesson, um, you know, we might hit drivers at the end of the lesson when we're already a little bit tired. Maybe we're trying to, you know, play around certain feels and see if we can do it with the driver. And then the coach is kind of like, all right, cool, let me know how it goes. And there's no real plan when you when you leave that lesson tee. And so this is kind of true no matter how much you're spending on that particular lesson. You know, just, just like for context here, um, I don't really consider anything under $100 to be like a serviceable— like that, that coach is still getting started, right? Maybe you found a diamond in the rough, but odds are $100 an hour is the minimum a high-quality coach is going to be charging. More likely we're looking at something in the range of $150 $200, $250. Um, you know, my mentor charges $500 an hour, um, and that's just out of pure demand. Now, that said, a lot of those coaches who are charging less, they're going to have a greater incentive for you to come on a weekly basis or even more frequently than that. And I really, um, would challenge that in large part because a good coach should be able to make a large enough change with a clear enough path over that, you know, let's say couple hours that you see them, that you don't need to see them every single week. That would be just overkill, because at the end of the day, a lot of it's go out and do it, go out and do the work. That coach isn't going to win tournaments for you, that coach isn't going to score for you, and just being around them all the time doesn't make it any more probable that it's going to work out for you. So there has to be time for, for a player to actually build ownership over what they're doing to build those skills. Players, if you're watching this, or parents, if you wanted to ask your child on this, just like, how often have you had something that you felt like was pretty good and, you know, maybe you didn't feel like it really needed to be changed at all, but you had that lesson on the calendar. And so coach looks at it, they want to change something. You had a feel that worked, they're going to change it to something else. And all of a sudden we kind of lose a little bit of confidence with what we're doing in the golf swing. We just lost a little bit of our feel. And, you know, my perspective is it doesn't really seem necessary to do that unless it's necessary to do that, right? If, if we're not struggling with our approach play, then, you know, it's like, why would we go ahead and make those changes? You know, the right play might actually be just to play more golf. But if you have a coach there who has the incentive to get that next lesson on the books, you can have a little bit of a conflict of, um, whatchamacallit, uh, conflict of interest, right? And so just super, super important to kind of understand, like, we're trying to improve, we're trying to shoot better scores in tournaments, we need to be looking at what are we actually doing in tournaments and what's the most efficient way for us to improve in tournaments. So this is Obviously what I'm doing with every student that I work with, I'm having them track their statistics, as you can see here. Then we're analyzing those statistics to figure out, you know, mathematically, like, what's going to have the biggest impact on their scores and what's the fastest, most efficient way for them to improve. And then we're going over specifically what they're going to do in their practice in order to see those changes happen, whether it's, hey, we just need to put time into it, we need to do the specific drill, we need to make these strategic adjustments, we need to make these mental adjustments, or, you know, maybe sometimes we need to make mechanical adjustments. But we want to go down that hierarchy to really see like what's the easiest thing that we can do here, you know, what's the low-hanging fruit. If we're 3-putting all the time because our lag putting is bad, yeah sure, I'd like you to be at 50% greens or 75% greens regulation, but it's like it's a lot easier to lag putt than it is to hit 75% of your greens, and it's gonna have a much bigger impact on your overall scores, and it's gonna have the compounded effect that if you get better at your lag putting, when you do hit more greens, you're not just going to 3-putt on those greens, right? So it's, it's so important that we're always attacking the thing that's the easiest to do first so that we're able to get like faster results. Not by like doing any type of like gimmick, but just like literally being like, okay, cool, this makes the most logical sense to like do this first because it's easier, and then continue on from there. And here's the kicker, here's the most important thing that you guys take away from this. We're actually tracking what, you know, what we're trying to move, right? So in this case, it's scoring differential. So when I started working with this player as an example, back in February, we had a scoring differential of 8.41. Now we've got a scoring differential of 5.12. So again, pretty substantial change over a relatively short period of time. This player definitely did better than average, has done better than average so far. Obviously he's got room to continue to improve this. Average player I work with improves by about 4 shots per year, give or take. And that puts us in a position where we're able to pick up spots within our class. You know, as more kids come into a particular class, um, you know, it kind of gets— you have more competition, let's say. So if your child starts off kind of young, maybe they're one of the best players in their class, and maybe they don't improve quite as much, and they kind of like drop down on that. Large part is