after seeing these two seasons, and watching guys who have nowhere to go but up actually seem to get worse after spending extended in depth time w/ arguably the best coach in the world...why would anyone spend a dime on a golf instructor?

it seems as if all the golf instructors in the world would be mailing/calling haney and saying get the f- off the tv, youre ruining it for us.

i had a serious swing coach for 3 years in high school and he helped me an incredible amount. but i was a ~4 and went to scratch or ~1 after 2 years.

also, a lot recreational players don't spend enough time practicing what they're taught by their instructor because they like to play more than they like to practice. it takes a serious amount of time practicing thing that aren't fun before muscle memory takes over.

Honestly this makes perfect sense and it should be fairly obvious why this happened to anyone who has played golf and have had lessons frequently. It does not mean however that all golf instruction is bad/useless.

how many strokes do you think you would have shaved just practicing and watching your swing on video over that same 2 year period?

its not obvious to me. how did barkly not get a stroke better? i bet i could have made him play left handed for the same amount of time haney coached him and got him 1 stroke better.

and romanos putting was horrendous yet i never really saw a lot of time dedicated to. maybe putting is just bad tv, but you could have set up some sort of ridiculous putting drill (like those lines of teed balls on the range) and made it entertaining.

i'm not familiar with the ending for ray romano but charles barkley got much, much better. he just had the same problem alot of us have that we can't seem to take our swing to the course (and in his case in front of TV cameras and alot of people). they may have exagerrated but barkley said he hadn't hit a shot more than 10 feet off the ground in 5 years.

from what i saw of romano i think haney/the show was aiming too high. focus should have been on getting rid of bad shots instead of hitting great shots. romano was more like me, should probably focus on breaking 85 consistently, barely break 80 when everything lines up right

IMO Barkley is a head case and needed a shrink more than a swing coach.

I haven't seen all of the Romano episodes, but what happened to him (or imo happened to him) happens to players who are used to go for very long periods of time with little to no coaching. It's just a classic learning curve thing and it's constantly 2 steps forward and 1 step backward or even 1 step forward and 1 step backward. This coupled with the requirement to make "interesting" tv makes it very very difficult to achieve the goals set forward imo.

I have seen a lot of hcp 10-25 players who have never had any lessons or only had a few and when tey finally want some lessons because they're stuck their game deteriorates to the point where you wouldn't think it was even possible because they just cannot adjust. I really believe that changing someones golf swing can take much more time and efford than most people think, and it doesn't help when the students are as difficult to teach as Barkley and Romano have been in these series.

Or maybe Haney just blows...

i've taken lessons from 4 golf pros, and if i am not mistaken 3 of them have played a few tourneys on the pga tour. if not, 2 were NCAA stars and one has played senior pga recently for sure.

anyway, i thought my best lessons were from the non elite golfer. focussed on very simple things, worked with my swing and got rid of bad shots. the pga pro's would have helped alot but i think i would have needed alot of lessons.

the ironic thing was that my range and course performance were reversed with 2 of the teachers. one i had the ball perfectly on the range and couldn't even make contact on the course (i think this guy taught exactly how he hit the ball) and the best teacher was the reverse (terrible on range, awesome on course)

wonder if my favourite teacher is still teaching? he would be really old now

+1....... and if anyone wants to get their kids heavily into golf, please start with lessons. wish i had.

an adult friend of mine started with lessons. he got really good really fast.

I don't want to defend Haney because he basically "failed" with both players, but:

1. Barkley had/has possibly the most severe case of full swing yips ever. He probably got multiple shots better over the show, actually....he's just still awful. He needs a psychologist not a golf coach.

2. ummm....it seemed to me like Romano got significantly better. no?

astronauts.to.the.moon...ahahahahahaha

that's how I hear "best teacher in the world" in regards to Haney in my head every time someone says it

thats why i was saying just turn him around and start over left handed

he fired a 92 on the last day of the show w/ haney as his caddie.

I have a coach and he is the best money I ever spent, many poker guys in San Diego use him and I think all of us feel its been worthwhile.

My brother hired a different coach and he sounded horrible, he made my brother worse and didn't explain things well / gave him information that directly contradicted what my coach told me. I think your mileage just varies significantly with golf coaches.

It's funny because I find myself defending poker coaching sometimes on 2+2 and a lot of people have a belief that poker results directly correlate to a good poker coach, which I *mostly* disagree with. In the golf world I feel like everyone has a much more rational understanding that the best coach has a lot of teaching skills that go beyond his own ability to play well (see smbruin22's post above). I know my coach shows me video and explains things in multiple ways to make sure I understand the adjustment, and that I can diagnose and make a change on my own when playing. I still can't even break 100 consistently but I can watch someone swing and correctly notice their most common flaws, when 3 months ago I couldn't even figure out my own.

hmmm...i like the poker coaching angle since i do it sparingly and would hate to be judged on the results of my students. sometimes one "takes a shot" or i see them at a homegame or something and theyre doing all the stupid shyt i told them not to do...ugh.

maybe coaching in general is just sort of a bust. people who really want and are able to will "dig it out of the dirt" as Hogan said.

This is a ridiculous discussion. Some are judging all golf instruction on the results of two people on a made for TV ratings gambit. We have no idea how many hours were put into the endeavor and then judged on one final round in which we all know anything can happen.

If we are draw a valid conclusion from this hypothesis, data from thousands of golfers over a long period must be studied. Not a whopping two.

BO

i dont think anyone is looking for a valid conclusion. im actually happy w/ a ridiculous discussion.

I thought the two ball scramble Romano played was a good idea. He definitely swung better when he had the second ball to back him up. Probably a good exercise for a lot of us.

Meanwhile I tonight Haney did well with Barkley, but with Romano I wasn't impressed with his coaching at all. He didn't seem to encourage the guy at all. Maybe he just enjoyed Barkley more.

If the one of the (supposedly) best coaches in the world is on your bag, providing you with appropriate corrections, encouragement, tips, reads, etc., then "anything" shouldn't happen, imo. Sure, golf has variability, but having your own personal guru helping you with every single shot should have some effect on reducing that variability... at least I think so.

Sure it will have some effect, maybe 1%. One shot. Wow.

It's a TV show designed specifically to draw ratings, not improve two wannabe golfers.

BO

yes but the motivations of the producers and the motivation of hank haney much be quite different.

the way he talks about barkley tends to make me believe he was hurt/embarrassed by barkleys lack of progress. there is no way he wanted romano to hozzle irons into the bushes after months of coaching that would have cost thousands of dollars just for good tv.

im also gonna say its far more than 1 shot. i played st. andrews twice, good weather, played well both times. once i had a great caddie the other my caddie was shyt. 7 stroke difference in score.

So your opinion is that having a great coach walk the entire course with you when you're "off"that day will only amount to a 1 shot difference in the end.

Okay, that's fair enough.

My opinion is that a great one coaching your every shot should be able to save you more than 1 stroke on your off days.

I guess we'll just disagree.

Yeah we can disagree, and admittedly it probably is more depending on the player. But that's neither here nor there in this thread IMO. From two students on some stupid TV show, we cannot draw near enough data to make any reasonable conclusion on anything. All we know is that neither student appeared to make progress in the given time frame.

BO

Good f-ing grief people, does anybody understand sample size?

As I already said, it could be worth more than 1 shot, or not. But for all that is holy and good, if you're going to use data to support your hypothesis, please use a sample size greater than one! Otherwise you simply undermine your entire argument.

But having a caddie the first time playing The Old Course is imperative.

BO

sample size? ;-p