Fundamentals of Teaching

Director of instruction Mike Wilson works with La Quinta resident Greg Mokler on the driving range at The Palms Golf Club on Thursday in La Quinta. Wilson is one of many top-tier golf instructors in the valley. (Marilyn Chung, The Desert Sun)

Mike Wilson

Home club: The Palms Golf Club, La Quinta

Big-name students: Currently working with Mike Weir, has worked with pros Paul Stankowski, J.P. Hayes

Wilson's No. 1 tip for any golfer: “I'm looking at their grip, looking at their posture, alignment, ball position. But mostly grip. That's probably the No. 1 thing that people do wrong in terms of how it affects the entire swing. Just the grip. In general, people grip it in such a way so that it doesn't hinge or rotate properly going back. So there is no leverage, and they have too much tension, and then they get too much tension in their shoulders and their arms, and then the whole system is off.”

Bill Harmon

Home club: Toscana Country Club, Indian Wells

Big-name students: Currently working with Jay Haas and Bill Haas. Has worked with Billy Andrade, Nicole Castrale, Stacy Prammanasudh

Harmon's No. 1 tip for any golfer: ”There are two common things that I look at: I look at the grip, and I look at the club face at the top (of the backswing), whether it is square, open or closed. That starts the process of elimination or what to look for.I was taught to do that by my father. I was such a bad teacher when I started early on, I asked him about teaching, and he told me those two things are important to every golfer.”

Craig Farnsworth

Home club: The Palms Golf Club, La Quinta

Big-name students: Has worked with more than 80 pros on various tours, most notably Nick Faldo, Annika Sorenstam and Y.E. Yang

Farnsworth's No. 1 tip for any golfer: “The thing I note for amateurs and pros, first and foremost, is their setup. Regardless of skill level, all have areas of their setup that conflict with their efficiency of action with the putting stroke. I changed as many items with Y.E. Yang as I do for many amateurs. Alignment and ball position are the areas that both amateurs and pros struggle with, especially when they get sloppy. This is the primary reason their stroke goes awry, with their setup being a close second.” 

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Swing Doctors

Mike Wilson sits in his teaching studio at The Palms Golf Club in La Quinta, a signed yellow Masters flag from his star student Mike Weir hanging on the wall, and runs through his teaching schedule for the day. 

 

 “This morning was a member from La Quinta Country Club, she's probably a 10 handicap, I would say, maybe a 12,” Wilson said. “Then one of our members here, then I taught a mini-tour player, a college player who is playing amateur-type stuff. He's a zero (handicap). My student this afternoon is probably a 2-handicap from Seattle who I've known for a few years.” 

As a long-time teaching pro in the desert, Wilson is best known for his association with Weir, an eight-time tour winner including the 2003 Masters and a Bob Hope Classic title. But like numerous desert teaching pros who have touring golfers and even major champions on the PGA, LPGA and Champions tours as clients, the bulk of Wilson's students are recreational players.

“It's 99.9 percent of what I do,” said Bill Harmon, director of instruction at Toscana Country Club in Indian Wells. “I teach golfers. Golfers come in all shapes and sizes.”

Wilson, Harmon and Craig Farnsworth are just a sampling of the desert-based pros who work with top golf stars. The names range from Brian Lebedevich and Carl Welty, who work with pros and amateurs at the Jim McLean Golf School at PGA West, to Mike Mitchell, who teaches reigning Senior PGA Championship winner Michael Allen.

Harmon — part of one of the game's most fabled teaching families, including his older brother Butch — has worked with pros on every tour. He's the long-time teacher of Jay Haas and his son, this year's Bob Hope Classic winner Bill Haas. While he enjoys working with the Haas family, Harmon said teaching amateur players can be a little easier.

“I would say it is harder to teach the tour pro, one, because their livelihood is dependent on what you tell them. And in their case, you are talking about improving maybe half a stroke a round,” Harmon said. “Higher handicap players are much easier to help because they have more to improve on. It's easier to improve a recreational player's game.”

Farnsworth, a noted putting teacher who works locally at The Palms, has taught dozens of pros on various tours, from Hall of Famers Nick Faldo and Annika Sorenstam to recent work with rising stars such as Jamie Lovemark. He also uses high-tech cameras and computer analysis for recreational players in one-on-one lessons or in clinics.

 

“Certainly the talent level is different with the professional players, the better players,” Farnsworth said. “And their learning curve is better. But for an amateur, you are talking about improve four or five putts a round. With the pros, it might be half a putt a round on average.”

Wilson agrees that pros tend to listen to instruction better and accept the idea that changes might take time to show improvement. Recreational players tend to want immediate gratification from a lesson.

Wilson says his only concern is teaching golfers who have a goal. The goal doesn't have to be winning the Masters.

“I do like helping anyone who is going to practice, obviously, but I like people who compete,” Wilson said. “I don't care what level it is. I don't care if it is the second flight of a club championship. That's what's fun for me.”

Harmon's desire to help golfers of any level has even led him to donate his time to the players on the La Quinta High School boys' golf team the last three seasons. He admits that even at high school tournaments, he's always thinking what he might tell a player if the player asked for some advice.

“I would say at least half of my lessons are women,” Harmon said. “In a perfect world of teaching, I would teach anybody who wanted to learn, and I mean anybody.”

Farnsworth sees much in common between his pro clients and high-handicap golfers when it comes to putting.

“With all average to good players, they all miss more putts from a misread of the green than any other single item,” Farnsworth said. “I had (Fred) Funk, Trevor Dodds, Cameron Tringale and Chip Beck all in on the same week, studying to be better green readers. If players are wise enough to take more than one putting lesson, they will find that getting into green-reading becomes a huge factor in making more putts through commitment.”

Each teacher's success with big-name players helps connect the teacher with more touring pros. But each teacher took a different route to working with a big-name player for the first time.

Wilson was simply working as a teaching pro at El Paso Country Club in Texas when he was approached by a college player from the University of Texas, El Paso named Paul Stankowski. Stankowski went on to win two PGA Tour events.

“He was already good when I started with him,” Wilson said. “Mostly I was an eye on the range to look and see if his alignment and fundamentals were good.  He had a great swing, so my job was to help him build confidence.”

Harmon's path to big-name clients was more obvious, with his father Claude being a teaching and club pro at Winged Foot Country Club in New York and courses in the desert. But it was a caddie job for Jay Haas that jump-started Harmon's teaching career.

“When I started caddying for him in 1978, I kind of became his set of eyes,” said Harmon, who was on Haas' bag when he won the 1988 Bob Hope Classic. “And it wasn't really that far into our relationship.”

Unlike a vast majority of teachers who are members of either the PGA of America or the LPGA Teaching and Club pro division, Farnsworth was a practicing Denver-based optometrist. His path to golf teaching began with some work he did with a patient who was also a member of the Denver Nuggets NBA team on free-throw shooting and visual perception of targets. Farnsworth then turned that research toward golf and in particular putting.

“My dad was a teaching pro and I spent a lot of time growing up around golf courses,” Farnsworth said. “So it was natural I'd start working with golfers.”

Ironically, both Wilson and Harmon say they have been branded in some ways by their success working with touring pros.

“I've heard from people that they know that you teach pros, and they don't think they are a good enough players (to work with you),” Wilson said. “When I started hearing those things, I though to myself, ‘I'm more interested in teaching a player who wants to learn rather than a certain level of player.'”

Harmon agreed.

“I've heard that, and I think it's almost humorous,” Harmon said. “It just couldn't be further from the truth. When you think about it, it's all just teaching.”

Comments

[Freida10]

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[Freida10]

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