because more players are entering the class, right? Anyway, 4 shots per year, we're going to be able to pick up spots in our class. We can start in the middle, you know, the 50th percentile, and we can get to, you know, kind of that elite percentile that actually gets recruited to play college golf, to play Division 1 golf. So, um, that's, that's really that process. That's something you're interested in. There's a link below, um, an application where you can fill out just to confirm, number one, your child's in a position where I can actually help them. Um, and then if they are, we'll be able to schedule a call, talk you through the details of what everything looks like, make sure that makes sense for your child. But anyway, back into the video here. Hopefully you guys can kind of see this thread. It's— we want to be able to see Okay, cool. What are our scores in tournaments? And we can also see how is this different from practice, right? Because, you know, even if you guys have a coach and people ask me all the time, they're like, Connor, how do you do all this like virtual coaching? Like, I think I need in-person coaching or whatever. I'm like, there's no way to do this in an economic way that isn't virtual because to go out and watch the necessary amount of golf would just cost an astronomical amount no matter who you are. right? Like, to go out and watch 5, 10 rounds of golf to actually see how a player plays— no coach on Earth is going to do that, you know? It's like, you— like, I just— I haven't seen it, at least. Even if you break down the math, it's like, for $100 an hour, 5-hour rounds times 5, I mean, you're already at $2,500 just to get an initial assessment, you know? It's like, that's, that's a lot. Um, and that's if it's a lower pricing point per hour, which most better coaches aren't going to be. So anyway, I digress. When I'm looking at a player, I'm getting 5 rounds to start, and realistically I'm looking at 10 rounds because if I went out there and watched them in person, you know, what if they play good? Tells me nothing. You know, what if they play bad because they're nervous? Tells me nothing. But if I can see 5 to 10 rounds of golf, I can get a statistical profile on why they shoot the scores that they shoot. How are they different from tournaments? So let's just take this player as a quick example here. Um, let's go ahead and see. So we've got greens regulation 55%, birdie conversion rate 29%, scrambling 41%, 3-putt rate, you know, just under 10% here in practice. Let's look what it's like in tournaments. It's probably a little bit worse. Sometimes it flip-flops, um, some players are better in tournaments than they are in practice. So we've got better greens regulation, lower birdie conversion rate, lower scrambling, and slightly better at 3-putting, right? So we've got a lot of good things here, and, you know, kind of between these two data sets here. Let me go ahead and look at penalties as well. So we got 2.9% penalties in tournaments, and we've got— let's see here— we've got 5% penalties in practice. Okay, cool. So we're doing a lot of things in tournaments that are actually better than what we're doing in practice. Now, once we've kind of established that, like, you know, that's obviously great to see. The biggest difference here is, you know, this player doesn't make quite as many birdies in tournaments. And so then the question becomes, okay, cool, out of all the things we could do, what's the most efficient way for this player to improve? And in his case, it's still push-up greens regulation, even though we've got that gap on birdie conversion rate. A lot of people can kind of get distracted on that. It's still to push up, you know, greens and regulation here. Now we can ask a deeper question, say, okay, cool, why is greens regulation not as good as it could be? Well, it's not par 3s. Par 3s are amazing. Par 4s, you know, could be improved. Par 5s definitely could be improved. So let's go ahead and look at our layup number. So from 75 to 100 yards, we're hitting the green 65% of the time, and we're hitting our par 5 greens 67% of the time. So in this case, for this player, one of the easiest ways to get his greens regulation up is to get his 75 to 100 yard approach shots improved, right? That's a very, you know, direct way for him to be able to improve his overall scores. And so my question to you is like, if you knew that, like let's say this was your child or this was your own game, do you need a coach to tell you how to hit a lob wedge on a green more than, you know, 6 out of 10 times? Or does it make more sense to say, hey, let's just practice this shot and, and try to do that as a starting point, you know? And then once we've got that, maybe we need to like work on our alignment a little bit. Maybe we're struggling a little bit with, you know, some of the consistency of, you know, the ball coming out. Maybe we need to put an alignment rod on the ground, make sure we've got our consistent setup here, that we're clear about the shot shape that we're hitting consistently. Um, little things like that don't require just like a routine lesson just to be like, all right, let's see how things are going. It's like you kind of know how to hit the golf ball. At the level that you currently hit it. And yes, it can be improved, but it's like, where's the most efficient place to improve right now? For this player, it's like, you know, most coaches probably say, hey, let's go ahead and hit 7-irons. My thing is like, hey, you know, we can just do a lot better with our lob wedge. And a lot of that's just intent. And I can tell you based on the conversations that I've had with this, this player, you know, that's exactly what the case is for this right now, is just the intent of