Steve Stricker – Golf’s Best Teacher

Right about now you might be thinking ‘did I miss something’? No Steve Stricker hasn’t written a golf instruction book or opened an academy in Florida. What he has done is to resurrect himself from the abyss of golf failure to become one of the best players in the world. If you watched last week’s John Deere Classic you know exactly what I mean.

It wasn’t so many years ago that Steve Stricker couldn’t drive a golf ball to save his life … or his career. Somehow, someway he worked it all out to not just return to where he was but to stand toe to toe with the world’s best golfers. Think about his performance in last year’s President’s Cup for proof.

If we look carefully at his game, I think we can see where he gets the new magic from. I Tivo’d Saturday’s round at the John Deere Classic and soon became mesmorized at the way Steve was playing. He made golf look as easy as Tiger ever did. I soon got to the point where I fast forwarded through everything and just watched him. What I started to notice was a guy who was in a zone, calm and disciplined. His shot routine was always exactly the same. And not just through the finish, he actually did the exact same routine after his finish on every drive to follow the ball until it landed and stopped regardless of how he hit it.

You start watching him carefully and he looks like the most skilled Swiss watch assembler in the world – calm, careful, exacting, efficient and never deviating. Then it hit me, golf advice that I’ve read a hundred times over the years. You have to practice the way you want to play. You can’t hit practice shots and expect it to carryover to the first tee unless you’ve practiced EXACTLY as you expect to play. It’s not as much fun as hitting shots like a machine gun, but it’s what you have to do if you want a repeatable, solid swing that works under pressure.

Think about it, would you expect anyone to be a good putter if they practiced with a belly putter and played with a conventional one. That may be extreme, but I’m sure you get the point. If you stand in front of a pile of golf balls and roll them in front of you and keep banging, you might as well skip the practice tee altogether. It’s probably worse than no practice because your practicing something that you’ll never use on the course.

The other part I want to emphasize about Stricker and some of today’s other standouts, like Justin Rose, is how meticulous they are in setting up. I know I get lazy on way to many shots and when they don’t go as planned, the problem can probably be traced to setup 90% of the time. Practicing includes the same exact setup routine on every shot. Use alignment sticks on the practice tee to check yourself on a regular basis. Feet, knees, hips and shoulders all have to be aligned – EXACTLY.

If you can duplicate a careful, precise swing time after time you are going to start playing better. Steve Sticker does not have a beautiful swing by any stretch of the imagination. If you see it for the first time you might be forgiven for thinking that some amateur has ducked under the ropes and snuck out on the course. But I don’t think there’s a pro in the world right now who wouldn’t want the results he’s getting. Watch him and learn to improve your game, he just might be the best teacher in the world at this point!

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4. The Right Teacher is Key to Golf Instruction
5. David Duval As Teacher

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