At Yarra Bend Golf course in Melbourne I work with the team of highly skilled coaches.  Most of us have more than 10 years professional coaching experience.  If we are truly honest, we will admit that the first five years of coaching were where we cut our coaching teeth.

Golf is a lot like chess;  you can learn to play it in a very short space of time, however mastering the game is a different story.  Just like chess there are endless nuances – particularly technical and strategic – which you learn about as you continue to improve.  Each time you come across a new piece of information, whether a suggestion from your coach or something you pick up through experimentation, it is cause for excitement and hope.

Every day I also see friendly advice being offered from players to one another.  Typically the advice comes from a parent or friend (usually a male).  In most cases the parent or friend has about as much coaching knowledge in credibility as I have for flying fighter jet.  And my only experience of flying is as a passenger.

Watching these ‘coaches’ is a great form of amusement.  Usually the coach starts out really enthusiastically, but usually ends in one of the following ways.  The ‘student’ finishes up frustrated from the 101 pieces of information offered, the coach says “you  just need more practice” or the coach makes a quiet exit.  My personal favourite is when the coach says “just copy what I do”, and then proceeds to top the ball or hit a massive slice.  Usually when they hit a slice they say “it would have gone straight except for the crosswind”.

I’m all for golfers helping one another out as it is part of the social nature of the game.  When you consider the value of friendly advice, just be mindful of the words from Dirty Harry in Magnum Force “a man’s got to know his limitations”.