hit more greens. Right? Instead of trying to go and try and hit it close and try— instead of trying to go pin hunting, we're just trying to be more intentional about hitting the ball on the green, right? And so this is kind of my, my summary here of just why if you're just going to these routine lessons and maybe your child is struggling to convert those into tournaments or consistent performance in tournaments, it's because we're not measuring the right stuff, right? It's like we're not looking at how our averages are trending. It's like, hey, we played a good tournament, we played a bad tournament, everything's panicked. Or, hey, this, you know, we finished here, we finished here. It's just kind of random. Um, so that's, that's number one. Number two, the lessons aren't specific to the particular issues. Maybe there's like a subjective of like last week this happened, but you know, over an average of 10 rounds of golf, like there's no way to actually just know that subjectively. Like you have to measure that. You have to have data on that. And so it's so crucial to understand like, okay, cool. You know, we're actually measuring this. We know what we're looking at. We know that this is the biggest issue. Right? Like, we've actually analyzed the statistics, and this isn't just looking at strokes gained and being like, huh, well, you know, approach play has— you know, we're losing the most shots on approach play, or, you know, the biggest gap here is whatever, putting. It's just like, it depends. Like, that, that really is the answer, is it depends. Um, I suppose I should also give a special shout out. Um, I misspoke here a little bit. We also need to get the 3-putting down, um, just be clear. So it's a combination of get the greens regulation up, also get the 3-putting down. But anyway, I digress. Point being, it's not just looking at these numbers saying, oh well, strokes gained is bad, so therefore it's like, no, what— even if we can say strokes gained is bad specifically with like putting, it's like, okay, cool, why? Like what is specifically going on so that player understands, hey, my lag putting needs to get better. And so what does that mean specifically? It means when I have a 30-footer, I need to have my next putt inside 3 feet, right? If I have my putt from 5 feet, I know I didn't hit a good lag putt. That's a much easier way to understand. It's much more easy to implement. And for this particular player, he's in a position where he doesn't have a putting green. So it's like, you know, for him, like, we've been able to have a massive amount of improvement, um, without even having some of the normal resources that you might, you know, your child likely has. So again, long story short, if your child's going to lessons routinely and they're not seeing improvement, especially in tournaments, they need to change the way that they're approaching the game and have a little bit more of a methodical approach, a little bit more of a detailed approach where we're tracking the statistics, we're looking at those stats, we're saying out of all these things we could do, what makes the most sense? And if we are going to get a lesson, it's targeted to that specific issue. But again, a lot of the time it's just your child putting in the time on that issue or making a strategic adjustment or making a mental adjustment. Those things tend to be much more instant results comparatively to changing your golf swing. Because we all know, it's like if you try and change your golf swing, we're looking at weeks to months of uncertainty that you may or not even get better, you know, results. Versus if we just put in effort into a particular area, odds are at least that initial kind of burst of effort is actually going to do something. I want to be clear, if you just put in tons and tons of effort, if we're already putting in effort on an area, doubling the amount of effort doesn't necessarily cause double the results. I want to be super clear about that. So if you putt for you're lag putting for 20 minutes, bumping it to 40 minutes doesn't necessarily mean you'll cut your results, you know, double your results. Odds are there is a significantly bigger difference of going from nothing to 20 minutes comparatively to 20 minutes to 40 minutes. Another way you can understand this is the relative difference. If you're at 0 or at 5 minutes of just kind of like randomness, and then we go to 20 minutes, that's somewhere between like a 400% increase and like infinite increase if we weren't doing anything. That's obviously going to have a massive impact. To just go from like infinite increase or a 400% increase to 100% increase, not going to have quite as big of an effect, right? So hopefully that makes sense as well. So anyway, hopefully this video was helpful if your child is, you know, in those kind of situations and kind of struggling to improve consistently. Or maybe you're not even measuring this stuff, maybe you're not even looking at Junior Golf Scoreboard and saying like, you know, how is their scoring differential trending and like which direction is it trending in, you know? Like where are we at percentile-wise if you're able to, to see that data, you know? It's like You know, for this player, we started off in the middle and now we're at the 35th percentile. We improved by 15 percentage points, which is crazy. Um, and so we're on a really nice trajectory here. And so just super important to kind of have that perspective. Um, so hopefully this video is helpful. If you want more help with it, again, application below, fill that out. Um, we can talk about, you know, what it would look like for your particular, uh, for your child in your particular situation. But once again, hope it was helpful. Talk to you guys soon.